Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 673: How to Develop Solid Home, and Away, Scouting Styles with Clint Campbell

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Ep. 673: How to Develop Solid Home, and Away, Scouting Styles with Clint Campbell · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the white Tail Woods. Present it by First Light, creating
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: First Light, Go farther, stay longer, and now your host
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your guest host,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm speaking to Clint Campbell about
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: scouting white tails at home and on the road. Welcome
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: to the Wire to Hunt podcast, which is brought to
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: you by a First Light. You've heard me say this before,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: and I'll say it again. If you don't have some
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: of the Trace clothing, the Trace pants, or maybe the
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: quarter zip, and you want to go get some work
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: done in the white Tail woods, you might want to
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: check it out. Super breathable, super durable. It is just
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: the right stuff for early seas and hunting and for
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: summer scouting and getting your work done. So check it out.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: You've got it, You've guessed it. Mark's still off, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: he's not really doing anything cool this time. He just
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: sent me a text and he said, listen, Tony, I
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: have to level with you. I just need to go
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: fly fishing. I've only been on the water ninety seven
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: days this summer, and I'm just itching to get out
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and catch a few fish. Man, you kind of gotta
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: feel sorry for the guy, don't you. I mean, that's
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: barely any playtime. So I hope he catches some fish
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: and he finds a good place to show off his
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: catch on social media if he's so inclined. And so,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: while he's off tossing dryflies to brownies and cuts, I'm
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: back here keeping the lights on. But it's not all
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: bad because I get to talk to killer whitetail hunters
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: like Clint Campbell, who happens to be my guest today.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Clint hosts The Truth from the Stand podcast. He plays
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: a mean guitar, he's an expert at wrapping people into
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: tiny little bows through his jiu jitsu skills, and he
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: scouts deer harder than almost anyone you've ever met. That's
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: what we get into today, and he breaks down his
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: strategy for mastering public land white tails out east and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: how he approaches traveling hunts when he draws a tag
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: somewhere far from his native Pennsylvania. Clint is honestly a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: wealth of whitetail knowledge, and I think you're gonna love
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: hearing what he has to say. So Clint, as usual,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: we started talking as soon as we saw each other here,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: and we've gone through We solved most of the world's
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: problems before we even started this podcast. But we should
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: probably get into this and talk a little bit about scouting.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Huh yeah, talk a little scouting, man. I mean, we've
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: already gone to Mars, we went to Saturn, we won
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: a UFC belt, a title, you know, Like, I mean,
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: why not solve deer hunting problems at the same time.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: We definitely should, And you know, I want to have
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: you on for a lot of reasons. I always love
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: talking to you. You've got the truth from the stand podcast.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: You're one of those people who's out there. You're living
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: it like you're always you know, you're always sending me
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: pictures and we're always going back and forth. And we
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: just started talking a little bit off here that you
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: brought up something I want to get into. You know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: you mentioned how important winter scouting is to you, and
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I'm the same way. You know, like, I feel real
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: cheated this year because we had a nasty winner and
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: you guys had a pretty bad winter, and you had
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: some other stuff going on, So you didn't get to
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: take advantage of that window the way that you you
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: usually do to feel good about your season. And so
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: you're kind of scrambling now and you have to summer scout,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: you know at home there in Pennsylvania, like you usually
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: don't have to.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I I'll be honest and I'll be one hundred
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: percent transparent. It's the summer is my least favorite time
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: to spend time in the woods. You know, it's hot,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: it's buggy, I'm getting cobwebs all over my face. I
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: can't see the ground the way I want to see
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: the ground. The rubs now have kind of faded to
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: where it's a lot harder to tell was that last
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: year's rub? Was that two years ago? So the sign
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: obviously just isn't there. And the nice thing about winter
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: scouting is when you have all the foliage off the trees,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: it's like I don't have to walk that extra seventy
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: five yards or whatever the case is to go check
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: out this thing over here. If something catches my eye,
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: like a rub on a tree, it's like I can
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: see the discoloration through the open timber at that point right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: A lot of times I can throw some glass on
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: it and I can tell, okay, is that something I'm
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: walking over there for or my head to you know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: continue in the direction that I was I was going
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: anyway right now, it's a little different where it's you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: it's a lot of map reading and kind of finding
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: those spots and then getting to them, and like you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: if it's thick covered, you maybe only see ten, fifteen,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: twenty yards and so now you're really having to dissect things.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: It slows it down. You don't cover nearly as much ground.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: But you know, with that, you know, you just kind
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: of deal with the cards, the cards that you have.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And we were talking a little bit yesterday. We were
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: texting a little bit before we uh, you know, we
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: knew we were going to be chatting today, and I
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: think I mentioned to you adaptability is sometimes our best ability,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: right with your honey, And I kind of feel like
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: that's where I'm at now, you know, I talked to
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: I did a who did I do that podcast with?
