Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 355: Becoming an Elite Deer Hunter with Joe Rentmeester

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Ep. 355: Becoming an Elite Deer Hunter with Joe Rentmeester · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
0:20
Speaker 1: fifty five, and today in the show, we're talking serious
0:23
Speaker 1: deer hunting tactics with Wisconsin d I Y Bow hunting
0:26
Speaker 1: expert Joe Rnmewster. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast,
0:35
Speaker 1: brought to you by on X. Today. You are in
0:38
Speaker 1: for a treat because we're getting back into some serious
0:41
Speaker 1: deer talk. Now. I know over the past month or two,
0:44
Speaker 1: I've occasionally kind of I don't know, We've explored some
0:46
Speaker 1: different kinds of things. We've talked mushrooms, We've talked high
0:49
Speaker 1: level conservation advocacy, we've talked cooking, and all sorts of
0:53
Speaker 1: others slightly off the mainstream white tail beat kind of stuff.
0:57
Speaker 1: And I'm glad we did that. It's the off season,
0:59
Speaker 1: after all, and there's nothing wrong in my opinion, with
1:01
Speaker 1: stretching our horizons a little bit. But if if I'm
1:04
Speaker 1: being honest, I know that we're all chopping at the
1:07
Speaker 1: bit for deer hunting season, which unbelievably he's quickly approaching.
1:10
Speaker 1: So today we are going to give you an extra
1:13
Speaker 1: large helping of know how to help in your preparations.
1:16
Speaker 1: And to do that, my guest today is Joe Rentmester. Now,
1:20
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with him, here's some quick background.
1:23
Speaker 1: Joe is a Wisconsin deer hunter who many folks probably
1:27
Speaker 1: know because of his appearances and collaborations with Dan Infult
1:30
Speaker 1: and Hunting Beast forum videos and podcasts. He also might
1:34
Speaker 1: know him from some of his appearances on the Hunting
1:36
Speaker 1: Public videos. He's been on the Public Land Challenge episodes.
1:41
Speaker 1: And I think that most of you are familiar with
1:44
Speaker 1: Dan Infult and we've had him on the show multiple times.
1:47
Speaker 1: And what's cool about Joe is that he's been able
1:50
Speaker 1: to learn firsthand from hunting with Dan over the years,
1:53
Speaker 1: and there has been a go out there and put
1:55
Speaker 1: his own spin on this beast style of hunting that
1:58
Speaker 1: many of us have become familiar with, and he's done
2:00
Speaker 1: it really successfully. In fact, the o G himself, Dan Infult,
2:05
Speaker 1: has called Joe the next great and a quote here
2:07
Speaker 1: he's called the next great big buck serial killer end quote.
2:12
Speaker 1: So what I'm trying to say is that Joe knows
2:15
Speaker 1: his stuff. He's having success killing mature bucks and a
2:18
Speaker 1: lot of tough situations like public land in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin.
2:22
Speaker 1: And he's trusted and admired by many of the best
2:25
Speaker 1: hunters in the country, which all leads me to say,
2:28
Speaker 1: this hunting season is almost here. I can feel the
2:31
Speaker 1: skin prickly on the back of my neck as I
2:33
Speaker 1: say that, um hunt of season is almost here, and
2:36
Speaker 1: Joe is going to help you and I get ready.
2:40
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's talk bucks. All right, I
2:47
Speaker 1: am here now with Joe, rent me, stir Joe. Welcome
2:50
Speaker 1: to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Hey,
2:53
Speaker 1: I appreciate making the time to do it, like like
2:56
Speaker 1: we're just talking about. I know you've got a little
2:57
Speaker 1: baby there at home, and I know from personal experience
3:01
Speaker 1: that's no easy task. So thanks for making this happen. No,
3:05
Speaker 1: not a problem. So far, so good. He doesn't have
3:07
Speaker 1: legs where you can take off on me, so I think,
3:09
Speaker 1: so far, so good. Man. That's a good point. I've
3:12
Speaker 1: just gotten to where my second son is back in
3:16
Speaker 1: the stage where he can't well, he can't move. My
3:18
Speaker 1: older son runs around all the time, and now I'm
3:20
Speaker 1: appreciating the one that's a mobile so much. Now. Those toddlers, man,
3:24
Speaker 1: they keep you on your toes. But you never know.
3:27
Speaker 1: You never know in the door is gonna fly open
3:29
Speaker 1: and they're gonna go out, oh man, or or crashed
3:31
Speaker 1: into the office and interrupted podcasts, so be warned for
3:34
Speaker 1: that too. Um. Well, cool, Joe. I I'm excited to
3:39
Speaker 1: be able to have this conversation because you're a guy
3:42
Speaker 1: who I've I've kept tabs on from Afar. I've been
3:45
Speaker 1: watching what you've been up to. Of course, you know,
3:47
Speaker 1: I've been following and learning from Dan in Fault a
3:50
Speaker 1: lot myself, and you've been a part of that sphere,
3:53
Speaker 1: and um, so it's been nice to see another. You know,
3:56
Speaker 1: there's been a pretty significant group of of young guys
4:00
Speaker 1: kind of coming under Dan's wing, learning from him and
4:03
Speaker 1: taking that into their own world, their own places, and
4:06
Speaker 1: putting it into action. Would you would you say that's
4:09
Speaker 1: a fair way to describe you, is like a Dan
4:11
Speaker 1: in Fault disciple? Um? Is that is that a fair
4:15
Speaker 1: way to describe it? Yeah? I would say that's absolutely fair.
4:18
Speaker 1: And there there are a lot of guys that came
4:20
Speaker 1: out of the beast and went and did other things
4:22
Speaker 1: or or got better. Yeah. Absolutely, huge, huge number of
4:26
Speaker 1: guys that have been on your podcast in the past,
4:28
Speaker 1: you know, Andy maybeing one of them. Um, yeah, absolutely,
4:31
Speaker 1: lots of them. I am actually a friend of mine
4:34
Speaker 1: another Beast guy, uh who I actually was just thinking today.
4:38
Speaker 1: Looks like the two of you could be brothers, my
4:40
Speaker 1: buddy Ross houseman. Um. I can't remember what his handle
4:44
Speaker 1: is on on Hunting Beast, but um, but the two
4:47
Speaker 1: of you guys, Yeah, yeah, I guy, you guys look
4:50
Speaker 1: like you could be related. So I want to look
4:52
Speaker 1: into that and see if there's something back there. All right,
4:56
Speaker 1: But but point being, um, you have had this, this
5:02
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of success kind of hunting in this Hunting
5:05
Speaker 1: Beast style, like a lot of other folks have taken
5:07
Speaker 1: and and kind of shifted and made work for them.
5:10
Speaker 1: But I guess what is interesting to me to start
5:14
Speaker 1: out is what was your hunting like or your hunting
5:19
Speaker 1: journey like before that? So what was the pre beast
5:23
Speaker 1: life for Jill in your hunting world? Like? Sure, yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: so my hunting started like a lot of people. Um,
5:30
Speaker 1: my dad bought me a bow and stuck me a
5:32
Speaker 1: tree and said sit right here, and uh, from there,
5:35
Speaker 1: he kind of set me for him. Oh, and taught
5:37
Speaker 1: me what a rub was, taught me what a trail was,
5:39
Speaker 1: kind of the basics, and you'd see a ubin on
5:41
Speaker 1: trail coming out of a swamp or something like that,
5:44
Speaker 1: and you'd set up and Uh. It got to a
5:46
Speaker 1: point as I got older, we would get we started
5:49
Speaker 1: using trail cameras and we would get these trail campigures
5:51
Speaker 1: of these giants coming out of um different swamps and stuff.
5:56
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where I noticed nobody
5:59
Speaker 1: in my face, Emily or locals weren't killing these big bucks.
6:02
Speaker 1: But we had him on our trail camera, and I thought,
6:03
Speaker 1: there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a
6:05
Speaker 1: way to be killing these deers. Somebody out there has
6:07
Speaker 1: got to be killing these dear how do you do it? So,
6:10
Speaker 1: just like a lot of people, um, I started digging
6:12
Speaker 1: around on the internet. I think I started on like
6:14
Speaker 1: a real tree form and I started asking questions about
6:17
Speaker 1: swamp hunting and someone said, hey, you've got to check
6:20
Speaker 1: out dan in Faults Marsh Bucks DVD. So I checked
6:23
Speaker 1: that out, and uh, I believe my question on that
6:25
Speaker 1: real tree form was I've got to swamp. The bucks
6:28
Speaker 1: are in it. Do I go in the swamp or
6:29
Speaker 1: do I stay on the field edge? And uh, I
6:32
Speaker 1: crawled down that rabbit hole and the answer was getting
6:35
Speaker 1: the swamp, which I later learned isn't necessarily always the answer,
6:38
Speaker 1: but that that shot me to the hunting deest, and
6:41
Speaker 1: that was that was the beginning of the end right there. Yeah,
6:44
Speaker 1: those DVDs are the beginning of the end for a
6:46
Speaker 1: lot of folks. Those Uh, they are very helpful. I
6:49
Speaker 1: I too enjoyed those. So so you found Dan, and
6:54
Speaker 1: from what I've heard, you send him some messages and
6:57
Speaker 1: he started answering your questions and and eventually you guys
7:01
Speaker 1: struck up a friendship. How long has that been now
7:03
Speaker 1: that you've been kind of hunting with Dan or using
7:07
Speaker 1: his methods and and things like that. Oh gosh, that
7:10
Speaker 1: was I was a junior in high school, so I'm
7:14
Speaker 1: not good with dates, So I would say over ten
7:15
Speaker 1: years now, we're getting old. Joe. Yeah, yeah, what do
7:21
Speaker 1: you think then? That switch was for you, like for
7:25
Speaker 1: a lot of people, like for me for sure, I
7:27
Speaker 1: had like a light switch moment where I went from
7:29
Speaker 1: hunting like my dad taught me, which is just kind
7:31
Speaker 1: of like you were talking about sitting in Sitting for
7:33
Speaker 1: me was sitting on the ground blind next to a
7:35
Speaker 1: trail and hope something walks by. Um. And eventually I
7:38
Speaker 1: had a light switch moment where all of a sudden
7:41
Speaker 1: things just started clicking and I started seeing more dear
7:45
Speaker 1: and then older deer, and and so on and so forth.
7:47
Speaker 1: Do you is there anything like that that stands out
7:49
Speaker 1: for you where you realize, oh, wow, now I get it.
7:55
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a tricky one. So from the in
7:57
Speaker 1: the very beginning, when I was watching those DVDs, I
8:00
Speaker 1: was like, holy cow, this makes sense. It was when
8:02
Speaker 1: he explains the stuff. It's all common sense. It's all
8:05
Speaker 1: very simple, but everyone really overthinks it. And I mean
8:07
Speaker 1: especially if you you come up reading a lot of
8:09
Speaker 1: the magazines that are out there today, they all kind
8:11
Speaker 1: of send you down a certain um path, and then
8:14
Speaker 1: when you watch these DVDs, it's completely different than that.
8:17
Speaker 1: So that those were kind of aha moments all in themselves. UM.
8:21
Speaker 1: I would say, in the last five years, I've really
8:24
Speaker 1: had some true aha moments. Um. I was. So there's
8:28
Speaker 1: a lot of guys. I guess I'm kind of almost
8:30
Speaker 1: taking a shot at people when I say this, But
8:32
Speaker 1: there's a lot of guys online that they'll read Dan's word,
8:35
Speaker 1: take it for gold, and that's it. They don't think
8:38
Speaker 1: any further than that. And that was me, for gosh,
8:42
Speaker 1: five years of the five years of being a hunting
8:44
Speaker 1: Beast fan. I guess you could say I just took
8:46
Speaker 1: everything he said. I saw a loan tree standing out
8:48
Speaker 1: in the cattails. I'm like, yep, there's a buck bet
8:50
Speaker 1: under there, and when really it was doll betting. Buck
8:53
Speaker 1: wasn't using it. So and there's a lot of different
8:57
Speaker 1: variables that can change different things, Right, So when Ann
9:00
Speaker 1: says that there's a loan tree in the cattails, that
9:02
Speaker 1: might be a buck, but that might be a buck,
9:04
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean that it is. So in the
9:07
Speaker 1: last five years, I've really kind of stopped. I've made
9:10
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes. I've gotten closer to some of
9:12
Speaker 1: these big ones. And when you get close, you kind
9:14
Speaker 1: of stop and you analyze and you look at what's
9:15
Speaker 1: going on around you, and you look where you made
9:18
Speaker 1: those mistakes, and it just that's where it really started.
9:20
Speaker 1: Clicking for me when it was when I took those
9:22
Speaker 1: hunting beast tactics and made them my own because where
9:25
Speaker 1: I hunt is different than we're Dan hunts, or where
9:28
Speaker 1: you hunt in Michigan and stuff like that. So that
9:31
Speaker 1: I would say is the biggest aha moment? Yeah, So
9:33
Speaker 1: I thinking for myself. Yeah, that's a good point. Do
9:36
Speaker 1: you feel like there's anything now that you can point
9:40
Speaker 1: to now that you've applied this to your own hunting
9:42
Speaker 1: and you've had these aha moments that you do different
9:45
Speaker 1: than Dan now where he would be like Joe's kind
9:47
Speaker 1: of crazy, but this is what he does and now
9:49
Speaker 1: you've found it works for you. Boy, No, I don't
9:52
Speaker 1: think so. I think if I told him what I
9:54
Speaker 1: was doing and why I was doing it, he would say, yep,
9:57
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Is there anything? Is there anything that
9:59
Speaker 1: he does that you wouldn't want to do well, that
10:04
Speaker 1: you tried and didn't work out or didn't like it
10:06
Speaker 1: so much, or you think that maybe you've got a
10:07
Speaker 1: slightly better angle on it. Sure? Um, when I guess
10:12
Speaker 1: what the example I have is when we're hunting Michigan together,
10:15
Speaker 1: we're giving each other grief. It was in one of
10:17
Speaker 1: the videos and he kept seeing the bucks pop up
10:20
Speaker 1: in a certain corner of one of the fields and
10:22
Speaker 1: there was a valley. The field was up on top
10:24
Speaker 1: and there was a valley, and he said, based on
10:27
Speaker 1: the map, he said, the deer have to be coming
10:28
Speaker 1: out of that spot. And then Tim, our camera guy,
10:32
Speaker 1: was seeing them come out of the other corner of
10:33
Speaker 1: the field, and I remember there was kind of a
10:35
Speaker 1: bowl back in the little other corner of the field,
10:38
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, they've got to be coming up
10:39
Speaker 1: out of that bowl, and that that's why we're missing
10:41
Speaker 1: the game. And I remember we argued about it and
10:43
Speaker 1: it was in the videos and it was kind of
10:45
Speaker 1: funny and uh so, just nothing major, just a little
10:48
Speaker 1: pitoly stuff, you know, in the moment thing. Yeah, okay,
10:52
Speaker 1: that's fair enough. That's fair enough. So what about some
10:55
Speaker 1: of those, um, some of those specific things when it
10:58
Speaker 1: comes to swamps, that's one of those situations that I
11:03
Speaker 1: deal with a lot myself. I'm particularly interested once you
11:06
Speaker 1: have those those a niche the same exact things that
11:09
Speaker 1: you talked about work. Okay, we got this swamp and
11:12
Speaker 1: a lot of white tailed media out there over the
11:14
Speaker 1: last ten twenty years has talked about if you've got
11:17
Speaker 1: a great swamp, you should leave it untouched, you know,
11:19
Speaker 1: don't go in there. That's the sanctuary. Don't mess with it.
11:22
Speaker 1: And so for a long time I was afraid to
11:24
Speaker 1: get in there and screw it up. And then you
11:27
Speaker 1: start hearing about more aggressive tactics like Dan's or other people,
11:30
Speaker 1: and you start seeing there's this other world. How did
11:32
Speaker 1: you start thinking through that? And where have you settled now?
11:35
Speaker 1: And the different things you think about when deciding when
11:37
Speaker 1: to push into something like that versus when to be
11:40
Speaker 1: a little more careful. Yeah, so where I started with that, UM,
11:44
Speaker 1: I guess was another lesson from Dan. He said, if
11:47
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing in a swamp, start
11:49
Speaker 1: by following around their tracks in the winter. And that's
11:51
Speaker 1: exactly what I did. I started looking for the biggest
11:53
Speaker 1: tracks I could find and just started falling around and
11:56
Speaker 1: they would kind of leave me from betting area to
11:58
Speaker 1: betting area to betting area, and then I could make
11:59
Speaker 1: sense where those betting areas were. Um. I would even
12:02
Speaker 1: pick up sheds in them sometimes that way kind of
12:04
Speaker 1: confirm it. UM stuff like that. Then UM, as time progressed,
12:09
Speaker 1: I would the mistakes I kept making I made. I mean,
12:12
Speaker 1: I've made tons of mistakes. Um was. I would hunt
12:14
Speaker 1: those betting areas. Gosh, I would hunt it five nights
12:16
Speaker 1: in a row, that same betting area, and I would
12:18
Speaker 1: kind of just adjust twenty yards every time or something
12:21
Speaker 1: along those lines. And that wasn't working. That was too
12:23
Speaker 1: much pressure. Um So I guess that that was kind
12:27
Speaker 1: of the beginning of it. As I progressed and learned,
12:30
Speaker 1: I've learned. So for example, say you've got a swamp,
12:33
Speaker 1: whether it's public or private, and there's almost no pressure
12:36
Speaker 1: and you can hunt the field edge. I would almost say,
12:39
Speaker 1: if you know that buck that you're after is going
12:41
Speaker 1: to be in there, I would say, hunt that field edge,
12:43
Speaker 1: but only hunt it when it's appropriate. If you're hunting
12:45
Speaker 1: it all the time, that buck is gonna learn that
12:47
Speaker 1: you're sitting at the field edge's gonna learn that it's
12:49
Speaker 1: danger that sort of thing. Um. So, sometimes you don't
12:53
Speaker 1: necessarily want to be diving into that swamp. Now, if
12:55
Speaker 1: you're dealing with pressure, like a particular swamp I was
12:57
Speaker 1: hunting this year, um people were they would go like
13:00
Speaker 1: twenty yards into the swamp and set up that was
13:02
Speaker 1: their swamp hunting. So then I had to dig I
13:04
Speaker 1: had to dive in quite a bit deeper to get
13:06
Speaker 1: ahead of those people to deer started learning that that
13:08
Speaker 1: twenty yards inside the swamp zone was danger, so I
13:11
Speaker 1: had to dive in quite a bit deeper. So it
13:13
Speaker 1: really is circumstantial, it really. And another thing too, it
13:17
Speaker 1: depends do you have a tamaracks cedar swamp. Do you
13:20
Speaker 1: have a marsh swamp? Um like done by Dan his
13:23
Speaker 1: marsh is you know exactly where the beds are, so
13:26
Speaker 1: why not get close to them? Um? A lot of
13:28
Speaker 1: your cedar swamps you don't know exactly where they're bedding. Um.
13:33
Speaker 1: You know, he might be forty yards this way, fifty
13:35
Speaker 1: yards that way, and that can completely ruin the whole
13:36
Speaker 1: game for you if you're not set up on the
13:38
Speaker 1: right trail. So sometimes you want to find bottlenecks as
13:41
Speaker 1: well in a situation like that. So it really really depends.
