Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 290: Our Greatest Deer Hunting Failures with Tony Peterson

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Ep. 290: Our Greatest Deer Hunting Failures with Tony Peterson · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  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 two
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  Speaker 1: and ninety. In today, myself, Spencer new Heart, and Tony
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Peterson divulge some of our greatest deer hunting failures and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: then explore what we learned from them. All right, welcome
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to another episode of the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to you by Onyx. I am in Montana at the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Meat Eater headquarters to my right, Spencer new Heart to
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  Speaker 1: my left, and a roundabout way, it's Tony Peterson. We
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: just did a whole half day of recording some videos
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: which will be coming out on the Meat either YouTube
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: channel at some point here soon. UM. I'm not sure
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: when that will be in comparison when this podcast comes out,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: so I'll keep it vague, but a pretty cool breakdown
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: of some different hunting ideas throughout the year that three
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: of us put together that I'm excited for y'all to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: check out. When that does come out, I will definitely
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: be letting you know exactly where to find it when
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it's out there. But it got us thinking about a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: number of things because we were sitting around this morning
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: talking about hunting certain properties. How would you hunt this one,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: how do you hunt this one? What did you hear?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: And it got me thinking about a specific hunt that
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I was on not too long ago that it just
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: seemed like a sure thing, Like I felt like I
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: had hunted some areas similar to the state. I had
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: some experience. I had time in the spring to go
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to this place out at shed hunting some stuff. I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: had some good intel. I thought it was slam dunk,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and I was so confident that I paired two different
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: states together. I was like, on a killbuck in this
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: state and then go over the border killbuck in the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: other state, and it will be easy. I know what
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: I'm doing. And then we completely got our asses handed
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to us and we didn't see a single shooter until
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: we did make a move far to a totally different area.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But um, big time failure. And this brought to mind
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: for all three of us the fact that we've all
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: had a whole lot of failures. Well, big time failure.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: It seems a little aggressive because you kill the book
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: like three days before this big time failure true. So
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I succeeded in Montana, I failed in North Dakota,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: so that is true. And and and we couldn't you
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: could even argue this is a good interesting question that
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: was going to sidetrack me a little bit. But I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: had someone, a friend of mine, posted on Instagram the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: other day and in one of people's opinions, if you
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: fail to fill a tag on hunt, and you go
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: on a hunt and you don't feel at tag, is
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: that a failure? And he argued strongly that it is,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and that if you say, yeah, and he said, if
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you and I'm paraphrasing, and I'm you know, I'm not
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: gonna get quite a sentiment, right, but the basics sentiment
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: it was that, you know, if if you're not actively trying,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: if you're not gonna do everything you possibly can, if
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you're not already doing putting it all out there to
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: fill that tag, then you're just making excuses for yourself.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And if you don't call that a failure, then it's
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: like giving participation trophies to kids these days. What's his point?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So you should be be real with yourself. What are
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you going out there to do? You're going out there
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to kill an animal, to kill a deer. If you
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: don't do it, if you pretend that's not a failure,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you're kidding yourself. So what is your thought, Tony? If
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: you don't feel a tag, is that failure? I think
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: he's bananas. Um if you you know, you could go
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: out there and make every possible good decision and work
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: your butt off and do everything right and not kill. Yeah,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: so you know it's it's hunting. So I don't follow
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: that line of reasoning. I think I think sort of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: parallel to what he's saying is try hard. You know,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: if this is your thing and you really like it,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: don't don't don't allow yourself to make a bunch of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: excuses to not try and and get after it. But
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean the measure of success for failure
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: being the punch tag is. But you know, there's there's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: so much to it, and you know I feel this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm sitting here with Spencer over here, and
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: he's just a young pup. You know, we've talked about
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: this before. I still got a little eggshell on his back.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: He's just a young guy. But you've got you've got
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: a youngster. You're watching out for and trying to teach
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: how to touch fish and stuff. And you know, I'm
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: sitting here with two seven year olds and I look
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: at it and I'm like, the experience matters, you know.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's awesome to go kill big Bucks, towsome,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: go kill little Bucks, does whatever. But you know, a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: year down the road, that just it's it's not as important.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It's fun to remember about it, but it's like you
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: remember the experiences overall, and like to hunt you're talking
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about out there in North Dakota. I mean, that's that's
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: one of the coolest places you could go to hunt.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Like you you can go out there and not kill
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  Speaker 1: a deer and have an awesome experience, and I don't
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: know how you'd label that a failure. Yeah, I know
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: what you're saying, and I feel the same way. Um,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: But I also feel like it took me time to
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: get to that point. Like for a lot of years,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was going through like a proving
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it to myself or proving to other people phase, like
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: somehow had to establish credibility, even like in my own head,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: like yeah, I can do this, And I really took
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: it hard when hunts didn't go well, really stressed. Really,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it's only the last couple of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: years that I lost a pretty good degree of that stress.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Like the year, not last year, but the year before.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't kill a single buck that year because I
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: was after Holy Field like crazy and spent so much time,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: and I felt pretty dunn okay about it. For the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: first time. I was like, I don't care. I didn't
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: kill any other bucks, but that doesn't matter. But if
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: that had happened the year before or the year before that,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I would have been stressing. What are people can say
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not able to walk the walk that I talked.
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  Speaker 1: I was like, I think it was a confidence issues
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and stuff. But at some point in everyone's journey you
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: have to a you build confidence and then also I
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: think we all, for many of us, learn not to
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: care about what other people think too, and just start
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: doing things for yourself and not for others um because
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: nobody really cares what you shoe. They don't well, and
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: if we're being honest about this stuff, you know, if
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you if you're a litmus test for you know, a
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: success or failure on this hunt is whether you kill something.
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  Speaker 1: We fail as bow hunters, especially, we fail almost every
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: single time we hunt. I mean it's like, you know,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: we probably should figure it out at some point, but
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: it's like, what one percent of the time, you kill
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: something two percent of the time, So when you're failing
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: nine percent, they can't look at it that way. That's crazy. Yeah.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I was telling Toni before this recording. We're talking about
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: haunting h Montana this year and stuff, and I was
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: tell him about elk hunning. I'd give myself a five
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: percent chance to kill an elk with my bow this
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: year because it's still foreign and I have no idea
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Um, but I will certainly not consider
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the season of failure if I don't kill one, because
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  Speaker 1: I think in the context of what it is and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: my experience, UM, there's no way there's that's a failure
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  Speaker 1: if I don't get one. But if I'm like thinking
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: about a rifle hunt in South Dakota on the property
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  Speaker 1: that I've hunted for all my life, if I had
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  Speaker 1: that tag and I didn't kill it, dear, I would
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  Speaker 1: consider that a failure because I feel like I've such
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  Speaker 1: an advantage. I know the ground so well, I have
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a weapon in my hand that can shoot three yards.
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  Speaker 1: I absolutely did something wrong or messed up. I failed
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to kill a buck. So in that context, I would
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: then say I failed because I feel like I have
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: a huge advantage. So basically what you're saying is, if
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you put the training wheels back on your bike, you
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: shouldn't tip over. Yes, exactly. And the reason I bring
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: this whole topic up is because I know for a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: long time, um, you know, before well, even once I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: started Wired hunt right, growing up consumed a lot of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: hunting media. I remember getting up Saturday morning watched the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: hunting shows on T and T back in the day,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Jackie Bushman and whatever else it was back then. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And then moving into the adulthood, watching the stuff that's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: been running over the last ten years. The time you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: see a whole lot of big deer hitting the ground,
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  Speaker 1: it just seems so easy. These guys seem so flawless,
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  Speaker 1: they seem so good. And then even talking to people
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, there's a lot of people that come
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: on the podcast we talked to it that are just
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: at least seem like absolute killers, I mean, ice cold studs.
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  Speaker 1: This stuff is just easy for him. Every single year
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  Speaker 1: they get it done. And then I was finding myself like,
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  Speaker 1: holy crap, how come I can't do that? How can
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  Speaker 1: I keep screwing up like this? And I know I'm
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: not the only one who ever feels that way. I
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  Speaker 1: know over the years, I've heard from many, many, many
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: other people. There's a whole lot of folks out there
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  Speaker 1: that struggle that too, makes so many different mistakes. And
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I guess one thing. If there's anything that maybe has
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: made wired Hunt a little bit successful, and I've said
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: this before, but I've gotten this feedback, it's that I've
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: always shared all my failures. And my friend Matt once
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: said that I'm talking about me. He said, you've cornered
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the market on failure, like you've done. You've done the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: best job talking about failures and screw ups and stuff
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: like that. And he and he found that refreshing. It
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: was nice to see that. Um So, the point being,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I thought, today we all I don't don't know whose
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: idea it was, but it was a good idea. Whoever's
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: idea it was that we could just talk all day
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: at least all episode about some of our failures kind
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: of layout or dirty launder on the table, talk about
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: some of the biggest mistakes and screw ups we've made,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: and maybe you get some help from the other two
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: guys here, maybe you talk through some ideas what could
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: have been differently. Has it happened to you guys too.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: This will be like a little bit of group therapy session,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: all right, or to talk through our problems see if
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: we can figure something out coming out of it. And
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and I'm betting there's gonna be some other people listening
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: that say, oh yeah, there would be not in along, like, yes,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that was me. Um, I'm betting that is going to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: be the case. So Tony, Um, start right off with
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: that property we're talking about, sure, because there's this really
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: cool area that I wouldn't hunt this year after my
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Montana hunt, and Um, I've been out there just like
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: recreationally with my family in the past and liked it
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and had started hunting more western states and thought it
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: was really cool. And you also had hunt in this
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: general air in the past. We talked about that. So
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: last year I finally had the time to be able
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: to go out there and try hunting him. This is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: North Dakota, some river bottom stuff, and like I mentioned,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: showed up thinking it was going to be a little
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of a cake walk did not end up being that way,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: and so Dispenser's point, maybe it's not a failure, because
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: you know, I still failed the tag earlier. I still
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: had a great time. Like you mentioned, Tony, it is
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: such a beautiful location that even though we totally struck
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: out last year, I still want to go back this
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: year and I want to try it again because it's
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: even if the deer population isn't that great and if
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: there aren't dear like you know you might want, which
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I think there are based on some of your experiences
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and other people as I talked to Um, even if
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the case, it's still just like such a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: cool experience being there. I want to give it a shot.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But what I want to do is is it kind
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: of layout what we did on that hunt very like
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: cliff note style, And then as much as you're willing
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: to kind of break down what you think our mistakes
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: might have been, sure, Um, so the way this area
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: laid out, we'll keep it kind of high level. But
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: there's this river in the bottom, and there's some high
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: stuff on either side, and right there's a kind of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: a river valley, and then there's hills on the sides,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and we came in thinking that these deer would be
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: feeding in some kind of green grassy food source or
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: something down the bottoms, and that we could sit on
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the hills and glass and see where these deer came
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: out of the thick shrubby or cedar kind of would
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: cover whatever you thought would be. Watch him come out
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and maybe cross the river. Maybe it's head out to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: some these fields and field and and and feed. We
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: would observe that at a a time or two, and then
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: we be able to move right in with our hanging
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: hunt setups, get positioned between the bed and feed and
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: ambush them pretty easily. Thought that would be the case,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: um from the get go. My buddy Further was out
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: there for a few days before I was there, and
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: he was telling me along the way, not seeing many
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: deer at all, just a couple of dolls here and there.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I saw one young buck this, and that there was
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: some pressure from some other hunters hunting other species in
