Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #118: My 2016 Public Land Montana Whitetail Adventure

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #118: My 2016 Public Land Montana Whitetail Adventure · 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
0:17
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This is episode number one eighteen,
0:20
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about my Montana public Land white
0:24
Speaker 1: tail adventure. But I gotta warn you this is not
0:27
Speaker 1: our best sounding audio episode. I'm in Montana. Dan was
0:32
Speaker 1: having technical difficulties, so please bear with us on this
0:34
Speaker 1: one and enjoy. All Right, Welcome to the Wired to
0:51
Speaker 1: Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Sick Gear. Today is
0:55
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit different podcast than usual
0:58
Speaker 1: because we don't have a guest. I'm not at home.
1:01
Speaker 1: I'm in Montana, and as I just told Dan, I've
1:05
Speaker 1: been driving around town trying to find a building that
1:08
Speaker 1: I can pull up next to and poach some WiFi from.
1:11
Speaker 1: So so I'm recording from my truck behind a coffee shop.
1:16
Speaker 1: So well, like I said, I'm in Montana, and uh,
1:20
Speaker 1: as you know, Dan, I've got some interesting stories this year. Today.
1:24
Speaker 1: Hey man, I'm, like I said, I'm extremely jealous of you.
1:29
Speaker 1: Um it's to the point now where I I think
1:34
Speaker 1: I hate you, but I really I really don't hate you. Thanks,
1:38
Speaker 1: thanks for that. I'm sorry that I inspired those feelings,
1:42
Speaker 1: but it's purely jealousy. Oh man, I it's been pretty
1:49
Speaker 1: cool out here. I've been out here in Montana the
1:50
Speaker 1: last like five or six or five days or something
1:52
Speaker 1: like that now and have had a pretty epic adventure.
1:57
Speaker 1: Um man, it's been fun and I've got a lot
1:59
Speaker 1: of story as I want to tell. I want to
2:00
Speaker 1: tell everyone about how this hunt has gone. You know
2:03
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about for a few months now,
2:05
Speaker 1: kind of building up to this trip. Um. Before we
2:09
Speaker 1: get to that, I guess really quickly, I want to
2:11
Speaker 1: take our little break here that we typically have to
2:13
Speaker 1: thank our partners at Sick of Gear who have been
2:16
Speaker 1: a long time support of this podcast, and taking a
2:19
Speaker 1: break from our usual Sickest Story segment, want to mention
2:24
Speaker 1: the Diverge photo contest that sick had just launched a
2:26
Speaker 1: little bit ago, which is their annual photo contests. Whether
2:29
Speaker 1: they're looking for the most epic, raw, emotional, compelling, super
2:34
Speaker 1: unique hunting photos that you can put together, and they are,
2:38
Speaker 1: you know, then compiling all these pictures and then allowing
2:41
Speaker 1: us the tribe members to vote on which ones we think,
2:44
Speaker 1: you know, are the absolute best later this year. So
2:47
Speaker 1: that contest just launched. If you want to submit your photos,
2:50
Speaker 1: you can do that at sick gear dot com slash diverge,
2:53
Speaker 1: and they're giving away some pretty sweet prizes to the
2:56
Speaker 1: winners of those contests and really to even participants. They're
2:59
Speaker 1: giving away sick of gear hats, a bunch of different
3:02
Speaker 1: types of sick of gear go pros, the opportunity of
3:05
Speaker 1: your pictures published in print and even in all expenses
3:09
Speaker 1: paid trip to come here to Bozeman, Montana. So sick
3:13
Speaker 1: of gear dot com slash diverge to get more details
3:15
Speaker 1: or to submit your own photos. And uh and with
3:18
Speaker 1: that now back to what's new in our white tail world?
3:22
Speaker 1: Stand Um, Like I said, I want to talk about
3:24
Speaker 1: my Montana trip before that. Is there anything new in
3:27
Speaker 1: your white tail world? We haven't got to catch up
3:28
Speaker 1: in a while. Well, I'm still married, so that that
3:36
Speaker 1: means that it's probably not. My white tail world is
3:39
Speaker 1: not going as good as I wanted. But you know,
3:43
Speaker 1: we really need to get her on the podcast one
3:44
Speaker 1: of these days, right right where she can ship talk
3:48
Speaker 1: on me for about an hour. Be really entertaining for
3:52
Speaker 1: all of us. No, no, I love her to death.
3:56
Speaker 1: She puts up with my bs and uh uh that's
4:00
Speaker 1: a that's a good thing. But as far as on
4:02
Speaker 1: on my end here in Iowa, um, I got four
4:06
Speaker 1: four out of my seven tree stands. Hung took me
4:08
Speaker 1: eight hours to put up four tree stands. I my
4:11
Speaker 1: food plot that I planted. It's coming up. My Braskas
4:14
Speaker 1: are coming up nice. Uh. I got my uh my
4:19
Speaker 1: scrape tree. It's an old fence post that was part
4:22
Speaker 1: of the fence that I tore down. I left it up,
4:23
Speaker 1: drilled some holes in it, stuffed some branches in. I
4:25
Speaker 1: got a scrape tree. And uh now I'm to that
4:28
Speaker 1: period where I just leave my properties alone until October.
4:33
Speaker 1: It's exciting knowing it's done and just need the final
4:37
Speaker 1: countdown now, right right right. So one of those where
4:41
Speaker 1: I want to go out, I want to check my
4:43
Speaker 1: trail cameras, but it's it's best just to let them
4:46
Speaker 1: soak until that the next time that I'm out there.
4:49
Speaker 1: So I'm in a similar situation as you know. You know,
4:51
Speaker 1: I've got all my stuff done on my different properties. Um.
4:55
Speaker 1: But the one thing different for me is that I
4:57
Speaker 1: can't remember if I told you this or not. But
4:58
Speaker 1: I got a wireless Carl camera for the first time.
5:01
Speaker 1: Did we talk about this already? Um, I think you
5:05
Speaker 1: mentioned the last time that you were going to get one,
5:07
Speaker 1: but you since then, I haven't heard anything about it. Okay. Yeah.
5:10
Speaker 1: So So I got one one of the Bushnell wireless
5:14
Speaker 1: cams and I set that up on my main Michigan
5:17
Speaker 1: property on one of my food plots. And where I
5:20
Speaker 1: put up one, I put it consimilar to do. I
5:22
Speaker 1: put up a fake scrape tree in the middle of
5:23
Speaker 1: that food plot to give me, you know, and maybe
5:25
Speaker 1: a little bit better chance at a shot in that plot,
5:27
Speaker 1: and then also to have my camera pointed out so
5:30
Speaker 1: I guess some pictures of deer in there. Um right.
5:32
Speaker 1: So I put the wireless camera there because, like you,
5:34
Speaker 1: I don't want to go into my property at all
5:36
Speaker 1: in September, and really I don't want to go to
5:38
Speaker 1: that area to hunt at all until either the rut
5:41
Speaker 1: or want to get daylight pictures of a mature buck
5:44
Speaker 1: out there. In the past, I was never able to
5:46
Speaker 1: tell that, you know, unless I actually went in there
5:48
Speaker 1: and checked the camera. But now that I've got this
5:50
Speaker 1: wireless camera, I can tell, you know, from home, so
5:52
Speaker 1: I'm pretty pumped. I'm really pumped about that. Um it's
5:55
Speaker 1: a good news bad news situation though, because I've been
5:58
Speaker 1: getting all these pictures now on my phone and I'm
6:00
Speaker 1: addicted to it. But I got some bad news today.
6:04
Speaker 1: Um my scrape tree that I installed, I didn't do
6:07
Speaker 1: a good enough job of getting it secure to there,
6:10
Speaker 1: because over the past few days, I've noticed it's spinning
6:14
Speaker 1: in circles, so stuff is either the wind is blowing
6:16
Speaker 1: it or deer pushing it or different things, because I
6:18
Speaker 1: can tell that the branches are pointing in a different
6:20
Speaker 1: direction in every photo. And then and then today I
6:23
Speaker 1: saw it has now been pushed over at like a
6:26
Speaker 1: forty five degree angle, so it's at a really really
6:29
Speaker 1: weird tilt. Now it's not maybe not quite a forty five,
6:32
Speaker 1: so it's it's still usable if it doesn't move anymore.
6:35
Speaker 1: But I worry, you know, one bad storm or one
6:38
Speaker 1: angry buck and that thing is gonna be on the ground.
6:40
Speaker 1: So knowing that, I kind of want to go in
6:42
Speaker 1: there and fix it, But at the same time, I
6:44
Speaker 1: don't want to go in there because the whole point
6:45
Speaker 1: has been not to go in there, so I don't know. Man,
6:49
Speaker 1: I'm kind of bummed that I and I knew it,
6:51
Speaker 1: you know. I actually when I did it, I knew
6:54
Speaker 1: that I didn't dig the hole deep enough, and I
6:57
Speaker 1: just I got struck some really hard ground and I
6:59
Speaker 1: was like, this is good enough, But I probably should
7:02
Speaker 1: just kept going. Um, because now I'm now I'm dealing
7:06
Speaker 1: with this stuff. If something rips my scrape tree out
7:08
Speaker 1: of the ground, I'd be very very impressed. Well, this
7:10
Speaker 1: is Iowa. That's right, it is. It is Iowa. You
7:14
Speaker 1: could have a big buck do some crazy things. Um.
7:17
Speaker 1: So that's about it on your set. Huh. Yeah. I mean,
7:21
Speaker 1: like I said, I've just been kind of you know,
7:24
Speaker 1: I wanted to. I want to go back to the
7:25
Speaker 1: property and set up maybe a couple more tree stands,
7:28
Speaker 1: but I just think, you know, I'm that I don't
7:31
Speaker 1: know about you. But I set up two three four
7:37
Speaker 1: tree stands that I know I'm gonna hunt during the
7:39
Speaker 1: rut because they are historically good spots. But then I've
7:43
Speaker 1: had a tree stands in the past where I thought
7:45
Speaker 1: i'd set up for maybe early season spots, and then
7:48
Speaker 1: I've never hunted them. So I'm doing a running gun
7:51
Speaker 1: right off the bat anyway, So I figured, you know, what,
7:53
Speaker 1: what the hell I like doing it, I'll just do it.
7:55
Speaker 1: I'll just you know, jump in and start doing running
7:57
Speaker 1: guns first week of October. There you go. Well, it's
8:01
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a tax with the works if you're
8:04
Speaker 1: if you're good at getting in there quietly and setting
8:07
Speaker 1: your stand up quickly without making a commotion, it really works. Um.
