Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 461: The Art of the "Whitetail Pivot" with Jared Shaffer

Transcript

Ep. 461: The Art of the "Whitetail Pivot" with Jared Shaffer · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, I just want to give you a heads
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: up if you're looking for a little entertainment. Season ten
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of Meat Eater is dropping September twenty nine, so hopefully
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: when you're listening to this that's available. It's on Netflix
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: right now, September twenty nine, Season ten, Part one of
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: The Meat Eater Show with Stephen Ronella, all sorts of
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: great adventures. If you want to scratch that itch and
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for some reason can't be out there hunting yourself, check
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: it out. It's on Netflix now. Enjoy. Welcome to the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the modern white tail
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: tell you the show. We're joined by West Virginia bow
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: hunter Jared Shaefer to discuss the art and science of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: making quick adjustments based on the always dynamic and challenging
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: realities of d I Y deer hunting. All right, welcome
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: First Life. To the show. Like I just mentioned, we've
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: got Jared Schaefer. He's affectionately known by his friends, family,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: and colleagues as the Ginger Ninja. He has been seen
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: on the tether Nation YouTube channel and known within a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: number of d i Y hardcore white tail hunting circles
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: as a really, really good, get it done no matter
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: what type deer hunter. He's from West Virginia, but he's
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: also hunted all over the country in recent years. The
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: last handful of years, he's been everywhere from North Dakota
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to Michigan, to Kentucky to Missouri to all sorts of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: parts in between, and he's been in a lot of different,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: unique situations where he's had to adapt his hunting style
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: quickly on the fly, and this seems to be something
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: that he is unique uniquely good at. I actually chatted
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: with a handful of his fellow hunters and friends, people
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: that have spent a lot of time with him out
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in the woods, and this is something that consistently came
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: up as his kind of superpower. One of these guys,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: a very good deer hunter himself, said of Jared that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: he's really good and this is a quote. He's really
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: good at adjusting to the circumstances. He doesn't get stuck
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in one tactic. I've seen him hunker down and hunt
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the same spot when it's right, and I've seen him
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: abandoned ship and go for a mobile ground attack. He's
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: really good at knowing when to change things up and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: he's not afraid. I think those are very admirable traits
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in a deer hunter, and so that is what I
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: wanted to dig into in this episode is how does Jared,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: how does he adjust? How does he adapt? Because almost
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: never does a deer hunt and go the way you
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: think it's going to. Whether that is on you know,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: hunting behind the house for the whole season, or maybe
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: it's a week long trip to some new state, whatever
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it is, there's always gonna be changes. There's always gonna
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: be wrenches thrown into the gears, There's always gonna be
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: a curveball, and oftentimes, you know, whether we fill a
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: tag or not, it's going to be dependent on how
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: we adapt, how we overcome that obstacle, how we shift
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: our mindset or our game plan, whatever might be. We're
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: gonna call this the white tail pivot. How do you
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: make those adjustments on the fly. That's what we're gonna
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: discuss today with Jared, and I think we're all going
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to get some helpful nuggets out of this one. Whether
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: you hunt north south east west. The pivot is important.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So without further ado, I want to get right into
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: this one. Best of luck to all you folks who
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: are out there hunting right now. Hopefully this will give
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you a thought or two to keep in mind as
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: you go out there yourself, and hopefully we can make
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the adjustment needed to get it done. So let's get
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: to my chat with Jared Schaefer. All right with me
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: now on the line, I've got Jared Schaeffer. Jared, how
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: are you Mark? I'm doing good, buddy. First off, I
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: just want to thank you for having me on. I've
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: been a big fan of your podcast, you know, ever
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: since you first started, so it's it's really cool to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: be on here with you and hopefully we can talk
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: about some hunting and hopefully it'll be good. Oh yeah, well, hey,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you're You're welcome and appreciate you making the time to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: do it. I've you have been been following your your
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: hunts from Afar. I've been seeing you go all over
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the place and consistently get it done, so I'm sure
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: this is gonna be a good conversation. And uh I
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: actually went and snooped around and talked to some people
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you know that we both know to get some inside
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: ideas and scoops. So I think its some good stuff
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to to drill into. Um. Yeah, I'm excited about this.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: So so I've been getting away from doing these long
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: winding introductions and people's history um and rather just jumping
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: right into the good stuff. So rather than telling me
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: your life story and what you did when you're four
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: or five years old, what do you think about just
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: jumping jumping right into the meat and potatoes of how
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: you deer hunt? Do you like that idea? I like it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Let's do it all right. So here's here's the first
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: thing that came to mind for me at last when
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about Jared A. K A. The ginger
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Ninja as as you've been called the time or two. Yeah,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I see in just the last few years. Right, you're
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: in Missouri, you're in Kentucky, you're in West Virginia, Ohio,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: North Dakota, Michigan, California, Alaska. I think all over the place, right,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you're hunting public, you're hunting private, you're in trees, you're
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: on the ground, You're all over the place. If I
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: am all over the place, So when I look at
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: all that. And if I had to like put a
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: word on something that seems to define you and your
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: deer hunting, it's it's maybe diverse. You have this diverse
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: set of experiences, diverse uh set of tools and your toolbox.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: If you had to step back, given all that and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: look back on the last five to ten years or so,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: if you're hunting life, doing all these trips, doing all
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: these different things, if there was one single thing that
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: stood up to you, if you could look back over
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: this last decade or so and said, Okay, I've been
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: to all these places, seeing all these things, try it
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: all these ideas, that is there one thing that stands
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: out above all the rest that you could say, you
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: know what, that one light switch moment or that one
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: lesson or that one mistake I made that I learned
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: from has made me more successful. Now, can you think
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of one thing that pops out when I say that?
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And that's a great question. And uh, you know, to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: preface all this, I haven't been hunting out of state
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: all that long or really I think the first time
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I ever hunted out of state was in Ohio back
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: in so you know, I haven't been doing the public
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: land thing that long really, So it's kinda it's been
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: really cool to uh to travel the last few years
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and to hunt so many different places. And man, I
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: was thinking about this earlier. I think the main thing
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: for me is just being as versatile as I could be.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I try not to get stuck in doing
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: things one certain way or hunting one type of terrain.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: It's just I try to learn, um, you know, anywhere
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I go, I try to learn the best way to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: hunt that spot. If that's from a tree, I do
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: it from a tree. If that's from the ground, I
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: do it from the ground. Um. I mean Heck, just
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: this past week in North Dakota, I hunted new territory, uh,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you know, new terrain that I've never hunted, and I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: had to quickly adapt. So just being versatile and quick
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: to adapt on the shorter out of state trips that
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: has been pretty much the key for me. Yeah. Yeah,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: it's funny you bring that up because a couple of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: my sources brought that very same thing up. Is it's
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: kind of your superpower, Like you have this ability to
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: pivot like on a dime and adjust to the new
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: circumstances and quickly make that shift in men. From my
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: own experience, that's one of the hardest things to do.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: It's it's so important, but it's not easy. Uh. Yeah,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: let's talk about that North Dakota hunt you're just on. Uh,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I want to see if there's some examples within that
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that maybe illustrate this. Can you kind of lay the
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the basic groundwork of where you're hunting and what the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: situation was that kind of forced you into that kind
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of scenario. Yeah, So to go back, we hunted North
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Dakota last year. We hunted kind of the northeastern side
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of North Dakota where there was a lot of timber
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: um typical river bottoms with you know, acorns backed up
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to crop fields stuff like that. So we hunted that
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: last year and we did really well. We killed I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: think three or four bucks in a week. Um I
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: missed a really good buck and then end up killing
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: one towards the end of the trip. But it was
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: kind of your typical set up on terrain, um, you know,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: hunt the the typical easy looking stuff. I guess you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: should say when you're looking at a map. But this
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: year we went to a different part of North Dakota,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: farther west. UM more centrally located in the state, and
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the piece of property we were hunting was mostly just
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: big agg fields and cattail swamps with just very very
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: few trees in them. So you'd have a shelter belt
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: here or a little pocket of trees, and um, you know,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: when we went out there, um, some of the guys
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: had already been out there, had done some scouting. They
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: had set up preset locations and some shelter belts and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: some of these smaller pockets of trees. And within the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: first hunt, I quickly realized that these deer aren't going
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to get to these pockets of trees in the daylight.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I was kind of glassing, um, some some marsh country
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that was maybe three yards away, and that's where I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: was seeing all the deer. You know, they were coming
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: out of those marshes where there's no trees. So I
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: pretty much abandoned the idea of sitting in a tree
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the rest of the week and strictly hunt off, hunted
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: off the ground, and I just kept moving closer and
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: closer and uh, towards the end of the trip, I
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: pretty much had had these bucks figured out where they
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: were bedding, what they were doing with the wind, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: I almost got it done. The last night, I had
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a nice buck at about forty three yards and I