13:44
Speaker 1: Talk to me about this swamp bedding because one of
13:47
Speaker 1: the things that I'm always trying to do is you
13:49
Speaker 1: find something that sure sure as hell looks like, okay,
13:51
Speaker 1: this has got to be this is a big ice
13:53
Speaker 1: late of bed on an island out there, or point
13:56
Speaker 1: into a swamp and it kind of has all the
13:58
Speaker 1: boxes checked. But then you start wondering, Okay, how do
14:02
Speaker 1: I tie this to you know, a specific buck, or
14:05
Speaker 1: how do I take it to that next point when
14:07
Speaker 1: you start learning how a buck is using that bed?
14:10
Speaker 1: What do you do or how do you start thinking
14:12
Speaker 1: about a bed after you've found it once you're getting
14:15
Speaker 1: towards hunting season, Like, what's the next step for you?
14:18
Speaker 1: So if I've if I found a specific bed, the
14:21
Speaker 1: biggest thing to do is to absolutely leave it alone. Um.
14:24
Speaker 1: If trail cameras are this is another thing I've learned
14:27
Speaker 1: in the last five years because I was always that
14:29
Speaker 1: anxious why your kid that wanted to run trail cameras
14:31
Speaker 1: all the time. But leave your trail cameras out of there.
14:33
Speaker 1: If you can monitor that betting area from afar And
14:37
Speaker 1: when I mean that, if you've got to swamp with
14:38
Speaker 1: a field across the road from it or something or
14:40
Speaker 1: a field next to it, if you can monitor that
14:42
Speaker 1: food source rather than getting up in there to confirm
14:45
Speaker 1: that that deer is in there, That's what I would
14:47
Speaker 1: personally suggest doing. Um. The trail cameras are just so
14:50
Speaker 1: dangerous because you're sticking your scent in there and those
14:52
Speaker 1: those bigger mature deer one you stick, you're sent in
14:55
Speaker 1: there one time, and that can book ram um. So
14:59
Speaker 1: I guess just surveilling from Afar week, we can deer
15:01
Speaker 1: shine in Wisconsin. I don't know if you can. You
15:03
Speaker 1: guys do that in Michigan. No. I think I feel
15:06
Speaker 1: like I looked in this and there are some weird
15:08
Speaker 1: things about it, like certain times of the year you can,
15:11
Speaker 1: certain times you can't. I think maybe fifteen days before
15:13
Speaker 1: the hunting season you have to stop doing it. It's
15:16
Speaker 1: something like that, Okay, But shine shining is a huge
15:20
Speaker 1: one for us UM, particularly in the summer. They start
15:24
Speaker 1: towards the end of summer, they get shined enough where
15:26
Speaker 1: they kind of start getting edgy. But you at least
15:28
Speaker 1: can figure out if they're coming out of that particular
15:30
Speaker 1: betting area based on where they're feeding. And a lot
15:32
Speaker 1: of that stuff is stuff that you'll learn over many,
15:35
Speaker 1: many years of hunting that betting area versus watching that field,
15:39
Speaker 1: If that makes sense. I know you do a lot
15:43
Speaker 1: of hunting specific deer, So yeah, what is there anything
15:48
Speaker 1: else you're doing when trying to tie a specific deer
15:51
Speaker 1: to a specific bed other than just what you said,
15:54
Speaker 1: observe the food sources if you can. But as you know,
15:56
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of situations where you can
15:58
Speaker 1: see a little bit of one yield, but the rest
16:01
Speaker 1: of his territory have no idea what he's doing. How
16:04
Speaker 1: else do you try to say, Okay, yeah, I think
16:07
Speaker 1: that buck is using this bed because that you know,
16:10
Speaker 1: I feel like it is so up in the air
16:12
Speaker 1: unless you see it actually use it once. Yeah, that
16:16
Speaker 1: that is very true. And a lot of times you
16:18
Speaker 1: hunt that bed and he's not there. There's a different
16:20
Speaker 1: deer in there. Um that For me, that comes down
16:24
Speaker 1: I guess to backpatal a little bit where I hunt.
16:27
Speaker 1: If you have a mature deer four year old or older,
16:30
Speaker 1: his sign looks completely different than any of the two
16:33
Speaker 1: or three year olds that are running around. So in
16:35
Speaker 1: a situation like that, if you can't if you think
16:37
Speaker 1: he might be in a certain area, when you start
16:39
Speaker 1: getting closer to that area, you start watching for tracks
16:42
Speaker 1: and rubs and scrapes and those basic um types of
16:45
Speaker 1: sign that you would read, and you you should be
16:47
Speaker 1: able to tell if he's in that area. For the
16:50
Speaker 1: most part, would be I guess my just feed on
16:54
Speaker 1: the ground, um, and then set up right away, don't
16:56
Speaker 1: don't wait till tomorrow. What would you say that older uck?
17:00
Speaker 1: When you say that older buck sign is just so
17:03
Speaker 1: different than a two year old or three year old?
17:05
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? Just higher rubs and
17:08
Speaker 1: bigger tracks, um. And and I guess how they move
17:11
Speaker 1: through the woods to it. It looks a little different.
17:13
Speaker 1: And that's one of those things that's just it's hard
17:15
Speaker 1: to explain over over a call. You almost have to
17:18
Speaker 1: see it. And I know the maps, maps are helpful.
17:21
Speaker 1: I heard one example you were talking about of this
17:23
Speaker 1: where in it when you said this, it was it
17:27
Speaker 1: was something I could recognize in myself, my earlier self
17:29
Speaker 1: as well. You said in some of the conversation I
17:32
Speaker 1: was listening to, you were talking about how a lot
17:34
Speaker 1: of guys will look at a swamp or some piece
17:36
Speaker 1: of cover, and then they'll look at the neighboring food
17:38
Speaker 1: source and they'll think that there's a buck in that
17:41
Speaker 1: cover or there's a buck in that swamp at point A,
17:44
Speaker 1: and he wants to go to point B, which is
17:45
Speaker 1: the food source, and so we just assume, okay, he's
17:48
Speaker 1: gonna go straight from point A the shortest route to
17:50
Speaker 1: point B, like a straight line from there to there,
17:53
Speaker 1: and oftentimes we think about, okay, how do we get
17:55
Speaker 1: in between there and there? But what you'd seen and
17:58
Speaker 1: what I've seen too, is that often times they're going
18:00
Speaker 1: to take a much more uh strategic route where they'll
18:04
Speaker 1: come in at an angle and then parallel the field
18:07
Speaker 1: or come into it, so they come in downwind or
18:10
Speaker 1: into a low spotter or something for some reason different
18:13
Speaker 1: than just point A to point B. Um, Am I
18:15
Speaker 1: accurate in describing that thought from you? And then number two?
18:20
Speaker 1: What are some other things like that that you found
18:22
Speaker 1: as far as how these mature bucks just move different? Yeah,
18:27
Speaker 1: so yeah, I would say you're absolutely correct, and sometimes
18:30
Speaker 1: they just move from point A to point B. But
18:32
Speaker 1: I've seen it a lot where so you've got a swamp,
18:34
Speaker 1: they're they're cutting into that swamp where they know they're
18:37
Speaker 1: not going to encounter humans because I mean swamp edges
18:39
Speaker 1: really I just just get hammered with human scent. Um.
18:42
Speaker 1: So they're there. It seems like they're finding the best
18:45
Speaker 1: place to cut in where they know they're not going
18:47
Speaker 1: to be ambush, even if it's in the dark. Because
18:49
Speaker 1: sometimes running you can run a trail came run trail
18:51
Speaker 1: cameras all up and down a field edg to try
18:53
Speaker 1: and figure out where a buck's cutting in. And that's
18:55
Speaker 1: something that's always been really hard for me, is figuring
18:56
Speaker 1: out where they're cutting into the swamp. But then when
18:59
Speaker 1: they get in the swamp, they know where they want
19:00
Speaker 1: to go and they'll I mean they'll travel. I've seen
19:03
Speaker 1: him travel a half mile through swamp when they could
19:05
Speaker 1: have just cut in in the field and they were
19:08
Speaker 1: I don't know, a hundred yards in from the edge
19:10
Speaker 1: of the field. They take the long way for safety.
19:12
Speaker 1: I think you think that's when you say safety, you
19:15
Speaker 1: think it's like a wind thing or is it? What
19:17
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah, I think it could be that too. Um.
19:21
Speaker 1: That's a tough one because I really don't have any
19:23
Speaker 1: way to confirm. I haven't seen it enough times too
19:27
Speaker 1: um confirmed that it's a win thing. I feel like
19:30
Speaker 1: they're they're cutting in the places that I have found
19:32
Speaker 1: them cutting in. It's kind of your overlooked spot. You know,
19:36
Speaker 1: you'll find where they're cutting in and you'll think, boy,
19:38
Speaker 1: I've never never thought about hunting that spot. So I
19:40
Speaker 1: think I think it's more based on that human intrusion
19:44
Speaker 1: and scent on the ground. I could be wrong on that.
19:47
Speaker 1: I mean that that thing right there. Trying to figure
19:50
Speaker 1: out how they come back and to cover back into
19:53
Speaker 1: a bed, I feel is such a tricky one, especially
19:56
Speaker 1: these big old bucks that so often are going back
19:59
Speaker 1: in there before a light even And so if you're
20:01
Speaker 1: trying to pull off that morning hunt and knowing how
20:04
Speaker 1: they're getting back in there, you have to not only
20:06
Speaker 1: think about whatever weird route they're taking in based off
20:09
Speaker 1: of wind, based off cover, based off what you're doing,
20:12
Speaker 1: but then also when are they going to do it?
20:13
Speaker 1: How can you get in there? Um? That one always
20:17
Speaker 1: keeps me up in the middle of night trying to
20:18
Speaker 1: think it through. In in two thousand nineteen, so last year,
20:23
Speaker 1: I think you pulled off a smoke and hunt just
20:28
Speaker 1: like that where you pegged exactly where you thought this
20:32
Speaker 1: buck was going to go into bed and he betted
20:35
Speaker 1: right underneath you. How did you do that? How did
20:40
Speaker 1: you How did you pull that off? Because that was
20:42
Speaker 1: that was an early season morning hunt and you you,
20:45
Speaker 1: baby Ruth, did you bath basically pointed your bat in
20:48
Speaker 1: the stands instaid you're gonna hit the home run? Right
20:50
Speaker 1: there and then you did it. Sure. Yeah, so that
20:53
Speaker 1: one to rewind. That one really goes back to when
20:56
Speaker 1: I was gosh, um, twelve years old when I started hunting. Um.
21:00
Speaker 1: That's a spot that I hunted since I was twelve. Um.
21:04
Speaker 1: That particular spot I've hunted in so many different ways, um.
21:08
Speaker 1: And just to describe it for people, it's it's farm country.
21:10
Speaker 1: There's really no swamp around, but that particular spot. I've
21:13
Speaker 1: tried so many different things, from sneaking up close to
21:15
Speaker 1: the edge of that woods and hunting it at night.
21:18
Speaker 1: I've I've shot deer out of that bed with the
21:20
Speaker 1: gun by jumping them up and shooting. UM. I've tried
21:24
Speaker 1: kind of catching them coming across the field sitting in
21:26
Speaker 1: the corn row and had him catch me drawing to
21:28
Speaker 1: that bed. And I've tried everything, and I've had some giants.
21:31
Speaker 1: I've actually there's some footage out there that I have.
21:34
Speaker 1: I think it's on Damn Dan's Farm Country DVD where
21:37
Speaker 1: I actually stuck a camera up in the tree over
21:39
Speaker 1: the top of that bed and I've got some pretty
21:41
Speaker 1: decent footage of there was I think in the video
21:44
Speaker 1: there's just one specific buck multiple times. UM. But over
21:47
Speaker 1: the years, there's been some slobs in that specific little spot,
21:51
Speaker 1: specific spot start to interrupt. But I just feel like
21:54
Speaker 1: if this is this is a spot that bucks keep
21:56
Speaker 1: bedding over and over and over again, it's a slam
21:58
Speaker 1: dunk buck bed. I feel you'd be really helpful to
22:01
Speaker 1: understand the details of why this spot is such a
22:03
Speaker 1: good buck bed. Yeah. So it's a basically if you
22:07
Speaker 1: could picture two fields side by side with a drainage
22:10
Speaker 1: ditch going in between them, and then the drainage ditch
22:13
Speaker 1: leads into a little point of woods that's maybe um,
22:17
Speaker 1: that point is maybe only twenty yards wide by fifty
22:21
Speaker 1: yards long, and then that little point of woods turns
22:25
Speaker 1: into like a bigger one acre woods. And they like
22:27
Speaker 1: to bet on that little point of woods with They
22:30
Speaker 1: actually like the wind at their back. Um. And if
22:33
Speaker 1: if there's no crops that where they're sitting, they can
22:35
Speaker 1: actually see the road. So anybody coming at them, they
22:37
Speaker 1: can see them coming at them, and anybody coming from
22:40
Speaker 1: behind them they can smell them from coming behind them. Um.
22:44
Speaker 1: Does that paint the picture? I guess before I okay,
22:48
Speaker 1: And what's nice is over the years, I mean I
22:50
Speaker 1: hunted both parts of the woods morning and night, and
22:53
Speaker 1: it seems like the bigger, more maturity are always in
22:55
Speaker 1: the point of the woods, the bigger one acre piece
22:58
Speaker 1: of woods. Sometimes you get some doughs and some all
23:00
Speaker 1: our bucks in there, um, but the big boys hang
23:03
Speaker 1: out right in that point of woods, and it's it's
23:06
Speaker 1: nice and tight and small where if you get up
23:08
Speaker 1: in the right tree, you can shoot that whole thing.
23:10
Speaker 1: And I've seen it time and time again where when
23:12
Speaker 1: you set up in the morning, even if they do
23:14
Speaker 1: bed down before light, they're eventually going to get up
23:16
Speaker 1: and kind of stage around and and sometimes I mean,
23:18
Speaker 1: if that happens, he moves fifteen yards, that's all you
23:20
Speaker 1: need to get your shot. So that's in that scenario,
23:23
Speaker 1: that's what I was banking on. Um. So basically, the
23:26
Speaker 1: night before I shot this deer, um I had, I
23:29
Speaker 1: was hunting, how do I describe it, two hundred yards
23:33
Speaker 1: across the field basically, and I was getting down early
23:36
Speaker 1: because I blew some other deer out of the field
23:38
Speaker 1: and I wanted to try and make a move on them. Um.
23:40
Speaker 1: But I was getting down early, and as I actually
23:43
Speaker 1: had my I was using the tethern platform and as
23:46
Speaker 1: I slung it down the tree. I hit something and
23:48
Speaker 1: it made a loud clank, and I saw him go
23:50
Speaker 1: tearing off back to that little point. And I felt
23:53
Speaker 1: very confident because he didn't know what I was in
23:55
Speaker 1: the tree. My wind wasn't blowing at him. All he
23:57
Speaker 1: heard was a clank, and it's not like he heard
23:58
Speaker 1: a clank looked up and then he had you know,
24:00
Speaker 1: he had sound envision. He heard that clank and took
24:02
Speaker 1: off just immediately, so I felt like he wasn't very hard.
24:06
Speaker 1: He just heard something he didn't like and got out
24:07
Speaker 1: of there. So I felt like I could come in
24:10
Speaker 1: from the other direction to this little point. Um basically
24:14
Speaker 1: what I did from the road. I walked through standing
24:16
Speaker 1: corn and then straight to a tree. I just picked up,
24:19
Speaker 1: picked a tree that I felt like, in the dark
24:21
Speaker 1: would cover most of that bedding, and got as high
24:23
Speaker 1: as I possibly could. The reason for that is because
24:25
Speaker 1: I wanted to get my scent out over the top
24:26
Speaker 1: of the corn. I felt like I was too too
24:28
Speaker 1: low it could swirl down on the corn, So I
24:31
Speaker 1: got as high as I possibly could, and he came
24:33
Speaker 1: laid down below me, and I would actually ended up
24:35
Speaker 1: happening was in the dark. I heard one and go,
24:39
Speaker 1: there's the main bed that I've gotten the trail camp
24:41
Speaker 1: pictures of all the deer on. I heard one go
24:43
Speaker 1: to that bed, and then I in the moonlight, I
24:46
Speaker 1: saw the target buck bed down right below me, and
24:48
Speaker 1: I could kind of see him in my binoculars in
24:51
Speaker 1: the moonlight. And I didn't know of any bigger deer
24:54
Speaker 1: um in the area that were substantially bigger than the
24:56
Speaker 1: one that was below me. So it got just light enough,
24:59
Speaker 1: I flipp down the goal pro like I was scanning
25:01
Speaker 1: kind of in the grass and the brush on the
25:03
Speaker 1: right side of me, on the on the other bed,
25:05
Speaker 1: the primary bed, and I didn't see the other buck.
25:08
Speaker 1: I turned put the camera on the on the buckeye
25:11
Speaker 1: shot shot him and then actually a big boy jumped
25:14
Speaker 1: up out of the main bed. He was like he
25:15
Speaker 1: was cratching. That's that's my lessons learned for the season
25:20
Speaker 1: is I should have been more patient and just um
25:22
Speaker 1: waited to see what that was. But we'll see this
25:25
Speaker 1: year's corn on both sides of that ditch, so that's
25:28
Speaker 1: gonna be huge. They like, I guess I should explain
25:30
Speaker 1: if there's alfalfa on both sides or either side of
25:33
Speaker 1: the ditch, you've got people driving by with a TV s,
25:35
Speaker 1: people walking their dogs, Whereas when you have corn on
25:37
Speaker 1: both sides of the ditch, there's no being there, so
25:39
Speaker 1: all summer long they're left alone. So it makes a
25:42
Speaker 1: makes a big difference. That's nice. We'll see maybe he'll
25:44
Speaker 1: be back. So you I want to make sure I
25:47
Speaker 1: understand why you decide to move that specific location. I
25:51
Speaker 1: think I understand it. But for everyone listening, basically, you
25:54
Speaker 1: you spooked him that night before, and you saw him
25:56
Speaker 1: run back to that point, and so because you saw
25:59
Speaker 1: he headed back that way, the assumption was, Okay, that's
26:02
Speaker 1: probably where he came from. If he's heading back to
26:04
Speaker 1: safety after getting spooks, he probably came from this point.
26:07
Speaker 1: And from previous history you knew that in that point
26:10
Speaker 1: there was this bed, which then told you, okay, that
26:13
Speaker 1: bucks betted there, probably, so I'm gonna kick this wing
26:16
Speaker 1: at him tomorrow, right exactly. Yep. And now a lot
26:20
Speaker 1: of times when we say bed, a lot of people
26:21
Speaker 1: are looking for Hey, he beds right tight up against
26:24
Speaker 1: this one tree. That's where he is every single time.
26:26
Speaker 1: And the betting in there it shifts around a little bit.
26:28
Speaker 1: It can be twenty yards this way, twenty yards that way.
26:30
Speaker 1: So it's it's not exact. It's not like I was
26:32
Speaker 1: staring at one specific spot, but you're exactly correct. Yeah.
