Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 247: My Nebraska 13 Pointer and DIY Hunt with Andy May

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Ep. 247: My Nebraska 13 Pointer and DIY Hunt with Andy May · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number two and forty seven,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and today on the show, I'm joined by my buddy
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and d i y white tail expert Andy May to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: break down our recent Nebraska white tail hunt and the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: full story of how I arrowed my thirteen point buck.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: to you by Onyx, and today we are telling you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a story. We're telling you the story of the hunt
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that Andy May and I just got back on got
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: back from out in Nebraska, and I'm hoping this is
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: going to be a story that has some teaching moments,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I think because it was a pretty awesome hunt. It
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: was an interesting hunt, surprising hunt in a lot of ways. Um,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And the fact that I got to share it with
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  Speaker 1: my buddy, Andy May, who I think is a great hunter,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: who I've been able to learn a lot from, excuse me,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and who I also maybe give it cold over the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: past couple days. And I'm coffing right now, Um, because
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of all these reasons I think that I learned a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: lot in this trip, and Andy, I think maybe you did.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Two Did you learn anything? Do you feel like we
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: came away from this hunt with some new AHAs? Yeah?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Absolutely it was. You know, it was a short hunt,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: so it was challenging, um, but definitely learned a lot
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: new terrain. For me for sure, I've never been that
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: far west for white tails, so I had to learn
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: on the fly, and we were able to do that
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and get on dear. Yeah, it was. It's a really
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: interesting scenario. So that's why do I want to walk
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: everyone through this hunt, what we thought leading up to it,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: kind of what our plan was, and then what happened
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: once we arrived and how we adjusted and figured things
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: out or try to fare things out over the course
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of that four days or three and a half days
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: or whatever it was. And oh, by the way, I
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: did happen to kill a great buck, So that's exciting
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm excited to share that story too. So that's
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: kind of the game plan. We're gonna try to pull
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: some lessons learned out of this for everybody, and I
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: guess Andy, to kick things off, can you kind of
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: lay the foundation as far as what you were thinking
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: before this, Because you and me start talking, you had
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: gotten permission on this piece of property out in kind
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: of Centralish Nebraska. Um, what were you thinking leading into
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: this as far as what we were getting into. Well, yeah,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: when I you know, first saw the property that we
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: were going to be hunting, UM, I got real excited because,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: um it was rather large. Um you know, so I
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: was expecting an abundance of game. UM, it was had water,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: which out west you know is uh like gold. So
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: UM it looked like a very um game rich river
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: bottom system. UM, very unique uh large hills, large sand
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: hills UM to the north and south and then and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: then uh you know a river bottom running east and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: west that had lots of terrain features and turns and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: ox bows and just something really new to me. So UM,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I was expecting, I think, kind of the same thing
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you were expecting, UM, something similar to what you had
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: seen in Montana with um, you know a lot of
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: deer kind of coming and going to you know, maybe
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: some of the egg fields on private land. UM. You
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: know that sort of thing. So we were expecting to
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: kind of observe from a distance and you know, maybe
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: pick out a couple of the nicer bucks and then
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: and move in from there. But it turned out much
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: different now leading up to it, right, so we need
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I want us have ever been to the property. It
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: was just looking at maps. So both you and I
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: spend time looking at aerial and topographic maps ahead of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: time and trying to pick out a few places, a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: couple of areas that we thought might be the best. Um.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And then our plan was to look at the maps,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: plan some things out, and then when we arrived there
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: on day one, to try to verify these things and
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: lead you observe, um, what were the things in the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: map that you were king in on before we ever
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: saw it? Well, um, you know, just kind of going
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: back on some of my experience. UM, I've done a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: lot of hunts, like going in blind on areas that
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I've never hunted before. But typically they're during the rut
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: um when you know that first two weeks in November,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: when the bucks are kind of on their feet and
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: cruising and chasing, the dolls are moving and there's a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: lot of action, and you can kind of put yourself
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: in some obvious positions, um, you know, and with some
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: tree stand time you can have some good luck and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: you know, dude to us scheduling, we were actually going
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: late October and more so kind of mid till late October,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you know. Um. So anyway, looking at the map, um,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: you know, the river corridor looked awesome. There was lots
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of river bends you know, which you know, in my
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: experience is typically good betting a lot of pinch points
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: where ridge systems come down to the river and there
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: will be like an outside bend, um, you know, that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: kind of pinches down travel. We expected white tails to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: be kind of lower in elevation along the river, and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: maybe some mule deer because there are mualies mixed in
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: up in the higher elevation, which I was really excited
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: about to to maybe get into some muli's um. But
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that's some of the features that you know jumped out
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: there looked to be like there it was some some
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: green you know, maybe irrigated fields or some egg uh
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you know, on on one end. Um. But you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes you can look at the map and it can
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: be a lot different um when you get there. Then
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: what you thought? So yeah, and I thought, even looking
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: at the maps, on of those green fields extended into
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: areas that you know, I thought we were gonna be
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a little hunt, and I thought maybe there's some hay
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: fields and maybe a little bit of alfalfa or something
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: like you were mentioned, kind of similar to other places
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I've hunted out west. So we figured we'd drive through
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the night all night and get there first thing in
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the morning and be able to glass crop fields and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: hopefully see bucks. Um. So we do that, We drive
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: all night, We get there seven, we chat with a
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: landowner and two things. Number one Um, he mentioned that
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he would like us to hunt just this one side
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: of the farm that isn't near the few crop fields
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: that they did have. So that was the first thing.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So he kind of points us in the direction. We
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: drive out in the direction that we are able to hunt.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And when we get out there, we realize there's no
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: there's no egg. It's just kind of brushy grass, dry
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: straw grass. Um. And then kind of cedars everywhere, cedar
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: choked kind of hillsides and things like that. And and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the second thing we saw is that this area had
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: cattle all over the place. UM. So I think right away,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you and me when we saw those two things, we
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: were already kind of looking at each other like, oh, um,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: this isn't quite what we're hoping for. But we we
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: we drove down, we drove eight miles down this river,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: um to this area where we could hunt, and then
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: we got up into these hills and just tried to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: glass some country. Um. We thought we're gonna be glassing
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: agg fields. That wasn't the case. But we could see
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: kind of some of this river bottom stuff and then
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: some of the hills behind it. Um, so what we've
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: maybe spent that first hour or something like that just
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: glassing all those hillsides trying to see some deer, right,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and then um, I think we saw three or four
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: doughs and little buck and that was kind of it
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  Speaker 1: for that first morning. We drove around a little more
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: trying to glass up some more stuff, but it was
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: slim pickings, right. Yeah. Yeah. The hills, like you said,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: are are sand hills with just uh, you know, no
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: real food to speak of for white tail, like the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: dry straw grass. We saw you know, a few moving
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: we weren't really at a good vantage point. We were
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: actually well I guess we were kind of high, and
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: but we were glassing up instead of down like we
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: kind of were hoping. Um, But we were just trying
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to get a feel for the area. And like you said,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of cattle, very few deer spotted. And I
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: think we both had a sense right there, like, Okay,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: we got our work cut out for us on a
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: short hunt. UM didn't appear to be a high abundance
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: of deer initially. UM. And I think our strategy of
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of what we went in with UM
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: kind of quickly changed, maybe maybe not changed dramatically. We
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: still wanted to find the bed and the feed pattern, UM,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: which we eventually did, but it was much different than
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: what we were expecting. Yeah. And and another thing we
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: were hoping to do is we thought we were gonna
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: be across to both sides of the river, so we
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: had glass this area. We weren't seeing many deer. We thought, okay, well,
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  Speaker 1: let's drive down a little further to the east check
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: out this spot and UM, cross the river there and
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: go up in the hills on the other side and
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  Speaker 1: glass down from that. So we get out there that
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  Speaker 1: we get to the river and we realized this river
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  Speaker 1: is much bigger and deeper than we thought. UM. We
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: both brought hit boots thinking that that was gonna be okay,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: and what what Well Andy, Andy goes out that he
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: pulls on his hip boots, like, well, I'm gonna try it,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I guess. We walked up and down and found one
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  Speaker 1: spot that we thought maybe it might be okay, it
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: looks pretty sketchy, but gosh, you started slowly going out
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: there and you're a big stick in front of right. Yeah,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: thank god. I grabbed the stick, um because I almost didn't. Um,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, you could tell you know water, you know,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: when it's deeper, it's kind of quicker moving. You don't
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: see ripples. Um. But three quarters of this spot where
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I tried to cross definitely was shallow enough. Um So,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: but the the beginning part looked a little sketchy. So
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I grabbed a stick. I don't know, it's probably eight
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: foot tall, and I was just kind of inching forward.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: You know. It's ankle deep, calf deep and pretty muddy, yeah,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: pretty muddy. And then all of a sudden, um, you know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I I'm hitting the stick on the bottom right front,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, it just the bottom just
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: drops off, like the whole eight foot plus um just
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: basically like a sheer drop off cliff that I totally