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the area. He was a little worried about um. And
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: then you know, when he was going on hunting, it
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: was like you see one dear night, like just was
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: not the numbers we thought. I showed up five days
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: later or whatever it was, spent one night up on
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a hill and one morning up on a hill, glassing
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: a huge swath of country, and again I saw very little,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: saw handful of dos. One night at last, let I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: saw two decent ish bucks down in the river. Um.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: But decided to pull the plug after that because we
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: drove around that whole day looking to try and find
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: different assets, access points, looking at maps, and I'm thinking,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: we've got like day and a half of hunting left,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: so we've got two options. We either just go and
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: sit somewhere and see what we can do, but have
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: not seen anything that's very encouraging at all, or we
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: totally you know, call an audible drive to a completely
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: different part of the state where I had some intel
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: that I thought we could find some deer in a
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: different kind of way. So I end up pulling the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: plug on this went to the total other part of
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the state. Did find some deer, had some close calls.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: But looking back on it, you have experienced that same
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: general area. You went back to that same general area
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: later in the year and ended up seeing some good deer,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: had some quality opportunities and stuff. Um, what what did
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: we do wrong? Because it seemed like so bleak our
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: situation was compared to what you've seen. So I think
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: what you did wrong is you went out there looking
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: for the destination food source and expecting to key in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: on the travel to and from it. And you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: if you can find an alf alfa field or something
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: out there, it's going to be covered in dear. It's
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: gonna be private, but you know you could have public
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: land deer moving to it if you don't find that.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And I know some of the we were looking at
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: those maps like you were. You're right on top of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: some of the stuff. I've hunted for ten years now,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: and I know from experienced glass and out there that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you're watching that river or you're
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: watching what you think is like the destination for him,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and you just need to spend a one e D
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and start looking back towards where you think the meal
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: there might live and you'll find those white tails. And
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: what you see when you find them is there on
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a just a browsing pattern. They're not really just trucking
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: off to some spot. That's why you don't see the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: major movement across the rivers. If you hunt a place
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: out there where you have a field. Those river crossings
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: are money because that's where they're going, but there's places
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: they don't have that, and so you end up just watching,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you know, you end up getting getting some elevation and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: getting on the spotting scope and seeing those white tails
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in places they shouldn't be there in sage flats. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: so if you and I can say that, it sounds
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: like easy, but I've spent probably at least twenty five
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: or thirty days in my life out there in that
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: spot glassing. You know, I used to go out there
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: for four days at a time before the season to glass,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and so I know this just from getting in the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: same situation. But the deer were there, you just they
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: just weren't. Probably you guys just probably looking a little
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: bit in the wrong way. And you know, it's it's
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: hard to remember unless you walk through that stuff a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: lot out there. But it's a hell of a lot
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: taller than it looks, you know. So it's it's like
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: any kind of long range glassing. When you look at
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the cover, you're like, oh, you know, and then you
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: walk into it you go, whoa, this is freaking head
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: high and totally different. Same deal out there and so
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of times those deer they're they're way more
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: visible later in the season when there's a lot less cover,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and so in early season you might not even see
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: them come out from the cedars wherever they're betting, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: they might make it into that that brush along the river.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: They disappear, they're gone, and until they come out to
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: drink or they come out to cross, you don't see them.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: And so when I went back out there, um, I mean,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: they're they're deer all over. I mean, it took me
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a while to kill one. I killed one, but it
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was it was the river crossing thing was done. I
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: didn't have anything going on there. Everything I had was
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: just browsing. Why do you think that was that they
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: weren't crossing the river? I don't know. The river wasn't high.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: They were. I saw I saw some deer cross it,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: but it was not the consistent. I mean that that's
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: been my go to things out there. You get on
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and watch those crossings, you find where the bucks are
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: going to go down their hanging standard you you know,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: sit on the ground and kill one. I mean, it
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: has been easy for me out there. It's not hasn't
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: been lately, and it's just been a matter of, you know,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: keen into what those deer browsing on, and it's if
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: there's something going on anybody. You know, one thing I've
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: seen the versus you know, the opening week in labor day,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: weekend type of thing when you were out there versus
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: middle October. You see the browse change. You see the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: like the rabbit brush and stuff out there's different colors
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and you watch them feed on different things. And so
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you know, for you, I don't know what was happening
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: there other than they were just they had enough brows
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't crossing the rivers. So analyze my
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: process us. So so my process for this account, I
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: want to zoom out and make it a little more generic.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: So for someone who isn't hunting this specific place, maybe
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they can still learn something about how to not make
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the same mistakes I made hunting a place for an
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: out of state place for the first time. So my
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: process was talked to a handful people who have been there.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I looked at the maps a whole lot, tried to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: find what I thought would be good pockets to cover
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: where I thought they would be dear betted, and then
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: we made a spring trip there and shut hunted and
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: scouted it and and and hit a couple of core places.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of other stuff. We didn't get to walk,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: but I got to scout a couple of patches at
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: least while we're there, And then when we showed up.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: I just told you what I I did when we showed up,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So analyze that process. Was there any process mistakes or
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: tweaks would have made that aren't necessarily specific, just as
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a little piece, but um, the only thing I would
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: say is just you know, you always have to be
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: careful about falling in love with the idea of you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: like you have this idea this is what they're gonna do,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and you you push that dead program. And I'm to
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the point now with hunting and glassing. If if I
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: give it an evening in the morning and it's not happening,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I'm done. I'm moving on to something else. And that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that's you know, that like I almost have to stick
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: to that, otherwise I'll do the same thing. I'll be like, oh,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: this is gonna happen. And when you're sitting there and
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: if you can see a mile up river and down
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: river and it's not happening there. You gotta figure something else.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So sometimes out there, you know, you pick your glassing
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: point of going on X or whatever, and you'll watch
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: you don't see them. Sometimes it's just a matter of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: hiking up that ridge, getting on a different knob and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: just looking a little bit different. And I really it's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: it's really easy to forget about doing that in the morning,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and it's so important out there. You know you'll see them.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: You'll see when it starts getting light out there already
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a lot closer to where they're gonna batt a lot
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of times, and you know it's different than the evening
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: how that progresses, and it it might not put you
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: on a morning pattern, but it'll it'll it'll give you
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a better idea what they're going to do in the evening.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: And so much, at least for me on these odd
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: state hunts, especially states where you can see a little bit,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: getting those visuals. If nothing else, just the confidence boost
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that you're in the right general area. I mean, that
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: is huge, just to know we're in the in the ballpark,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: then all right, and then we can wheel around and
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: figure things out. But I want to know him in
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the ballpark. It's really hard to get serious if you're
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: still clueless. If you're even in the game, that helps
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: it ton well, and that at such a good point.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And like when I went back out there, I got
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: on some deer. It took me, I don't know, probably
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: three days. Had a perfect setup. They were coming in
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: three bucks, it was it was gonna happen. Somebody drove
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: down the other side of the river blew everything out.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So I had to reset, and I didn't have a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: lot to go on, so I just went back to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: my spotting scope and started over. And that's when you're
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in a hunt and you're on the road. It's really
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: hard to go out like for an evening knowing you're
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: not really gonna hunt. You know, you carry a boat
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: in case you see when to crawl after or something.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: But it's just an exercise and futility mostly, but to
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: reset and go, okay, that blew up. What's next? How
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: do I figure this out? And it it takes a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: little time, you know sometimes, but if you're you know,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: if you're open to that, like if you're open to like, okay,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: either I had it wrong. It got blown up on
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: me something like that. This thing has changed, and now
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I need a reset. You gotta reset, you gotta do it.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's that definitely in my mind. It was
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: looking back, it was I had these assumptions going in
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and we didn't adjust accordingly. Now I sort of made
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a good decision, and that the mistake, one of the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: mistakes was not trying to plan B in the same
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: area and like getting in there and seeing stuff up
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: close for changing our vantage point. We didn't do a
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: good job of that. So that was one of the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: state mistakes. What I think was good though, was I
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: realized this isn't working. What we're doing isn't working. Let's
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: hit reset. I just made a really hard reset by
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: driving an hour. Now, by doing that, it put us
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: in a brand new area where we found dear really
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: quick and came really close to shooting some Um So
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it worked out kind of, but it's in a very
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: different fashion. Um But I do know now that maybe
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I could have made it happen still there and sure
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: as heck, are going to try again. Well did that happens?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I mean I did the same thing in Oklahoma last
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: year where I put in a pile of research into
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: this spot, drove down there, got my ask kick for
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: three days. Me and my buddy were like, let's just
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: let's just call it outible go somewhere completely different, Like
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe, like you said, like maybe you
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: could have stayed figured something out. But I just sometimes
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: if you get to the point where you lose that
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: much confidence in a spot, it's good idea to see
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: fresh ground. Yeah, I was just gonna say the confidence things.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy to agree
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: if you get so down on your head or if
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: you're getting beaten up so much, you could change nothing
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: else but just make me feel like there's gonna be
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a better chance because I'm in a new place and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden things start working out, and it's
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: still it's not a complete failure because now you've seen
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: this in person and going into you have a better
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: idea of what to look for when you get there.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: This video series that we did earlier today, within that
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: we took a property that one of the three of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: our was familiar with, and then we had the other
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: two digitally scouted and it was really eye opening. You
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: already know this, but like digitally scouting can only get
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: yourself far and then the person who had been there
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: on the ground and hunted these places had much more
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: awareness of what it actually looks like in person and
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: why maybe your assumption on this was wrong. So it
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: wasn't a failure that you didn't kill one, because now
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: you go into and uh, you know so much more
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: than you did before. Tell you what, though, if I
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: don't kill on in twenty nineteen, that's a failure. I'll
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: be really pissed. And I'm planning on sinking a bunch
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: of time into it this time, like how much time? Uh? Well,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: last year I tried to do attended trip between Montana
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and North Dakota. I think it was something like that,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and I think I gave it like three and a
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: half days. So this year, I'm gonna budget seven to
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: ten days just for North Dakota. So I think I
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: can do it. I like it. Yeah, I think so
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: seven at ten days and h depending what your standards are,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I think you can certainly do it. Yeah, I'm gonna
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I'll probably. I mean it'll be like a three year
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: old is like my floor, Like I'd like to kill
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: three year old. Um, But if I get out there
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and night number one and I'm like saying nice box,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: like nice older box. Then I'll jump my standards up
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: because I know I could shoot like a nice four
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: year old or something like that. I'd have a hard
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: time jumping back down to like a spin lee three
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: year old. If I knew there was a big daddy
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: out there there are Yeah, he's out there. Well, I
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: have these freaking sheds, and tell me there's a small
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: we'll not swamp monster, but a big boy. So I
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: don't know, I'm excited to get back that. One of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the things I love about hunting so much and about
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: like taking to the degree that we take is these
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: challenges like this where you get thrown into a place
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Like why I love hunting new properties so much because