26:36
Speaker 1: So here's another thing we I've talked to a lot
26:38
Speaker 1: of different people who've talked about identifying buck betting areas,
26:42
Speaker 1: identifying buck beds. Um. You know, we've seen the duties
26:46
Speaker 1: where Dan walks through the different things he notices a
26:49
Speaker 1: buck sign of a buck bed. But what can you
26:52
Speaker 1: describe for you in your mind, the key things that
26:55
Speaker 1: you look at to help you pinpoint Okay, yes this
26:58
Speaker 1: is a buckbed, or yes this is a buck adding area.
27:00
Speaker 1: Maybe just give a few examples in different scenarios, just
27:03
Speaker 1: for people that maybe aren't as familiar. Sure, so, I
27:07
Speaker 1: guess I would say I do kind of backwards from
27:09
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I find the deer and then
27:11
Speaker 1: kind of work my work my way back through scouting
27:14
Speaker 1: and glassing and trail cameras to where they are to
27:16
Speaker 1: figure out where they are. It's not too often that
27:18
Speaker 1: I'm scouting looking for a specific bed, because all too
27:21
Speaker 1: often these these big ones don't leave big sign right
27:24
Speaker 1: in their betting like this, this betting area where I
27:27
Speaker 1: shot this buck out of in this point. There were
27:29
Speaker 1: no rubs. Um. I mean I crawled all over there
27:32
Speaker 1: just to look. I was curious. There were no rubs
27:34
Speaker 1: from that bigger deer in there. Um. There there were
27:37
Speaker 1: rubs from the deer I shot. You can tell he's
27:38
Speaker 1: a little bit younger of a deer, but there was
27:40
Speaker 1: nothing that really jumped out. UM. Bad question, it really.
27:47
Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't say I'm always looking for beds.
27:50
Speaker 1: I'm more so looking for the betting area. UM. In
27:53
Speaker 1: Dan's situations, you have that one little high spot in
27:57
Speaker 1: the cattails. I know I'm not. I guess now I'm
27:59
Speaker 1: kind of being repetitive. You've got that high spots, you know, Hey,
28:01
Speaker 1: that's that. But I'm looking for betting areas, whether they
28:04
Speaker 1: be thick and overlooked or high stem count um areas
28:08
Speaker 1: or um areas that aren't gonna get a lot of
28:11
Speaker 1: human Trusia's something I'm always thinking about is where where
28:13
Speaker 1: is your average guy going? And that's exactly where the
28:16
Speaker 1: de're not going to be, the maturity are not going
28:17
Speaker 1: to be. UM. I probably didn't answer that question in
28:20
Speaker 1: a very good way, but it's it's it's tricky one
28:23
Speaker 1: to answer without showing people. Yeah. Another thing I'll add
28:28
Speaker 1: is a lot of times I'll jump a deer right
28:30
Speaker 1: out of the bed and then hey, I know he
28:32
Speaker 1: hung out there or he betted in that spot at
28:34
Speaker 1: this time of the year, and then the next year
28:36
Speaker 1: I'll go hunt that betting area, knowing that that he
28:39
Speaker 1: uses that. It's a tricky one, Yeah, for sure. Do
28:43
Speaker 1: you ever do that on purpose in season? I know
28:46
Speaker 1: that some guys like the bump and dump idea. Whenever
28:49
Speaker 1: you're going into a new place, do you ever get
28:52
Speaker 1: purposefully aggressive, purposefully aggressive or so aggressive that you'll go
28:56
Speaker 1: in there thinking, yeah, I might bump them out. But
28:58
Speaker 1: if I do that, I know exactly where he's better
29:01
Speaker 1: and I can make a play tomorrow or or something
29:03
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I've done that, but I can't I
29:06
Speaker 1: can't think back to any success. But I know other
29:09
Speaker 1: people have had success with it, So I've definitely I'd
29:12
Speaker 1: rather be aggressive in a new area than be just
29:15
Speaker 1: out of the game the whole time. So I've done that,
29:17
Speaker 1: but I can't say I've had success around it. Yeah.
29:19
Speaker 1: Have you ever done like the wind bumping thing that
29:21
Speaker 1: Dan does? Sometimes not in particular no, what what then
29:27
Speaker 1: would you say when you're let's talk morning hunts in particular,
29:32
Speaker 1: because because those are like I mentioned, especially you know
29:36
Speaker 1: earlier in the season or later in the season can
29:38
Speaker 1: be harder to pull off. How how do a lot
29:41
Speaker 1: of your morning hunts look like at those times of
29:44
Speaker 1: year when some guys say, don't hunt mornings at all
29:46
Speaker 1: at that part of the season because they're a little
29:48
Speaker 1: higher risk. Uh, they can just be a little more tricky.
29:52
Speaker 1: Is it is it going to be something just like
29:53
Speaker 1: the scenario already outlined in that hunt or are there
29:56
Speaker 1: some other rules or kind of playbooks that you that
29:59
Speaker 1: you follow. So that's I mean, that would be what
30:02
Speaker 1: I would go for personally. Um, But a lot of
30:05
Speaker 1: the deer I've killed in the morning where boy, a
30:08
Speaker 1: lot of them they were coming in and I don't
30:09
Speaker 1: know if it was the whole Jay Hug factor, whether
30:11
Speaker 1: they're trying to come in and win their their bed.
30:14
Speaker 1: But a lot of the deer I've killed in the
30:15
Speaker 1: morning where at the very first light I could I
30:17
Speaker 1: could see I'm thinking of two of them right now
30:19
Speaker 1: that I could see, I could see them in front
30:21
Speaker 1: of me before legal light, and eventually they work their
30:24
Speaker 1: way around, and I was able to get a shot
30:25
Speaker 1: on both the deer. I'm thinking of one of them
30:27
Speaker 1: being November, one of them being UM late season, actually
30:31
Speaker 1: two of them being late season. Usually I'm catching them
30:34
Speaker 1: in the betting and working around UM. A lot of
30:37
Speaker 1: times they know something is up, but they can't figure
30:39
Speaker 1: it out, and they seem to just stall and try
30:41
Speaker 1: and figure out what's going on, and usually gets light
30:43
Speaker 1: and it's too late. Yeah, how early are you getting
30:46
Speaker 1: in there on those kinds of hunts? I think if
30:48
Speaker 1: I remember right that that hunt we were just talking about,
30:51
Speaker 1: you were in there at least an hour beforehand, Is
30:53
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? I want to be set up and
30:56
Speaker 1: sit in the dark quietly for an hour, so probably,
30:59
Speaker 1: I mean, if it takes, I mean, give yourself extra
31:01
Speaker 1: time and be at the base of the tree um
31:04
Speaker 1: two hours before it's going to get late. And would
31:07
Speaker 1: you do a hunt like that on any random day
31:10
Speaker 1: or would have to be you know, a special set
31:14
Speaker 1: of circumstances like you saw the buck and you've pinpoint
31:17
Speaker 1: where you thought he was betting, or some kind of
31:19
Speaker 1: conditions coming through us, a cold front or I don't know,
31:22
Speaker 1: something like that that makes you think that you know
31:24
Speaker 1: tomorrow morn is going to be a special morning. I
31:28
Speaker 1: guess that really depends upon the circumstances. Um for the
31:31
Speaker 1: most part, Like, I'm not I'm not like the kind
31:33
Speaker 1: of guy that reads the moon just because I hunt
31:35
Speaker 1: when I can hunt. I can't hunt all the time. Um,
31:37
Speaker 1: obviously the wind has to work. The wind is huge.
31:40
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to get that wind away from them. Um,
31:43
Speaker 1: Like if you can create an obstacle, if you have
31:45
Speaker 1: an obstacle, like in this particular situation, that this deer
31:48
Speaker 1: coming in was not gonna jay hook me because he
31:50
Speaker 1: would have to walk cross ways through the corn rolls.
31:54
Speaker 1: And I just didn't see a buck every morning walking
31:56
Speaker 1: for the whole summer. I just couldn't picture because it
31:59
Speaker 1: was early season. I could picture of box walking through
32:01
Speaker 1: the corner rolls cross ways. So that's a big thing,
32:04
Speaker 1: is just getting that wind away from them. Yeah, what
32:07
Speaker 1: would be I don't know if the answers that question,
32:09
Speaker 1: but yeah, speaking of that early season, Um, what are
32:14
Speaker 1: you doing for the evening hunts? How are you? I
32:16
Speaker 1: think I remember hearing you talk about there's some discussion
32:20
Speaker 1: you're having about scouting and just how when it comes
32:23
Speaker 1: to early season scouting. Oftentimes you're doing all the scouting
32:26
Speaker 1: leading up to the first hunt, and the first hunter too,
32:30
Speaker 1: and then it's all out the window because things have changed,
32:32
Speaker 1: and then you have to re assess and adjust after
32:35
Speaker 1: that pressure. Um is that to interpret that? Right? Is that?
32:39
Speaker 1: Is that how you approach things early on? Yeah, very
32:42
Speaker 1: much so, because you can have something all figured out
32:45
Speaker 1: and the night before the season or the day of
32:47
Speaker 1: the season, somebody goes in and sets up wrong and
32:50
Speaker 1: has their wind blowing right into the betting area of
32:51
Speaker 1: the deer after and then everything changes. So yeah, absolutely, yes,
32:55
Speaker 1: So what are you doing leading up to the season.
32:57
Speaker 1: Then what's that early season outing those final piece of
33:01
Speaker 1: the puzzle look like. Yeah. So for for summer scouting, um,
33:06
Speaker 1: it's a lot of running cameras in places that that
33:08
Speaker 1: don't intrude. It's a lot of glassing, sitting back and glassing. Um.
33:15
Speaker 1: One one secret that my buddies and I joke about.
33:17
Speaker 1: I guess that isn't that big of a secret. But
33:20
Speaker 1: if you can for glassing, if you can get out
33:22
Speaker 1: of your truck and just walk one fence line back,
33:24
Speaker 1: you're going to see so many more. Dear, than the
33:26
Speaker 1: guy's driving around. I recognize a lot of the trucks
33:29
Speaker 1: that are always driving around the summer glassing and they
33:31
Speaker 1: never get another truck. And you talk to some of them,
33:33
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, I saw a twenty dollar last night,
33:35
Speaker 1: And I'm like, did you see any antlers? And he's
33:37
Speaker 1: like nope. And meanwhile, I was one fence line back
33:40
Speaker 1: watching two booners. You know, I had that one year,
33:42
Speaker 1: which is why I say that, Yeah, do you when
33:47
Speaker 1: it comes to that, that glassing? How often? I feel
33:51
Speaker 1: like this is one of those things that we hear
33:54
Speaker 1: a lot about. We know like we should do, we
33:57
Speaker 1: should glass, we should do we should scout more, we
34:00
Speaker 1: should spend more time in the woodler in these places.
34:02
Speaker 1: But I think there's like a disconnect between knowing you
34:05
Speaker 1: should do that and what doing that actually entails. And
34:09
Speaker 1: I was talking to my buddy Andy about this last
34:12
Speaker 1: summer and I asked him, when you say you're doing
34:15
Speaker 1: this whatever it was like some kind of scout, how
34:17
Speaker 1: many times are you actually doing that? And he said
34:19
Speaker 1: something like, well, I don't know, two or three times
34:22
Speaker 1: every week for months leading up to the season or
34:25
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, when you say you're doing this
34:28
Speaker 1: early season scouting or something like that. You know, is
34:31
Speaker 1: this a once a week thing? Is this? I mean,
34:33
Speaker 1: is it once just before the season? Just helped flesh
34:36
Speaker 1: with that? Actually looks like I'm guessing it's more than
34:39
Speaker 1: just once. No, that's about correct. I would say it's
34:42
Speaker 1: like I would almost say it's three or four times
34:44
Speaker 1: a week. I don't know how having the little guys
34:46
Speaker 1: going to impact that, but three or four times a
34:48
Speaker 1: week and then that that week before. I always try
34:51
Speaker 1: to adjust my work schedule to be able to last
34:53
Speaker 1: every single night and see if I can get a
34:54
Speaker 1: solid pattern on something. Um. Yeah, that's accurate. So what
34:59
Speaker 1: happened year? What was the what was opening night like
35:02
Speaker 1: last year for her? Yeah? So last year I had
35:05
Speaker 1: a specific buck Um that I was watching and he
35:08
Speaker 1: was he was moving through a spot. I was glassing him,
35:11
Speaker 1: i should say, And he was moving through a spot
35:13
Speaker 1: and there was a small little window that you could
35:15
Speaker 1: catch him moving through. I would say, I was watching
35:18
Speaker 1: I don't know, a half mile back and the window
35:20
Speaker 1: that you had to catch him moving through was like
35:23
Speaker 1: twenty yards wide, So you had to just stare with
35:25
Speaker 1: your eye through the spotting sculpt and you would catch
35:27
Speaker 1: him at very last light. So and that's not a
35:30
Speaker 1: huge tip about glassing. Most of the glassing I do
35:33
Speaker 1: is fairly pointless until that last ten minutes light or so. Um.
35:38
Speaker 1: But anyways, I was watching this specific deer and uh,
35:42
Speaker 1: then opening night came along. The wind was completely wrong,
35:44
Speaker 1: so I literally, um just kept driving around the block
35:47
Speaker 1: watching to see what was going to happen in this
35:49
Speaker 1: particular spot. And nobody was in any of the parking lots,
35:52
Speaker 1: and I thought I was good, and then it was
35:54
Speaker 1: it was getting late where you you wouldn't. I was
35:56
Speaker 1: going to skip the night hunt and just wait and
35:57
Speaker 1: then moving the next day, and it and the the suddenly
36:00
Speaker 1: one guy pulled up and headed back with his wind
36:02
Speaker 1: blowing straight into the betting area. So idove in. Um
36:06
Speaker 1: again it was late, idolve in kind of put my
36:08
Speaker 1: wind a little off to just kind of give it
36:10
Speaker 1: a try, but I knew it kind of screwed up everything,
36:13
Speaker 1: but I was still going to try it because the
36:15
Speaker 1: spot was blown at that point. And what happened nothing thing. Yeah,
36:23
Speaker 1: So then it was back to square one. After that,
36:25
Speaker 1: you probably was often moved to either different timing as
36:30
Speaker 1: far as when he moved or he adjusted, were able
36:32
Speaker 1: to catch eyes on him or anything else after that, Yeah, yeah,
36:35
Speaker 1: so he actually adjusted. Actually in the particular swamp, I
36:38
Speaker 1: was running a number of wireless trail cameras, which I'm
36:42
Speaker 1: not a big fan of doing that. I probably won't
36:44
Speaker 1: do that anymore because it seems like the dear smell
36:47
Speaker 1: something that isn't right, and they started wearing those those
36:50
Speaker 1: trails with the cameras on them. But I was running
36:53
Speaker 1: cameras in this particular swamp, and at one point I
36:57
Speaker 1: think it gosh, I think it was, I don't know,
36:59
Speaker 1: a few days later caught him going. I got a
37:01
Speaker 1: picture of him, um going back to bed, the specific
37:04
Speaker 1: buck going to back to bed, and I think it
37:06
Speaker 1: was like twenty minutes before light. So I knew he
37:08
Speaker 1: was really close and it was going to rain that afternoon.
37:11
Speaker 1: So I ran that morning. I ran to the swamp
37:13
Speaker 1: and I tried to follow through the swamp where that
37:16
Speaker 1: deer because in the swamp you can kind of see
37:18
Speaker 1: where where the mud gets pulled up onto the cat tails.
37:20
Speaker 1: So I tried to follow my way back to where
37:22
Speaker 1: he went because I knew it was going to be
37:23
Speaker 1: in kind of one of two clusters and uh, then
37:26
Speaker 1: the wind was just off that night. So I went
37:28
Speaker 1: back home, grabbed all my gear, got in there, got
37:31
Speaker 1: set up, and then the wind just started swirling. So
37:32
Speaker 1: I think that buggered him completely that night, and that
37:36
Speaker 1: was where that was where I got frustrated and kind
37:37
Speaker 1: of switched gears and started looking at farm country. Um,
37:40
Speaker 1: there was a different deer in the area that I
37:42
Speaker 1: half heartedly paid attention to. He was a giant, and
37:45
Speaker 1: some dude shot him, um over a bean or I
37:48
Speaker 1: think it's corner beans. He tried him over a bean
37:51
Speaker 1: field opening night on public land, and I was like, shoot,
37:54
Speaker 1: I need to switch gears, get out of swamp. I'm
37:56
Speaker 1: diving too deep. I'm making this too hard. And that's
37:58
Speaker 1: what led me to the farm. Farm land. That's an
38:01
Speaker 1: interesting point. That's another thing that I've heard you to
38:04
Speaker 1: say before is sometimes the need to just completely switch
38:09
Speaker 1: up your strategy. Like if you're getting frustrated, if this
38:11
Speaker 1: one deer, this one thing is not working in a swamp,
38:14
Speaker 1: then switch to the farm, or switch to hill country,
38:17
Speaker 1: or switch to something else. Why why do you recommend
38:20
Speaker 1: that kind of full scale pivot sometimes? Sure, So that's
38:25
Speaker 1: when I would say I kind of learned from Andy.
38:28
Speaker 1: I remember on a podcast, your podcast, actually, I believe
38:30
Speaker 1: Andy was talking about how when he goes on these
38:33
Speaker 1: out of state trips. I remember him saying, the deer
38:36
Speaker 1: are there, you just have to figure out where they are.
38:38
Speaker 1: And we don't have a ridiculous amount of deer. So
38:40
Speaker 1: like in that scenario, I was pounding around in the
38:43
Speaker 1: swamps and they were hard Most of the deer were
38:45
Speaker 1: hardly in the swamps. So then when I saw this
38:48
Speaker 1: guy shoot this other buck and post it up he
38:50
Speaker 1: posted up on a report page, it kind of brought
38:53
Speaker 1: me to the realization this buck was right out of
38:55
Speaker 1: my nose in the crop fields, a fully mature, big
38:57
Speaker 1: buck in the crop field. So you just you half
39:00
Speaker 1: the deer are there. You have to find where they are.
39:02
Speaker 1: What are they feeding on? Um? In there? I guess
39:05
Speaker 1: what I'm learning is in the early season this particular swamp,
39:07
Speaker 1: the deer aren't pushed into there yet. They don't need
39:09
Speaker 1: to be in there yet because the pressure isn't hyped
39:12
Speaker 1: up enough. So really finding where they are I don't
39:16
Speaker 1: I can't say enough. It's that simple. I guess it's
39:19
Speaker 1: funny as you're saying that, um, it makes me think
39:23
Speaker 1: about the I don't know what you call it, like
39:27
Speaker 1: the manic state I'm in during the hunting season when
39:30
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think through all those same things and
39:32
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you know, are they in this stuff or no,
39:34
Speaker 1: they're in a totally different area, or what are they doing?
39:36
Speaker 1: Or what's wrong here? I'm constantly you know, thinking, over thinking,
39:39
Speaker 1: second guessing text and buddies seeing what they're seeing, trying
39:43
Speaker 1: to apply that to what's going on by me, Uh,
39:46
Speaker 1: what are you like during this season? I mean, what's
39:48
Speaker 1: is this ship going through your mind twenty four hours
39:51
Speaker 1: a day? Or can you turn it off? Or how
39:52
Speaker 1: do you handle it? No, it is definitely twenty four
39:55
Speaker 1: hours a day. It's it's I remember, And what happened
40:00
Speaker 1: two so in last year was two thousand nineteen and
40:02
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. I ended up eating my tag because
40:05
Speaker 1: I chased a specific buck around all year. And I
40:07
Speaker 1: remember in the last week, the last two weeks of
40:11
Speaker 1: the season in two thousand and eighteen, I went just
40:14
Speaker 1: absolute crazy. I was manic. I remember I was hardly
40:16
Speaker 1: sleeping because because we could shine till ten o'clock and
40:19
Speaker 1: in the winter, ten o'clock is really late, so I
40:21
Speaker 1: was I was shining like crazy, just trying to catch
40:24
Speaker 1: a buck coming out of so well, I'm just going nuts.