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: would have fell in and then swept down river. Um,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: you were less than twelve inches probably from that edge
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: with your foot. I mean you're right there, that was
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, that's kind of kind of sketchy, like
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: you said. Yeah, so so we can't cross the river.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: We've got cattle all over the country, we're not seeing
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: any deer, and there's no food. Um that's how the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: trip started. And I remember you and me walking back, Yeah,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and we're thinking, oh man, this is ah, this could
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: be a complete flop. Um then we're okay, well, we
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: just need to set up camp and then look at
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the maps again and reassess what's the next area we
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: should go look at. Because we did do a little
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: bit of walking down on that river. We thought there,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: here's the section a good cover and there was a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: strip of timber going along the river that we thought, man,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: there should be some scrapes or something along here if
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: they were deer using it. And we were checking the
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: river crossings trying to see tracks, and we just weren't
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: seeing the number of tracks that we thought we should see.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And there were no scrapes. There was no sign that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: we thought would be indicative of good deer activity or
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: good buck being in there, So figure a right, let's
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: go find a place out of camp. So we drive
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: this kind of I mean, the I can't even know
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: if you want to call it a a road. It's like
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: a it's like a trail almost that went along into
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: these hills. And so we're driving up and over these
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: hills of this barely seable trail that we're following, and um,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: eventually kind of got to the spot where the where
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the trail petered out and we couldn't see it any
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: see it any further. So I was like, all right, well,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I don't want to drive this truck all over the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: place not knowing what we're gonna get into, especially because
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: you come over some of these hills and there's like
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: steep cliff faces or these steep coolies. Um. I had
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: this perpetual paranoia that was gonna come over hill and
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the truck was gonna drop straight down. Um. So we're
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just following a spot on the hillside that was kind
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of sheltered, you know, from wind, set up our tents, um.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And as we're setting out the tents, the winds like whipping,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm we kept on like waffling back and forth,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like should we set it up here. Um, we're kind
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of in a bowl, so I was hoping we were
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: kind of protected from the wind. But the wind was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: whipping and it was supposed to get way worse like
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a day and a half later. But we didn't want
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: our tent way down the bottom because we thought that's
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: where all the deer we're gonna be. Um. So then
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, man, this is We're just doomed. Like
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: we're probably gonna have the tent blow away on day two.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: We're not gonna see any deer. Um. We're just like
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: kind of like we're already laughing at each other like,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: oh God, like this is going to be a disaster. Um.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: But I don't know, I mean what happened. Then I
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: think we set up camp and then it was basically
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: as soon as we have camp set, we're kind of thinking,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: all right, we probably gotta get moving right and start
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: making a game plan. Yea, And uh, you know, I
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: think we I think we had an idea, um, you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: just kind of I think we both had a bit
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of experience with um, you know, pastured ground with cattle
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and white tails, and you know, some white tails will
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: still hang out. But when they're thick in there, and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: they're constantly moving through the thick color and thick cover,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and it's pastured to death. You know, they tend to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: push the white tails out. Um, that's been my experience.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: You know, if there's a lot of cattle, not a
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: lot of white tails, there might be some still in
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: some pockets. But basically what we did is we just started.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: After we set up camp, we started trekking west and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: eventually we got to the end of the pasture where
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the cows couldn't go any further. Unfortunately, that was quite
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a ways from camp. You know, we didn't know that
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: at first, but we got past the cows, which eliminated
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, at least what would you say, six
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: of the ground we could hunt. Yeah, so, um, you
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: know the strategy in my head and I think yours too,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: and we we we did a lot of good teamwork here,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: like bouncing ideas off each other, and due to the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: lack of sufficient food, um, you know, we kind of
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: started focusing on bedding and what we know about deer
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: bedding and buck betting in in river bottom systems. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: uh so it's a bit of river bottom, but it
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: also has ridges so you know, we were looking at
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: points going down from the ridges. We were looking at
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the ox bows or the river bends. Every time there
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: was a river bend or what we were calling them,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: it was kind of like a bowl because what the
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: ridge came down into like a point or like a
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: bench um with a point, and then there would be
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: an oxbow or a river bottom. But it created like
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a big flat space out there in that river bottom
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: um and we called it a bowl. And because that
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: was on the south side of the river, um that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the south side tends to get a little more shade
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: on a on a um, you know, when when the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: sun's up in the sky and it's going down in
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the evening, it tends to get a little more shade.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So that was the only area where we found any
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: bit of green. And when I say a little bit,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it was very little. It looked like little little mini
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: food plots of grass down there in those bowls. Yeah.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: And then along the ridges were thick thick cedars um
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: so great cover all those ridges. And then like you mentioned,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: there were little pockets of thick brushy stuff along the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: river too, and then that that grassy flat spot in
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the bowl. And so you and me. We we worked
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: past the cattle and we're kind of looking at our
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: maps the whole time, our phones, thinking about okay, what
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: might be good, and we kind of settled on the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: idea of trying to get to a couple of these bowls,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: maybe split up each of us on a different bowl
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: and kind of observe it, try to set up. We
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: went in with our saddles and sticks on our backs,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and the game plan being to get up into these spots,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: slowly work our way into them and try to find
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: somewhere set up where hopefully we could see something but
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: also maybe be in a position to to shoot. And
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: we got to this first spot that you were gonna hunt. Um,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: what did you like about that? First thought? Well, Um,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I was willing to sacrifice the first evening, which I
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: often am on a you know, on a trip where
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think they're going to be moving a ton,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: uh you know, like as far as like running behavior.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: We were hoping that they'd be cruising, but a high
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: vantage point where I could see some of these bowls
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and these ox bows. Um, I thought would be a
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: good first move, even on a short term hunt, because
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: really we knew we were gonna. We were at a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: disadvantage on this hunt with time, unfamiliar ground, and then
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: even more disadvantage when we found out how low the
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: deer numbers were in this area, just there wasn't enough
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: nutrition to support a lot of deer. The area had
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: been hit with the h d um, you know, four
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: or five years ago and all you know, everything we
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: heard from the locals, they still haven't gotten back to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the numbers. They were maybe like half um. So, you know,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: we had a couple of things stacked against us. But
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I liked that area. I did have a potential shot,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a long one, but it was more less a good
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: glassing point. Um. So I stopped at that one and
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and you decided to go to the next one. And
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: that was kind of our strategy, to just keep hitting
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: these these betting areas down the river to the west
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: until we found deer. And unfortunately the first night ended up.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: You know, I found deer, and obviously you found some
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: deer um, so you can get and dive into that
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, So so I left you at
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that spot you were kind of observing on that point,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: watching that first bowl, and then I went way up
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: again up into the hills to go around your ball,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: because I don't want to walk too close to the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: top of your ridge and blow my wind down into there.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So I went way back up into the high hills
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and then walked on continuing on further west, and it
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: ended up being about a two mile hike for me
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to get from where a camp was to where I
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: eventually hunted um. But so I went way out into
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the hills and then I'm looking at this bowl I
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: want to get to on my map, and I am
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: easing my way now, coming back towards the river, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I get into the beginnings of some little cedar patch
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: is up in the hills, and I bump a small
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: eight pom he was betted at or standing up in
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: this little cool He goes running off, so I'm thinking, okay,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I'm getting into him a little bit, but I'm still high,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'm still above the river. So I continue to ease.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: But I see on the map now that I want
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: to almost head straight down to the river bottom now
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to get to the the spot where i'd be on
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the down wind side of this betting year, because I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: don't want to blow into it. So I thought I'll
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: approach from the down wind side and just slowly ease
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and glass and figure it, we'll see what's going on
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: in there. So as I'm dropping down this hillside, I
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: get to a gap there's some seaters. I get into
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the gap in the seaters where I can see down
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: to the bottom completely into this bowl, and they're on
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: the edge of the river. I spotted deer. I pulled
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: my binoculars and it's a shooter like it's a nice, big,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: mature a pointer. Um, So I got really excited and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I just remember like, oh my god, there's a nice buck.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: And the first thing my first instinct was to try
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to film him before I did anything else. And this
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: is actually looking I hadn't thought about this, but that
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: was probably a mistake. Um. If I hadn't done what
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: I'm about to tell you I did, I bet you
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: could have killed this deer because the first thing I did,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: rather than trying to make a move on that deer,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and the first thing I want to do is get
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: footage of him. So I've taken off my backpack and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to unzip my backpack to get my camera out,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: which is at the very bottom of the pack. And
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: it took me like, I don't know, it felt like forever,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: probably just the minute, but I'm like trying to pull
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: out different things, trying to find my camera. I finally