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I loved the figuring out process. I like that figuring
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: out process more than the actual pull it trigger. So
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: this is actually the really fun part of it is
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: struggling and you learn a little bit here or they're
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: they're going to learn a little bit there. And this year,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: if I get on some deer like that, it's gonna
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: be cool even if I don't kill one. So so that, uh,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that is something that I know we can all relate
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to a little bit. Do any of you guys have
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: any other specific hunts like that you would say is
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: like a failure or that you can point to some
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: big mistake you made as far as like tactics or
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: decisions on that front, anything on that line. Uh. The
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: decision wise, I think it was like five years ago.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: It must have been six years ago. Um. I had
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: an okay year hunting up to that point. But it
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: was like November four in a buck perfectly read the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: script and came in and A shot him a ten
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: yards and um, I was so sure A double lung him,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and I saw the arrow he uh ran off. The
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: blood looked great. It was you know, the bubbly pink blood.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I was ignorant and sent out text messages like bb
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: D got on and man never again until I'm like
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: holding those antlers in my hand. Um. But I was
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: super confident that I just crushed this buck. And I waited,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: you know, probably forty five minutes an hour, and I
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: picked up the blood trail and followed it forever and
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: was down to the point where it's just drops, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I ended up one longing that deer. I'm sure he
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: died a mile later, miles later. But I just never
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: found him, and it bugged me endlessly for the rest
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of the year. He got me really down. Um, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know that like, um, waiting longer for the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: recovery would have been the answer, Like that would have
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: resulted in me having, you know, this deer now on
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: my wall or something. It was just the poor shot
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: selection of a slightly quartering two deer that I don't
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: think I'll ever take that shot again, or um, I'll
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: just bring that shot more forward, because is it sucked?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: What happened that really really sucked? Walk us through the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: actual encounter, Like how did it work out this deer
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: coming in? What were you doing? What led you being
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: forced into that shot? Like we forced in that shot?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Or was it the first shot available and you were
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: like I gotta get it, Or what happened leading up
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: to that point? Uh? For most of the encounter he
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: was coming in described the buck to head one envisioned
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: this probably like by five It would have been my
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: best arm tree white tail at the time. Stoked to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: have him and he was coming in pretty much head on,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and I had this encounter lasted probably three or four
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: minutes of just watching him come in because it was
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: on a field edge and then uh, he ended up
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: weaving through some trees and all of a sudden he
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: was at ten yards and that was the first shot
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I had, and I took the shot, and that ten
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: yard shot was like in front of me, whereas had
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I let him come a little bit further too, he
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: would have then been, you know, parallel with me. I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: could have had a more broadside shot ideally, So that
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that was another mistake I made. Um, But just that
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: quartering two shots and the huge like off and down,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I double along this thing. It's going to be dead
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, and then that not happening really sucked. Uh.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: The shot placement, m hm, it was quartering to you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: dramatically just a little bit. You said, what was it?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Just a little bit. It was such a rush too,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: and and I was, I don't know about cocky about it,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: but I was confident that I killed this year and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: it was only ten yards. Ten yards should be a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: dead deer or anybody. And so I think there was
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: like a lapse in my uh attention to detail as
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: well as far as where I might have hit this thing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: But I felt like the the blood and the arrow
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: confirmed that I double lung this year? Do you remember
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: at the shot. I know that I've had a tendency
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: um on like gimme shots that and this is a
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: bigger issue that I will speak to and address. But
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: on the gimme shots, especially like as soon as the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: pin hits the bowl, bamn, I'm firing, Like I like,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I don't take the time on those gimme shots because
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: it just seems so easy. And I know, like you
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: should be taking the spot sink in your eye, like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: right in and then you know, pulling back on it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: But did you feel like it was? It was so
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: easy you couldn't mess up, so you just did it.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And maybe it was an issue like that. Yeah, Um,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: there was. Also I didn't bother stopping the year because
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: he was ten yards, and so I think there was
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: there's a lesson to be learned there as well. Uh,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: it just seemed like too easy of a shot. I
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: was coming off the year before my shot a buck
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: at thirty five yards. He died within fifty yards. I
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: double longed him. Um, So I was confident that a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: ten yard shot should be a dead deer and it
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: should have been, and I just messed up. Where do
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you guys stand on the stop, don't stop, debate? What
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: do you do? You typically stop dear spencer, typically stop him?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And is there any situation where wouldn't other than that one?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe just how aware of me it is, or how
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: on edge it is if it thinks there's something up
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: or um. One time I stopped it to hear that
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I grunted at twice, and when he came in and
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: I ended up stopping him before I shot, he knew
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: then that something was up because he came into an
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: area where, like, son of a bitch, I should be
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: able to see this buck that just grunted at me.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I made the mistake of like nat, doing that at
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: him and stopping him, and then it was like he
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: knew it was up. I shot him and killed him.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: He didn't go very far. But in that case he
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: was on edge um. There was too much information available
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: to him to know that there was not that buck there.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: And so that was a case where I stopped him
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have. But in most cases I prefer to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: stop it because because the argument against it, it's kind
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of you you're um sort of speaking to, which is
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: if you stop them verbally with a sound, you put
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: them on edge and you give it a better chance
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: of a buck like jumping the string, so dropping down
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the arrow goes over his back, that kind of thing,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Tony Man. I'm it's all situational, you know. If they're
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: if they're cruising through and it's it's going real fast,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna try to stop them, you know. Um,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: if I think they're gonna stop naturally, or if they're
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: just walking in there close. A lot of times I don't,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I just dump them, you know. And it's just it's
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: like one of those things you just read in the moment,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: you know. And once in a while you get one
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: of those deers that you murp at to try to
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: get him a stop, and he turns around and runs
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: out of your life, and I really wish that wouldn't happen.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: So it just it just depends. And I do think
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it does come with experience a little bit too, like
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: knowing when you can get away with it when you can't. Um,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Like you said, I'm you know, I definitely I feel
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: like there's a chance that they'll stop themselves, and off
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: time I would rather than do it naturally, for sure.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: But sometimes you don't have that snare but I've I've
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: heard of some people, especially new hunters, were like, if
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you watch hunting TV at all, it seems like every
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: single time someone shoots a deer, they got they first thought,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: got Maratt And so you got new hunters who have
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: like a deer standing stock still in front of them
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: or like really still. They were like they could stop
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: at any point and then people and then shoot him. Um,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you don't need to do that. It's like a taunt
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: or something. I don't know what it is, or you know,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I think some people on TV do it because like
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: they want to pretty shot, like the picture they want.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Sometimes when you know, you hear it on the TV show,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: it's not the hunter, it's the cameraman doing it, you know,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: so they have it in frame. Yeah. So I think
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that you, as a hunter need to remember that you
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: don't need the pretty video shot. You don't do They
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: don't have to murp him, don't murp him. I'm sure
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: you guys have one recovered deer, but have you ever
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: single lunged a deer before? I So, the only unrecovered
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: deer I had was not a single lung the buck
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I killed him Montana, I nicked one lung and ever.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: But I don't have a single long buck that that
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I can think of, or any deer of any kind
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: that I didn't recover Tony I have. Yeah, I mean,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: you know the thing about saying that is if you
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: don't recover from, how do you really know? You know?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: But I I shot one one time in the in
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the Twin Cities. I got on this vegetable farm by
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: my house, and these deer were just like on this
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: little carrot field. It was like incredible. And as soon
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: as I got permission and I saw what was going on,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and this was like a guy's garden by the house. No, no, no,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: it's an organic vegetable farm. So it's a farm. But
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: they have liked a whole field of carrots and never
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: hunted carrots before. And I went out. I got permission,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: My buddy got his permission, and I went out and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: glassed it. It was the season was already in and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting there just glassing, and I just watched all
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: of the like twelve bucks come running in and it's
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: like they're plucking these carrots out of this looser, you know,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and they're they're hold them up like bugs, Bunny. They
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: chop a field, let it go. And I'm like, this
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: is like a dream. It's it's like two minutes from
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: my front door. And so I went in there. There
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: was no good place to hang a stands. I just
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: went and built a little groundbine under the cedar tree
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and had all these deer pour in. I had I'll
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: never forget. I had three turkeys right behind me, all
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: these deer in the field in a in a ambulance
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: went by, and all the turkeys were goblin at the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: siren the all time, and they were like right over
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: my shoulder. And these bucks started coming in. And the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: first good one, which was a really nice deer, got
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: in there and a dough busted me as I drew
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and kind of put the whole thing on edge, and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: I shot him, just squaring the shoulder from the ground.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: But I was like, well, you know, it hit hard,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and he went running off. I had a lighted knock
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and not my arrow went spiraling up in the air.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget it, and I looked for that dear.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: That was one of those ones. It's one of the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: reasons I don't hunt those places anymore, because you're like
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards from people's backyards and it's you know
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: that that farm in the neighboring farm where we got
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: permission to look for him are pretty big. But it
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: was just weird. I don't like being in that situation,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: but that's one deer where I'm like, I'm pretty positive
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I took out one long just the way watching it
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: hit and watching how it transpired, and I never never
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: got I've never saw him again. I don't know if
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: he I don't. I'd like to think he survived, but
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: who knows. You know, he probably didn't. The mistake or wheah,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I shot him in the shoulder. That was dumb. I
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: should have shot him behind the shoulder. Well, I mean
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: my mistake was, in all honesty, was I rushed it
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: because what happened is I had all these deer and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: all this stuff going on, and that dough busted me,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: and I just instead of just concentrating on the shot,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I concentrated on Now, this whole situation is going to evaporate.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: She's gonna blow this up. And in my career, my
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: hunting career, so many of the screw ups I've made shooting,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: you know, missing or hitting him poorly have been just
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: because I didn't let it breathe. I just didn't let
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't take my time, and you think about it,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like literally the difference between taking your
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: time and not take in your time. It's three seconds
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: for five seconds, but it's like just that freaking rush it. Man,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: you gotta get this, you gotta make it happen. And
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I try so hard in my life now to not
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: fall into that, and sometimes I do just from you know,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you get in the moment. It's crazy. But it's like
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: young hunters, you see that so much. And that's like
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: when I'm listening to Spencer talking about this book that
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: he lost and saying, you know it's ten yards, how
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: did I screw it up? And you know it might
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: have been slightly quartering whatever. I always think about that
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: because we always think we know exactly what happened, right,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: But if we don't find him, we don't know. And
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: you just you know, if you if you take newbies
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: out a lot, and it still happens to us. But
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: if you take people out, you know, ask any guide
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: out there, like what happens? So double lungo, I double lungo,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I double they go out, it's gut shot it's hitting
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the brisket, it's hit all you know, like we we
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: just fill in the blanks mentally, man, And it's a
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: lot of times I don't I don't think we get
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: it right. I mean, it's it's so easy to to
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: to rush things. But then like you said, to also
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: put pressure to make it happen right now, because we
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: you know, especially if you're you're getting into a pretty
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: serious but you're still early in that process. So you
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: went out all spring and scouted, You went shed hunting,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: you hunted, You hiked miles and miles and miles and miles,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: picked up sheds and scouted and found betting hears. You
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: went out there in the summer and you hung tree stands,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and you hung trail cameras, and you sat out there