40:26
Speaker 1: And then I remember in uh, at the beginning of
40:28
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, I'm like, if I can apply that
40:31
Speaker 1: attitude and that mentality to the first because I took
40:33
Speaker 1: the first week of vacation for two thousand nineteen, I'm like,
40:36
Speaker 1: if I can have that same attitude and that same craze,
40:38
Speaker 1: I wonder what's gonna happen. So my I went crazy
40:41
Speaker 1: the first week, and just like you said, yeah, it
40:43
Speaker 1: eats you up, I do the I do the same
40:46
Speaker 1: thing when it comes to one buck. I get one
40:49
Speaker 1: buck in my mind, and it's usually the death of me,
40:52
Speaker 1: and it's usually on like one small little property where
40:55
Speaker 1: I'm super limited, and I end up getting hung up
40:58
Speaker 1: on him though, and throw all these other things rings
41:00
Speaker 1: out the door because I'm just trying to get that one. Um,
41:04
Speaker 1: how how do you handle just that? Because I know
41:08
Speaker 1: I've heard you stay in the past that you end
41:09
Speaker 1: up hunting specific bucks a lot. Do you where's your
41:13
Speaker 1: head at some years I'm thinking, like, I'm not gonna
41:15
Speaker 1: do that anymore. And then the next year just happens again.
41:18
Speaker 1: What about you? Yeah, so I guess to flip back
41:22
Speaker 1: on your real quick before I answer it. Part of
41:25
Speaker 1: the problem I run into is we don't I mean,
41:27
Speaker 1: we don't have a crazy amount of deer to go after,
41:29
Speaker 1: which is why I'm so obsessed with that one dear.
41:31
Speaker 1: I mean, is that the same for you? Or do
41:33
Speaker 1: you have a fair amount of good deer you can
41:34
Speaker 1: go after? So it is a little more like you
41:37
Speaker 1: and that I've I've got usually just a couple small
41:41
Speaker 1: properties that usually have like one good dear for sure,
41:44
Speaker 1: maybe two like the best years, um some years. What
41:48
Speaker 1: I what I usually have is like one or two
41:50
Speaker 1: decent local spots, and then I travel like on a
41:52
Speaker 1: state um, to a bunch of different places. So my
41:55
Speaker 1: problem is probably that I don't have enough good local
41:59
Speaker 1: spot to give me tons of options that that could
42:02
Speaker 1: certainly be part of it, right right. And then the
42:05
Speaker 1: thing you run into doing, which I did forever, is
42:07
Speaker 1: you over hunt the heck out of him and blow
42:09
Speaker 1: the deer out of there anyways that I've done way
42:12
Speaker 1: too many times. Um. The big biggest thing I've learned
42:14
Speaker 1: with that is just kind of sit back and be patient,
42:18
Speaker 1: um and sometimes you just you don't even hunt, You
42:21
Speaker 1: sit back in glass, or if the wind is completely wrong,
42:24
Speaker 1: you don't even hunt because you you are so limited, um,
42:27
Speaker 1: with that one specific deer. And then sometimes you just
42:29
Speaker 1: have to get aggressive, if you like I wonder that
42:31
Speaker 1: I was chasing for a while. Um. I posted up
42:33
Speaker 1: pictures of him on Instagram for people that follow me.
42:35
Speaker 1: He had double drop times, just trash everywhere. Yeah, he's
42:40
Speaker 1: he's a freak. And I could not figure out what
42:42
Speaker 1: that deer was doing. So I just dove in and
42:44
Speaker 1: I ended up jumping him up. But that was when
42:46
Speaker 1: I was We've all got those deer where we say,
42:49
Speaker 1: if if I had known then what I know now,
42:51
Speaker 1: that you will be dead and that that in that
42:53
Speaker 1: particular case, when I jumped that deer up, I went
42:55
Speaker 1: and did everything wrong. I was a young, um, crazy
42:58
Speaker 1: kid that was excited and over outed it. Um. But
43:01
Speaker 1: just sitting back and being patient and calculated and knowing
43:04
Speaker 1: when to and when not to move in. What are
43:07
Speaker 1: some of those things for you that I mean it's
43:12
Speaker 1: time to move in? Like what are the green light
43:14
Speaker 1: signs for you to to swing for the fences? Sure?
43:19
Speaker 1: So just seeing him shining, um, seeing him, catching him
43:23
Speaker 1: moving across the field like I did with this in
43:25
Speaker 1: this particular situation with the one I killed that year. Um.
43:28
Speaker 1: Sometimes a rumor, I'll hear a rumor from somebody. Um. Yeah,
43:32
Speaker 1: the basics, shining trail cameras of visual just seeing him.
43:37
Speaker 1: So talk, let's talk a little more about the shining thing.
43:40
Speaker 1: Um because because I know that I've heard from Wisconsin
43:45
Speaker 1: a lot of folks seem to do that since it's
43:47
Speaker 1: it's legal there. Um and and probably plenty more states
43:50
Speaker 1: too that I just don't know. Um, how why the
43:55
Speaker 1: net do you cast? I guess you could even apply
43:57
Speaker 1: this to you know, glassing from Afar too. You know,
44:00
Speaker 1: if you think that there's a buck in a certain area,
44:03
Speaker 1: or maybe it's just a property of permission on our
44:05
Speaker 1: piece of public that you can hunt. Like how wide
44:07
Speaker 1: a zone do you go outside of that core where
44:10
Speaker 1: you think something's happening with your either glassing or shining
44:14
Speaker 1: at night? Like, what's that circumference? To give you a circumference?
44:19
Speaker 1: It would be tricky, I would say, from the moment
44:21
Speaker 1: I turned the spotlight on till the moment I turn
44:24
Speaker 1: it off and head back to my house. It's usually
44:26
Speaker 1: only like a half hour shining mission. So I'm just
44:29
Speaker 1: checking spots from checking fields. Um, there's certain little spots
44:32
Speaker 1: where the some of the more maturity or you can
44:34
Speaker 1: actually catch them in little crevices moving through out to food. Um.
44:39
Speaker 1: The big deer I've learned too. I mean they'll eat
44:42
Speaker 1: right on the edge of a field and when they
44:44
Speaker 1: hear your car coming down the road, they cross the
44:46
Speaker 1: road before you even get there and cut back in
44:48
Speaker 1: the coverage. I've tried a lot of different things, from
44:50
Speaker 1: driving fast and clicking on the light to see just
44:52
Speaker 1: different things like that I've learned over time. UM yeah,
44:56
Speaker 1: I UM. This isn't related shining, But when it comes
45:00
Speaker 1: to glassing, I do a lot of the truck driving
45:02
Speaker 1: stuff too. And um, I went from having a silver
45:06
Speaker 1: truck to a black truck, and for some reason I
45:09
Speaker 1: found that the black truck spooked deer a whole lot
45:12
Speaker 1: more so in the future. I just got a new truck.
45:15
Speaker 1: It's black again. I guess I didn't think that one through.
45:17
Speaker 1: But is it? Do you think it could be a
45:20
Speaker 1: louder exhaust or louder tires or something. Sounds definitely that's possible.
45:23
Speaker 1: That's possible to I don't. I can't say that I
45:26
Speaker 1: recall it being dramatically different, but it's certainly possible. Um.
45:31
Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, it was just it was dramatic.
45:33
Speaker 1: I used to be able to get away with you know,
45:36
Speaker 1: being a couple hundred yards away and these bucks, you know,
45:38
Speaker 1: would be okay, I don't know, three hundred four hundred
45:41
Speaker 1: yards out there at the back of the field. But
45:42
Speaker 1: with a new truck that I got. This was I
45:43
Speaker 1: don't know, six years ago when I got that one. Um,
45:47
Speaker 1: it just went. I would pull up, stop and bam,
45:50
Speaker 1: they're gone. So, like you were saying, I started trying
45:52
Speaker 1: all sorts of different things. I would just do the
45:54
Speaker 1: do the roll by so you see them, you think
45:57
Speaker 1: lots of good buck. But instead of stopping, you just
45:58
Speaker 1: keep on driving and then you come around the block
46:01
Speaker 1: or something, or you do a turnaround and then you
46:03
Speaker 1: just then you creep just where you can get and
46:06
Speaker 1: look past the trees or something and see him. Um. Yeah,
46:11
Speaker 1: it's interesting trying to do these different things. What about
46:14
Speaker 1: What about This is another one I always wonder about
46:16
Speaker 1: because you described how just getting off the road and
46:19
Speaker 1: getting back one fence or you can see so much
46:21
Speaker 1: more I constantly have this inner debate in the summer
46:25
Speaker 1: when I'm thinking, Okay, I could either do that, but
46:29
Speaker 1: I'm committed to that one field and I'm stuck and
46:32
Speaker 1: that's all and sees this one spot. Or I can
46:35
Speaker 1: cover a ton of ground in a much bigger space
46:37
Speaker 1: and check off, you know, a whole a lot more potential. Yes,
46:42
Speaker 1: no type of areas like okay, that's where he is,
46:44
Speaker 1: that's where he's not that kind of thing. Um, do
46:47
Speaker 1: you ever do the I guess what am I trying
46:50
Speaker 1: to say is do you always commit to one spot
46:53
Speaker 1: like that and get back off the road or do
46:55
Speaker 1: you sometimes try to cover a bunch of stuff on
46:57
Speaker 1: the car? Or how do you balance those two things?
46:59
Speaker 1: If you do off? Yeah, I would say my glassing
47:03
Speaker 1: is kind of a there's always a little tweak almost
47:05
Speaker 1: every night, a little adjustment until I do lock onto
47:07
Speaker 1: a certain deer, and then I'll sit at time and
47:09
Speaker 1: time again. Now with the glassing, I would say I
47:12
Speaker 1: treat it just like hunting where Um, when you're walking,
47:15
Speaker 1: you want to make sure your wind is not blowing
47:17
Speaker 1: into wherever they're coming out of um. When you're where
47:20
Speaker 1: you're walking, you don't if you're sitting and glassing in
47:23
Speaker 1: a spot that two hours later the deer got to
47:26
Speaker 1: come through and smell where you sat there and glassed.
47:28
Speaker 1: I wouldn't glass there. I mean, I'm trying to glass
47:31
Speaker 1: in spots where it's it might be along a hiking
47:34
Speaker 1: trail or along a tractor lane where there's human scent. Anyways,
47:37
Speaker 1: I'm trying to not make it, not make it obviously
47:40
Speaker 1: these deer that they're being watched. I've made that mistake before.
47:43
Speaker 1: Or I would sit up on top of a hill
47:44
Speaker 1: and a half hour later after I left, they walked
47:46
Speaker 1: right where I was on top of the hill and
47:48
Speaker 1: they realized something's up, and dear seasons on right exactly.
47:51
Speaker 1: There's no they don't know you're not hunting yet, right exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
47:56
Speaker 1: that's a tricky one trying to figure out. One of that.
48:00
Speaker 1: One of those light switched things for me was understanding
48:04
Speaker 1: the value of observing and learning and scouting and how
48:08
Speaker 1: that's just as important, if not more so, than actual
48:12
Speaker 1: hunt hunts. You know, do you do do you do
48:14
Speaker 1: that with observation stand kind of hunts at all? A
48:19
Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, I would say a little bit. I know,
48:23
Speaker 1: I know some guys will go really really light, so
48:27
Speaker 1: just observation stands until they get the exact until they
48:30
Speaker 1: need and then they get super aggressive with it and
48:33
Speaker 1: they then they just strike hard. Then but most of
48:35
Speaker 1: their season of observe, observe, observe and then strike hard.
48:38
Speaker 1: And then there's other guys who have and and maybe
48:41
Speaker 1: this is how you might describe Dan, maybe not, but
48:44
Speaker 1: he you would say that they have a whole bunch
48:46
Speaker 1: of good spots scouted out and then they just go
48:48
Speaker 1: harden this one and then blow it up or kill.
48:50
Speaker 1: They go harden the next one, blow it up or
48:51
Speaker 1: kill hard, and the next one blow it up for kill.
48:53
Speaker 1: How would you describe your like if I had, if
48:56
Speaker 1: you had to generically describe your approach in that way,
49:00
Speaker 1: would yours be? But I think I think it would
49:03
Speaker 1: be a combination of both. If for those nights when
49:06
Speaker 1: I get frustrated I don't know where to set up,
49:08
Speaker 1: I'll fall back on old bedding areas and just go
49:11
Speaker 1: for broke um. And then there's those other times where
49:14
Speaker 1: I'm I feel like I'm onto a specific deer, We're
49:16
Speaker 1: I'll sit back and watch and then move in and
49:18
Speaker 1: pick the cherry. So to speak, um with that late
49:23
Speaker 1: muzzleloader buck that you killed last year? Is that a
49:25
Speaker 1: good example a little bit of how you hunt one
49:29
Speaker 1: specific buck because I think if I remember, you had
49:31
Speaker 1: a history of that deer and you were kind of
49:33
Speaker 1: working on or is that right? Yeah? Yeah, that that
49:36
Speaker 1: was a deer I wanted to kill. There was one
49:38
Speaker 1: that was one other one that was potentially in the
49:39
Speaker 1: area that I was more interested in, but I didn't
49:42
Speaker 1: know if it was alive yet, So I wasn't going
49:44
Speaker 1: to stack all my eggs in that basket. I knew
49:46
Speaker 1: this one was alive, um from a sighting, but I
49:49
Speaker 1: didn't know or from a trail camp picture actually is
49:52
Speaker 1: what it was? Um? But yeah, so so can you
49:55
Speaker 1: walk me through then basically your whole experien adriance with
50:00
Speaker 1: that deer and what I'm leading to kill um eventually? Yeah,
50:04
Speaker 1: so that dear, I want to say it was two
50:06
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen. He ended up being four years old
50:08
Speaker 1: based on all the pictures in history I had with him.
50:10
Speaker 1: But I got my This one's kind of a confusing
50:13
Speaker 1: one to explain because I got my first picture ever
50:16
Speaker 1: of this year. He always had a split G three
50:17
Speaker 1: on the one side, and I got my first picture
50:20
Speaker 1: ever of them UM near one swamp, middle of the night. UM.
50:24
Speaker 1: And then that same winter when I got that picture
50:27
Speaker 1: of that same same time of the year, I also
50:29
Speaker 1: was getting pictures of him in a different swamp. UM.
50:32
Speaker 1: And that was kind of the end of that. And
50:34
Speaker 1: then two thousand eighteen rolled around and Uh, he popped
50:37
Speaker 1: back up in the main swamp where I hunted him.
50:41
Speaker 1: And I'd love to give you the names of the
50:42
Speaker 1: swamp so I can make the story better, but I
50:43
Speaker 1: shouldn't keep that under red, right, So he popped back up. UM.
50:49
Speaker 1: I chased him around a little bit. I was. I
50:51
Speaker 1: got pictures of him UM in two thousand and eighteen
50:55
Speaker 1: during the Muzzli season, multiple mornings in a role coming
50:57
Speaker 1: back to UM, coming back to bed, and I was
51:00
Speaker 1: actually I actually ended up shooting uh huck. I wasn't
51:05
Speaker 1: sure which bucket was. I just saw the rack on
51:07
Speaker 1: his head. But when I was hunting him in two
51:09
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, I ended up shooting a different one UM
51:12
Speaker 1: in that exact betting area. He still one question started
51:15
Speaker 1: to interrupt, But these cameras that you're picking up pictures
51:18
Speaker 1: of them going back to bed, what what kind of
51:21
Speaker 1: camera setups were those, And I mean, like, where where
51:24
Speaker 1: were you setting these cameras up to get that kind
51:26
Speaker 1: of info? Just down trails and the cat tails, So okay,
51:29
Speaker 1: so you're back in the swampy stuff yep, and and
51:33
Speaker 1: a lot like that specific camera was not a wireless one,
51:36
Speaker 1: so I uh, that intel I received after everything happened,
51:41
Speaker 1: But but I still went. It was actually right after
51:43
Speaker 1: everything happened, so and I still went and hunted it,
51:45
Speaker 1: hoping he would do it again and end up shooting
51:47
Speaker 1: that other one. But with the the one thing I'll
51:50
Speaker 1: say with those, So I've got wireless trail cameras now,
51:52
Speaker 1: and I keep getting pictures of them one time and
51:55
Speaker 1: then I'll never get the picture again. And this winter
51:58
Speaker 1: I had one where I got a picture of a
51:59
Speaker 1: new uck. He was looking right at the camera, had
52:01
Speaker 1: the camera hidden well, and then um, I went out
52:05
Speaker 1: in the snow to retrieve the camera. I had the
52:07
Speaker 1: one picture of him. And then when I retrieved the camera,
52:09
Speaker 1: he started literally just going around the back of the
52:11
Speaker 1: camera through some really thick stuff. The camera was kind
52:13
Speaker 1: of in a funnel, but he purfectly you could he
52:15
Speaker 1: had a hell of a rub line going through some
52:18
Speaker 1: thick stuff just avoiding that camera. And the one thing
52:20
Speaker 1: I noticed when I walked up to that camera, I
52:22
Speaker 1: have like a python cable on it. As I was
52:25
Speaker 1: on strapping it from the tree, I could smell the
52:27
Speaker 1: rubber from that Python cable. So, and maybe I'm being
52:30
Speaker 1: a little crazy, but those I mean, it's not every
52:32
Speaker 1: day there's that smell of rubber in the middle of
52:35
Speaker 1: a swamp like that. So I don't know if that
52:37
Speaker 1: you know, he's like, something's not right about this. It
52:39
Speaker 1: wasn't big enough of a danger to completely leave the swamp,
52:42
Speaker 1: but it just bothered him. So for people to consider, yeah, interesting, Okay,
52:47
Speaker 1: so you've got this, these cameras back there and the
52:49
Speaker 1: cat tails. You're getting a few pictures and this this
52:53
Speaker 1: is your muzzle er season is in December or November?
52:56
Speaker 1: When is it? Yeah, it ended up landing at the beginning.