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: It might have been it's actually been a couple of
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: different guys like hes Cisco is one guy, and a
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Mike Perry from Pennsylvania was another guy. And we talked
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: a little bit about the reliance on winters scouting and
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: like we might rely on it a little bit too much, right,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: because it tells you the story of last year, and
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: without being there whenever whatever sign was laid down, you
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: don't really know particularly what week that happened. Right. It's
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: like you might be able to tell just based on
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: how close it is to like a food source or
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: like a betting area, or like a specific terrain feature
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: or something like that, that that might be like rut signed,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: or that might be like early season sign or whatever
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: the case is. But you really don't one hundred percent know.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: And so this year it might be a blessing in
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: disguise where it's like I'm going to get out hanging
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: my cameras here in the next couple of weeks, kind
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: of finish hanging those and doing a little bit of scouting,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: a little bit more exploring on the new piece I've
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: been I've been looking at the buy and large this
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: year is probably going to be a lot of you know,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: boots on the ground come September October and starting to
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: figure things out. And so you know, I'll start to
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: lay the groundwork for that here during the summer, but
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: it will be a lot of doubling back in the
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: uh in the fall to kind of check my premonitions
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: from the from the summer, if you will.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you or your situation, do you do you
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: hunt any private land?
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: I do not. Well, I shouldn't say I don't on
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: an occasion. I mean, my family does own in like
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Centralish western side of PA roughly, you know, we have
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: a couple of hundred acres between a couple of different parcels.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: But I haven't been back there in probably four or
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: five years, probably other than like a wayward turkey hunt
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: one day with my dad like three years ago. That was.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: That was about it. But yeah, for you know, buy
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: and large, it's all all the public either that's around me,
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: a couple hours north of me or out of state.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So you're where I want to go with this
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: is your style is tied so closely to the kind
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: of terrain you're hunting. Yeah, so you you know, you're
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: hunting the mountains of Pennsylvania. You don't have a situation
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: where you're gonna grab the spotter and go sit on
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the edge of a beanfield in you know, late July,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: early August, whatever, so like the importance for you of
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: getting out there winter scouting would be different from some
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: dudes saying like maybe Ohio or somewhere like that. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I think that there's an important lesson there because it's
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: so easy for us to hear like, oh well, I
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: just run trail cameras a scout, or I just do this,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: or Zach Fharrenbau does this, or whoever does this, But
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: it's so tied to your personal situation. Yeah, And so
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: for for you, you know, that winter scouting in that
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: big Wood scenario, it's like such an advantage. And then
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: if you lose that, you're like, Okay, now I'm scrambling
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and I got to get a ton of cameras out
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: and you and you run a ton of cameras.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean I'll have out you know, I
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: probably own I want to say, maybe thirty roughly is
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: probably what I have in my arsenal, you know, probably
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: like nine ish cell cameras and then the rest of
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: all regular SD card cameras put on that North people
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: on the Big Woods piece. It's like I'll pull you know,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: cameras with my buddy Aaron Heppler and my other buddy Tom,
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: you know, we'll all kind of pull our cameras together
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: and like commit exit number of cameras to like that spot.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: And so in that piece alone, we'll probably have between
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: the three of us like thirty plus cameras on there.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: And we've met some other friends. We get some other
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: friends up there, and we all share intel. I mean,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: the place is so big. That's the one thing you
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: know when you're hunting smaller pieces. So like for me
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: locally in PA, I don't share really intel with anybody
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: locally because it's just like there's not a lot like
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: the public pieces just aren't real big, and there's a
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: lot of pressure. And I certainly don't put any pictures
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: online of deer that I'm getting on camera or anything
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: like that. If anyone ever sees me share a picture,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: you can almost guarantee it wasn't from PA, and certainly
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: wasn't from you know, my local area. You know, me
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: and a couple different guys, like we'll all share intel
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: with each other because the place is so big, we're
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: not going to step on each other, you know. And
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: so I have pictures of deer, and you know Tom
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: has pictures of deer. I'll send them my pictures and
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: be like, hey, I saw this deer. He was on
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: camera over here, and then we can start to get
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: an idea of like how they're moving, because otherwise it
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: just takes I say, it always takes about three years
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: to figure a spot out roughly, and then you can
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: start to reasonably consider that you should start to have
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: the type of encounters that you want to have. May
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: not kill that third year, but you should at least
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: be in the game before that. Though. If you don't
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: have any help, you're you're really throwing a dart at
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: a dartboard, you know, in a lot of ways. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: so we try to do the best we can just
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: kind of help help each other out and allows us
