Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 418: Planning a DIY Whitetail Trip with Tony Peterson

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Ep. 418: Planning a DIY Whitetail Trip 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,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number four eighteen,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and today on the show, I'm joined by Tony Peterson
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to break down everything you need to know to plan
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: your own d I Y white tail trip. All right,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: by First Life. And I am down right now in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the great state of Iowa doing some scouting. It's uh,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: it's been maybe four or five years since I've hunted
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in Iowa, but this will be the year I'm finally back,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: so I'm excited about that. And my buddy Tony Peterson
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is here joining me. Um, we're working on a little
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: project down here, and it worked out well to pair
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: my scouting trip with this, uh, this work that we're doing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So Tony, it's been fun. Glad you're here. Yeah, thanks
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: for having me. Man, it's been been a good weekend.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I feel like we got a lot done in a
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: handful of days. And um got to check out some
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: new land, which is always exciting, and I figured this
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: would be a good This would be good, a good
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: excuse to talk about a topic that you spend a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: lot of time on. But I don't think we've ever
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: taken a full podcast for Wired Hunt with you to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: go through your process. We've talked a lot about like
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: your specific hunts, like what happened this October, what happened
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: last November? How did you kill that buck? And you've
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: talked about different pieces and parts of things, but we've
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: never really dove into your full thought process around your
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: traveling hunting style. You do that a ton, obviously, and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I do a decent bit of it. And you know
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: that's part of what I'm doing right now is planning
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: for I've got coming up in November. So so that's
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: what I want to talk about. Are you game for that? Absolutely, buddy.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I will say, we gotta just lay like a little
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: light tease out here, because we're out here working on
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: this project and I'm excited about it, and I think
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's I can say this. I think I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: can say that you are going to be much more
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: involved with a lot of Wired Hunt stuff coming up
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: here in the coming weeks and months and years. Um,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I've kind of sucked you into the wire hunting world
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful thing and I'm excited about it.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: So so, yeah, folks can look for a lot from
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you coming soon, can't they. Yeah, we are. We're working
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: on all kinds of stuff right now. It's gonna be great.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you, I, Um, I was talking to
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: my buddies last night who I've done here, and we're
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: talking about your involvement with it and how I honestly
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: do think that you know, you bring just such a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: helpful set of experiences and skills from a hunting perspective,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Like you've got this wide array of experiences, You've traveled
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: all across the country. You're really you're really locked in
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: on the public land thing, but you also have done
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: stuff on the private land that for all those reasons,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: it's great that you're getting involved with what we're doing here.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: But it's also made you, you know, one of my
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: favorite people who talked to on the podcast, because I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: always know, like I can talk to you about a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: lot of different things and you can speak to it
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: from personal experience. You're not telling me, well, I saw
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: this YouTube video about how to find this thing, and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: that's what I do Um, you've actually been out there
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and done it, and that's that's a valuable thing. So
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: so yeah, a little hot tease there, big stuff coming.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It's exciting, folks. Can you know, of course follow what
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: we're doing here, and why hunt to see it? They
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: could go check out your your Instagram if they want
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to start following you personally. You've got more updates and
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: stuff than there. What is that Tony J. Peterson on Insta?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: That's there? Um, I don't know. I think that's all
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: we can say for now. Yeah, I think I think
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the one other thing we could tease is that once
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: in a while you and I disagree on nothing strategies
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: and styles. That's something we should talk about today. And
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we disagree, I mean we got
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: we do disagree on something a little bit. It's more
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: that we default the different approaches, Like I default in
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: a certain way and you default in a certain way.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And I think it stems from like our backgrounds and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the things we've done to get to this point,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: what we've seen work. We should we should definitely talk
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: about that as we get into this because I think
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of it applies to you know, how to
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: think about what you're doing on a traveling hunt, definitely,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean we were talking about this past weekend,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: just how you have to sometimes force yourself into a
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: different mindset when you've only got six days to get
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: it done versus a season, or when you're hunting in
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of place or a certain state versus others.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Those are all things that that I think we should
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: talk about. Um So we should talk about here to
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: kind of to kind of lay out a game plan.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I want to talk through, you know, how you go
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: about setting your plans, how you start thinking about things like, Okay,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: it's January or February, I decided I want to hunt
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a BC place. Now it's the spring, and what am
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I going to do in the spring and early summer
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to prepare myself for that. I know we've talked in
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the past a little bit about your turkey scouting trips,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Maybe talk through some of that,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: move into what you're doing in the summer, and then
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: finally when it gets to game time and you're leaving,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: let's actually talk through your mindset on these short trips
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: you're planning, how you start on day one and how
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: that changes by day three and so on. Um, so
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: that's where I want to go. Where you plan on hunt, man,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: this is gonna be uh. You know, one thing, when
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: you ask me about something like this, it makes me
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: really nervous because I am just I have sort of
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a framework laid out, you know, but I also can
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: just make a decision on the fly and just go
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. And so I kinda when when people reach
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: out to me about hunt planning, which happens a lot,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you know, they're they're kind of in a different place
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: if like that's your hunt, Like if you're gonna if
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you're like I'm going to Nebraska for the first time
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: this year, You're gonna probably look at that a little
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: bit differently than I would for for a bunch of reasons.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But that's like their trip, you know, like you're you're
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: kind of looking at this this Iowa tag, this is
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a big deal. I did the same thing last year.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: You know, you're kind of that's that's taking precedence over
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. So you're really digging in and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: trying to make and make make reasons to go scout
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and just like devote that time. Like that's what most
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: people would do with their trips, and I feel I
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: almost kind of feel guilty about this. This year, I
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: have have an elk hunt that's gonna kind of rock
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: my September and change change my normal plans a lot.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And so I'm kind of sitting here going, well, I know,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna go to North Dakota with my
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: buddies because I love it out there, and so I
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: don't really need to I don't. I don't need to
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: think about that one too much. I kind of go, okay, well,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: we'll pick dates that work for them. I don't really
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: care seasonally what it is, as long as it's not
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the crazy opener where everybody's trying to kill
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a velvet buck or I know, it's not gonna be
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: a rut deal, and so I'm gonna just squeeze that
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: in there somewhere, and then you know, I'm gonna do
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Minnesota and Wisconsin, of course, and I've got to I've
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: got a little pup coming it hit the ground, I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: don't I don't have it yet, but I'll be picking
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: it up in a few weeks and so I'm gonna
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: be building in some bird trips. So like that's it's
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it just muddies the water for like a clear white
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: tail plan for me. But I've got, you know, probably
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: five states that I'm gonna do, and you know, I
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: am gonna hut white tails out in Idaho to when
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: we're out hunting, and so that one is that's sort
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: of a wild card. If I run into them, they're
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna factor and it sounds like we might
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: run into them in the area we're at, and so
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I just kind of I just kind of lay out
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the dates and the and the states, and I go, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: this is this is where I start. This is where
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna do. And usually this year, other
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: than Idaho, I don't have any like new just going
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: to this state or going to this area the state
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that I'm super excited about. And that's that's where like
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the real planning comes. And if you go you know
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: how it is, if you've revisit a spot, you know
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you've got those year two or three or four of experience,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and so you go, I'm starting here, I camp here.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: A lot of those logistics You've already covered them in
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: the past, and I kind of feel like that this year,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I kind of feel like I don't have tons of
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: new stuff to think about. So when you were doing
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: new spots, like when you're at that stage with a
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: location brand new, you decided, Man, I really want to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: try Oklahoma for the first time, or I want to
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: try whatever what looks different in that scenario. Um, you know,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the first thing still is just settle on the time.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And I'm I'm starting to get a little contrarian with
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: some of this stuff because it's just the popularity of
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: public land bow hunting now and I love it, like
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I love seeing people out there. It's just you know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: there's times where it's going to be crazy, and you
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: know those states, you know, Oklahoma is not one of them,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: but you know those states that have an early early
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: opener are going to be crazy busy. The Nebraska's in
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the north, Dakotas and some of the western states, Kentucky,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and then you know, the Rut it's just gonna be
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be your busy time. And so you know,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: in years past, maybe when it wasn't so busy, I'd go, Okay,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: do I want to hunt the Rut in Oklahoma? What's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: what's that time frame look like? And when I when
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I decide on my trip if it's November one to
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the ninth or whatever. Then I start digging in a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: little bit and going, Okay, where are where are these
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: big chunks of public or where are these where are
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: these like checkerboard types of public land? Where I know
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I got you know, plan a through Z if I
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: need it. And that's that's when I started digging in.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So you gotta just if if anybody's listening to this,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: they're like, I want to go do that hunt, you
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: gotta go, okay, what kind of what's your goal? Like
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: do you want to have fun? Do you want to
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: do an early season hunt on a you know, food
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to bed pattern or whatever? Do you want to do