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: get the camera out and get it on him. I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: get to film the deer and he's maybe two yards
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: away on the edge of the river, just kind of
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: feeding or I don't know. I can't even remember exactly
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. It's kind of like sitting around
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: looking at stuff, nibbling, um, just standing there. So I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: get some footage of him, and then he actually starts
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to walk. He gets puts set up and starts to walk,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and I think at this point like, oh wow, he
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: might come this direction. I bet you I can sneak
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: down and get a shot. So at this point I
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: dropped my camera. I grabbed my bow in an arrow,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and where I'm at is I'm on the side of
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: this ridge and then the ridge going down to the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: bottom is covered in really thick cedar trees and it's
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: maybe a fifty ft dropped down this ridge to get
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: to the bottom, maybe maybe more of that maybe, um.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: So I scurry over to the edge. I see that
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: he's kind of not walking straight towards me, but kind
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: of up the ridge away from me now, So I
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: think I can maneuver, and I go sliding down this
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: ridge as quietly as I can, but as quickly as possible.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm like shimming under branches and crawling on all
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: fours and laying down and sliding underneath these things. And
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: as I'm picking my way down through the seat or
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: take it to get to the bottom, I see antlers
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: come in my direction. I'm like, holy crap, he covered
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of ground, like he's close and coming right
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: at me now. And then my thought was, I wonder
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: if he heard like snapping branches or something, and thought like, oh,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: there's some deer over there, and he's to come and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: check them out. So I'm trying to get now quickly
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: up to the front, but also not move so much
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: that he sees me, because now he's heading right in
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: my direction. Basically, what ends up happening is he gets
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: closer and closer and then he starts trotting like right
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: at me. He's at like sixty fifty fifty forty, and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I'm just at the edge of the trees, but one
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: set of limbs that are in front of me, and
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I can't get around him in time. So I remember,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I remember trying to maneuver my left arm around one
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: branch and then like, I need to push past one
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: more and then I could draw back and get a shot.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: But he's at like he runs by it, like less
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: than twenty yards, but I can't get a shot through
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the branches, and he goes trotten by and keeps on
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: working down that river bottom and goes around the point.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I tried a couple of calls at that point in
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Hail Mary, but nothing. He disappeared, So I'm for I'm like,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: oh man, that was awesome to see him, but I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: didn't think the shot was so close. It was exciting.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But as I sat there and I thought through, Okay,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: what do I do next, I realized, well, wow, that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: was at three in the afternoon. He was up on
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: his feet and it kind of seemed like he was
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: almost cruising. I mean, it wasn't like he wasn't bumped,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like he was chasing a deer. It wasn't
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: like he was kind of feeding, like he was on
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the move. So I thought, wow, look at this location
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: as you described it, um Andy, this spot was just
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: like that example you brought which where there's this bowl
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of flat ground middle there's ridge that circled around it,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and then the point came down towards the river and
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: pinched everything down to a very narrow area. And I thought,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: if I get to that pinch point where the ridge
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: comes closest to the river, it's like a forty yard
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: space there that any deer that comes through would have
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: to pass by. So I sneak over to that spottle
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: all my gear and I find this little pinch and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I look at the hillside and I find there's some
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: cedars there and a couple of dead trees, and I
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: see a little shelf that's maybe I don't know, ten
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: ft up up the hillside, maybe just a little little
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: bit elevat on the hillside. I kind of crawl up
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: into there, and I start breaking some limbs and kind
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: of opening up a little kind of cubby hole for
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: me basically where I can be tucked into the cedar
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and then like a little down tree in front of me.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And I've got several nice shot lanes into this little
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: bowl and towards this gap where they have to pinch
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: down into. And I got settled there, and um, I'll
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: admit I took a little tiny nap there in the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: sun because we hadn't we hadn't, I hadn't slept a
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: wink to drove stream. We drove straight through the night,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't sleep for whatever reason, so I hadn't
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: slept yet that night, so I fell asleep for like
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: half hour or something. I wake up and it's hot
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: and no deer yet, and I think it was like
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: two hours past since I've been set up, and I
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: finally see movement to my left, down kind of in
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the same same general region where I saw the original buck,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and I pull up my binos and it's another big buck.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And the first thing I thought was, it's that same
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: deer again, but he's heading away from me now, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I thought, man, he came back, but now he's going
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the other way. But he turns his head and I
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: see a whole bunch more times, So right away I'm like, Okay, Wow,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: this is a big deer. He saw a big body
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: on him, but he's walking kind of quickly away. So
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I needed to get his attention and need to get
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: his attention fast, and I thought the best way to
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: do it would be a loud, aggressive call, So I
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: thought snort we's, so right away I grabbed my grunt
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: tube and I give a big snort we's, and that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: stops and right in his tracks, and he turns and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: looks back and he's probably maybe two yards away, looks
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: back at me for maybe thirty seconds to a minute,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and then turns and takes a few more steps and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: then starts making a scrape. And then I watched him
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: for the minute and then he takes another suit stakes,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: takes a few more steps walking away, so I snort
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: whis again. He stops, turns, looks at me, and this
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is kind of that moment of truth where you're you're
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: looking at him and like, what's he gonna do? How
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: is he going to react? And then you've I'm sure
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you've seen this where they take that initial like they
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: make like the eighty two return, where they repositioned themselves
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: right towards you, and that's just this like, oh yes,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: this feeling of relief like he's gonna come. And he
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: starts taking those steps and starts walking right towards me,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: and then I was like, holy smokes, this might actually work.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And he comes walking down his hillside he's on, drops
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: down into the bottom I'm in starts walking on a line,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and so as he was doing that, I got my
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: camera out, and I remember I brought my saddle and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: my sticks in because I thought I was gonna hanging
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: from a tree, so I had my tree arm to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: film fro him. Um, but because I'm on the ground,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I couldn't use that, so I just had my handheld.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I had the camera handheld. So I'm holding the camera
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: in my hand videoing him as he's walking in. And
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: then eventually I'm like, okay, wow, he's really gonna come in.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I can't I can't fiddle with a camera anymore. So
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I just set the camera to keep it on record,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: and I set it kind of pointing in front of
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: me into the grass, and then I had my go pro.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I turned on the go pro and pointed that at me,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and this buck's walking down. Now he's maybe a hundred
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: yards away, ninety yards away, eighty yards away, but now
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: he starts to turn like he's going to go into
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the cedars before he gets to me. So I grabbed
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: my grunt tube again and I point the tube in
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the opposite direction of me, so he's to my left.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I point the tube to my far right so that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a deer is down that way, because
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I want to pull him to the right in front
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of me, so I grunt twice. He turns, looks again,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and then turns on a nine degree angle and comes
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: now straight down the line towards me. And he just
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: comes stamping in. And he did exactly what I wanted.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I couldn't have drawn it up any better. And um,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: he goes behind that one little dead tree. I draw back,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and he's moving and quickly though, like not trotting, but
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: like a very fast walk. He's not like pausing. He's
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: just like on a mission though. And I just remember thinking,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: oh crap, he's gonna he's gonna be in my lap
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: here if I don't get a shot quickly. And so
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I just stopped him with up matt and shop. The
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: shot was slightly quartering too, and the shot hit to
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the left a little bit of where I wanted to be.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: So because of that quartering to angle, and because I
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: pulled it, you know a little bit to the left,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: the shot was back and angling into his you know,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: back quarter of him. So I see him go running
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: off instantly when I saw that shot where hit. I
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: was just like, ah, I was really upset with the shot. Um,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and he goes running off your runs off maybe add
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: twenty yards and stops and just stands there. I'mthing, Okay,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I you know, either liver shot him or I definitely
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: definitely because of the angle. It definitely angled into the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: into the gut section. So I'm not happy at all
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: with the shot. Watch him stand there and he turns
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and start slowly walking away, and I can see, I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: can now see the arrow of the arrow had not
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: passed through. It had lodged in his back and his
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: opposite back leg um, but you can see blood. You
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: can see he was hurting, and I could watch him.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So basically what happened then is I watched as he
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: slowly walked over into this kind of thick brushy area
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: which is where that original eight pointer had been, and
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: he beds down there for the rest of the evening.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Then I watched him better there. He was bettered. He
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: got up once and then rebetted, And the whole time
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I'm kicking myself because of the shot,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, should I try to go get another
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: shot at him? Or should I just wait, because I
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: know that if I don't push him, he should be there. Um.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So I'm going back and forth, back and forth, back
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and forth. But I just the way he was bettered
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: down and the way the river was, he was better
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: tight to the river. So the only way I could
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: get to within shot range of him, I'd have to
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: go around the river bend and come up to him,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and it would force me to approach from his left side,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: where he would be able to see me. Like, there's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: no way to sneak up behind him because of the river.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So I just did not think there was any way