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: in the evening and scout of bean fields. And you're
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: random a couple of miles every day to make sure
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: you were good enough, fit enough to be a hike
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: in a couple of miles in the public land. You
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: did all this stuff, you put in days and days
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and days and days and days and days and days
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: and days and days and days of work, and it
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: all comes down to the next ten seconds of my life.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I will either cashing on that investment of time and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: energy in my life or I will not talk about
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on a couple of seconds. It's
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: really easy to say I gotta get now. I mean,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I've fallen into that for sure. Early on it was
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: like there's a little window I can maybe slip the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: shot in there. If I don't take this shot, never
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: get get the shot again. And I was at that point,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: I gotta take the shot. I think a lot of
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: time you learn a hard lesson if you do that,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: whether it be with a miss, whether it be with
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: wounding a deer, and you realize how much worse the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: scenario is. I would much much much rather not get
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: a shot at all than rush one and wound a
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: deer and deal with what that means. But that's sometimes
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: something that has to be experienced before you actually start
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to be able put into play. Dude, I think it.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I think you have to go through it, and I
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: think it's I think it's just there's a lot going on.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: But part of it's just pure ego, like we all
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: go through. We want to possess that big buck, like
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you believe me, you want to show that picture off,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and I think you go through the stage where like
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: you're gonna screw up a lot, you're gonna fail a ton,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and then you kind of just you get to the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: point where you learn, like that deer, it's awesome, it
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that much to your life, like and really,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: like you said earlier, it really doesn't mean that much
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: to anybody else, and you kind of go, it's still
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: it's still an amazing thing, and it's a driver, but
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you understand that this isn't the end all like this is,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: you know, And and if you don't get this one,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: like you know, it might take you another year. But
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: if you stick at this long enough and you work
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I don't enough, you're going to get another chance, you know.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And the opposite is the other side of the coin
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: is the opposite, and that if you force a shot
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: for your ego and you wound an animal or you
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: hit it and it dies two weeks later, we're talking
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: about the very serious nature of life, Like you are
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: screwing with the life of an animal that could suffer,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: that could have a really horrible, horrible end to its existence.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And that's something I don't think that you want to be.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be trifling with just to stroke
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: your ego. It's bad ju ju man, It's bad, bad,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: all the way around. And it's not even like always
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: ego related, just not having that much experience with a
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: live animal in front of you, just not knowing how
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that encounter is going to unfold. And I think about
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: my like first years of archery, turkey hunting a lot,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: and all the times I messed up not knowing when
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to draw on a turkey and just screwing up a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: perfect encounter that had I let it go, you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: ten more seconds, I would have had a turkey with
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: his fan up, with his back to me and a
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: perfect shot. But it just takes some actual encounters. It's
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: it's so the thing that's such so much more easier
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: said than done. You just need to experience it and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: uh potentially have those screw ups to to figure out
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: what you need to do this this exact scenario. And
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know I should have thought about this when
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: we first started talking about this. One of my biggest
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: groups of all time, the biggest failures, and I've talked
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: about it extensively in past years, but now where this
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: podcast have been around so long, there might be a
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: lot of people that hadn't heard that way back until
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the thirteen I think it was. But um, I did
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: this very exact same thing with the biggest Buck, I
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: would have had a shot in my life at that point.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: It's a great big buck. I called him job breaker,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: talked about him a lot, and you're one. Had some
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: cool encounters, didn't get him. Year two, it was all
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: about trying to kill this dear. Lots of excitement build
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: up around it. I thought I found his bad I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: thought I knew where he was coming going from This
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: whole thing worked out really cool, where like one morning
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Mischian into my office and typing away,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: and then I had this feeling like I got just
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: like I think I need to be in Ohio today,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and I looked at the weather and I saw a
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: front was coming in. I'm like, there's a front coming.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: It's October fift or something. I know where he's betted.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I've been waiting for this one wind direction. I was like,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: if I had a south southwest wind and a cold
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: front hit, even if it's in mid October, I bet
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: you can kill him. And like it was like one
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: of those weird gut things where like usually you don't
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: really know, you know, usually don't really have such a
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: clear calling to like this is something stupid. It was.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: It was a weird thing that I don't know if
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I can speak to another example like this, but I
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: was like, I gotta go. I ran upstairs to my
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: wife's office and say, hey, honey, I gotta go. I'm
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: driving five hours down to Ohio. I think I killed
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: job record at night, and so barreled down all the way.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: It was raining, cold, set up in this perfect one
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: set up where I was gonna kill job breaker, and
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: he didn't show up. I didn't see him. Woke up
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the next morning, start driving back to Michigan. I get
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: stuck in traffic on the highway. On the way back
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: to Michigan. I'm sitting in the car beating myself up
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: about it. Think and think and thinking. You drove all
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the way down here for one night's hunt five hours
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: five hours. Have I said that many times that you're
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: teasing me about it. I genuinely miss that. Uh so
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: there's a five hour drive literally just um, I'm stuck
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: in traffic on the highway, and I convinced myself again
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: to turn around. You gotta do it. You gotta try
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it one more time. Turn around, drive back down, get
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: set up. This time he shows up. He comes walking
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: off from this ditch, crosses right underneath me, like twenty
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: some yards away or something. Kind of a situation where
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: was a gimme shot, except for the rushing part. Came
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: that I had seen him step out of the ditch
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and there was about a ten remember than that twenty
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: some yard wide little opening that he was walking across,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: and I did two things. I number one, to get
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: into the position to get a shot that I thought
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I needed, I grabbed my bone. I had to do
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: a full three spin to be able to get away,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: you know, around this and shoot around the backside of
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the tree. And then number two, I believed I needed
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: to film it, so I took the extra three seconds
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to turn on the camera, spin the camera, and get
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: it on this deer. All the while I'm doing those
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: two things, the deer is walking across the clearing. By
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: the time I get those things, we have dogs in
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: the office, so there's a little bunking going on. By
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the time I got those things done, he was at
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the very end of the clearing and there was some
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: bushy trees that he was just starting to walk behind.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: And I don't I definitely didn't have like the thought
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: like what, didn't have a conversation with myself at the moment,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: but for no doubt about it, in my head, I
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: was like this now or never, you gotta shoot. Shoot,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: like this is your last possible chance. All this, all
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: the two years of time, and then this whole like
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: two days saga back and forth, back and forth, thinking
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: this is gonna happen, then didn't happen, things gonna happen,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Like there was so much put in this moment that
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I absolutely rushed that shot. I fiddled with too much
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: stuff up in the first place, and then I rushed
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: it when I finally did get the shot and I
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: got shot him, and that buck I didn't recover until
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the next February. I don't know what happened. He might
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: have died. I searched him for two days. Maybe he
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: died and I didn't find him within that time period.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe he didn't die for a week, maybe he didn't
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: die for two I don't know, but whatever it was,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: it was not good. Um and so that has just
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: stuck with me forever. To the point now that I
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: so after that happened, I was like, Okay, I rushed
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: that shot, screw up. I gotta practice more or whatever.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: So I thought I practiced more, practice warn't get better.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: And then I had another time where I found rushing
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the shot again, and then I would tell myself, but
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you're fine on the target behind the house. You're fine,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: it's not that bad. You still kill these deer. You're
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: doing fine. It's not a big deal. And then a
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: couple more years one of that where I'm like trying
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: to convince myself it's not an issue. Finally I realized,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: you know what, it's just not worth screwing wrong with
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: something like this. Like so as as many people know now,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I've been like tearing down my whole archery process and
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: rebuilding to try to find a new way to better
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: control those final moments, to be in control of the shot,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: to have an unanticipated release, so I'm not punching the
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: trigger or rushing it. Trying to trying to find all
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: these different things so that there's nothing I'm working at
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: harder now than figuring out those last moments, because it's
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: not it's so easy to grow up and it's not
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: worth it anyway. There's there's nothing I don't think that
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: probably demands more of our attention than being able to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: execute in those final moments. But so many people it's
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the last thing they think about. There's a lot of
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: people who grab their bow two weeks before the season,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: shoot it a couple of times. I hit the balls,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I'm good to go, and then off they go. I
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: just do not think that is responsible with job Breaker.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Do you think there was also, um like a failure
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: when it came to the post recovery, as far as
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: you may have pushed him too soon or anything like that,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so kind of like you, I don't think so, I
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: don't know, but I don't think we waited overnight. So
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: I shot him in the evening right towards last light,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: came back the next day, like I don't know, eight
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: am or something like that. So gave him a lot
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: of time. And then I had two different dogs too,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: So first we went followed blood to the blood ran
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: out after the blood rand. Now we started doing circles nothing.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: A buddy of mine came who had a who had
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a dog who was gonna come help. Anyways, he also
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: happened to have a pretty well trained dog. He helped
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: search for a day nothing and then actual listener, I've
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: been sharing everything on Facebook at the time. Someone who
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: was following along and said, hey, I'm not too far away.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I do this professionally. Whatever, I could bring my dog
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the next day. So I spent two full days looking
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: with dogs um and and I didn't rush it. So
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: I think we we did everything we possibly could to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: try to find that deer. Now. The weird thing, though,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: is come back two months later or three month whatever
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: it was when I was back there to go shed hunting,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: like the first day of February, first week of February,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know. We show up and that buck is
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: right in a spot that we walked by like I
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: can't say we walked within sight of it, but we
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: walked like it couldn't have been more than twenty yards away.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: He was down like a ditch and there's a little
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: tiny it was like the head of a ditch at
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: the bottom's that's the oppos of the whatever, that's the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: bottom of the ditch sort of. And there was a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: spot telling a natural betting spot probably that a buck there.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: He was right there, so we couldn't he might have
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: been in the whole time and somehow we just missed it.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: But with those dogs smelled it, I mean, the odds
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of that, the odds of two dogs missing it so slim.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: So I wonder, you know, this is just speculation on
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: my part, but like I think about something like that,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and I go, that was probably not just a direct
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: gut punch situation. It was probably one of those deals
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: where it maybe looked like that, but it was maybe
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: real low or real high or on the lower side
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: it was, so it was more like contestined. Well, I
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: was gonna say, because I hit one. I had a
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: big one on public land two years ago in South
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Dakota that hit low. I shot at him from a
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: ground blind and my limb hit the ground blind. The
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: whole world exploded, and I thought I missed him, went
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: out there, found blood and ended a long story short,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: ended up finding eight hours later shooting him again. And
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I had hit him like that where it was like
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: he caught some guts, but not just a center punch thing.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: And so I always wonder about that buck. If we
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: hadn't caught up to him and got really lucky to
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: find him and get another arrow in him. I don't
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: think a twenty four hour a weight would have been
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: enough for that dear, Like when we what he was
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: capable of doing, what he was thinking about stuff, he
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: had his faculties about him, you know, eight hours later.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: And so that buck that you shot like that, you
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: know if you just if you naked enough to kill
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: him over time, but it could be, you know, because
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: with with two good ducks, that DearS, if he's gut
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: shot in dead, you find him, I think you would,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: so he's you know that it almost makes it way
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: worse because how long was he out there? Who knows suffering?