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: kind of like lay a game plan. You start to
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: understand how deer is starting to use that terrain. You know,
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: this place has just wildly open timber, and then all
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: of a sudden you get like really kind of almost
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: like microhabitats where all the sign kind of explodes, where
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: where it gets really thick and they've got some food
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: and they've got some cover, but there might be two
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: miles between that and the last place you saw signed
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And so to figure all that out on your own,
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: you know, is a task.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: So run me through a scenario here, because when when
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I think of like big woods Tapa hunting, I mean,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: my big wood sap of hunting is a little bit
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: different because I can't run cameras on a lot of
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: the places that I hunt, like in northern Wisconsin, some
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: of the rules and stuff, and so for me, it's
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: so tied to winter scouting looking for the sign, and
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: then summer scouting just looking for the sign because there's
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: not you know, I don't have the glassing situation, but
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: you rely so heavily on those trail cameras to do
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: some heavy lifting for you in the summer. So let's
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: say you go out and you're like, you don't you
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: don't have this current winter scouting situation where you're like, Okay,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I know I'm going to go drop a camera here, here,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: and here because of what I saw you're going in. Now,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: let's say you're bringing in a half a dozen cameras
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: or whatever. What are you hanging them on? Are you
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: looking at like train traps? What are you doing here?
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's that's a very good question because that's
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: exactly where I'm at, Like, because where I had run
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: cameras in the past. So one thing I will do
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: is I'll roll on like historical data, all the cameras
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: I typically run and leave out for a year, and
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: then I go back and I gather them, you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: and I might check them in the fall, but buying
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: largely stay out for the year, and I start to
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: just get a sense of, like, one, how often am
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I seeing new deer in the fall? And how often
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: am I finding homebodies? And what I've kind of found,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: at least on this big piece, is that I get
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: a lot more homebodies than I do on smaller parcels
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: for whatever, for whatever reason. And so if I have
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: five good bucks, you know, on a camera, say in
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: this big woods piece, chances are three of them will
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: probably be around it in the general area whenever fall
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: rolls around where for locally, for me, if I have
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: five good bucks on camera in the summer in an area,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: I'll be lucky if one sticks around, you know what
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, For whatever reason. It's just something that I've noticed.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: So most of the place that I've kind of focused
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: on the past two years is really challenging spot to hunt.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: There's another area that I kind of I hung a
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: couple of cameras let them run for like the past
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: two years, hadn't hunted at once because it seemed like
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: it was the easiest access. I always had great deer
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: on camera, but in the back of my mind is
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: always like, man, this place is gonna getound because it's
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: the easiest access, seems like the most logical place for
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: someone to jump in if they wanted to do a
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: quick hunt. But in the course of two years, I
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: think I might have had three people on camera, and
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: all of them were during gun season, and so I'm like,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: all right, so archery season, we're kind of in place,
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: so I need to kind of expand on that piece.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: And so what I'm really kind of looking for, especially
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: in this in this particular area, is there's not a
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: lot of undulation and terrain in this particular area because
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: you're already kind of on top of of on top
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: of the mountain, so to speak. And so really what
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: I'm looking for is just very slight variations and change
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: in elevations. So it might only be like a ten
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: foot rise or something like that that's just gonna kind
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: of funnel deer around an area. Because I found one
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: spot like that, and that's where I found a lot
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: of deer traffic. The other part is is find you know,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: this is again using a little bit of intel from
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: the one or two cameras I did have in that
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: area the past two years, is that most of the
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: bucks that I was seeing they actually had like black
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: up to like mid shin, if you will. And there's
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: a handful of like swamp areas that are around there.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: And so whenever I was watching these pictures of these
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: bucks come through, you know, last fall, it's funny because
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I was I wasn't even looking at their head at first.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I was looking at their feet to see if they
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: had mud on their feet, you know. And so one
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: I started seeing like the younger deer that would come through,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't see that as consistently. All the bigger deer
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: that I had come through, almost all of them had
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: dirty legs. And so it's like I started then looking around, going, Okay,
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: where like the swampy kind of areas and not it's
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: so thick that you can't get through, but like, where
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: are the spots where I look kind of open just
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: from you know, looking looking on a map, you know, ea, scouting,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: And then from there. What I started looking for were
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: just kind of like little land bridges between swampy areas
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: to kind of go investigate, you know. And then I
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: started thinking, you know, so that was the first thing.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: What are the land bridges, and so I'll investigate those.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: And then the other part was was just looking at