53:00
Speaker 1: I think it was the second week in December. I
53:01
Speaker 1: could be wrong on that. It ended up being nice
53:04
Speaker 1: and late, which was good because then you've got the
53:06
Speaker 1: cold weather working in your favor, and it landed right
53:09
Speaker 1: on that second rout as people call it. I'm not
53:11
Speaker 1: a not an expert on all those phases and stuff,
53:13
Speaker 1: but when all the fonds come into heat, and I've
53:16
Speaker 1: done pretty well with those fonds and those late doors
53:19
Speaker 1: coming into heat over the years. But yeah, he he
53:23
Speaker 1: was actually the buck that I was catching in the
53:25
Speaker 1: summer moving through, and he was the buck that that
53:27
Speaker 1: other guy kind of messed up. Um, And that was
53:30
Speaker 1: a buck I really wanted to chase around. But then
53:32
Speaker 1: obviously I filled my tags, so I just really kept
53:34
Speaker 1: tabs on him with trail cameras, and I the entire
53:37
Speaker 1: archery and gun season, I confirmed that he was still
53:39
Speaker 1: in that swamp, still holding up in there, and then uh,
53:42
Speaker 1: guns season, I dove into their opening morning. Actually my
53:46
Speaker 1: cousin wanted to go along, so I took him in
53:48
Speaker 1: there and he actually he had a nice eight point
53:50
Speaker 1: come through that he shot, and he was pretty jacked
53:52
Speaker 1: about that because it's a little little different style of
53:53
Speaker 1: hunting for him. Um. And then I think with all
53:56
Speaker 1: that commotion that morning, UM, I don't know exactly what happened,
53:59
Speaker 1: if he he was still in there or moved over,
54:01
Speaker 1: what happened, But my plan was going to be with
54:04
Speaker 1: the muzzleloader was I was just gonna work my way
54:06
Speaker 1: through that swamp kind of um in a line morning
54:09
Speaker 1: after morning and catch him moving through. UM, so that
54:13
Speaker 1: I took vacation that I want to say. It was
54:16
Speaker 1: like the last five days of muzzleloader season, and that
54:19
Speaker 1: first morning I set up, didn't hear anything. It was horrible.
54:22
Speaker 1: There was like a half inch of ice, so as
54:24
Speaker 1: you went through there it would break you break through
54:26
Speaker 1: and then smash your shins on the ice. So it
54:28
Speaker 1: was horrible. Glad it ended quickly. UM. So then I
54:32
Speaker 1: hunted that morning and then I spent the whole day.
54:33
Speaker 1: It's a huge swamp and I we had a fresh snow,
54:36
Speaker 1: so I made an entire circle around that whole swamp.
54:39
Speaker 1: Took many hours to do just looking for I didn't
54:41
Speaker 1: know exactly what his track looked like, but I was
54:43
Speaker 1: looking for a big track because again, like I said,
54:45
Speaker 1: there's not that many mature bucks in the area, so
54:47
Speaker 1: if there was, if I found a big track, it
54:49
Speaker 1: was more than likely going to be him. Um. I
54:51
Speaker 1: didn't find any that really piqued my interest, so I
54:54
Speaker 1: went and uh. I went and sat at the at
54:57
Speaker 1: the other swamp, the initial swamp where I got the
54:59
Speaker 1: very first to of him, just to watch the doors
55:01
Speaker 1: come out and kind of just chill for the night
55:03
Speaker 1: and hang out and wait for the next morning and
55:04
Speaker 1: continue my strategy of just working through in the mornings.
55:07
Speaker 1: And uh, like I've said many times, I had all
55:10
Speaker 1: these doors come out and I looked in the back
55:12
Speaker 1: of the field and I, um, he actually he lost
55:14
Speaker 1: that split G three. He's got real short G two.
55:16
Speaker 1: And I remember looking in the back of the field
55:18
Speaker 1: and seeing the really short G twos on a big
55:20
Speaker 1: buck that looked out of place, and I was My
55:22
Speaker 1: mind was blown, and I shot him right there. So
55:25
Speaker 1: it was kind of a situation where sometimes it's just
55:29
Speaker 1: as helpful to know where he's not at then where
55:32
Speaker 1: he is right being able to check something off this
55:34
Speaker 1: is important too. Yeah, absolutely, And and that was one
55:38
Speaker 1: of the things I talked about in the video. I
55:40
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen that that the Hunting Beast
55:41
Speaker 1: video over on YouTube. And I was kind of telling
55:45
Speaker 1: Andy May I'm like, yeah, I got lucky, and he's like, no,
55:47
Speaker 1: you didn't. He said to me, that's exactly what he's
55:50
Speaker 1: seen time after time. Is you get a deer that'll
55:52
Speaker 1: maybe go back to a certain area at a certain
55:54
Speaker 1: time of the year to check on a group of
55:55
Speaker 1: doors and they'll they'll do a year after year for
55:57
Speaker 1: a short little window. And he told me, he's like,
55:59
Speaker 1: you caught him in that window, and I was like,
56:01
Speaker 1: no o kidding. So that was a big learning experience
56:03
Speaker 1: for me. So yeah, I've experienced the same kind of things.
56:07
Speaker 1: And one example was this buck that um I only
56:13
Speaker 1: would see him show up in December, and he showed
56:17
Speaker 1: up once a year. He showed up once in December,
56:21
Speaker 1: on December fifth or sixth or seventh, something like that
56:24
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen, and then in two thousand and
56:27
Speaker 1: seventeen he showed up once a little later in December,
56:30
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand eighteen he showed it back
56:34
Speaker 1: up on the farm much earlier. He showed up in
56:36
Speaker 1: early November, and I had a bunch of close calls
56:37
Speaker 1: with him in early November, but then he disappeared again.
56:41
Speaker 1: But I kept thinking, Man, if we get to that
56:43
Speaker 1: first week or so of December, you know, he seems
56:46
Speaker 1: to that's when historically he's come back, and so I
56:49
Speaker 1: was hoping for that and was trying to do some
56:51
Speaker 1: long distance scouting in Lo and behold, I think it
56:54
Speaker 1: was December five. I think was the day or eighth,
56:56
Speaker 1: fifth or eighth, and there he was second rock kind
57:00
Speaker 1: of thing, just like you described. He was chasing a
57:02
Speaker 1: doll and I killed him that night. So so yeah,
57:06
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of things like that too. It's
57:07
Speaker 1: it's it's very it's very true. It's weird. It's weird
57:11
Speaker 1: that they have these kinds of annual cycles of sorts. Um.
57:16
Speaker 1: But it was that that big point, that big. I
57:18
Speaker 1: think it was a thick, heavy time point that you
57:20
Speaker 1: have for a lot. You got it for like a
57:21
Speaker 1: lot of different profile pictures. Yeah, yeah, he was. He's
57:24
Speaker 1: the really big one in Michigan that I got a
57:26
Speaker 1: few years ago. Yeah. Yeah, that thing is a tank.
57:28
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I always kill that one. I never I'll
57:31
Speaker 1: be honest, I never dove in deep enough to figure
57:32
Speaker 1: out how you killed him. Yeah, he's uh, he was.
57:36
Speaker 1: He was an unexpected buck. You don't see man like
57:39
Speaker 1: that around here. So it was it was cool. Orto. Yeah,
57:43
Speaker 1: that was beautiful, dear. Yeah. Um, so okay, that's kind
57:48
Speaker 1: of interesting. You've got a couple of hunts last year
57:51
Speaker 1: that your past history in these places, years of studying them,
57:57
Speaker 1: years of scouting. Lad to you getting the kills that
58:01
Speaker 1: early season, that late season buck. But then you've got
58:04
Speaker 1: these two hunts smack dab in the middle of that
58:07
Speaker 1: in Michigan and Ohio where you were hunting brand new
58:10
Speaker 1: places and you were able to kill a buck. And
58:13
Speaker 1: I think that's I think last year your season was
58:16
Speaker 1: impressive regardless, but the fact that you've got two kills
58:21
Speaker 1: in that kind of scenarre and then two kills and
58:23
Speaker 1: brand new spots, that that makes it really interesting. UM.
58:27
Speaker 1: I can't and we can't have this conversation and not
58:30
Speaker 1: talk about your Michigan hunt right um, right here in
58:33
Speaker 1: my right here in my home state. Uh, do you
58:36
Speaker 1: want to talk to me about how you guys approached
58:38
Speaker 1: trying to break down your strategy there in Michigan. Um,
58:43
Speaker 1: I know you guys had tough conditions a lot different
58:45
Speaker 1: things like that, but but walk me through some of
58:47
Speaker 1: the challenges and in ajas as you guys broke things
58:50
Speaker 1: down over the course of that early season hunt. Sure.
58:54
Speaker 1: So with the with the Michigan hunt, it started by
58:57
Speaker 1: just kind of reaching out to people and learning where
58:59
Speaker 1: the decent area were where people were killing um different deer,
59:03
Speaker 1: and uh, we kind of ended up nailing down two
59:06
Speaker 1: different spots that were, um, one was an hour north
59:09
Speaker 1: of camp and one was an hour south of camp,
59:11
Speaker 1: so kind of putting them two hours apart. Um. But
59:14
Speaker 1: what the spot I ended up killing was a spot
59:16
Speaker 1: where a local guy said, Hey, my buddy goes in
59:18
Speaker 1: there every year. He shoots a hundred inch buck every year.
59:21
Speaker 1: And my thinking around that was, if if somebody can
59:24
Speaker 1: go into a spot in a public land spot to
59:26
Speaker 1: hundred buck in Michigan every year, that's where we need
59:29
Speaker 1: to be. That sounds great to me. It's a good
59:31
Speaker 1: spot in Michigan if it's doing that. What's that? I said,
59:34
Speaker 1: it's a good spot for around here if that's the case. Yeah, yeah,
59:37
Speaker 1: absolutely was gonna say did you know where it was?
59:41
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, So we dove into this particular spot
59:44
Speaker 1: and uh what it was. To describe it is it
59:47
Speaker 1: was it's kind of a high ridge, um, a high
59:50
Speaker 1: long ridge, and most of it was woods, but at
59:53
Speaker 1: kind of the one end of the ridge there was
59:55
Speaker 1: a sybean field and usually the back of the ridge
59:59
Speaker 1: there there wasn't a accessible trail that most people would
1:00:01
Speaker 1: come up and they would kind of um get into
1:00:04
Speaker 1: the back where actually all the good betting was. But
1:00:06
Speaker 1: what we ended up having was all that flooding. The
1:00:09
Speaker 1: flooding I would say, put the water on that trail
1:00:11
Speaker 1: like belly belly button deep when it was at its highest.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: You probably saw that in the videos. So it actually
1:00:16
Speaker 1: cut everybody off from coming in that one way. So
1:00:19
Speaker 1: we we ran into all these deer out in this field.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: Actually mid day, we ran into some dose in this
1:00:24
Speaker 1: bean field, and we're like, if if this is gonna
1:00:26
Speaker 1: be this simple, if these deer are gonna be eating
1:00:27
Speaker 1: out here in the middle of the day, let's start
1:00:29
Speaker 1: by hunting the field. So we hunted the field edge.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: UM that first night, Jake and I saw that two
1:00:35
Speaker 1: and a half year old buck and that smaller buck
1:00:37
Speaker 1: out there, and the way hunted the field edge a
1:00:39
Speaker 1: few more times, UM had a lot of different weird
1:00:42
Speaker 1: things happened, and you could tell that our pressure was
1:00:45
Speaker 1: starting to affect the deer. So we decided we needed
1:00:46
Speaker 1: to work start working our way into the cover, not
1:00:49
Speaker 1: knowing exactly where the betting was. And this is where
1:00:51
Speaker 1: that debate kind of came in that we had with
1:00:53
Speaker 1: that I had with Dan. They were actually accessing the
1:00:55
Speaker 1: field in two different spots. They were kind of coming
1:00:57
Speaker 1: out of two different betting areas, and I think happened
1:01:00
Speaker 1: as we burned the betting area where Dan had seen
1:01:02
Speaker 1: a big buck come out of. We haunted that, and
1:01:05
Speaker 1: then we were starting to hunt the spot where I
1:01:08
Speaker 1: believe the deer were coming from. And that first night
1:01:11
Speaker 1: when we dove in the cover, we had those guys
1:01:13
Speaker 1: come through, ripped down all our equipment, and we we
1:01:16
Speaker 1: went further back in deep. And the biggest thing I
1:01:20
Speaker 1: guess if I could explain to a guy as to
1:01:22
Speaker 1: what we were looking for, is as we headed back
1:01:24
Speaker 1: through the woods, it was very open. I mean you
1:01:26
Speaker 1: could I think you could see almost a hundred yards
1:01:28
Speaker 1: with with the leaves on, and it was very open
1:01:30
Speaker 1: like that. And we got to a point where it
1:01:32
Speaker 1: got really thick or high stem count. And right at
1:01:36
Speaker 1: the beginning of that really thick we jumped up dear
1:01:38
Speaker 1: that took off, and I remember that bed was just
1:01:39
Speaker 1: war to the dirt, and that was really really started
1:01:42
Speaker 1: to slow things down. I remember I was kind of
1:01:44
Speaker 1: going crazy going fast and Jake's like, we gotta slow
1:01:46
Speaker 1: down right here. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Was being
1:01:49
Speaker 1: a little bit of a back seat driver there. I thought, Yeah,
1:01:54
Speaker 1: I guess it depends where the rules are. But I
1:01:56
Speaker 1: was cool with it. But you know, sometimes you get
1:01:59
Speaker 1: all fired up and uh, you go too deep. I
1:02:01
Speaker 1: do that way too often. That was and I guess
1:02:04
Speaker 1: I could back pedal a little bit. There was our
1:02:06
Speaker 1: first night or second night we hunted some frag mights
1:02:10
Speaker 1: believe they are called, and there was a buck that
1:02:12
Speaker 1: I just don't wag too deep in on. The sign
1:02:15
Speaker 1: was so obvious. Um, but I just don't way too deep.
1:02:18
Speaker 1: And that's what you think that that's a benefit of
1:02:20
Speaker 1: me being able to with Dan as I can have
1:02:22
Speaker 1: him say, hey, why the hell are you diving in
1:02:23
Speaker 1: so deep? That's stupid and you get it in your
1:02:25
Speaker 1: head real quick. Okay, So before we go to further, though,
1:02:29
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta help me understand that thought process
1:02:34
Speaker 1: in your head, because that right there is one of
1:02:37
Speaker 1: like the big differentiators I think for a lot of
1:02:39
Speaker 1: people is knowing when to when to keep going, when
1:02:42
Speaker 1: to stop. A lot of us are guilty of one
1:02:45
Speaker 1: of going too far one of either way. So a
1:02:48
Speaker 1: lot of us are so nervous to blow dear out.
1:02:51
Speaker 1: This is how I was for a long time. I
1:02:54
Speaker 1: was so worried to spook dear that I would never
1:02:56
Speaker 1: go far enough. And then you get the opposite where
1:02:59
Speaker 1: you want to be aggressive. You want to be aggressive,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: and so you do what you just describe, where you
1:03:02
Speaker 1: push in there so hard and blow everything out and
1:03:05
Speaker 1: you need someone to kind of knock up the side
1:03:06
Speaker 1: of ahead and say, well, what are you doing? Um, yes,
1:03:09
Speaker 1: walk me through how you try to do that or
1:03:12
Speaker 1: how Dan has maybe shown different situations where he said, hey,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: this is this is when you got to stop anything
1:03:17
Speaker 1: like that. Stand out that you could help us kind
1:03:19
Speaker 1: of illustrate it with. Yeah, so I get in that
1:03:23
Speaker 1: particular situation, Um boy, I guess just to say that
1:03:28
Speaker 1: he yelled at me. He's like you because he'd seen
1:03:30
Speaker 1: me do it multiple times, and he's like you, you
1:03:32
Speaker 1: don't have to dive in so deep. And I think
1:03:34
Speaker 1: I always had this growing up. I always had this
1:03:35
Speaker 1: mentality that I was going to outwork every other hunter
1:03:38
Speaker 1: in the area, and I was going to go deeper,
1:03:39
Speaker 1: and I was going to go in spots where nobody
1:03:41
Speaker 1: was willing. And sometimes it's not not that you make
1:03:45
Speaker 1: it too difficult, right, So it if you have if
1:03:49
Speaker 1: you can find a friend that's a better hunter than
1:03:50
Speaker 1: you and get him to go along with you. And
1:03:52
Speaker 1: I guess that's another technical in and of itself. I've
1:03:55
Speaker 1: got a few buddies that I've literally just met because
1:03:58
Speaker 1: you start seeing him posting these big bucks on social
1:04:00
Speaker 1: media and you reach out to him and you don't
1:04:02
Speaker 1: develop a relationship, and pretty soon you're scouting with him
1:04:04
Speaker 1: and you're learning things from them and they're learning things
1:04:07
Speaker 1: from you, and uh, that's that's huge. There's a few
1:04:10
Speaker 1: kinks out of my system that have been worked out
1:04:12
Speaker 1: by Dan over the years saying hey, why are you
1:04:14
Speaker 1: doing that? And uh, that's huge. You's got to be
1:04:17
Speaker 1: able to take that feedback. Yeah, the second set of
1:04:19
Speaker 1: eyes can can be super helpful. Especially it's so easy
1:04:23
Speaker 1: to just to see things the way you always see them,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: right right. Eventually, just you don't notice certain things because
1:04:30
Speaker 1: you've always kind of done in a certain way, or
1:04:32
Speaker 1: when a new person comes in all of a sudden,
1:04:34
Speaker 1: something will stand out so easily that you just took
1:04:37
Speaker 1: for granted, right. I mean, it's a great, great point
1:04:41
Speaker 1: to add on to that. I've got to I've got
1:04:43
Speaker 1: a buddy, Jordan's um He's He's one guy you should
1:04:46
Speaker 1: try and get on here. He's he tries to be
1:04:48
Speaker 1: a little more silent, but I bet you could get
1:04:50
Speaker 1: him out here. But he's talk Yeah, he's he's strictly
1:04:54
Speaker 1: a swamp hunter. He only hunts from the ground. I
1:04:56
Speaker 1: talked to him to buying a tree stand. But I
1:04:59
Speaker 1: got to know him because he was posting these giants
1:05:01
Speaker 1: that he was killing in the cat tails from the ground,
1:05:03
Speaker 1: and I kind of message him, like what are you doing?
1:05:05
Speaker 1: And we developed the relationship that way, and he came
1:05:08
Speaker 1: he came out and hunt. Excuse me, he came out
1:05:10
Speaker 1: and scouted a spot with me on a buck that
1:05:12
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out. And I remember we're
1:05:14
Speaker 1: hardly in the swamp. And the first thing he pointed
1:05:16
Speaker 1: out to me is you get these swamps on these
1:05:19
Speaker 1: trails with the dogwood and uh, just the I don't know,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: the vegetation that's not very big around. And if you
1:05:26
Speaker 1: look really close, these bucks when they go through the
1:05:29
Speaker 1: dogwood and stuff is so soft that they will sometimes
1:05:31
Speaker 1: pull their antlers through the dogwood. And if you look,
1:05:34
Speaker 1: you can catch little knicks on the dogwood. And he
1:05:36
Speaker 1: was pointing out he's like, so you can tell he
1:05:38
Speaker 1: would went down this trail because of all the knicks
1:05:40
Speaker 1: and the dogwood, and there's just these these tiny little knicks,
1:05:42
Speaker 1: and I was like, no kidding, and it was just
1:05:45
Speaker 1: it's such a such a simple thing that I've I've
1:05:48
Speaker 1: never seen. I walked past a thousand times, so I
1:05:50
Speaker 1: always wondered what sign I'm missing like that, But just
1:05:53
Speaker 1: that one little experience kind of change the game for
1:05:55
Speaker 1: me because it's something I look for now, and it's
1:05:56
Speaker 1: something that I can add into my pack of now. Yeah.
1:06:01
Speaker 1: So okay, so you're working your way down this ridge
1:06:03
Speaker 1: and there's this transition from the open hardwoods to this
1:06:08
Speaker 1: thicker stem count, and I think that's that's definitely an
1:06:11
Speaker 1: obvious change in habitat. I'm gonna start slowing down and
1:06:15
Speaker 1: write a lot of Okay, now we get to change.