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: could get close up to shoot him without him seeing
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: me or hearing me. And the wind had died down.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: It was completely still. Everything was crunchy and um and
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: that was That was basically how that night ended. I
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: just I'd decided to wait and watch him. So I
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: just want to keep eyes on him as long as
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I possibly could. Stuff if he did, you know, if
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: he wasn't dead and he jumped up off of his bed,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I'd see where he went before dark and um, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: that was that was the evening. I had a dark
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: had a two mile hike back out and um, and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that was kind of like a frustrating hike for me
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: because I've been so excited about how the hunt went
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and then I found this buck and being able to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: pull it off on the ground. Um. But then it
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: was really frustrated because the shot wasn't perfect um, and
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I felt like I had kind of reverted a little
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: bit to my bad habits of rushing the shots. And
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you and me have been working on this together. Um,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: You've been you know, someone who's been trying to help
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: me deal with a little bit of this like target
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: panic rush and the shot kind of thing that I've
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: done in the past. So I switched to this new
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: kind of the whole process that I've been working on
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and trying to use a back tension style UM follow through,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and that all just kind of you know, in the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: heat of the moment it flew out the window. It
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: was like I had to get the shot now. He
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: was passing by my one lane, and I think that
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: caused me to pull that shot just a little bit. Um.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And I think between that and the angle that resulted
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: in that that hit being farther back that I wanted. UM.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So I mean you saw my when I always I
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: arrived back at camp late that night, and I mean
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I was kind of down, wasn't I? Yeah? Yeah, I
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: mean you you said, do you want to hear the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: good news or the bad news first? So I knew
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: something pretty crazy it happened. Um, and then you told
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: me what happened, and you know, we were able to
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: watch the footage and you know, going back to the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: shot execution thing. Um, you know you've you've been you know,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: fairly diligent trying to work on you know, changing your
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: shot pro tess and changing the way you um, the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: way you shoot completely, um, going from kind of a
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: command or trigger puncher to more of a back tension
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: style unanticipated release. But what that tells me is that
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it wasn't ingrained fully you you worked on it. I
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: think you worked on it kind of a lot early on,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and then kind of intermittently here and there, and then
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: you'd have some little flare ups, uh, you know when
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you're practicing with buddies and stuff like that of kind
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of your old issues, and you know, I think it
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: just you you worked on the process, but it wasn't
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: totally ingrained. Uh, you know it was. It didn't become habit,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: it didn't become automatic. Um, because I used to have
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the same issues, and I worked on it and worked
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: on it, worked until my brain knew no other way
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: there was there was That's all I did for you know,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: five six months, and there was no way that it
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: was going to go back my my brain didn't even
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: understand the old way anymore. So I think it just
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you know, this offseason will work on a little more. Um.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: You know, that's an intensive situation. You know, you had
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: a big buck coming in, um, ground level. Um, you
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: know he's good. You you have we're on the ground,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: tucked up in you know, these little pockets of cedars.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: It's not like you have giant shooting lanes everywhere. You
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: gotta pick these little holes. So you know, it's easy
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: on those real intense, high pressure situations to kind of
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: fall back into that. UM. So I you are kind
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of harder on yourself than I thought you needed to be. Um.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a perfect shot. A perfect shot, but bow
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: hunting isn't perfect. Um. You know, Uh, things happen, um,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: and ultimately you you put a killing shot on this deer.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It just wasn't perfect. And you know there's might be
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: guys out there that are gonna dog. You for this,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: but everybody's makes mistakes. Everybody puts bad shot shots on deer.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I put bad shots on deer. It happens, um, you know,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and when that happens, you can't beat yourself up. You
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: got to think about what you need to do from
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: there forward recovering the deer. And you know, then a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: good thing to do is is really analyze what you
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: did wrong, what was my mistake, and then from there
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: on forward try to try to work on that, try
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: to minimize that mistake, eliminate it completely so that that
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: stuff doesn't keep happening. Yeah, I think that's the really
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: important part you and we were talking through that night afterwards.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Was like, like you said, I was pretty upset with
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: myself about it, and really, um just upset because I
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: worked so hard to try to fix this and then
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: to have it happened again. It was really frustrating, and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I hated the idea of possibly wounding a deer because
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: of it. Um, So I was. I was upset, But
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: then at some point I was like, Okay, there's nothing
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you can do about what has happened, so you have
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to stop beating yourself up about the past like that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: That that's water under the bridge. Now, all you can
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: change is what you do in the future. So I
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: just was, you know, I have to re read um,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: dedicate myself to working even harder to get better at this,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: to figuring out what else I need to do to
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: make the second habit, to make this so so that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I'm minimizing any kind of mistake like this more and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: more and more, and UM, just I'm not I'm not
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: ever going to settle. I'm not gonna settle for good enough.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna settle for well. Most of the time
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the shot is good. But ever once in a while
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: you pull one. Um, Like you said, things do go
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: wrong with bow hunt and you can't be perfect. But
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I think it is important to try to always strive
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: to be more perfect. So so, like we talked about,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I know, going into this year, I'm gonna try some
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: new things. We're gonna try an actual back tension release
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: attention style release um and just get the whole finger
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: thing out of it. So I just can't so that
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: my brain can't just like flip into this different mode
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: because it just all the things I worked on so hard,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: like this whole mantra that I say in my head
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: and all those things like it all just disappeared in
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that second because it was just it was just I
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't nervous, I wasn't shaking. It wasn't like buck fever
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: at all. It was just like, you have to get
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the shot. And it was just like I knew I
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: drew Everything was like great, calm, cool, I drew back.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: But it was like as soon as I drew back
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and he was there, I just had to shoot. It
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: just happened. Um, And that is not the way I
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: want to be shooting. So I know I've got some
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: work to continue to do on that, and UM that's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: going to be the plan moving forward to continue working
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: on it. And right now I'm even though in the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: midst of the season, I'm going to continue with shooting
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and trying to work and try to prepare myself as
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: best as it possibly can for the rest of the season. Um,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and then come off season, I think we're in tear
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: it back down and start a new again, and UM,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: see if I can't improve this thing even more so. UM.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: That said, it was kind of a tough night, but
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: we did feel like based on the shot, UM, assuming
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: he didn't get pushed by coyotes overnight. Um, he should
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: be he should be right there. So we got up
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: bright and early next morning and kind of thought, all right, well,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Andy still has got tag. Why don't we just sneak
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: back in and at first light just sit the same
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: spot that I sat and see if a deer came
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: in for you. It was real cold overnight, so we
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: knew everything was gonna be fine on that standpoint um.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And then after we sat for a little bit, then
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: we could go and hopefully find my dear uh walk
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: us through what happened that morning. Yeah, so we're kind
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: of hoping that uh, that nice or eight that you
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: saw might come back to bed because it appeared as
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: though he was betting on that river bend um and
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: if not right there, maybe just up on the ridge
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: a little bit. Um. Some of the deer were betting
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just on that first bench or that first uh. It
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: was almost like the ridgehead um, different levels, different benches,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: so it seemed like a lot of them are on
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that first bench that had cedars on it, and then
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: they would kind of dip down into this bowl where
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it was green. So we're we're in a position where
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: you shot your deer where if he comes back to
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: bed um, you know, we might get a shot at him.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And hopefully he hadn't been back already and seen the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: commotion and all that kind of stuff. So we sat.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: We were both glassing diligently to see your deer, and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: initially we didn't um, and then all of a sudden
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: you spotted him and you say, I think I saw
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: my dear, And we looked and he had made it,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe an other twenty thirty yards down the river,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: but there he was playing his day, big reck, uh,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: you know, sticking up, and we started celebrating and not
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: being very stealthy. Yeah, such a feeling of relief. Yeah,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I was so I was so just. I was so
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: nervous that, you know that if if he did get
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: up and move again, or if coyotes pushed him or something,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: we were gonna be a find him. And I was
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: worried because there wasn't an exit wound, there wouldn't be
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: a great blood trail, and I've been stressing about all
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: these things. And oh, it felt so good that he
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: was there. Yeah, it might be good to mention this
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: place was loaded with coyotes. Um, we were we were
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: camping in the middle of nowhere, like an hour from
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the nearest road, and all night long, just surrounded by coyotes,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: different packs howling. I mean, it was just a beautiful sound,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: but there there was a lot so that was a concern.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: But when we did watch the replay of your buck,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: we could see, um, you know that that arrow had
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: went through and hit that back leg and he wasn't
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: using it and he wasn't gonna far. Um, So we
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: knew that he would be in his first or second
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: bed and and we'd find him. And uh, you know,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the shot could have been better, but it did the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: job and we were able to find him. But before
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: we went and found him, something fairly exciting happened. Um.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: You spotted a buck coming down out of the sandhills