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: that rout hunt? Then you gotta look at the regulations,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: like is there a youth season at the time you
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: want to hunt, or any of those those things that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: might pop up. I need to be wearing blaze orange
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, dodging bullets here, Like what's what are
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: we dealing with? I can really change things, Oh dude,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: it can. And you know, there's there's just so much
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: inconsistency from state to state on rules, you know, and
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: so you just you gotta gotta know that stuff and go, Okay,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: if I gotta take my pt O Halloween through the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: first week of November, there's nothing that's gonna nothing extra
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: that's really going to change my plans or I'm gonna
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: show up and really kind of drag down the enjoyment level.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So you just gotta pay attention to that stuff. Um
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you Actually you also kind of gotta look a little
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: bit too if you're you know, if you let's say
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: you're not a saddle hunter and you want to bring
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: in a couple, you know, set the stands and sticks,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, you can't leave them up right like
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: some states, some kinds of land, you can't leave them
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: up overnight. If you show up and you don't know that, like,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you can get in trouble be figure that out when
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: you get there, and you go, okay, now I really
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: wish I had that saddle, or I wish I had
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a ground blind or you know, just how do you
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: want to hunt? And is there anything prohibitive there that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: won't allow you to do that? And so that's and
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't say any of this stuff to
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: just like I don't want to disswade anybody anybody, I
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: just want them to understand there's a lot that you
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: got to look up and be confident about before you go.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: That's that's one of the big hurdles to this kind
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: of travel is just like this seems like such a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: paniastic at the tags or it seems like too much
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: work to like learn these new rules and play by
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the rules. And then you know, you might you might
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: go to some state and hunt a wildlife management area
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: one day in a national forest the next, and there
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: might be totally different rules. And so it's just it's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: just part of the game, right And then you talk
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: about the backside of it. If you get if you
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: get lucky to kill something, you know, try transportation with
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the you know, game animal and the CWD rules and
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: just there's a there's a lot to know. But that's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: just like the slog through the mud stuff. Gotta do it,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: gotta figure it out. The fun stuff is starting to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: pull up your on ax and start looking, you know,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: start start figuring out where do you want to hunt.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So we talked this past fall a little bit about
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: just how we'd seen things changing on public land a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: little bit. And you just reference the fact how busy
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's getting, and how popular it's getting, how you're avoiding
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: those you know, most popular times a year. When you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: start looking at like the scouting the finding of locations,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you know that the typical advice when you're trying to
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: find not a state location, whether it's public land or
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: even some private land stuff, people will say, well, get
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: away from the major city centers. Try to find something
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: big and something that you know has like some kinds
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: of barriers that will stop most people from getting to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: certain places, so you can find those hard to reach spots.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Like if I had to look at the most common
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: advice for finding places, it's that kind of stuff. Now,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: my question is it's you know, it's post COVID rush
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of outdoors activities. Does all that stuff still apply or
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: are you having any other kind of changes of mind
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: now similar to how you're switching up your dates. Are
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: there any of the things that are changing now because
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of the increased popularity of this stuff and you're thinking
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: differently about the types of places you want to focus on. Um,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: it's manisfactoring in there. I'm I'm treating this year like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: it's going to be like last year. I think it's
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: just gonna be busy out there. And you know, I
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: could be wrong, but I think there's gonna be a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: lot of traveling hunters. And I still think we're gonna
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: see just we're gonna see people out there. I think
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be busy, you know. And and the one
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: thing I should say, like kind of on that note,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the way that I look at this stuff is, you know,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: you and I were talking about this yesterday. I when
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I go on these trips, I don't I'm not filtering
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in like where's my best chance to kill a big buck?
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Like that? The Iowa thing is different. You know, you draw,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and I would take you start thinking that way because
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it's such a it's such a realistic opportunity. But at
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the same time, you know, just you get about anywhere
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and you have that chance. And so I look at
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: these like where can I go to have a good
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: deer hunt? First? Like, where where can I go to
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Like I love seeing lots of deer, you know. I
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: love sitting on my tree stand and just knowing, even
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: if I don't have a whole lot of faith that
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you know, a hundred fifty inter is coming down the trail.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I just love going to places where I know, like, man,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I'm around a good population and I've got my shot
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: to to out work these deer and make something happen,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and that that kind of opens up the aperture for
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: me a little bit, because I don't, you know, like
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the Oklahoma thing. I've i' found it down there a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: few times and I love it down there, and I've
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: actually seen some really good box But it's more about
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: that state is just an awesome opportunities. It's fun. You
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: see a lot of stuff, you have, you have dough tags,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you have buck tags. It's just enjoyable. And you know,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: we we kind of we do the same thing with
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the Western hunting too, where we go, where's my best
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: chance to kill you know, X y Z type of trophy?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And that's okay, but you really it really changes the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: planning process a lot, and I think it adds in
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a level of frustration sometimes. That's that's kind of hard
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: to deal with, you know, because it's because it is
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a low odds game, right, Like you know, if you
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: think you're gonna go to Nebraska on your first trip
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and shoot a hunter and fifty inchre on public land,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: like you probably not gonna do it, Like you might
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you know, but probably not. But if you go there
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: kind of with realistic expectations, you're like, I just want
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to hunt, and you know, if I see one that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: trips my trigger, I'm gonna be super happy. And you
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: go into that you don't have like I always say this,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: but it's like shutting a couple of the browser windows
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and you're just like, Okay, now where do I find
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the spot that looks like I want to hunt it?
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be fun because you know, we we think
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: about this stuff. But if you we were looking at
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: all this different ground down here in Iowa, and if
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: it wasn't Iowa and you looked at it, if you
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: didn't know where you were, you could still pick every
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: block of timber we walked into and probably say there's
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a buck that uses this every day that I'd be
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: really happy to see coming down the trail, you know
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: what I mean. And so you go show up in
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I don't care what state it is, you're gonna make
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that trip down to Kentucky. You walk into the woods,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you're already there with a buck that would make you
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: you're calling the taxi German is probably plus a whole
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: bunch of other deer and so it's kind of like
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: that's kind of like a wash. So what do you
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: what do you want to do with your time? Like,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: what's what's gonna be really fun for you? Like? How
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: do you want to hunt in? Do you need five thousand,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: ten thousand, twenty acres to get away from people? Or
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: are you ok kind of bumping elbows with and a
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: few more folks on you know, a hundred twenty acres
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: if it's if it's the kind of place you want
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: to hunt? Yeah, have you like, how have the things
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: you want to hunt have? What am I trying to say?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: How is that changed for you? So? Are you now
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: more interested? It sounds like you just want to have,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of deer sightings. But how are
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you shifting when it comes to people. Are you more
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: comfortable around people because it's just happening or do you
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: find yourself wanting to avoid more people more often and
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: get off the radar even if it's less quality deer hunting.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I would take less quality and fewer people, you know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I just I just like, I mean, I'm like everybody right,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: we just you know, you don't want to be sitting
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: there and see somebody you know, walking through or whatever,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and it the thing that sucks it. It really colors
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: your your trip in a negative way sometimes. And what
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: it is, it's not like the dude who comes walking through,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you know, going to kind of hunt the same way
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you are. It's the guy who drives down the road
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: that's not supposed to be driving, or brings the four
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: wheeler into the place, and it just it changes the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: tempo of everything, you know, or the people who are
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: just like kind of blatantly disregard like that. There might
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: be other hunters out there that kind of sucks, but
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's part of the game now
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and I'm I'm just if I can, if i can
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: get away from them somehow. I'm looking for that, you know.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the scouting you
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: would do leading into that. Um, you know, I know
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: you do a decent a good amount of east scouting.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: We don't need to cover this in too much detail,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: but what are a few of the things that you're
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: thinking about when going through the scouting process. Um, I mean,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: we know the basics. We're gonna be looking at maps,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: we're gonna look for depending on the time of year,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: there hunting, you're gonna be looking for a while. If
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: it's early season, where do I think the food sources are,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and where do I think the other hunters are coming in, etcetera.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: But what are the few what are a few of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the next level things that you're thinking about at this
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: stage in the game for you when you are trying
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, what it is you want
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: out of a hunt. We are a couple of the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: key key factors that play into your eat scouting man,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: you know, specifically to this year and the kind of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: hunting I'm gonna do because I know I'm I'm dealing
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: with a mid season situation where it's going to be
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: kind of that traditional lull or the late September stuff
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for. I'm not looking for food a whole lot.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: You know. I know that by the time I get
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: to anywhere I'm gonna be hunting, the food situation is
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: going to be at least killing something on a food
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: source is just probably not gonna happen, right, And so
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I'm digging in for those little water sources, those those
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: those places that are just harder to access. You know,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm looking for something that I gotta work