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: my prevailing wind and knowing that I get a south
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: you know, south southwest west kind of predominant prevailing wind
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: during that time of year, then looking at the opposite
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: side of those swamps and those areas, going like, all right,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: are there any terrain features there are going to kind
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: of funnel them down toward the edge of that swamp
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: or is it flat? They can kind of meander out
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: and I just need to kind of go investigate that stuff.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: But I'll start on that side of the swamp knowing
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: that that's going to be my predominant wind, and I'll
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: be my most likely tree locations that I would want
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: to find to play to be able to play the wind.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: When you're running cameras, can you see those bucks have
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: muddy muddy feed on there too or not?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how that's how I pull That's.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: How you see it's not in Yeah, interesting I think
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: it was. I think it was Steve Bartello that wrote
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: an article one time years ago, I might even edit
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: it when I was at Peterson's bow hunting, But he
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: said big bucks have wet feet, and I've thought about
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: that because it's so freaking true. I want to back
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: up a second, because you said something about, you know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: running cameras on bigger properties and homebodies versus running cameras
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: on smaller properties and not necessarily any is easy to
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: find a homebody there. Don't you think that's just tied
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: to the amount of a deer's like home range that
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: you have to work with.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I think it's that, And I think and this is
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: just look, I don't claim to be smart enough to
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: know this for a fact. It's just these are just
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: kind of my hypothesis or my hypotheses. But if I
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: were to venture a guest, I think it's one, Yes,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: they have so much more room and they have so
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: much more kind of like available to them that why
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: would you completely change home ranges. There's likely multiple dough
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: families within that area already that they are that they're
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: using for food and cover, just kind of in general, right,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: And then I think the the second part of it
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: is is that food is so sparse there that I
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: think that they just kind of move around like with
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: as the food changes and as opposed to like going
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: like three properties over or whatever, they're just staying in
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: that general area because there's a patch of oaks here
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and then in the summer there's a bunch of wild
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: blueberries and raspberries, because I see that a lot, especially
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: in around those swampy areas where it's like those beds,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: just like there're those deer just bed in there and
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: live in that area until the bears run through, run
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: them mouth and then they'll come back essentially, and then
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: I think the other part is too, is that they
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: make such even when they are doing a little bit
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: of traveling, they make such long cycles that if you're
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: if you're impatient, you'll think they have left. But if
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: you really think about it and you see them kind
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: of come back, it's like instead of it being like
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: a three day window where you catch them, it might
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: be a five, seven eight day window, you know. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: so that's the other thing, like when you're on big pieces,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: I just had to kind of learn painfully over time,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: is that just because they had n't been around for
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: eight days, maybe even ten days, depending, you know, I
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: just might be in the wrong little you know, five
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: hundred acre chunk. They might be playing this one hundred
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: acre piece over here just to my east or whatever.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: They've not left the area, They're just not in this
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: little not in this particular chunk, yep, you know. And
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: so and that's what I've seen. And when I say homebody,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: it's not that I've caught that deer on camera the
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: same camera consistently. I might have during the summer and
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: then maybe a couple times during the fall, but I
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: had a camera that was a quarter of a mile away,
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of like a cast the net. And
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: it's like I caught him on two other ones over here,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: all fall along, plus the one I had him on
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: originally in the summer, like three times. Right, So I'm
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: going he's maybe not bedded in the same exact spot
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: because you know, foliage has come down, betting situations change,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: but he's still in, he's still at home. He hasn't
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: completely left, you know. And so that's kind of what
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: I've seen, at least on that on that big woods piece.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a I think there's a really valuable lesson
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: in that where when you talk about using tra cameras
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: to scout and I had to figure this out the
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: hard way when I started hunting a lot of small properties,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: like twenty to forty acre type of chunks. The randomness
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: to deer movement feels so real, especially when you're trying
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: to find a decent buck. You're like, man, he was
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: here September twenty seventh, and he wasn't back until October sixteenth.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And one time he was here in the day, one
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: time he was here at night. It's like, yeah, because
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: you might be hunting five percent of his home range
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: or three You know, if you get into a big
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: wood scenario where you talk about with limited food and
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: lots of cover, you might have a home range it's
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: nine hundred acres and now you're hunting twenty acres of
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: it or forty acres of it. And I think it's
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: hard for us to wrap our heads around that. Sometimes