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, I mean that will go down. Hopefully
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that will go to the worst, like the lowest point
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: of my journeys Hunter. Hopefully it never gets worse than that,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: because I have for a long time felt pretty darn
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: bad about that and have tried to learn from it
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: and still working to address issues of that and try
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and get better every year. But that one sticks with you. Yeah,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: You've had some challenges with buck fever and stuff like that,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the two right now, old brother, I don't know, I
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: don't know if there's anybody in the world who's ever
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: had it worse. I mean, you guys are sitting here
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: talking about were you know before this, like talking about, oh,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: I've missed three deer. I'm like, I missed three deer
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: in a day. Like I'm like, I I spent it
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of my life. I wanted it so bad,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I just growing up, I just wanted to
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: be a successful bow hunter so bad. And the first
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: couple of years I hunted, I couldn't hardly buy a
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: deer sighting. So when I started finally getting like a
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: few deer around me, it was like such a big
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: deal that had no chance of holding it together. And
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: I'd go through these periods where like for a while,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I might make a couple of good shots in a row,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: and then it flame out for like six shots, you know,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: and I just I had to look at it. And
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: it finally came to a head with me in in Minnesota,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: probably in I don't know, two thousand and I don't
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: know five or something. I guess maybe maybe a little
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: earlier than that. But sitting on a tree stand on
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: like Halloween, you know, just just the night, and sitting
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: in a place where they cruise, and I had this
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: is this is gonna make me sound dumb, and I'm
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: not that I am. So we had gone to uh,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: we had gone to a concert at Fine Line Music
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Cafe in Minneapolis. I had the whole week off to hunt,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and like the Sunday night we went to a concert
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: or Saturday night or whatever. And I was freaking deaf
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: concert Blue October. We're getting all these other details. So yeah,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: so it was a Blue October concert and there was
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: like twenty five people there and it was so freaking loud.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: It was. It was a blast. But I remember my
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: wife and I had we had at the time, she
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: was not my wife yet, but we had a hotel
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: room and I remember laying in the room at night
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: like thinking, Okay, now I'm driving to southern Minnesota tomorrow.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: I can't hear anything, like nothing, And so I go
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: down there to hunt, hunt for a couple of days
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm sitting on stand and it was like the
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: it was I've gone to one concert. I love music.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: I've gone to one concert since that entire time. Because
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: that scared me so bad because I would sit there.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget I was sitting there in that stand
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: and I'd hear I'd see the trees like the wind
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: blown to the trees, and I couldn't hear it. It
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: was so like from me. And I looked down and
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: this fork he came walking by, couldn't hear him in
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the leaves and he betted down and I'm like, I
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: can't hear that, dear, like eight yards away. So anyway,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: this is not what where I'm going with. That is
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: not the failure. That was a failure, and that was
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: dumb different kind of dumb um. And so you know,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and if you want to talk about dumb um, I've
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: like tried to preserve my hearing so much since then
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: because it really wigged me out. And I had a
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: buddy shoot at a gross like three years ago right
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: by my ear and like doubled the ringing in my
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: left ear. Maybe I lay at night. I'm still pissed
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: at him about this. So anyway, total total sidebar. But
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that night, I'm sitting there and it's just the night,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful, and I but I can't hear. And I
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: look up and here's this buck walking by and he's
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: got you know, he's got just a wall of times,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: like just that typical twelve point type deer and he's
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: like one fifties, you know, and to me at that time,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: that was like an unreal dear, like to seat to
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: see it let alone. And I remember just watching my
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: arrow sail over his back like never aimed, not just
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: drew and you know, like road spray and prey, and
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, holy sh it, I screwed it up so bad.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: And so he just kind of trotted a little ways
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: and then I'm in panic mode, like because he's like
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: fifty yards away now, like, oh, I know something's going on.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: He stopped at scrape and I got another air on
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm like every deer sound you can make, snore, whees, athletes, fawns, rattles,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: whatever party sounds, I don't care I'm doing. I'm like,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: please come back into like range, please. And as I'm
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: calling to this buck, I just like look over my
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: shoulder and here comes this like a pointer right by me.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: So I called in this dear, and I just spun
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: around and I shot, and that buck was so close.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: When I missed him, that arrow stuck in the ground
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and he dropped a turn and he snapped my arrow
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and ran off, and I was like, it's you want
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: to talk about? Like a formative moment in your life.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Like I was sitting there and I was like, how
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: do I just destroy everything? Like I immediately just turned
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: in the joke er. I'm like, I just want to
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: watch the world burn. I freaking hate everything. And it
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: was like it hit me so hard because it was
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: two opportunities that, you know, they just don't come around.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: And it was like a ten minute. It was like,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: in ten minutes, I did that and I'm not And
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: that wasn't like the first dear I had missed, you know, like,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not going to be able
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: to continue to bow hunt if I don't have confidence
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: like that I can do this. And I had to.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: I had to take apart the whole thing and start over.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: To man, it was I felt like, I don't know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: have you guys ever hunted with traditional gear, hunted with
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: recurve bla blah blah. So I did a little experiment,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: you know, when I was in college. I'm like, I'm
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: gonna go, I'm gonna try to kill one with a recurve.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: You know, a ton of practice. I ended up. I
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: missed a few deer, I killed a decent buck, which
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: was freaking awesome, killed a dough and I was like,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I think maybe this is maybe I can
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: do this. You know. The next year, I just never
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: I shot a lot. I just never got to the
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: point where I was like, I totally feel okay carrying
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: this in the woods. I started the season with it,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: but I knew, like I had this guilt like you're
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: not you're not there, man, Like you shouldn't be out
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: here with this, and so I stopped. I went, you know,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I went back to a compound. But I realized I
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: was like feeling that way even though I knew, like
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: you said, I could sit there at the target hit
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: it no problem, but when I went out of the woods,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't. I'm like, I'm scared to see
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: that deer coming in because I'm gonna screw this up.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: And that's like, if you're there, if you're at that place,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: you're in a bad spot. Man. Yeah, that's that's the truth.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: And I I'm trying to think here. I mean the
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: same thing you could if we want to stick to
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: this topic. I have had somewhat similar issue, different but
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: similar with gun hunting and that I shoot my bow
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: at ton, I shoot my guns almost never, like if
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I'll shoot a couple of times, you know, just for
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: fun with friends. But then I basically in my past
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: with fire arms, I don't do very much fire running.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: So it's usually like you go out there the day before,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the week before and shoot it once, shoot twice, whatever,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: make sure yeah I hit the bulls eyre hit close
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: and all right, it's it's still on from last year.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And then you go at it um and then all
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: of a sudden you wonder why you missed something or
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: things don't go well. So I mean, for example, I
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: it was two thousand, it was the year before that
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: job breaker shot, and now I was I was hunting
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: a job breaker this year. But there was also this
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: other buck I was hunting that was a year younger,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: a couple of years younger, um. And fast forward through.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: We saw a few times during both season. It's December
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: now and another one of the situation was a big snowstorm,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: cold front coming through. I drove down for the front,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: hit it. It It was a blizzard like conditions. I had
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: shot a muzzlotter, had shot my muzzlotter once, you know,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the week before, just to make sure it's good. I
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: get out there and now I found myself in a
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: situation where I'm trying to climb up into the tree stand.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: It was so much ice on the steps. I couldn't
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: get into the tree stand. So I go to another stand,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: same thing. Can't get any of my tree stand. So
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: I just walked and find a tree stand next to
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: a tree on the edge of the field blizzard like conditions.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: A doe in this book ends up walking out. I
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: have not spent much time at all trying to range
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: deer at long ranges with the without a range finder.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I was trying to range this deer. It was so
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: much snow and wet and crap. I couldn't get a
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: range on him. He's out there. Obviously I believed he
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: was within range. It looked like he was close enough,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: but I'm not. You know, I don't have a good rest.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly as range. It's snowing, it's blizzarding.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I shot the muzzler a couple of times that year,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: leaning up against the tree paw. The buck looks up,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: looks around, gets back down to feeding. It'm like, oh
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: my god, I missed him. Freaking out. This has been
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the same kind of thing like the whole year been
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: going by. I had all these different clothes, calls, nothing
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: was coming together. This was early, this was in that
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: still I haven't really stressed out about stuff phase. So
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I felt this pressure. I had to kill a good buck.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I reload, takes all the time, jam all the powder
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and the sabbath, everything down there, get back up. He's
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: still staying there, leaning the gun against the against the tree.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: The buck looks up, takes a couple of runs to
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: bounce off, stops looking at me again. Oh my god,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding me. Start reloading, and then he
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: finally goes off. But as he's going off, he's kind
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: of slowly walking away. I'm halfway through loading my third shell.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I feel something like dripping into my eyes. Wipe my hands.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I scoped myself, blood coming down my face. I just
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: missed the best buck. I had a chance that all
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: your toys, and it's because I never practiced with my
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: gun ever. I never practiced in shots lead against the tree.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I never prepared for adverse conditions with the gun. I've
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: never practiced shooting without ranging it, so I didn't know
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: how far. I didn't even know what the max range
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: was for the muzzler. I you know, I was like,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: it's over a hundred yards, but probably under two hundred,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: I'll hit him. But you know, I shouldn't have been
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: going out there like that. It shouldn't have known that.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: All right, if it's going to be a hundred twenty
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: five yards, you make that shot on the bowl. But
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: if he's a hundred fifty, you better aim and inch high.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: And if he's a hundred seventy, you're at the extent
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: of your range or whatever it might be. Like now
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: I'm getting the point where I realized you can't skimp
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: on things on the fire ELFs side too. And I
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I had grown up in a world where we hunted
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: with firearms for a few days a year up north,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and the longest shot you would ever have as fifty yards.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: And it was in that situation, at least in our
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: family culture, you shot the night before. If it was
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: still on, you go. And we we saw one deer
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: every ten years, so you weren't really gonna get shot aways.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: So now it's a different scenario. And I feel like
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: it just comes down to so many failures in the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: hunting woods come down to those final moments. But how
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: much of our time throughout the years spent preparing for that.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: For a lot of us, there's a lot of time scouting,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of time hanging stands, a lot time checking
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: trail cameras, showing your buddy pictures, a lot of time
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: doing all that stuff. It's easy to sometimes skimp on
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the other pieces it is. I mean, I think, uh,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: you know, Spencer, is probably better to talk about this.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: You're probably probably the most accomplished gun hunter in this room,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I would say, because I'm terrible at it and I'm
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: you know, listening to you talk about your experiences. Mark, Like,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: I'm in the same boat, Like I can't. If I
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: have deer within bow range when I'm gun hunting their toast,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: it's awesome. But if I'm hunting like normal rifle ranges
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: or even like an easy rifle shot, it's like not
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: a foregone conclusion. And for me, I found like I
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: can miss a year with a rifle pretty easy if
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: it's just standing there. But I'm pretty good at him
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: when they're running. Like like, I don't I have a
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: theory about this. I don't. And this is like only
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a few in my entire life. But and it actually
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the first the only time I've ever big game hunted
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: out west where a rifle was with for antelope one
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: time and I was like, I missed the antelope standing
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: there broadside and smoked him running and you know, antalope
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. I'm like that that had to be a fluke, right,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: But I've had that happened to me like three times
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: with deer, and I've only killed a few with a rifle.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: And it's the same thing, Like I think I just
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: go on autopilot. I mean, I hunt with shotguns a
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: lot on flying birds, and I think I just like
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: take over a little bit there and go, okay, this
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: is this is like it's like totally unintentional. I don't
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: think I'm honestly don't think I'm good at it. I
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: think it just lets me like takes my head out
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: of that little part of it, and I'm better at
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: it than when I actually get to sit there and