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: for to get into a little bit. And you know,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a weird thing like you and I've
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: been talking about. On this trip. We did a lot
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of we had a lot of discussions about this before
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: we left, and you know, there are times where we're
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: kind of like struggling, Okay, what are we gonna do?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: How are we gonna do this? And then we get
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: into the woods and it's just flow state. You're just like, oh,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: look at this, look at this, and you just you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: realize that the the front end stuff for east scouting
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and you're planning is like so important to just lay
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: that framework and just lay the groundwork of like, Okay,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I know what's here. I know, I like the looks
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: of this water hole. I know, I like the looks
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: of this ridge. Uh, this a little swamp back in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: here looks pretty cool. But until you get in and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: look at them, then then everything starts to gel and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you just discover all this other stuff. And I you know,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I've been I've been writing about this quite a bit lately,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: where you know, I get the east scouting wrong all
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the time, you know what I mean, Like I look
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: at something and I'll go, that's my spot. And really
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: what it does is just get me into the woods
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to look at that spot, and along the way you
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: find that fence crossing that's pounded, or you just there's
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: something else, and it's just it's like, uh, it's just
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: like a trick to get you into the woods sometimes
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: so you find what you really need to find. You know.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you show up and you're like, well, like, how
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I nailed this, Like I am an expert, I got this.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: And then but most of the time you show up
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and you're like that this isn't This isn't how I
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: expected it to look. It's way it's way more open,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: or there's cattle in here. Just it's just not right.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: But it's getting me in there looking and in that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: process us to walking and with a little bit of
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a plan, you go, there's where I need to be
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: now or if this isn't it, I know a plan
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: B better be something good. Yeah, And I think that's
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: part of the that's part of the process that we
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: talked about where such an important part of any kind
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of out of state hunt is having a whole bunch
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of options, and that starts on the east scouting side.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Because if you can go into a hunt with you know,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: this spot and this spot and this spot and this
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: but not just like a tree stand location possibly, but
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about chunks of ground or properties or whatever
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: that you know, Okay, this sure looks good. This I
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: think is gonna be my plan A. But if you
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: just do that, you have a plan A, and you
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: spend a ton of time studying that parcel and you
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: really think about it, and you've got all these ideas,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and then you show up and it's not like you
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: expected and you hadn't had a whole bunch of other options.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Then you're sitting there s o L and think you're
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: scrambling trying to figure okay, I need to or something
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: else out. Or the opposite is that you're so wetted
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: to this original idea that you don't even allow yourself
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to look at other options because you're like, I gotta
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: make this work. This was supposed to be so good.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: And so I think, especially for newer people, that's a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: temptation that could could easily lead to a rough trip.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: So I mean, it's a simple thing, but have a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: bunch of pre planned options so that when you go
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: in there to that first place you scouted out online
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't look like you wanted to, Or you
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: show up on the first day of the hunt and
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: there's nine other guys in there that you can say, Okay,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: no big deal, I've got a plan B. And you
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: can show up a plan being give it a shot,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and what this whether scouting or hunting, same thing, show up,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: take a look, and if it's not right, all right,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: no sweat off my back. I've got a plan seat
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and you keep on going down the list, and it
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: makes that like that transition from this is what I
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: expected and it wasn't what I expected. Now what Those
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: moments can be so stressful, they can be so um paralyzing,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: they can be they can really make or break a hunt.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And it is a night and day difference if you
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: find yourself in those moments, whether we don't have other
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: options or if you do. If you do have those
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: other options, it is just all right, onto the next thing.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: But there's such a like a I don't know, not
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, but there's such like a stress that is
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: applied when you're stuck there trying to fare only what
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to do next, when you don't have something in your
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: back pocket. So if anything, I think the scouting is
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: so important just to lay out a bunch of options,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: even if they're not super well thought out, even if
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: they're not all the very best thing in the world.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I think, just like you said, like just having options,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: just having different spots that you can go to that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you can quickly be like, all right, next, I've got it,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: just makes you feel better and that sometimes makes the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: difference absolutely. I mean when I when I drew that
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I would take last year, I had a stupid amount
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of way points dropped and I had actually I had
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: gone in there the spring before I drew a turkey
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: tag down there, and I found a spot where I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, this is this is gonna
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be my ticket, and went in there the the first
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: morning I was there turkey hunting. Hiked way back and
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: there was the It was the farthest you could get
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: on this property, on these chunks of public land. You
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: couldn't you couldn't find a place there that you could
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: go farther in and it was it was a hall.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I went in there and immediately called in a great
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: big tom killed him and looked around and I was like,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: this is where I'm gonna kill my big buck when
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I draw. And when I got out there, when I
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: drew the tag and got down there to hunt, there
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: was it was one of the few parking lots that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: had people in it, and so I just said, Okay,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'll just backburner this sucker and I'll go
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: to B C, D. And I ended up never hunting
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that spot. I went in there and walked around an
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: area of it, and it was it had some potential,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: but it was just like it was just not what
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I expected, you know. And I I'm telling you, I'm
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like way glossing over this. I had my hopes pinned
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: on this, Like I was like, this is the place,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: and I found a bunch of other stuff and marked it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But I was like in my head, like you don't
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: need anywhere else, dude, like this is it. And I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: never hunted it because there were people there. And the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: one time that I skipped in the middle of the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: day when there was nobody there just to look around,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: it just it wasn't. This wasn't what I was expecting.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: But my B, C and D spots all had really
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: good buck concentrations in it, and I actually killed my
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: buck in my d spot, like it was like it
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: was good, but it wasn't you know, the other one.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And I think I think one thing that you realize
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: when you do these kind of trips a lot is
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: that you're gonna settle for stuff, Like you gotta get
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: comfortable settling for stuff, but like you have to do
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: it in the right way, and so you know you
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: might you might not have the greatest tree. Take it
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: like a creek crossing. You look at it, it's pounded.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: You're like, I gotta hunt this right now that I
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: know they're coming through here. But you only got a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: couple of options, and all the trees suck, so you
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: settle for the one that sucks the least, and you
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: know it maybe not be very comfortable, it may not
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: offer you the cover you need, but it's like this
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: is the spot that's like a good settle right, Like
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: that's a calculated risk, but just settling for an area
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: because you only you scouted one area and you're like, wow,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: this is this is gonna be good enough for me.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Like you see, first time elk hunters do this a lot.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: They'll they'll look at their unit out in Colorado and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: they'll go, man, look at this meadow, look at this bench,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: look at this little wallow. You know, they see this
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: stuff and they go, there's no way a bull is
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: not going to show up there. And they go out
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: there and there's no way a bull is going to
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: show up there after day one and they ride it out.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And that's a little bit different because the density said situation.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But white tail hunters do that too, like this is
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: my spot. I'm gonna go crawl around these hills and
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna arrow one from the ground. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you get out there and the density is way lower
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: than you expect, and there's you know, prairie grouse hunters
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: out there, and all of a sudden, the whole dynamic changes.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And if you don't have you don't have that life
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: raft built in some other spots, it's tough. So I
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: know you do. We've talked about this in past a
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: little bit, but I think we have to touch on
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: at least some um. You know, you head out for
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a turkey hunting trip and get a little scouting in,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: or for whatever reason, you're able to skip over to
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: one of these places and get on the ground before
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the season. A couple key things like what's the most
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: important stuff for you these days? With those on the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: ground scouting trips preseason. For me, I used to think
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to cover every square inch, and then
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I wanted to pick the tree, and then I wanted
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to set the stands, and I wanted to be like
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: really really overprepared. And more recently I've shifted a little
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: bit too. I'm now I want to lay the land.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I want a handful of places that I feel good
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: about this area, this area, in this area, and then
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I'm actually going to be more focused on I'm gonna
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: show up in season, see what stuff looks like in
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the season, and and and make some setups right then
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: and there. I'm not going to make a decision on
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: stands until the season, and I'm gonna get in unt
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: an observation standard something and then move. And I'm putting
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: more of my hopes on the actual, in the moment
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: stuff and less of six months ahead of time. That's
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: where I personally am with things. What's that look like
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: for you? UM A little bit different? Maybe you know
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I the Turkey thing. What I'm what I'm doing on
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: those trips is you know, a I love turkey hunting,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I just like go and run around chasing turkeys, But
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: it's just about identifying the places that I know I'm
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: going to enjoy hunting. So I and I talked about
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: this a lot, but like, I think it's really important.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: You know, this kind of goes back to the you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: planning around a big buck thing versus planning around just