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: from across the river, and without putting your glass up,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: it looked like a dough. But you put your glass
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and be like, hey, it's a nice buck. Nice buck.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: So it came and it dipped down into the river.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And this is something that I thought was pretty interesting, um,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: because you know, you and I think we worked real
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: good together. We had a lot of the same thoughts.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: We were kind of bouncing ideas off each other. I
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: had an idea, you had an idea, and a lot
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: of times we came to like a compromise or you know,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: or something that we we were just kind of figuring
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: things out together. And there was that that one instant
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: where you your instinct was to call to him, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, my instinct was to try to sneak
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: up on him and get a shot. And it was
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: just two different styles. There's no right or wrong. You know,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: five times out of ten, I might have tried to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: call him. That might have been my first instinct, but
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: because when I saw him dip down in the river,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I thought, wow, I can cover fifty yards and get within,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you know, fifty sixty yards of this deer. And then
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: when I thought it through more, um, you know, there
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: would have been probably a thirty yard area where I
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: might have been pretty exposed. But I think after hunting
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: out West the last few years, I'm really I'm really
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: liking the sneaking in on game, so kind of addicted
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to that. But we tried the calling. Yeah, yeah, I
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: tried the grunt call um. And the river it was
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: kind of it was a little windy, um, you know,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the river had a decent amount of noise, and he
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: was just a little too far away to hear it.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: So then I brought out the rattling antlers, and uh,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: you would have thought I slapped that deer on the
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: ass as hard as I could, because the second I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: touched those, he like took off like he got shot,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you know. He yeah, he took off. He took off
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: up the hill and ran, I don't know, another hundred
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: fifty yards and just stopped, looked back at us, and
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: then he did something really interesting, which indicates how low
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the pressure was out there. He just started feeding. He started,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: he relaxed completely and he started feeding under this tree
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that was very different than a lot of the cedars
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: and and other things that so it's very easy to spot. Um.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember saying that. I said,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I said, I think I can kill that buck right there,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: because he he kind of went back and he kind
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: of went back up, you know, into bed. So we
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: had an idea, you know, he would probably be close
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: to there. You did say that, You're like, I bet
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you we'd kill that deer right there again. Um, And
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: he was like he was like a nice eight point
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: like to the years eight pointer. Yeah, nice dear um
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: on a short trip um. You know, I was probably
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: looking for something a little bigger, but on a short
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: trip um, especially you know the hand we were dealt
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: with the cattle and lack of deer and food and stuff,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I would have been I would have been happy to
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: take that deer um. But anyway, after he kind of
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: cleared off, I said, you know what, let's just go
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: get your deer. I wanted to see him as bad
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: as you did. So we got out of there, and uh,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: we started the recovery. Yeah, and that was that was awesome,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: getting the getting a walk up on him. And I
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: had been worried about coyotes to given the fact, just
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: like you said, there were so many of them. Even
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: though we saw him there, you couldn't fully see him.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: So then I started worrying, do you think the yokes
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: got on him? And did they tear him up? And
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: did we lose a bunch of meat? And we walked
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: up there and they did get on him, but they
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: didn't eat nearly as much as I was worried they
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: might have. They kind of ate a little bit of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the back um rump of him. But that was it.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: So it could have been certainly could have been worse. Um,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And it was just a huge, huge relief to walk
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: up on there. And he was a beautiful mature buck, definitely,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: you know, four or five years old and uh seven
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: points on one side, six on the other, a typical
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: seven by six thirteen pointer. Never have I shot a
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: thirteen point typical block before, So how often do you
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: see that? I mean it was like it was just
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: a picket fence of perfect times. I mean, he was incredible.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: He was one of the coolest dear you know I've
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: seen like on a trip like this. I mean he
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: was just he was awesome, I mean so unique. You
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: would you know, you wouldn't be able to duplicate a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: buck like that, you know, in a hundred years. No,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: you don't see hi any dear, um that have seven
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: points on the side like that, just straight typical, nice tiense,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: just a beautiful, beautiful animal, big old chunky head on him,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: dark forehead. UM. I mean, I just could not have
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: been happier the way it turned out. And you know,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: when we when we came back afterwards, UM, I was
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: kind of talking about, you know how there was a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: lot of decisions that I made on that hunt. Like
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it was a it was a quick you know, it
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: was the first day. But there's a lot of things
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: that happened that first day that I was really proud of,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Like decisions I made UM that led to this that
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: you know that I can see that ten years ago,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have made these decisions, so it's kind of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: indicative of progress that I've made. UM that I was
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: really proud of, you know, the decision to try to
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: sneak in and scout this area and pick this area,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: this the area wanted hunt and that was a good decision.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: The fact that when I saw that first buck, that
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I made a move on him and then didn't get
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: it done, but learned something from it that led me
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: to say, Okay, I need to hunt this spot now
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: because of that. UM, that was a good decision that
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I was proud of. UM. You know, the decisions on
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: when to call and how to call, and how I
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: was able to do that that was Those are decisions
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: that in the past maybe I wouldn't have made the
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: right way that worked out. I was proud of that.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: UM being able to get a shot even without a
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: blind blind while on the ground. UM, even though that
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: shot didn't end up being perfect. I was I was
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: proud to have been able to, you know, have that opportunity.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: So all those things are things that made me feel
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: pretty good that I made progress as a hunter, that
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I'm doing things the right way, learning things, getting better. Um.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, there's I said
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: this to you, I was like, there's a whole hell
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: of a lot of lot in this one too, you know,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to be able to for that dear to be there
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: on the first in the first spot that I was
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: checking out. Um, So I was really proud of how
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: things went. And then I was also just very very
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: thankful for that luck though that it all kind of
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: went my way. Um, because there's some years where you
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: make a lot of good decisions and you don't have
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: that luck and it doesn't go the way you want to.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: So yeah, hey, I want to tell you too, like, um,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you know, you were you felt kind of proud that
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you made these decisions and um, you know, calling that
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: deer in and after you know, after my attempt at
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: calling my book and he took off like a bad
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: out of hell, I felt pretty uh pathetic. Yeah, these
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: bucks are easy to call in and you know, my
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: attempt had the exact opposite effects. So thanks for that
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: about that, Andy, But but yeah, you know, I got lucky.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna complain about that though. And um, it
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: was just so cool how it all came together, how
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: unique it was. And then another cool thing about it
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: is that because we were so far away from the truck, um,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: we decided, you know what, let's just quarter him out.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Um that bucket killed in Montana earlier this year. I
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: was so ingrained in like Midwestern white tail mode that
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I thought I gotta just gut him and drag him out.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: And it was a bear to do that. So this
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: time around was like, you know what, No, I'm gonna
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: pack this sucker out. And you fortunately had game bags, Um,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: but they're back in the truck. So you decide you
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: were in a high alla back to the truck and
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: get the game bags while I worked on quartering him
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: out and skinning him out, and then hopefully by the
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: time that you got back, I'd be almost done. Um.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And so that's basically what happened. But you actually were
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: able to maneuver the truck closer, so we didn't have
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: nearly as bad as a hikes. That was nice. Um,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: And we got him all quartered out, skinned out, and
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: packed up on our backpacks and hiked out of there
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: with him and had a had a not too long
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: a hike, a little bit of a step hike, but
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: definitely nicer doing it in the backpack then dragging him
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: up there. Probably. Yeah, And I, you know, I should
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: probably add I, um, quickly into this hunt, I started
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: having some I suffered from some pretty significant back issues,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: but normally with exercise and and some medication that you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: I kind of keep it controlled somewhat. But I was
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: having some pretty significant nerve pain that started on day
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: two and started increasing rapidly. Was kind of shooting down
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: my leg into my foot and it was rather painful.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: So I I never said this to you, but I
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: was actually terrified to drag that deer. I would much
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: rather put it on my back and try to Yeah, um,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I've had this issue before a few years ago, and um,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a nightmare. So I was. I was
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: kind of in panic mode. Um, And I was able to,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously get home and take some medicine and
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: it's kind of starting to feel a lot better now.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: But I thought it was cool just you know, our
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: whole hunt was like a back country whitetail hunt. I
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: mean there was no showers. We you know, brought our
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: own food in um, and we know we were hiking,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you know, two plus smiles to to get to our spots,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: and it was just fitting to pack him out like that.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: It was. It just made the whole story that much cooler.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, the first I've ever done that with
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: the white tail, and uh, like you said, just just
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: a cool way to wrap up my portion of that experience. UM.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: So yeah, So we we got him out and I
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: headed I decided to drive back to town to try
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: to get more ice for my cooler because I had
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: NiFe ice to to get him. So what it is,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: We got him back to camp and then we did