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: think about it. But it's all like a familiarity comfort thing,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: you know, like if you're not and like you said
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: about the both thing, if you only take your bow
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: out for two weeks before the season starts, you're gonna
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: feel like I feel a little rifle like probably shouldn't
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: even be there. You know, it's it's it's a rough thing.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, like you just said yourself up for failure,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: you are the best thing for me has been hanging
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: out with these mediator guys more often. They have gun
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: hunts so much that I've been invited on rifle hunts
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: now and there's a lot of peer pressure to make
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: sure I'm not the worst shot there. So I'm very
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: proud that on our last hunt we did a Couzier
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: hunt this last year, everybody missed except for me. Nice. Nice, Yeah,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: And you know that's that's stout company I was with
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: and I was the only one with one shot kill.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm learning. I'm getting better at it um, but
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: it takes work, it takes experience. Like I had to
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: shoot a lot this year or this was last year,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Like the last two years, I've shot more than I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: ever have and uh, and that's not going to be
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a blip on the radar and to try and make
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: that the norm. Yeah, I feel really compy with my rifle.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I've done a lot of rifle hunting. That was I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: started doing that before I was bow hunting, and I
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: had like a stretcher. It was like seven straight deer
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: that were one shot, one kill with my rifle, and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: I like felt unstoppable. Basically like, if there's something within
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: two you on our fifty yards, it's dead. What does
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Spencer do when he feels unstoppable, I'll tell you what
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: he does. So, like I felt really really competent as
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: a marksman with my rifle, but I like quickly realized
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: that I was much too dependent on my bipod. Like
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: almost all the shots I was taking was sitting with
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: off of bipod or prone off of a bipod, which
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: in that scenario it is so easy to hit your target.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: But one year I was hunting from the ground and
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I had a big white tail like a hunt buck
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: coming through some crp that was ground level with me,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and I tried to get a shot off of my bipod,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: but I was just too low. I couldn't get my
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: scope high enough to even like get this thing in
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: my scope. So then I had to shoot standing up,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: free handing it. And I stand up and get ready
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to shoot, and I was so lobbly. There wasn't there
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't buck fever or anything like that. Like I just
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: had to execute, you know, hunter and fifty yards shot
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: standing up and I could not do it. And do
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: you feel like that should be an easy shot? I
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: think so standing up free hand hundred yards, I I
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: don't know, I just I just don't maybe not that.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't even close, Like I didn't even feel
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: competent enough to consider pulling the trigger because I wasn't close,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and I realized I was way way too dependent on
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: my bipod. So you didn't shoot. I didn't shoot. Not Yeah,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: but if you could have seen my scope out in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: the field at this you had to realize, like for
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: me to shoot, I feel like I would have had
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to have it in my scope. That's how wodly I
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: think I was. But it was something that, uh, you know,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like Spencer might have like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: an aim issue, Like he's really worried about when he
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: aims things because earlier today, earlier today might be right.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: We're filming stuff today. So Spencer was wearing a microphone,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: like one of the wireless mics, and he's gonna go
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: to the bathrooms and talks start. Production teams say how
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: do I take this thing off? You know, I gotta
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. And they're like, well, you can
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: just do this or whatever, but he's like, you know,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: it's just fine, We're not gonna listen or anything. So
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Spencer goes in the bathroom, comes back out, and the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: microphones like obliterated. It's in three different pieces. Were like,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: what what did you do in there? And he goes, well,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I have to get completely naked before pee,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: shoes off and everything. It looks like a Todd that
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: went to the bathroom. There's just a trailer closed, lady.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: The last thing you see his Spencer's underwear hanging up
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: the door knob. So yeah, I feel like that must
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: be because you're worried about your aim. You don't want
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: to get anything on your pants, right, must feed must be.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna let that linger. We're not gonna tell you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: whether that's true or not, but that that was eye
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: opening for me. That like, yeah, just just like somebody
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: with their bow. People preach this all the time, like
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: practice from uncomfortable positions, like practice sitting down, practice sitting
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: or standing up, practice drawing. You're like bent over and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: then you have to you know, straighten your back or whatever.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: And like I think archers who are serious are really
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: good about doing that, but a lot of gun haunters aren't.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: Like after that, I mean out and I started practicing
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: shooting off a fence post and practice you know, shooting
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: off of leaning off of a tree and freehand and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: everything else, because, like I said, it was just too
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: dependent on that bipod. It made it, uh like I
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: just got lazy with doing everything else because I thought
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: every shot would come easy off those two sticks where
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: you have a really hard time messing up. Yeah, you
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: know what that reminds me of kind of like what
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: you're talking about. It's like if you're in a turkey plant,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: or if you're in just a hub stop lind and
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: you have your decoys or your shot set up in front,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: and you know that turkey comes in behind you and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: you have to open the window and scoot around and shoot.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: You screw that up every time, every time because it's
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: not like the simple easy thing that you but you
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: should probably be sitting in yard practicing for that. You know.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Well that's this gets a little woo woo. But I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: think it has helped me a lot. And we talked
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: about this with somebody recently. It was John Dudley or
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know who it was, but visualization like what
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I get into a tree every time I visualized actually
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: imagine watching a deer come walking in front of me
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: into each of the different places I think a shot
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: might happen, and I imagination station watch this buck come
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: walking across in that lane. I will practice drawing back,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: imagine imagining stopping him um and making sure I can
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: actually draw back, making sure I can move into position,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: and think through everything I'll do. And I try to
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: do that each time in like three or four different
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: locations in the tree. You got a lot of time,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: usually sitting up in the tree. That's a great way
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: to use it in a productive fashion. And I do
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: think like your brain operates a lot more smoothly when
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: it's gone through a scenario, and even if it's faked,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: even if you were just visualizing it. Like there's so
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: many examples of this outside just hunting, but in like
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: the sports world and all these different yields. This stuff
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: really does help your mind perform under pressure in the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: real scenario if you've already walked it through in your head.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: So I can't recommend doing that enough. I do that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: all the time, all the time. When I'm gonna true
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: stand aim at leaves that are you know, I think
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: so too. I'm gonna vote not, I'm gonna vote. That's
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: real world, good, solid advice. Good alright. I got the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Tony Peterson stampoo approval, but not than that woose stamp
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: um uh so not woo woo. But we're still talking
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: about state of mind issues, Spencer. You're really aggressive with
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: certain things like related to clothing and using the bathroom onnot.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: I just imagine I couldn't stop thinking about, like what
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: this would be like. Does he like really like petitely
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: drop everything. He's like an animal that was never supposed
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: to have clothes on in the first place. And it's weird.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Is this the same guy that thinks that Bobcats and
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Turkey's mate. He's got a lot of quirks, Tony. There
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: are there are people who have told me that Bobcat
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Turkey think was the single best thing they've ever heard
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: on a podcast ever. Spencer, he's a he's a he's
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: a genius content. He brings some really special things to
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: the table. But what I'm trying to get to here
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: is that you told us that you have had issues
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: as being not aggressive enough that's a failure of the past.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: Is that something worth speaking to? Yeah, I think if
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: you are somebody who kind of like learns white tail
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: hunting from magazines and watching TV and stuff like that,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: you see this pattern of these hunters have this property
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: that has an area that you don't hunt until the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: rout and basically, you know, if you can haunt in September,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: you're hunting field edges, if you can haunt October, you're
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: only haunting evenings and maybe little bit into Timber. But
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: then like once it comes November, then you can haunt
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: your better spots and uh like without having kind of
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: a real world mentor for white tail hunting, I thought, Okay,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: that's what you do. That that's what you do. And
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: so my first couple of years bow hunting, I had
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: some success. I killed a few deer um doing just that,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, that's that's the answer, that's what
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: it is. But then I struck out for like three
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: years after that, and I learned that I was not
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: being near aggressive enough. And it wasn't until like, um
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: kind of removed myself from those sources of information that
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: like it's this you know, very practiced, uh like amount
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: of pressure that you should apply or whatever like that.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: That's still relevant. You had to be smart. But when
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: you pick and choose a hunt. Um. But I've had
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of like eye opening conversation with Tony, for example,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: about he is very aggressive when it comes to thing
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: and I need to certainly do more of that. And
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: like seven or eight years ago, I had to do
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: way more of that because I wasn't even close to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: being aggressive, you know, I was doing just like the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: things that you should, like I said, field edgies and
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: just the evenings and then maybe a morning and stuff
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: like that. And like if you have a certain set
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: of circumstances that works really well, right, I mean, it's
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: all about like reading your situation right and finding that
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: balancing act right, like what is necessitated here and what
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: what can you get away with? What can't you get with?
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: There are scenarios like you know, I mean we're talking
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: about like the juries of locastokies or something that you
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: get these huge farms control everything. You can keep the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: pressure below that methodology that they use from you can't
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: argue it doesn't work for them, right, And and like
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: it's just not relevant to everybody else. Ten or fifteen
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: years ago, that was kind of the only information available,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: not not literally the only stuff, but that was so
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: much of what you saw. But now there's a lot
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: more guys that speak to you kind of that aggress
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: same style of haunting. You hear about it with you know,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: the Haunting Beast and people like Tony and huying public guys. Um, Like,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that is completely the answer either, but
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: there's a balancing act. And I wasn't there for my
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: first few years ago. That was certainly a problem. Was sorry,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: that's ah. I mean, that's just a symptom of getting
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: your information from the wrong place. I mean, like you said,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: you didn't really have a choice, but you always have
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: to like vet where this is the advice is coming from,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: you know. And I was like, I would use the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: example like if if Mrs Peterson got hit by a
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: bus tomorrow and I got dating advice from Brad Pitt,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't be relevant to me, right, Like he
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: probably had an easier life going after the ladies than
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: I would, and so it wouldn't be It would be like,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: you know, when when somebody who lives on a thousand
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: acres or four thousand acres in southern Iowa says, you know,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: hunter food plots leave these sanctuaries alone and move it
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: like that plan is awesome for them. It's a good idea.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: And like Mark said, if you have that go ahead,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: you know, we know that that's the best way to
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: do it. Most people don't have that. You know, if
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: you're hunt in public land in Pennsylvania, that's like that
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: is absolutely worthless advice to you, basically, And so it's
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like a matter of just and that's why these guys,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: like the Hunting public and stuff have got so popular.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: They're showing you like, here's here's your world, guys, here's
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: what we're doing in your world, and you go, holy cow,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: you know it's it's amazing. And you know they're still
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: doing stuff differently and you know, taking different tactics and stuff,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: but it just opens up the world to like more
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: relevant advice to each of our situations, I think, And
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I think the key thing at least that I have
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: taken is like my favorite thing about doing this podcast
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: over all these years is getting to talk to so
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: many different people who have all had a whole lot
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: of success, and many of them do it in wildly
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: different ways, Like there's so many different ways to do it.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: And I still believe that it's not worthless to get
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: advice from the Lakowskis, even if you don't. He's pointing
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: at me, by the way, the just just because he
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: said that, and because at the same period, like I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: don't hunt um the same stuff that Dan Infall hunts. Maybe,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: but I'm still going to take something. I think you
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: can take something from everybody as long as you pass
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: it through a filter. I would say, take, consume it all,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: take it all, break it apart, like pick it apart.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Hear what Marjorie has to say here, what Dan Infall
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: has to say here, what Tony Peterson has to say here,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: what Spencer Newhart has to say and think critically about her?
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: Why does this work for them? What is the situation
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: that allows those things to lead to success? What does
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: that mean for my situation? What could I take from Tony?