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: was I was getting stingy on the range and I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was trying to get a little bit closer, but it
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: just didn't work out. But you know, I consider that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a success, you know, when you put the pieces together
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and you at least get a nice bucking range. So
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: that was it was interesting hunt a different terrain type
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: that I've never hunted, but still was able to get
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: on a buck pretty quick. Yeah, how hard. Well, let
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: me tell a step back coming into this hunt, when
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: you heard about your bodies out there are these other
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: people who kind of had, you know, pre set some stuff.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It sounds like they had kind of a preimagined plan.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And and one of the things that I that I
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: do is leading in any one of these trips. I
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: usually have a game plan of what I think I'm
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: gonna do, Like here's what I you know, if the
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: conditions are like this, I'm gonna hunt here. If the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: conditions are like this, I'm gonna try this. At least
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: I have like a pre I don't know, a set
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of plays to choose from for the beginning of a hunt.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: But then you know, in a situation like we you
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: described it, sound like pretty quickly you realize that the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: playbook wasn't gonna work for what you're actually seeing. How hard? Well,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I guess question number one is do you come into
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a hunt like this with a set of plays already
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: kind of mapped out? I think I want to do this,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: this and this, or do you have no preconceived notions
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and you show up on day one saying, you know what,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to make any decisions before we get
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: here on the ground and see what's happening. I guess
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand, like what do you have when
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: you start? And how hard is it to change off
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of that? Yeah, so I go into every hunt with
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: at least some kind of idea. You know, I'll look
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: at the maps, um, do some scouts, some cyber scouting,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, at least have kind of a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: rough idea in my head of how I think it
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: should go. And then you know, you get there. Um,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: oftentimes the pressure is different, the terrain is different than
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you think, and uh, you know, I just try to
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: try to be really fluid, if you know, that's the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: best way I could say it, and uh, this hunt
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: was a lot like that. You know, once we got there, Um,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: we were looking at what the cameras were showing and
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: there wasn't hardly any daytime movement. And then after the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: first night, you know, all the other guys were sitting
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: on their spots and you know, they weren't seeing anything.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: So it was just clear to me that, you know,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I just needed to do something else and that that's
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: another thing that I'll do. You know, if you're hunting
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: with a group of buddies, you know, talk to talk
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to the guys you're hunting with, see what they're seeing
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and see what the movement patterns are, what they're observing.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Or you know, if I'm hunting public land, I'll talk
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: to other guys that are hunting in the same area
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: and see what they're seeing. And if you know, the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: theme is kind of the same and people are you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: they're not doing they're not doing very well with one tactic.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I start to think about, what, what's the one thing
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: that other people aren't doing, you know, try to be
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit different. Um, whether that's hunting a completely
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: new spot that's maybe overlooked, or a different tactic you know,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: that's that's always been kind of my go to And
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty quick to ditch something or an idea if
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna work. It's just kind of
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a gut feeling. Um, but you know, I'll ditch something
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: pretty quick, to be honest with you, if I don't
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: think it's gonna work out. Like, what's that thought process
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: look like? It does it take like a sit that's bad,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a day that's bad. What goes through the ginger Ninja's
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: head when you're starting to have this realization like oh,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: this isn't gonna work, and then there's this shift between
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: like that realization too. Then Okay, now I've got to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: change to this, Like what's that internal discussion or conversation
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: look like in your head when you're at that kind
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: of pivotal moment. Yeah, so it's it seems to take
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: me about two hunts to abandon, uh, you know my
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: previous plans and this this last hunt was a really
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: good example of that. You know, I sat that spot
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: that night observed these deer doing something completely different. So
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I sat that spot again the next night and I
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: saw the deer do the same exact thing. So you know,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I thought, in my head, the deer aren't doing what
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I want them to do, so I'm just gonna have
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to go to them. Abandoned everything that I had planned
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and uh and figure something out. And for me to
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: decide that I'm going to get out of a tree
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and hunt on the ground, that's that's a harder decision
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: for me because I'm not the greatest ground spot and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: stock hunter. But you know, I felt like that was
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: the thing to do, so, um, you know that's what
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I did. But I'll switch even even mid hunt. I've
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: got down, you know, I've you know, pick a spot, whatever,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: there's a good sign there, I've cyber scouted it, boots
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: on the ground, whatever it. If I sit there and
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I see a couple of deer or a couple of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: bucks do the same thing, I have gotten to down
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: within an hour of that sit and relocated. So it
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: just depends on the situation. You know, a lot of times,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: um it's a quick thing. Um. Other times it may
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: take me a couple of days. It just depends on
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the situation. Yeah, man, that's one of the hardest things.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: When you see a different behavior, different travel pattern or whatever,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: then what you wanted them to do, and then you're
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: stuck there. I mean I was in this exact same
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: situation just a week and a half ago or whatever,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: on a hunt on my own, where you're you're set
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: up where you think they have to come through, and
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: then you see the first deer do something different, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: then the second deer does something different, and the third
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: deer does something different. You're thinking, oh no, like you
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: know that feeling, We're like, oh no, they're all going
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to go right there. And then you're sitting and thinking
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to yourself, Okay, do I risk moving right now when
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it's still like mid movement and maybe I can get
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: over there soon enough and catch whatever is coming? Or
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: do I write it out because you know deer or
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: why the animals and they don't always do what you think,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, if I go over there, then of
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: course the buck's gonna come right by me where I
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: was um describing me the situation where you actually are
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: willing to mid sit, yanker, set, and move. I mean
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that's a bold move. Uh tell me what it would
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: take for that to happen. Well, I have a good
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: example of that. I was hunting in a spot in
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Ohio a couple of years ago, and I had scouted
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: this spot out and there was there was good bucks
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: on there. I'd actually had a couple of sets in
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: that exact tree in the past where I had encounters.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, that morning, I saw three different
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: mature bucks take a different travel route. And I think
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: it was it was due to the wind that morning,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the way the wind was coming through that area. Um,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: but all the bucks were traveling a little bit higher
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: up on the ridge. And when I see three different
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: mature bucks do the same exact thing, I pretty much
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: have to adapt, you know what I mean. I'm not
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: gonna sit there the rest of the day just hoping
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that one's going to come by where I'm at so exactly,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna hop down and move. And I
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: ended up moving that hunt, uh like eight thirty in
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the morning, and I moved up to that spot and
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I sat there the rest of the day and it
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: didn't pay off, But you know, I saw three different
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: bucks do that, so you know, I wasn't gonna sit
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: there and just hope that one was gonna wander by. Yeah,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: so how do you how do you make that move? Like?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Did you wait? I'm wondering about the details because I've
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: been in this situation too, and I'm wondering, Okay, I
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: gotta make a move. What's the ideal time to make
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the move? So do I move immediately after that third buck?
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Or do I wait till like ten am and I
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: think it's slowing down a little bit. And did you
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: pull down your set and then creep your way to
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the next tree or did you say I gotta rep
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the band aid off and get there as fast as
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I can. I don't care how loud I am, Like,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: talk me through that whole process, because because the whole
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: thing is kind of fascinating and kind of terrifying if
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: you're in that situation, right, Yeah, I mean I totally three.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I mean you're thinking the whole time. You know this
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: is you know, I'm I'm tearing down a set in
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the middle of what could be the peak movement time.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So it's definitely a big risk. Um that particular hunt,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: it was more like ripping the band aid off. You know,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I packed up my stuff as quick as I could.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I got down the tree. You know, it's the middle
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of the ruts, so I'm not super worried about noise
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. But packed everything up, climbed down
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the tree. I wasn't super worried about, you know, all
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the noise I was making. I basically made just a
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: bee line straight to where that where those bucks were moving,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and I set up as quickly as I could. But
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it could be different depending on situations like um,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I may not be as apt to move
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: like that in the early season. Um. You know, it
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: just depends on the on the time of year and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: what the deer doing. So it's it's a tough call,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and it's uh man, it's just a gut instinct to me.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: You know, if if I feel something telling me that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I need to move, you know, I try to make
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: it happen. But it's it's not had an easy decision
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: to make. I think I saw somewhere. Uh correct me
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: if I'm wrong on the specifics here. But I think
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you've been running a saddle for eight years now, is
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that right? Uh started in so, yeah, I guess that's right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: At this point, it's been a while. Yeah, that's that's
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: nearly a decade in the saddle. That's that's longer than
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: most people not named John Eberhard. Um it's longer longer
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: than me, although I think I started running one in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. I think, Um, so you've been doing