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: like a really rough butcher like just basically chunked out
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: as much as immediately we could get in the cooler
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and put the ice that I had on it. Um,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to get more ice, and then I
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: also wanted to make sure that the cape and the
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: head um could be preserved and not riding out in
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the sun for the next three days. So I thought
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I drived the nearest town which was Um. From we
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: were camped to that town was like two and a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: half hours UM. But I was able to find a
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: tax the dermist that who could keep it and freeze
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: it out or keep it out and freeze it. So
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: that's what I did for us the evening. You stuck
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: it out and hunted Um. Walk us through what you
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: did from there. Before we get to that, they'll want
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to take a quick second to thank our friends over
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: at White Tailed Properties and plug one of their recent videos.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: As we've been talking over the past few months, they've
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: got this land Beat video series over on the White
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Tailed Properties YouTube channel. It's definitely worth checking out, full
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of quick tips related to deer hunting, deer management, habitat management,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: buying and selling properties, and if you're interested in the
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: land management side of things. They have a recent video
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: out talking about planting tree food plots. So actually trees
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: that produce mass, soft mass, hard mass that can produce
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: kind of like a food plot, but by by planting
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: these trees. So check it out. Is called Whitish plant
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: tree food plots for better deer hunting. Of course, this
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: isn't something you're gonna do right now in the fall
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: but it's something to be thinking about as we move
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: into the next year. Um, I'm already thinking about some
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: of my idea as in plants or two thusand nineteen.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: This is a great video to get you on that
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: same path if you're thinking about some land management ideas,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: So check it out over at the White Tailed Properties
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: YouTube channel and visit white Tail properties dot com for
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: more information. Yeah. So, um, I basically went um down
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: to the other side of the bowl where you had
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: killed your deer, so further west. We that was kind
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: of the trend after you killed We just kept pushing
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: further and further west. But I went and set up
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: where I thought I could get a shot at that
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: dark corn to eight. Um. So I had marked on
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: the on X maps when we were recovering your deer
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: where I thought he kind of went up to bed
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: and then I hiked back in, uh slowly snuck down
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: um through a little draw and again. Um. You know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: our our intention were to use the saddles, um because
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it's we both love them and they're kind of ultimate
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: and mobility. But in reality, here are very few trees
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: we could even get in, and the ones that you
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: could get in a lot of times were right in
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: the middle of those bowls, so I feel like deer
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: would have seen you. And they required immense amount of trimming.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: So all of our hunts, every single one, ended up
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: from the ground. Um. And so what we did. What
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I did was I snuck down this straw and then
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I tucked back up into these this little cedar like
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: a little cubby like you had before, within within shooting
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: distance of where that buck had been feeding earlier that morning.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: And when I got all set up, you know, I'm
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: kind of getting all squared away, and I looked down
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: on my chest no binoculars and no range finder, and
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I live and die by those. I'm a glass ar.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I love glassing. They've you know, they have been uh.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: They've helped me kill lots of animals, identify you know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: bucks to see if they're big enough to go after
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: a long ways away. And my range finder, you know,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: I thirty yards an in sure I can to mate
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and be pretty deadly beyond that. I don't practice that
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: as much as I should. I will now after I
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: tell you the rest of the story. But I don't
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable shooting past thirty without a range finder. I
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: just don't I'm not good enough at it. You know,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: if you're five six seven yards off, you know, once
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: you get out to like forty yards, that's that's a
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: wounded or missed animal. So, um, I felt kind of naked.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: But I estimated where twenty was. I estimated where thirty
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: thirty was, and I was like, you know what, a
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: million deer killed within thirty yards every year. So no, biggie.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: And uh So I'm sitting there and you know, uh,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: the evenings progressing, and I hear down by the river,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I hear something scraping, and I'm like, oh man, there's
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: a buck right down there. I couldn't see him yet,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: and then here he comes pops up right in front
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: of me, and it's that eight and he comes right
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: to that same exact spot right or we thought we
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: could kill him. And he's right there broadside, feeding without
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: a care in the world. And he's at forty forty nine.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Wasn't sure within my shooting range. I was very comfortable
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: with that shot, but I didn't know, and um, I
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: was like, you gotta be kidding me, you know. So
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just hoping he's going to come closer. Um, and
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: he doesn't. So he ends up kind of feeding off
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: to my left. He's getting a little farther now, so
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: that I'm like, okay, you know, I'm okay letting this
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: deer go, but I'm gonna try to call him in,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: but I want I didn't want to call him when
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: he was in view of me, so I was gonna
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: let him get out of sight so that he would
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: have to come investigate. He I didn't want to be
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: able to see where the call is coming from. But
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: keep in mind, this is the deer that you know,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: it's probably the most callish idea in the United States.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: He goes, he goes down and into these theaters and
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I can just kind of see the top of his
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: back when he's out of you, and I just give
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: a real soft grunt to my right, trying to sound
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: like I was far away, and boom, he just takes off.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: He's gone. So I think your buck, the buck you
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: killed and kicked his butt a few times or something.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: But he was Yeah, he was a one scared animal.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: But h so, you know, been hunting a long time,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I forget the things, never have forgotten my range finder,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and it cost me. It ended up costing me. You
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: know that deer and ultimately the success on this trip. Um,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: So it's okay. Um I I didn't beat myself up
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: about it too bad. Um, I was okay with that.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: That deer was very nice. I would have been super proud,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: but I had had a good season already. I didn't
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: feel overwhelming pressure to get a deer on this trip.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: And to be honest with you, when you shot your deer,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I felt really successful. Um. I was hoping to get
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: one out of this trip on such a short time frame,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and uh, I felt really good about it. Yeah. But
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: you you, you you were kind of kicking yourself a
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: little bit. You're like, gosh that you know, as as
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: an experienced season hunter to do that, and then you
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: rookie MISTAKEE rookie mistake. And then you did say that
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: one big thing that this made you think about that
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: you want to do more is is work on really
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: nailing down accurately estimating ranges with your eyeball without a
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: range finder, right, yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's three
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: D shooters that that can do it. Um. And I
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: am always been more of like a known yardage guy.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: You know, if I know the yardage, you know I
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: can hit the center. Um, but you get me out
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: past thirty yards. You know I'm not reliable, Um, but
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I should be able to
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: do that. I still want to range everything I'm gonna
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: shoot at, but there might be a scenario when you
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: have to make that quick decision and still within your
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: effective range. I certainly can improve on the yardage estimation
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: and definitely gonna work on it. Yeah, And something related
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to this that you brought up actually on our car
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: drive home. I thought it was pretty Italian and kind
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: of while we were on this hunt, unbeknownst to you,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: I was kind of analyzing like how you do things
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and and why you did things, and trying to understand
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: your thought process, just you know, because you're obviously are
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: you very successful. I've I've kind of looked up to
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: you for a long time and learned a lot from you,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to see it in person and and
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: kind of see, you know, what I could take away
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: from that. And one of the things I really noticed
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: is just your level of of thoughtfulness about everything and um,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and the degree of analysis that you go through from
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Eric when it comes to any decision or when something happens,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: thinking back on why did that happen? How did it happen?
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: What do I take from that situation? And you told
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: me when we're driving home that you document all of
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: your hunts. You've done it since like I don't know
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: how long you've done it, twenty years or fifteen years
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: or something like that. The first year, so you document
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: all the deer sightings and hunts and everything you've learned.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: But then something I thought was really interesting was every
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: shot opportunity you have a buck, So if you kill
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the buck, or you missed the buck, or you had
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: a shot and distant quite happened, you document each single
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: one of those instances and you write out the Well,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: rather me, tell tell me how you do that, UM,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: tell us how you do that? Because I thought was
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: really interesting what you do and how you use this
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: as a way to learn from each one of those opportunities. Yeah,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: so it's basically just a little short story of what happened.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: So let's say I kill a buck and i'll i'll,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: you know, jot down you know what the deer did, Um,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the way he was moving, what what did I think
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: he was doing, the way he was traveling, time of year,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: All this kind of stuff. Basically lay a big layout
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of the story when I'm successful, you know, at the
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: end of that, I will kind of highlight three or
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: four things that I did right that helped me be successful,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: and just things to really kind of focus on this.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: This is what you did right. This was a learning
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: experience you you did these rights, So these these things
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: are good. Um. When I missed an animal, which I
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: have missed, um, I do the same thing. I write
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: out the story. That was an opportunity, That was a
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: buck that should have been mine. Um, you know, and
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I made a mistake. Now what was my mistake? Did
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I draw too early? That was I over aggressive and calling?
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Was he too alert at the distance he was? Um?
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: You know it was it was the way my tree
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: stand was positioned. Was I sticking out like a blob
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and he picked me out? It could be a number
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: of things. Um, But I will write down what I
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: thought cost me that hunt, the thing that cost me
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: that dear um. And the same thing. When a shot
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: isn't presented or isn't presented, but it should have been. Um,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: you know something that I did that if I wouldn't
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: have done this, or if I would have done this differently,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I would have had the shot opportunity. So basically, you know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: my whole thing is, um, I want to constantly improve
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and to do that, uh, you know, I have a
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: drive inside of me to constantly improve. But to do that,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: you have to make mistakes and then you have to
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: learn from him and eliminate them. So that's kind of
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: my my thought process when I do this. I tried
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: to I'm okay with making mistakes, but I don't want
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: to make him twice. Um, you know, I want to
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: eliminate those. And when you eliminate them, you know, you
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: start eliminating all the mistakes you've made over the years.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: You start to make very few, um, you know, and
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: then things just come together, you know. And kind of
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: going back to what you said earlier, Mark, like you
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: you said there was some luck involved in I don't.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think some people might say, oh, man,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: you're so lucky he was betted there. We had those
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: spots picked out, that's where that's where a mature buck
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: would bet if he was betted in this river bottom.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: We we made the right call. We figure that out
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: in a matter of hours, and you were on a
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: five year old deer in territory you've never been on.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: That's not luck. That's picking it out on a map,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: having the instinct to slow down, having your wits about
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: you to see that other deer. You know, some guys
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: might not even have been paying attention, um, and walked
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: right by that opening, went down there and bumped him.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: But you were attentive enough to see that, and then
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: you almost caught You almost got that deer. But you
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: had enough uh you know, instinct to kind of slow
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: down and say, you know what, hey, if that dear
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: did this, there might be more here. You know, this
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: looks like a good spot where I can you know,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: tuck in here without making any noise. I haven't bumped anything,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: and maybe something else will will come by. I can
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: see a long ways. I'll be able to at the
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: very least observe. And that was one of the biggest
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: betting features to the west that we saw. That one,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the next one and the next one to the west.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: We're probably the top three. And I mean it just
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: you picked the right one. So that's not luck. You
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: know that, that's skill, my friend, that you did everything
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: right there. I appreciate saying that. Um, it was you know,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: like We talked about it coming into it with a
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: challenge that we realized we had. You know, we knew
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: it would be a challenge, and then once day one star,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh man, this is gonna be even more
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: of a challenge. Um. Having it all work out the
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: way it did was very gratifying, and it's you. And
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: we talked about this a lot in the trip to
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: about we love hunting. We love all aspects of hunting,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: but something that we in particular really enjoy is that
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: chess match, the figuring it out. And we both talked
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: about different examples where we've had some spots where we
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: figured it out and it's a great spot, but we
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: figured it out, and then once we had it kind
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: of figured out, we weren't quite as drawn to hunt
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: there anymore. You know. Um, like I've had like this
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: this spot in Montana that I hunted the last couple
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: of years. I kind of like, you know, it's it's awesome,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I've got it like PEG. Now I don't know if
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I'm so interested in hunting there again next year, um,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: because there's not that challenge of like what do I do?
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I love having to go into this new area and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: and start from the bottom and build your way up
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: and learn and understand and and uh that puzzle is
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: is so fascinating to me. And and being able to
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: put those pieces together in this trip UM was particularly
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: interesting giving all the other unique circumstances. So it was, Man,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: it was one of the very most rewarding hunts that
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: I've been on UM. But I guess we we still
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: haven't finished everything that happened for you. So you had
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: this missed opportunity with with all mossy Horns as I
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: like to call him, and so you didn't have the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: range finder, and now we have like a day and
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: a half left. What was your what was your mindset,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: thought process and plan for how to move on and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: kind of wrap up the trip? How were you approaching it?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: What do you do? Yeah, well, if you remember, that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: was probably my lowest point in the trip because I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: was having some really significant pain then and luckily you
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: had some pain meds and that kind of took the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: edge off. So UM, you know, I'm tough it out.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: In day three, we tried something a little different in
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: the cattle area. UM, I was my leg was a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: little questionable. There was a very nice uh ox bow
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: that had an abnormal amount of cover and our goal.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Our our plan was to sneak in there right to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: that back into that ox bow in the dark, well
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: before daylight and then just let deer filter in. Now
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: we were a little worried that the cattle might uh
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: you know, keep the deer out, but it was I
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: think it was worth a try because we weren't feeling
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: real strong going in blind, you know, two and a
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: half miles to the next bowl in the dark and
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: picking the right spot, so I think that was going
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: to be more of the evening plan. But anyway, we
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: snuck in there and a little did we know we
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: were going to have all the turkeys in the world
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: roosted above us. But it was it was pretty cool.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of Miriams, uh you know, roosted above us,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: and uh, they're making all kinds of rackets, so that
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: in itself made it a really cool morning. Saw a
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: couple of dolls, had a couple of dolls coming into bed,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: bumped one another. One came in within fifty yards of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: us and bedded down and then she disappeared. I'm not sure,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: but we sat there for a while, tried some calling unsuccessfully,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and then we kinda we snuck through the edge of cover,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: kind of working west, um, just trying to you know,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: at a snail's pace, always on the glass, sneaking through
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: on the ground, just trying to get visual of a
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: shooter buck on his feet. It was great deer habitat,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: but it was full of cows. Um. It was pastor
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: to death. Cow tracks everywhere. No deer tracks, um. No
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: scrapes under you know, over overheating branches, which you would
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: expect to be, you know, really heavy this time of year.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: So we kind of got the impression that there weren't
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of deer in there. And then it was
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: funny because the minute we started seeing a few deer tracks,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: we bumped two dolls, two or three dolls, um. And
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: then that was the end of the morning. We kind
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: of called it a morning, went back and kind of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: regrouped for the evening hunt. Yeah. And like you said,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that evening hunt, the plan was to continue the progression
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: down those bowls, go into the next one to the west. Um.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: And that one looked pretty good, didn't it. Yeah, that
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: was cool. In fact, it looked a lot like the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: bowl or you killed yours. It had the sat we
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: get we snuck in there, had the same little bit
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: of cover down by the actual river bend tip in
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: the ox bow. It had the bench, the first bench
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: and then the secondary bench that had real thick seedars,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: and then again down in that shaded area that gets
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: the most shade, holds the most moisture, there's some green,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: there's very little. It looks like a little, you know,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: corter acre food plot of just grass. And sure enough,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: just like all the other bowls that we saw, the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: first deer dip down out of those seedars, vetted very close.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Probably can see where they're eating. A group of dolls.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Ducks down into that green and starts feeding. And you know,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: there's two things that deer can do. They can go
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: away from us on the outside bend and it pinches
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: down over there. But because we had a western wind,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: we were on the east side, and if they come
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: our way, it pinches down close to the river, so
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: they'd come within range of us. We had just a
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: really neat spot on the back side of a down tree,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and um it an incredible wind front blew in um
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: real high winds probably plus yeah and swirl and started
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: making everything swirl and then you spotted what we thought
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: was a nice bucket. It was a nice buck It
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: was just probably a two year old. But he's coming
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: down the ridge, coming down towards that green stuff, sneaking
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: down real slow, and we didn't get a great look
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: at him. We were kind of hoping he was gonna
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: be a little bigger than he ended up being. But
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: we had a really need encounter. Um he came down,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: came down into the bowl, and the wind was swirling
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: so bad. I think that he picked us up. But
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the way the wind was going, it was whipping all directions.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: He was confused. He didn't know where where he wanted
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: to go. He didn't know where we were, but he
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: knew something was not right. And it was probably because
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: we we're at day three of day four of no showers.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: You know, we weren't smelling too great. But anyway, we
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: had a really cool encounter. He started working our way
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: at a pretty fast pace, and I believe he got
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: this all on film. But he gets within bow range
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: and I kind of mimic draw draw the bow back
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: on him, and he has no clue and he ends
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: up five five yards in front of us and has
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: no idea, we're there. It was a really neat encounter,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: um on a pretty nice little at eight point. Yeah,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: that was cool, and it's super close just right there.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: And then if we're looking at you like, oh, that's
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: exactly what we wanted about to do, exactly what we
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: thought it would do in this scenario. We just needed
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: one a little older, a little bigger. Yep, yep, yep.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: So the rest of the night, uh, it was pretty uneventful.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: That was probably you know, thirty minutes after that made
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: the long hike back right. Yeah, we saw that badger.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: That was cool. Oh yeah, badger. Badger came right up.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: We got a little video of that. I had never
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: seen one, so I was pretty pumped about that. Um.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: And then day four, um, we we decided that we
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: were gonna pull out half a day early. I was
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt the morning. Um. You know, I was kind
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: of pushing it with a day from work. My leg
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: was giving me trouble. You're you had a sick kid
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: at home. You know. I felt very fulfilled on this trip.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: You felt very fulfilled. I was okay with hunting the morning.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: The morning looked like it was gonna be really nice,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: and then it was gonna kind of get windy, and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: so I was good with one more morning set I
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: thought I had a good chance to kill that dark
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: horn to aid again. And uh so I decided to go,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: and you hung back and cleaned up camp. So made
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: the track back, you know, about two miles again and
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: got into the original spot where I had a chance
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: at him without my range finders. Snuck in at first
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: daylight or bright before daylight, and got all set up
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and it was the coldest morning. There was frost. I mean,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: it was just just gorgeous and then calm and it