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: What can I take from Spencer? What can I take
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: from Joe Blow in Florida? I mean I think that
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: I think that you can learn a little bit from everything,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: even if they come from different circumstances. Because if I
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: only ever pay attention to guys did exactly the same
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: way that exactly the same place as me. Your situation.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: I do think you're missing out as some interesting things.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Um So it's just like you gotta have that filter. Yeah,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: And I think if the if the script was flipped
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: and a decade go, my uh, like I wasn't only
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: watching the Lakowskis and the Drewies and stuff like that,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: and it had been the super aggressive hunters like the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: hunting public or something that probably wouldn't have been that
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: beneficial either, like only knowing that kind of guerrilla style hunting.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, I was way way too passive
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: to start off with, and once I realized that it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: needed to be more aggressive, that was certainly a turning point.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: And it was a failure to not be more aggressive
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: for those first few years. And I'm right there with
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: you too. I did the same thing. And I'm still like, definitely,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I definitely air towards be careful. I don't I have
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: a tendency to want to go careful first and ease
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: my way into things. I've been trying to test more
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and more of the aggressive things, but I definitely have
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: that same predisposition. But where for for either one of you, Like,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: what's your litmus test internally for knowing what's how far
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: do you push it? Like, I don't know if you
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: have if there's it's hard to say that without any
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: specific example, But is there any example either one of
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: you guys can speak to to help us understand, like
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: how you judge how aggressive is aggressive enough versus not?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Is their story or experience that would speak to that?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: I could say For me personally, it's almost always a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: matter my My aggressive strategy is almost always a matter
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: of getting in on some fresh sign and setting up
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: at the edge of where I think it's good. And
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: so mine's like I do like a lot of one
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: two things. So I want to observe, and so I
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: forced myself to get in, but like cautiously get in
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: to watch. And so I'm not you know, I'm not
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: relying on trail cameras anything I want to see with
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: my own eyes, and I'll be hunting. And once in
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: a while you do kill when doing that, but usually
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: that's like the half step, you know, like then you
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: got to see what's going on and then move in
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: and get aggressive. And if I see something I like,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: then I get really aggressive. But it's always kind of
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: like a measured observation thing. Not always, but a lot
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: of times, and then it's like, Okay, you're right or wrong,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: or you found it or you didn't. And then if
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: you find it, you go yeah. Another big thing I'm
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: always thinking about is like what do I have to lose?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: And that changes at different parts of the year, that
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: that changes on different types of hunts. So if I'm
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: like on a short seven day hunt and I'm three
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: days in, what do I have to lose at this point, Well,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: you I got three more days. Worst case in there,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: I blow it off for the next three days, but
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: I don't have that much time left. While if I'm
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: hunting a small property in Michigan that I have the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: next three months I'm supposed to be hunting and I'm
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: depending on this is maybe it's my best spot. Then
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: if I have two and of months left, I get
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: a lot to lose if I get super aggressive right now.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: So I'm constantly trying to think what do I have
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: to lose and how high are the odds of success.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: It's this constant like scale, and I gotta sit there
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: and have to try to analyze what's on the left
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: side of scale, it's on the right side of scale,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: and sometimes of year or in some situations you're okay
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: with it being off balance, sometimes not. But I think
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: that does take a little bit of personal experien is
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: to start to understand. Well, yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's entirely tied to how much land
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: you have to rome. You know, if you if you
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: only have twenty acres and you're in the suburbs somewhere,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: and aggressive, you know, Tory gilly suit on approach is
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: probably a bad idea. You know, if you live somewhere
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: where you got a couple of thousand acres of public
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: land or fifty thousand acres and go nuts man started rolling.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: And I would guess that, like your aggressive hunting style
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: is really a product of kind of being a traveling
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: d I Y guy. You have five days in this state,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: so you can't really afford to be passive. Um, it's
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: it's partially that. I mean, that's where I learned it,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: you know. But I do that at home too, and
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I do it in Minnesota. I do in Wisconsin to
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: to to some extent, maybe not quite as aggressively, but
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: it's more it's more a matter of having two little
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: girls at home and not you know, like I don't
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: ever have a month, you know to sit on and
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: wait for the right conditions. You know. It's it's almost
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: always like a short duration thing for me. And so
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: it's it's a matter you know, if I played too cautious.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything going on a lot of times. Yeah,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: and like when I lived in South Dakota, I would
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: be fairly cautious and stuff. But if it got down
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: to the wire and it was you know, the last
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: three or four days of gun season, I had a
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: gun tag that I was really excited about, I would
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: get as aggressive as doing soft deer drives that we
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: talked about on this video series. Um, you know, just
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: like blowing deer out of sanctuaries that a lot of
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: people would consider taboo. But in that situation, I felt
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: like that's what it calls for. Yeah. I blew a
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: lot of deer out of sanctuaries too, But there's nobody
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: posted at the end of him Tony. When you end
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: a hunt, like you when the when the traveling hunts.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: When you end a hunt and you didn't kill a
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: buck eight times out of ten. If you could put
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: your finger in something, why why didn't you kill a buck?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Is there some typical thing you could speak to, like
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: this is you to the issue? Or this is usually why? Uh,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: most of the time, it's riding a dead program too long.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: You know, if you only have four or five days
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: and you know, you get locked into the research you
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: did and you show up, and especially if there's like
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you know, some ground truth to it, where there's some
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: sign there, it's that's the danger of It's like, you know,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: it's sometimes it's hard enough to get a plan A
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: and to have a quality plan being can be really hard.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: So you talk yourself into that. But you know, like
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: I should probably talk about like if we're talking a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: failure episode and a mistake episode. I think my biggest
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: mistake I've made as a bow hunter so far, and
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: that has led to probably my most consistent failures, is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: ever deciding I was going to hunt the big Woods
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. I'm and I like, that sounds like a joke,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: but really I'm sitting here like just about in tears
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: because I get my butt kicked over there all the time,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's like got in me like
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: you're talking about this North Dakota stuff and I'm listening
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: to you, and I'm like, man, that's so easy compared like,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: but it's different. It's just different. You know, it's like
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: the antithesis of each other. It is in it, but
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: it's just solid timber versus a state that you know,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: the state tree is the telephone pole. So it's so different.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's a matter of experience. But when
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: I go, I've like, I've made up my mind to
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: hunt these big wood bucks on public land. I'm mostly
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: on public land. Once in a while I hunt in private.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: But it's like I will I will scout in the spring,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: I'll scout in the summer. All I'll put in more
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: work there than any other state I've got, Minnesota, whatever,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and I will think, Okay, this is the year. Like
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I've I've seen him in the hay fields next to
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: the private you know, I found the rubs, I found
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: the staging areas. Maybe I saw a big one, because
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I've seen a few big ones up there on public land.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: But I go hunt and it's like, you know, this
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: guy comes by in four wheel or to go refresh
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: his bait site, or you know, the wolves come through
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: or something, and it's just or I just you know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: I get busted by those crafty doughs up there. Like
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: it's just it's the hardest thing that I do year
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: to year for deer, and I just don't. I like,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I almost can't get it right. Once in a while,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: I do, but I've never killed a big one up there,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: and it's just like it's like the place I go
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: just to fail, Like I I just know and im
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm talking, you know, I'll spend more time during
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the there than anywhere, and that my odds of killing
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: anything are so much lower than everywhere else I could be.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: And I keep driving across that goddamn river and I
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: keep going over there, hut, and I just it's just
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: one of those things, like it's just a stubborn thing,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, my mistakes over there. Maybe that's what
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: bothers me the most is I feel like I feel
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: like I'm not I feel like I'm putting in the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: work and it's not happening. Like it's it's like when
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: you're fifteen, you know, and you've been be hunting for
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: three years and you're like, I'm sitting in the tree
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: stands like I'm doing the same things everybody else is doing.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: Why is this not happening for You're like the dog
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: chasing the car. Oh my god, I'm like a lot
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: of efforts. I'm like a blind three legged dog chasing
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: a car. Yeah, one of these days you're gonna cross
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: the intersection. Gees, I mean my wife, My wife will Joe.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Every year, I'll say, like usually by like about November
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: fifteenth time, like, do not ever let me go back
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: to Wisconsin. I'll go over there to duck hunt, grouse hunt, whatever.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: If I tell you I'm going to your hunt there
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: to divorce me, leave me, I don't care, like, make
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: make the stakes real. And every year I go back,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: Are you going back this year? I'm going back and
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: I got a new theory and I'm I'm I've got this.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: There's this this area of managed force land and it's um,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: it's gotten pretty big now. I don't know if it's
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the same Timber company or not, but it's it's private
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: land enrolled into the tax program, so it's public, you know,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: and they log it and so it's various. You know.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: You and I were talking Mark and I were talking
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: about fire burns up in the boundary waters. And you
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: know where we're at in Wisconsin, a lot of a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff is centered around the clear cuts, and
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: this this timber company keeps cutting the clear cuts, and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: there's you know, there's old growth and new growth and
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: five year old growth, and there's a lot of deer
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: in there, and every once in a while, halilay eyes
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: on just a pig in there, like just I mean,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: I saw one a couple of years ago. That was
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: when when I first laid eyes on him. I'm like,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: that's at least one sixty and I'm talking legit, big
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: box and I'm just I think, I'm just I'm gonna
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: go way later this year. I'm gonna go right before
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: the gun season. I'm gonna hunt the middle of November.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna not going over there in Halloween. I'm not
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: doing any of that bs. I'm gonna go for that
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: time like where that big mature buck might be cruising
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: right before. You know, the wild card there is you
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: can bait, and so I want to just go catch
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: them cruising. So I'm not running a corn pile, but
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: there's five million corn piles out there from gun hunters,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: and so it's like a it's like a wild card thing.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: But what I see is those bucks get real wise
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: to those spots. Anybody can drive an a TV two
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and they seem to stay in those those you know,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: five years seven year old clear cuts. And so my plan,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: my new plan, after getting my butt kicked, is I'm
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: focusing on that stuff at that specific time all day.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Sits for like five or six days, and I'm just
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: gonna roll the dice on a big one screwing up done. Interesting,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: I'm already I already can feel like it's gonna suck,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Like I'm I'm already like I know that might sound
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: like sort of convincing, but I have so little confidence
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: it's gonna work. I could totally relate those just like
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: the big woods in northern Michigan. I mean that's exactly
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: I've grown up there, pounding my head against the wall,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: wondering why isn't this working? Wi isn't this working? So yeah,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: I've I've wondered the same same things and struggled the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: same things. I haven't put in, you know, not as
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: much time as it sounds like you're putting in. Like
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not devoting my best days of the rut to it.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: I'm there the handful of first days a gun season. Um,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: but but yeah, I've started. I did some last year,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: spent a little bit more time in our big woods stuff,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: and I did kind of like a scouting hunt into
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: this public stuff that I've never gone this far back before.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: I tried to get way back into this swampy stuff
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: that's like smacked down in the middle of two roads,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: like the farthest point from both of those roads have
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: a big creek that runs through and I got damned
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: by beavers a long time ago, and it's still kind
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: of a big marshy area because of that. And so
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: I headed in there and kind of scouting my way in,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: and it came across like there's not many deer in
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: the are in general, so when you see sign, like
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: any sign that's like a positive thing, you don't see
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: stuff littered everywhere. So I see a rub, see another rub,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: and I realized that there's like a little bit of
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: an island with some evergreens that I'm on here, and
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: there's another rub run here in a scrape and a rub,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: And I found more concentrate buck sign this little patch
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: than I've ever seen in my twenty five years that
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: I can remember hunting and hiking around and there like
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: like it looked to me like right away, all right,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: this is literally a bedroom. There's a buck bedroom way
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: deep in here. And it was an island in the
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: swamp not I wouldn't call a swamp, was a little
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: piece of high ground what I wouldn't call it swampy
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: enough to be swamp, but just off the edge of
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: the swamp, so imagine like standing water. And then I'm
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: back like forty yards from that it's slowly getting a
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: little higher, little higher than like a little knoll almost
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: of evergreens um and then make some just thick junk
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: red in there, and it was just ripped to shreds,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: and I could see bucks, you can see rubs. Found
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: that edge like a soft edge to the swamp edge
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: to like where the hard timber began. And that's a