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: this a while and you've obviously, you know, fine tune
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: this mobile style has has a saddle hunting or mobile
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: hunting approach. I'm the answer is probably yes, of course,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to haven more like, how how has
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: saddle hunting? How is this mobile set up allowed you
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to pivot like this? I mean, is that the thing
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that has allowed you to make these quick moves in
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of cases? Absolutely, I mean there's no question
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: about it. Um, you know I started. I've always mobile hunted,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: like I've always used a climbing tree stand. So I've
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: always been pretty mobile and if I see deer moving,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I just go toward the dearer at it. You know,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I've always thought it's pretty simple. You see the deer moving,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you can move to them. So, um, when I started
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: self filming all my hunts and carrying all that weight, like, man,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: there's got to be a better way than carrying this
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: forty pound climbing stand. So I started looking into the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: saddle stuff, and uh, coincidentally, that was the first year
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that I hunted out of state in Ohio, and the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: first year that I switched to the saddle, I killed
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: two nice bucks out of it. So I was kind
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of immediately hooked on, and I was like, this is
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not only a fun way to hunt,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: but it's for sure effective. So you know, the past,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: you know, four or five years, I've kind of honed
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: my mobile running gun skills. I guess you should should say,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think it's helped tremendously. It
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: seems like every year on top my best buck or
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I kill a really good buck, and uh, you know,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I think just being able to move so quick and quiet,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: it's just such a huge help. And it's you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: it's not it's not for everybody, you know, not everybody's
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: gonna like from a saddle, But for me, um man,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's the only way to fly for me.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Are there any other situations where ye're up in your
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: saddle somewhere? You describe one example, which was you're up
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in the tree and you saw three mature bucks go
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: by the same morning and they're out of range, same moved.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: What what are some other things that would be enough
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: for you to move. I guess what I'm trying to
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: get at here is what are the boxes that have
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: to be checked that would force you to say, all right,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I gotta get out of here, I gotta move. You know.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's I'll debate, like if I see a mature
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: buck do something once, is that enough or not? Or
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: is that a random thing? You know? I have those
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: types of internal debates all the time. What like, what
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: are the few things that would make you say yes, absolutely,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: can you give me some more detail there? Yeah, like
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: you said, so if I see if I see a
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: few different deer um doing one particular thing. Um, if
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I see him, I see him hitting a food source
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: that I wasn't aware of in the area. Um, you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: maybe there's an oak tree dropping that I didn't know
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: it was there. No, that's that's the one thing. Um,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: So food source movement. Um. If they're bedded in a
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: in a different spot, then then maybe I plan for um.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And it's it's such a hard question to answer because
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: there's so many different variables there. Um. You know, if
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like the tree I'm in, you know, I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: don't have enough cover for whatever reason. Um, and there's
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: a tree twenty yards over that's has better cover. Um.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe the wind direction. Um. I've switched trees a lot
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of times just based off the wind direction. So you know,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I go into an area completely blind. I've never hunted it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I'll set up in a tree that I think will
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: work with the wind, but when you get up there,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you you discover that it doesn't work. So UM,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: definitely the wind direction. So I would say, you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: dear movements probably number one I'm watching for that. You know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: if they're doing something completely different, I'm gonna abandon pretty
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: quick and move over. But then you know, adding all
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: those other things, and it's kind of a combination of everything. Um.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: But then sometimes I know that the tree that I'm
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in is the right tree, and I'll stick it out
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: because you know, what the the does and small bucks
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: are doing, maybe the big bucks aren't doing. So it's
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: just very situation dependent. And uh, yeah, that's that's a
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: hard question to answer. Yeah, so so you kind of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: led me into the next thing I have to ask,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: even though it's still not easy to answer. Uh, talk
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: me through the scenarios or the situations where you would
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: say I have to stay, I have to stick it out.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: It's not going the way I thought it would, or
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: this dear did that thing. But that's not enough. I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: need to stick it out, like one of the situations
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: where you're gonna stick it. Yes. The last year's buck
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: in Ohio was a good example of that. Um. I
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: had identified this ridge point where all these bucks were
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: cruising through, and uh, they were only the one that
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I was really after. He was only coming through about
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: once every three days. And the tree that I had
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: picked on this ridge point, it worked perfectly with the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: wind and had good cover. The main trail that most
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of the bucks seemed to be using was fifteen yards
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and my access was pretty much bulletproof to get in here.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: So it was one of those situations where I knew
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: if I sat that particular tree, I was going to
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: get a shot. And I think I hunted that tree
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: for were different times before I shot that buck. Um.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: But you know, in that situation, I wasn't getting picked off,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I wasn't getting winded. Um. You know, I felt like
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: my entry was pretty dang near perfect. So in that situation,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: especially during the rut, when you've got these bucks, it
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: seems like they're on a circuit where they passed through
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: every few days. Um, that's when I'll stick to a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: spot and I'll stay in one tree even And you
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: had previous years experience there and pictures all confirming your
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: your kind of confidence in that spot, right, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: had trail camera pictures, I had hunted the area of
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the year before, so, um, I had pretty high confidence
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: that was a really good spot. Yeah. That's always so
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: hard though, because we especially folks like us who have
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: gotten into this running gun style. It's you know, the
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the dark side to mobile hunting, I think is that
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: there is this temptation to always switch it up, right
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: because because it's so it is relatively so easy now
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: that I can jump to here and jump to there
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and try this and try that, And I sometimes wonder
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: if if I overdo it? Sometimes? Um, sure do you do?
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You ever worry about that? And you know, how how
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: do you deal with that? If so, It's not something
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I worry about so much. Um. You know, I keep
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: saying gut instinct, but man, that's I go by that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: so much. It's just what do I feel like it's
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: right for the situation. So, you know, if I feel
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: like I need to stay put, I'll stay put. If
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I need to move, I'm gonna move. But you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: to your point, it is very easy to to move
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: around too much and then not give a spot the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: time that it needs because you know, you're not always
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: going to go in the very first set and kill,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: which I mean that happens a lot too. But you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: especially during the rut time frame, I mean, these bucks
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: aren't staying in one particular spot. You know, maybe a big,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: big mature buck may have you know, a pretty tight
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: core area, but if you're just hunting for a general
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: like a nice buck, you don't really care what bucket
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: is out of all the deer on your trail camera. Um.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like that's when, uh, some people
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: should just stick to one spot and uh, you know,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: not worry about bouncing around too much. So yeah, because
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: sometimes you just got to give them the chance to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: come by. They're gonna come by eventually if you're in
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: one of those perfect places. Um, but you know it
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: comes back to this this. Uh, I don't know this,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: this is not rule, but montra I guess of sorts
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: where we always talk about the first says the best set, right, Um,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: but sometimes you do need to ride out a spot.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: What's the longest you would ride out a spot like
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the one you described in Ohio that just everything seemed perfect,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: You had confidence in it, you knew from historical observations
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and pictures like they're gonna come through. How long will
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you give a spot like that? Uh? For me, typically,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: if I sit it five times and something doesn't happen,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I'm usually moving on. So um and to hunt a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: spot five times. Like I said earlier, it needs to
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: be you know, good access, you know, the wind, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of different things working together, you know for
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: you so um, you know, I feel like after that
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that amount of time, if something hasn't happened, I get
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I'll start to lose confidence in the spot. And I
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: think that that's really important. If you don't have if
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: you don't have the confidence to sit there, um, you know,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good time to move because you know,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: if you're not confident, you're not you're not alert, You're
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: sitting there playing on your phone. You know, your mind's
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: kind of elsewhere. So um, I'll kind of, you know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I'll stick with that spot until I feel like, you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: my confidence is starting to go downhill, and then that's
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: when I pop, smoke and move. Have you ever found
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: yourself in a situation where you're hunting, you know, one
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: of these new spots, or you're on some kind of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: trip and you went in your original game plan and
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: it didn't go the way you wanted to, and then
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you pivoted, you made a change, and that wasn't going
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the way you wanted to. And you know, you tried
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: several things, nothing was working. You didn't have an observation
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to go off of, you didn't have a new trail
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: camera picture to tell you, Oh go there. Um. Have
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: you ever been in that scenario where you found yourself
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: at the end of an evening hunt maybe, and you're
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: walking back to the truck and you just kind of
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: feel lost, like nothing's working, and for ten minutes or
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: an hour or four hours, you're kind of in a
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: funk and you're like, God, damn it, I don't know,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. Have you have you
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: ever found yourself just stuck in a funk like that? Oh? Yeah, absolutely?
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Several times. UM out that way. It was that way
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: in Missouri last year. We we went down and hunted
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: um during the run it and the weather wasn't good,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and the deer movement wasn't good, and I was trying
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: all these spots that I thought would be you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: just dynamite. I just wasn't seeing what I thought I
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: should see. And it was just it was just one
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of those trips. It was just a grind, you know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: just you know, day in day out, not seeing much.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: You know, none of none of your grand plans are working.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: But um, that trip. Um. So I didn't end up
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: killing a deer, but I had it. I had an
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: encounter with a nice buck, and it was you know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: getting towards the end of the trip, and I was like,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just gonna try something stupid. If
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: it works, it works, if not whatever. So I ended
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: up sitting this spot, um, right beside the road. I
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: was like thirty eight yards from the road, and unless
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: literally thirty eight yards in the road. Um, somebody had
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: seen a decent buck in the corner of this field
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: right by the road. And you know, I looked at
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the maps and I was like, man, it just kind
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of makes sense. Why they're crossing right there, all these
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: ridge points down in and they're crossing this this creek
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: bottom right beside the road, and I was like, I'm
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: just gonna go sit right beside the road, like I
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: don't care, you know, I'll try something, you know, stupid
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: like that. So I went up and I set up,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: um right beside the road, and it was like an
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: hour into my city. It was like two thirty in
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the afternoon. A nice buck comes down out of the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: timber crosses the gravel road and he's standing in this bottom,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: like the brushy creek bottom. And I grunted that deer
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: right in. I mean, he came walking in perfect and uh,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I took a crack at him at twenty four yards
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and he ducked my arrow really bad and I just
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: barely clipped him. But um, just doing something crazy like
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: sitting right beside the road, Um, it almost worked out.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you know, if I'd have made my
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: shot count, it would it would have worked. So, you know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: after grinding all week long and not having any luck,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I was doing trying to do everything right.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm going deep away from people, hunting spots
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that that look right there, signs there, and it just
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't work. But then I end up getting shot at
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: one right beside the road. So that crazy. I love it.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I asked about that because you know, I've certainly found
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: myself in those situations before too, And usually usually I'll
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: be in that funk for I don't know, a couple
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: of hours or an evening or something, and I'm like,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. Just like you said,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I tried all these different things that did all the
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: right things that you're supposed to do, and nothing's working.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: And I keep trying this thing, and I tried that thing,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and I tried this different thing, and you know, I
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: don't know what to do now. Um. One thing that's
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: helped me in that situation is and I don't always
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: get to this quickly. Sometimes it takes me, like I said,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: till the next morning or something. But I've got to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: kind of clear my mind and say, okay, stop trying
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: to figure out, like what what the next thing to
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: do is, and instead go back to step one, like
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: go back to the very bare bone basics like reset,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: hit reset, and the whole thing. Yep, forget about all
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the stuff that went wrong, and now just look at
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the whole situation as if you were brand new to it,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Like look at this with brand new eyes. Try to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: look at the setting as if you're a different person
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and you don't have this baggage that you carried with
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you for the last seven days, and and just start
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: from start from scratch, start as if you were brand new.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: And sometimes like just that reset helps me. UM, just
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: kind of all of a sudden see things more clearly
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: or realize like oh yeah, duh, just stick to the whatever. Um.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: When you found yourself lost in Missouri or any other
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: situation like that, Um, you told me what your ultimate
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: idea was, But can you talk me through like the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: process to get to that point or like, you know,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: did you have any kind of any of that anguish
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that I described, And how do you kind of work
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: through that? How did you get to that point? How
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: do you how do you handle and find your way
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: out of the wilderness so to speak? Um in those situations. Yeah,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: So this spot we were hunting, we had actually hunted
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: it the year before as well, and the year before
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the weather was a lot better, there was less pressure,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: there was a lot more bucks movement, and was just
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: an overall better hunt. So when I went into the
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: hunt this past year, I had that that hunt in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: my head, you know, the hunt of years you know
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the year prior, so you know, I had it in
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: my head that it was gonna be big bucks running everywhere.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I can hunt the same spots, it was all going
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to be pretty much exactly the same, and I can
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: pick up right where I left off. But you know,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: three or four days into the hunt, I quickly realized
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: that that absolutely wasn't the case. The weather was different. Um,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: there was a lot more acorns, the bucks weren't moving.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And it's just like you said, you have to you
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: have to be able to reset and just just think
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: this isn't working. I need to do something different. And
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: for me, that's when I start looking just I call
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: it just doing something stupid. Just do the most obvious
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: thing that other people aren't doing, like sitting right beside
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the road. You know, there was people that were riding
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: past this spot day in and day out, and you know,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: nobody was even looking right there. So to me that
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: it makes it just more exciting. You know, you're doing
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: something that you haven't done. You're you're going to a
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: different spot, and you know, who knows. You may hunt
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: this different spot with no no preconceived notion of anything,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and you may pick up one piece of intel that
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: helps you start onto another puzzle, you know what I mean.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: You may see a buck in this new spot and
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, he's traveling, he's doing this, so I'm
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: just gonna move and you know, start putting those pieces
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: back together again. So you basically, you know, like you said,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: just completely wipe the slate, start over. And you know,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I think that that reset is really good. You know,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it gets your mind working again. You know, you're in
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a different area with different deer maybe And for me
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that you know, I just feel like it helps keep
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: me sharp if I keep doing if I try to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: keep doing the same thing, Um, I just get really
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: bored with it. And you know I stopped paying attention.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm not I'm not sitting in the tree
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: paying attention like I should. So, um, you know, that
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: reset for me, like you said, just doing something completely
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: different as has been really big, a big help for
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: me at least when you when you say, you know,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: do the stupid thing. It brings to mind a story
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: that Dan Infalt. I don't know where it was, if
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: it was an article or conversation of podcasts or something
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: he was talking about how you know, it always seems
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: like the brand new hunter, like the kid hunter or
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the first time hunter that goes and sits out in
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a bucket in some random place. They kill the biggest
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: buck of the ear right. You always see those stories,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and that's always the person that shoots the giant And
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: it's like, why is that. It's not an accident. It's
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: because they don't know any of the stuff you're supposed
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to do, so they go hunt the stupid spot that
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: no other legit quote unquote deer hunter. We go go
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: do and that's where the big giant buck is. Um,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: it's funny. Sometimes we probably you know, outdo ourselves, out
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: smarter ourselves, over think and uh, you know, go and
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: force deer into doing these stupid things because that's what
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: we're not doing. And sometimes it pays to throw those
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: you know, throw the curveball, do something totally differently, especially
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: if you've been doing all the quote unquote right stuff
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: and it's not working. Um, that's sometimes just the change
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: of pace you need. Yeah, I mean, and and what's
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: the you know, what's it hurt to try it? You
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: know you're not you you weren't doing any good to
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: begin with, so you might as well, you might as
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: well do something kind of off the wall. And you know,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I've always said, you just gotta have fun with it,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: you know, don't put too much pressure on yourself, and uh,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you know, just go with your gut instinct, have fun
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: with it. If you blow a deer out, you know
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: who cares? I mean, you're these trips, these out of
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: state trips, especially where you have four or five days
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: to get it done. I mean, you just gotta you
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: just gotta go for it and see what happens if
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: you don't kill one. You know who cares that? You know,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that's not what the trips about anyway, But um yeah,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what I do. And I think
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's fun at least. I mean, it's got
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: to come for something right. Well into your point, if
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you if you find yourself losing confidence or getting bored
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: or too frustrated, Like as soon as your mind goes bad,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: that's when you miss your opportunity, right, that's when you're
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: not focusing, that's when you don't do the little things right.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: So as soon as you lose that mental edge, you're
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: out of the hunt already. So you might as well
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: do something different to just get your edge back, uh,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: for the simple fact that that will make you more
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: effective and and actually like there in that you know
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: mentally there to actually be able to take advantage of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: an opportunity if it does arrive. Yeree, you mentioned something
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: about blowing out dear um, which brings to mind another
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: kind of pivot that I often have to think about,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: which is what happens when you set up in a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: dynamite spot like this looks like a killing set. You
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: maybe saw the big buck yesterday and you moved in,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: or maybe not. Maybe it's just like hot sign amazing.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: You get in there, it's perfect, and then you get
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: blown up by some doughes um and then you don't
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: see anything that night. I'm curious in this kind of
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: situation where you kind of blew it up, but you
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: don't know to what degree um, will you ride out
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: something like that, or will you say that dope family
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: group just made a ruckus I gotta move or does
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: it have to happen two days in a row, or
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you know, tell me about how you'd raft to that
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: kind of situation. Yeah, so that's a great question. And
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm sitting in my living room right now
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and I'm looking at three different bucks on the wall
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: that I killed, and I can distinctly remember getting blown
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: at by two or three different does, and I ended
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: up killing the buck the same night. So I don't
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: pay a whole lot of attention to it. I mean,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: it's obviously annoying and you don't want it to happen.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: But um, I've had enough success after you know, blow
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: the deer out that uh, you know, I look at
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the situation. You know, it just depends sometimes sometimes I
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: know I'll blow them out. It it does kind of
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: ruin the hunt for me. But um, you know I've
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: these these two bucks and I'm looking at right here. Um,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: they were earlier season hunts. Um, I was hunting really
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: tight to buck betting. And you know, you know as
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: well as I do that that the does are betting.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: You know, they're not right on top of the buck,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: but they're on the outskirts or where that bucks bedded,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and it's almost impossible sometimes to get in on them
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and and not blow something out. There's gonna be does
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: or small bucks or whatever. And in my experience, man,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: you you jump those does up, and you know, if
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: they don't cause too big of a ruckus. Those bucks
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: don't pay a whole lot of attention to it, at
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: least in my experience. Um, you know, the the bucks
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: I was just talking about, Uh, the one in particular
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I was. I was sneaking in that afternoon and uh,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: there was three doughs standing under the tree that I
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to get in, and you know, they took off
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: blowing and stomping and you know their whole ordeal, and uh,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: I set up in that tree, just carry on with
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the plane. You know that I'd already you know, taking
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the time to get back into this bedding area. So
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: it's like, I'm not abandoning, you know, ship. Now I've
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: got all this intel. I know this buck is in here,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna ride it out and just see
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: what happens. And you know, an hour later, he came
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: out of that bed and I shot him. So it's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a you can't get too hung up on all that.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: But so you bring up you bring up a question
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: that I often, um find myself wrestling with throughout a
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: hunting season. Uh, and maybe you just answered it with
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: that anecdote. But you're walking into your tree standing you're
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: maybe you feel like you're running a little bit late,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: and you get close to the tree and there's a
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: doll or several dolls, and you've got two options. You
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: could either hunker down and try to wait till she
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: moves away, and hopefully she moves away and you can
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: get to tree stand eventually without being too late, or
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: you say, screw it, I gotta get to that tree
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and get going and just move and just spook that
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: dough on purpose so you can just get going and
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: do your thing. Which of those two situations would you
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: opt for in most cases? Well, I mean, obviously I'd
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: like to set up without spooking them, but if there's
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: no way around it, you know, rip the band aid
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: off and get them out of there. Just just get
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: them out of the way and and get set up
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and uh, hopefully they don't run, you know through where
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: you think the bucks bed and that, um, you know,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: if you can get them to run the other way,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: that's obviously ideal. But yeah, I would on those hunts
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: like that, Man, I don't want to see the doughs
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: like I don't want to see the small box. I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: don't want them. I don't want to have them underneath
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: me for any amount of time, Like I just want
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: them out of there. So, um, you know, it's it's
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: it's one of those risky things, you know, do you
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: try to try to get set up without blowing them
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: or not? But you know what we need, I need
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: like a long distance sling shop so that you get
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: a situation that you can like aim a stone to
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: the right side of that dough to burst so she'll
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: run off to the left or whatever. Or like you're
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: hunting and you've got this dough that's lingering underneath your
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: tree stand all evening and you just know she's gonna
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: eventually smell you or pick you off, and so you
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: just gotta get her out, Just give her a little
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: get a little pop in the back end with a
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: little rock, just gonna move on. I think that maybe
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the next big product that hey, that's that's a great idea.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I mean you could probably pat. Yeah, I'm gonna I
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: gotta think of a clever name, and then that one's
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: gonna be gold. Um. We talked about when does blow
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: you out and how that didn't really mess up your
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: hunts in the past. What about a buck though? What
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: about when a buck bust you? And let's say I
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: mean there's some places we hunt where we know there's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of bucks we'd be willing to shoot,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: and we're not real picky. But let's say this is
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, and and maybe this maybe this example
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: isn't gonna work for you. But let's say it's Ohio
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and one of these properties you hunted for a while
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: and you know the bucks that are there, and there's
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: really like two of them, maybe one or two of
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: them that are really like the ones you want. Like
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I know last year that buck you killed was I
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: think the buck you really wanted to kill, right, So
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: what if what if a situation like that happens where
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the buck you really want blows you out, like he
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: he's spots in the tree and he pegs you hard
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: and he's out of there. Do you give up on
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: that tree immediately and said, Okay, well it's not happening here,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I gotta move. Or do you think that he'll make
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: a mistake maybe two days later because he's on a
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: dough or whatever. What's your thought process on that situation? Yeah,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: when it comes to that, I mean, if he bust
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: me and he for sure smells me, um, I'll pretty
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: much abandon that spot and and try to move around
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: on you know, on what I think he'll do to
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: avoid that spot, because I think that you know, once
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: they once they pick off, especially if they smell you,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna remember that the next time they
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: come through. So I'll try to I'll try to play
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: off that. I might not move too far, but I'll
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: move far enough away that you know, he's he's not
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: looking for me in that particular tree. Um, if he
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: doesn't smell me, I don't worry so much about that. UM.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I've killed bucks after they've busted me, especially walking in. UM.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: I busted a buck a couple of years ago walking
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: into a spot, and uh, I just so happened to
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: know he was he was bedded down, and I busted
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: him up, but the wind was in my favor. He
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: he he didn't really know what I was. You could
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: tell by the way he ran off. He just kind
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: of you know, bounded out and didn't blow or anything. So, UM,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: I actually knew the next bed up the ridge that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: he would probably come back to. So it's you know,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: basically a bumping dump. So I bumped him. I immediately
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: moved straight to that bed where I thought he would
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: come back to, and he ended up coming right back
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: to it. Um, he wasn't overly spooked or anything. And
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I ended up killing him that night. But so when
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: you say you immediately moved, like when you you bumped him,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: like you were in a tree and he saw you
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and spooked, and so you got out of that tree
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: and pulled your set and then hiked a couple hundred
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: yards down the ridge to another spot and set up
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: in a tree over that bed I was actually walking
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: in when I bumped out. He was he was bedded
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: in a little bit different spot that I wasn't planning on,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I kind of soft bumped him.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I guess you would say, didn't smell me, so um,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I watched the direction he went and then
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: just kind of quickly but quietly moved up up the
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: ridge to where I thought he would come back to.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: And that's that's what ended up working out. Okay, speaking
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: of quickly but quietly, this brings up another thing that
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: I'm always interested in. Um, I for years would stress
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: over walking super slow and super quiet, even if it
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: was crunchy, frosty, no wind. November morning, that type of scenario,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: now that dreaded deer can hear you two miles away,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and then uh more recently, I just started doing the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: RiPP the band aid off thing, and you know what,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make a racket no matter what I do.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: So I could either do it slowly and be loud,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: or I could do it quickly and be loud. Um.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: So I've started doing that more often. What's what's your
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: take on that dilemma? Yeah, so it depends on you
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: know what kind of hunt it is. So if if
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I'm early season and I'm honing in on where a
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: bucks betted at and I'm trying to set up within
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: seventy five yards of him, it will take me two
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: hours to go you know, a hundred yards or so,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: just super slow. And I guess this is why they
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: called me the ginger Ninja. I don't know, but I
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: just I would just take my you know, it will
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: take me all afternoon to get into a spot. Um,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: you know, early season, when I know that they're betted
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: in a in a particular spot. Now during the rut, um,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I'm like you, during the rut it's like rip a
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: band aid off. I'm getting in there, and I'm getting
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: set up so um yeah, just completely depends on the
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: time of the year and uh, the in the situation.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit more about your approach
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: with these beds, because I know you do a decent
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: amount of this buckbed hunting and you're doing it in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: some hilly country there in West Virginia, and I'm imagine
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that something you're doing in those Ohio spots that southern Ohio.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, what is your approach to finding places like
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that you can actually hunt? Because there's one there's it's
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: one thing to like say, oh I found a quote
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: unquote buckbed. It's another thing to find one and then
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: actually be able to hunt it and kill something near it. Um.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Can you talk to me how through your evolution of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of how you've kind of figured that out and what's
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: been the trick that's made that work for you? Yeah,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and you you said it. I mean, it's fine in
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the spots that you can access, and that's that's one
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the hardest part. Um. I know of several beds that
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: that you get used a lot, but there's absolutely no
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: way you can get into them, or not a way
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: that I found anyway. Um, So for me, it's it's
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: trying to identify ones that are you know, they're well
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: you used, they're used by you know whatever, a couple
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: of different mature bucks, and can I get in on them.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes access has to be a little creative.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Um in hill country, you know, we've got a lot
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: of steep digit ditches that come off these ridges, and
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of times I'll get down in those ditches
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and just go straight up the side of a hill
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: and one of the better beds that I hunt that
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I've killed a couple of nice bucks out of. You know,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: it sets up just like that where um, they're bedded
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: on the side of this ridge and they've got a
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: pretty decent sight advantage. But the ditch that runs up
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: the side of the ridge, um, you know, they can't
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: see down in it, and it also blocks your your
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: sound as well as you're coming up. So that's one
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: of those beds that, um, the access is pretty good
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and the deer use it fairly often. So that's a
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that's a really good setup that I have. Um, you know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I've got a couple of others that are that are
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: good too, And you know, really I've only got maybe
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: a handful of beds at I feel could produce a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: nice buck, and you know, usually the access is is
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the problem. It's like you said, it's some of them
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: are just you know, they're set up to they have
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: every advantage and it's really hard to beat them. So
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: here's the thing with this style of hunting, which which
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I've dabbled with. I do not claim to be an
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: expert in this at all, but I've dabbled and I've
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: heard obviously talked to a lot of people that do
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: it a lot, and it's it's pretty obviously a high risk,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: high reward type of hunt, right where you're gonna go
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: in there and you get tight to a bed and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: either it's gonna happen or it's very likely that you're
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: going to educate that deer in some kind of way.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So I think a mistake that a lot of people
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: make is that they hear about the style of hunting,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: they see somebody do it successfully and tout it and like,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: oh man, that's the way you got to do it,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and then they only have like their thirty acre family
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: farm that they can hunt, and they do it a
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: few times and they've blown that place up for the
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: rest of the season. Um, I think that happens quite
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: a bit. How do you you mentioned you only have
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: a handful of beds that you can actually hunt. How
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: do you how do you handle that risk right? How
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: do you either spread out your hunts so that that
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen, or how do you know when the right
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: time is to go versus you know when not to
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: do you give each one of these beds one hunt,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: two hunts, four hunts. Talk to me about how you
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: kind of avoid that real significant weak spot of this
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: style of hunting, this this risk that you face if
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: you're trying to do that. Yeah, So I hunt, you know,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: out of state, and you know, several different pieces of
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: property here in West Virginia. So I try to, you know,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: identify what I think are going to be the better
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: beds for each time of the year. So early season,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: pre rut rut, and you know, I'll kind of bounce
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: around to you know, these different spots where I feel
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: like I have the best chance. So you know, these
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: these beds maybe on different pieces of property. So I
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: throw as sit at one bed. If it doesn't work out,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: I'll just jump to the next one. So I just
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: kind of make a circle, you know, I'll come back
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: to the other bed if I feel like, you know,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I need to sit it again, I'll sit it two times.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: You very rarely, while I hunt it more than twice.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: But I just kind of try to spread that pressure
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: out between properties and even states even so, um, you know,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: it just it takes a lot of work to find
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: setups like that, and like I said, I don't have
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of them, so it's it's not it's not
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: my primary style of hunting. I love hunting them that
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: way and it's really fun when it works out. But um,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: you just you need a lot of land and you
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: need to be able to spread that pressure out, and
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: um yeah, that's kind of my my take on it
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: is just trying to bounce around between places and not
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: not hammer one area until I blow everything out. Still,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: another one of the things I'm thinking about when I
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: imagine trying to hunt buckbeds in West Virginia, let's say,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: or southern Ohio, is these hill country setups, these ridges,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: these draws, these ditches. Uh, the wind thing is obviously tricky.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Can you talk to me about how you you know,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: how you use the wind in a way to make
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: these hunts work? How do you hunt some of these
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: beds with the wind? How do you set up and
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: consider thermals and swirling and all the different possible challenges
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: that can come up in place like that, at least
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming is what you're dealing. Yeah, And like you said,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a big challenge because the wind can
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: be tricky in the hill country. Um. You know, I
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: found that I've had my best luck when you have
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit higher wind, you know, something in the
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: ten to twelve mile and hour range, something that's uh,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: you know, a little bit higher speed but not you know, overbearing.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: But um, you know, you get into early season and
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: if you have a really calm night, I mean, the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: wind could just be doing all sorts of stuff. So UM,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: hunts like that, I rely more on the thermals. Um
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: And that's why I hunt the edges of a lot
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: of these ditches, because you know, as the thermal start
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: to cool off, that ditch is the first thing to
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: cool off, and you know it's gonna suck that scent
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: right down the ditch. And uh, most times I'm trying
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: to set up to where the bucks are dropping out
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: of their bed and they're you know, filtering around the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: top side of this ditch, so it's it's more or
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: less a funnel, but it also acts like um, kind
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: of a wind barrier in a way because you're you're
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: wanting your thermals to fall straight down the ditch and
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: go down the hill. So um, So it's either a
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: higher wind situation or like a straight thermal situation where um,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you can kind of take advantage of that.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: But it's you know, I'll also go into a spot
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of times and it's completely the opposite of
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: what I planned for. It happens all the time, So
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of times those hunts, I'll still throw a
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: sit at it. You know, I'll pick the tree. You know,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: I'll pick the best tree given the situation, you know,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: with the wind and that. That's one of the aspects
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: of mobile hunting that I think as nice as being
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: able to adjust on the fly, you know, when you
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: go in. But I get it wrong a lot. I mean,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: there's just no doubt about it. You know, there's no
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: way around it. Will you ever throw a hunt at
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: a bottom? I Mean, there's lots of spots that I
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: can think of over the years I've seen where you
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: find this about where all these ridges dumped down into
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: a little of a bowl, and there's big community scrapes
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: down there on the bottom, and there's two trails coming
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: off of every one of these points that drops down
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: in there, and this is like the ultimate hub, and
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: you know they're in there, but you also know that
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the wind probably is pretty funky. Uh. Historically, I've always said, Man,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to touch it. That sounds like a
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: ship show. Um, I'm gonna try to get up higher
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: somewhere where the wind safer. But I've got some buddies
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: who are like, Man, you can't make assumptions like that.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: This could be the super Bowl of spots and you'll
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: never know unless you try it. Um, what would you do?
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: What's your situation there? Your thoughts on that situation? To
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: be honest, I don't hunt a lot of bottoms, like
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: you said, just for that reason, and you know, maybe
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I'm missing out. Um. You know, the bottoms in the
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: area here in West Virginia where I'm at, they're really narrow.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't have very wide creek bottoms at all.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: But like where we hunted in Missouri, the creek creek
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: bottoms are a lot wider down there, so you know,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I would actually hunt a creek bottom there where I
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: feel the wind is a little more consistent. But um yeah,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like you, I don't really mess with it a
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: whole lot. And I can't think of any bucks that
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: I've killed in a creek bottom like that, But it's
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: probably just because I don't hunt them that often. So
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, maybe I should throw some more sits out him,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Well, that's the funny thing.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It's like we get these ideas in their minds where
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: we heard enough or we experienced the downside of time
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: or two, and then we make a rule of it
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: and we say, okay, that's too dangerous to ever do it.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: And maybe it is then the flip side. Maybe we're
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: creating a self fulfilling prophecy where we never killed bucks
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: on you know, seventy five degree days because none of
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: us ever hunt seventy days anymore, or something exactly. So, hey,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: we gotta hit pause real quick. This is future Mark
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: and we had some kind of weird technical snaffoo happened
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: during this interview that resulted in the audio quality for
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: my microphone to all of a sudden just tank. So
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: for the rest of the show, I'm gonna sound like crap.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I apologize. Bear with me on this,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: but but Jared sounds just fine. So enjoy the rest.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening back to the show. So so this
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: year and moving forward, I'm just kind of re checking
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: all these things, like what fifth grade math class always said,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: like you gotta like show your work yet check your
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: work and show on the side of the page. I'm
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: trying to do that now as a hunter. No, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I you know I need to do the same thing.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm guilty of it, you know, exactly the same way.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: You know, you get this notion in your head that
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: you know this one way never works, but you know,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: in some situations, maybe that's that's what you need to do.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: So you know, that's one thing that I need to
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: I need to be better about, is uh, you know,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: don't get stuck and don't get stuck in any one
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: way because uh, you know, you may try something different
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and kill the biggest buck you've ever killed. So so
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: you you mentioned a couple of examples of this, like
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: that stupid sitting next to the road, But are there
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: any other situations where you've been that guy who all
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: your buddies thought was nuts because you did the crazy
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: thing and you did a thing that you're not supposed
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: to do, and you just said, you know, I gotta
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: try it, or I actually think that, even though everybody
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: says don't do X, I'm going to try X. Has
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: there been any situations like that where that's panned out
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: for it or come close or anything like that, other
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: than the one example we already heard, Uh, there's there's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: been a few actually where I've done some crazy stuff
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and it worked out. Um. The one buck I shot
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: in Ohio a couple of years ago, I actually snuck
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: right through the middle of a betting area, UM and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: set up it was you know, just the situation was perfect.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: It was rainy and cold and we had a cold
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: front coming in and I was like, you know what,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go right into that betting area, like
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: right into the heart of the betting area. And Uh,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: I killed that buck that night. UM. I slept in
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: the woods overnight. One hold on, hold on. I need
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: more details on both of these because these are the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: goods right here. So first I really want to hear
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: about the sleepover. But back to the back to the
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: betting bum, Um, what time of year was this one?
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: What time was this in the day that you did this?
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: And then like tell me how you actually pulled that off. Yeah,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: so this was October um, so pre rut obviously. But
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: we had this betting area on this small piece of
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: property we were hunting. So it's on the east side
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of a ridge, just kind of a bowl in the
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: side of the ridge, and it had been clear cut.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: So imagine a four acre like a horseshoe shaped bowl
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: in this ridge that was all clear cuts. It's nasty,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: thick um. So we had been getting all these bucks
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: on camera kind of on the outskirts of this betting area. Um,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you know they're heading back into this betting area in
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: the dark, so you know that they're they're spending their
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: time in that clear cut. So it had been really hot,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: it had been in the seventies and we had been
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: hunting there for like four days and there was I
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: think there was three of us hunting. It's only sixty acres,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: so it's it's fairly small. But I just started thinking,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, those bucks are staying in that
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: clear cut and they're not coming out of there in
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: the daylight. And uh, I looked at the weather forecast
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: and we had a wind switch out of the northwest,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and it was gonna be raining and then it was
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: going to clear up in the afternoon. So it's like
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the perfect scenarios, like these bucks are gonna be on
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: their feet. So it was it was actually still raining
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: of good and the temperature was dropping and I think
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I left like right at noon. I'll started walking in there.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: So I walked the down wind side of this betting area,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: like right on the edge of it, and I just
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: tiptoed in there, I mean, just creeping in there, and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: uh it was it was one of the bucks that
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I actually jumped up some dose. They were right where
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to be set up, kind of
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: in the I don't know where the way this horseshoe
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: bends around. I was kind of right in the middle
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: of it. Um, so you had all these exit trails
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: coming out on the bottom end of the betting area.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: So it took me two hours to get in there,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: maybe two and a half hours, just creeping along and uh,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I picked a tree that looked you know,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I never hunted the spot before. I never hunted this
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: tree or anything. You know. I picked this tree and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I was like, I think this all works. I climb up.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: What made that tree the tree? Like? What? What? Why
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: was that the killing spot in your mind when you
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: saw it? Like? What were the fee chairs or was
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: there four of those trails all dumping out right there?
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Why was that the one? Yeah? So it was like
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: the most centrally located tree um for all of the
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: exit trails coming out of bedding. So basically I had
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: exit trails right in front of me, I had extit
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: trails behind me, UM, and it was right on the
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: edge of the clear cut, like I mean, right up
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: against the thick stuff. So um. You know, I knew
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: that if a buck come out of one of those
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: exit trails, it was gonna be it was gonna be
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: a money spot. So you know, I set up and shoot.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: I think that buck. I think he came out at
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know, four or thirty, so it was pretty
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: pretty early. But I watched him. He come out and
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: he was just feeding, um, just browsing around, and he
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: eventually made his way into range and I put an
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: arrow in him, and uh, you know there was two
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: or three of my other buddies hunting the same property,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and they were hunting, you know, the quote unquote best spots,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know it took me getting right up
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: in that betting area to kill that sucker. Yeah, so
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: what about the nighttime ninja move? Talk me to that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: one then. So I've been getting this buck on camera.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: I've been chasing for two years and uh, yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: this is West Virginia, and I figured this buck at
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: least I knew one of two. He was in one
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: of two betting areas that I knew of, And I
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: was kind of poking around on the edges of you know,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: hunting during bow season, and I hadn't seen him, not
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: one time, but I was getting pictures of him on
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: trail camera. So it got down to, uh, it was
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: rifle season here, and it was the tail end of
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: rifle season, so these deer had been pressured a lot,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: and this particular betting area, Um, there was a lot
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: of other guys hunting the top side of it, I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: guess you you should say, on the up wind side.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: And I knew that. I knew that the only way
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: to get in there would would be to get in
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: tight in on that bedding area on the down wind
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: side and catch him coming back in the morning. So
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: my thinking was, I was like, this buck is probably
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: gonna get in there before daylight and bed down, and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: if I'm not already in there, you know, I'm probably
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: gonna blow him out on my injury. So, um, you know,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I took a little backpacking shelter, you know, in my
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: quilt and all that stuff, and I slept in the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: creek bottom right below, right below the bedding area, and uh,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the thermals. It was super cold that night,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: so the thermal stayed down in that bottom. You know.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't really have much much fear of busting him
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: out or anything like that, but I got up, you know,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I slept in that creek bottom, got up super early
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: that morning, and I only had to hike maybe two
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: yards to where I could watch this the bottom side
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: of this bedding area, and man, right at daylight, that
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: sucker come down off the hill coming into that bed
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and I shot him right at daylight. But he ended
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: up being my biggest West Virginia buck. He was a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: good one. Has there ever been a deer that you
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: were more pumped about other than that? I mean, I
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: don't know if you can top the the over. Yeah,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I mean that one was really that was really cool.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: And I mean, to be honest, I did not think
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: it was gonna work. I was like, you know whatever,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: I'll give it a shot and just just see what happens.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: You know. I had some backpacking gear that I wanted
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: to try out, and I was like, I'm just yeah,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: we're gonna try this out and see what see what happens.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: And I just got lucky ended up killing him. But
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: that was really cool. Yeah, I'd say that's incredible. What
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: what is the buck that? Maybe it is that one?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: But if it's not that buck, what's the buck that
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: you're the most proud of? Like does anything? Maybe it
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: was how you did it or some other circumstances that
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: make it just like that's the one. If you could
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: only hold on to one memory of all of your
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: hunts and there's one that you said, damn it, this
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: is this is it? What buck kill would that be? Yeah?
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: So that's definitely the buck I killed in ten He's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a big he's just a big seven point but he's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: he's five and a half years old, just a giant body. Um,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: but I had been getting pictures of this buck since
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: he was two and a half years old, and you know,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: back at that point in time, I would have shot
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: him when he was two and a half because he
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: was a nice looking deer. So so I was hunting
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: this deer, you know, when he was two and a half,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: three and a half, four and a half. But this
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: was kind of before um, you know, I really started
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: to dive into the beast hunting tactics, I guess you
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: should say. So, you know, in is when I really
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: started looking into this beast style hunting, and it just
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: kind of clicked with me. You know, all all these
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: spots in the past where I've killed bucks, and it
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: just made sense that they were betting in those spots
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: based on the wind. So um, I had actually found
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: this bed on the side of this ridge, um the
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: spring prior. And the funny thing is is where I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: was getting pictures of this buck like three quarters of
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a mile away, like a long ways away, but I
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: was all the pictures were in the middle of the night.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: So I put a camera up on the on the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: outskirts of this betting area and lo and behold this
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: this big seven point I was getting pictures of him
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: coming out of that bed. And I've been trying for
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: you know, the last two or three years figuring out,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out where he was coming from. And
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: when I when I got pictures of him leaving that
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: betting area, it just all clicked and it all made sense.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: And had I had hunted that area before, but I
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: was hunting it completely wrong. Like I was accessing it
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: from the top of the ridge, you know, on the
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: up wind side, which is just you know, total rookie move.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: But you know, I started thinking about it. I was like, man,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: I need to I need to take the long way around.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I need to walk in up this creek bottom and
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: then it's three yards up the side of this really
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: steep ridge, and I was like, man, that's that's the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: only way I could get in on this buck to
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: kill him. So it was. It was October one, and
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it was the very first time hunting this spot. So
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: I access it just just like I played. The wind
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: was perfect coming out of the southwest, so when I
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: went up the creek bottom, windows in my face, it
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: was perfect. So I creep up there. It takes me
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: forever to get set up because I was just trying
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: to be so quiet to get set up, and I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: pick a tree, I get set up, and I'm you know,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: at this point, I hadn't really killed a buck doing
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: like this tactic before, so, you know, in the back
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm like, yeah, this is ain't gonna work.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: He's not betted there, you know, whatever, it's not. There's
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: no chance that's gonna work. But I'm sitting there and
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen anything. I don't I don't think I've
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: seen anything yet. And I look up seventy yards away,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: you know, to work, close to where this bed is at,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: and I could see that sucker's rack sticking up out
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: of the ferns. He was betted right right where I
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: planned on. And uh man, he got up out of
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: his bed and he I watched him stretch and do
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the whole thing and check the wind, and he just
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: starts feeding his way straight to me. I'm like, you've
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: got to be kidding me. Is this actually gonna work?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: And you know, he only he only made it probably,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, forty yards from his bed, and it
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: was almost dark, it was getting close to dark, and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I ended up getting a forty yard shot on him.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: And I mean just I absolutely drilled him, I mean
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: right through the heart and I watched him fall. But
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: like that was that buck was my big like lightbulb
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: aha moment, like Wow, this this actually works. You know,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you can you can kind of plan on where these
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: bucks are going to be betted and if you access
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: it right, you can kill him. And man, after that buck,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: it was just like, you know, it just opened up
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: the world of bed hunting to me. And you know
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I killed killed several bucks kind of the same way
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: after that. But yeah, that buck there for sure was
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: it was. That's a good memory for sure. Yeah, I
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: can I can see why for for other people that
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: maybe find themselves in a situation like you were in
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: prior to thousand and sixteen and are wanting to have
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: a lightbulb moment like that for themselves. Um, you obviously
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: had a bunch of you know, different challenges along the way,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: and then the years since you've been perfecting and fine
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: tuning it. If you could give them you know what
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: you wish you knew back then so that they could
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: make this work. What would you tell them now to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: make this style of hunting work for more people? That
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: person that wants to try lest has heard about this
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: but has never really had a click. What do you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wish you knew that you do know now that you
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: could share. Yeah, that's a tough one because there's so
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: many different aspects of it. But for me, the biggest
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: thing was just learning how to access a spot. Um.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I've just been doing it wrong for so so many years,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: and I just had to look at the way I
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: was doing things and just you know, kind of come
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: to terms with myself that I was just being stupid. No,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: I was going about it the wrong way. And once
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: I realized that, and then just went into each hunt,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: you know, just with that with all that access in mind, like,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: you know, do it the right way or don't do
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: it all? Do it at all, um, even if you
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: don't see any deer. Um, because you know a lot
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: of these hunts you just don't even see a deer.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: So it can be really tough. But um, you know,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: put your time in, UM try to find these types
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: of spots that that you can actually access because a
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: lot of them you can't. But and then just you know,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: go about it the right way. Um. You know, look
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: at your access route, try to try to make a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: plan and stick to it. Even if it's the hard way.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: There may be an easier route in there that will
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: take ten minutes versus two hours. But um, you know,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: take your time, do it the right way, and you're
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: gonna fail more often times than not. But uh, it
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: eventually will work out, and it'll work more often than
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: you think once you you know, once you get it
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: dialed in. But um, just have the patience to do it.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the hardest part. Um. You know,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of guys that I explained
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: how I access an area and they're they're like, man,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: I can never take that much time to to access
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: a spot, and man, if that's what needs to be done, yeah,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: that's what you gotta do. So, you know, just patience
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: and persistence there um or probably number one for me,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: makes that makes a lot of sense. And like you said,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of these things are easier said than done.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: And the work or the patience or the pain, the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: ask that you have to endure to actually execute on
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: these things, that's almost always it separates the you know,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: the talkers from the doers. Absolutely, that's tough. Definitely contested
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: that it's not always fun. And I've certainly been I've
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: certainly been guilty of sometimes just being like ah, like man,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: but but you gotta do it, like you said, Sometimes
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: I feel like overall here there's been this kind of
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: theme of like adjusting or pivoting or you know, being
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: able to you know, just adapt to the situation. Right. Uh,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: there's there's one more, I guess, wrench in the gears
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: that I want to throw at you. That's something that
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of this experience, and I want to hear
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: how you handle how you pivot off of this kind
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: of situation, which is missing a deer or wounding a deer. Um.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I know a couple of years ago, last year you
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: took a shot at the giant North Dakota and and
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: just nickedim. Um, So I know at least recently you've
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: experienced that once. Um. I actually know a different story
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: too in Missouri that maybe you'll bring up. So I'm
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: just curious, you know, everyone, I've never really got a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: great answer from someone on how they handle this stuff,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: maybe because there is no great answer, there's no easy solution.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: But I'm always curious to hear what people do or
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: think about or how they handle those moments afterwards, how
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: they handle the next day? Um, And I don't know.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: I haven't got the silver bullet answer that checks all
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: the boxes that and maybe it's because there isn't one,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: but I'm just curious. How do you handle that situation?
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: How do you move on from it? How do you
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: how do you try to address whatever happened? How do
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: you you know, adapt and continue on after those you know,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: lowest of lowest type moments. Yeah, and man, that's a
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: hard one to answer, because you know, I try to
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: look at it. You know, did I do something wrong?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Was it something that I did that I a stupid
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: shot or you know, flinch at the shot or something
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: like that. Like if I do something like that, I'm
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: I'm much harder on myself, um than if something else
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: would happen. So, you know, in a situation like that
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: where I do something really stupid, you know, you know,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I just try to keep that in my mind, you know,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: especially on the next opportunity, you know, learn from that,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: learn to have a little bit more patients maybe and
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: wait for a better shot or you know, if it
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: if it comes down to shooting, you know, if I
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: miss a deer, um, you know, I'm going to spend
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: the next week like really really hammering my equipment and
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: just making sure that everything's good and uh, that I'm
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: confident with it, because you know, if you miss a
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: big buck or something like that, you know, your confidence
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: is usually shot. So um, I try to shoot enough
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: after a situation like that that I can build my
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: confidence back up. And I think that that's that's probably key.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Um if it's something else, like you know, you hit
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: a limb that you didn't see, or deer ducked and
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: got out of the way. Like, I'm not hard on
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: myself at all. It usually at all in that situation.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: So you know, things happen, you know, dear move, Um,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: you hit something you didn't see. So um, I try
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: not to think too much about those situations. I mean,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: obviously you can learn from them. Um. You know, there's
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: there's something to be learned from every situation. But yeah,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: that's it's a tough one to answer, man to me,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: because I you know, there's some deer that I'm harder
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: on myself, um than than other deer. But you know,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: just try to try to shake it off, but keep
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: it in the back of your mind. You know what
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: you what could you have done better in a you know,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: a different situation. So so I heard a story about you,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: and you can tell me if this is true or
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: not or correct correct the details. But I was told
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: that you either missed a deer or couldn't get a
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: clear shot of the deer because of your peep site.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: And so you decide, you know what, screw this thing.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: You ripped out the peep site and you're learned to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: shoot your bowl without one. Uh can you fill me
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: in or correct me under details there and then explain
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: to me why finally and how you do that? Now? Yeah,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: so that's it. Actually wasn't just one deer. It was
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I think three different deer in one year or maybe
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: to two hunting seasons. So I had to let two
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: of the biggest bucks I've ever seen in the woods.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I had to let him walk because, uh, you know,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't see through my peep sit good enough
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: to to really pick a spot. Um. So there was
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: a buck in Missouri. Um, I'd hunted all week down
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: there and only put the pieces together. Had this big, giant,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: heavy eight point come in right at last legal shooting light,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: and it was you know, kind of cloudy that day,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: so it was a little bit darker, but I could
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: see him with my naked eye. But man, when I
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: got to full draw and anchor, I could not pick
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: out a spot on that deer. So I'll let him walk, um,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: which I'm I'm proud of that decision because I think
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of people probably just would have slung one.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: But uh, I drew back on him three different times
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: and just couldn't couldn't figure out where to shoot, so
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: I just let him go. And then I had another
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: one in Ohio, probably the oldest deer I've ever seen
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: on the hoof. I have no idea how old this
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: buck was. That he was huge, and he come walking
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: in one morning right at legal light. And the same deal.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't pick out a spot through my peep
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: site because, uh, my previous setups, I just don't like
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: to shoot a really big peep site. I feel like
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: my accuracy suffered a little bit, so I always shot,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: you know, a little bit smaller peep site with a
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: smaller sight housing, so that probably hurt me a little bit.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: But man, after that one in Missouri, that one hurt
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: pretty bad. So I was like, you know what, this
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: next year, I'm taking the peep site out and I'm
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: just gonna try to figure it out and shoot without it.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: So pulled the peep site out, and uh, so I
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: started using the Bomar nose button. Um. Most people probably
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: know what those are nowadays, but you know it's a
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: it's like a spiky little ball that you put on
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: your string and it it touches your nose so you
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: can you can really feel it because it's it's kind
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: of sharp. But I stuck one of those on there,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: pulled the peep site out and started shooting that way.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: And man, I gotta be honest, like I I shoot
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: better that way than I ever have. Like I just
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: shoot so well without a peep site. And uh, you know,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: I did it last spring before hunting season and shot
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: that way all summer. I was dialed in out to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards before we went to Alaska to hunt caribou. Um,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: I shot a cariboo at eighty three yards with no peep,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: made a perfect shot on him. And then you know,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: this past season, I really got the test it in
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: low light situations while whitetail hunting. So I shot a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: buck in North Dakota, made a good shot. Um. A
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: couple in West Virginia made good shots. Um. Then really
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: the the ultimate test was the big one I shot
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: in Ohio last year. You know, he came in right
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: at right at legal shooting time, and uh, I could
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: you know, as he walked in, I could see see
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: his body well enough to pick a spot. So when
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: I got to full draw and anchored, I could I
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: could see good enough to put a perfect shot on him.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: And you know he didn't run sixty five yards, so
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: that was like, that was all the testing I needed.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: Right there was you know, in those low light situations,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: so you can just see so much better. And uh,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: for me, it didn't affect accuras. If not, it probably
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: helped me. So um Man, I've been encouraging a lot
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: of people to try it out, you know, especially if
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: you're just a strict white tail hunter, because you know,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: most of your shots come in the you know, first
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: few minutes of light in the morning and the last
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: few lights, last few minutes of light in the evening.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: So it's been, uh, it's been it's been my game changer.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I guess here in the past year, man, I guess
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the proofs in the pudding you certainly have demonstrated what
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: can happen. So yeah, I think it works. So Bold
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Bold moved like it. Um I was told I was
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: crazy about I feel like that's one of the other
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: themes of this episode is he might be crazy, but
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: it works. Sometimes you gotta be a little bit crazy
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to make to make it work. But man, it's so
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: much a lot of truth to that. Uh well, I
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: think this is I think you bring me to a
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: good place for us to wrap this up because you
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: mentioned that Ohio buck. You shot that buck first light,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: and I was watching the video that you filmed with
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: that hunt and after you recover the deer, you could
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: just see this this emotion that you've gone through, and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: you described how bow hunting can be so frustrating and
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: you can feel like, yeah, I'm never gonna kill something.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: You can sit there for days and days on it,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: and I can I can say this, but I felt
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: this way myself many times, where you sit there and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: you're like, I am an idiot, I am stupid, I
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: can't do this, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: never gonna kill anything. This is a waste of time,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: or this stand is stupid, or this day sucks or whatever.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: It's it's really easy to get negative on yourself when
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: you do this sometimes because it's it's not a walk
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: in the park. This is not like riding on a
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: golf cart and drinking a beer in the sunshine and
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: hitting off the T nine. You know, like you are,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: and we're inherently doing something that at times is miserable,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: is difficult, is uncomfortable, is draining, and it's really damn hard. Ah.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: So you go through this emotional roller coaster and many
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: many lows, and then every once in a while we
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: get this ultimate high like you did, where you went
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: from feeling like you could never kill anything to then
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it did happen. So what I
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: want to know, Jared, is what has been what's been
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: the key for you handling those days, for those moments
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: when it feels like nothing's going your way, nothing could
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: ever go your way? How do you rave those storms
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: and make it to those moments like in Ohio where
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: you finally do kill one or like the previous year
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: where you hunted I think all season, various times in
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: Ohio and didn't kill a buck till January. Um, how
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: do you handle those inevitable dry spells that can so
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: easily send us a negative town. Yeah, I mean it
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: just for me, it just comes down to attitude. I
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: just really try to keep a positive attitude, um, even
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: when things really get hard and it just becomes a grind,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: you know, and I get frustrated just like anybody else,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, get down with myself. But uh,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I just try to always you know, that's my mantra
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: in my head is it only takes ten seconds. It
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: only takes ten seconds. And I say that multiple times
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: throughout the season, and just try to keep a good attitude,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: just try to have fun with it, because you know,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: I know that all of these hard hunts, all of
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: these sits, it's gonna eventually turn around. You know, it
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: almost always does. You know, if you stick it out
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: long enough in your persistent it's it's eventually gonna pay
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: off and you're gonna get another chance. So that's just
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: that's what I tell myself, and that's constantly what's in
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: my brain is it only takes ten seconds and this
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: whole thing can turn around. And I just try to
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: really remember that and not get not get too down
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: on myself. Yeah, that's the truth that can all change
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: in a flip of the switch, snap of the fingers,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: blink of the eyes, and your whole season is a
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: totally different story. Absolutely well, Jared, I I've really enjoyed this.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing, you know, these stories and these experiences.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: I certainly took away a lot, and I'm sure folks
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: listening did too. I know that you are filming a
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's fall right where where can people
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: see some of the hunts you've got coming up this year? Yes,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: so pretty much everything I'm doing these days is on
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: the Tethered Nation YouTube page. And uh my Instagram is
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: j Shafe thirty if you want to find me on there.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: But uh yeah, most of my stuff is on is
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: on Tethered Nation. Um, if you want to look on
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: some of my past hunts, Um, you know a lot
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: of these deer I've talked about I've got on video.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: But I'm flinging arrows on on YouTube, So look me
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: up on there, and uh yeah, I hope that. I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: hope everybody enjoyed it. Excellent. Well appreciate Jared, and good luck,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: good luck with the rest of the season. Yeah, Mark,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you having me on and good luck to
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: everybody out there, all right, and that'll do it. Appreciate
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: you joining me. Hope you enjoyed this one. I hope
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: you'll learn something. Hopefully we gave you a thing or
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: two to uh get you through this next week and
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: help you out on your next hunt. Appreciate you tune in.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: I want to give you a couple of quick reminders
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: if you're not already following what we're doing over on
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Wired Hunt across the different platforms, highly recommend you go
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: to our website. You can find it at the meat
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: eater dot com slash Wired. So just go to the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: mediator website and go to the Wired section the Wired
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Hunt section here to see dozens and dozens of new
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: articles that myself, Tony Peterson, and a handful of other
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: great writers are sharing every week. Check out the Wired
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: hunt YouTube channel. We've kind a new how to video
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: every single Monday. Check those out, and then make sure
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: you're following Wired Hunt on Instagram. I've got a lot
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: of updates. They're doing day by day hunt recaps, gonna
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: get you guys up to speed on what's happening in
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: my world and sharing some lessons learned along the way
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: as well. So that's it for me. Appreciate you guys
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: joining in, thank you for listening, thanks for being here,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: and until next time, best of luck out there in
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: the woods and stay wired to hunt.