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: having a badass week that you really enjoy. And you know,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: like they're not mutually exclusive. Like you can go have
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun and kill big bucks. But I know,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: just from quite a bit of experience, if if I
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: go in the camping situation is rough, then that's like
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a that's a knock, right, Like that's just not as
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: much fun. If I have to camp somewhere twenty miles
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: away from where I hunt, and it changes the whole logistics.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I don't like that if it's uh, you know, just
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: not the kind of ground that I like hunting for
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: some reason, and so like not to just like I'll
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: use a different example. A couple of years ago, Buddy
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: and I drove down in Nebraska. We were gonna bow
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: hunt a couple of days turkeys, and then we were
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: going to gun hunt. We were right. We were in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the early bow season, right on the shotgun opener, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: part of it was because we had driven through the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: year before on a different turkey hunt and just spent
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a little bit of time in this area and it
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: was really cool, like it had had the right creek
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: bottoms and it was kind of rolling hills and it
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: was like you just looked at it and you're like,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: this sets up like maybe a fun kind of not
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: a not a deer hunt that we're used to, you know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: not just deciduous for us, not egg fields the same way.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And so we went back and we we bow hunted
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and satin blinds and that was fun. But when we
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: got out with the shotguns, when that opening we were
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: running the hills, then I was like, this is just
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: a cool area. There's a couple of different kinds of
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: properties and it just I was like I could come
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: back here. I know the bucks are gonna be there.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: There's gonna be bucks here. It's gonna be good enough,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: but it's gonna be really fun, good camping. Um, you know,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you got access to a decent town, not crazy far
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: away in case you need something, but it just had
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and it had room to spread out. You know, you
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: could get away from people. I'm looking for that like
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and I know, you know, whether I ever see a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: deer on their turkey hunting or find an antler or
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: any of that stuff. You know, you're out there, you
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: see the sign. You know, you can kind of get
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: a feel for the the population around and go is
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you know this isn't a waste land here there here?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And so then you just go, okay, should we come
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: back here on the opener? And that's that that's particular
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: spot we did go back on the opener and that's
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: where we arrowed those two velvet bucks back to back
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: on that one trip a couple of years ago, and
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it was just the whole groundwork thing was laid out
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: just because we had a fun turkey hunting trip and
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I knew hunting there was gonna be fun. Yeah, you
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: have something be said about that, And you know, we
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: we've touched on a little bit when you mentioned, you know,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: thinking about what's gonna make you happy. But when it
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: comes to goal setting goals for these types of trips,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: how is that? I mean maybe you've already answered it.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: How is how is your thought process on goals for
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: these trips? Evolved. That's something that we've talked about other
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: times is I sometimes have been I often get locked
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: into like one goal, and I feel like you are
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: more able to evolve your your goals sometimes. What's worth
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: talking about there as far as a couple of key things, Um,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: you know my goals are, They're all over the place.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Like I don't. I don't. I don't go into most
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: of my hunts thinking I know what I want, right,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Like I know, if I'm hunting northern Wisconsin and a
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: tennants er comes down the trail, I'm gonna be losing
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: my mind, right Like if I draw an eyewa tag,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not picking my bow up when that deer comes
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: down the trail. I want to enjoy that because I'm
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: only going to get five Ayowa hunts in my life,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: you know. But it's really for me. This This is
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: a weird one because we talked about this all the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: time where it's like I'm going to Kansas and I
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: want a one forty plus and I was like, you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: kind of joke, like okay, like a hundred pointer comes
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: down the trail, You're not you know what I mean?
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: But what I what I found in my life I
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I spent I've been like you, let me put it
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: this way, I've I've been more goal focused and You're
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: you're just kind of weird like that way, like I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I see it hanging out with you. They you you
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: look at this stuff a lot differently than I do now.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: But back when I was tournament fishing, or back when
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I started out as like a freelance writer and I
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: felt I had something to prove, I was, I was
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: like really trying to stay in that lane of like
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: what do you gotta do to get exercise? Buck dead?
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And what I realized is I didn't enjoy it as
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: much like I burned myself out tournament fishing, I burned
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: myself out bow hunting to some extent where I'm like,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: I know, if I put all this time into this state,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: i could probably get a crack at a good one,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: but I'm not. I'm not having that much fun. And
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: what I started to just back off of that and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: just go where can I go that I know like
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: personally is going to do it for me? And then
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I started killing more big bucks anyway, Like I started
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: just hunting like I'm I'm just hunting deer here. And
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: then you see something happen, You're like, Okay, well I'm
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: gonna move on that one because he's here, and he
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: gave me an opportunity and my success on like big
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: public land box. It got better when I felt like
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I cared a little bit less about killing big public
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: land bucks and just having more fun hunting. That was interesting.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Could you point to, like any actual things you did
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: differently from h and I guess let's move into the
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: season a little bit. So you're showing up to hunt
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: now that you hunt in this kind of way compared
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: to ten years ago, Tony, when you show up on
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: day one for a hunt, how does that look different
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: than it used to look ten fifteen years ago? Like,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: what's that beginning stage look like now? Traveling hunt? You've
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: got five days or six days or whatever. Pay attention
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to all the deer. So when I when I started,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I made the first my like, So I grew up
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: hunting a mix of public and private. Right, never killed anything,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: you know, very rarely until I got into like later
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: in high school and then in college. But even you know,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: when I was twelve thirteen, we would we would hunt
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: public and private. Never it was rough. I didn't know
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: what we didn't know what the hell we were doing,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: but we just hunted deer, just like we're going wherever.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Like if there's a deer trail here and there's lots
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of tracks on it, that's where we're gonna sit, you know.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Like we weren't like, oh here's a big roun. You know,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: we we like that stuff. But it wasn't. It didn't
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: play in and when I when I decided when I
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: went freelance, I'm like, I'm gonna try to I'm gonna
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: try to kill some big bucks in public lands. How
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: this goes? Like, I'm gonna devote my time to this.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: What I what I realized right away was you can
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: focus on big deer in one spot, or you can
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you can focus on deer in a bunch of spots.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Like I couldn't. I couldn't do both very well. And
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: so I was paying attention like I found when I traveled,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I was paying attention to all the deer and that
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: that you know, like if you see some does come
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: down across the river, but no bucks, Like if you
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: think about that one way, you could be like, well
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that's there's no bucks. Using that the other way is
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: like I just watched it one night, and I didn't
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: see bucks go. But I've watched deer very naturally come
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: down and use this crossing Like how you use that matters.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: And so we often go into these hunts, especially if
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: we have these high expectations in these good big box states.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Then yeah, you see some doughs come out into the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the beans on this walking area or something.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: You go, there's no box here, Well, you saw those
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: deer do that. It didn't mean much because the deer
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: you want isn't there. I would look at that sometimes
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: and go, I'm just gonna move over there. Maybe I'll
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: shoot one of those doughs, but I want to be
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: where those doughs came into the field. And then you
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: move over there, and if you plan it right, what
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: you're trying to do now the does come out and
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is cool. I'm around deer. And
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: then you look back in the brush and you know
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: a hundred yards away they're staging back there, and you go, oh, like,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: just now now the game has changed. I've felt like
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff has happened to me like that,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: where just hunting deer versus like laser focus on the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: big box has changed how I bump into the big box.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Give me some other other examples like that, because that's
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that's a you're right, You're absolutely right that a lot
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: of people and I have done this too. You can
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: laser focused on just like what are the bucks telling you?
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: And or what you're waiting to see a mature buck?
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: And if I don't see one and it's moving going
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: somewhere else completely paying no attention to whatever, I soften
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the other deer. What are some other examples of ways
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: you might think that way and apply to I think,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: I think just like understanding how how random it kind
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: of is, and so like that that scenario there where
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: if you see der does come out and then you
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: move in, they see a staging area moving on him.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: We have this, and the hunting media has done a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: really good job of of, you know, showing you know,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: different shows where it's like, okay, we're getting pictures of
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: this giant non typically it's coming to the food plot.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: You know, every time the wind blows out of the east,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: this guy comes in from here. We're gonna go in
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: tonight because I've got a perfect east wind and and
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: we're we're sort of convinced that there's there's more predictability
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: out there then there is. And you know you see
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: this with trail cameras too, like this, this is why
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: trail cameras are so awesome but so frustrating, Like why
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: is this big bastard here only once every three weeks?
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Who knows? But the thing about if you hunt deer
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: as you go out there, and I've seen this, like
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma is a perfect example. If I just sometimes I
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: just go hunt dumb spots where I'm like, I want
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: to fill a doughteg, like I want to. This looks
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: like a place where a ton of deer come in
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: here to feed in this you know, public bean field
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And you sit there and one night it
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: is five does that come out? And the next night
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: there's eleven deer out there and two of them are
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: poping young bucks, Like why, like what what's going on there?
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: And if you're not, if you're hunting deer actively like
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: that and you're just kind of like, I just want
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to be around deer like I want to. I want
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: to put myself in a position where there's deer. Those
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: big ones show up and you see different deer on
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: different nights. Now, I know it's different if you're like,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you talk about your lease a lot in
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: in Michigan and you you get really familiar with those deer,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: you know, like you you get to learn that land
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and those deer very well, and you encounter them a lot.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: If you're driving out to South Dakota for a five
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: day hunt, like it's that's an entirely different setup, and
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: you don't know who lives there, and you don't know
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: who's going to come out, And if you get on
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: that river crossing today, you have no idea who's coming
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: through there in the morning or the evening, or if
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: what you saw last night is indicative of what you'll
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: see today. I just I love that. So here's one
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: of these ultimate conundrums, um that ties back to another
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: thing we we debated or just kind of ruminated on
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit this weekend, which is you're in a
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: situation like this, you're hunting a new place and you
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: hunt night one and you didn't see what you want
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: to see, but you're in a spot that looks damn good,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Like you feel like really confident this is the kind
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: of spot that something should move through, but it didn't
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: happen on day one, Um, one frame of or one
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: point of view might be moved. Keep moving until you
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: find them, or you hunt day one and wasn't the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: way you want to be? Be mobile? Keep them on
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: there at toes, don't let these dear figure you out.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: You gotta keep moving. So that's like one philosophy. But
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: then there's the other philosophy, which could be you know,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: you just there, random deer movements, random Maybe you're in
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: the perfect spot, but the bucks and the deer just
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: happened to not be either night if you were to
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: wait it out and hunt it again the next day,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: or if you were there on day three, out of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the of the the next one, here he comes strolling
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: right along. So how do you think about these two approaches,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: like the staying mobile and always moving versus a volume
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: approach where sometimes you're in a place that you just
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: got to write it out? Do you like? Does that
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: does that cont echotomy enter your your mind throughout hunts?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: And how do you think about that? Yeah, it's all
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: about what you believe, man, Like I think you know obviously,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Like the most obvious example there is the rut hunt.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: If you if you get on a just a killer
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: pinch point or something, and you're just like somebody in
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: the next couple of days is coming through here. Then
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that's that's a different scenario and a good one, Like
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I've I've done that. I did that the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: last time I hun in North Dakota during the rut.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, I found a spot was that was just
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: like it's it's gonna happen here. I just gotta put
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: in the time. And I had entire dark to dark sits.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Like the day before I killed my buck, I sat
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: dark to dark and I saw a four key. But
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: I came back and I sat there four days and
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: I killed a buck on the fourth day. But it
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: was because it was a setup, right, like it was
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: that was the trap that was gonna work. You know.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Other times it's just how much do you believe it?
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: You know, like I kind of if I show up
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to some public land and I give it a morning
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: in an evening or usually an evening down the morning, Uh,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: if it's just not humming and I don't believe it,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I'm gone, you know. But if it's kind of dependent
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: on the density of deer, you know, if you're in
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the big woods of Wisconsin versus some place I got
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: a ton of deer or what are you on? You know,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: like what's what's the sign? Look like you might have
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: just had a night where they just it wasn't it
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: wasn't right for that spot. But what if you're on
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: this like banging acorn drop and the signs everywhere like
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: are the acorn still raining down? Then the deer still
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: gonna come and it the same thing happens like with
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the water set up. You know, I talked about sitting
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: water all the time. Some deer out there are gonna
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: go drink every day in one of those ponds like
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: or or come down to that little creek crossing like
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you might be able to if you don't
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: feel like you're blowing them out of there, keep her
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: riding that sucker out. But it's like a you know,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: like do you have your faith? Because if you don't,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: then you're gonna start moving around and if you don't
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: believe in it, you know how that goes, Like it
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: hits eleven o'clock in the morning, You're like, this sucks,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything. You start moving around, You're on Facebook,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you look over and
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: there he is. And it's just it's a headspace thing
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and it's tough. And if you're if you just need
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that new view, go ahead, go take it, you know. Yeah,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: So what do you say to the guy or girl
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have the amount of experience you have to know,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: you know, if they should be confident in the spot.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: So someone who's been doing this a handful of years,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: but they're like, god, I mean, this looks right, I think,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: But they always end with that, I think, and they
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: don't have the ability to say the rock solid shore
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: like in kind of scenario, how do you how do
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: you proceed? Would you air in one way or the other? Um? So,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I think you and I talked about this quite a
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: big yesterday and it kind of reminded me of something else.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I was sitting here last night I thought about it
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: was you know, we talked about Buck Sign all the time.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: We've been looking at every freaking rubb and scrape, but
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: we've seen him, We're and I was, we've seen a
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: lot of them. But the interesting stuff is sitting there
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: looking through these woods which are pretty open, and seeing
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: that freaking pounded trail going through the woods, or seeing
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like a couple of fence crossings we've walked up to.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: It's like, Holy cow. And so I would say, like
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: if somebody's new and they're heading out there wherever, and
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: they're gonna do this trip, and I hope you do.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Like one way that I get a ton of confidence
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: in the spot is just how pounded are the trails
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: or like how like sometimes you walk to you've seen this,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Like on a western river, you'll find a crossing and
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: there's like a sandbar, you know, like there'll be a
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: few different river features where they it's not just a
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: straight across thing that work their way out and and
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: stay in a little riffle or whatever. And some of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: those sandbars you get to you look at and you go,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a billion deer tracks here. Like
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that's I would rather have that than the biggest signpost
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: rub ever, because that tells me just lots of deer
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: coming through, and if lots of deer coming through, one
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: of them is probably a good one. And it made
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: me like, you know, I'm scouting turkeys with my little
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: girls right now, and where we have our blinds set
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: up and I've got some cameras are just the places
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: in some of these fields and on some of these
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: roads that are pounded in tracks, because I know that's
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: just like okay, that's just a concentration occruiters coming through
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: here over and over again, and it's it's elementary stuff,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: but it will put you in a position if if
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: not to kill that buck, you might want maybe to
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: see them or to see you know, you might go
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: out someplace in the beginning October and see a bunch
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of doughs and scrappers crossed this river crossing or or
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: travel through the hills somehow, and it's just very consistent
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: move and you go, man, if I was here during
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the rut, who's going to be doing that same movement?
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And that that kind of information, that kind of experience,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: like I think it's just so valuable. Yeah, what about
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: key things as far as the features that you're looking
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: for on these trips, because you made a comment how
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you don't pay attention to food very much anymore because
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: it's just getting pounded by everybody else, but you do
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: tend to like water. Can you elaborate a little bit
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: on any other things like that or any specifics when
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it comes to you know, for someone heading out for
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing, and they're trying to start wrapping
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: their head around Like my focus areas um again, Like
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: we hear food, you hear look for buck beds, we
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: hear um get away from people. But a lot of
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: this stuff is it's kind of generic and it's hard
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: to like really wrap your head around this, especially if
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you're on the newer side of things. So are there
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: any specific types of things you might say? Man, Like,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I'll give you I'll answer my question for you with
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: an example. And like you said yesterday, like you really
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: like a water source that's hidden in the cover, do
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: you have any specific stuff like that that could be
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: on someone's list of Man, I should keep an eye
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: out for these couple of things, just anything that the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: deer might use every day of the season. So the
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: food source thing, I mean, I don't mean to minimize
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: that because it factors in you know. I mean, you
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: go out, so I don't care where you are, some
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: random chunk of public and there's an egg nearby that
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about that even if you can't hunt it,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: even if it's not on the property you can hunt.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: You know, that's where x amount of deer going. It's
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a destination food source and that just you just put
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: that in like, Okay, I know this, this is this
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: is something I can absolutely know. I can't use it
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: any other way than they're going to be going there
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: in the afternoon and coming back in the mornings, right,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and so what do you got to find something else?
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: And so, like I like the water source thing because
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: oftentimes people just kind of overlook that and they would
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: rather be close to that being field edge, or they
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: would rather be where you know, the corn just got
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: chopped across the fence line. But the little water source thing,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean those deer might use that every
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: single day. It's not masked, it might not show up.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: It's not going to show up one week and be
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: gone the next. It's just consistent. The same thing with
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: river crossings, and the same thing with you know, terrain
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: features that really funnel movement. Like we always look at
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: that as a you know, a rut thing, but man,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: they there. You know, you look at this this ground
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: that we're in right now. It's kind of bluffy, and
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: there's these these hillsides and some of them have like
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: a hard limestone bank type thing, and some of them
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: have these washouts where the deer just they go lower,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: they go high. And you know those deer go low
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: or high when they're traveling there in September and October
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and November and December and January and every you know,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: it's not just like this is going to happen one
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: week and not not the next. I'm always looking for
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And if you find something like that,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: which you will, if you if you do enough boots
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: on the ground and enough east coating, then you might
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: when you're out there and get clued into that acorn
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: drop or some other kind of just here today, gone tomorrow,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: food source or brows or something like that that could
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that could really get you somewhere. And so it's just
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: it's just a matter of like what play the odds.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: If there's a if there's a just a banging trail
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: going down this hillside because they can't go up over it,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: that's a start. I get get down the downwind side
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of that, see who comes through, and see what else
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: you observe along the way. All right, So to get
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: us to like a really clear example of something, and
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have to do some like word painting here
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: for people so they can understand what we're talking about,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: but look at the stuff we walked over the last
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: couple of days. Think about what we've seen. Can you
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: describe to me, like if you had one day to
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: kill a buck here a well, say in the rut,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: like where describe your favorite feature, your favorite spot we've seen,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: like described as as an example, so we can see
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: like one kind of thing like you're describing that you
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: really loved and how you would set up on that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: kind of thing for a traveling hunt. So I would
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: go to that spot with that community scrape with the
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: vine hanging over it and the fence crossings. So this
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: this was a The only thing I don't like about
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: that is you're close to the property line. But the
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: thing I like about it is you could get deer
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: coming off of that property that are heading in a
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: direction where if you shoot them, they're just gonna keep
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: running that way. But what this was is these are
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: very open woods, very open, and they actually make me
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit like anxious, Like I feel a little
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: nervous just even looking at them. But you can stand
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: on this fence line and look into the neighbor's property
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: and they've got the thick stuff and there's rubs everywhere,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: clear staging type stuff. And so not only do you
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: have a pretty obvious betting area, you've got this little
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: kind of neck down I don't know if you like
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: a really subtle ridge kind of thing that I three
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: trails coming out of that into the stuff you can
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: hunt and all of those trails, if you're on one trail,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: you might be able to shoot the other two. They're
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: close enough together, and they're all tied to fence crossings,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and they're all pounded, and there's a community scrape right there,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and so it's just a hub spot. And because of
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: the way the some of those draws in there, some
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of these ravines layout, you could probably weasel your way
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: down through a bottom. It would be it would be
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: like a little family circus looking at your route. But
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: you might be able to get in there early early
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: in the morning, probably spook some deer. But if you
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: had to do, if you if you could do it right,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and I think you could, you could do an all
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: day sit in there in that place. Just it's got
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: the right cover. It's a transition zone, it's covered in
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: sign and it just forces deer movement. Yeah, and that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: that ridge that you're describing is the one consistent corridor
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: where a cruising buck could cover a long distance without
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: having to do some major dropping down the drainage coming up,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of these different knobs and drangers
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: on either side, and then there's one big main artery
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: that runs in the middle that is not uh disconnected,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: and that bridge is is where this happens. So yeah,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: I really liked that too. You gotta believe that stuff's
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: gonna happen there can I pick a plan by. So
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: the last spot we were in yesterday that had that
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: little shoot where that big buck track was, Oh yeah,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: there's like a this is a such a highly situational thing,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: but it reminds me where I grew up in southeastern Minnesota.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: There's like a giant rock bluff on one side, not giant,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: but big enough, and then on the other side, twenty
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: yards away is another big rock bluff and on the
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: top is crp and woods, and on the bottom is
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit of pastured woods and then a cornfield
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and the trails going through that little gauntlet like it
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: was like if you could bring in a giant bulldozer
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and make a funnel. That's what somebody did years ago,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and they're just you know, it's such a such a
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: tight window for them to cross through there, and they
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: clearly were, and then you've got some parallel trails on
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: top and the bottom. It's one of those situations where
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: you play the wind right in there. If you see
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: a deer and he's kind of work in your direction,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: he's probably going right through that shoot. So it's one
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: of those ones where you could set up up like
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: you could set up knowing your shot is probably gonna
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: be right there twenty yards a way. That was a
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: cool spot. Yeah, Yeah, that whole area there was really nice.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately I can't hunt that one, but but yeah, that's um,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: those are interesting places for sure. I am excited to
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: get back and start getting after these. Now you mentioned
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: in in spot A how that area was just so
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: open on the side that I could hunt, and that's
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the same thing that I was talking to you about.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: It's like that just made me uncomfortable, like how why
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: would there be big bucks moving in daylight through Why
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: do open timber like this? Now, this is this is
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: private land that I have access to on these locations,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: So it's it's one other thing. But I'm talking to
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: some friends that have hunted in this general air, and like,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I know it looks weird, but they're in here, they're
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: moving through in the daylight. And it got you and
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I talking about how sometimes I bring my Michigan mindset
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: to other states and I over complicate things. So I
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: come bringing all of my Michigan uh fears, my Michigan anxieties,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: my Michigan worries about making the wrong twig snap and
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: having seventeen deer ago running in the other direction. Um. Like,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: I'm operating on eggshells every day in Michigan, and then
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I come here to Iowa, and my buttery is like,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that big white open timber. There'll be tons
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: of deer in there all the time. There's big bucks
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: roaming in there. And I'm like, how is that possible?
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: And and and you said that sometimes you felt the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: same way, like we bring these different mindsets to locations
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: where it doesn't translate and we can Actually we need
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: to be a little bit more flexible or adaptable with
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: our my and sets, because we'll sometimes miss opportunities because
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: we overthink things. I mean, explain your perspective on that.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Like maybe I did a round about way of trying
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: to describe what I'm talking about her. No, no, no, no, no,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: you're you're spot on. I mean I do the same
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: thing that that The how open these woods are here
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: that we've been walking through is just wild. It's just
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: but it's a it's a testament to just Iowa in
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: general that they can have good hunts in there, because
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: you're right, like, there are a lot of places where
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: if you had that woods it wouldn't be that great
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: like it just it just wouldn't be. And so you gotta, yeah,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: you kind of gotta look at that and go, Okay, well,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I gotta work with what I have to work with.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: And if it's if your permission is on these open woods,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: what are the box is going to show you? You know?
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, I still think that little public land chunk
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: we looked at has a lot of potential just because
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: it's not it didn't look like anything we've seen around here.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: But you know, you go into those woods, and the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: one thing about those woods is if you set in
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: set up in there, you're gonna know what's going on.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: You're gonna see there's no way you're gonna blank at
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: any given time in there, and so it's just a
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: matter of dealing with what you've got, you know. I
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: mean you had another thing where some of these properties
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: have been the available cover has been bulldozed off and
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: so they've shrunk, and so you're showing up with that
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: like this is that's just like white Tail hunting Man.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: You just if you don't own it, you show up
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: and there's always different stuff. You know, you're dealing with
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: egg land and timber production. It's just you know, it's you.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: You have one expectation to show if it's different, but
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: those woods and that, you know, bringing your home mentality
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: to it. Like that kind of goes both ways, right
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: You look at that and go, I'm terrified hunt here
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm gonna get busted. Well, you know,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you have people who live here who say you're not,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: and you're you know, you're probably not if you set
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: up right. But that The other way that goes is
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: somebody from you know, the southeast East or Pennsylvania shows
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: up in Kansas and thinks this is gonna be a
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: slam dunk and you still I was. I was talking
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: to Randy Newberg about this the other day, like about
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: really good tags. He's like people think they draw that
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: once in a lifetime tag for X unit or Y unit,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: or you get that Iowa tag and you go, this
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: is gonna be a slam dunk. I hunt way harder,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: dear than this. You still need effort commensurate with the tag.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: And so it goes both ways. Like you can be
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: too cautious sometimes when you show up in the deer
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: different than like like this scenario with you in the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Iowa bux. But at the same time, you can get
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: too cocky and be like, well, dude, if I can
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: kill bucks here, I can show up there and all
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: of sudden you get out there and it's just a
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: different ball game, not a cake walk, yep. But but
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: the big thing is that's and it's not even that
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: the deer here going to be easier to kill always,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: but it will be different. And so that's a big
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: part of the process that starts early on. You're not
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: only trying to adapt to hunting pressure, or you're not
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: only trying to adapt to where did I see the deer?
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Where didn't I see the deer? But it's also figuring
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: out how do these deers operate, how do they react
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: to hunting pressure, how do they relate to their habitat
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: similarly or differently than what I'm used to back home,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: And like that's something you need to get a sense of,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: at least quickly. I think, and and adjust, like so
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: much of these traveling hunts, Like if you had to
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: distill it down into anything like one core set of philosophies,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: it's like observe, learn fast, and adapt and do that
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: over and over and like you've got to quickly adapt, adapt, adapt,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Watch what does this mean? Adapt? Watch? What does this mean? Adapt?
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: If you can do that, you can have success on
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: these kinds of hunts. But the the the opposite to
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: that is something that a lot of folks and I
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: have been guilty of this at times too. It's like
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: the opposite is what will doom a trip like this,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: which is get comfortable, something feels nice, you're enjoying like
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: a nice spot, sit that way, or paralyzed by not
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: knowing what to do and think, well, I'm just gonna
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: stick with this because that's what I know, or stick
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: with us because what my buddy said to do or
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: or whatever, like the lack of adaptability will sink you
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: on these short term trips, Like you just have to learn.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: And that's that's why I think this kind of hunt.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: If somebody was asking, like how can I become a
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: better deer hunter? And I had to like provide them
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the secret blue pill that's going to provide them away
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: to become a better deer hunter. It wouldn't be like
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: a fancy new call. It wouldn't be a set of camera,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a thousand dollars ten dollar least. It wouldn't
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: be any of those things. It would be going a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: bunch of one week trips to different places you've never
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: hunted before. And right there the forced set of activities
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: that come with having to go to new places and
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: watch learn a death, watch learn a death. You do that,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and you actually get out there and do that, you're
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: gonna get better. I mean, this is this is the ticket.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: That's the ticket. It's just experienced man. Yeah, you know,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I I was thinking about this last night with us
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: and we keep talking about how open these woods are
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: here and that one of the farms that I hunt
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota when I started hunting, it was like that
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: you'd sit in one and it was a great turkey
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: hunting woods. You know, you'd sit in it and look
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: from one end to the other. And what we learned,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: even way back I was in high school when I
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: was hunting this first was that if this, if there
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: was corn standing, and there was always corn standing on
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: top of the bottom somewhere, that's where they betted until
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the corn got picked. And it actually got way harder
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to hunt when the corn got picked because those deer
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: it seemed like and it's it's it's circled back to this.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: It got logged, and now it's getting really mature again.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: It actually feels like when they picked that corn, those
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: deer move out because it's just not it doesn't work well.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: So what we deal with was, and this is early season,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: this isn't rough stuff obviously, but you would know those
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: deer are going to be bettered in the corn and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna just stage through that woods and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: go up and feed the beans or the off alf
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: or vice versa. You know, you'd play it morning or evening,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: and that's what this looks like here. And I just
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: think about this and like, this is this is probably
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, four or five hours from where that is.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: It feels like the same scenario, you know, what I mean.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: And so, like you said, if you get on these
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: hunts and you know, I see stuff hunting in northern
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin which is different than most of the white tail
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: hunting I do, then I still go, yeah, of course
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: they came down off of that ridge and crossed right there,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Like it's the same thing that you've seen, you know,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: a western white tail state that isn't anything like that.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: You know on paper, they're totally different. But you watch
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it and go, I've seen this movie before. Yeah, you
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: start to notice like patterns of behavior where it's like
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the color, like the specifics might look different, but there's
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: this general underlying consistently where you can match up. Oh yeah,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: this kind of feature. Actually there's a lot like that
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: other one. And and you're right once you start, it's
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: like that's saying like seeing the forest for the trees,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Like sometimes you can get so focused on the specifics
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you miss the bigger picture. If you can, if you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: can put yourself into enough positions like this, you'll start
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: seeing both. And if you can see both, then you'll
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: actually understand what the hell is going on. There's something there,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: um what else is important to you? Just I mean,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: when it comes to these short term traveling hunts, and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: we've talked about got to be able to adapt. We've
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: talked about you need to have a lot of different
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: options so that you can adapt quickly and feel comfortable
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: with that. We've talked about being careful not to bring
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: all of your problems from home with you and again
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: being able to adjust to what's actually happening there on
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: the ground. Um, is there anything else? Is there anything else?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: When it comes to that side of things, it's worth
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: thrown out there for people that are going to try
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: something like this or are wanting to. And there's probably
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks other have tried these things, They've
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: heard about it for years, have gone out there and
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: done it, Like, man, this is it's not working. Yeah, well,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I would say, you know, kind of what we talked about.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: But when we got down here, you know, you've got
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: little kids. I've got little kids. There's always this weird
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: excitement and guilt. You know when you when you go
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: on trips here, you're excited to go, you're sad to
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: leave your kids. And you know that's one of the
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: reasons I really like a Turkey trip or some other
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: it's just a scouting trip where you can't for a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: couple of days, you kind of get to take your
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: own temperature as far as like how comfortable are you
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: being gone for X amount of days? And if you
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: take a guy like Andy May and you give them
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: three days somewhere, there's probably gonna be a short blood
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: trail and a trophy photo, like the dude, it's gonna
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: go kill something somewhere. Most people are gonna do that.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: But if you have five, six, seven days, you gotta
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: You've got a real opportunity if you can, if you
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: can get into the moment and kind of leave some
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: of the bs from work and family behind and just
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: go I'm here, I'm gonna enjoy this. My buddies are here, we'
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: gonna work together, we're gonna we're gonna do this. You
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: get a lot done in five six days if you're
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: capable of doing that. Like some people, you know, you
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: might go on a two day trip in their homesick
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: like it might not be their thing or you know,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: so just kind of learning like how comfortable are you
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: driving ten hours and setting up a camp and not
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: taking a shower for five days and you know, living
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: that lifestyle. That's that's a big part of it. Yeah,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: what do you say to that person who has seven
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: days budgeted for their trip and they get to day
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: five and it's just not been going well, They're not
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: finding deer. They're like this, it's a sucking I've been
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: gone from the family. I know, my wife's irritated, my
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: kids missed me, and I think a lot. I've certainly
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: gotten to these points on trips. Like God Parton was like,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: I just I'm just gonna call it cut my losses,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: get back to the family, get some brownie points, all that.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: So there's one side that says that, there's the other
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: side to say, stick it out, push it to the end,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: leave it all on the field. Uh, because they can
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: all change in the last two minutes of the last day.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: You never know where are you at on there on
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: those two options, and has that change for you stick
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: it out? I mean, but that's that goes back to
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: just like if if you're enjoying it, you're gonna want
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: to stick it out. So so do these hunts in
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a way. Try to try to do them in a
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: way where you're having fun. You know, it's the single
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: minded focus on the end result often takes away from
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: the fund. If it's like I don't want to go
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: back and tell the guys at work that I didn't
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: kill a big one when I drew my Kansas tag
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: or whatever, that's hard to overcome. But if you're just
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: out there and you're just like, man, this is so
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: cool sitting in this river bottom in western North Dakota.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm here. You ride that out to
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the end, Like you do this stuff enough, you do
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: get those last second kills. I mean I've had I've
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: had times where I was like, well, you know this
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: is I'm just running at the clock. Now, I got
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes left. There's no way in fact I had
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: that happen. When it when it first happened to me,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: it like taught me a really good lesson. So I
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: was in Geez. This was probably like two thousand eleven
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: or something. I was in North Dakota, and I had
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: killed a big buck the year before. I think it
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: was the year before. Really easily, like I was like, Oh,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I got this, this is no problem. Next year went
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: out there, we had had shorter time. I think we
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: had four days and we had three of us, and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: we just were not had other people on us, and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: it was just not coming together. It was not fun.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I had, you know, two babies at home, you know,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: just like it was a tough trip, right, And I
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: just remember the last night nobody had killed. And usually
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: we go out there, if there's three of us, you're
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: gonna get one or two tier, you know, maybe three
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: on a good year. We had nothing, and you know,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: it's like Jesus, you know, we really we flamed out
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: on this one. And I remember sitting there and it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: was just the most beautiful night. And I was set
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: not a crossing an upriver, my buddy was sitting on
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: acrossing and down river my buddy was sitting on across
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: and I was like, man, how is this not happening
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: for one of Like we are, we're on these things.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: But I just had the sense of like this this
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: is not it's over. But it was like such a
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: beautiful night. I'm just like remember sitting there going like whatever,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: like that's cool. Maybe I'll come back. Maybe I'll just
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: swing back in late October or something. And I just
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: looked over and here come to this eight point down
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: the trail, fifteen yards away, quartering away, and I shot
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: him and he went and tipped over, and I was
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: like what, like what and and actually my buddy got
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: a shot that night too and missed it. I think
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: he missed one or maybe he didn't passed one up
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: or something. I can't remember, but it was just like
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: I had in my head. I was like, there is
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: no way. And then you know, the last second I had.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: It happened in Oklahoma one time on a buck to
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: where it was down to like the last couple of minutes,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, you know, we got we got
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: a dope piece. I saw a ton of deer whatever.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: And then I hear that coming down the trailer. What
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: runs right in on the trailer is supposed to shooting
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: me runs and tips over, and it's like, holy shit,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I cannot believe that just happened, you know. So it's
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: stick it out. If if you're having fun, you will
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: want to stick it out. Last minute magic that's possible, man,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: And that's uh. And then you've got to call the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: wife and explain why you're gonna be home later than
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: you thought. Dude, well we're tracking tomorrow. I mean, you know,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: on those last last minute shots, like take the one
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: you know you can make and then be real confident
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: that you can piece one out and you know, cut
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: the skull played off and do whatever you gotta do
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: to get at home. You know, speaking of that, any
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: last minute lessons learned that you've um, little little tips
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: or things that have helped you when it comes to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: all of those other end of the process type situations
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: like recovery processing, getting the animals home, getting the meat home.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: You've done this a bunch, travel all over the place.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Anything's you've learned on that front that have made that
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: whole deal easier for you. Because we're gonna doom that
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: everybody's gonna listen to this. They're going on on these trips,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: they're going to be successful. There's gonna be tens of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: thousands of people bringing deer home. Let's help him out
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: and give him, give him a few more ideas here
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: and how again do it? Just confidence. So if you've
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: never if you've never you know, feel dressed a buck,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: if you've never pieced apart of deer good enough to
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: get it into cooler, do that and figure out how
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: to do that. Like, yeah, I just I grew up.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: That's that's what we always did. Like we never took
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: our deer to a butcher. You know, it's just my
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Dad's like, here's how you take them apart. So I
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: have the luxury of having been taught that, and so
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: I get not everybody has that, but that it's not
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: a difficult thing. If you can get with somebody who
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: knows how to do it and see them do it
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: one time, or they gonna walk you through it, it's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: a huge benefit, you know. I mean, that's that's one
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: of the reasons I love getting people into this like that.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: That seems very intimidating, that part. But when you when
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: you walk somebody through it, it's not that like take
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: the insides out, peace them out. What do you not
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: want to eat? Cut that off? You know, like it's
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: not but it's it's tough when you haven't done it,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: and those are the kind of things. It's just like
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: not being comfortable with your saddle setup or not being
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: comfortable with your stands when you get out on these trips.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: If you don't have that that comfort level, and there's
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: only one way to earn it, right like you got
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: you gotta do this ship. But the more you do it,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: the more you go like that that anxiety levels the
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: nervousness like that goes away and you can just enjoy
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: it better. It's like anything else, like first day on
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: the job versus two years into it. And so just
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: get exposure to that and that that's one of the
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: reasons I just you know, if you're at home. I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: think it's one of the reasons why a lot of
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: people quit bow hunting or deer hunting after a few years.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: They get in, especially the young male crowd seems to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: do this a lot. They get in and they think
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: they're gonna kill a bunch of big bucks and it's
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: gonna be awesome, and it's hard, and they don't get
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: the experience actually drawing and aiming and shooting deer, doze whatever.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: They don't get the experience of blood trailing, and so
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: you kind of you kind of skip a lot of
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: those steps that make you a person who can own
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: that process. And the more you own of it, the
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: more comfortable you are. And so that goes for the
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: back end stuff too, Like that's that's a big deal.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: And of course, like have the tools, right, like have
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: have good knives, have a cutting board, have a way
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: to just like you and you don't need to hang
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: them up, you know, like a lot of people think
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: that you do. And if you have the opportunity, yeah,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: you can hang them up. It's a good thing. But
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: we cut up so many deer on the tailgate of
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: our truck, you know, kind of like you would piece
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: them out just or with a tarp on the ground.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of ways to do it.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: And if if you're listening out here and you have
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: new hunters around, you help them out with that. Like
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a gift that keeps giving. Let's end
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: with this. You mentioned um a scenari where a lot
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: of people like get into it and then realize it's
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: harder and it's not coming together for him, then they quit.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: So for someone listening, and I think there's there's probably
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: a decent number of people out there. I've gotten messages
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: from a lot of people out there who have gotten
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: into this thing. They liked the idea of it, they
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: like the stuff. They've been out there trying to hunt.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: They've hunted a bunch. It just hasn't come together for him.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: They hunted for years, and they've been watching too many
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: hunting shows and all that kind of stuff. So they
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: feel they need to shoot a hundred and thirty or
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: hundred buck or something there. That's what they want to do.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: So they've been hunting and hunting and hunting for years.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Hasn't come together. I haven't killed that first big buck yet.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: And they're kind of like, what the hell am I
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: doing wrong? I'm hunting the pinch points, like they say,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: should I've got my grunt tube, I'm I've gone to Kansas,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I tried that. I've done all these things. I've got,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: you know, hundred acres on my buddies land, I and
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: hunt and we put in food plots and we run
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: trail cameras, and uh, what am I doing wrong? I mean,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: there's so many different possible things that could be going on.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: But if you had any like without knowing any details,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: if you had to make some assumptions and you could
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: give them like one thing to think about, what would
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: that one thing to be? Well, ask yourself, are you
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: enjoying it? Like some people they just want to target
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: a good one and if they don't get it, they're
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: totally okay with that. If you're not having fun, uh,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and you haven't got that first one forty yet, like
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: maybe go kill a bunch of little ones like I mean, really,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: what you see happen there A lot is people get
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: into a crowd, and this is you know, we do
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: this to people a lot, like unintentionally. But if you
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: bring somebody in, and that's like a that's a virtuous thing, right,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Like we're bringing somebody into the fold. We should be
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: doing that. The problem is is if you kind of
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: you kind of usher somebody into your group that's at
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: a skill level, you know that's not up to Mark
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: Kenyan's experience level. There there's like a natural thing that
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: happens where they want to compete, especially guys do this.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: I think women are better at this because they're not
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: idiots like we are, like we we we have to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: we we we we fight our egos a lot, right,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: But if you get somebody in who just accepts like
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell I'm doing, like I'm
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: you send a fund by me, I'm you send a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: forcu by me, I'm shooting those people, they tend to
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: do it long term and they tend to blossom into
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: somebody who can get that ship done. Like I've got
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: a I've got a really good buddy who I got
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: into bow hunting and probably I guess fourteen fifteen years ago.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: And he's always had a great attitude on hunts, like
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: any and a low standard guy, right. And last year
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: he's he's got a place in Minnesota he hunts in
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: addition to traveling with me, and he uh, he killed
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: his first good and he killed great, like a hundred
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: forty some inch buck like twenty inches wide. It was
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: like just unbelievable. And this was something like if you
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: knew this guy five six, seven years ago, he'd be like,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: no way, like there's he's never going to get there.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: But I've just watched this progression and a big part
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of it was like his willingness to just like I'm
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: just open to not being very good at this and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: getting better, and his attitude. He was just always like
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: let's just do where where are we going? Like you
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: want to go hunt here, you want to go hunt there.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Every day you get up, he's getting up like he's
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: that's so important, and it's it's hard to be that
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: way if you're frustrated with the results all the time,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, like you and I've been talking about
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: investing a little bit just randomly in our conversations and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: there's like there's so much of this like psychological stuff, right,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Like if you if you ask me about like it's
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: kind of something like a geek out on. Right. The
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: first thing I want to tell you about his apple
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: when I bought it, because that was a winner, right,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: I don't want to tell you about the ones I
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: lost my ass on, you know. And so if you're
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: paying attention to this, and you're and you're listening, and
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: it's like easy for us to condense a ton of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: kills into an hour or hour and a half conversation,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: we're not talking about, you know, the mistakes that outnumber
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: those by like orders of magnetude. I mean, you screw
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: up when you go out there. I make mistakes every
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: single time I hunt. Literally, Yeah, such an important thing
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: to remember and to bring up. Yeah, and you just
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna get it. Like you you go watch
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: a th HP video, You're gonna see the highlights, like
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: you go you into us, you read an article, highlights, highlights, highlights.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: But the reality is is like if you're out there
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: getting your ass kicked in the woods, you're exactly like
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: every hunter out there, but you go get your asket
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: A whole bunch and every once in a while, you know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: the light shines on you and you go, Okay, I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: got one good one out of the way, and then
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: you go back to screwing up and screwing up and
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: screwing up. But eventually you get a little more consistent
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: on the success. And that's it right there. I mean,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: that's screwing up and screw up a little bit less
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: and learning, and then screwing up and then screwing up
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: a little lesson learning, and just keep on doing that
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: and eventually comes together like that's the rest of you
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: for getting good at anything. Man. That is That is
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: I guess that's a good place to wrap it up.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: So thank you Tony for coming down here for working
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: on this project. I'm excited for people to see this
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: stuff soon. I'm excited for people to hear more from you. Um.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: I wish we didn't have to be so vague about it.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe we don't even need to be vague about it,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: but we're gonna be for now. But stay tuned, folks,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: We've got some cool stuff coming up. Uh be sure
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: to be following along with the Tony's got going on
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: here and see a lot more of him and uh,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: I'm happy about that, so Tony, I am too, buddy.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks for everything, man, absolutely and that's gonna do it.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in. Appreciate you spend some time here.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: I hope this is inspired and helped inform you on
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: what you need to know to get out there and
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: plan that first trip. Like we've been talking about you,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: you won't regret it. This is a great way to
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: expand your boundaries, to learn a lot, and have a
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: lot of fun along the way. So until next time,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: thank you and stay wired to hunt.