1:06:17
Speaker 1: But then it's finding that spot within the spot. That's
1:06:19
Speaker 1: always the real trick, you know. Do you go right
1:06:22
Speaker 1: in the edge of it, do you go fifty yards
1:06:24
Speaker 1: into it? Do you go until you see a rubber
1:06:26
Speaker 1: or scrape or a bed? How do you how do
1:06:29
Speaker 1: you approach that? And in this case, you you have
1:06:31
Speaker 1: Jake who kind of told you to tap the brakes,
1:06:33
Speaker 1: But what are you thinking about as you move through there.
1:06:37
Speaker 1: So shootability, I guess it's a big one for me.
1:06:40
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you don't want to go too far
1:06:42
Speaker 1: be too short, but you also really need that spot
1:06:44
Speaker 1: where you can when they do come through, you can
1:06:47
Speaker 1: get a shot. So we had the tree we ended
1:06:49
Speaker 1: up picking. We we didn't go far in because when
1:06:52
Speaker 1: we looked at on X, you could tell that you
1:06:54
Speaker 1: couldn't really go much further before you were going to
1:06:56
Speaker 1: run out of that point and you were going to
1:06:58
Speaker 1: be into water. So we didn't want to go too
1:07:00
Speaker 1: far in. But then at that point it was being
1:07:02
Speaker 1: able to shoot as much to the left and as
1:07:05
Speaker 1: much to the right as possible, but also having in
1:07:07
Speaker 1: that situation we had our wind blowing out over the
1:07:09
Speaker 1: water and kind of behind us at an angle, and
1:07:11
Speaker 1: knowing where our wind was because it was a point
1:07:13
Speaker 1: where if the deer would get too far to our
1:07:15
Speaker 1: right they would wind us. That was that was kind
1:07:18
Speaker 1: of a situation with that. And so describe the spot
1:07:22
Speaker 1: you picked him in. What happened there? Yeah, So that
1:07:26
Speaker 1: particular spot. Um. One thing that was interesting about it
1:07:29
Speaker 1: is we we kind of were right in the betting area.
1:07:31
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even say we were on the edge of it.
1:07:33
Speaker 1: We were right in it, and uh they were actually
1:07:36
Speaker 1: uh polk trees right in the betting area with acorns dropping.
1:07:39
Speaker 1: And I remember turning to Jake and I said, we're
1:07:41
Speaker 1: right in the thick of this. I'm like, anything could
1:07:43
Speaker 1: happen at any time, because the deer when they were
1:07:45
Speaker 1: making it out to the field, they're getting out there
1:07:47
Speaker 1: really early, and we were quite ways into the timber.
1:07:49
Speaker 1: I'm like, so anything could move at any second. And
1:07:51
Speaker 1: I remember looking over and seeing this buck standing there
1:07:55
Speaker 1: and slapping the back of the tree because I think
1:07:57
Speaker 1: he was staring at I think I was moving around
1:07:58
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, not quite down yet because we
1:08:00
Speaker 1: just got in there. And then like there's a buck
1:08:02
Speaker 1: right there, and uh, from there it was it's kind
1:08:05
Speaker 1: of a rodeo. The buck zig zig left and right,
1:08:08
Speaker 1: and he was at like forty yards and then thirty
1:08:10
Speaker 1: two yards. There was a point where I thought, man,
1:08:13
Speaker 1: this year, he's sitting and feeding on this oak. At
1:08:15
Speaker 1: what point does he say that he's not gonna say anything,
1:08:18
Speaker 1: But at what point does he realize that he's content
1:08:21
Speaker 1: and full and he's going to go back to his
1:08:23
Speaker 1: bed and lay down and walk out of my life forever.
1:08:25
Speaker 1: I'm like, I gotta make this shot work. And I had,
1:08:28
Speaker 1: unfortunately had my range finder with me and I clicked
1:08:30
Speaker 1: it at thirty two and uh letters sail and I
1:08:33
Speaker 1: felt like it was a little far back and a
1:08:34
Speaker 1: little high, but he ran and rolled and it was
1:08:37
Speaker 1: pretty sweet. It was. You know, one thing that was
1:08:39
Speaker 1: cool about that hunt, too, is we always talked about
1:08:42
Speaker 1: that the first buck you killed, the excitement of the
1:08:44
Speaker 1: first buck you killed, because there's no standard for you know,
1:08:48
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're not going in there try to
1:08:49
Speaker 1: kill the biggest buck in the world. You just want
1:08:51
Speaker 1: to kill a buck. That was kind of like what
1:08:53
Speaker 1: that was. And I was so freaking jack because I
1:08:55
Speaker 1: didn't care what it was. I mean, I didn't want
1:08:56
Speaker 1: to shoot a pork buck, but to have a nice
1:08:59
Speaker 1: racked buck, I I was. It was like kind of
1:09:01
Speaker 1: like my first block all over again. You could probably
1:09:03
Speaker 1: see in the video, Yeah, you were pumped. Um. So
1:09:06
Speaker 1: that was just simply because of you know, the challenge
1:09:08
Speaker 1: inherent in a new place and Michigan public Land being
1:09:12
Speaker 1: particularly tricky for a lot of folks. All that made
1:09:15
Speaker 1: it probably especially for failing, right, Yeah, exactly, yeah, and
1:09:19
Speaker 1: then you got a camera over your shoulder. You feel
1:09:21
Speaker 1: like people are watching. Do you how do you feel
1:09:24
Speaker 1: about that whole thing? Does that? Does that get to you?
1:09:26
Speaker 1: Do you get do you feel that added pressure? So
1:09:30
Speaker 1: for for the public land challenge, yeah, just because it
1:09:33
Speaker 1: is a challenge, and I'm a very very competitive person,
1:09:35
Speaker 1: so absolutely it does. For my regular hunting. When I'm
1:09:38
Speaker 1: self filming, this maybe sounds crazy, but I feel like
1:09:41
Speaker 1: it helps me um focus on something else rather than
1:09:45
Speaker 1: get anxious and get nerves. It's I don't know, I
1:09:48
Speaker 1: love it. I love self filming. It's I've had Even
1:09:50
Speaker 1: when I was younger, I would forget to bring the
1:09:52
Speaker 1: video camera and I would run a mile back to
1:09:54
Speaker 1: the truck and go get the camera just because I
1:09:56
Speaker 1: just had to have in the treat. What if something happened,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: I think that I'm film right. Yeah, it's funny you
1:10:01
Speaker 1: say that. I That's that's how I ended end up being.
1:10:03
Speaker 1: Most of the time. I hate the pain in the
1:10:06
Speaker 1: butt of like getting it all set up when I'm
1:10:09
Speaker 1: in the tree and then taking it down, especially the
1:10:11
Speaker 1: end of the night. I just want to like sneak
1:10:12
Speaker 1: out quite I hate having to mess around with stuff
1:10:15
Speaker 1: and jingle jingle things my backpack or whatever it might
1:10:18
Speaker 1: be that, you know, just having extra gear entail sometimes
1:10:21
Speaker 1: so the couple times when I don't bring it, I'm like, oh,
1:10:23
Speaker 1: this is nice. But then you see a nice buck
1:10:26
Speaker 1: and you can never look back at it again, and
1:10:28
Speaker 1: then that kills me. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, So that public
1:10:35
Speaker 1: land Challenge in Michigan, you killed, you know, on that
1:10:40
Speaker 1: tough situation in Michigan, and it panned out. Now I
1:10:43
Speaker 1: wanna before hearing about your final hunt, or at least
1:10:46
Speaker 1: the other hunt I know about in two thousand nineteen,
1:10:48
Speaker 1: I want to rewind the tape back to two thousand
1:10:51
Speaker 1: eighteen to the other public land challenge you were part of.
1:10:55
Speaker 1: This is Minnesota, and you had success on that trip
1:10:59
Speaker 1: as well, and I wanted to talk to you a
1:11:02
Speaker 1: little bit about that because because you guys are doing
1:11:04
Speaker 1: this kind of island hopping kind of thing during that one,
1:11:07
Speaker 1: and I was curious to hear a little bit more
1:11:09
Speaker 1: about that particular hunt and then any other times you've
1:11:13
Speaker 1: done this, because I think for a lot of guys,
1:11:15
Speaker 1: the hunting swampy areas, cattail swamps whatever. Here in Michigan,
1:11:18
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of stuff where there are those islands, UM,
1:11:22
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear kind of how you guys approached
1:11:25
Speaker 1: it in that case or any other situations you've you've
1:11:27
Speaker 1: seen where you have targeted these islands as as buck areas,
1:11:31
Speaker 1: buckbetting areas or anything like that, and how you approach them,
1:11:34
Speaker 1: how you set up all that stuff would be would
1:11:36
Speaker 1: be interesting. Sure, so I can speak to kind of
1:11:39
Speaker 1: the approaching the set up, but I personally, I don't
1:11:43
Speaker 1: really have that sort of terrain. By me, we don't
1:11:46
Speaker 1: really have um Oak islands and the very few that
1:11:49
Speaker 1: we do, actually last year I went in and looked
1:11:50
Speaker 1: at one in the summer and it had UM. There's
1:11:53
Speaker 1: like two or three different trill cameras on the one
1:11:55
Speaker 1: guy had a note on his troll camera saying please
1:11:57
Speaker 1: don't steal this, and there was a mini it is
1:12:00
Speaker 1: the whole thing, And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And
1:12:01
Speaker 1: I don't know if that video kind of broke the
1:12:03
Speaker 1: theal on islands island honey, because the video really did
1:12:07
Speaker 1: make it look so simply hunt the islands ki, but
1:12:11
Speaker 1: that that hunt was actually a result of UM being
1:12:15
Speaker 1: the guy willing to UM work like crazy for it
1:12:18
Speaker 1: because we ended up going three miles back and carrying
1:12:21
Speaker 1: a ton of crap on my back, the camera, the
1:12:23
Speaker 1: camera arm. Um, so it really did work out that way.
1:12:27
Speaker 1: The big thing that we learned her I learned on
1:12:29
Speaker 1: those islands is you if you say the island is
1:12:33
Speaker 1: kind of long like a peninsula, and you start by
1:12:37
Speaker 1: setting up at the beginning of the island, that better
1:12:39
Speaker 1: be your best fit. Because later in the night that
1:12:43
Speaker 1: I'm interrupted, Joe, sorry, we gotta we gotta take one
1:12:46
Speaker 1: step back before this and and just I got to
1:12:49
Speaker 1: hear the basic gist of like what this habitat or
1:12:54
Speaker 1: what the scenaire looks like for people that aren't familiar
1:12:56
Speaker 1: with the video who haven't seen kind of example maps
1:12:58
Speaker 1: and stuff you showed. Um, I think correct me if
1:13:02
Speaker 1: I'm wrong here, But we're basically talking about big cat
1:13:04
Speaker 1: Tail swamp with isolated high ground islands in the middle
1:13:08
Speaker 1: of that that have oak trees on them and a
1:13:11
Speaker 1: series of those scattered throughout. Is that right or would
1:13:14
Speaker 1: you describe it any other way? Yep, You're You're exactly correct. Okay,
1:13:18
Speaker 1: So that's just want to make sure we have the
1:13:19
Speaker 1: right picture in everyone's minds. Now, continue yep. So it
1:13:24
Speaker 1: was a matter of really just hopping those islands and
1:13:26
Speaker 1: kind of working your way back through them. Um. The
1:13:29
Speaker 1: thing I will say this is where I really got
1:13:32
Speaker 1: really good at reading sign was I would get onto
1:13:34
Speaker 1: the islands and I would say I think the sign
1:13:37
Speaker 1: might be old, and then I could turn the down
1:13:38
Speaker 1: and say, hey, what do you think about this? He's like, yep,
1:13:40
Speaker 1: the sign is all this is this guard wage. We
1:13:42
Speaker 1: need to keep moving. So and the sign too. It
1:13:44
Speaker 1: might just be the scrapes and the dirt are getting dry.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: There's no fresh pooh um that you can tell. The
1:13:50
Speaker 1: acorns haven't dropped in a while. So we worked our
1:13:53
Speaker 1: way through the islands. The island that I ended up
1:13:55
Speaker 1: killing on, I believe the furthest one back there. Uh
1:13:59
Speaker 1: in those clusters of islands. When I got to that island,
1:14:03
Speaker 1: it was it just screamed at me. There was fresh
1:14:05
Speaker 1: poop um. There were scrapes where you could you could
1:14:07
Speaker 1: tell where he dug his claws, and it was still wet,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: it hadn't even dried, so I knew there was something
1:14:12
Speaker 1: back there. Um. And then so you kind of it's
1:14:16
Speaker 1: a tricky game because if you go, if you run
1:14:18
Speaker 1: all the way to the back of the island, assuming
1:14:20
Speaker 1: the betting is off the back of the island. The
1:14:24
Speaker 1: um well, I guess that's that's probably the best way
1:14:27
Speaker 1: to do it, to be honest, because if you're if
1:14:30
Speaker 1: your oaks are dropping on the back of the island
1:14:33
Speaker 1: and you're set it set up on the front of
1:14:34
Speaker 1: the island, that buck is going to come out of
1:14:36
Speaker 1: his bedding feet on the oaks on the back of
1:14:38
Speaker 1: the island and never make it to the front of
1:14:40
Speaker 1: the island. So the best best thing for somebody that's
1:14:42
Speaker 1: hunting an area like that um year after year after
1:14:44
Speaker 1: year is to figure out exactly where the betting is
1:14:47
Speaker 1: because you don't want them to get hung up on
1:14:49
Speaker 1: one specific acorn oak tree um all night and then
1:14:53
Speaker 1: not move until after you get down. Because Dan Dan
1:14:56
Speaker 1: actually ran into that. He had that year and a
1:14:57
Speaker 1: half year old buck come in. It fed like forty
1:14:59
Speaker 1: r of the way and it until it was black
1:15:01
Speaker 1: and that was that was a huge learning experience for me.
1:15:03
Speaker 1: You have to you have to find the first oak
1:15:06
Speaker 1: trees um from betting, because those deer don't want to
1:15:09
Speaker 1: move too far from betting if they don't have to.
1:15:12
Speaker 1: In uh until it gets dark. I don't know if
1:15:14
Speaker 1: that makes sense, talk circle, No, it does. UM, So
1:15:18
Speaker 1: if someone has, you know, if someone was able to
1:15:22
Speaker 1: get out there the spring before, they can go and
1:15:24
Speaker 1: scout these islands and they can look and try to
1:15:26
Speaker 1: find that betting off the backside, and they can try
1:15:29
Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, here's the first couple of oak trees,
1:15:31
Speaker 1: and how close can I get without the deer seeing me,
1:15:34
Speaker 1: You're smelling me, you're hearing me. That's the ideal scenario.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: But let's say we're hunting public and it's you know,
1:15:41
Speaker 1: we're heading from out of state, we haven't been able
1:15:43
Speaker 1: to scout in person before, we're heading in blind like
1:15:45
Speaker 1: you guys did in that situation, and you guys are
1:15:47
Speaker 1: just looking at maps and then scouting on the ground
1:15:49
Speaker 1: and moving as you did. UM, talk to about how
1:15:53
Speaker 1: you try to approach each new island and how you
1:15:56
Speaker 1: tried to work your way into it without spooking deer
1:16:00
Speaker 1: but trying to get close enough. This is kind of
1:16:02
Speaker 1: a similar scenarios. I guess I asked about your Michigan hunt.
1:16:05
Speaker 1: But again it's how do you pick the spot within
1:16:08
Speaker 1: the spot in this scenario? So yeah, yeah, So again
1:16:13
Speaker 1: for me, it goes to shootability. Um, and maybe that's
1:16:17
Speaker 1: that might be it's something I've always kind of kick around.
1:16:19
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a kink. I need to work out of
1:16:20
Speaker 1: my system and start getting the deer twenty yards from me.
1:16:23
Speaker 1: But I want I want to be able to shoot
1:16:24
Speaker 1: thirty yards to the left and thirty yards to the right.
1:16:26
Speaker 1: So I'm covering a sixty yard area that that deer
1:16:29
Speaker 1: is gonna walk through and he's in trouble. Um, that's
1:16:31
Speaker 1: a big deal for me. But then being I mean
1:16:33
Speaker 1: still being close enough that he's going to go past you. Um,
1:16:36
Speaker 1: stay on on that island, there was kind of like
1:16:38
Speaker 1: a little it was kind of high in the middle,
1:16:41
Speaker 1: so I stayed on the down wind side of the
1:16:42
Speaker 1: island and skirted. I crouched down when I walked, just
1:16:46
Speaker 1: in case there was something on the up wind side
1:16:49
Speaker 1: of the island bedded that way wouldn't see me, just
1:16:51
Speaker 1: in case it came out to the island and moved around.
1:16:53
Speaker 1: Does that make sense. Yeah, Especially when you don't when
1:16:57
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly where they might be, it becomes
1:17:00
Speaker 1: even more careful to be assuming any the worst case scenario.
1:17:04
Speaker 1: Guess right, exactly yeah, yeah, and uh. And then when
1:17:08
Speaker 1: I get set up in a situation like that where
1:17:10
Speaker 1: I don't know where they are, I'm moving really slow. Um.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: It was very windy, so that helped because if you
1:17:15
Speaker 1: when when a deer I always say this, A deer
1:17:18
Speaker 1: isn't looking for you when they come out to the
1:17:20
Speaker 1: field or whatever. They're looking for movement. So when that
1:17:23
Speaker 1: deer is laying in that bed, if you're moving around
1:17:25
Speaker 1: all drastically, climbing the tree, making fast motions, it's gonna
1:17:29
Speaker 1: catch It's more likely to catch that deer's eye. And
1:17:31
Speaker 1: that deer might be laying there kind of groggy. Um,
1:17:34
Speaker 1: not not all wound up, but you can sure get
1:17:37
Speaker 1: them wound up fast if you're making motions that they're
1:17:40
Speaker 1: going to pick out. So I move really slow. Just
1:17:42
Speaker 1: go slow, um, don't make any obvious movements, climb up
1:17:46
Speaker 1: the side of the tree, um where you don't think
1:17:49
Speaker 1: the deer are going to see you. Put the tree
1:17:50
Speaker 1: in between you and the deer where you suspect the
1:17:52
Speaker 1: deer to be. So just going slow that way. Do
1:17:54
Speaker 1: you ever have any other adjustments you make again when
1:17:59
Speaker 1: you're thinking you could be close to bedded deer? Uh?
1:18:03
Speaker 1: As in, you know, sometimes I've hurt people go extra
1:18:06
Speaker 1: low because they want to make sure they don't get skylined,
1:18:08
Speaker 1: or they want to make sure they don't, you know,
1:18:10
Speaker 1: get so high as to be visible from a farther distance.