8:11
Speaker 1: And that's kind of a good segue into my hunt
8:14
Speaker 1: here in Montana because I've been running gunn on it
8:16
Speaker 1: every day of the hunt so far. So should we
8:19
Speaker 1: talk about this right? Yes? Yes, let's talk about your
8:25
Speaker 1: trip to Montana that I'm extremely jealous about. Yeah. So
8:28
Speaker 1: I want to kind of do a little role reversal here, Dan,
8:31
Speaker 1: and I want to let you take the host rains
8:33
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna you play the host. I play the
8:36
Speaker 1: guest on the show because you always do a nice
8:39
Speaker 1: job of of profiling hunters on your podcast. Um. So,
8:43
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked a little bit about how I
8:45
Speaker 1: was planning for this Montana hunt, you know, in some
8:47
Speaker 1: past episodes. Um So I guess, knowing that context, you
8:51
Speaker 1: know how I planned it a little bit. Now you're
8:53
Speaker 1: the host, take it away. What do you want to
8:55
Speaker 1: know about this past hunt and what's happened here so far. Well,
8:59
Speaker 1: let's do a little let's take a step back, and
9:01
Speaker 1: you know you did a lot of research into where
9:05
Speaker 1: you were going to hunt, and you were out there
9:08
Speaker 1: this you know, this summer. Did you visit the spot
9:12
Speaker 1: that you were hunting this summer to scout? Yeah? So,
9:17
Speaker 1: so as you know, you know, I chose to hunt
9:18
Speaker 1: Montana this year in part because right I was already
9:21
Speaker 1: gonna be spending a month out here on kind of
9:23
Speaker 1: my workcation. Um, so I thought I had an opportunity
9:25
Speaker 1: to scout. So yes, I showed up here in Montana
9:28
Speaker 1: with a game plan um of a few places I
9:32
Speaker 1: wanted to try to scout. I didn't get to do
9:33
Speaker 1: as much scouting as I thought I was going to
9:35
Speaker 1: be able to do, um because of some issues that
9:38
Speaker 1: we've talked about a little bit past. But i'll quickly
9:40
Speaker 1: review what I did. You know. Step one, I looked
9:43
Speaker 1: at kind of like a one to one and a
9:45
Speaker 1: half hour radius around where I was staying here in
9:49
Speaker 1: kind of west central Montana and was looking for river
9:53
Speaker 1: bottom ground. So I was looking for these valleys where
9:56
Speaker 1: there's a river running through the middle of it, and
9:57
Speaker 1: there's good cover because that's where these white tail seem
10:00
Speaker 1: to live the most in states like this, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado,
10:04
Speaker 1: et cetera. So I was looking for areas like that,
10:06
Speaker 1: and then I was looking for public land within those valleys.
10:10
Speaker 1: So I found a couple of different valleys where that
10:13
Speaker 1: was the case, and I started driving out there. So
10:16
Speaker 1: first weekend July, I headed out to one of these
10:19
Speaker 1: valleys and just started doing some evening drives. I think
10:21
Speaker 1: I did three evening drives in one valley UM to
10:26
Speaker 1: check out this river bottom ground and there's two pieces
10:29
Speaker 1: excuse me, hiccups, there was two pieces of land that's
10:33
Speaker 1: in Montana's block management program, which makes private land available
10:39
Speaker 1: to hunters. So I was scoping out in those areas
10:41
Speaker 1: in the surrounding region UM, and that's kind of where
10:44
Speaker 1: I was gonna focus until I don't know, late July,
10:48
Speaker 1: I found out that some of these properties might not
10:50
Speaker 1: actually be open to public anymore. So at that point
10:53
Speaker 1: I was like, well, crap, all the scouting could be
10:55
Speaker 1: for nothing, and I'm down to like my final week
10:58
Speaker 1: out here. I need to have some other kind of game.
11:00
Speaker 1: LAMB Um. So I started doing more research, looking at
11:03
Speaker 1: different maps, looking at different areas, and I gotta be honest,
11:06
Speaker 1: um and give a big thank you to our friend
11:10
Speaker 1: Randy Newburgh, because I wouldn hit coffee with him and
11:13
Speaker 1: told him, Hey, you know, I'm kind of up in
11:15
Speaker 1: the air again about some of these different regions. Um,
11:17
Speaker 1: is there any specific areas you might you know, general
11:20
Speaker 1: areas you might think I should do some new scouting
11:22
Speaker 1: him and he pointed out a couple of different new
11:25
Speaker 1: river areas that I had not looked at before. They
11:27
Speaker 1: were farther away, um, but he said, hey, these might
11:29
Speaker 1: be worth scoping out. So I took him up on that,
11:33
Speaker 1: and I decided that last week I was here to
11:35
Speaker 1: go check out one of these other areas. This was
11:37
Speaker 1: like an hour and forty five minutes, almost two hours
11:39
Speaker 1: away from where I was staying. But I was like,
11:42
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta find new area. Last week I'm
11:44
Speaker 1: out there. I drive out to this new region, and
11:48
Speaker 1: right away when I get to this river bottom area
11:50
Speaker 1: way out there, I start seeing a lot of deer
11:53
Speaker 1: and a lot of good deer um better than I've
11:55
Speaker 1: seen in the in the other areas I've been scouting.
11:57
Speaker 1: So after night number one and I think we talked
12:00
Speaker 1: about this this summer, like I was pretty stoked. I
12:02
Speaker 1: found I found my region the spot. The next night
12:05
Speaker 1: I went back out because there was a piece of
12:08
Speaker 1: public land that I wanted to watch specifically, So I
12:10
Speaker 1: drove out the second night, watched it, and then I
12:13
Speaker 1: hopped out of the truck and just did like a
12:15
Speaker 1: hundred yard walk along the edge of this cover just
12:17
Speaker 1: to like see it a little bit, and then that
12:19
Speaker 1: was it. Then I had to go home like two
12:21
Speaker 1: days later. So that was the extent of scouting I
12:23
Speaker 1: got to do out here in Montana. One night drive
12:26
Speaker 1: by and then one night drive by and then a
12:29
Speaker 1: quick hundred yard walk along the edge of it. That
12:32
Speaker 1: is all I had. Um that takes me to August.
12:36
Speaker 1: I then, you know, okay, based on the fact that
12:38
Speaker 1: this one little piece, I really liked this little piece,
12:40
Speaker 1: and I had a neighboring piece of black management land
12:44
Speaker 1: that I thought was gonna be open to public. Now,
12:46
Speaker 1: as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, at
12:48
Speaker 1: the end of August, I found out that was no
12:49
Speaker 1: longer public. So now I just had a small piece
12:52
Speaker 1: of public next to this private which had all the food,
12:55
Speaker 1: but I can hunt the cover next to it still.
12:57
Speaker 1: So that was my game plan coming into this. I thought, Okay,
13:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna try to hunt
13:01
Speaker 1: this little piece of public next to the food, and
13:05
Speaker 1: if you know, we're going to see how that goes.
13:07
Speaker 1: And my game plan was and maybe I'm getting ahead
13:09
Speaker 1: of myself here, but um, well, well I guess what
13:13
Speaker 1: do you want to know next? That's that's the scouting
13:14
Speaker 1: I did leading up to this. So you did, you
13:18
Speaker 1: got your scouting done? And then when did you realize
13:22
Speaker 1: that when you came back here? Because you you you
13:25
Speaker 1: came back for the hunt, and but then you realized
13:28
Speaker 1: some things have changed, right, yeah? So and and for
13:32
Speaker 1: the listeners, just you know, Dan sounds a little different
13:34
Speaker 1: now because we had to just switch things up. We
13:36
Speaker 1: had some bad service issues. So Dan's on his phone now,
13:39
Speaker 1: I'm on my computer now. So to your question, Dan, um,
13:43
Speaker 1: you know, like I just said, the piece, but part
13:46
Speaker 1: of the public lan that thought I was gonna be
13:47
Speaker 1: a hunt now it cannot hunt anymore. So I now
13:50
Speaker 1: was showing up to hunt a smaller piece. And because
13:54
Speaker 1: of that, I did have a backup plan kind of.
13:56
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, so, you know that that
14:00
Speaker 1: property kind of fell through for you. You kind of
14:02
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a backup plan. Um by
14:06
Speaker 1: losing that piece of property, did it miss things up
14:09
Speaker 1: big time for you? Or were were you pretty comfortable
14:13
Speaker 1: with going into that smaller piece of that of that
14:15
Speaker 1: public ground and uh making it go at it. I
14:19
Speaker 1: was a little more nervous, just because the original piece
14:22
Speaker 1: had all the food on him. So I knew, like
14:25
Speaker 1: I had thought, Okay, I'm gonna go in there and
14:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be able to hunt this food easy. And
14:29
Speaker 1: these bucks and all these deer were coming out to
14:30
Speaker 1: feed into this. I assumed they'd be doing it pretty consistently. Um.
14:35
Speaker 1: My worry was that now that all I could hunt
14:37
Speaker 1: was the cover. My question to myself was can I
14:40
Speaker 1: get into that without spooking deer in the afternoon. That's
14:42
Speaker 1: what I didn't know. Um. So because of that, I
14:46
Speaker 1: did a little more research. I found a couple of
14:48
Speaker 1: other properties within about a twenty minute drive, um, some
14:51
Speaker 1: block management some other that I could hunt if I
14:54
Speaker 1: had to. So I said, okay, I'm going to go
14:56
Speaker 1: in there. The first night or two hunt this original property,
14:59
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna play it safe and observe, see what
15:02
Speaker 1: I see and if I can hunt it, and if
15:04
Speaker 1: I see some quality bucks or if I see dear enough,
15:06
Speaker 1: then I'll keep hunting here. But if not, after the
15:08
Speaker 1: first two nights and then I'm going to go explore
15:10
Speaker 1: these other two areas. You know, I didn't given the
15:12
Speaker 1: fact I only had seven days to hunt, I couldn't
15:15
Speaker 1: devote too much time to anyone's spot unless I knew
15:17
Speaker 1: it could produce. So the plan for night number one
15:21
Speaker 1: was to just get to the edge of this cover
15:23
Speaker 1: between the food and the cover and that little transition area,
15:27
Speaker 1: try not to go in too far because I didn't
15:28
Speaker 1: know where they're betted, and just observe. So that that
15:31
Speaker 1: was my game plan when I showed up on showed
15:34
Speaker 1: up Saturday afternoon with that plan. So night number one,
15:38
Speaker 1: I mean, you got well be for that. You get
15:41
Speaker 1: to this this public ground that you had scouted out,
15:44
Speaker 1: did you run into any other hunters out there? So
15:48
Speaker 1: if first no, um, I pulled up to the parking
15:52
Speaker 1: lot area kind of thing and there was no one
15:54
Speaker 1: else there. There was a little campground there where I
15:55
Speaker 1: was planning on staying, and there were a bunch of
15:57
Speaker 1: other hunters at the campground, but I talked to them
16:00
Speaker 1: and they were elk hunters, so I was feeling pretty good.
16:03
Speaker 1: I parked my truck, got all situated and started hiking
16:06
Speaker 1: in and I just took my sweet time getting in there.
16:09
Speaker 1: And I had already, you know, studied my maps, and
16:12
Speaker 1: I kind of located this first section of trees I
16:14
Speaker 1: thought I could get to with minimal intrusion, but that
16:17
Speaker 1: would give me a good view of both this kind
16:19
Speaker 1: of covery area. It's kind of a mix of like
16:22
Speaker 1: willows and brush and grass that's where these deer bedded,
16:25
Speaker 1: and some cottonwood trees. And then I could also see
16:28
Speaker 1: this alfalfa field to my east. So I snuck in
16:31
Speaker 1: there and I brought a stand and sticks with me,
16:34
Speaker 1: and I got that tree stand hung up. I cut
16:36
Speaker 1: a few shooting lanes. Is quiet, not not really shooting lanes.