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: starts getting light. You know, it's light for I don't know,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: twenty thirty minutes. And to my right, kind of back
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: by where your deer died, I hear two bucks sparring,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: not like a full blown out fight, but they're they're
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: going at it a little bit. It sounds like two
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: big antlers, and I'm like, oh my gosh, here we go.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: You know, you know, in reality, I think I my
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: my mind made him, you know, both bigger than what
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: they were. I was thinking, like that big eight that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: you saw and some other giants that we didn't know
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: was there. But all of a sudden, here he comes
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: the same dark corn eight comes running right at me,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, I know,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: like you got the truck packed up and we're ready
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to go. And I'm thinking if this deer is running, like,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: what's who just kicked his butt? You know, So I'm thinking,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a bigger buck behind. So I got
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: my release on him. I'm like kind of starting to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: draw back, and I'm like he stops and he looks
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: behind and I'm like, oh my gosh. The other ones
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: following him. So he ends up kind of trotting past
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: me and right in range. Yeah, in range. I knew
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: the ring he was. He was within thirty seven yard.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: He had to hit the trail at thirty seven um,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: and and I was completely okay with letting that deer
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: go um, even even if this other deer wasn't following him.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: But I was pretty pumped because I thought the deer
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: following him was going to be that big, that bigger eight.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, here here comes a deer.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I see him coming around the corner of the sun's
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: kind of over there, so it's like kind of blinding me.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: And I looked through the glass and it's actually a
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: smaller eight like what like seriously, So so he comes
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: it's still probably a two year old, you know, maybe
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: nine inches or something like that, and uh, he comes
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: by and kind of dips down into the river, and
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: uh that it ended up being it. I thought maybe
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: there was another buck over there, so I tried a
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: little rattling sequence and sat for another couple hours, and uh,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: you know, nothing happened. So I decided to pack it
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: up and made the hike back and that was it.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: And that was it. And uh, men, I know that
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I know that you've got to bounce her quick, so
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want to keep you any longer. But this
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: was such a even though it's a short hunt, even
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: though it was challenging hunt, it was it was it
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: was a really fulfilling and fun hunt for me. And um,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you, uh let me tag along with you
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: and get to hunt this property that that you got
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: permission on, So I know that's a big, a big
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: part of all this was the fact that you got permission,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: So thank you for that and for sharing that permission
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: with me. And um, any like final takeaways or anything
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: else that you think are worth sharing before we shut
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: this one down. Well, yeah, why don't you tell why
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: don't you why don't you give uh one or two
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: things that you learned from you know, maybe someone else
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: going on a hunt like this, but somewhere they've never
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: been um and they run into some issues like what
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: are some things that you took away? And then and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: then I'll give a couple. Yeah, well I think I
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: think on a trip like this, where you're going to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: a new place and you're on a short kind of
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: time frame, I definitely realized more and more that you
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: need to you need to take calculative risks and be
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: able to adjust based off of those. Um So that said,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: you know, coming into this and we had all these assumptions,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: we had all these things we thought were going to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: be present, and I thought, oh, I know exactly how
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: we're gonna hunt this. But when we got there, totally different.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: So right away, like on that day, when we realized
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: it was totally different, you and me, multiple times we
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: talked about, well maybe we should try this. Yeah, we
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: usually wouldn't do this is aggressive, this is crazy, but
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: we kind of need to do that. And there are
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: several different things we talked about that we had to
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: be more aggressive take calculative risks because you need to
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: quickly learn things and quickly adjust to those lessons um
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: on a short time frame hunt like this. So examples
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: of us doing that were, for example, after we glassed
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: all of the place and didn't see the deer we
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: wanted to see, we thought, all right, we need to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: push into this a little bit and actually visibly see
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: some of Let's cover ourselves. So we walked into the
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: edges of some got close to some betting stuff, got
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: on our feet, check the river crossing, walked along that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: edge where we thought there should be scrapes, got up
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: tight to the river where we thought there'd be some
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: betting on the other side, and checked it all out. Um,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: that was a little risky, like we could have bumped stuff,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: but I thought we needed to get feet on the
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: ground in that spot to to verify are is this
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: really as poor as we think it is based off
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: the glassing, or do we need to spend some more
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: time there? So we made a calculated risk. We learned
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: that no, it does not look like there's a kind
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: of activity we need that we thought we'd have here,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: And then we said, okay, we're gonna cross off the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: map fast. We don't have time to daily daily in
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: places where we just don't think it's gonna happen. So
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: we crossed off the whole section. And then we said,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: all right, what's next, how do we adjust? We looked
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: at those maps and we had those spots that we
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: talked about, the bowls that we marked, they were they
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: looked great, but they were so far away. We were
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: hoping we'd be able to hunt some of this stuff
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: that was closer. Um, but we when we we made
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: this risk, we learned something. We said, Okay, we we're
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: gonna have to push to these bulls because that's probably
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: where the cattle won't be. And so then our next
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: calculated risk was the fact that we were willing to
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: you know, push all the way up in there and um,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: you know, get into that bed and get tight to bedding.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: So I think that my big takeaway in this type
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: of deal is is when you need to get a
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: little bit aggressive to learn something and then be able
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: to quickly act according to what you learned. Mm hmm, yeah.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: I mean if we would have now, if we would
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: have pre scouted this place and had stands, you know,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: pre trimmed and hung um. That would probably be ideal, right,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: especially if it was a little bit a bit later
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: in the rut, but on a short term and we
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: were having trouble just we needed to find deer um.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: So you know, sometimes, like especially in a situation like this,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: we had five miles of river ground essentially to hunt,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: but we found deer in the very small portions of
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: that very small you know, I don't know if twenty
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: acres are more, um, a little little pockets or less.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: I mean twenty acre a little pocket here, go down
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: a little you know, little pockets. So we really we
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: needed to observe, we needed to spind deer sign and
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: and in this situation in particular, deer sign was everything.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: When we started seeing tracks, that was everything. We started
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: finding some some scrapes and once you killed your deer,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: once we got down there along that river, there was
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: quite a few scrapes getting opened up. You saw your
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: buck making scrapes. So just sneaking in and being aggressive
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and getting where the deer were. Um, because there was
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of great looking spots between where we camped
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: and where we eventually found a deer. That would probably
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: be amazing, uh, other times of the year. Yeah, you know,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: you know when they're when they're really rutting in the
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: deer or moving. But it was low deer numbers, so
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: we just needed to find them and we needed, like
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: you said, need to be aggressive. Short. You know, we
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time, so just sit back
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: and observe. We did do that somewhat the first day,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: but after that we kind of needed to start diving
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: in close and so close that you know, it was
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: almost essential to hunt from the ground because we couldn't
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: make racket. We were a lot of times we were
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: within a hundred yards of deer and uh, you know,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: just the way these trees were. If there even was
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: a tree to get in um most of them required
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: probably a hundred branches trimmed. I mean it would have
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: been it would have been a couple hour job, I think,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So yeah, those are my big takeaways.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: To be aggressive and if you're you're in an area
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: with low deer density, got to find the deer sign,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: you know. And in a low deer density, there's still
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: gonna be a few bucks that are that are older
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: and and you know they're going to be in there.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: And then know what you implement what you know about
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: buck bedding, you know, and those river bends and where
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: bucks like to bend in that bed and that type
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: of terrain or habitat depending on where you're at, you know,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: and that can really shorten you know, short in a
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: cycle of figuring something out, you know, on a short
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: term hunt. Yeah. I always think of those betting areas
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: as the hub of the wheel, like it's the very
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: most important piece of the puzzle because if you know
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: the hub of the wheel, all the other things that
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: those deer do they radiate off of that hub, like
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: spokes coming off of that wheel. Um. So that's always
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: a really important place to start the lowering process. All
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: the other pieces can fall into place after that. Um So,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: I think that was, like you said, that was key
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: to our success. So identifying the missing link in this area,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: What was the missing link? Anything anything green? Everything was
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: so dried out and bearing. Um when you found green,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: deer were smashing it. Yeah. You know, there wasn't a
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: lot of deer because they're just aren't very high deer numbers,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: but that's where they were going. They were going to
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: those spots the two or three deer you'd see would
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: be on that. So yeah, well, my friend, it was
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun. It was a cool hunt, and um,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: I'm glad we got to do it. Yeah, me too,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming and uh, it's a hunt I'll always remember. Um.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: I think you're doing some great things for hunting. Um.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: So I was really honored and proud to be able
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: to share hunt with you and hope hopefully we can
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: do it again someday. Thanks man, I appreciate that. And yes,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: let's definitely plan on. Let's planning a part two either
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: there or somewhere in the future. So with that, let's
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: wrap it up and hopefully you and we can have
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: some continued success in Michigan. Right, that's right, Yeah, we
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: both Hopefully I have a next one to go after
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and maybe we'll get one in the next week or
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: two fingers crossed. And that's a wrap, folks, So thank
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: you for joining us for this one. Hopefully you've got
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of tree stand in the near future coming
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: up here. November it's about it's about upon us. Probably
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: when you're listening to this, it is November, actually, So
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: November is upon us and that is a beautiful thing.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: So good luck out there. Remember to stay mentally tough,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: pushed through the adversity. There's gonna be challenges, just like
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: me and Andy faced. But if you keep pushing, if
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: you'll learn, if you adjust, good things can still happen
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: out That is the game plan for myself. I'm sure
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be the game plan for all of you.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Should straight have a great rut and we will see
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: you next time, and until then, stay wired to hunt.