1:18:13
Speaker 1: So some people will hunt lower than usual because they
1:18:15
Speaker 1: don't want to be spotted from the bedded buck, while
1:18:17
Speaker 1: other people say they want to be higher so that
1:18:19
Speaker 1: if that deer starts moving their way, they won't be
1:18:22
Speaker 1: as likely to smell them or see them. Does does
1:18:25
Speaker 1: your height ever change based off snarrows? Like that? A
1:18:28
Speaker 1: little bit, not not a crazy amount, um obviously, Like
1:18:32
Speaker 1: on that bedded buck hunt, I knew I wanted to
1:18:34
Speaker 1: get as high as possible, and there's there's a point
1:18:36
Speaker 1: where you get really how you start to mess up
1:18:38
Speaker 1: that angle of you know, if you're going for a
1:18:40
Speaker 1: double lung shot, it gets it shot becomes more difficult
1:18:43
Speaker 1: if you get too high, And then I do get
1:18:45
Speaker 1: a little bit worried about going too low and getting
1:18:47
Speaker 1: picked off, But then there's the going too high and
1:18:50
Speaker 1: getting picked off on their bedded So yeah, I guess
1:18:53
Speaker 1: I think about it, but it's something I'm gonna start
1:18:55
Speaker 1: paying closer attention to. UM, I got a buddy justin right, Um,
1:18:59
Speaker 1: he's gotta He was telling me about a swamp that
1:19:01
Speaker 1: he hunts where if there's any hunters hunting the hardwoods
1:19:05
Speaker 1: that boughts up to the swamp, you don't see much
1:19:08
Speaker 1: for deer um coming into the hardwoods, he said. But
1:19:10
Speaker 1: if there's no hunters and you just go sit on
1:19:12
Speaker 1: the ground, you'll see all kinds of deer, he said,
1:19:14
Speaker 1: because the deer have become so accustomed to sitting in
1:19:16
Speaker 1: their beds and watching people climb up the trees. So
1:19:19
Speaker 1: that was something he told me this year that I'm
1:19:20
Speaker 1: gonna start paying attention to more. Yeah, you always wonder
1:19:24
Speaker 1: what what they what they know about you. I can't
1:19:28
Speaker 1: remember what Maybe maybe you said this earlier just now
1:19:32
Speaker 1: and I'm losing my mind, or in something I was
1:19:34
Speaker 1: listening to earlier. I've been preparing for this. You said it,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: But there was a scenario where you realize that there
1:19:39
Speaker 1: was a buck you've been hunting for years that had
1:19:42
Speaker 1: been possibly watching you for all those years. And that's
1:19:45
Speaker 1: one of the things that I always battle with, is
1:19:46
Speaker 1: wondering what sometimes these bucks could be bettered off on
1:19:50
Speaker 1: a point or much closer to the road than you
1:19:52
Speaker 1: would think. And every time you go and you think
1:19:56
Speaker 1: you have to go off into the back stuff, you
1:19:57
Speaker 1: have to get far from the road to get in
1:19:59
Speaker 1: their deep because you think that's where the big bucks
1:20:01
Speaker 1: should be. But maybe he's right up front, sitting in
1:20:04
Speaker 1: this stupid stuff and you think it's stupid, but it's
1:20:07
Speaker 1: actually smart because the buck sees you every time you're
1:20:10
Speaker 1: walking in and he's out of there before you ever
1:20:12
Speaker 1: get set up because of it. Um, I constantly have
1:20:15
Speaker 1: this little thing in the back of my mind just
1:20:17
Speaker 1: just chirping to me like you might be a total dumbass, Mark,
1:20:20
Speaker 1: he might be right there where you're walking by you.
1:20:23
Speaker 1: Do you ever have those worries? Yeah? Absolutely, Um, yeah,
1:20:27
Speaker 1: I can't think. I'm sure it's I'm sure ever run
1:20:29
Speaker 1: into it before, but I absolutely don't. And those those
1:20:32
Speaker 1: ones are always tricking me too, because those are your bigger,
1:20:34
Speaker 1: mature dear, and you want to be able to sit
1:20:36
Speaker 1: back and maybe glass room. You know, say they're coming
1:20:39
Speaker 1: out of just a little hole or something, and you
1:20:41
Speaker 1: want to sit back and glass him. But those are
1:20:43
Speaker 1: the bucks that they don't move out of that hole
1:20:44
Speaker 1: until after dark, right they they they're so tricky to hunt.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: You gotta know that, but you can't let them know.
1:20:50
Speaker 1: You know there, they're there. Yeah, that's that's that's the trick,
1:20:54
Speaker 1: is that. Man. They can sometimes be right right underneath
1:20:58
Speaker 1: your nose, but you'll never know unless you are really
1:21:02
Speaker 1: either right on top of him or get lucky, or
1:21:05
Speaker 1: it's the rut or something. Um. Yeah, or there's justin
1:21:10
Speaker 1: gentleman that I'm talking about. The big thing he does
1:21:13
Speaker 1: that we've been discussing is just track checking. He learns,
1:21:15
Speaker 1: he learns these little spots, and he learns the trails
1:21:17
Speaker 1: that come out of him, and he's he's checking for
1:21:19
Speaker 1: tracks coming in and out of those little spots. And
1:21:22
Speaker 1: when he sees that big track going into the spot,
1:21:24
Speaker 1: he moves in and I know he's killed a few
1:21:26
Speaker 1: of them and a little overlook spots that way. So
1:21:28
Speaker 1: something I'll kind of start looking for those little trails
1:21:31
Speaker 1: coming out of those little spots. The question I always
1:21:33
Speaker 1: had when it comes to some of that track checking,
1:21:35
Speaker 1: whether it be trails or I know some guys will
1:21:39
Speaker 1: track checked the edge of a crop field to get
1:21:42
Speaker 1: an idea of Okay, is the big boy in the
1:21:43
Speaker 1: area yet, um is, how do you pull it off
1:21:46
Speaker 1: without pressuring him, you know, I mean without when you're
1:21:49
Speaker 1: walking around like that. That that This goes back to
1:21:51
Speaker 1: the debate I'm always having, which is in season scouting
1:21:54
Speaker 1: of any kind, I'm always worried about pushing the envelope
1:21:58
Speaker 1: and leaving my scent or spook and deer. Yeah. I
1:22:01
Speaker 1: might be learning something, but am I screwing things up
1:22:04
Speaker 1: by my presence at all? Um? I Constantly I'm debating
1:22:08
Speaker 1: how do you how do you balance those things? That's
1:22:12
Speaker 1: a tricky one in some of those spots. What I
1:22:15
Speaker 1: like to think about is where I'm walking right now,
1:22:18
Speaker 1: is this a spot where people are normally walking? Like
1:22:20
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of lanes where people take the
1:22:22
Speaker 1: lane all the way back to the big woods, and
1:22:24
Speaker 1: then you've got the buck betting off to the side
1:22:26
Speaker 1: or something. So I'm maybe checking along the lane where
1:22:28
Speaker 1: the scent isn't abnormal. Um. I guess it's all about
1:22:32
Speaker 1: if you could I mean, if there are green little
1:22:34
Speaker 1: lines drawn everywhere where human scent where, or maybe the
1:22:36
Speaker 1: color kit do you can look at a map and
1:22:38
Speaker 1: see where all the human scent was and then look
1:22:41
Speaker 1: at where it's not. Um, I think you could learn
1:22:43
Speaker 1: a lot that way, but just staying maybe I'm over
1:22:46
Speaker 1: explaining it, but just staying where the human where they're
1:22:49
Speaker 1: used to that human scent. Yep, yep. Might know what
1:22:52
Speaker 1: you're saying, and that's it's as you're saying this. So
1:22:56
Speaker 1: I'm thinking myself, Okay, it makes a lot of sense
1:22:58
Speaker 1: to take advantage of aces where deer are used to
1:23:02
Speaker 1: human concentrations, right, They're used to like I've got a
1:23:06
Speaker 1: I've got a property that the neighboring property they mow
1:23:11
Speaker 1: the lawn like way back to the edge of the swamp,
1:23:13
Speaker 1: even though it's a bunch of thick junk all around there.
1:23:15
Speaker 1: For some reason, they mow some stuff and people are
1:23:17
Speaker 1: back there every once in a while walking around. But
1:23:20
Speaker 1: when there's not people back there, it's it's actually pretty
1:23:22
Speaker 1: good deer country all around it. And so I'm sure
1:23:25
Speaker 1: there's some of the deer I'm hunting or moving in
1:23:28
Speaker 1: and around there, and they know that this little spot
1:23:31
Speaker 1: they're used to human scent. But then you look at
1:23:35
Speaker 1: the flip side, which is okay, yeah, maybe I could
1:23:37
Speaker 1: take advantage of that. But on the other hand, you
1:23:39
Speaker 1: know that these older bucks, where the older bucks like
1:23:42
Speaker 1: to spend their daylight activity where they don't get bothered.
1:23:45
Speaker 1: So I want to take advantage of the spot where
1:23:48
Speaker 1: it's safe to scout and to walk. But doesn't really
1:23:51
Speaker 1: matter if that buck is never going to show up
1:23:53
Speaker 1: there in daylight or I mean, I guess there's always clues,
1:23:56
Speaker 1: right you could you could see, okay, he passed through here,
1:24:00
Speaker 1: and I know he probably didn't pass through here during
1:24:03
Speaker 1: daylight because there's always human scent through here. So that
1:24:06
Speaker 1: tells you that's one piece of the puzzle you could
1:24:09
Speaker 1: put in there, and that that might help you kill
1:24:11
Speaker 1: him somewhere else. Maybe I don't know, I'm talking myself
1:24:14
Speaker 1: into circles here. No, No, that's that's what we deal with, right.
1:24:18
Speaker 1: And one of one of my buddies, Uh, I've got
1:24:21
Speaker 1: a buddy who's a heck of a killer. I actually
1:24:23
Speaker 1: he's in the most recent um turkey hunting video that
1:24:26
Speaker 1: I put up on the Beast there. The turkey hung
1:24:27
Speaker 1: videos always a little cheat, so if anybody watches it,
1:24:30
Speaker 1: I'll fore warn you. But he's and one of the
1:24:33
Speaker 1: things he kills a lot of those overlooked bucks. And
1:24:35
Speaker 1: one of the things he told me, he said, Joe,
1:24:38
Speaker 1: you're always hunting the bucks that are that you think
1:24:40
Speaker 1: are pressured, that are that are old and don't want
1:24:43
Speaker 1: to be around people. He said, You've got to remember,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: some of these bucks are more social animals and they
1:24:47
Speaker 1: want to know what's going on. And just just him
1:24:50
Speaker 1: saying that they're more social animals. They kind of they
1:24:52
Speaker 1: want to be around the rest of the day. They
1:24:53
Speaker 1: want to see what's going on. Maybe a doll comes
1:24:55
Speaker 1: in heat and they want to know about it. Just
1:24:57
Speaker 1: him saying that some some of the bigger bucks are
1:24:59
Speaker 1: more social animals. As kind of changed my way of
1:25:02
Speaker 1: thinking and looking at things. So maybe maybe me just
1:25:04
Speaker 1: saying that, I'll get the gears turning for somebody who
1:25:07
Speaker 1: thinks like me and always thinks that the bucks are
1:25:10
Speaker 1: a mile in the swamp away from every other. Dear,
1:25:12
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily true. I feel like I'm at this
1:25:16
Speaker 1: point now for me personally, where I have been so
1:25:20
Speaker 1: indoctrinated with all of the ways you're supposed to do it.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people.
1:25:27
Speaker 1: I've I've written all these articles, I've read all this stuff.
1:25:30
Speaker 1: Like any of us, right, we've all we're all consuming
1:25:32
Speaker 1: all this stuff now all the time. UM, so we
1:25:35
Speaker 1: all kind of know the standard rules. You're supposed to
1:25:40
Speaker 1: do it this way, you're supposed to push in here,
1:25:42
Speaker 1: you're supposed to think this way. Um that you can
1:25:45
Speaker 1: kind of get stuck in a rut because now you
1:25:47
Speaker 1: know everything you're supposed to do, and part of you
1:25:50
Speaker 1: might say, well, I just need to execute better. But
1:25:53
Speaker 1: then sometimes you kind of need to just I'm starting
1:25:56
Speaker 1: to realize sometimes that maybe I just need to look
1:25:59
Speaker 1: at this in a complete a different way, Like forget
1:26:01
Speaker 1: the rule book. Let's just throw something new at the
1:26:04
Speaker 1: wall and see if that sticks. Because if if the
1:26:06
Speaker 1: rule book isn't working in this scenario, why keep trying it?
1:26:09
Speaker 1: Why not just try new things. I'm kind of like,
1:26:13
Speaker 1: sometimes the rule book works, but sometimes you get into
1:26:16
Speaker 1: a situation where you kind of want to be creative again.
1:26:19
Speaker 1: It's it's easy to lose that creativity when you know
1:26:21
Speaker 1: how you're supposed to do it. Yep, Yeah, exactly is
1:26:26
Speaker 1: there anything how about this, Joe? I gotta believe you've
1:26:31
Speaker 1: you've seen and heard a lot of the same things
1:26:33
Speaker 1: I have. What is one of these rules? You probably
1:26:37
Speaker 1: there's gotta be something that's like a craw on your
1:26:39
Speaker 1: side that you just hear people say all the time
1:26:41
Speaker 1: and you think of yourself, jeez, that's stupid. What's one
1:26:44
Speaker 1: of those like white tail rules that if you could
1:26:48
Speaker 1: have a magic wand and wish away and like everyone
1:26:50
Speaker 1: now has to forget that rule, what would that be?
1:26:55
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Give me some examples so I can kind
1:26:58
Speaker 1: of wrapt around. Okay, So for example, this is one
1:27:01
Speaker 1: of the things that for a lot of years I've
1:27:03
Speaker 1: I've done and and I think there's some warrant to it,
1:27:06
Speaker 1: but I know there's plenty of other people that have
1:27:08
Speaker 1: success like you. That being like early season morning hunts,
1:27:12
Speaker 1: people say, don't hunt early season mornings because bucks are
1:27:15
Speaker 1: in their beds before daylight. It's super risky and relatively
1:27:20
Speaker 1: low odds for success. So people will say, just hunt
1:27:23
Speaker 1: evenings in the early season, and then once you get
1:27:26
Speaker 1: to late October then you should. Then you can start
1:27:28
Speaker 1: focusing on those mornings. There's one of those quote unquote
1:27:30
Speaker 1: rules that a lot of guys will will tell you, Um,
1:27:34
Speaker 1: that's that's one example, let's say, or cold fronts, like
1:27:39
Speaker 1: another one is like hey, and this is I'm again
1:27:41
Speaker 1: I preach this all the time, but like, if there's
1:27:43
Speaker 1: a cold front, you gotta hit it hard because the
1:27:45
Speaker 1: deer going to be moving. Like there's a super generic rule. Um,
1:27:49
Speaker 1: anything like that, or are others that you would say, Nope,
1:27:52
Speaker 1: that's bullshit. Ohay, So I'm maybe not gonna answer this right.
1:27:58
Speaker 1: But the biggest thing I see on reading the internet,
1:28:02
Speaker 1: all the different discussions and everything, and it's not even
1:28:05
Speaker 1: it's not a rule, but I gotta say it is
1:28:07
Speaker 1: I think people get too obsessed with their gear. There
1:28:10
Speaker 1: their way too worried about all of their gear. What
1:28:13
Speaker 1: what I always what I always like to think about
1:28:16
Speaker 1: as I was trying to figure things out, is that
1:28:19
Speaker 1: you know, you'd like to spend money and then get results,
1:28:22
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work that way. And you've got to
1:28:23
Speaker 1: think yourself, how many encounters that I have with big
1:28:26
Speaker 1: big Bucks this year while I had zero of them? Okay?
1:28:28
Speaker 1: Is that because I don't have the right gear usually
1:28:31
Speaker 1: know the answer is no. Um? Is that because I
1:28:34
Speaker 1: didn't scout enough? Yeah, I need to scout more? Um?
1:28:36
Speaker 1: Or hey I didn't Um, I didn't get this dear
1:28:40
Speaker 1: because it was around the back side of the tree. Okay.
1:28:43
Speaker 1: Is that because you're in a tree stand and you
1:28:45
Speaker 1: need to set up differently, or perhaps maybe you do
1:28:47
Speaker 1: need to settle. Maybe all of your situations you get
1:28:50
Speaker 1: bucks in on you. You screw up all the time,
1:28:52
Speaker 1: and it's because you don't have the right shootability, And
1:28:55
Speaker 1: maybe you do need to settle, because that's just how
1:28:56
Speaker 1: you think. That's the air you make and a saddle
1:28:58
Speaker 1: would be a patch on it, or it's just I know.
1:29:02
Speaker 1: I I just said people want gear to be their
1:29:05
Speaker 1: magic potion too often, and then I said, saddle might
1:29:08
Speaker 1: be your but you get what I'm getting. Buying new
1:29:14
Speaker 1: gear is not. And maybe that's your goal. Maybe you're
1:29:16
Speaker 1: a gear person. You love tinkering with gear, but at
1:29:19
Speaker 1: the end of the season, when you don't have a deer,
1:29:20
Speaker 1: you better not be piste off because you wasted your
1:29:23
Speaker 1: entire summer tinkering with your gear when drinking a beer
1:29:26
Speaker 1: when you should have been all glassing. Yes, that's a
1:29:29
Speaker 1: that's a great point. That's a great point. Now I'm
1:29:31
Speaker 1: gonna ask you the flip side of that. So, so
1:29:38
Speaker 1: what if and you kind of could have this is good.
1:29:42
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a hard one here because what
1:29:43
Speaker 1: you just told me sort of answers this next question,
1:29:45
Speaker 1: but I want to force you into another one. So okay,
1:29:49
Speaker 1: So I first asked you, what's one of those typical
1:29:51
Speaker 1: rules that you wish people wouldn't pay attention to? So
1:29:54
Speaker 1: what about the reverse of that, which is if you
1:29:57
Speaker 1: could create a rule. So you just sort of did.
1:30:00
Speaker 1: You said, don't blame your equipment for your lack of success.
1:30:03
Speaker 1: But now I'm going to give you the power to
1:30:05
Speaker 1: make one more So like layout one Joe rent Mester
1:30:10
Speaker 1: white tailed rule that everyone you wish would remember this
1:30:14
Speaker 1: one thing that that for you, you think they would
1:30:18
Speaker 1: help a lot of people. Sure, So I'm gonna almost
1:30:23
Speaker 1: take the one that I just said, and I'm gonna say,
1:30:25
Speaker 1: learn how to read sign because too many people they're
1:30:29
Speaker 1: they're scouting is their trail camera or um seeing the
1:30:34
Speaker 1: deer or whatever, or maybe seeing a track, but you
1:30:36
Speaker 1: have to learn while the track is signed. So now
1:30:38
Speaker 1: i'm counter counter getting myself again. Um, learn how to
1:30:43
Speaker 1: read sign, learn how to read what's going on around you.
1:30:46
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe and I didn't answer it directly, but there's
1:30:50
Speaker 1: there's there's no right or wrong answers, so you can
1:30:52
Speaker 1: totally say that, Um, it's okay, so give me let's
1:30:56
Speaker 1: go to the sub bullet on that though. And I
1:30:59
Speaker 1: know you've given the examples already through our conversation. But
1:31:02
Speaker 1: if someone heard you say that and they said, Okay,
1:31:04
Speaker 1: I gotta learn how to read sign better, tell me
1:31:07
Speaker 1: in detail. Like if you're my teacher and I'm the
1:31:09
Speaker 1: student and you said I need to learn how to
1:31:12
Speaker 1: read sign better, now I'm going to say, okay, how
1:31:16
Speaker 1: do I do that better? Like? What are some things
1:31:18
Speaker 1: that I can do two more effectively read this sign?
1:31:21
Speaker 1: Is it just a matter of paying attention to things
1:31:24
Speaker 1: in more detail? Or should I be paying attention to
1:31:26
Speaker 1: different things? Or give me a little more color there.
1:31:30
Speaker 1: So the big thing that I've heard Andy and all
1:31:33
Speaker 1: those guys talk about that I'm no different don is
1:31:36
Speaker 1: spending a ridiculous amount of time in the woods. And
1:31:39
Speaker 1: with that, though, is picking up on what's going on
1:31:42
Speaker 1: around you. There's a lot of people that will go
1:31:44
Speaker 1: for a walk in the woods go scouting, but that's
1:31:46
Speaker 1: literally what they're doing. They're going for a walk in
1:31:47
Speaker 1: their woods and then they take their selfie, they post
1:31:50
Speaker 1: on social media and say there I did some scouting today.
1:31:52
Speaker 1: But what that doesn't count? What as I that doesn't count. No,
1:31:57
Speaker 1: that doesn't count. So what did you learn? What did
1:31:59
Speaker 1: you pick up? Um? You could? You can almost look
1:32:02
Speaker 1: at scouting like hunting. Was it a was it a
1:32:04
Speaker 1: failed day of scouting? If I went scouting and I
1:32:07
Speaker 1: didn't come back with a new piece of the puzzle.
1:32:09
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people might be able
1:32:11
Speaker 1: to relate to this. You go. I haven't been able
1:32:12
Speaker 1: to scout much with a little guy, but a few
1:32:14
Speaker 1: times I do scout, I'll pick up on one little
1:32:17
Speaker 1: tweak in something and then it just it's just on
1:32:19
Speaker 1: my mind for the next two weeks. So when you're
1:32:23
Speaker 1: in the woods, um, pick up on what you're seeing.
1:32:26
Speaker 1: Slow down that that's a really big one. All the
1:32:28
Speaker 1: killers that I've ever walked through the woods with, they
1:32:31
Speaker 1: all go slow. They they think about what's happening. They
1:32:34
Speaker 1: look at look at what's going on around them, and
1:32:36
Speaker 1: they think, how is that You're going to move through here?
1:32:38
Speaker 1: And it's you literally just stand there and think. Sometimes, Um,
1:32:43
Speaker 1: and now, I don't want people to just go stand
1:32:45
Speaker 1: in the woods kind of thing. Yes, I follow you.
1:32:49
Speaker 1: Do you know something I do I think a lot
1:32:51
Speaker 1: of other guys do this too. Is when I'm out
1:32:54
Speaker 1: there scouting. I'm constantly scouting at two different levels. So
1:32:58
Speaker 1: by that, I mean I'm scouting what's right in front
1:33:01
Speaker 1: of me, right in front of my feet on the
1:33:03
Speaker 1: ground level. But then I also like to have my
1:33:05
Speaker 1: phone out looking at the aerial map so that I'm
1:33:07
Speaker 1: also looking at the thirty tho ft overview, and so
1:33:10
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to look at what's the big picture,
1:33:12
Speaker 1: what's the small picture of the tiny picture right in me,
1:33:14
Speaker 1: because I never want to forget the context around me.
1:33:16
Speaker 1: So yeah, this, this rub right in front of me
1:33:18
Speaker 1: is an important puzzle piece, but I also constantly want
1:33:21
Speaker 1: to look at how does this fit into the bigger
1:33:23
Speaker 1: scheme and is there some bigger terrain feature or something
1:33:27
Speaker 1: else that funnels or factors into this little thing I
1:33:30
Speaker 1: see right around me? You know do you do you
1:33:32
Speaker 1: ever do that? Yeah? Absolutely? And that's that's where, um,
1:33:36
Speaker 1: we're all guilty of walking and scrolling through our phone.
1:33:39
Speaker 1: So that's where you need to stop when you're looking
1:33:41
Speaker 1: at your phone, and you need to stop because if
1:33:43
Speaker 1: you walk past that one rub, that's the beginning of
1:33:45
Speaker 1: a rub line taking you back to a bed. You
1:33:46
Speaker 1: might have just hurt yourself. So that's where you need
1:33:49
Speaker 1: to stop, look over your map and then continue trying
1:33:52
Speaker 1: to figure stuff out. And with the map, something that's
1:33:55
Speaker 1: kind of coming handy and you've probably experienced this is
1:33:57
Speaker 1: just when you see things, you start dropping pens, and
1:34:00
Speaker 1: with those pins you put your notes and when you
1:34:03
Speaker 1: get home you go back and kind of look over
1:34:05
Speaker 1: it and stuff starts clicking and starts making sense. Yeah,
1:34:08
Speaker 1: and everybody's a math professional nowadays. They're handy tool that's
1:34:13
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Okay, so, uh, second to last question,
1:34:20
Speaker 1: biggest mistake by wanna be Beast hunters. There's all these
1:34:26
Speaker 1: folks that follow the forum, they see the videos, they
1:34:30
Speaker 1: hear people, you know, for the last decade or so,
1:34:32
Speaker 1: maybe more than a than that. You know, there's been
1:34:35
Speaker 1: this this uh coaching tree of sorts of people learning
1:34:39
Speaker 1: from Dan or learning from the Dquistos or whoever, um.
1:34:45
Speaker 1: And now there's all these different people trying it, preaching it,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: talking about it. What would you say the biggest mistake
1:34:51
Speaker 1: you see from people trying to hunt this quote unquote
1:34:54
Speaker 1: beast style. Yeah, giving up. Giving up is the big
1:34:59
Speaker 1: one I've seen. I mean, over the last ten years
1:35:01
Speaker 1: of being on the Beast. I've seen so many guys
1:35:03
Speaker 1: that are They say they got out of the swamp
1:35:05
Speaker 1: and they their sticks were clank, and they didn't know
1:35:07
Speaker 1: how to pack them together. They threw everything down. It
1:35:09
Speaker 1: was all strapped, it was falling off, They got mud
1:35:11
Speaker 1: in their boots, they were frustrated, and then they literally
1:35:13
Speaker 1: give up. I've seen giving up, as it seems to
1:35:15
Speaker 1: be the main reason people fail. What's the solution then, Well,
1:35:22
Speaker 1: if you don't know how to pack your sticks together,
1:35:23
Speaker 1: go on the beast and ask, hey, how do I
1:35:25
Speaker 1: I can't get my picks and my sticks and pack together?
1:35:28
Speaker 1: How do I do it? Um? But the true, biggest
1:35:30
Speaker 1: solution overall to all of that is to just keep
1:35:33
Speaker 1: doing it. Just repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, um,
1:35:37
Speaker 1: make little tweaks, pick up on what you're seeing. Picking
1:35:39
Speaker 1: up on what you're seeing is just such a big one. Um.
1:35:42
Speaker 1: And those are very generic answers. But yeah, that that's all.
1:35:46
Speaker 1: That's that's good stuff. That's there's no really great specific
1:35:50
Speaker 1: answer to that one. I feel like it's so true though,
1:35:52
Speaker 1: it's it's that it's it's hard to ever communicate the
1:35:59
Speaker 1: importance of that concept, and like just saying it, like Oh,
1:36:03
Speaker 1: you just gotta do it. You just gotta push through,
1:36:05
Speaker 1: you gotta persevere, you gotta have grit. It's hard to
1:36:08
Speaker 1: just say it in front to connect to people, but
1:36:09
Speaker 1: it's I think the best way for people to learn
1:36:13
Speaker 1: about that is just to see by see examples. So
1:36:16
Speaker 1: watching people do it, seeing you guys push through day
1:36:19
Speaker 1: after day, hunting the whether it's the public land challenge
1:36:22
Speaker 1: in Michigan, excuse me, or if it's you know, anyone
1:36:26
Speaker 1: of any other people putting it in, putting in the
1:36:28
Speaker 1: hours day after day, pushing hard in the public or
1:36:31
Speaker 1: pushing hard in some piece of private or failing, failing, failing, struggling,
1:36:34
Speaker 1: struggling and struggling, but keeping after it and finally you
1:36:36
Speaker 1: killed that buck you're after in December. I think that
1:36:39
Speaker 1: is While there's a whole lot of negativity that can
1:36:43
Speaker 1: come from social media and everybody having a podcast and
1:36:46
Speaker 1: everybody having a YouTube channel and all this media out there,
1:36:49
Speaker 1: it can be overwhelming. There's a lot of Yahoo's out there.
1:36:52
Speaker 1: But what it has done that I think is pretty
1:36:55
Speaker 1: cool is that it gives people the opportunity to see
1:37:01
Speaker 1: that everybody has struggles, everybody has challenges, Everyone screws up. Um,
1:37:07
Speaker 1: it can feel really lonely if you weren't able to
1:37:09
Speaker 1: follow along with everybody else making the same mistakes, are
1:37:11
Speaker 1: having the same challenges and learning as they go to
1:37:14
Speaker 1: right and pushing through them. Yeah. So there's something to that. Yeah.
1:37:20
Speaker 1: And and sometimes too, I've been guilty of it. You'll
1:37:23
Speaker 1: have a bad day. Um, everything every single thing that
1:37:26
Speaker 1: could possibly wrong, that could go wrong, goes wrong, and
1:37:30
Speaker 1: you literally feel like you want to quit. You You're like,
1:37:32
Speaker 1: hunting is stupid. Why do I waste my time doing this?
1:37:34
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you don't get those days, but
1:37:36
Speaker 1: but I'll get them, and I'll finally get out of
1:37:38
Speaker 1: swamp and I'll get back to the truck and you
1:37:40
Speaker 1: just go to bad wake up next morning. You just
1:37:42
Speaker 1: need to reset. You need to reset you're thinking, because
1:37:44
Speaker 1: it does get tricky, it does get hard, and that's
1:37:46
Speaker 1: kind of the fun of it, that's the beauty of it.
1:37:47
Speaker 1: And as you progress along, you'll have less and less
1:37:50
Speaker 1: of those experiences because you'll start to embrace it and
1:37:53
Speaker 1: love it. And um, I mean, one example that I'll
1:37:56
Speaker 1: give is if I hate camping, I absolutely hate camping,
1:37:59
Speaker 1: And if it just seems silly, but I hate sweating,
1:38:03
Speaker 1: I hate being around the fire, I hate the bugs
1:38:04
Speaker 1: biting me. But now you yeah, you get it, you
1:38:10
Speaker 1: get it. I mean, I'll do it. But now you
1:38:11
Speaker 1: get into the public land challenge. We're sleeping in tents
1:38:15
Speaker 1: and the rain is plotting out our tents and you're
1:38:17
Speaker 1: walking through the woods and the bugs are buddy. I
1:38:19
Speaker 1: love it like I love the chance, like you start
1:38:22
Speaker 1: to love the the what's the word I'm looking for
1:38:25
Speaker 1: the process. It's the it's the journey. Yep. So I
1:38:29
Speaker 1: can have the same bad things go wrong hunting as camping,
1:38:32
Speaker 1: and I love it. Hunting hated camping. That's the grind. Yeah, yeah,
1:38:36
Speaker 1: that's what I'm constantly, especially the last year, I've been
1:38:40
Speaker 1: trying to remind myself of this over and over again,
1:38:42
Speaker 1: and anyone listening in the Who's Herd past episodes has
1:38:45
Speaker 1: heard me preach on this lately. But I definitely I
1:38:50
Speaker 1: get really goal oriented. Like I'm so focused on trying
1:38:54
Speaker 1: to get whatever that goal is. So if it's the
1:38:56
Speaker 1: kill on that trip, or if it's the one buck
1:38:57
Speaker 1: um after this year on a local property, I get
1:38:59
Speaker 1: so obsessed with it that it's really easy for me
1:39:02
Speaker 1: to get stressed out by it and just like single
1:39:05
Speaker 1: mindedly focused and worked up, and then you can lose
1:39:09
Speaker 1: some of the joy in there if you get two
1:39:11
Speaker 1: worked up. So I'm constantly trying to reset myself to
1:39:15
Speaker 1: don't be obsessed with the end goal, obsessed with the process.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: Enjoy the process. If you can learn to love the
1:39:21
Speaker 1: journey along the way to the goal, then whether you
1:39:25
Speaker 1: achieve that thing in the end or not, while of
1:39:27
Speaker 1: course you want to push for it, um, your ultimate
1:39:30
Speaker 1: satisfaction or happiness in life or whatever doesn't have to
1:39:34
Speaker 1: depend on that. If you can learn to love that journey. Um.
1:39:38
Speaker 1: So that's a personal goal of mind to continue getting
1:39:40
Speaker 1: better at YAR after year. No, that makes sense that absolutely,
1:39:44
Speaker 1: I actually I get I want the success so bad
1:39:47
Speaker 1: that I always make I should say I always I
1:39:49
Speaker 1: make the mistake and I go shoot two and three
1:39:51
Speaker 1: year olds. That's that's one of my big things that
1:39:53
Speaker 1: I gotta quit doing. Um Like, if I wouldn't have
1:39:58
Speaker 1: shot the buck, that the bedded buck, and I would
1:40:00
Speaker 1: have wait another twenty minutes, I'd have a hundred or
1:40:03
Speaker 1: if you know Hio, you know Ohio. If I would
1:40:05
Speaker 1: have been a little more cuck I guess we didn't
1:40:07
Speaker 1: talk about the Ohio hunt. I know I didn't. I
1:40:09
Speaker 1: didn't want to throw you under the bus with the
1:40:11
Speaker 1: antler shot. Right. We all make mistakes, but I wasn't
1:40:16
Speaker 1: calculated my shot one in the antler. And it's just
1:40:19
Speaker 1: those fine little things. You got a tweak, Yeah, so true,
1:40:22
Speaker 1: all those little things. Um. Okay, So Joe, you spent
1:40:26
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time with me tonight. I know
1:40:28
Speaker 1: you've got a little one at home, and uh, I
1:40:30
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to your off anymore, but I
1:40:32
Speaker 1: will ask you one final thing you baby Ruth did
1:40:36
Speaker 1: last year with that buck that you spooked the night
1:40:39
Speaker 1: before and you went in the next morning killed him
1:40:40
Speaker 1: right over top of his bed. So I want to
1:40:43
Speaker 1: see if you can do the same thing for the
1:40:45
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty season. If you were if you could
1:40:48
Speaker 1: guarantee that you kill one buck, how do you think
1:40:52
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen? Like if if you could like picture
1:40:54
Speaker 1: in your head? Okay, I think I know this one, dear,
1:40:56
Speaker 1: And I think if if I had to pick, like
1:40:58
Speaker 1: when I'm gonna kill him, wear them in a kill him,
1:41:00
Speaker 1: if I forced you into making your very best guests
1:41:03
Speaker 1: of how it's going to happen. What's that scenario? How
1:41:06
Speaker 1: are you going to kill a buck this year? Yeah,
1:41:09
Speaker 1: so there's one one specific book that I've chased for.
1:41:13
Speaker 1: I want to say it's like four or five years now,
1:41:15
Speaker 1: and he's seven or eight years old. He's a really
1:41:17
Speaker 1: old dear and I'm almost positive he's alive based on
1:41:20
Speaker 1: tracks from the spring scouting here and if if I
1:41:25
Speaker 1: can call this year I've tried. I could go on.
1:41:29
Speaker 1: I could spend two hours talking about how I tried
1:41:32
Speaker 1: to kill this year and all that stuff. But I
1:41:34
Speaker 1: think this deer's vulnerability is going to be there's again,
1:41:37
Speaker 1: this is a benefit of mine is not having a
1:41:39
Speaker 1: lot of deer in our area because there's a small
1:41:42
Speaker 1: group of doughs that live in a in a spot
1:41:45
Speaker 1: that I feel like can um manipulate, I guess you
1:41:48
Speaker 1: could say. And last year, I guess I've had this
1:41:52
Speaker 1: year for so many different years. I've tried so many
1:41:54
Speaker 1: different things. And one of the things I theorized last
1:41:57
Speaker 1: year is hey, when these doughs come into heat, he
1:42:00
Speaker 1: is gonna be over here wanting to read these doughs
1:42:01
Speaker 1: in their their night they're back in the cover. Um
1:42:04
Speaker 1: they're not out and open where everyone else is, so
1:42:06
Speaker 1: so this is gonna be good. So I threw a
1:42:08
Speaker 1: trail camera up and this old deer was on it.
1:42:10
Speaker 1: I believe it was three times over three days during
1:42:13
Speaker 1: the rough middle of the day UM in this spot.
1:42:15
Speaker 1: So if if I can tell you how I'm gonna
1:42:17
Speaker 1: kill this dear, I'm hoping to um during this window,
1:42:21
Speaker 1: like we said, do the whole the whole repeat thing
1:42:23
Speaker 1: during this window, catch him doing um what. Hopefully those
1:42:27
Speaker 1: doughs come and heated at about the same time and
1:42:29
Speaker 1: I can catch him that way. So I'm if I
1:42:32
Speaker 1: don't find anything big in the early season, I'm just
1:42:34
Speaker 1: gonna be patient for the rout because it's I cannot
1:42:36
Speaker 1: find his bed. Um, I'll keep looking for it. But
1:42:39
Speaker 1: that's how I'm gonna kill a buck during the rut. Awesome,
1:42:43
Speaker 1: which is interesting because I've heard you in the past
1:42:45
Speaker 1: say that the rut frustrates you and that you don't
1:42:47
Speaker 1: like it. So now you're learning to love your nemesis. Yes,
1:42:52
Speaker 1: absolutely all right, Joe, this has been fun. I appreciate
1:42:56
Speaker 1: you taking this time to do this. Um. If people
1:42:59
Speaker 1: want to follow along with your hunts and different things,
1:43:01
Speaker 1: you've got going on or that's going on the Hunting Beast.
1:43:03
Speaker 1: Where can they where can they find all that stuff? Yeah?
1:43:06
Speaker 1: So um, head on over to my Instagram. Just type
1:43:09
Speaker 1: in my name Joe Rome stir or on the Hunting Beast. Um.
1:43:13
Speaker 1: If you want to something something I always thinks kind
1:43:15
Speaker 1: of If you my name is Predator TC on the
1:43:17
Speaker 1: Hunting Beast form. If you click on my name and
1:43:20
Speaker 1: scroll back to some of my very first questions, you
1:43:22
Speaker 1: can see some of the most basic stuff, which is
1:43:24
Speaker 1: sometimes I read my own stuff and I'm like, what
1:43:26
Speaker 1: the heck? So yeah, the Hunting Beast or Instagram. That's awesome, Joe.
1:43:30
Speaker 1: All right, well, good luck this coming season. I hope
1:43:33
Speaker 1: that early or whatever part remember that was. I hope
1:43:36
Speaker 1: that's a good a good rough for you and that
1:43:39
Speaker 1: you you kill that old sucker. Yeah, thank you, and
1:43:41
Speaker 1: I hope you get that that one that the little
1:43:43
Speaker 1: guy was holding the sheds of so he can hold
1:43:44
Speaker 1: the rack man that he's he's my Moby Dick this year.
1:43:48
Speaker 1: That's the buck I'll be losing sleepover so fingers fingers
1:43:51
Speaker 1: crossed it all right, all right, and that's going to
1:43:56
Speaker 1: do it. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. It's
1:43:59
Speaker 1: got me just chomping, chomping at the bit to get
1:44:03
Speaker 1: after some white tails and man, get ready, it's going
1:44:06
Speaker 1: to be here before we know it, and that is
1:44:08
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. So until next time, thank you for listening,
1:44:12
Speaker 1: and stay wired to hump