16:39
Speaker 1: There was just the tree I was sitting in UM,
16:41
Speaker 1: so I just kind of opened up a couple of
16:43
Speaker 1: holes in the tree I was hunting so I could
16:44
Speaker 1: get some shots. But as I was doing that, another
16:47
Speaker 1: vehicle pulled in UM next to mine, and a couple
16:51
Speaker 1: of bow hunters stepped out of there. Um. So I
16:53
Speaker 1: kind of just walk you through how the rest of
16:55
Speaker 1: that first night went. So, so I got up there
16:57
Speaker 1: in the tree, saw these other guys. I'm like, God, crap,
16:59
Speaker 1: you know, I really hope they're not going to come
17:01
Speaker 1: over here by me. But as I'm you know, kind
17:03
Speaker 1: of moaning and groaning in my head about this, here
17:06
Speaker 1: comes some deer out of the cover, heading towards the field. Um.
17:10
Speaker 1: And then it just kept going and going. Over the
17:12
Speaker 1: next hour and a half. Dough dough, little buck, little buck,
17:15
Speaker 1: dough dough, little buck. Lots of deer started piling out,
17:18
Speaker 1: and I was feeling pretty good because my little observations
17:21
Speaker 1: stand that I thought would be a good observation stand
17:24
Speaker 1: and also might have the chance of seeing some bucks
17:26
Speaker 1: because there's a number of trails that did come within
17:28
Speaker 1: range there. Um. Well, I had picked a pretty decent
17:30
Speaker 1: spot because I was seeing a lot of deer and
17:32
Speaker 1: some of them were close. Um, maybe thirty percent of
17:36
Speaker 1: the deer were within shooting range. Um, and a larger
17:39
Speaker 1: portion maybe we're a little bit farther south of me. Um.
17:41
Speaker 1: But I was feeling good about, you know, the fact
17:43
Speaker 1: that it had only been like an hour and a
17:44
Speaker 1: half of hunting, and I was seeing all these deer
17:47
Speaker 1: um just as we started getting to the point where
17:49
Speaker 1: maybe I thought, you know, a buck, bigger buck might
17:52
Speaker 1: be coming through, because there's maybe an hour and a
17:54
Speaker 1: half before dark. Now one of these hunters, one of
17:57
Speaker 1: these hunters comes walking through and he was hunting on
17:59
Speaker 1: the round, just kind of walking around with his bone arrow,
18:03
Speaker 1: and he spoke a bunch of deer and walked with
18:05
Speaker 1: him like fifty yards of me maybe, and then he
18:09
Speaker 1: saw me up in the trio. It's kind of waved
18:11
Speaker 1: at him, and then I don't know if he saw
18:13
Speaker 1: a deer or something, because he saw me, and then
18:15
Speaker 1: he knelt down and faced the opposite direction of me
18:19
Speaker 1: and just sat there looking for like fifteen minutes, right
18:23
Speaker 1: in front of me, and I'm like, all right, I
18:26
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing. I just kind of assumed
18:28
Speaker 1: that there must be a deer on the other side
18:30
Speaker 1: of this brush that I can't see, and he's like
18:32
Speaker 1: he's gonna wait it out and try to shoot this
18:33
Speaker 1: deer in front of me. And finally that didn't work out,
18:36
Speaker 1: I guess, because like fifteen minutes later he got up
18:38
Speaker 1: and walked out. Um, so it was kind of bummed
18:41
Speaker 1: about that. You know, I was hoping. One of the
18:42
Speaker 1: things I was really hoping, given this whole Montana idea,
18:46
Speaker 1: was that being so far away from most city centers
18:49
Speaker 1: and being in an area where white tail hunting is
18:51
Speaker 1: not nearly as popular, I was thinking I could have
18:53
Speaker 1: maybe a relatively pressure free public land hunt, which is rare. UM.
18:58
Speaker 1: But but you know, it didn't didn't quite workout. So
19:00
Speaker 1: those guys kind of screwed up my night number one hunt.
19:02
Speaker 1: But still about an hour after they disappeared, if those
19:06
Speaker 1: guys left, UM, a couple of young two year olds
19:09
Speaker 1: ten pointers or maybe one was an eight. One of
19:11
Speaker 1: those ten they came walking right by me and saw
19:14
Speaker 1: a few more deer, and then just towards last light,
19:17
Speaker 1: I spun around and I could look in these fields
19:19
Speaker 1: behind me, and a little farther south me, just through
19:22
Speaker 1: some little holes and leaves, I was able to spot
19:24
Speaker 1: a couple of shooter bucks, maybe a hundred fifty yards
19:27
Speaker 1: out in the field south and east of me. So
19:30
Speaker 1: I felt really good just to describe describe a second
19:34
Speaker 1: what a shooter buck in Montana is for those listeners, well,
19:37
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it was a minimum of a
19:41
Speaker 1: three year old hopefully older, but a minimum of a
19:43
Speaker 1: three year old buck. Um and just just a nice
19:46
Speaker 1: representative buck. I didn't go into this trying to shoot
19:49
Speaker 1: a giant or setting some kind of like super high standards. UM.
19:54
Speaker 1: I was going to this thinking, hey, this is gonna
19:56
Speaker 1: be a pretty big challenge, you know, going into a
19:58
Speaker 1: totally new state, super far from the public land, camping
20:01
Speaker 1: on my truck. UM. So I just wanted to kill
20:05
Speaker 1: a buck that was gonna make me happy and it
20:08
Speaker 1: was relatively mature. Um, So that was what I was
20:11
Speaker 1: shooting for. UM. So what I saw out there in
20:13
Speaker 1: that field where a couple of bucks that had nice, big,
20:16
Speaker 1: solid bodies. So it told me, yeah, these are mature
20:18
Speaker 1: gear and you know, decent enough headgear. Um that caught
20:23
Speaker 1: your attention. Um probably one twenties, one thirties somewhere around that, right.
20:27
Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, that's a nice buck, big bodies,
20:29
Speaker 1: sweet that that that'll make me happy on this hunt.
20:33
Speaker 1: So perfect. So yeah, so that's what I saw, and
20:36
Speaker 1: that let me know, Okay, there's at least a couple
20:38
Speaker 1: of quality bucks in the area that are worth hunting.
20:41
Speaker 1: And you know they're within, you know, somewhere within this area.
20:44
Speaker 1: They had to have come off the public lands somewhere
20:46
Speaker 1: because of the direction they were walking and where I
20:48
Speaker 1: saw them, so I knew, you know it, Maybe it
20:51
Speaker 1: wasn't right where I was hunting today, but I knew
20:53
Speaker 1: that there were bucks that I could possibly hunt. So
20:56
Speaker 1: that night hunt ended, I snuck out and I said, Okay,
20:59
Speaker 1: I've got to I've got to make an adjustment tomorrow.
21:01
Speaker 1: But that was what night number one looked like. Um,
21:04
Speaker 1: so do you want me to move on to night
21:06
Speaker 1: number two or do you have any questions about that hunt? Well,
21:10
Speaker 1: my my question is did you hunt the next morning
21:13
Speaker 1: or were you strictly hunting afternoons. Yeah, so my plan
21:17
Speaker 1: was to not hunt the first couple of mornings because
21:20
Speaker 1: I had a really good situation for evening hunts. Mornings
21:23
Speaker 1: I felt less confident, So I thought, Okay, hunt the
21:26
Speaker 1: first few days, just the evening's played a little bit safe.
21:28
Speaker 1: Figure out how the deer using this area where they're bedded,
21:31
Speaker 1: when they're coming back to bed, all that stuff, and
21:33
Speaker 1: then if you figure it out and you think you
21:35
Speaker 1: can hunt mornings, then I would do that. The last
21:37
Speaker 1: like four or five days, but the first couple of
21:39
Speaker 1: days I was going to play a little bit safe
21:41
Speaker 1: and just try to learn. So also, the other thing
21:44
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is that right towards the end
21:47
Speaker 1: of my first night's hunt, it started to rain, and
21:50
Speaker 1: it was on pace to just keep raining for the
21:53
Speaker 1: next two days almost So it started raining that night
21:59
Speaker 1: and the next morning I woke up and it was
22:01
Speaker 1: raining like crazy, And so my plan was to just
22:03
Speaker 1: hop in my truck, well, hop out of the back
22:06
Speaker 1: of my truck into the front of my truck and
22:11
Speaker 1: just scout from the road again. And so I got
22:13
Speaker 1: up really early and it just drove around some of
22:15
Speaker 1: these hills. I could see down into the crop fields
22:18
Speaker 1: around the public land, and I was just trying to see, Okay,
22:21
Speaker 1: how long do these deer stay out feeding in the morning,
22:24
Speaker 1: When are they going back to bed Where specifically are
22:26
Speaker 1: they going back to bed um? And you know, are
22:29
Speaker 1: there some other areas of this public that maybe I'm
22:31
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it could be good that are good.
22:33
Speaker 1: So that's why I kind of tried to figure out.
22:35
Speaker 1: And I found another field on the other side of
22:37
Speaker 1: the property um that hadn't had deer in it when
22:41
Speaker 1: I showed up in July and did have some box
22:43
Speaker 1: in it this morning that this was like a Sunday morning,
22:47
Speaker 1: I think. So I was like, okay, hey, there's an
22:48
Speaker 1: option to option B on this piece um. But then
22:51
Speaker 1: I also saw a bunch of deer on my main
22:53
Speaker 1: section going back into bed on the public So what
23:00
Speaker 1: were these food sources that these deer were heading out into. Yeah,
23:04
Speaker 1: it was just a great, big, giant elf alfa field
23:08
Speaker 1: um with handful of trees in the middle and some
23:11
Speaker 1: little grassy breaks and stuff in and around there, but
23:14
Speaker 1: mostly just big open elf alfa field um that they
23:18
Speaker 1: were that is there a lot was the numbers? I
23:22
Speaker 1: mean from you know, just from a number standpoint, where
23:25
Speaker 1: are there a lot of deer? Did you see a
23:27
Speaker 1: lot of deer while you're hunting out there? Yeah? So
23:29
Speaker 1: that was a big difference between a lot of other
23:31
Speaker 1: places I've hunted. Just a lot of deer, like, way
23:35
Speaker 1: more deer than I'm used to seeing most other places.
23:37
Speaker 1: So that they've got the cool thing about at least
23:39
Speaker 1: this area, and I think it's relatively consistent and a
23:42
Speaker 1: lot of good parts of Montana is that there are
23:45
Speaker 1: very high deer numbers, and there's really a really great
23:50
Speaker 1: buck to door ratio because it's just not very many hunters.
23:52
Speaker 1: So it's not like here in Michigan where all the bucks,
23:56
Speaker 1: you know, year and a half old or anything are
23:57
Speaker 1: getting shot. So in Michigan, you know, there's like one
23:59
Speaker 1: buck to every five does or something crazy like that.
24:02
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's horrible, but out here it's like
24:05
Speaker 1: one to one. I saw just as many, if not
24:07
Speaker 1: more bucks than I saw does, and a very evenly
24:11
Speaker 1: distributed age structure. So I saw a year and a
24:14
Speaker 1: half holds. I saw lots of two and a half
24:15
Speaker 1: year olds. I saw lots of three four Um, so
24:18
Speaker 1: you're seeing, you know, lots of nice bucks. So just
24:21
Speaker 1: from like an enjoyment standpoint, it was a blast just
24:25
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of deer and seeing a lot of
24:26
Speaker 1: like nice looking bucks that would like at least get
24:29
Speaker 1: your heart pumping enough to like pull up your binoculars
24:31
Speaker 1: and say, oh, is that a shooter? Um? So that's
24:33
Speaker 1: what I was seeing. So it rained. They two started
24:39
Speaker 1: off raining in your truck. So you went on a
24:41
Speaker 1: little drive. Did that? Did that rain let up towards
24:44
Speaker 1: the evening of night? To no, it just kept on pouring,
24:48
Speaker 1: so I scout in the morning. Then I came back
24:50
Speaker 1: to camp, I took a nap in the truck, tried
24:52
Speaker 1: to I did a little writing UM, and then around
24:56
Speaker 1: I think one thirty year or maybe two, I decided
25:00
Speaker 1: to go try to find this new spot. And so
25:02
Speaker 1: based on what I've seen the first night, UM, I
25:04
Speaker 1: was thinking these deer were coming out south of me,
25:06
Speaker 1: and there was a change in wind direction that kind
25:09
Speaker 1: of compelled me to have to go even farther south
25:12
Speaker 1: to to be able to hunt without having my wind
25:14
Speaker 1: blow back to where I thought these deer might be betted.
25:16
Speaker 1: So I drove to the other side of the section,
25:19
Speaker 1: parked my truck, put another standing sticks on my backpack
25:22
Speaker 1: through my rain gear, and hiked out to this new
25:25
Speaker 1: area across the river. Found another stand again that I
25:29
Speaker 1: thought I could get into and see this area better.
25:32
Speaker 1: And this spot this time I could see the fields
25:34
Speaker 1: much better than I could night number one, because now
25:36
Speaker 1: my goal was, Okay, I know they're not way far
25:39
Speaker 1: north where I was. How far south are they? That's
25:41
Speaker 1: why I wanted to figure out. So now I'm on
25:43
Speaker 1: the far south part of the property, trying to confirm
25:45
Speaker 1: where in the middle is this action happening? And it
25:48
Speaker 1: didn't take long for me to figure that out. Um. Literally,
25:51
Speaker 1: I'm hanging the stand still and it's maybe three o'clock,
25:55
Speaker 1: maybe three thirty, I don't know, pouring rain, and Um,
25:58
Speaker 1: I'm hanging the stand and I look out across the
26:00
Speaker 1: field over by where I was hunting on the first night,
26:03
Speaker 1: and here's like six bucks coming out in the field.
26:05
Speaker 1: I'm like a son of a gun. Um. And that
26:09
Speaker 1: was kind of the big lesson from that night. I
26:10
Speaker 1: didn't see hardly anything down by where I was hunting,
26:13
Speaker 1: like two doughs. All the deer, like like forty deer
26:17
Speaker 1: or more, including I don't know, fifteen bucks maybe more.
26:22
Speaker 1: All of them were coming out into the northern section
26:24
Speaker 1: of the field, um, near where I was hunting the
26:27
Speaker 1: first night, although maybe not ultimately right by there. Um.
26:31
Speaker 1: And what I kind of found is that the reason
26:34
Speaker 1: why that was happening is that that section of the
26:37
Speaker 1: field was lush grain alfalfa. Still the section down the
26:41
Speaker 1: south had been cut and was like all dried up
26:43
Speaker 1: and and the deer weren't feeding down there. So so
26:48
Speaker 1: that was what I took away from that. Oh and
26:49
Speaker 1: I saw two bucks that like for sure. I was like, okay,
26:51
Speaker 1: those are for sure shooters. There are a bunch of
26:53
Speaker 1: like twinter Bucks, and there was two that I saw,
26:55
Speaker 1: like okay, those definitely nice big body you know, representative
26:59
Speaker 1: nice for spectable buck. Um. So I again felt good,
27:02
Speaker 1: and I knew that those bucks were coming out somewhere
27:05
Speaker 1: in this region. And I'd say it's like a like
27:08
Speaker 1: a hundred two hundred maybe like a hundred fifty yard
27:12
Speaker 1: tall like north to south section of field that is
27:15
Speaker 1: that comes out of this adjacent public land. Um. So
27:19
Speaker 1: then that that that left. I snuck out that night
27:23
Speaker 1: and I had a game plan of the fact that Okay,
27:24
Speaker 1: I need to move back north, but I think I
27:26
Speaker 1: need to make one final tweak. Okay. So the next
27:30
Speaker 1: question I have for you is in regards to where
27:33
Speaker 1: these geer coming out the betting area, the you know,
27:36
Speaker 1: the ending food source, where they were going. How big
27:40
Speaker 1: of an area were you playing with here in terms
27:42
Speaker 1: of acres? You know, the whole large section was probably
27:48
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred acres um maybe um, but the
27:53
Speaker 1: actual small area that I was focused on couldn't been Well,
27:57
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's less than that maybe maybe
27:59
Speaker 1: we're talking like a hundred acre area total, but the
28:02
Speaker 1: microregion that I was focusing on was really like probably,
28:07
Speaker 1: oh gosh, maybe like twenty acres um because really I
28:12
Speaker 1: was focused. I was hunting right on the edge of
28:14
Speaker 1: the private land in the public land, so right in
28:16
Speaker 1: the edge of the cover and the food um. And
28:19
Speaker 1: then it was just like a maybe like four hundred
28:21
Speaker 1: yards wide from north or four hundred yards long from
28:25
Speaker 1: north to south maybe, and then you know, covers on
28:28
Speaker 1: the west side, foods on the east side, and I
28:30
Speaker 1: was just working my way up and down that line
28:32
Speaker 1: from north to south, trying to figure out where is
28:34
Speaker 1: the transition point where they coming through the most um.
28:37
Speaker 1: And then you know, there was I don't know how
28:41
Speaker 1: deep the deer were into the cover that they were bedded,
28:44
Speaker 1: but one of the main things I found on night
28:46
Speaker 1: number one is that they were not bedded right in
28:48
Speaker 1: the edge, so I could move up and down that
28:51
Speaker 1: transition line safely early in the day without needing, without
28:55
Speaker 1: worrying about spooking deer. So that gave me confidence for
28:58
Speaker 1: the next day that I could sneak in there and
29:00
Speaker 1: and hang a new stand and just make that small
29:02
Speaker 1: adjustment because I didn't need to worry about spooking deer
29:04
Speaker 1: as long as I was in there early. UM. I
29:06
Speaker 1: will point out that every night the deer were moving
29:10
Speaker 1: super early. I mean by like three o'clock probably every
29:13
Speaker 1: day three three thirty somewhere around there. UM, they were
29:16
Speaker 1: deer heading out to feed, which was pretty surprising to
29:19
Speaker 1: be compared to most other places I hunt. UM. But
29:22
Speaker 1: you know, these deer aren't pressured too much. And another
29:25
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I noticed was the moontime. You know,
29:29
Speaker 1: we've talked to a lot of different people about the moontime. UM.
29:32
Speaker 1: I picked up the two thousand sixteen version of the
29:35
Speaker 1: Moon Guide, you know that Adam Hayes and Joe Miles
29:38
Speaker 1: and guys like that talk about, and that just shows
29:40
Speaker 1: you the overhead and underfoot times for the moon. And
29:44
Speaker 1: as as we've talked about, you know what a lot
29:47
Speaker 1: of people believe is that when the overhead or underfoot
29:50
Speaker 1: time for the moon coincides with that last couple hours
29:53
Speaker 1: of daylight or first couple of hours daylight in the morning,
29:56
Speaker 1: that can lead to increased day movement. Well that was
29:58
Speaker 1: happening during this week I was hunting. So I think
30:02
Speaker 1: those first couple of days. The red moontime was like
30:05
Speaker 1: three thirty and then day three or four twenty something. Um,
30:10
Speaker 1: So so you know, it just could be circumstances. You know,
30:14
Speaker 1: it could have been coincidence maybe, but at least in
30:17
Speaker 1: this case, the deer movement times coincided very closely with
30:21
Speaker 1: that moon time. So that was kind of interesting thing
30:23
Speaker 1: I saw. All Right, So it's it's night three, Like
30:29
Speaker 1: you're getting ready to go set up on night three, right, Um,
30:34
Speaker 1: you didn't bump any deer going in. Um, you're set up?
30:39
Speaker 1: How long? How long was it taken you to set up?
30:42
Speaker 1: And how long between from the time that you started,
30:47
Speaker 1: you know, you got rested in the stand until you
30:50
Speaker 1: were seeing deer. Yeah, so I want to I want
30:52
Speaker 1: to rewind us a little bit and and describe how
30:55
Speaker 1: I got to that point, um, because because so, like
30:59
Speaker 1: I said on it, and two, I saw these deer
31:01
Speaker 1: were farther up north. But you know, that night I
31:04
Speaker 1: sat there thinking, Okay, I've got a tree stand up
31:06
Speaker 1: there already that I could just walk in and hunt.
31:09
Speaker 1: But I wasn't seeing the mature but I wasn't seeing
31:12
Speaker 1: the big box come by that location. Now I knew
31:15
Speaker 1: that part of that could be because those guys came
31:19
Speaker 1: walking through and spoot some of those deer, so that
31:21
Speaker 1: could be the reason why I didn't see the shooter box.
31:23
Speaker 1: Or I also knew that I could not see very
31:26
Speaker 1: far south of me from that stand because of these
31:28
Speaker 1: different trees in the way that I couldn't trim out
31:30
Speaker 1: at all. So I knew that they were deer moving
31:32
Speaker 1: through that I couldn't see between me and the river.
31:34
Speaker 1: I was probably about a hundred yards from the river.
31:37
Speaker 1: I was hundred yards north of the river, and I
31:39
Speaker 1: heard a lot of deer splashing through the river. And
31:42
Speaker 1: I had seen, you know, these other deer pop out
31:45
Speaker 1: into the field that I never knew where they came from,
31:47
Speaker 1: but I knew that they must have come out somewhere
31:48
Speaker 1: around there. So I sat there thinking, well, I could
31:51
Speaker 1: hunt the easy stand that's already there, or I could
31:53
Speaker 1: bring in another stand and set up a new stand,
31:56
Speaker 1: like sixty yards or fifty yards south of where hunt
32:00
Speaker 1: that first night. So I ended up deciding to do
32:02
Speaker 1: that because you know, you know, with a short amount
32:05
Speaker 1: of time, you just gotta be a little more aggressive
32:08
Speaker 1: and make things happen. Um And I thought, given the
32:11
Speaker 1: wind direction I had, which was west northwest. Um, given
32:15
Speaker 1: the wind direction and given what I'd seen on night
32:17
Speaker 1: number one, number two, my hypothesis was that there were
32:20
Speaker 1: deer filtering all throughout this little section, but the bigger
32:24
Speaker 1: bucks were probably bedded in what looked like the very
32:26
Speaker 1: best cover, which was right along the edge of that river.
32:29
Speaker 1: So if that was the case, that means they are
32:31
Speaker 1: probably the deer that were where they were traveling these
32:33
Speaker 1: trails parallel to the river. That was my hypothesis, And
32:36
Speaker 1: with the wind direction I had, it was gonna blow
32:38
Speaker 1: me blow my wind out to the west and a
32:41
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, down to the south, and that
32:44
Speaker 1: would allow any deer that came out that way, it
32:46
Speaker 1: would allow that wind to be hopefully just cutting south
32:48
Speaker 1: of them. That was my hope and my thoughts. So
32:51
Speaker 1: I grabbed another stand sticks and the rain just finally
32:55
Speaker 1: stopped around noon, so it's nice and wet, so I
32:57
Speaker 1: could go in there quietly. But because of this west
33:00
Speaker 1: northwest wind, I had to be careful about how I
33:02
Speaker 1: accessed it, because I didn't want my wind to blow
33:06
Speaker 1: down into the cover to the south, and because I'm
33:08
Speaker 1: accessing from the north, and so that wind wanted to
33:10
Speaker 1: be pushed down into the cover where they're beded. So
33:13
Speaker 1: I've got my trees to I've got my sticks, so
33:14
Speaker 1: I got my camera gear, I've got a pulse, I've
33:16
Speaker 1: got all sorts of crap, my bow, my all that crap,
33:19
Speaker 1: and I'm loaded down. So I have to walk way
33:23
Speaker 1: out around. I walk up to the road basically, and
33:25
Speaker 1: I walked the edge of the road way way way
33:27
Speaker 1: far north, away from the property and the cover to
33:30
Speaker 1: make sure I don't blow my wind into their circle
33:33
Speaker 1: around get into the bottomed river bottom area, and I
33:36
Speaker 1: just took my sweet time, and I was just really
33:38
Speaker 1: careful and really quiet, and it was like one thirty
33:40
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, so I thought I wasn't there early enough,
33:42
Speaker 1: and got down to the edge of the close to
33:45
Speaker 1: the edge of the river. And when I got to
33:47
Speaker 1: this area I wanted to be, I was torn between
33:50
Speaker 1: two different trees. Um kind of just there weren't great trees.
33:53
Speaker 1: All the trees are um interestingly, have just got clusters
33:58
Speaker 1: of like I don't know if they're willows or some
33:59
Speaker 1: kind a shrubby brushy thing. It's just thick as heck
34:03
Speaker 1: coming out from all the bases of these trees. So
34:07
Speaker 1: every tree I wanted to get into required like an
34:10
Speaker 1: enormous amount of trimming to even get a set of
34:13
Speaker 1: sticks on the tree. It was like just so thick um,
34:16
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was dead brush, like dead limbs,
34:19
Speaker 1: so it made a lot of noise when you're trying
34:21
Speaker 1: to like push your way into there. So I just
34:25
Speaker 1: had to painstakingly try to trim out a little section
34:29
Speaker 1: of this brush so that I could get my sticks
34:31
Speaker 1: up on that tree. Um. But the one thing I
34:33
Speaker 1: did have going for me was, like I said, it
34:35
Speaker 1: had rained, so the grass was quiet, and then it
34:37
Speaker 1: was still kind of windy. It was pretty windy actually,
34:40
Speaker 1: so I had some stuff disguising my sound. So long
34:42
Speaker 1: story short, I tried to be as quiet as I
34:44
Speaker 1: could and got the sticks up, got up in the stand,
34:47
Speaker 1: and i'll tell you what DAN Like, as soon as
34:50
Speaker 1: I got in that tree and like looked to see, okay,
34:53
Speaker 1: exactly at what I could see from this tree stand,
34:56
Speaker 1: I like I literally got shakes, like I was shaking,
34:58
Speaker 1: and I got nervous in my stomach, like it was
35:00
Speaker 1: the spot. And I just had this very very very
35:03
Speaker 1: physical feeling that this was the spot. I've had that
35:07
Speaker 1: happened twice before the night before I killed job shot
35:11
Speaker 1: job breaker and eventually killed me, you know the story. Um.
35:13
Speaker 1: And then the night that I went in last year
35:17
Speaker 1: on October one and killed my buck in Michigan. Those
35:19
Speaker 1: two times I felt like dead on, this is the
35:22
Speaker 1: killing tree, this is the killing night, and it actually
35:24
Speaker 1: panned out. And now this third time, UM, and so
35:27
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, this is the spot because here's
35:29
Speaker 1: what this spot was. Damn. I was in this cluster
35:32
Speaker 1: of trees, a small tree, but a cluster of trees
35:35
Speaker 1: around me with lots of cover. And then like I said,
35:37
Speaker 1: there was this like shrubby, nasty growth all underneath me.
35:40
Speaker 1: And what I did, I didn't put my tree stand
35:42
Speaker 1: too high. I just situated enough that like my lower
35:45
Speaker 1: body was still covered by those shrubs, just my upper
35:49
Speaker 1: half was above it. So you couldn't see me basically
35:51
Speaker 1: at all if I was sitting down. Just if I
35:53
Speaker 1: stood up, I could shoot over it to most anything
35:55
Speaker 1: around me, so i'd awesome cover. And then to the
35:59
Speaker 1: north of me, I could see this grassy field, this
36:02
Speaker 1: kind of tall grassy field that I had been able
36:04
Speaker 1: to watch the first night. But I could see more
36:07
Speaker 1: of it now, And I had a number of trails
36:09
Speaker 1: converging within about fifteen yards of me, all converging down
36:12
Speaker 1: to a low spot in the fence between the private
36:14
Speaker 1: and the public, so there's deer funneling that way to
36:16
Speaker 1: cross there. And then to the south of me, I
36:19
Speaker 1: had the river about forty yards away. Forty five yards
36:22
Speaker 1: away the river was, and then I had several trails
36:24
Speaker 1: running parallel between me and the river. So any deer
36:27
Speaker 1: that wanted to travel through this area, basically we're pinched
36:31
Speaker 1: down around me on either side, and my wind was
36:34
Speaker 1: blowing parallel to those trails, so they would either be
36:37
Speaker 1: north of me or south of me, but hopefully would
36:39
Speaker 1: be you know not, it wouldn't be any kind of
36:41
Speaker 1: like direct wind type situation. So I felt really good
36:44
Speaker 1: about it. And now to answer your question you asked,
36:47
Speaker 1: like ten minutes ago, as I'm hanging my camera up
36:50
Speaker 1: like my camera arm, I catch a glimpse of movement,
36:54
Speaker 1: like almost right underneath me. And here's it, like a
36:57
Speaker 1: two year old eight pointer yards away while I'm still
37:00
Speaker 1: getting set up, and so I'm like, crap, he must
37:03
Speaker 1: have seen me. So I'm just frozen. But he's just
37:05
Speaker 1: kind of looking around and then he he beds, he
37:08
Speaker 1: beds down yards away from me, and I'm like, crap,
37:11
Speaker 1: now I can't move some stuck there hoping. Yeah, it was.
37:16
Speaker 1: It was awful because I still don't have my stuff right.
37:18
Speaker 1: I think my bow is in the tree, but my
37:20
Speaker 1: camera gear is not set up. I've got my extra
37:22
Speaker 1: warm layer still hanging on limbs because I hadn't put
37:24
Speaker 1: those on yet. Um. But finally another buck comes through.
37:28
Speaker 1: The first buck stands up, they'll slowly walk off, they
37:31
Speaker 1: walk down, cross into the field, and they do get
37:34
Speaker 1: into my wind So I'm like, okay, this is the
37:36
Speaker 1: moment of truth. Are they going to win me? Or
37:39
Speaker 1: will my scent control program work again? And you know, luckily,
37:45
Speaker 1: the whole you know, the whole system that I that
37:47
Speaker 1: I apply, which you know about you know, I spread
37:49
Speaker 1: down a sent away, I put nose jam around my
37:51
Speaker 1: boots in my tree, and I use those ox machine.
37:54
Speaker 1: Um that all worked because they got to my windstream.
37:57
Speaker 1: They stood there for a second, sniffed around, and then
37:59
Speaker 1: just kept on going. So that was a huge sigh
38:01
Speaker 1: of relief. And um, I finally was able to get
38:04
Speaker 1: my camera gear set up. Got my bow in the hangar,
38:06
Speaker 1: and I got kind of situated and said, Okay, now
38:09
Speaker 1: now things are going to happen. So so that's where
38:11
Speaker 1: I'll leave things off. Was there any terrain features, I know,
38:15
Speaker 1: you're you were talking about a river bottom. Uh, it's
38:19
Speaker 1: fairly flat and river bottoms. But was there any like
38:23
Speaker 1: little drainages in that area that you were hunting, or
38:27
Speaker 1: any terrain features that you know, kind of you know,
38:31
Speaker 1: brought the deer to your location that may have funneled
38:35
Speaker 1: um or or made it as a pinch point of
38:37
Speaker 1: some sort. So to your point, there was not a
38:41
Speaker 1: whole lot of major terrain variation at all down in
38:45
Speaker 1: the area was hunting. I guess it was. It was
38:47
Speaker 1: high on either side, so it was kind of like
38:49
Speaker 1: a big bowl. Um, You've got hills on either side.
38:53
Speaker 1: And then down in the bottom is this this river
38:56
Speaker 1: And then you know, like I said, like a four
38:59
Speaker 1: yard wide swath of this flat land down on this
39:03
Speaker 1: bottom where the river runs through, and then all this
39:04
Speaker 1: cover was and then on the east side was the food.
39:07
Speaker 1: So where I was actually hunting was pretty flat. Um,
39:10
Speaker 1: So the only really funneling features was the cover itself. Um.
39:16
Speaker 1: And so within that cover, like I said, there was
39:18
Speaker 1: patchy mixes of tall grass, cottonwood trees and then this brushy, willowy, bushy,
39:24
Speaker 1: shrubby crap um. So what seemed to happen is that
39:27
Speaker 1: they were they were bedded in that very thickest stuff,
39:30
Speaker 1: but they would travel into the openings. But typically we're
39:33
Speaker 1: kind of along some of those edges. But what I
39:36
Speaker 1: really saw was actually from the maps and then confirmed
39:39
Speaker 1: when I was on the ground. But even on the maps, um,
39:42
Speaker 1: you know, I got a hunt terror map from from
39:45
Speaker 1: Ben and those guys made up for this piece of
39:47
Speaker 1: publics and say is my number one option from that map,
39:49
Speaker 1: and then from looking at some different online options too.
39:52
Speaker 1: Even before I had that map, you could actually see
39:55
Speaker 1: trails from the aerial view where these deer were using
39:59
Speaker 1: a lot. So I knew a couple of these areas,
40:00
Speaker 1: and I so based on I knew that there seemed
40:02
Speaker 1: to be a lot of trails paralleling the river. And
40:04
Speaker 1: then there was a couple more just north of that
40:06
Speaker 1: um And now I was situated right between those two spots, um,
40:11
Speaker 1: and it seems like those were the main main features
40:13
Speaker 1: and why exactly they you know, use a couple of
40:16
Speaker 1: those trails in the middle of the grassy area. I'm
40:18
Speaker 1: not quite sure, um, but that's kind of what I
40:21
Speaker 1: was seeing, all right, So two bucks right away before
40:27
Speaker 1: your gear ever, you know, you finished shutting up. Did
40:33
Speaker 1: you get it? I mean, as those two bucks worked
40:35
Speaker 1: their way away from you out into that field, did
40:38
Speaker 1: more dear automatically start coming out or did you have
40:42
Speaker 1: time to get situated? So I have time to get situated,
40:47
Speaker 1: but not very much. Um. I had just gotten things situated,
40:51
Speaker 1: and then the kind the kind of parade started. Little
40:54
Speaker 1: bucks does a little buck, A couple more does um?
40:59
Speaker 1: But I'm situated. I'm watching, you know, I'm just a
41:03
Speaker 1: few of them go south of me enough that they
41:05
Speaker 1: get back into my wind again. I get nervous, but
41:07
Speaker 1: I passed the test again, so I'm like, okay, like,
41:10
Speaker 1: so far, so good, this this plan is working out.
41:13
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there. I can't remember, Ersecca, what I
41:16
Speaker 1: was doing. I think I was watching this doe faun
41:18
Speaker 1: that had gone out into the field, and I happened
41:21
Speaker 1: to just catch a little glimpse of something underneath me,
41:24
Speaker 1: like a little flash movement, and I looked down there
41:27
Speaker 1: and there's a big buck literally right underneath me. But
41:32
Speaker 1: like I told you, there's this brush and so like
41:36
Speaker 1: you can see him, but there's no way I could
41:38
Speaker 1: shoot him. And you know, all his deer had been
41:41
Speaker 1: going from west to east heading out to feed. He
41:44
Speaker 1: was going from east to west back into the cover,
41:47
Speaker 1: and I'm like, crap, So he'd already walked past me.
41:51
Speaker 1: I never heard him. I never saw him. And then
41:53
Speaker 1: something happened. They didn't like maybe he caught me moving,
41:56
Speaker 1: maybe he winded me, and now he's jogging back into
41:59
Speaker 1: the cover. And it happened in a flash, you know,
42:01
Speaker 1: I saw him. I spun around to try to grab
42:04
Speaker 1: my bow and he was running away by then and
42:06
Speaker 1: he disappeared. And so I just I was I was
42:10
Speaker 1: pretty piste because like I had made the move, it
42:13
Speaker 1: had worked out. I had put myself in this position.
42:15
Speaker 1: On day three, I had a shooter at five yards
42:18
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know it and I blew it,
42:22
Speaker 1: and that was like, I was like, you know, what
42:28
Speaker 1: was this? I so that night before night number two,
42:32
Speaker 1: one of the big deer I had seen out there
42:34
Speaker 1: in the field was a really tall dark horned eight pointer,
42:37
Speaker 1: tight and tall, dark horned eight point with a really
42:39
Speaker 1: big body, and he was like the best buck I
42:42
Speaker 1: had seen that night, so he was the one I wanted. Well,
42:45
Speaker 1: what I remember when I looked down at this buck
42:47
Speaker 1: grind uneath me is that he had tall brow times
42:50
Speaker 1: in a tight, tall frame. So I was like, it's
42:52
Speaker 1: that buck. So I thought this was that nice tall
42:56
Speaker 1: eight point maybe like one thirty, big bodied, you know,
43:00
Speaker 1: it could have been a four year old or five
43:01
Speaker 1: year old, just a cool looking buck. Um, that's what
43:05
Speaker 1: I thought he was. So I was pretty bummed out
43:07
Speaker 1: that potentially that the top buck that I've seen so
43:10
Speaker 1: far had been right there, and uh, I did not
43:13
Speaker 1: do what I was supposed to do with it. All right,
43:16
Speaker 1: So that you said that was roughly so you had
43:19
Speaker 1: what three hours of hunting light left? Yeah? Yeah, and
43:23
Speaker 1: um and and I'll just continue actually because you know,
43:29
Speaker 1: I'm piste off about that. And then like a minute later,
43:31
Speaker 1: maybe two minutes later, as I'm sitting there like, oh
43:33
Speaker 1: my gosh, how did I miss that? Like how could
43:35
Speaker 1: I not hear him? And well, the reason I couldn't
43:37
Speaker 1: hear him because it was just so windy, like you
43:38
Speaker 1: just couldn't hear any deer movement. So I decided, okay,
43:41
Speaker 1: I just cannot I can't stay still, like I need
43:44
Speaker 1: my head swiveling at all times because there's so many
43:47
Speaker 1: deer moving through here. I need to make sure I
43:49
Speaker 1: spot one of these bucks come through, especially on that
43:52
Speaker 1: one section where that where that buck had been, I
43:55
Speaker 1: had a very very small window that maybe I'm not sure,
43:57
Speaker 1: but he might have walked through the small window. Um,
44:00
Speaker 1: So I needed to make sure that if another buck
44:02
Speaker 1: came through, I spotted him before he got into the
44:04
Speaker 1: cover right underneath me. So I'm just head on the swivel,
44:07
Speaker 1: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and
44:09
Speaker 1: like two minutes later, bam, here comes a little buck,
44:12
Speaker 1: a doll, a doll, big buck, big bodied, heavy horned
44:17
Speaker 1: eight porn, not like a huge frame, but just like
44:19
Speaker 1: a nice, heavy, big bodied eight pointer. All right, there
44:23
Speaker 1: we go. So I grabbed my bow, turn on my camera,
44:26
Speaker 1: start filming him, and he's at like sixty yards and
44:30
Speaker 1: then he comes in fifty three and I'm like, okay,
44:34
Speaker 1: he's gonna keep angling in towards me. But then he
44:36
Speaker 1: stopped at fifty two and he just stood there, kind
44:39
Speaker 1: of looked around, and the other deer were filtering out
44:42
Speaker 1: and and then they all started crossing the fence right
44:44
Speaker 1: there fifty two yards, so they weren't coming to the
44:46
Speaker 1: closer trails. So I wait, hoping maybe he'll come my way.
44:51
Speaker 1: He turns, starts going towards the fence. I do one
44:54
Speaker 1: light contact runt. He doesn't hear it. I try again
44:57
Speaker 1: a little louder. He hears it. He looks up, takes
45:00
Speaker 1: like two steps in my direction, keeps looking around, and
45:04
Speaker 1: then he turns halfs the fence and keeps going. And
45:09
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna do any kind of crazy aggressive calling
45:12
Speaker 1: because it's so early. I just thought maybe I could
45:14
Speaker 1: get him to check it out based on curiosity if
45:16
Speaker 1: I did a couple of like contact grunts, But that
45:18
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna work. I didn't want to spook all the deer,
45:21
Speaker 1: so I watched him feed out into the field away
45:23
Speaker 1: from me, and off he goes, and a few more
45:28
Speaker 1: dear filtered through the same story. And for the next
45:31
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, I'm like on edge, like I said,
45:35
Speaker 1: constantly looking. Didn't want to miss a deer. But at
45:38
Speaker 1: about that, like I don't know, it's like four o'clock
45:40
Speaker 1: or four tens somewhere around there, I don't know give
45:43
Speaker 1: or takes somewhere on this general region. I need to
45:45
Speaker 1: like commiserate. So I texted a couple of my buddies
45:48
Speaker 1: in Michigan and it was like I just blew it,
45:52
Speaker 1: Like I just gave him the updately. I just totally
45:53
Speaker 1: screwed up. And as I'm texting that, the first time,
45:58
Speaker 1: I take my at tension off of the area around
46:00
Speaker 1: on me. As I'm texting, I happen to catch a
46:02
Speaker 1: glimpse of movement off the left of my eye again
46:05
Speaker 1: and bam, here's a nice eight pointer again something like crap,
46:09
Speaker 1: Spin around, look at him, looks like a shooter, Grab
46:13
Speaker 1: my bow, turn on the camera, zoom in grammar range finder.
46:17
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, uh, maybe not. I don't think
46:21
Speaker 1: he's I don't think he's mature. He might have been
46:23
Speaker 1: a three year old, maybe a two year old, kind
46:25
Speaker 1: of iffy and in between. And I was like, you
46:27
Speaker 1: know what, if I don't immediately want to shoot him,
46:30
Speaker 1: then I'm not going to pass him. Like if he's
46:31
Speaker 1: not a for sure shooter, I'm not gonna shoot. So
46:35
Speaker 1: I just sat there watching him and filling them a
46:38
Speaker 1: little bit. And then he keeps looking over his shoulder,
46:42
Speaker 1: and I keep looking back there trying to see was
46:44
Speaker 1: looking at and he's now he's he's doing two things.
46:47
Speaker 1: He's looking over his shoulder and then he's sniffing the
46:49
Speaker 1: ground around him, and that's because he's standing right in
46:51
Speaker 1: the trail. I walked to my tree stand. But luckily,
46:54
Speaker 1: you know what we've said a thousand times, that knows
46:57
Speaker 1: JamMan really seems to do the trick because he kept
46:59
Speaker 1: sniffing around, sniffing around. He smelled it, but didn't know
47:02
Speaker 1: what the heck it was. Never smelled me, and he
47:04
Speaker 1: just continued on his way. So he looks over shoulder again.
47:08
Speaker 1: I look again, and then I see the dark, big bodied, tight, tall,
47:14
Speaker 1: chocolate horned a barner and I say, that's the one.
47:19
Speaker 1: At that point I see him, I'm like, that's the
47:23
Speaker 1: big eight from last night. Maybe it's the same one
47:26
Speaker 1: I saw earlier that you know, ran past me underneath
47:28
Speaker 1: my stand. Turn the camera back on, spin, grabbed the
47:31
Speaker 1: bow spin background so I can get to the other
47:33
Speaker 1: side of the tree, and now I'm in shoot mode
47:36
Speaker 1: and I'm just waiting for the smaller eight porn to
47:38
Speaker 1: move off so that the big one will follow him,
47:40
Speaker 1: and long story short, I'll cut right to the chase
47:43
Speaker 1: here and keep this simple. The smaller a porn moved off,
47:47
Speaker 1: the big eight pointer walked past, came just out from
47:49
Speaker 1: behind this tree. I drew back. He walked through it
47:54
Speaker 1: like yards, and I just waited till he naturally stopped.
47:58
Speaker 1: He was slightly courting away. I settled the pen released
48:02
Speaker 1: Aaron went right through his heart and he took off running,
48:05
Speaker 1: and then I had a mini melt down on the tree.
48:11
Speaker 1: Oh my god, so many emotions just went through my
48:15
Speaker 1: like through my head, like I'm I just I'm jacked
48:19
Speaker 1: for you. I'm I'm pumped for you, but now I'm
48:21
Speaker 1: jack for the rest of the hunters and myself, you know,
48:25
Speaker 1: because you know, the majority of the Midwest has to
48:27
Speaker 1: wait until you know, later in September or October. But uh,
48:32
Speaker 1: I'm dude, that's awesome, Thank you man. It was crazy.
48:36
Speaker 1: It was like in that you watch him drop. Well
48:40
Speaker 1: that was the funny thing is that no, I didn't
48:42
Speaker 1: see him drop because so I shoot, he goes running off,
48:46
Speaker 1: and like I mentioned, there's this tree in between me
48:49
Speaker 1: and this larger grassy area, and they all the dear
48:52
Speaker 1: him that smaller buck, and a couple of days that
48:54
Speaker 1: ended up walking up that I never knew were there.
48:56
Speaker 1: They all go running behind this tree. So I I
49:00
Speaker 1: follow them up to the tree, and then they disappeared
49:03
Speaker 1: behind the tree, and then I see a deer run
49:04
Speaker 1: out the other side of it, and so I just
49:06
Speaker 1: locked onto them, and I saw one that seemed to
49:09
Speaker 1: have like a shaky butt, you know, as he was running,
49:11
Speaker 1: he just kind of be like kind of drunkenly swerving.
49:13
Speaker 1: It's like that's him. And then he hits. He gets
49:16
Speaker 1: to this ditch line. Looks like he kind of tumbled
49:18
Speaker 1: into the ditch, like it took a weird jump. But
49:20
Speaker 1: then I saw a deer jump out the other side,
49:22
Speaker 1: and like, crap, like how did he? I thought it
49:25
Speaker 1: was a perfect shot. He should have been down. So
49:28
Speaker 1: I wait, awhile, you know, I post social media or whatever,
49:32
Speaker 1: and then I get down check the arrow. Arrow looks great,
49:35
Speaker 1: Everything looks good, and you know, this is stupid, you
49:38
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this, But I was so excited and so
49:41
Speaker 1: confident about the shot. I was like, you know what,
49:43
Speaker 1: I know he got to that ditch and there's this
49:45
Speaker 1: little opening in the brush along the ditch. I was like,
49:47
Speaker 1: I know he got to there. I think he couldn't
49:49
Speaker 1: have gone very much further than that. So I'm just
49:50
Speaker 1: gonna skip ahead to the ditch. Fine blood at the
49:53
Speaker 1: ditch right where I know he crossed, and then he's
49:56
Speaker 1: got to be just on the other side. So I
49:58
Speaker 1: go walking over there and I start looking at day
50:00
Speaker 1: it and I look past the ditch and I don't
50:01
Speaker 1: see anything. I start looking for blood. I don't see anything,
50:05
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, this is weird. Now we've talked,
50:08
Speaker 1: I've got that's pretty bad, right, I was so day excited. Um,
50:17
Speaker 1: But you know, I I don't see blood as well
50:19
Speaker 1: as some people because I've got a little bit of
50:21
Speaker 1: red green color blindness. So I can see red and
50:23
Speaker 1: green just fine, but sometimes in like certain lighting or
50:26
Speaker 1: when they're contrasted against each other, they don't pop out
50:28
Speaker 1: as much. So like red blood on green grass or brush,
50:33
Speaker 1: it doesn't pop for me like it does for other people.
50:36
Speaker 1: Like I'll be with friends and they see blood from
50:37
Speaker 1: a longer distance than me, and it just it shows
50:40
Speaker 1: up a lot easier for them. For me. I've got
50:42
Speaker 1: to like focus in on the spot and then oh,
50:43
Speaker 1: there it is, so I'm like thinking of my head, gosh,
50:46
Speaker 1: like there should be an easy blood trail, but I'm
50:49
Speaker 1: an idiot, and my genetics have forced me to suck
50:51
Speaker 1: at blood trailing, and I'm not, like, what's going on here?
50:55
Speaker 1: How come I can't find this? Dear? So, after like
50:57
Speaker 1: looking back and forth along this ditch, just trying to
51:00
Speaker 1: find a speck of blood so I can start. After
51:02
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen minutes or something, I find, like,
51:04
Speaker 1: you know, stopping an idiot, go back to the beginning.
51:08
Speaker 1: So I decided to walk back to where the arrow
51:10
Speaker 1: was and start from the beginning. And I'm as I'm
51:12
Speaker 1: walking back, though, I've got my eyes on the ground,
51:15
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of hoping maybe I'll randomly come
51:17
Speaker 1: across some blood. As I walked back, and I'm walking, walking, walking,
51:21
Speaker 1: and then like ten yards in front of me, I
51:22
Speaker 1: see this big brown blob and I look up and
51:28
Speaker 1: there he is. He had died like sixty seventy yards
51:31
Speaker 1: away from the tree stand, just behind that tree right away,
51:35
Speaker 1: and he just dropped and I couldn't see it, and
51:37
Speaker 1: I had no idea who was right there the whole time.
51:40
Speaker 1: That was that and that was that he was right there.
51:45
Speaker 1: But this isn't where the story ends, is it. Uh well,
51:51
Speaker 1: I guess what do you specifically mean? Because not completely,
51:53
Speaker 1: but well, you found the deer, right, and uh you
51:58
Speaker 1: had to drag him back to your truck. But it
52:00
Speaker 1: did you forget something? Oh yeah, So so in my excitement,
52:07
Speaker 1: you know, of of surprisingly coming across the buck there,
52:10
Speaker 1: you know, I immediately you know. And this is in
52:12
Speaker 1: the aftermath I realized what I did. But when I
52:14
Speaker 1: spotted the buck, I set my bow down and then
52:17
Speaker 1: I ran over the buck and I got my camera
52:19
Speaker 1: and I filmed the recovery and was all happy, happy,
52:21
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And at that point and then I realized,
52:24
Speaker 1: holy smokes, I have so much work to do tonight still,
52:27
Speaker 1: because on all my own I've got to I've got
52:30
Speaker 1: to get back to my camp, get my other camera,
52:33
Speaker 1: drop off all this other crap, and then come back
52:36
Speaker 1: and try to take some photos and try to do
52:38
Speaker 1: some stuff like that while it's still daylight. And then
52:40
Speaker 1: of course I got to clean them out and then
52:42
Speaker 1: drag him back all by myself through this like nasty stuff.
52:46
Speaker 1: And um, I was like, man, this is gonna be
52:48
Speaker 1: a lot of work. So I'm like rushing around just
52:50
Speaker 1: trying to do all this stuff. So I get the
52:51
Speaker 1: buck clip, well not get the camera, come back, take photos, video,
52:56
Speaker 1: got him. I bought this little thing called a deer
53:00
Speaker 1: layer or something. It's basically just like a roll up
53:03
Speaker 1: piece of plastic that you can use this kind of
53:06
Speaker 1: like a sled to kind of get him out a
53:08
Speaker 1: little bit easier. And I'm glad I had that. Um
53:10
Speaker 1: it's not perfect, but it definitely made a little easier
53:13
Speaker 1: to drag him out on my own because it was
53:14
Speaker 1: a long drag and like I said, it was flat.
53:17
Speaker 1: It was relatively flat in the bottom ground. But to
53:20
Speaker 1: get out and back to camp, I had to come
53:22
Speaker 1: out of the bowl and then go up this big
53:25
Speaker 1: hill and then just up and down, up and down,
53:27
Speaker 1: up and down hills all the way out to the
53:29
Speaker 1: top where my camp was. So it was a rugged
53:32
Speaker 1: drag out and it was it was exhausting. Um. So
53:36
Speaker 1: I get back to camp finally with the buck it's
53:38
Speaker 1: after dark. It's like, I don't know, I shot that
53:40
Speaker 1: bucket like for something, and I got him back to camp,
53:43
Speaker 1: but like, I don't know, ten thirty eleven thirties somewhere
53:46
Speaker 1: around there, some zonked and I'm like getting stuff around
53:50
Speaker 1: in camp and thinking about what am I gonna make
53:52
Speaker 1: for dinner? And then I think to myself, where's my bow?
53:57
Speaker 1: I look around camp. I set it down the table,
54:00
Speaker 1: I said it on the ground. I cannot find my bow.
54:03
Speaker 1: I lost my freaking bow. So I was kind of
54:08
Speaker 1: panicky that night, and I'm like, oh my gosh, did
54:10
Speaker 1: I like set it down where I parked my truck,
54:13
Speaker 1: Like did I run over my bow somewhere? Did I
54:15
Speaker 1: leave it out in the middle of the woods somewhere.
54:17
Speaker 1: So I thought about just going out right then at
54:19
Speaker 1: night and trying to find it, but it was dark
54:21
Speaker 1: and I was whooped. So I thought, okay, I'll go
54:23
Speaker 1: out first in the morning because I had to go
54:24
Speaker 1: out and pulled down my tree stands anyways. So so
54:27
Speaker 1: that's what I did. I waited till first light the
54:30
Speaker 1: next day, snack back out there, and I the first
54:34
Speaker 1: place I decided to go was back where I saw
54:35
Speaker 1: the deer where I found the buck, because I started thinking, well,
54:38
Speaker 1: maybe I had it and dropped it there, And that's
54:41
Speaker 1: what I did. I'd set it down right next to
54:42
Speaker 1: the buck, or not right next to about fifteen yards
54:44
Speaker 1: away from it, and there was covered in frost, and
54:48
Speaker 1: I got my bow and pulled down my tree stands
54:50
Speaker 1: and hurried back up to the truck and drove back
54:53
Speaker 1: to town and dropped off the deer at the taxidermist.
54:57
Speaker 1: And that was that because because you're not you're not
55:01
Speaker 1: coming back, right, so you do that that bow kind
55:06
Speaker 1: of finding it was probably a big relief because you
55:08
Speaker 1: weren't coming back or you didn't have a backup bow
55:11
Speaker 1: because you're going right to the mountains for elk right now,
55:14
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah, I was like, I really need to
55:16
Speaker 1: find this stupid thing because I don't have a really
55:18
Speaker 1: boring week. I don't have boring week in the mountains
55:21
Speaker 1: if I don't have a bow out there. So so yeah,
55:24
Speaker 1: I I found that and got back in the town
55:26
Speaker 1: and I dropped off the bucket the processor to get
55:29
Speaker 1: the meat taken care of, and took the took the
55:31
Speaker 1: skull to a taxidermist here to get a euro mountain
55:34
Speaker 1: done because he can't bring back a full skull with
55:37
Speaker 1: brain matter and all that kind of good stuff into
55:39
Speaker 1: it into Michigan. Um so, so I had had that
55:43
Speaker 1: taken care about here, and then I'm now I'm here
55:47
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, and I'm all I'm all ready to rock now.
55:52
Speaker 1: Funny story, I had so much fun out there that
55:56
Speaker 1: originally my plan was to hang out here in town,
55:59
Speaker 1: um until you go, I'll hunting and just like fly
56:01
Speaker 1: fish for a couple of days and do some work.
56:02
Speaker 1: But I got to thinking today, you know, it just
56:04
Speaker 1: be fun to go back to my spot and just
56:06
Speaker 1: hang a stand and watch these deer and film these deer.
56:09
Speaker 1: So I actually think after we get off the air
56:11
Speaker 1: here tonight, I'm going to drive back to my original
56:13
Speaker 1: spot and just sit out there for a couple of
56:15
Speaker 1: days and watch and take some pictures and video and
56:18
Speaker 1: just kind of enjoy deer as a spectator. Yeah, I
56:23
Speaker 1: think that's an awesome thing to do, because, you know,
56:27
Speaker 1: if you ever want to come back to Montana uh
56:30
Speaker 1: and do some you know, do some hunting in that air,
56:33
Speaker 1: in that particular area, you're gonna know, you're gonna have
56:38
Speaker 1: a great idea. You're gonna be able to even even
56:40
Speaker 1: just a night or two as a spectator. You're gonna learn,
56:43
Speaker 1: you know, so much more about that property. Yeah. Yeah,
56:46
Speaker 1: just keep keep learning and maybe I can take a
56:49
Speaker 1: thing or two away from that and apply it to
56:51
Speaker 1: a future year, because this is definitely the kind of
56:53
Speaker 1: spot I would be interested in coming again. I mean,
56:54
Speaker 1: it was just it was a lot of fun. I
56:56
Speaker 1: saw alid of deer, there were nice bucks and beautiful
57:00
Speaker 1: of hill area, and um, you know, not a lot
57:02
Speaker 1: of other people. There are those two guys that one night,
57:04
Speaker 1: but that was it. Um So, man, it was just
57:07
Speaker 1: a super cool experience. And you know, coming into it,
57:11
Speaker 1: I knew it was gonna be it was gonna be
57:12
Speaker 1: a big challenge. I to be honest with like a
57:15
Speaker 1: little intimidated. I was like, Wow, this is like a
57:17
Speaker 1: lot of new stuff, like new state, new time of year.
57:20
Speaker 1: I've never hunted this time of year. I've I've never
57:21
Speaker 1: done a big state trip that was dependent on public land.
57:25
Speaker 1: Um So, a lot of new things and that you know,
57:29
Speaker 1: I did not know if for sure I'd be able
57:30
Speaker 1: to pull it off. Um So, having actually been able
57:35
Speaker 1: to do it, you know, in three days and make
57:37
Speaker 1: the right adjustments and moves and stuff, was it was
57:40
Speaker 1: really um I don't know, it was just it was
57:43
Speaker 1: really fulfilling and fun. And I'm very proud of having
57:50
Speaker 1: been able to do that and have this trip and
57:52
Speaker 1: it was just a cool experience too. Now my question
57:56
Speaker 1: is you know you've haunted other states, right, Um, but
58:00
Speaker 1: the trip is just I mean from Michigan where you live,
58:03
Speaker 1: to Iowa, what's that six hours? Uh? Yeah, to the
58:07
Speaker 1: edge of Iowa's bout six hours? So now from where
58:11
Speaker 1: you live to where where you hunt? Was that what
58:15
Speaker 1: was that a twenty hour drive? Hour drive? So what
58:22
Speaker 1: is there? Is there a difference going even further than that?
58:27
Speaker 1: I mean, what did you have any expectations going into this?
58:31
Speaker 1: Going into this hunt? Uh? I mean were you okay
58:36
Speaker 1: with failing? I mean, as the hunt would have gotten
58:40
Speaker 1: closer to an end where you're going to go for
58:41
Speaker 1: a lower caliber buck where you gonna shoot a dough
58:44
Speaker 1: what was your what was your goal? Yeah? So like
58:47
Speaker 1: I you know, like I just said, going into it,
58:49
Speaker 1: I knew it was gonna be a big challenge. So
58:51
Speaker 1: because of that, I was I was pretty focused on
58:54
Speaker 1: like just trying to have a great experience and like
58:56
Speaker 1: look at it as like an adventure and a learning opportunity. Um. So,
59:02
Speaker 1: so I had relatively low expectations. Um, but I also
59:06
Speaker 1: thought I was definitely I definitely thought I'd put myself
59:09
Speaker 1: in a position that I could succeed. I just wasn't
59:11
Speaker 1: gonna be bummed if I didn't. UM. So I went
59:14
Speaker 1: into it saying I wanted to shoot a mature representative buck.
59:19
Speaker 1: So you know, like I talked to earlier, a nice
59:21
Speaker 1: buck that was at least three to four years old. UM.
59:24
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to hold out for something crazy, big,
59:26
Speaker 1: crazy old. UM. I just want to get a nice buck.
59:29
Speaker 1: If I could pull that off. With all these things,
59:30
Speaker 1: I was gonna really happy. Um. And then I just
59:33
Speaker 1: wanted to like enjoy the whole trip. You know, it
59:35
Speaker 1: wasn't just about killing a buck. It was also about
59:38
Speaker 1: being in Montana and camping for a week and being
59:41
Speaker 1: in a new beautiful place and you know, just like
59:44
Speaker 1: kind of some like so low time, you know, being
59:47
Speaker 1: on a trip on by myself, lots of time to
59:49
Speaker 1: just kind of think and figure it out on my own. UM.
59:52
Speaker 1: So that was kind of my goal is to just
59:54
Speaker 1: enjoy it, learn it, learn the area, to try something new,
59:57
Speaker 1: and just see if I could like put myself into
59:59
Speaker 1: this new st situation and figure it out. Um. That
1:00:02
Speaker 1: was what the goal was. That's what my thoughts were. UM.
1:00:05
Speaker 1: As far as like you know, the type of deer
1:00:09
Speaker 1: or deer herd. I'd say it kind of lived up
1:00:11
Speaker 1: to expectations in that way. Like my thought was that
1:00:14
Speaker 1: you know, in Montana or some of these western states,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: there's lots of deer, there's lots of nice bucks, um,
1:00:20
Speaker 1: and you know, early season you can get on them
1:00:23
Speaker 1: with their you know, bed feed pattern, and that's kind
1:00:25
Speaker 1: of what happened. Um, that's why I saw, that's what happened.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of fun from that standpoint,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: just because it was a there's a lot of action.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: You're you're always seeing deer and that's a lot of fun,
1:00:35
Speaker 1: especially at the beginning of the year, when you're just
1:00:37
Speaker 1: stoked to be out there, to be able to be
1:00:39
Speaker 1: out there and to see a lot of deer and
1:00:40
Speaker 1: a lot of bucks that like get you excited. That
1:00:43
Speaker 1: was that was awesome. Well yeah, that whole Western hunt,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: you know, has all has always sparked my interest, but
1:00:52
Speaker 1: now going west for white tails, it just seems to
1:00:55
Speaker 1: me like it's another reason just to go out less.
1:00:57
Speaker 1: So it's you got you sparked my interest us with this.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, it's uh, I think the only the
1:01:03
Speaker 1: only issue with me going on all these. You know,
1:01:05
Speaker 1: I've try to go to new places as often as
1:01:07
Speaker 1: they can. The only issue with that is that I
1:01:10
Speaker 1: find the spots and I like them so much. I'm like, oh,
1:01:12
Speaker 1: I'm going back there every year. So I don't know
1:01:14
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do because now I'm like, well, I
1:01:16
Speaker 1: want to elk hunt somewhere every year, and now I
1:01:18
Speaker 1: want to go whitetail hunt in the Western State every year,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: and all I want to do this Midwestern state and
1:01:23
Speaker 1: that miss what Midwestern state? And oh, I really want
1:01:25
Speaker 1: to go Alaska someday, and man, I can't do it all.
1:01:28
Speaker 1: But man, there's there's a lot of cool opportunities out
1:01:31
Speaker 1: there for hunters if you're willing to try new things
1:01:35
Speaker 1: and um, you know, put some time and work into it.
1:01:38
Speaker 1: That's That's something I've definitely learned that you you do
1:01:41
Speaker 1: not need a lot of money and an outfitter or
1:01:44
Speaker 1: lease or something like that to go have a quality
1:01:47
Speaker 1: out of state hunting trip. I mean, over the last
1:01:50
Speaker 1: like ten years or whatever it's been, I've gone to
1:01:52
Speaker 1: so many different states all over the country. Now, I've
1:01:55
Speaker 1: gone east, I've gone Midwest, I've gone far west, and
1:02:00
Speaker 1: I've done it all on my own, and I'm you know,
1:02:03
Speaker 1: between the age of like twenty two and now twenty nine,
1:02:06
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of money. It's not like
1:02:08
Speaker 1: I've got some big paying job. I've been able to
1:02:09
Speaker 1: pull it off by sleeping in my truck or sleeping
1:02:12
Speaker 1: afforded our hotel room and just figuring things out. And
1:02:16
Speaker 1: you know, some schuckle with me has been able to
1:02:19
Speaker 1: go to these places and not always kill deer and
1:02:21
Speaker 1: not always killed giant deer or whatever, but I've been
1:02:23
Speaker 1: able to go out there and have fun and see
1:02:25
Speaker 1: nice deer and have great white tail experiences. And I
1:02:27
Speaker 1: think that's another big confirming thing for me out of
1:02:30
Speaker 1: this trip is just that anyone can do it, you know,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: if you're willing to put some time and energy and
1:02:36
Speaker 1: maybe sacrifice some of some fancy things at home so
1:02:38
Speaker 1: you can have a little extra money to buy a
1:02:40
Speaker 1: nonresident tag and pay for gas. Um, you can do
1:02:43
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Anyone can do this kind of stuff,
1:02:47
Speaker 1: right right. Well, congrats Mark, thank you sir. I appreciate it,
1:02:53
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you dealing with our technical difficulties here
1:02:56
Speaker 1: today to to try to talk through this. It's been
1:02:59
Speaker 1: a little bit challenge and it's not our our best
1:03:01
Speaker 1: sounding podcast ever, but um, but hey, you're in Iowa
1:03:06
Speaker 1: with a crappy computer issue and I'm in Montana in
1:03:09
Speaker 1: a parking lot and we're making it work right. Well,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I think I think the listeners always have kind of
1:03:16
Speaker 1: low expectations for this podcast anyway, so uh, you know
1:03:22
Speaker 1: they're they're okay with it. And what's perfect is that
1:03:24
Speaker 1: when you said low expectations, you cut out right at
1:03:27
Speaker 1: that moment. So yeah, I think it's a I think
1:03:35
Speaker 1: that's a perfect sign. So we'll wrap this episode up.
1:03:38
Speaker 1: We'll be back here soon with regular higher quality audio
1:03:42
Speaker 1: episodes soon. Um. Before we close it out though really quickly,
1:03:46
Speaker 1: of course, need to thank our partners who helped make
1:03:48
Speaker 1: this podcast possible. So thank you to Sick Gear, Redneck Blinds,
1:03:52
Speaker 1: Hunter a Maps, Yettie Cooler's Osonics, Carbon Express, may Haven
1:03:57
Speaker 1: Optics in the White Tailed Institute of North Erica. Big
1:04:00
Speaker 1: things for those guys. And finally, thank you all for
1:04:03
Speaker 1: listening to this interesting, interesting podcasts and one way or another,
1:04:08
Speaker 1: and for following along with my hunt, you know, on
1:04:12
Speaker 1: the blog and social media and all that kind of stuff.
1:04:14
Speaker 1: I've gotten so many messages and tweets and emails and
1:04:18
Speaker 1: stuff of all of you guys supporting me on this
1:04:20
Speaker 1: trip and rooting me on, so thank you for that,
1:04:23
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, and of course, as always, stay wired
1:04:28
Speaker 1: to hunt