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: spot a little I want to get in there this
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: year and uh try to hunt that actually during the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: rut and see what's going on around there, back in
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: that gnarly stuff. Because I've started trying to find like
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: these soft edges, find either like what looks like a concentrate.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: I've never found concentrations like this, but I was hoping
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: to find something like that and or just like these
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: internal soft edges and try to hope that someone's gonna
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: cruise along with something that they move in through there.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: And that's the best idea I can hop at this point.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: I'll be curious to hear how that plays out, because
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: I've found a few. I've got one island in a
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: in a swamp over and you know, you know, a
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: real lowland over in Wisconsin that if I go out there,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: you know, grouse hunting or something late season when it's
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: frozen and you can just walk out to it. It's
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: like that you just walk into it and you're like,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: holy cow. But I've tried to like figure out how
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: to bow hunt it, and it's just such an advantageous
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: spot for that deer to bed. I think it's just
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: one of those places that you know, a big, big
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: guy lives there for a while, he dies off, wolves
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: get him, whatever, and then another one moves in. I
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: think it's just like that spot and I have yet
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to capitalize on it. But it's
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: like it's just they're like taunting me. So I'm curious
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: to hear how that goes for you. My thought process,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to go in there, like the
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: first day, I can walk in like three hours before
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: daylight or whatever it is, way before daylight get in there.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: So I'm not going to push him out and just
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: be set up and said all day and just hope
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: that maybe there happens to be a buck still there
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: that comes either maybe he doesn't actually live right there,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: maybe that was just happened stance last year, but maybe
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: I'm in a spot that I haven't been in the
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: past that for some reason the buck really likes spend
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of time and then cruise through or it come.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe he is maybe comes back in beds there and
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: you know, fribus bike. But knowing knowing this, it will
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: be a big body, good eating exactly, so we'll see.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of failure in those big wood
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: situations is tough. I was going to try to do
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: um and looks like it's gonna be pushed next year,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna try to do a big woods Northeast
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: hunt tracking them in the snow. That's an idea that
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's really cool. So yeah, I was gonna
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: do that this year pushed a year, but still on
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: my schedule. I'm gonna try that and maybe that will
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: be the way to do it all the time in Michigan.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'll start talking with a rifle, right, Yeah, so
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: that could be a pretty cool way to do it. Um,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: We've really, I feel like, embarrassed ourselves, laid ourselves out there.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: Is is horrible failure ridden hunters. Maybe no one's gonna
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: listen to this podcast any ever. Again, this might have
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: been our greatest our greatest mistake of all was telling
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: these things. Credibility going yeah, credibly vanished. Um. But before
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: we wrap it, is there any other final thing that
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: popped up in your guys minds that you want to
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: um get out there or speak to UM. I think
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: if I had a concluding thought, I would say to
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: all the listeners, just understand that everybody you see out
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: there doing this sucks at it most of the time.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: Like understand that that that's just reality. We everybody gets
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: it wrong way more than they get it right. Yeah,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: you said one percent before, and that seemed generous for
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: like how often a person is successful because a lot
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: of overshot it. It seems maybe a little bit generous.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I think if you're talking to general hobby, general hunting population,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: for you know, every day they hunt versus killing, it's
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: probably way high. Well maybe I don't know. It tends
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: on what they're trying to kill too, though. Yeah, if
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: it's true, if you're trying to kill a mature buck,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: then yeah, buch a one percent A lot. I don't mean,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you looked at how many times,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: like how many five day hunts do you go on
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: Tony that you kill buck? Mature buck on average or
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: a week long hunt whatever. Mature buck maybe one to
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: two a year, some good a really good year maybe
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: three or four, and that's like a you're you're thumping
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: your chest for a while because you're hitting at least
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: like most years. Then for mature box, no, I probably hunt.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: It's not actually sorry, not days hunted, but trips tags filled.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: Oh I I feel a lot tags. But I have
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: pretty low standards in a lot of places. Right, Yeah,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: there's a when you're talking to me, there's a big
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: difference between talking mature bucks and talking just killing stuff.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Um so yeah, I mean I kind of I figured
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: it out one time with my hunting buddies, on our
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: out of state trips a few years ago, and just
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: overall for meal deer, antelope, and primarily white tails. Just
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: my little group with guys, we were we were at
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: and that was that was ranging from unbelievable awesome animals
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: to little spiker scraps or does or something. So it
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: was just like wide range. You know, if you're if
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: you're talking three and a half and four and a
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: half or better, you're talking real small percentage and then
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: you you knock it down from very experienced guys like
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: you guys too, most folks don't haunt that much much much,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: much lower percentage. I'm sure. So your point's well taken. Good,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: good Spencer, uh Tony. Earlier you brought up like buck fever,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: but I don't know if you addressed like where you
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: were at now? And I know you've written an article
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: for Meat Eater about this, like how to suppress buck fever?
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: So what did you learn from that process? And like
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: where are you at now with your buck fever status?
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I am? I am so much better, No, But like
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: it's just it's once in a while, Like I was
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: telling you when I was in Oklahoma last year, I
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: had unbelievable, non typical come in on public land, came
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: running in and chase the dough and I just flat
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: out missed him, didn't just rushed it dumb, you know,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: And so I'm not immune to it. But if I'm
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: sitting on my tree stand and you know, I see
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: a buck walking in and it's just a normal, decent scenario,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: even if they come cruising in a lot of times,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: I mean what I do. Like Mark was talking about visualization,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: I started to think about deer's targets, like when I
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: see him like and not like in a like a
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: demeaning way or anything, like, I look at him and
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: I go, I wouldn't miss you. You throw a Rhyan
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: harder at Glendell out there, I'm not missing that sucker,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: you know, like you could do that if you look
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: at them that way. And actually a lot of times
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: the deer bigger than the targets, and you're like, you
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: wouldn't miss that with a thousand arrows, but you can
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: miss that when it's got a heartbeat. And so I
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: started looking at him and I think, like, you know,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: you're sitting on that bean field in that buck walks
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: like you wouldn't you would never miss a target there.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: So there's like some self talk to you actively in
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: your head, like Tony, you got this, you never missed
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: do that? Oh my god, I'm yeah, I sure do.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: I mean that's why I'm glad we're having therapy because
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: I've had a lot, like I've had a lot of
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: therapy in my life. So I'm like this is this
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: is nice? Yeah? I literally in my head, I'm like good,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not like screw this up. I'm like, you know
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: you can do this. Come on, buddy, Like, look at
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: that that. If that wasn't target, I can see that.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: I'm too obvious. Um. Yeah, that's a that's a really
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: good point though. So But to answer Spence's question here,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: like we're talking years and years and years and lots
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: of hunting to get there, like to get over that,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: and I'm not. I'm not over it. I'm just so
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: much better than I was. But like I was bad,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: you know. So I mean it's it took me. And
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: you know the other thing about that, you know, solving
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: that issue. You know, I interviewed Randy Olmer for that,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: and Randy's so freaking accomplished, you know, and his his
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: thing was target practice somehow with something at steak. So
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: shoot a competition, shoot against your buddies, you know, get
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: get yourself in the headspace where like you want to win,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: you want to concentrate on that shot. And there was
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: a lot more to it, but for me that was
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: part of it. But also just watching more and more dear,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: doing more photography and scouting as much as I could
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: in the summer, and just sitting back and glass in
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: these bucks because I think that's the thing, like we
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: don't we don't spend any time around them, you know,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: like that we think about them all time, and we
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: do not like you don't spend like you don't walk
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: out into the parking lot here and you know pedal hundred,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: they're not there, Like you don't see those list is Montana, Tony,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a sould on Montana as I
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: used to be. After this trip, I've been running into
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: some some rough people. Man. Um that's a different that's
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: that's spotter for a different podcast. But I think just
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: like seeing them kind of demystifying that and going, man,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: they're they're just they're out there doing their thing. They're
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: not these crazy six cents, super smart things that we
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: give them credit for. I don't believe that for a second.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Like I think they're just surviving machine survivors. Yeah, so
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: watch them, Spencer, any other thoughts or no. I like
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: that way of thinking about it. But like some buck
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: fever is fun too, Like those are the funniest moments
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: I think of the entire year, that ten seconds or
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: that minute leading up to the shot. Uh. And it
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: can be like kind of healthy too. Sometimes it's like
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: really focuses you in Now it's not healthy or fun
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: if it's debilitating, you know. Um, but I don't feel
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: like I'm there, But I enjoy that rush, you know,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: right before that happens. I just want the mega rush
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: after the shot. I want to make sure, like the
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: shaking and freaking out that part of it, the debilitating
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: part you want to have after the release. People out
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: there who claim that I'm not one of them, I
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: get it at all points. So I knock on wood. Now.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: I have my issues and they're well documented. Like my
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: issue has been rushing shots, Like like the pin gets
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: on target and I'm shooting it and it's almost like
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: a lout of my controls. It's my issues have been
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: the past but knock on wood. The last five or
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: so years, like haven't had that, like shaken, freaking out,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: like leaning up too, I have not had that. I
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: had one well that was even different at one time
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: where my legs went out of control, like it was
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: the weirdest thing. I got stuffed as that mean, like
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: I got stuck at full draw on a buck. So
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: I drew back. The buck was one step in my
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: shooting lane, and then he stopped and was staring at
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: me up in the tree like it was on a
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: spindles tree. And it was like the only thing I
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: could do was like a hanging hunt, like two and
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: more two hours before daylight hung this dam um, so
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: the bucks right there drawback and they staring at me.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: And then I was doing like the whole self talk
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: thing like all right, you got this, just hold on,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: hold on, he'll he'll put his head down and moved
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: just wait, just wait, just wait, And then like it
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: lasted too long. I'm like, I don't know if I
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: can hold on hold And all of a sudden, like
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: my legs just turned into like spaghetti in the way,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: just like and I swear to God so much so
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: that I thought to myself he sees your legs, You're
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: the box is gonna run away because he sees your
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: legs moving so much. I literally was like, you need
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: to get your legs under control. You need to You're
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: gonna lose this buck because he sees you. And fortunately
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: enough he took one more step and I was able
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: to get a good shot. Your legs really disagreed though
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: the legally you don't have this market. No, this isn't easy.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: It was internal conflict like anything I've ever experienced. Uh So,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: I think my final thought would just kind of echo
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a little bit what Tony said, which is just like
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: the whole reason why I want to have this conversation,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: why I'm glad he got brought up this morning and
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: kind of just our chats was the fact that it's
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: just it's just a reality of it. Like hunting is
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: full of these failures, these mistakes, these shortcomings. Every single
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: one of us has these. Every whether you're a new
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: hunter or the most experienced hunt in the world, you're
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: gonna screw up more often than not. And that's okay.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: You should look at those opportunities opportunities, not as failures.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: But hey, okay, I just learned something that doesn't work
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: very well. I just identified something I can improve on.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: That's an opportunity. So even though it sucks in the
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: moment and it's it's common and easy and I do it.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: I'm really hard on myself when these things happen, but
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: it's address it, Identify it, and then quickly figure out
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: how can you address it? And I think that's the
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: way to remove as much of the suck as possible
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: is by making progress. Because nothing, at least in my opinion,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: not many other things feel as good as fixing a failure,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: as growing from that and then being to look back
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: and say, I totally screwed this thing up last year,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: and look how much better I did this year. That,
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: like personal growth, is one of the very most powerful
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: things in life. I think North Dakota, it's all right
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: and on that. Yeah. So with that, with that in mind,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: I've noticed that Spencer starting unbuttoned his shirt. He's gonna
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: go to the bad thing. Okay, So that will do it.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this one as
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: we regaled you with all sorts of screw ups we
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: made over the years. Um My hope with it as
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: I already said was that this maybe can help everyone
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: out there realize that you are not alone when those
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: mistakes and those roadblocks and those obstacles come along, we
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: are all right there with you. You can get through it,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: you can learn from it, and you can grow. That
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: is our goal. That's we're hoping comes from this podcast
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: for each one of us, even personally, So keep that
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: all in mind. Hopefully you're making some progress out there
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: in the woods getting ready for the season, which is
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: gonna be here in just a matter of weeks. I
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: can't believe it. I'm excited. And until next time, stay
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt.