Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #228: Breaking Down Public Land Hunts w/ Tony Peterson

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #228: Breaking Down Public Land Hunts w/ Tony Peterson · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number two,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and today in the show, I'm joined by outdoor writer
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and public land whitetail specialist Tony Peterson, and we're breaking
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: down his two thousand seventeen public land successes and we
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: are examining his new game plan for two thousand eighteen.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And before we get things kicked off, I want to
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: thank our friends at Lacrosse Boots for their support of
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: this podcast. And as I've mentioned over the past couple
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of weeks, I've been wearing the Cross robber boots for
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: almost two decades now. They can tinue to serve me
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: without fail. Keep me warm during the late season, they
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: keep me comfortable, walk into the tree stand all year long.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: They keep my feet dry. You know, I'm heading to
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Montana in just about one week, and i know on
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: this hunt I'm gonna be going up and down a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: river multiple times. So good waterproof forever boots very important.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Nice high rubber boots very important because I'm gonna going
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: through some decently deep water, but these should have me
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: covered for most of the time. It's a great way
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: to get in and out. I can get in quietly,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I can access some spots that you normally wouldn't be
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: able to So using water as an access route is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a great tool, and these rubber boots make that possible.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So I know they're gonna be a great tool for me.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I imagine if you're looking for boots, they should do
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the jeb for you too, so you can learn more
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: if you're interested at Lacrosse Footwear dot com. All right,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: by Onyx and today we are joined again by Tony Peterson.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And Tony's an outdoor writer. He's been published in many
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: well known publications out there like bo Hunter Magazine or
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: North American Whitetail. And he's a public land specialist. And
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: if you heard I think this was episode two two
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: just last month, I think it was, that was our
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: public land master class. If you heard that podcast, Tony
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: was on there a couple of times, because he's been
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: on the show twice before actually, and in those episodes,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: like I don't know what number those original episodes were
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you should go back and listen to those, but in
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: those ones he shared a lot of helpful information. He's
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: become really one of my favorite go to people to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: talk to about public land, do it yourself, haunts, UM.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: He's someone who I like to catch up with a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: few times a year, even off the podcast, just to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: catch up on what he's up to, how he's doing
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: these things. He's just a he's got a helpful perspective,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a good way to talk about these things. So I'm
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: excited to finally have him back on the show because
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it was almost I think almost two years ago since
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: he was on last. So today we're gonna catch up
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: with Tony, find out what's new in his hunting world.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I'm interested to see if tactics or ideas have changed
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: it all since we last chatted. And then I'm hoping
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: we can try to learn some new things from him
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: by kind of breaking down what he did during his
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen season and then looking forward at his
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen plans and diving into how he planned
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: these trips, what he's hoping to do, what he's expecting,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: how he's going to try to tackle these different states
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: at different times a year. I think he's hunting five
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: different states, um on public lan, So he's gonna have
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: some interesting things to talk about. I'm excited about that.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: But what I'm not excited about is that my usual
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: co host, Dan Johnson is not here because of a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: scheduling conflict. So I'm stuck with Spencer new Hearth. And
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, man, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: filling in. I will do my best to fill in
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Dan's role. All try to ask some of the worst
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: questions to I guess I got a question for you.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I got a question for it. That's That's how I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: gotta start every one of them. Okay, all right, In
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: all seriousness though, man, speaking of Dan, we had a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: huge missed opportunity last week. Um, for those that didn't listen,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: last week, we had Spencer and Dan and Further and
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: myself on the show talking about our own plans and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: goals and stuff for the year. And UM, when we
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: were talking about naming our bucks. This buck I think
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you call them like the Big ten or the five
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: by five or something really lame like that. Um, but Dan,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I gave Dan the right to name that buck. Remember this,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and you talked about your favorite movies Forrest Gump, and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Dan then decided to name your buck Forrest. Well, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: maybe you saw us on Instagram, but a bunch of
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: people all commented saying that we really screwed it up
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: because we should have named that buck Lieutenant Dan, who
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is a character in Forrest Gump and obviously the tie
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: into Dan. Did you did you think about that afterwards?
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Did you see those comments afterwards? Spencer? I saw the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: comm ments, and uh, I can't believe that just went
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: over our head like that. But I am on board
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: with changing this year's name to Lieutenant Dan. It feels
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: more fitting since Dan is now hunting a buck named Spencer,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that I should haunt a buck named Dan, and even
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: though he tried to get out of that, didn't name
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it something else. Uh, it has now come full circle
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: and that this buck needs to be now when it
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: is Dan. Yeah, well, I think the people have spoken
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and and Dan's not here to argue that, so I
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: say we just go over his head and and make
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: the switch. Huh, that's right. I'm pulling up the file
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: folder now, so it went from Big ten to Forest
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  Speaker 1: to now Lieutenant Dan is there any way to like
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: lock that on there, so there's no more changes allowed.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: We'll just decide right now that that's who he is,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and I'll let the other hunters in the area know.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: If anybody sees this deal, he goes by Dan. That's good,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: get everyone on the same page. Um, anything new on
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: that front. I know last time we chatted, you were,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: you know, talking about how you're trying to get things
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: all lined up for opening day taking a stab at him.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Anything you've done since then or do you have any
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: plans in the coming days to try to tighten up
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the plan? Nothing new on my end since we last
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: spoke about a week ago. But this is kind of
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: my last week, um for some different preparations to check
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: cameras to get in lass bit of scouting before that
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: season opens on September one. So nothing new on my end.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But how about with you, Mark? I see that you
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: are putting some miles on your pickup and getting some
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: of those classic August cell phone pictures through Spotty and
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Scope that we all see. Yeah yeah, um yeah, I've
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: been been getting eyes on a lot of bucks and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: driving around a decent bit. Um. I guess since we
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: last chatted, I think I mentioned when we talked that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I thought I maybe had seen Holy Field. Um, well
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I saw that same buck again. Uh, this was like
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: four or five nights ago. Maybe. UM, I still don't
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: know for sure if it's him. I have I've been
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: seeing like right at last, like he's been coming out
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: in this bean field. But the frame looks a lot
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: like him. So that's exciting, but I'm not gonna get
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: too excited yet. Um. And then in that same field,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: like two or three nights ago, I had a batchelor
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: group of five different bucks come out, and um, all
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: of them were at least two year olds, maybe a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: three year old or two in there. And then one
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: definitely was a four year old or older, different buck,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: definite shooter that I've not seen before. So that was cool. Um.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So that's at least two different mature bucks that I've
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: seen come out into that field. And this is this
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: is really close to a spotic and hunt. I can't
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: hunt this property, but it's right next door basically. Um
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So that was good. And I'm trying to think if
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I've seen anything else. I haven't checked my cameras yet
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that I have on my main Michigan property. I hung. Well.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: The other big thing I guess I did is I
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: went up to our northern Michigan deer camp um and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: checked some cameras up there. No bucks hardly at all
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: on those pictures, but we don't seem to get any
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: summer pictures of mature bucks at this property. Uh. Um,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But we did a bunch of bears on there. Um.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: But I got those cameras set, and then the big
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: project up there was trying to get our food plots planted.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard on some of the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: past episodes where I've talked about this place, Spencer, but
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: basically it's a little forty acre property up in the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: big woods and swamp country in northern Michigan that uh
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that my grandpa bought like thirty years ago. And um,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So the past few years we've been trying to make
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a few habitat improvements because it's it's been almost like
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: void of deer completely. But three years ago we started
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: trying to carving these little plots. And so this is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the third year I think now where we have something planted,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: and uh excited about that. But it was kind of
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a debacle. Man. We we got up there and got
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to the plots and they were just completely overgrown with weeds.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I'm perpetually dealing with weeds because I just can't get
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: up to this place enough. So we sprayed it in
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: like late June, I think, so I was hoping by
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: spraying it then it's still be pretty well knocked down
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: or at least not too badly grown over by the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: time we got back. But I was wrong about that.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Lots of weeds and we didn't We weren't gonna have
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: another chance to get up there, so like this is yesterday,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: so yesterday there's our only chance to do this. So
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I couldn't spray and come back. So basically we just
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: had to deal that we had. So I had my
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: little groundhog disc for the four wheeler and it took
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a long time, but it actually chewed up that stuff
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: really good, so I'm pretty happy with what we got.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Took a lot of circles over and over and over
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: going around, but but I got it disped up, got
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the soil turned over well. I think I killed off
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: most of those weeds um so that there might be
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: some some weed issues a little bit, but that's fine.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: It's not doesn't need to be a perfectly manicured, beautiful plot. UM.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I feel good about the fact we'll at least have
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: good seed to soil contact for our planet. So um
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: planet a mix of oats and winter wheat and some
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: brassicas um, which is something new. For a long time,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: we were just able. We were just able to get
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: oats planted up there because of how acidic the soil was.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: But we've been adding a lot of lime over the
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: past few years, so it looks like our pH has
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: improved enough that I think brassicas can take I'm excited
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to see that if that works out. And uh, And
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: that was basically the Northern Michigan Project did. Did a
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: little bit of scouting up there, moved some cameras around. UM.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: So now I'm probably not going to get back up
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: there until both season and um the rest of this
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: this next week week and a half I've got left
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: before Montana. I'm just scurring around trying to get a
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff done here in southern Michigan. I planted
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: my Braska plots here on the main farm, and UM
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: move some tree stands around a couple of days ago. UM,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you know, one cool thing. And I'm rambling here spencer,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: so feel for a jump in and tell me to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: shut up if you want. Um. But I was. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: was trimming some lanes at a few stands, and I
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: went back to where I think is probably my best
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: location for the rut this coming fall. I've got three
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: tree stands that are all actually four stands that are
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: all kind of along this back bedding area on this property,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and and um, over the years, I've tried to improve
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that betting area by doing some hinge cutting. While I'm
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: walking back to one of these tree stands that's back
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: down wind of this betting air, or it's located to
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: be down wind on on west wind. And as I
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: get up to the edge of this betting air, this
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: hinge cut area, I stand there. I'm kind of looking around,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: taking in the scene, kind of you know, happily patting
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: myself on the back about how good it looks and
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: how thick and nasty is And all of a sudden,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: deer jumps up from like twenty yards away from me,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: goes running away. And it's a nice ten point buck,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: like at least a three year old buck, maybe older.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty quick, um, but a nice mature
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: buck that was betted right in those hinge cuts I made.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So that was cool to see something that I worked on,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: you know, a few years ago, and now it's you know,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: paying off with deer using it. So were you improving
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a betting area there? Or were you creating a betting area?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Like do you think there's any chance that buck would
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: have been there otherwise without those hinge cuts, So he
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been where he specifically was. There was originally
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: a betting area, um, a small betting area, and so
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I had taken note of that some years ago and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: saw that deer betting there. Um. But I thought to myself, Okay,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: there's this bit of high ground on the back side
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of the swamp. I bet you can make it bigger
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: and extend it lengthwise down this ridge farther and that
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: just might you know, draw more deer to bed here.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I might get some more buck activity if I do that. So,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: like I mentioned, over the year, I've done a couple
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of times, I've done this, extended the hinge cut to
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: make this area much bigger. And so he was at
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the far end of the new stuff. So, um, this
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: area that he was bettered in is an area hinge
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: cut last spring. Um that that's maybe fifty to seventy five,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: maybe fifty seventy five yards extended out from where the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: old betting area originally was. So he was he was
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: better at the far end of it. I can imagine
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: this if you imagine this betting air being kind of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: relatively narrow but long. He was at the far end
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: of one of the of the if it's like a
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: long rectangle, who's the far end of the rectangle at
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the very end of it, betted up underneath some of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: these hinge cuts looking I'm assuming he was looking out
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: towards the open stuff ahead of him. So that was
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: that was encouraging to see. And I've got a tree
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: stand that's fifty yards from there. Um, Now that's not
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing I would like hunt that buckbed
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: from that tree stands. It's a really hard to access place.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So I only hunt these stands during the rut, and
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I go in really really far before daylight, circle back
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: through the back door of the swamp. And then if
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I hunt those spots, it's an all day said, I
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: can't get out of there. Um, But it was good
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to see. And um, when we've got a west wind
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: in November, there'll be one of the spots I'll probably
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: be And that's neat because like the hinge cutting is
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: something simple that like anybody can do. It doesn't take
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: a bunch of resources. It doesn't take a bunch of equipment.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Uh you know, and that's something you've probably knocked out
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: like one afternoon in the past to get that buck there. Yeah,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that's exactly right. I mean I don't have any fancy
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: equipment or anything. I just had a cheap chainsaw, and
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: like you said, it was a one day thing where
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I went back there and did I did a handful
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of those cuts and uh, you know, all you gotta
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: do is opens up some sunlight, put some cover on
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the ground, and those dear love it. So that was
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: good to see and and walking around in there. Um,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I wish i'd I wish I was doing
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: this two months ago or three months ago rather than now,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: But just my schedule has been nuts and I think
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that some activity in August is not going to impact
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: me in November. Um but in a perfect world, that
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: would I've been doing this, but here I am. Anyways,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I was doing it, so I'm walking around in there
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: and was clearing some lanes, because like I said, I've
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: got three stands that are along this bedding area. Um.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Two of them are for westerly winds, one of them
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: is for an easterly wind. Um, and just kind of
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: puts it around in there. It is just so tore up.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: There are so many rubs, there's so many you could
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: see old scrapes, you could see beds um. And I
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: usually go in here in the spring too and do
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: a quick scout and shed hunt, and those are usually
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the only time I ever going here, and um man,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it just looks dynamite. So last year, not from this
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: specific tree stand, but from the other westerly tree stand,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: which is about two yards down the Betting Ara maybe
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: give or take, I had nearly a shot at Holy
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Field from that spot. He came through at forty yards
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and my shooting lane was just cut to thirty five.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So he was just back in a little bit too
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: far back in the cover. Um, but you know, he's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: definitely the area. So maybe to three months from now
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: we'll get in the counter with him in here and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the whole story will come full circle. We uh as
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: listeners would all look forward to that, and no get
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: rid of this deer move on to something new, right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: that's right? Um? So, so I've blabbed on for a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: long time now, but we gotta get Tony on here quick.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: He's waiting, but really quick before we do that. Um,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: any final plug for RUT Radio, because our RUT Radio
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: episodes are gonna start up not next week but the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: week after that, right, do you want to give people
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a quick reminder of what to expect there? Yes? So
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: this will be the third season now of RUT Radio.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: The first episode will go up September five, and the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: goal without radio is to bring you the most relatively
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: relevant white tail until anywhere. Um. And so we will
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: be recording these episodes like on a Tuesday, we'll talk
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to four different hunters that are very well respected for
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: their white tail knowledge, talk about what they've been seeing
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: for Dear movement, what they expect to see for Dear Movement.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: We'll get that podcast up on Wednesday, and we try
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to make them really digestible, like thirty minute episodes. So
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: this is something you can knock out on your commute
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: to work or over your lunch break, whatever it might be.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And uh, we're gonna be bringing those episodes every week
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and talk to hunters across the nation. Yeah, So if
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: if you're new to the podcast or for some reason,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: if you haven't subscribed yet, definitely subscribe now so you'll
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: get those episodes. So by suscribe, subscribe to the wire
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Dut podcast, you're gonna get the RUT Radio episodes too.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: They're kind of just like a mini series within our
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: own podcast here, So make sure you're subscribe. And like
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Spencer said, the fifth of September, well the first one
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: on there, and I think right, I'll have been hunting
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days by then in Montana, and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you'll be hunting a couple of days in South Dakota,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: so probably the first update from our hunts will be
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: on that episode two. So that's exciting. Yeah, And you
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: know there's become it's becoming more and more popular to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: hunt that early September, late August where states allow. So
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: right off the bat, we're going to have some unique
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: reports for you guys. Hopefully Lieutenant Lieutenant Dan will be
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: hitting the dirt, right, that's right, that's right, all right, man.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Well let's take a quick break and then we'll give
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Tony call real quick. Before we do that, though, I
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: want to thank our partners at Onyx and as I've
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: been mentioning now for quite a decent bit. The Hunt
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: app is something that I've been using a lot off
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of the off season. I use it during this season.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It is a mobile application that allows you to see
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: aerial maps, topographic maps. It shows property maps. You can
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: see the actual private properties in the landowners. You can
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: see the public land parcels, borders, designations, all that kind
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and a lot of handy tools in there.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I was just using onyx Maps yesterday actually while out
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: scouting this new property I got permission on on the
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: west side of the state here in Michigan, and we're
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: out looking picking different trees to hanging stands. We're kind
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of doing some last minute stand prep and walking around
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: scouting picking trees, and I would mark a tree on
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: my app, and then what I was gonna do since
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: there's another guy that's hunting this property with me, My
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: plan was, I'm gonna mark all these trees they think
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: would be good. I'm gonna set them up with tree
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: stands over the next couple of days, and then I
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: can send those locations directly to him. You can actually
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: text away point to a friend and then if they
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: had the Onyx app, they can open that app, it
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: pulls up in their Onyx map and they can see
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: it right there on their phones too. This is a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: great way to share locations in this kind of situation.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: If if my friends not able to actually get to
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: one of these spots before the season, and if the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: first time he ever heads in is going to be
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: four hunt, this way, he's not gonna be bumbling around
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: looking for reflectors or some tape or something. You can
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: just follow that white point on his phone right to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the spot. So just another way that the Onyx Hunt
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: app is helping me out a lot. If you'd like
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: to learn more, you can go to onyx maps dot com.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: You can search for Onyx on your mobile app store
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of choice, and if you want off, you can use
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the promo code WIRED. That's w I R E D
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: for off. Alright back with us now is Tony Peterson.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Welcome to show, Tony, thanks for having me man. Yeah,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: this is uh the lucky number three time you've been
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: on the show. Third appearance, so glad you have me
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: on last year. I know we're gonna have to work
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: double time to catch up for that. Um well, I
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: appreciate it, man, I love doing this podcast. Yeah, it's fun.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I've enjoyed our Ask two episodes a lot. And I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was just saying, when me and Spencer are doing the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: intro um, how those are a couple of my favorite episodes.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And you've really become one of those guys who I've
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you know, turned to is Is Um someone I've been
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: able to learn from a lot as far as how
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: to do a lot of these public land hunts. And
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: you know, in particularly, I've started to do some of
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: this western white tailed public land stuff that you know,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you've done quite a bit of two so your your
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: advice and ideas has definitely been helpful to me. So
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I just thinking, I thought today we could kind of,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: like you just mentioned, catch up on what you did
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: last season and then look forward to this coming season,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: which opens for all three of us here in just
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. So and you know, like we
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: usually try to do, I'm hoping we can kind of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: use all those examples to dig into some things, um
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: learn some of the different things that are going on.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And and then I think there's a handful of other
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: things you and I had kind of spitballed about otherwise
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it might be interesting to cover too, especially like with
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: our families and some of that kind of stuff. Um,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: how all of that acts what we're doing as deer hunters.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So that was that was my game plan. Um, yeah, yeah,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's right up my alley. So I'm good
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: with that. Cool. So, so you mentioned that we didn't
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: touch base last year? Um, how was the two thousand
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: seventeen season for you? I was good, Um, you know,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I had had a good run in a couple of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: states and I ended up, um, you know, having a
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. Killed some bucks out there, killed a
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: dough in northern Wisconsin on public land that was way
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: harder to kill than any of the bucks I ran into, Um,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and just had a I had a good season. It was.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun, a lot of cool encounters.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm really really optimistic for this year after last year.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Where all did you hunt? Um? Last year, I hunted
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and I feel like
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: there's one other state of missing there. Um, those for sure,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: but I had I hounted public in Wisconsin, hounted public
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: in North Dakota, and South Dakota and some in Minnesota.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So I spent a lot of time on you know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: common ground out there, and it was it was just
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a fun season. Of course, you know, I went out
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: hunting in Colorado and did some mantled open stuff too,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: but as far as white sales, those were the main states.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I focused on what what was that dough hunt? Like?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: What made that one so special? Because it was so hard.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: It was just you know, you know that living in
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Michigan and having hunted where you've hunted, Uh, some of
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: these states are just way more difficult than other states,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you know, and it usually boils down to pressure and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: predators and you know, dear population and winter kill, the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: whole thing. And where I out in northern Wisconsin, it
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: just consistently kicks my butt more than anywhere. And I
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: last last November, I are about nine days to hunt
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: public land up there, and I thought, you know, I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: had I had a couple of dough tags, I had
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a buck tag. I'm like, this will be this will
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: be a blast. And I got my butt kicked almost
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: every day and had several doughs that I was just
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: trying to put in the freezer and got busted drawn
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: on them and finally killed one, and it was it
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: was way harder to do than any of the bucks
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I killed last year and anywhere I went. And you know,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting example of what's going on
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: in the hunting industry because I pitched that story to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: several of the magazines I worked for, and every editor
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: passed on it because it was a dough, and you know,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: it's just it's kind of indicative of where we are,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: uh as an industry. But to me, you know, in
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: my experience, it was just I really had to bring
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: my a game up there just to kill a dough
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: in a way that I don't even have to do
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: to kill big bucks in some of these states. And
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: so it's it's always interesting thing to me how it
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: varies so much from state to state and county to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: county and just you know, parcel to parcel almost you know,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so this is like big Woods habitat right
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: up there. Yeah, yeah, we're where where I'm kind of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: focusing on is right where the last of the egg
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: ends and the real big Woods starts. So you do
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: have it's not totally devoid agriculture. I mean, you can
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: play off as some of the private fields around there.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: There might be an alfalfa field or a hate field
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: or something, but for the most part, it's it's big
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: wood stuff. Gotcha. Yeah, that's We're just talking before you
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: came on about some work that I've been doing up
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: on my family's northern Michigan property. And that's this little
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: forty acre chunk that's surrounded by state land, like ten
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: tho acres of state land, and it's just all big woods.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Either there's a little bit of hardwood timber, but then
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of swamp and um, it's so hard
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: to find deer in that kind of area because it's
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: pretty much homogeneous terrain, all timber. And you know, for
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: years the population has been really low and the hunting
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: up there has just been brutal, Like we like, our
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: little group of guys that goes up there has hardly
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: killed anything. So I'm really I'm really trying to refocus
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: on hunting up there and try and like figure out, Okay,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: how can I apply all the things I've learned now
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: is like an adult hunter to this place that I
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: hunted growing up as a kid and did horrible lot,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Like how can I start to figure this place out
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: and what was your take? How did you end up
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: trying to tackle that big wood slash? You know a
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: little bit of agg but how did you approach that?
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I know you didn't end up killing the buck, but
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: how are you trying to do and how do you
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: ultimately kill that dough? Well, so my my strategy keeps changing.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And you know, on the on the land that I'm hunting, um,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: it's it's in the managed force program, so it's it's
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: private that's open to public, but there's there's these rules
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: on it. So you know, you can't run a trail
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: camera unless you contact the owner and get inform or
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you get permission, and you just have to you have
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to go about it differently. You can't leave tree stands up,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: so it's like you put up a stand, take it
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: down up a stand. It's it's almost too much work
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: for what it's worth. But what I started doing is
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: going in and looking for fresh signs setting up there,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and if i'd see a deer or see something that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you know, observes something, I'd move in the next day.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And I kept moving and I don't know how many
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: stands I put up and took down in those nine days.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: But it was a lot and you know, I didn't
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: kill a buck. I did see a buck that I
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: thought was probably one sixty, which is which is you know,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: a giant for public land. Um. And I saw a
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: couple of others that were you know, one fifteen two,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: maybe mid one thirties. So it wasn't like I was.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it was interesting because it was really hard,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: but I saw one of the biggest deer I've ever
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: seen on public land. And just I think those kind
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: of hunts, I think what you're talking about on your
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: northern Michigan property. I think you just got to get
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: in there and get where the deer are. Now it's
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: almost more like a h an elk hunt. You know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: if you go out and you see this beautiful meadow
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you know in you know, the mountains in Colorado or whatever.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it may look great, but it doesn't matter
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: if they're not. If there's not fresh sign there and
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: there's not elk around there, it doesn't matter. So you've
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: gotta keep going and keep going. And I kind of
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: think in the big woods, you know, we think of
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: deer as being you know, occupying, you know it. So
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: let's say there's ten deer per section or six deer
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: per section, and you think, okay, they should be spread out.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: They're not. You know, one of the deal group that
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: lives in one little area and this buck lives here,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and you know, they're only occupying a little bit of
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the woods most of the time. And if you're not
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: around that, it sucks bad to be up there hunting.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: And so I think it's just a real mobile strategy,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and is is how it's usually going to play out
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: for you, Like you're gonna have to keep looking, you know. Yeah,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: that's an interesting point. I um, yeah, We've got this
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: little forty and on that forty about well of this forty,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: all of it was overgrown with stuff, and over the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: last couple of years, as I was talking about, we've
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: actually carved in a couple of little tiny food plots
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: and so we're getting some consistent dough activity now on
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the private stuff. Um, but I keep on being tempted
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: to take a season and like spend a bunch of
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: time up there and just explore all the surrounding public
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: around it and do just what you said, bounce around
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: from spot to spot to spot to spot. And there's
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: some old clear cuts in the surrounding area that I
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: gotta imagine there's some deer relating to those maybe a
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: little bit. So I feel like, as you said, kind
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of jump around observe just I think it would be
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: dreadful for anyone listening or watching because I probably will
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: hardly ever see any deer, So it might be really
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: boring content that year, but it could be really cool
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: if I did figure it out. Well if it is,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and it's super rewarding. And you know the thing about
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: having swamps everywhere, because I hunt places like that too,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and to me, it's the hardest kind of hunting out
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: there for white tails and what I think, you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: especially if you're gonna focus anytime, you know, Halloween on,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: if you can look at your aerial photography and see
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: you can kind of you can kind of see I
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: call it a figure in the swamp where it'll be
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: like a point across from a point and it's hard
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: to see when you're on the ground walking around, but
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: if you look at the aerial photography, sometimes you'll see
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: those and that's where they cross a lot. And so
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: usually if I'm dealing with huge wood stuff, I don't
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I don't do the clear cut thing as much because
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I may I may be in an area that has
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you know, four square miles a clear cut, and it's like, well, okay,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: so yeah, maybe the deer eating the fresh brows somewhere
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: in there. But it's basically, you know, you're dealing with
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: this huge, huge piece of land. And so if you
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: find some of those those places in the swamps where
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it's easier for them to cross um, where there's an
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: island in the swamp that they can get to and
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: bed on because they love those because of the visitors,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: then you can kind of narrow down your search. You
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: know what. It's like. It's a process, man, you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: it's it's just not easy to find. And just because
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: you see that figure eight on d aerial photography, you
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: might walk in there and realize you can't really hunt
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: it with a prevailing wind, or it just might not
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: be the right spot. But you can kind of shortcut
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the process a little bit by doing that. Sometimes, Yeah,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that's a good idea. I definitely finding those like little
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: pinch points, that kind of thing, I think is a
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: great way to try and narrow it down. I've I've
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: started looking for some things like that or just starting
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to identify all the different kind of internal edges that
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: there's no obvious edges around here because it's not like
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: big timber meeting up to a crop field or something.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: But I've been trying to find like edge between swamping hardwoods,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: or between hardwoods and pines um or some things like that.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I think, I think that's someone to start doing, is
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: take my map and just start marking each one of
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: these different features that I think might have something to it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: And the next spring, I just need to go and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: just walk every single bit of it and like really
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: dedicate some time to figure in this place out, because
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it just seems like to your point,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: it would be a lot of fun to figure that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: out and try to make it happen. Well, it is,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's so different. You know, you
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: talk about making food plots and that's a blast, but
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: this is a totally different style of hunting, you know.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're going out trying to figure out
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: what these deer are doing, and these low densities and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: these places that are hard to get to, and you know,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: talking about soft edges back in the timber and that
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Man, it's it's just it's rewarding, it's cool.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: And you know you mentioned going out next spring. I'll
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: tell you what. I learned more about what deer doing
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the swamps in March than any other time, just because
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you can, you know, they're frozen, so you can walk
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: anywhere you want to, and then you find some of
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: those places that those those big bucks just tear up
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: year after year, and they got those you know there
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: there's some kind of terrain feature of something that's advantageous
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to them, and it's it can work in your favorite
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: but it's you gotta you know, you gotta burn some
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: boot leather to get there. Yeah, yeah, I gotta. I
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: gotta put in that work. I think it's it's time
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: to stop kind of twiddling my thumbs up there and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: just settling for the status quo and just being like, oh,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this is just deer camp. I'll just have a nice
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: time hanging out with a family, and it's time to
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: actually put some real time into making the hunting a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: little better. So I gotta do it. Um Spencer, Tony Tony.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: On the other end of the spectrum, you have like
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: the Dakotas and Nebraska, and you know, amount of tree
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: coverage there is the least as anywhere else in the nation.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: How did you do hunting there in because I think
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: those are three of your favorite states that you know
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: visit pretty regularly. Yeah, they are. You know, I like,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I like fewer trees. Uh, that's way more enjoyable to
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: me than having, you know, six square miles of trees.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: It's just so much easier to figure out, you know
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: what I mean. I always I always think of deer
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: like walleyes. You know, if there's if there is the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: CRP patch, it was one fence row of trees, or
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you know there's there's some kind of patch of cedars somewhere.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: They just gravitate towards that stuff. And so if you
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: get out into some of those places in South Dakota
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and North Dakota where you know, it looks more like
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: peasant territory than anything, it's just a lot easier to
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: figure out where the deer probably gonna go, and and
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: you can observe them. You know, that's the big hindrance
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: when you're hunting the big wood stuff is you can't
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: see anything. So you know, you go run trail cameras
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: or you might try to glass, a fresh clear cut
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or something. But for the most part, until you're hunting,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: you just don't see a lot of gear movement. And
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: when you're hunting those states that are more open, you
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: can observe so much better. And that's like, you know,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: my strategy, the way that I tend to kill a
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: lot of bucks out west. I mean, that's that's what
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I do that you know, I filled my tag in
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: North Dakota and South Dakota last year, both by just
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: observing and then moving in. But Tony, you're kind of
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: playing it off like it's easy almost, But I live here,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I hunt here. I know it's not as easy as
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you're making it sound. But walk us through that South
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Dakota hunt. Because if I had to challenge somebody to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: go kill a deer like the way you did, which
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: was late September from the ground on public land and
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: uh hunting in I think those were pretty rough conditions
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: at that time. I thought, I think it was like
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: raining and windy all weekend, right, I don't think many
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: guys would succeed. Yet you went out and you did
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: that and you killed probably a five and a half
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: year old white tail, just an awesome buck. Tell us
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: about that haunt. Yeah, I mean it was a it
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: was a cool deal, man. Um, you know I got
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: on that deer just honestly. I was driving down the
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: road after hunting in the morning and the rain, going
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: back to camp to have lunch, and I saw three
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: meal deer box on this just kind of cleared out
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: hillside on a walking ranch and I nothing going on,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So I went and stocked him, because you know, your
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: tag is good for either meal dear or a white tail.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I got in on those bucks, blew them out of there,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: and I was like, why are there? I've never seen
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: meal dear here? Why are they here? And I kind of,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of rolled around on the back
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: of my head. Well, I ended up seeing a white
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: tail buck crossed there in the dark coming back that night,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: going into the same spot, and I'm like, all right, well,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: so now i know I'm missing something. And because it
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: was so rainy on the opener, I mean it was
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: it was like biblical. It was crazy how much rain
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: we got. Um. I walked in there with a ground
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: blind because there was there was no you could tell
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: just by looking at it that you probably weren't going
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: to find a good tree stand tree, and what had
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: happened is the rancher or somebody had cleared out a
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: bunch of those low seaters in there, and there was
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: fresh growth coming up, and so these deer were kind
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: of staging there, kind of browsing, but they were they
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: could get on this hillside that was really only like
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards up road, but they could be out
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: of sight. And so when I got in there, you
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: could just see evidence of browsing everywhere, and there was
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: a great big pile of cedar skeletons. So I just
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: put a ground blind up next to it, and I thought,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: you know, if I get sick and sitting in the rain,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna come and sit in this thing.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: And it just so happened that because it was so rainy,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: there wasn't hardly any other hunters out there. It was
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: opening weekend, and it was like pretty much a ghost
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: town because it was downpours. And I ended up going
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: sitting there and the buck that came in. There's two
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: bucks that came in, and the little guy and then
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the big one that I killed. And I had seen
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: those deer the day before a mile down the road
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock on their feet, but they were on
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: private and so they were just covering ground and browsing
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and some of these spots and and keying off one
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: of the fields on that walking ranch, and then they
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: would kind of stage their way back to bed. And
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I just got lucky. I got in there. You know,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you could get You can get around real quiet when
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: it's the town for We got in there, and those
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: those two bucks sped past me, and I ended up
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: getting there on that big ten pointer. But it was
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you know, it was honestly probably due mostly to that
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: bad weather, because there's no way those deer would have
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: been as consistent on a spot that close to the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: road if it would have been a nice opener. I
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: just I just don't think. I mean, I can't prove that,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: but I think that the downpour kept the pressure away
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and those deer were still comfortable being in a killable spot.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I think you, I think you had a small group
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: with you on that haunt. How did everyone else do
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that was in camp? They did well? Um My one
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: of my buddies killed a nice ten pointer um the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: second night of the season, and then another buddy hit
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: one hit, a hit a smaller buck um that we
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: never found. He hit it, he didn't hit it very
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: well and it rained all night, so we ended up
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: grid searching for a long time and just never picked
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: him up. Um. So really we you know, shot opportunity,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: you wise, it was incredible. Um. You know, my buddy
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Eric killed a great ten point or made a perfect shot. Um.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And that was another deer. We saw him and his
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: buddy the day before the season opened feeding in a spot.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Eric went in there, hung a stan, had to tweak
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it a little bit the next night and that buck
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: came in at fifteen yards and he dumped him. So
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: it was you know, any time that you can go
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: to for three on public land in a short weekend
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: of bow hunting is pretty solid, you know. Yeah. And
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: before we move on, like I own to stress how
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: difficult it is to do what you just did. I
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: mean where you were hunting is uh gets a ton
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: of firearm pressure. There are loads of deer killed there
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: every year. Um. It is an appealing area to hunt,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and so there's loads of archery pressure as well. And
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: then like you talked about, it was public land on
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the ground in the rain. Um. You know, I was
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: so impressed that you guys went out there and had
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: that kind of success. Well, you know, to me, it's
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: it's all relative. Right. You know, you're you're from South Dakota,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: so your experience is largely from South Dakota, right, And
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: when you talk a ton of rifle pressure, I hear that,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, Mark here is it to being permission? It's
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: all relative because you know, when I think of just
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: just as an example, one of the private farms that
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: hunt in Minnesota, UM, they have like three different shotgun
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: groups that hunt there that have like fifteen guys apiece.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: So just in a couple of weeks of shotgun season,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: forty five people will hunt that farm. And that's not
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: counting muzzleloaders, bow hunters, and random gun hunters who aren't
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: part of the group. And so I always just you know,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: when I hear about a lot of pressure, I'm like, well,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I've been around a lot of pressure my whole life.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: So it's not you know, I don't want to use
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that as an excuse to not go right, or is
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: an excuse to not hunt as hard as possible, because
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what we do a lot of times
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: we say, well, this is gonna be hard I'm probably
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: not going to succeed, so I'm not gonna you know,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna work too hard at it, and that's
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: not really the best way to go about it, you know. Yeah,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: speaking of like making excuses for not going out or
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: not hunting his harden, Um, rain, I feel like rain
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: is one of those things that people oftentimes like it's
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: not gonna be that good or I don't want to
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: get soaked, and they don't go hunting. I've always personally
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: loved rainy days for hunts. Um. I feel like I've
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: heard you two in the past talk about how you
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: know bad weather is no excuse? Is that right? Do
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: you do you love those kind of days too? Yeah? Huge.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I I would pick rain over any condition to hunt
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: in anywhere public, private. I don't care. Um, I just
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think dear like beingbedded down in the rain.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: I think they, I think they just have the urge
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: to move more and I don't. I don't know why,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: if it's just a discomfort thing or what. But I'm
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you know, for me, I'm looking for conditions that people
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: don't want to hunt in. First, you know, the deer
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: are always going to be out there moving you know,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: if it's hot, if it's windy, if it's rainy, they're
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: gonna move. We we think they don't. They do. But
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I want to be out there when other people aren't there.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: That's what matters to me more. And so I'm I'm
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: all in. If it's ninety degrees or if it's forty,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: our winds or whatever, I don't care. I like it
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: when I like empty parking lot. Yeah, yeah, I agree
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: with you. What what when you have that kind of
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: scenario like you had there for that opening weekend hunt
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: in South Dakota where you see a bunch of rain
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: in the forecast, does that change your strategy at all?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Because okay, I see I've got this all this rain.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Did that change your perspective as to how you want
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to approach that hunt where you sat anything like that? Like,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: one thing jumps to my mind is maybe if it's
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: super rainy, it's gonna be really quiet going in there,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: so you might be able to be a little more
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: aggressive getting close to bedding or something because you can
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: be doing that quietly. I don't know if that's something
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: that you ever think about, But what else is there? Well? Yeah,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: it changed you know my whole strategy. If I go
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: to you know, a state like South Dakota where I'm hunting,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: or if I go to Nebraska or Oklahoma or somewhere,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: my my strategy is to identify a bunch of ponds
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and sit over water I like. And that's early season,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: mid season, late season. Dear drink every day and I
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: like water. Um. I intended to do that in South
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Dakota until we knew at least the first four days
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of the season we're gonna get dumped one. So I
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: ended up. You know, most of my planning was where
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: are these ponds I'm gonna go sit? And then seeing
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: that forecast, you know, developed, the closer to the hunt got,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: then it was like, all right, well now we got
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: to call an audible and hunt them some other way.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And so the rain, like the rain aspect, you know
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: that that changes your strategy stuff. But for me, if
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I can get over a bean field in the rain,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that's where I'll be first. And then if I'm not
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: on something in the rain, I'll go for a still
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: hunt and just look around and figure it out. And
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: one thing that I learned last year, UM, while hunting
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: in South Dakota is I did that. I got I
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: had a storm come in while I was sitting on
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: a stand, so I had to get down, and I
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: had already had to buck come out into the field,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and so I went and just snuck around to see
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: where they came from. And this like grassy knoll that
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: just feeds off of this field that they were in,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: was so covered in deer bed. It was incredible. And
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't need to hunt it because I
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: ended up killing that buck, but I just filed that away.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: And part of the reason I went exploring was like,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: it's the downpoard. There is gonna be a low impact thing,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: and I want to see where those deer were coming from.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: And so you can kind of you know, you may
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: have to do things differently, but you can sneak around
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and take a look and scout. You know, we've we've
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: gotten so scared about doing doing that and bumping deer
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: or you know a lot of us are trying to
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: save deer on private land or save you know, you know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: quality action, I guess, and when you're on public land,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: especially if you've got four or five days, I'm not
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: saving anything, Like I don't I don't want to scoop deer.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: But I don't care, you know, And so you can.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: You can take some risks and go try to figure
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: some stuff out. I think, you know, I think a
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: lot of times we play it just way too afely. Yeah,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: what what was next? You had that success in South Dakota,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: killed the dough in Wisconsin. Where where else did you
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: find success? Where are the other states? Um? I killed
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: a little buck in North Dakota. UM in the worst
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: wind I've ever hunted in UM. We had. I went
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: out with my buddy, Tyler Pierce. I'm not sure if
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: you know him or not, but we went out. Tyler
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and I met up out there and we had any
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: deer tags so we could hunt mele deer and white tails.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And when we got there. The morning I got there,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it was nice and calm, pretty warm. We were right
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: in mid October, so it was kind of no man's land.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: And that night the wind came in and we hunted
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in horrible wind up to fifty five for almost the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: rest of our trip. UM and it was rough. I mean,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I was on I found some bucks, a couple of
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: really good bucks that I could not set up for
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: because the wind never gave up. And it was. It
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: was tough, but I ended up. I ended up setting
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to stand and just digging my heels in and saying, well,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit through this wind. And we had a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: high wind advisory. It was fifty five sustained. And I
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: got into that tree and I was like, you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: the first thing I thought, it was like if I
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: die because this tree tips over, this is so dumb
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: and so. And then I'm like, even if this buck
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: comes in or a buck comes in, I can't stand
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: up and shoot. There's no way I'm gonna be comfortable
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: doing that. So I climbed down and got on the
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: ground and had seven does and a little buck come in,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and I thought, man, I've only got one day left.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: We haven't killed anything. If they give me a really
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: good shot, I should probably just thump him throw him
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in the cooler. And that's what happened. And the next
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: night it calmed down and I put Tyler in there
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and the ten pointer that I was set up for
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: this ancient buck with. He was limping, he had the
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Roman nos. He was just a cool dear. He came
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: right down and made one little decision that brought him
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: just out of Tyler's range. I go to watch the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: whole thing from putting up on a hill across from him,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: and it was so close. But that was that was
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: North Dakota in a nutshell. It was crazy, Wendy. That's
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: another one of the situations that, right you, some people
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: would say they wouldn't go out and hunt in those
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: kind of conditions, but you're you're going no matter what, right,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: well you have to, Um, you know, I don't doing
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: what I do for a living. You know. Everybody thinks
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: I get paid to hunt, and I don't. I get
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: paid right and create content. But I create more content
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: if I kill more stuff, so I don't really I
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: can't afford to just take bad days off, you know.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And it's if I did, if I did say, you know,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I'm only gonna hunt when the conditions are pretty decent,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I'd probably only hunt half of the time. And I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: don't really want to do that, you know. Um, So
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it's just it is what it is. You just go
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: when you're on go ahead. I was gonna say in
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: that same kind of thing applies to even guys that
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: don't make a living making content or something, because a
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of hunters have a limited amount
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: of time they can hunt. You know, they can just
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: hunt the weekends. And if you've got really bad wind
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: or rain this weekend or two weekends or in a
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: row or whatever, are you just not gonna hunt it
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: all in October? Or you're gonna take off the time
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: that you would to do the thing you love and
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: then just not go because the conditions are bad. I
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: would always argue that, you know, even if the conditions
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: are bad, and we talk a lot about, at least
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I talk a lot about, you know, waiting for the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: right conditions to go on for the kill in certain
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: places like that, how important timing is. That doesn't mean
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you can't hunt. That just means, okay, if the weather
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: is lousy or whatever, if the wind is so bad
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you don't think a lot of deer gonna be moving,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: maybe you do not go to your number one stand
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: where the big buck you've been after all seasons at,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: but go hunt some public, go hunt whatever property you
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: haven't been too for a while, and just have a
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: good time, you know, go out there and see what happens. Yeah,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: that's that's such a good point. I mean, you know,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: we should say if you're stuck hunting acres and that's
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: all you have. You know, you might not want to
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: go in there every possible chance you can, right, but
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: that's why you just try really hard not to get
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: stuck in that situation. And you know, I'm like you guys,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking for spots all the time, public, private, whatever, um,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: just just for that reason. If if I have a
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: chance to go, I have to for my job, but
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I want to anyway. And I see this, This happened
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: a lot where it's it's just kind of easier to say,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: you know, it's October tenth and it's kind of hot,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go because it's not going to be
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: any good anyway. Man, I'm here to tell you that
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that's just really not true. Yeah it's not November seven
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: when it's you know, twenty degrees in the morning. But
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: you can sure have a lot of fun out there still.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: And you know, I always look at it like we
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: we go fishing a lot this summer. I take my
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: little girls fishing, and I I hate waking up in
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the summer, you know, forty five minutes afore first light
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: to go fish small mouth or whatever, because I might
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I just want to hit the alarm and sleep. But
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: every single time I get out there on at lake
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: and that suns rising and we're throwing topwaters for small mouth,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful. I'm like, I never regret doing this. It's
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: the same thing when I get into that tree stand.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I'm never like, oh, this was a stupid idea. I
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: should just say at home. I'm always like, this was
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: an awesome idea. You know, to that same point, um,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: in most situations, it would be considered unorthodox to like
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: hunt in the morning. You know, prior to say October
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: fift most guys just aren't doing it. But when you're
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: on those public land, uh, you know a set schedule,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: like you only got five days to hunts, do you
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: find yourself hunting any mornings at all? All time? I
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: don't ever take the morning off. So this is another
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: thing that the lies that we believe about deer hunting.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of people who who you know, know
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a lot about deer will say that don't hunt him
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: in the morning. Well, what if you have an awesome
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: situation to go catch some deer stage and coming off
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: a field to go bed. What if you live in
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: a state like Minnesota, know where our gun season this
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: year starts on November three, so we have a half
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: a million gun hunters out there on November three, So
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: I can't count on the rut. So I'm gonna take
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: every morning off until what October. I just no way.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: And you know, as an example, last year in uh
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota, I killed my buck the second morning of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: the season, September six or seventeenth or whatever, coming through
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: the stage on his way back from feeding, and it
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: was kind of a process to set up and get in,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: you know, he kind of had the circle around and
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: at a leaf pretty early. But that was a great
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: morning hunt, killed a nice block. And then in South Dakota,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: I killed that buck in the morning in the same
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: kind of situation where he was working his way back
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: from feeding to go bed, and we like to say, well,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: you're just gonna screw it up. Always back in their
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: beds before the first light, Like that's crazy. Every deer,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: every situation. You know, it's just usually takes a lot
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: more work to figure out a good morning stand in
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the early season then it does the evenings, you know.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I mean in the evenings we go to the food
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: plot or a field edge, and it's pretty simple hunting
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: in the morning, You've got to think about how you
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: get in there without spook and everything, And it's just
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: a different strategy, you know, but it can totally be done.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: It kind of relates back to what we were just
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: saying about the weather, you know, like if you don't
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: have the perfect conditions, maybe don't go to your perfect
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: set until you have the right conditions. But you can
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: still find ways to to go hunt and have a
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: good time. I feel like with this kind of situation,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: if you've got a really small property and you know
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: you don't have the right set up for a morning hunt,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: like it's there's not a good backdoor access route or something.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe in that situation, yet, don't hunt those mornings if
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: you can't safely, If you can't safely pull off a
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: morning hunt without screwing it up, maybe that's not a
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: good idea. But if there is a way to do it,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: it takes a little extra work. To your point, why not, Um,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm in the same boat as is what
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: you described, Tony that I usually don't hunt a lot
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: of mornings on like my main Michigan like my little
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: small Michigan private farms, because I can't get in easily
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: without spooking deer. But you know, when I'm going out
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: on some of these public land hounds, like I was
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: in Montana last year, um, public land, and I had
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: a pretty tight amount of time, only had like four
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: or four and a half days. I decided, just like
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: what you said, I was like, I don't I don't
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: have time to I don't have enough time to be
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: able to sacrifice those morings. I need to try to
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: figure out some way to make it work. So I
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: had to take an extra long route away around the
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: food source to get away from that so I didn't
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: spook deer there coming through the back door, get into
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: the back of the betting area, and uh, you know,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: it paid off. I saw some box almost had some shots. UM.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: So you know, kind of to all these things, it's right,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: it's situations specific. You need to be smart about when
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you take your shots, how you do it. But there's
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: definitely if there's anything I've learned, you know, over these
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: years talking to some different people in the podcast, it's
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: it's that there's no like black and white rules. There's
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: lots of ideas and frameworks to think about, but you
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: need to be able to be flexible based on the
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: specific circumstances. That's because that it's a true and that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you know what you're talking about with small properties, and
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: some of them you can do, some of them you can't.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: The thing about it is when you say you can't,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: you can't hunt bucks in the morning in the early season,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: you should never do it. Then you're just like you're
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: just giving yourself an excuse to not even try. Or
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: it's like how many people have you heard say, well,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: it's it's too windy, the deer just aren't going to move.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Like that's crazy, but we we say it and we
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: we live by it sometimes and I just look at
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: that stuff and I go, so all the deer are
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: just not going to move today, Like there's no situation
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: where you can figure out how to how to get
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: in there and hunt them in the morning. That's crazy,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean some it's always worth investigating. To me.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: You know, a theme that a theme that you've touched
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: on a lot is avoiding pressure. And so if I'm
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about when the most amount of other hunters are
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: in the woods, it's probably going to be like opening weekend,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that could be anytime depending on your state. And then
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: like come the rut that was first days of November.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: So do you hunt mid October a lot? And are
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: maybe other hunters overlooking that time period because just there
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: aren't very many people in the woods. Yeah, big time.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I mean if you're if you're a public land guy
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: and you're you're not hunting October, you're missing out. I mean,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: it's that there are deer out there that are going
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: to be moving. It's it's not going to be a
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: field edge thing anymore. You know, it's not going to
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: be the same kind of hunt as it was two
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: weeks or a month before. But those two are gonna stage,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: They're gonna eat acorns, they're gonna drink in a pond.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff to do. And you mentioned
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the fewer people that are out there chasing them around,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: the more likely you are to have good deer movement.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: And you know, I'll tell you last year was a
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: real eye opener for me in mid October because I
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: encountered big box in mid of soda in a place
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: that I never thought I would. You know, I had
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: never seen a bucket anywhere near the caliber I saw
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: last year on like October tenth, and in Wisconsin. I
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: saw the same thing at a time when it just
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have been happening, And I'm sitting here going this
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: has to at least partially be due to the fact
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: that they're way fewer people out you're messing around. Yeah,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: it's funny when you just said that, when you said
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: you saw these two bucks. In my head, the first
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: thing that popped in my head was why. Okay, so
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: we saw these big bucks middle of October. Why And
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: then you just answered it because you thought the pressure
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: is lower. And this goes back to something you were
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: talking about a little while ago. I can't remember what
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the specific example was, but just this importance of whenever
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: you observe something, you should always try to examine the why.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Like nothing happens by chance. I don't think in the woods.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: There's always got to be something behind it. So whenever
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: you see something like that. At least, what I always
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: try to do is when I observe something or whatever
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: might be, I then we'll sit back and think through, Okay,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: what what was the wind or what was the condition,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: or what was the train feature, what was the whatever
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: that caused that deer to do that thing? And I
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: think if you keep doing that all the time, that's
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: how you really begin to learn. Um, yeah, do you
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: agree with that, Tony? And then number two, was there
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: anything else other than the pressure factor during that mid
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: October time frame that you think led to those settings? Oh?
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: For sure? Hunting in the cover, you know, I mean
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: I think I don't you know, I have no idea
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: what percentage of tree stands that the average bow hunter
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: hangs that are on field edges or food plot edges
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: or some kind of opening, right, we'd like to be
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: able to see. It's really this is a really rampant
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: in the gun hunting world where they want to be
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: on a power line and shoot four yards away. But
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: both hunters fall into the same thing where we'd like
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: to be able to see, you know, But those deer,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: after a couple of weeks of getting hunted in those places,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: they really really stick to that. Ever, And you know,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: when I hang stand, both of the stands that I
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: saw those big bucks on were in the cover. They
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: were in in what I figured were staging areas, And
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: so you're just in a place where those deer feel
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: comfortable moving. You know, would I have had the same
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: results if I was sitting on the same field edge
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: stands I sat in on September fifteenth. Probably not. And
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't prove why a deer's movement, But
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: like what you said about there's a reason for everything.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Those dear nature doesn't waste a calorie. It's hardly ever
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: until there is a reason for it. And like you said,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: if you're paying attention to this stuff, and and you
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: know all of the conditions and where you're hunting and
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: how you're getting in there, and you see these deer
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: doing stuff, you can figure out kind of why. And
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: even if you don't really understand the total driver for
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: their movements or whatever, it doesn't really matter as long
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: as you know they're like doing it. You know, if
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: you see a buck across the creek in a little spot,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: does it really matter why he crossed it? You know,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: in three years, a different big bucks going to cross it, Like,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: does it really matter where they're going? It's fun to
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: figure out. But the cool thing is knowing that a
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: mature buck like you know that did that one day,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and if you did it one day, either him or
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: somebody else will do it again. Yeah. Yes, It's like
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: just making sure your eyes are open to stuff, and
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: like not just saying oh, I saw a big buck there,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: but saying, oh, I saw a big buck there because
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: there's a creek crossing, and then like taking note of
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: that and to your point, oh, more bucks might do
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: that same thing in the future because there's this creek crossing.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: I think that accumulation over the years makes it makes
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: a big difference. Yeah, And that's you know, that's it's
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: it's easy to talk to speak in those terms when
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: you hunt a lot of different places because you're you're
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: used to you know, new experience, new challenges, learning, watching
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of different stuff. The harder part sometimes is
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: when you think you know a property really well and
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: it still kicks your butt because you're like, well, the
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: deer like doing this and they don't like doing this,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: but why can't I get on it? And a lot
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of times it's because we just make up our mind
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: about certain things or we haven't understood that that you know,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: the brows has changed, or you know, maybe some destination
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: food source changed or something. And so if you if
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: you hunt where you're in a lot of new places,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: a lot you just have to you have to consider
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: that stuff where you're gonna get smoked, you know. Yeah, yeah,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: that's a good point. Speaking of that, then, was there
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: anything last year that any example like that last year
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: where you had an AHA moment or any big lessons
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: learned or anything else really notable like that. Um, maybe
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: you already touched on it, but if not, anything that
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: stands out in that regarding UM, I think I think
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: North Dakota taught me a lesson that I should have
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: just I should have just waited on that wind and
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: used the one night I had and used it right.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: And I should have been more patient, but I got
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: nervous about, you know, going home without filling a tag,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and I wanted some more dear in my freezer. But
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: when you when you're on you know, I was on
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: pretty consistent movement by some good bucks, but I panic
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: because I'm like, if I only have one night to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: do it, then I don't know if I can do it. Well.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: You know, that's sometimes just the hand you're dealt by
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: mother nature. And I should have I should have been
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: more patient, but I partially wasn't because I knew I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: could put my buddy in there and hopefully he would
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: kill one of those big bucks. But just just watching
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that and feeling that pressure like I gotta get in there,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: gotta get in there, got in there, and sometimes you
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: just say I can't overcome mother nature here. I just
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: got to write it out until things change, you know.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: And I feel like I learned something like that every year,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: where I'm just reminded, like, dude, just just chill out,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: be patient and let this stuff unfold, uh, you know,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: instead of forcing it, because sometimes I do get pretty
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: aggressive in my tactics. But you know, it's it's just
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: everybody has holes in their game. I guess once in
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a while, I run into mind, you know. Yeah, So
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty good segue then into um
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: talking about what you're gonna do this year, unless Spencer,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: do you have any other questions? Uh? For Tony about
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: what happened seventeen. No, let's let's hear about this fall. Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: You you've already been hunting, though, haven't you. I have
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: been hunting. Yeah. I got to hunt down in Florida
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: in the craziest white chill season out there. What was
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: that like? Miserable? Uh? It was it was. I'll tell
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: you what. I've been pretty lucky and traveled to quite
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: a few different places and I have never been to
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: a place as inhospitable as the swamps in south central
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Florida in the end of July beginning of August. That
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: place does not want humans there. It's brutal, brutal. Wow,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: just so hot or what else? Oh? Yeah, I mean
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the heat, of course is you know, it's omni president
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: it's everywhere, and the humidity, but the bugs, Like I
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I've spent a lot of time in northern
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Minnesota where the mosquitoes are pretty epic, and I don't
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: think it. I don't think I've ever seen anything like
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: what Florida was like mosquito wise, And you know, there's
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: cookie cutter storms every day in the afternoon, so you
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: just all of a sudden get this, you know, lightning
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: hit in the ground and just crazy rain for a
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: little bit, this monsoon kind of weather. And so you're
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: you're like in this place where there's water everywhere, and
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: there's alligators everywhere. So you just see these gators in
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: places where you're like that should not be. And because
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: that because it's so wet, it pushes some of the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: other stuff into the high spots, like the snakes, and
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: so it's just this like it's this place, man, where
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting experience, but it is not for everyone.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: So would you return? Yeah, you know, it's such a strange,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: ange deal this. You know, it's like elk hunting almost
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: where you go elk hunting, and elk hunting can just
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: just totally kick your butt. It can be so not
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: fun in some ways, but by the time you're driving home,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: you're already thinking, how do I do this different next year?
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: And Florida. You know, the good thing is we had
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: a really good crew down in Florida. I hunted with
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: some really cool people and it was everybody was everybody
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: was up for the misery and the challenge, which was
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: nice because I've been on hunts like that where you
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: have people that need a little more comfort and they
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: can make it really really bad because they'll start complaining.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: And this this crew we had was awesome and so
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: by the end of it we were talking about how
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: we could get down there and hunt some some massolas
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: in the springs. So yeah, I'll do it again. Did
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: anyone see any deer to anyone kill anything? Was there
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: any film? Mike Shay from Field and Stream killed a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Great Buck Opening night, um and then you know, we
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: all saw a deer. It was just tough. I saw,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I saw a couple of little bucks, a bunch of doughs,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: killed a pig, you know that. That was the one
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: fun thing about it that kind of kept you going
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: was there were a lot of pigs down there and
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: they were big, and so that's always it's always fun
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: to have a bonus critter that could run through you know. Yeah,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: how how do you hunt an area like that? Like
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: what were you were targeting food sources or bay or
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know, how do you hunt in July for
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: white tails in Florida? So you know, they have some
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: feeders down there, and they have some food plots, and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: then there's just places that they go because it's you know,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: high ground. I mean, it's kind of like hunting swamps
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: up here. Um, So it's it just depends, you know.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't see I never sat like over a feeder,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: but I sat a few places where I could see feeders,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: and it was like, I just I don't think that,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: you know, midsummer deer in Florida really want a car
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: blow too hard. Don't think they're that drawn to corn.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I think it's just sort
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: of a way of life, like in Texas, where you know,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: just that's just what they do. But I saw way
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: more dear even greenery and kind of just browsing their
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: way through than focusing on that stuff. And so and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: you know, the crazy thing was they were just starting
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: to rut when we were there, and they rout in
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the summer, and so I suspect you could probably get
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: if we would have been maybe a week later, ten
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: days later, Um, it would have been pretty heavy chasing
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: and you maybe could have called him in. And in fact,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I did grant one buck in a little guy. I mean,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: he came right in on a string, So you know
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: you can you can hunt him kind of like we
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: hunt him up here and in the Midwest and out east.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: It's just such a different environment. Man, What is next
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: for you then? Or is it going to be anelope, mule,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: dear white tail? Elk. I'm sure you're going to be
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: someplace else hunting here within a few weeks, um. I've
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: got I was just last weekend, was in Wisconsin setting
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: up a bear bait site. I've got I drew a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: tag over in Wisconsin and doing a little do it
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: yourself thing over there. So that will open on September five,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: and I'll I'll hunt bears and then I'm gonna wrap
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: that up, hopefully by the ninth, and I'm gonna come
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: home for a day and then I'm gonna go down
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: to Nebraska and hunt on some white tails on some
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: public land I've never been on. Those are the first
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: two first two things I'm gonna do this year. Public
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: land Nebraska that you've never been on. Walk me through
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: how you go about planning that. So I saw this spot.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: I went down there Upland hunting with my dog two
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: years ago, and my buddy and I go down We
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: take our dogs in the late season and we just
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: pick chunks of public and we go hunt, you know,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: pheasants or quail or prairie chickens, depending on where we
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: are in the state. And he found this and he said, well,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: there's public land down the road here, let's go look
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: at it. We got there and drove up to it
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: and it was clearly not Upland type terrain. It was
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: bluffs and it was along the river, and so we
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: didn't hunt it, but I looked at it and I
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: could see some trails coming down off a good deer
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: trails and it was surrounded by some private agriculture, and
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: so I kind of just filed it away. And so
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: this year I had an elk hunt I was gonna
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: go do in southern Colorado. They shut down the place
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: I was going to go to because of the fires,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: and so I didn't know if I should try to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: restart elk planning, which is like real daunting, or if
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: I should just say this just wasn't meant to be
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: this year. And I finally decided I wouldn't go. And
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: so I'm like, I'm gonna go hunt that place that
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: we saw. And so I've been looking at that on
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: aerial photos a lot, and you know, spending some serious
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: time on on act and looking for some back you know,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: backup spots around there. But my plan, I'm I'm crossing
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: my fingers that it's gonna be about degrees when I
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: get there, because there's two ponds way in the back
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: of this property, and I can see I can see
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: trees that look like they definitely are big enough to
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: put tree stands in on both of them. And so
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: my first strategy isn't if it's normal to hot conditions.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go hyke right back there, hanging stand and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: watch that water if it if that doesn't pan out,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: if it's rain he or whatever. I've got a few
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess kind of drainages that lead
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: down to private fields that look like they could be
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: places you could catch them in the morning and the
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: evening coming and going. And so if that's if my
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: first spot doesn't work out, then I'm gonna be that
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: that would be planned be on this place. There have
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: been a few times, Tony where I've been talking to you,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: um about some hunts that you just did or that
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to do, and you'll bring up how you
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: found it while you were turkey hunting in the spring.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: How has um turkey hunting doing d I y trips
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: every year changed things for you as a d I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Y y tail gay she and ground man. It's the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: same thing with the you know, if I go into
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: a place quail hunting, UM, I may find an amazing
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: white tail spot, you know, I mean, just it's just
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: covering ground. And one thing I like about turkey hunting
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: it's it's different if you're bow hunting because you don't
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: tend to cover as much ground as as running and
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: gunning with a shotgun. But I use spring turkeys as scouting,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: you know what, retail scouting a lot, and I've started
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: to use this upland hunt. This upland hunting is the
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: same kind of thing where you know you're you're out
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: there for a different purpose, but you always got your
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: eye to deer sign and you know cool places to be,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: and so it's just it's just spending more time out there,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: you know what, what when you start out, so you said,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: you're in a head in there, hunt those ponds, see
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: what's going on. If not, you're in hunt these drainages.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: In that kind of situation. You said, there's those drainages
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: that are leading down to food, Like how how far away?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Especially I'm always wondering about this too, especially this kind
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: of like prairie states are kind of out there a
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: little bits. I think it's a little bit different than
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the Midwest, where the distances between cover and food or
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: how far deer are willing to travel maybe is different,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: do you get I mean, can you be pretty far
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: away from that private land and still see movement across
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that public Yeah? Yeah, I mean it just it depends
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: where you are and how how limited the food is
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: this this place. There's a lot of food around there,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: it looks like so that that will kind of be uh,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll play it how I see it when
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I get in there. Um. That's that's one thing about
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: the big wood stuff that we talked earlier. If I
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: find the property that's got anything worthwhile for them to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: head to around there, those deer cover some serious ground.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: So it's just it's sort of a situational thing, you know.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't. You can do a lot of
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: work ahead of time on aerial photography, but until you
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: get in there and watch and start walking around, it's
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: just it's hard to know what's going on. But they'll
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: they'll cover some grounds, Okay. Well, then before to go
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: any further, we're and take our final break of the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: day for word from our partners at White Tailed Properties
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: this week with White Tail Properties were druinned by Tom James,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: a land specialist out of Indiana, and Tom is going
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: to be talking to us about what to consider when
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: shopping for a property on the edge of suburbia. That's
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: a great question. Living right outside the shadows of Indianapolis,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with that, and there are some really
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: great hunting ground areas just outside of suburbia, but what
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: you're dealing with a lot of times is being that
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: close to town. Normally, those uh the prices for those
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: properties are are labeled with a development or a residential
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: development price, So a lot of times it's hard to
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: find a competitive price that would be relative to something
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: you were looking out for farther out into the into
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the more rural areas of the state. That being said,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: there can be some phenomenal deer hunting in those areas
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: just outside of the country because a lot of those
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: are sanctuary areas where no hunting is allowed, and oftentimes
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: bucks grow to so old ages in those areas, knowing
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: the community and knowing maybe how the perception for hunting is.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: One of the last things you want to do is
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on a piece of property
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna be harassed all the time by non hunters,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: or do you see with a deer leaving your property
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: and you know, going off on the surrounding landos or
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: landowners if you do happen to have a harvest. So
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: considerations are cost access. The general mood of the hunting
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: community around that, and and and making sure that you
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: can get along with your neighbors and those areas. If
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more and to see the properties
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: that Tim currently has listed for sale, visit white tail
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: properties dot com. Backslash James that's j A. M. E. S. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: So so keep keep movings to the schedule. Then what's next? Um,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: after Nebraska Minnesota will open, I'll be hunt in private here. Um,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: I think. And then you sell out? What Whenever I
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: hear you're hunting private ground, I think you're a sellout.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: I'm taking the easy way out. I know. Next thing,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll be all on guided and I'll fit
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: it on the slippery slope. I know it. That's my
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: gateway drug. That farm in southeastern Minnesota, That's it's honestly
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: my my guilty pleasure because I just love hunting it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: so much. I grew up hunting there and I just
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I just want to be there. It's one of my
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: favorite places. You know, It's just a dairy farm. I
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: have permission on, so I always you know, people always like,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: how can you don't hunt public in Minnesota more? And
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I just don't want to I just want
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to go hunt this place, you know. But I'll do that,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna do um, South Dakota on the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: end of September at some point I'm not sure exactly when,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: twenty seventh or something, and I head out there and
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: then I'll head to North Dakota and then I kind
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: of left it open in the end of October beginning
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: of Nova bur in case I need to go back
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: to Nebraska or do something else. And then I've got
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: eight days carved out to go hunt some new stuff
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Oh, I got a pretty pretty full schedule
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: find up. Yeah, So the North Dakota and South Dakota
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: those the same spots that you've been going in the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: states or is that new stuff? Um? The North Dakota
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: will be the same stuff, same area. South Dakota. I
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: got a few new places I'm looking at that are
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: in the just general same area. Um, So I'm not
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know how that will shake out that. You know,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: the Oklahoma stuff is brand new. I've never been anywhere
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: near this this area that I'm going to, So that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: will be a fun one because it'll be you know,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the ruts should be cranking and it's totally you know,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: foreign to me. So we'll see. So I then have
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: to ask, what how do you plan to approach that? Then? Oh, well,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: this one, the spot that I got I've got picked
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: out is I don't know. It's pushing on four thousand
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: acres and most of it is timbered, which is kind
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: of strange Oklahoma. Um, but I'm gonna end up. I'm
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: looking for some water on there because they're gonna be chasing.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at some of the private stuff around there
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: because there's some fields that they could be going to.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: But I think it's going to be more of a
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: you know, kick a trail, start walking and hanging hunt. Um.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: It looks it looks like the Oklahoma version of Big Woods,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: and so I don't really know what to expect on there.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: The the other places I've hunted in Oklahoma have been
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: way easier to figure out because of you know, what
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: they had on them as far as public you know,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: it's easy to define water sources and food sources and stuff.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: And this one is going to be a little bit
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: of a puzzle. I think, how much time do you
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: have a lot of to figure in that puzzle? Out?
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: About eight days? So we'll see the last Yeah, the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: last time I went to Oklahoma. You know, it's it's
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: a it's a hall, but it's a fun state to hunt.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: They have a lot of deer, a lot of turkeys,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if we'll running to any pigs
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: in this spot or not, but that's always a possibility.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: So it's it's fun to go to a place where
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: you got buck tags and dough tags and a good
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: population of critics. You know. Yeah. Earlier this year, Tony
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: I wrote an article talking about the top three d
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: I Y States, And I was just basing that off
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: of like tag costs, season length, public land available, um,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: some general numbers you can find based on harvest statistics
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: and amount of deer in the states and stuff, and
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: what I came up with just from research on my
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: computer with South Dakota, Ohio, and Nebraska. But you would
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: be the actual authority on this subject. So what would
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: you say would be your top three d I Y States? Well,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: for me personally, uh, you know, it's tough to beat
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the Dakota. It's real tough to beat in Nebraska. Um, Oklahoma,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: I don't I just don't have enough experience in Oklahoma.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Is safe for sure, but it is a really cool state. Um.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: It just you know, it depends where you're at. You
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: know when I say that, that doesn't do anybody in
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania a whole lot of good probably, And so you
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: know you kind of pack your in. Well, how close
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: are you to Kentucky? Out close a right? You to Ohio?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, it just it depends where you're at.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: But personally for me, I'm I'm a real big fan
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: of the Dakotas and Nebraska, and I've been looking really
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: hard at northern Missouri. I just haven't haven't carved out
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: any serious time to go spend some time on public
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: down there. But there's just that's you know, the cool
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: thing about it is, you know, it's fun to write
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: those things, it's fun to talk about. But the cool
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: thing is that we just have all this public hunt
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: like even if it's you know, even if you're not
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: gonna go kill booners, anywhere you're living, probably have the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: chance to go hunt public without too much of an
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: astment of travel. And that's prettily. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of the Great Plain states there, I think
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: everyone one but Kansas. Uh, what about further east. What
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: are some of your favorite states you know in the Ohio, Kentucky,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: West Virginia, Tennessee area. Well, I like Kentucky. Um, you know,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: I I don't because of where I live. It's just
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: so much easier for me to go west and east.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to go where there's fewer people
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: and not more. And so most of the time if
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: I travel east to Hunt is to Wisconsin. Um, I
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: just it doesn't make any sense for me if I
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: can drive to Nebraska in seven hours to drive ten
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: to go east somewhere, you know, I just it's just
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: what I do. And you know, having twins six year
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: olds at home, I need to pick places where I
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: have the best chance to go tag out four days
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: or five days or something like that. You know. I mean,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: if I had, if I had unlimited time and didn't
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: have you know, daddy duty, I would probably go hunt
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: a heck of a lot more states, and I would
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: I would try them out more, you know. Okay, Spencer,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: you gotta put your ear muffs on because this is
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: going to give you a headache. Um. But but Tony,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: this is something that you and me were kind of
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: chatting about the other day, just offline, just this whole
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: deal that I'm new to being a new dad, but
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: you're in it for a little while. Now, how how
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: does that factor into doing what you do? You know,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like i'm I'm I'm definitely struggling with this
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: right now, just thinking through how can I make this
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: hunting season as decent as possible for my wife and
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: obligations with the family and everything. How do you balance
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: all these hunting trips and everything with the responsibilities you've
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: got back home. Uh, It's it's a tough one to
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: figure out. Finding some equilibrium, especially in your case with
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: a little one is tough. Um. That's one of the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: main drivers for me as far as hunting the states
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: I do and doing as much research ahead of time
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: as possible. You know, the more heavy lifting you can
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: do from home and the less time you have to
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: be away from home, the better. And so for me,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know, you know, when we had
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: we had two kids at one time, I was like,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: I have no idea how much this is gonna cut
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: down my time to go and be gone. But you knew,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: you know, like I knew it was going to be significant,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: But what it really did for me, was caused me
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: the laser focus on, you know, doing things correctly, and
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: so it actually hasn't cut down on my success at all.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: It's just forced me to work smarter. And you'll see
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: that where not only do you just not you're you're
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: just not gonna go be gone as much for a
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: while when you got a little guy at home, but
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: you're gonna want to be home as soon as you can.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: It's a weird thing, you know. You think about it
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: and you're like, I can't wait to go to Montana
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: or wherever. And you know, when you're there a couple
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: of days, you're like, man, I miss my kids, you know,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: and you want to go home. So it's it's I
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: can force you to really focus on the process and
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: it just just try to be as efficient as possible.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: I feel like from from hearing you describe some of
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: these past hunts, it sounds like, you know, I feel
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: like maybe a lot of people tend to think like
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: one of these odd state hunts us like seven days
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: or ten days, you need a bunch of time. But
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: it sounds to me that a lot of your trips
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: are like four day hunts or five day hunts, you're
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit tighter on those timeframes, is that right?
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: And then number two like, do you do anything differently
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: because of that? Then you might if you had that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: full long stretch that some people do. Yeah, I I
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: usually only give myself four or five days. Five days
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: is a pretty long one for white tails. You know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: if I'm going out hunting or something, that's different, of course,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: but you know, you don't you don't want to waste
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: to sit. So if you if you go for four days,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: let's say you got one day to scout and hang
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: stands and four days to hunt, you have eight sits. Basically,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: unless you're you know, rout hunting hares sit all day
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But generally speaking, morning evening, morning evening, you know,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: and if you miss one of those, or you screw
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: one of them up, or you sit someplace where the
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: wind sucks or something and you you lose one, it
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: stinks you lose two. You know, there's a quarter of
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: your time gone, and so you just try to make
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: good decisions and it's you know this this probably sounds weird,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: but this is one of the reasons why I'm like
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: really into working out in the last five years, because
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: when I show up and I have one day to
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: hang stands or scout. Like I sometimes you gotta go
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: dark to dark and get this a ton of work done.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: So you have those chances. So you have that morning spot,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: and you have this one for the wind that direction
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: and another one for the wind, and you you just
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: make the most of it. You know. Is there anything
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: else that you're doing. Yeah, I've got my assumptions based
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: on some of the things you've already mentioned, but from
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: an efficiency standpoint, anything else you're doing before the hunt
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: to make sure that that four or five days is
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: as seamless as smooth as possible. I don't know if
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: there's any other kind of digital work you're doing, or
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know you've talked about East scout, and
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: you've talked about backup plans, anything more you can elaborate
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: on that just for these efficient quick hunts, Yeah, planning
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: them out correctly. I mean, So what what I mean
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: by that? Not only you know it's like the scouting
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: of course, um, but the gear that I'm using, the
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: camping equipment I'm using, the places I'm camping in relation
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: to where I'm hunting. Um, all of those things I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: factor in because it's just you know, if it's easy
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: to set up all these little roadblocks that you don't
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: see coming. And this this is why it's hard for
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: people to do this that don't do it as much
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: as I do, because they go and they're like, oh,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: sleeping in the tense not that much fun, or you know,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: my my cock or my sleeping pads. No, it's no good.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not getting any sleep and it's a miserable experience.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: The more stuff that you can take care of like that,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: so you're comfortable, so you're eating better, you know, not
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: eating just junk food all the time. Um, you just
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: feel better, getting better sleep, all of that stuff matters.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: You will hunt way better if you're you know, if
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: you're physically happy, you know, and it's it's not it's
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: a strange thing to talk about. We kind of talked
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: about it in the elk world a lot in the
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: western back country stuff. But you know, if you're not
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: in very good shape and you're gonna go try to
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: hang a bunch of stands and hike, you know, seven
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: miles in the breaks andth Dakota's probably not gonna happen.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna end up not having as many setups,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: not feeling as good, maybe not sleeping as well because
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: you're sore, maybe not as driven to go do it.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: So all of it ties together. There's a lot, there's
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: a lot to it. Yeah, that's a that's a really
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: good point. So so now I'm gonna ask you a
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: three part question, which is tackling those three things you
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: just mentioned, but explaining to me exactly what you do.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: So from a fitness standpoint, what are you doing specifically
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: to make sure you're to make sure your physical fitness
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: isn't keeping you from having success from a white tail stamp?
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: And I guess that we'll just go one time. So
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: what are you doing that from? So the best thing
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: I did was give up drinking five years ago for
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. That was a good, good
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: idea for a person like me. But I I divide
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: my time up between running and lift and weight uh
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: I do. I try to do about eight workouts a week,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: so either you know, try to do it. You know,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: run four times, lift four times at least during the week,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: and that might only be forty five minutes of session
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: or an hour of session, but I try to do
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: that just to maintain and get the cardio in, get
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: some get some core works and weight work in. So
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: you're I just feel so much better tying stands and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: carrying stuff into the woods and dragon deer out. And
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: it's it's you know, it's a process like anything else.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: You know, we want we want shortcuts to everything, right,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They're gonna sell you grunt
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: tubes and all kinds of stuff to promise the deer
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: comes into you, but they don't really work that well
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: most of the time. It's the same thing with fitness.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: You know, like there's no way to do it other
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: than just commit yourself and make it a way of
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: your life. But if you do, you know, you're hunting
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: will be a lot You'll you'll enjoy it a lot more.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: And so I'm just I'm just kind of locked into
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: that phase right now where I know how much you know,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: and it's not just hunting. I mean a lot of
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: people say they get in shape for l hunting, but
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: you're really getting in shape for your entire life to
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: be better. And you know, the one of the great
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: benefits is, yeah, you can climb them out and better.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: You can carry a quarter of an outcout. But in
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: a white shill world, we don't really focus on that
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: that much. And it is a huge part if you're
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: gonna do the kind of hunting that I do a lot,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: if you're not in very good shape, it's really hard
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: and it's it's it ties into everything. Yeah, yeah, especially
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: this public claim kind of stuff where you really need
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: to get in there after stuff you're hiking around a lot,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: carrying and sticking stands. I mean that that helps. Just
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: it seems to me like I don't I don't think
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: a bunch of white tail hunters we don't need to
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: all be Cameron Haynes. But I think if you can
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: have some reasonable level of fitness so that at least
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: your body isn't bringing you down. So that's not the reason.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: You know, as we talked about a lot, there's so
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: many variables in a deer hunt. There's so many things
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: that can go wrong. There's so many things that you
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: can't control. That something is in your control, as your
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: body and your physical fitness, that's something you can, you know,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: have some say over. So why not try to control
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: that variable and and at least make sure that that's
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: not bringing it down. So I've agree. Next one, you
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: talked about camping, Choosing where you're gonna camp, what kind
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: of gear you're gonna have. Do you have any recommendations
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: as far as you're sleeping, set up your camping, set
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: up all that kind of stuff to make sure that's
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: smooth and as comfortable as it can be or as
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: functional as possible. Yeah, go go luxury anyway you can. So.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: I used to stay in a little tiny tent. It
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: would be me and a buddy usually, and you know,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: we're stepping over each other. You can't stand up in it,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: and it's just not very much fun. I'm to the
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: point now if I can get away with it, because
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: I can drive my truck up to a lot of
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: places I camp. I use a I use like a
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: pretty heavy duty six person dome tent, and I use
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: that for myself and I can set up a little
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: coffee making making station in there. I can drive some
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: clothes out, I can stand up fully. I'm you know,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I'm six too. I like to be in the morning,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: not be stooped over getting my clothes on, and just
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: use a good cut a good sleeping pad, a good
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: sleeping bag, all of that stuff. It just makes things
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: so much nicer. I mean, I think about, I gotta
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: I gotta pretty sweet system down for camp and now
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: where I can sleep and I feel comfortable. But I
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: think about how many years I hunted where I was
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: in know, just really low quality stuff and just didn't
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't appreciate what I could do for myself by
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: just getting a little bit better stuff, you know. And
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: and then I'm reminded of that when I go out
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: hunting and I'm in a little tiny tent, sleeping on
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: sleeping pat on the ground, and I'm like, oh, this
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: is horrible, you know. I mean, it's a fun experience,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: but when you're used to kind of the cushion, you know,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: Kardashian style camping, and then you go to then you
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: go to that ELK set up, You're like, oh, now
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: I remember. But yeah, at the very least, you know,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: I realized not everybody's gonna go out buy a six
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: man tent and all this this stuff. A cot with
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: a good thick foam sleeping pad is a great start
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: that takes you a long way started having a good
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: night's sleep. Any specific brand or model or anything like
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: that or other favorite gear, um, I'm using right now,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: I'm using Cabella's stuff. Um, you know, I'm sure there's
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: way better stuff than I'm using. But I have a
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: nice Cabella's cot and I have a I don't know
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: what the model name of it is, but it's a
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: it's a foam pad, is three inches thick, and they
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: make it. I don't know what it costs. I can't remember,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: but it's so much better than any kind of blow
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: up path I've ever used or anything. It is. It
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: is for camping. It's really comfortable. I can definitely a
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: test to the how important that kind of stuff is
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: because it goes right back to your physical not your fitness,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: but just your physical comfort. If you're miserable and you
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: can't sleep, it becomes just so much easier to take
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: shortcuts during the hunt, or to lose your focus during
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: the hunt, or whatever might be making mistakes. It all
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: kind of ties back to that state of mind, state
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: of your body, which well, yeah, when you if you're
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: if you're not sleeping, well, you just will not hunt
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: very well. And it's so tempting to sleep in it's
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: so tempting to talk to yourself into I just need
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: a good good night sleep, and you know if you're
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: if you're running on eight hunts or ten hunts for
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: an entire trip, and you this is your one one
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: shot to go do something cool. Missing the missing the
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: morning is it's just not an option. Yeah, so it's okay.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: That brings me to a question. This is something that
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: I have have debated with myself many times, and you
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: just kind of answered it for me. But I guess
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: I'll put it out there again and see if this
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: is what you mean. So I always used to be
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: of the mind, like like talking maybe like the rut
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: two weeks the first two weeks in November, usually hunt
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: every day all day and I'm getting out too my
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: tree stand like an hour and a half before daylight,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: and I'm sitting the entire day. I get back home
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: or get back to camp, or get back to the
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: hotel or whatever is I'm doing, and I've got a
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: couple of hours to work, and then I fall asleep,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: and then you're up four hours later and you're doing
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: it all over again. And so I do that, and
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: as you know, anyone knows, that is just a crazy
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: physical grind, like it definitely wears down on you. So
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: that's what I do usually But then, like last year,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: I started thinking, am I actually lee? What what's the
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: better scenario is grinding it out and being out there
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: the whole time, the whole trip, every morning, super early.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: But maybe being at a deteriorated mental state or physical
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: states you're focus maybe isn't cred on point by day
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: seven you're not feeling good, or you're falling asleep in
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: the tree, or because you're not focused, you look at
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: your phone and a big buck passes by that you
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: could have got a shop. So is that a risk
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: to doing it that way or which? So would it
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: be better to say, Okay, you know what, I'm going
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: to give myself one sleep in mourning because then I
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: know that my quality of attention and focus and all
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: those things will be so much better for the rest
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: of it. Um. I battled these two ideas in my head.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? So here's the litmus test for that.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: Are you still having fun? Right? Is the deteriorated state
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: you're in where you're super tired and the works piling
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: up and your wife's kind of mad at you? Is
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: that to the point where it's it's you know, leaching
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: some of the enjoyment out of it, because that's the case,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: sleep in or take a day off. If you know,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: if you're having awesome sits and you know a hundred
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: million people aren't contacting you for work all the time
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: and it's fun and your wife's like, go get him, buddy,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: then if you're in the right mental state, keep going.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, that's that's a great it's a great
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: question because we always look at this from the perspective
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: of what's what's my route from here to a big
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: bucker from here to success? But really, I mean, we
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: we forget so easily that we're supposed to be out there.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: We're out there because we enjoy it. It's supposed to
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: be fun. And if you're out there and you're super
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: tired and you're sick awaking up and it's not that
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: much fun, then it's probably time to just show out
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: for a second, you know, enjoy it, and get back
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: out there when you're refreshed and you're and you and
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: you can enjoy it. Because the worst thing that you
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: can do with something like this is just you know,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: drive it right into the ditch because you're just you're
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: so driven to succeed when really, I mean, we're just
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: hunting rabbits with antlers. Man, Like, we're just we're out there,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: super lucky to live in this country and have the
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: opportunities we have. And two, you know, people have gotten
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: divorced over this to to to to go to that level.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: It's not fun anymore. So if it's if you're sitting there,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: and that's the same thing with whatever dear you want
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: to shoot. You know, if you're if you're locked into
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: two bucks and it's not fun to hunt because you're
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: never gonna see one, then you're doing it wrong. Find something,
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: you know, find find what deer is gonna make you happy,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: and shoot that sucker. You know, I talked about that
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: all the time, but I just I believe it in
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: my heart hearts. Man. Yeah, no, it's a it's a
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: good point. It's something that every year I need to
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: have like a mini self intervention. Even though I know
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: this stuff and like I go into the season knowing it,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I because I am so achievement focused, goal focused, so
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: like determined when it comes to the actual hunt that
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: every year, without without fail, I find some point in
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: the season where I'm just I'm losing the fun out
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: of it. I'm just so focused or so frustrated or
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: so tired or whatever. I'm at least to the point
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: now where I can recognize it, and I know when
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: to like kind of slap myself and say, hey, man,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: chill out. Remember this is supposed to be fun. Get
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: back to the basics. And usually that's that's about the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: time when I decided to do what I just said,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: I'll take a morning off, or I'll take a day
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: off and like take the wife out for dinner or
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: do something like that, just kind of reset. And then
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: it's amazing how just that little reset it change is
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: not just the actual quality of your hunts after that,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: but your mindset, your enjoyment. Even just that little bit
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: can really flip things. And you get that when you
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: get that renewed excitement all of a sudden, versus like that,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: oh gosh, I can't I can't imagine waking up again
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: in the morning, or those moments like when the alarm
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: clock goes off in the morning and you've got one
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: of two feelings. Either one of it's like oh god no,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: or the other one's like all right, I'm ready. That
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: just a little intervention can make a big difference there.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: So well, and what you're what you're talking about is
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: just the you know, getting your head right, and that
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: matters a lot when you're doing something challenging as bow
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: hunting white tails. If you don't, if you're head not
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: in the game for some reason, physical, mental, what's going
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: on at home, what's going on at work, You're not
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt the way you want to, and it's gonna snowball.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: So you're what you're saying there, taking some time off
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: and having a little intervention. I'm the same way man.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Usually Usually it's kind of you know, brought on me
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: by my wife. We will be like, you know, maybe
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: maybe it's time. Let's let's take the kids to go
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: minigolfing or something tonight. Let's get out of a tree
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: and just have some fun. And you're right, it's just like, Okay,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: I reset. I'm back mentally where I need to be. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: I think every year I'm seeing that becoming more and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: more important to make sure I take that time to
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: just to just reset at least once a season or
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: once during the run. I kind of need that, and
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: I think especially now with a with a child, I
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: feel like that's gonna probably be more important than ever
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: so maybe that that is one of those times, like, Okay,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: if there happens to be that day where this fifty
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: winds or where they there's ninety degree temperatures and November
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: kind of no, Okay, you know what, I probably do
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: need me one little one afternoon or one morning or
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: one something where I'm gonna need this little reset. If
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: you have to take a reset day or reset afternoon,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: try to time it so coincides with the worst potential conditions,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: even though yeah, it still could be good if you
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: have to take a break, maybe it's a good way
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: to line it up. Take advantage of slightly lower odds
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: days or evenings and line those things up. Yep, absolutely, Spencer,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: give any thoughts on this now that you're a newly
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: married man and you've got several kids on the way
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: soon and all that. Uh, at this point, I still
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: largely function like a bachelor when it comes to hunting,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: all right, that's right. We've been together for like eight
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: years and I've been always a hardcore hunter, so she
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: knows the deal right now. But I'm sure once kids come,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: like a decade from now, that will change. Can relate
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: to this, how old is she? I am? Twenty six,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: she's twenty four. Okay, Well enjoy the next four or
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: five years and hunt hunt your butt off, because this,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: this young mentality that you have is going to come
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: to a screeching halt when she decides that it's time
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: to make some babies. Your life's gonna change. Yeah, man,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: it all deteriorates once you hit thirty. I mean, my
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: body's falling apart, your mind's falling apart. It's all downhill.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, soak it in while you got it. Yeah,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: enjoy it. Oh man? Um, you know the final thing
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: I was really curious about, back to the camping physical fitness,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: like these outside factors real quick? Is there anything from
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: like an eating standpoint? I mean, I I know for me,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: I used to like on our rut vacations or something,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: me and my buddies we'd get like Wendy's every night
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: or pizza every night, and we eat like donuts in
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: the morning. And the last couple of years, I've kind
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: of realized that that's not working for me. Um, you
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: have anything on the eating standpoint that helps you be
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: more effective for these huns? Yeah, I I am like
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: a junk food addict, Like I can't I've never had
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: moderation to anything in my life, Like I have to
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: be super careful. And so what I do is I
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: prep one big meal for dinner every night that I'm
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: going to be in camp. And it's always you know, venison, asparagus, pepper,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: some kind of you know, vegetable venison mix, and then
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: some rice, you know, instant rice I'll throw in there
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: or whatever. So I have one good meal a day
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: that isn't like many chocolate doughnuts and just horrible you know,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: empty carbs. And that seems to sort of center things
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: a little bit where you're like, Okay, I know this
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: is what I'm eating tonight. It's gonna be really good.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: It's good for me. It sort of carries over into
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: the morning, and it keeps me, like you said, you know,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: from going and eating fast food all the time, or
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever the worst options are. So I I do.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: I discipline myself for one meal a day, and it's
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: it's usually the biggest meal obviously, but I have to
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: prep it ahead of time. Otherwise I won't do it,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: you know, if I just you know, if if I
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: don't make it really easy just to dump it right
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: into a soft apan and cook it up, then I
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: won't do it. Yeah, I'm exactly the same way I
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: started two years ago, doing the exact same thing, having
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: those pre prepared meals, and it comes out. I feel
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: like so many things as like a serious white tail hunter.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: It's you need to find ways to by planning ahead
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: of time, make things easy that normally would maybe would
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: be inconvenient. Like there's things you know you should do,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: but if they're inconvenient or hard, you have the possibility
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: of you know, cutting corners, not doing it quite the
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: right way. But if you can ahead of time, plan
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: ways to make it easier, simpler, done ahead of time,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: whether that's cooking meals or whether that's your planning for
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: a hunt, or whether that's prepping your gear, and anything
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: you can do ahead of time to make it easier,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: more convenient, smoother. It seems like that extra work ahead
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: of time you can just pay off dividends across the
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: board for all these kinds of things we're talking about.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: Oh it does, it's it's you know, it's Spencer doesn't
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: notice yet because he's just a little pop but older, older,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: wiser man, we know that that's the key to enjoying
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: anything is, you know, getting your getting your act together
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: ahead of time and putting in some work ahead of time.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: It makes it makes the whole process so much better. Yeah.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad that Dan couldn't make it today
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: and that Spencer's on here, because I feel like we're
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: changing We're changing your life right now. Spencer. I think
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: if you, I hope you're taking notes because this is
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: really gonna impact the trajectory of your next twenty thirty years. Yeah,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: I would have just turned this part of the podcast off. Yeah,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: we are really doing you a big favor here, Spencer.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: So so if this isn't interesting to you at all, Spencer,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: do you have any final things that are of interest,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: any any last questions for for Tony or anything. One
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: thing I haven't heard you talk about is trying to
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: get private access. And so when you're traveling out of
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: state and you're you know, going there to hunt public
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: do you ever find yourself knocking on doors or you know,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: scouting private land or do you find that to be
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: fool's gold and you know, just not worth your time,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: It's it's lost time. Maybe. Yeah, I I used to
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: knock on some doors a long time ago, and it
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: just never was really worth it. And so I found
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: if I just focus on the public and figuring out
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: some random chunk of public land somewhere, I'm just better off.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not saying if I were, you know,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: in camp somewhere and a farmer drove up and said, hey,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: I got a thousand acres down the road, you can go,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I wouldn't do it. I don't
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: seek it out anymore. I seek it out in Minnesota still.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: Like if I'm talking to somebody and they mentioned they
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: own some woods or something, I'll investigate that for sure.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: But if I'm traveling just about anywhere, I'm I'm to
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: the point now where I'm just focusing on the public.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: It's just easier. And you know, I know, you know,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: maybe if you're mining for more opportunities out there, you
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: can find some cool stuff. But I just I'm digging
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: this process of hunting public and it's just it's what
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: I'm focused on, you know, So that's kind of I
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: don't I don't I don't actively seek those opportunities. On
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: that same note, do you sometimes find public ground that
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: looks too good and like has a ton of hunters
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: there where maybe you need to look for something that
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: you know isn't manicured for white tails, or you know,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: something like that maybe has cattle on it and is
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: a less than ideal property. Oh yeah, I I anything
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't to me, It doesn't really matter how
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: it looks. It matters how easy it is to get to.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: If something's easy to access, there's gonna be hunters in
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: there most of the time. You know. If it's easy
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: to access and it looks like amazing white tail property,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: it would be covered in people. So I'm just looking
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: for harder to access areas. They don't have to look amazing,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: they don't have to. I I just want places that
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: people don't want to go. Yeah, yeah, it brings to
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: mind for me. Um. You know, sometimes they'll be public
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: land parcels where they the state or the county or
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: whatever might be has planted crops or food plots or
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: something where they lease out some ground to farmers. And
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: so I feel like that's one of those things that
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: you see it and you're like, oh wow, food plots
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: on public land. That's awesome. But it's kind of like
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: this ringing belt. Every other hunter too, just draws them
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: all in. And I feel like that's a perfect example
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: something that looks great but probably actually because it looks
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: so great, ends up making it not so great. Oh yeah,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: I've seen that a lot. But at the same time,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: I've scouted some public land own in Iowa that looks
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: as dreamy as anything you're gonna see down there anywhere.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: And I can't say this for certain because I haven't
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: haunted it yet, but just from the investigation I've done
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: in the scouting, I think that there's some exceptions to
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: that rule. Generally speaking, I don't like a state planet
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: food potter, the easy, you know, the the no brain
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: or food source that everybody can see from the road.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: That's that's not my style. But I think if you
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: get into a certain area with maybe limited access or
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: limited tags, you can find that place that looks too
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: good to be true, but it's awesome and you're not
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: gonna be overrun with people. Yeah, I gotta find those
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: hidden gems. Yeah. Well, I um as always have enjoyed
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: this one, Tony. I'm excited. You know, just a couple
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: week and a half from now, I'm going to kick
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: off my own public land hunt out there and we'll
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: probably be doing a lot of things you're talking about,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: So I appreciate you doing your share and getting me
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: pumped up and giving me a few more ideas as
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: you always do. But before we go anything, I know
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: you've got a few cool projects in the works right
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: now that anything you want to mention like that. Yeah, man,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: we have a we have a pretty cool thing going
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: on for North American White Hill where Laden forced the
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: associate publisher there. He's a he's a good old boy
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: from Missouri who loves to bow hunt. He and I
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: kind of came up with this this project called Project
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Public where we're chronicling our fall through North American White
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: Tails Instagram page with the hashtag project public, and so
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: we're just showing scouting and the process and when we
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: get into hunting here, we'll be showing you know, the
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: setting up camp, hopefully some butcher stuff, all kinds of
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: just just the little details, and there'll be some other
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: aspects to it. But you know, if anybody wants to
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: fall on and see how we're doing almost in real time,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: that's going to be how to do it. It's it
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: should be pretty cool. Um. The other thing that I
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: have going on I was hoping to have it finished
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: for this podcast, and I think I'm I'm about nine
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: point seven percent of the way there. But I've got
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: a bow Hunting public Land White Tailed book coming out
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: and I've just ran into a little bit of a
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: design issue. But it's it's super close to being released.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: It will be released way before most of these white
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: tail seasons open up. And I just I wrote it
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: partially I kept doing something hard. People kept asking me
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: if I had like a comprehensive uh, you know, right
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: up with my strategy that people would ask me for
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: the book, and I'm like, you know, I've written quite
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: a few books and never done this one, and I thought, well,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: I should do this. And so that's gonna hit really
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: really soon. They'll be able to get that off of
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: Amazon here, probably within a couple of days. I'm pretty
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: excited about that. Yeah, And I can say I've I've
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: got to preview at least a draft of it, and
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: there's some there's some definitely good stuff in there. So
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: if people want to find that on Amazon, what's the
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: title again, they need to search for it'll be bow
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: Hunting public Land White Tails perfect. They'll be able to
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: find it on my my page. I've got another another
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: book on there, and then I've got another novel coming
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: out here shortly too, but that one, you know, this crowd,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: the interest should be in that book, and it's it's
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: pretty comprehensive, and it's it's not h it's different than
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of the magazine work that I do and
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: those those kind of titles because it's it's my own
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: so I kind of got to say what I what
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: I fully think about everything. So you should buckle and
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: prepare for some of my opinions if you if you
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: pick it up, and I hope you do, because it's
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: it's it covers this process pretty heavily. So it was,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: it was it was a fun one to write. It's
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: been a nightmare to to edit and finalize, but writing
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun. So yeah, that's awesome. Well,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of people are gonna find that
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: to be a helpful tool, just like just like all
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: these conversations. So Tony, I just want to say thank you,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: and um man, I hope we can talk here. I'm
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: sure Spencer's gonna loop you in for some radio episodes
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: if you're up for giving us updates. Throughout the season. Um,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: so we'll be able to follow along and I'll be
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: following um the project project public or public project project
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Project project public. All right, we'll be falling along there.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: And Man, I hope you have a great season. Well,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Mark, I hope you guys have a
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: good season two. And you know, maybe we'll chat this
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: this coming spring or something and hash out how we
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: how we did and see see where we ended up.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping. Uh there's gonna be a lot of success
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: stories in that in that conversation, So thank you. That'll
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: be good. Yeah, And Spencer, you can feel free to
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: tune out that because I'm sure we'll talk about balancing
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: our families and I know how that all that is
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: for you. So all right, Well, thank you, Tony, Spencer.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Anything final from you, No, I am looking forward to
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: the book. When we did our recap of radio back
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: in January, head Tony on and I introduced him by
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: saying he's one of the best white tail hunters. I
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: know what I mean that. Uh, so covering this subject
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: from Tony, I'm excited to see what he has. Well,
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: thank you, man, I appreciate that, agreed, all right, well,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: let's shut this one down and that's gonna do it.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: So my only updates for you are the usual rating
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: or reviews on iTunes. Please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: or Twitter. It's all under Wired to Hunt. Subscribe to
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you might
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: be having hunting season kicking off next weekend if you're
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: in South Dakota or Montana, or Kentucky or North Dakota
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: or a handful of other states. And if that's the case,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: this last week of preparation, it's it's it's so important.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Make sure you check every piece of equipment, make sure
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: you have a list of everything you need to have packed.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten something
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: important on the first time of the year. I'm promising
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: myself I'm not gonna do it again, So what make
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: sure you don't make the same mistakes. I have best
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: time of years coming right up. I'm super excited. I'm
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: sure you guys are too, So the best of luck
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: to everybody out there until next time. Then I hope
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: you'll stay Wired to Hunt. U