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: you go, well, he's just totally nocturnal or he's not moving.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: It's like, man, you're just playing with a little tiny piece.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: They'd be like if you were looking for somebody in
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: the house and you could only stay in like one
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: closet and you're like they're not home, and you're like
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: spin around in the closet and you're like, well, you
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: can't look in the living room, you can't go downstairs.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And I think the big lesson there is to be
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: really careful about trail camera usage as far as like
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: what you deduce out of that. You know, like you said,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: if you're working some big cover, you know, you've got
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: a thousand acres or five thousand acres of big woods
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: to work and you get a picture of him here,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: and then a month later a picture of him here,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: and you can draw a line between him and you go, okay,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: we're within a third of a mile, quarter of a
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: mile whatever, Like now you're starting to pin down what
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: could be considered like some level of core area. Like
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: now you have something to work with. It's vastly different
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: than being on thirty acres and going I got two
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: pictures of him, I guess I'm going to sit here,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: like you got to, like you said, you got to
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: work with what you're like the hand you're dealt, And
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: it's different.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that and that two pictures on a piece
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: the size of this big woods piece, Like that's like
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: for me, that's money in the bank, especially if I
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: get them at two different times of the year. You know,
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: that's all I really need at that point. It's like
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: if I get him in the summer and know he's around, right,
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: and then I get him again October fifteenth, that's all
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: I need. I don't need any more pictures of him.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I know he's gonna be here at the at you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: all fall. He might transition, you know, around winter, take
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: an excursion during rutt. Even though it's just interesting because
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: I was re listening back to like some stuff I
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: did with doctor Bronson Strickland from a MSU Dear lab
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: and the idea, and this changed, This kind of changed
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: how I looked at my trail camera data too, and
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: just knowing that, you know, we think that the deer
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: more predictable and patternable, you know, in October early earlier
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: in the year, for example, right like they're still on
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: like maybe a pseudo bed to food ish pattern. They've
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: not completely got all ramped up and started thinking about chasing,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: chasing does and stuff like that. And then we think
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: when RUTT happens that all of a sudden, like they
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: go berserk and they like they're running all over the place,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: and they're betting in like various places, you know, every
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: different day, every day there's a different bed, right, But
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: the data actually suggests the opposite. They're way more sporadic
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: and unpredictable in October in their betting patterns, and they're
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: way more predictable when the rut happens. Right. Well, he doesn't.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: They don't have data on this, but we actually he
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: and I talked about it, and I was like, Doe families, right,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: He's like, don't have data, but I would put any
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: amount of money that mattered to me that, Yeah, they're consistent.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Betting is tied to like dough families that they're hanging around, right,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: And I would go and I would say, maybe that
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: doesn't go for younger bucks, but I think older bucks,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: you know, get smart and get hip to the game. Right.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: And So because I've talked to G's this is something
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: like I saw this play out this year too, and
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: this this thing, this taught me two different lessons that
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I kind of knew academically but really kind of you know,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: made them concrete for me. You know, Johnny Eberheart a
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: lot would talk about hunting over scrapes, you know, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: especially when you're scouting trying to find a script. It's
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: hard to during the summer sometimes, but if you can
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: find a good community scrape, you know, a dominant deer
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: in the area, buck in the area will likely at
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: some point probably come bed not far from that scrap
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: and wait for doze to come through and hit that scrape,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: and he's gonna scent check them as they're coming through,
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: as opposed to chasing them. Right. So it's the old
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: adage of like, you know, in my twenties or thirties,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: we were out running like crazy men, right, crazy people.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: And now I'm forty five and I'm like, nah, man,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: I said, I'm just happy to sit home and hang out,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's a similar type of thing.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: It's like why work harder when you can work work smarter?
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: And so last year I was hunting one of my
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: favorite kind of community scrape areas and the target deer
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: I wanted to kill locally walks in beds down about
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: forty yards from the scrape, about thirty five is yards
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: from me, and was down windo that scrape and just
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: was sitting there sent checking that scrape for two hours
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: bed and sleeping, nodding off, waking up, readjusting, et cetera,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: et cetera. So that was the one kind of lesson
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: academic lesson I learned in real time was that one, yes,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: those older deer will kind of bed down wind to that,
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: and they won't even come to the scrape, right, which
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: gives credence to hunting the places in between those kind
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: of destination spots.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: And then the.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: Second one was I got him on camera, says, ties
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: back to our summer thing. I got him on camera
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: the last time was like September fifteenth, Right, Never again
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: did I get that deer on camera the rest of
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: the season. But he was comfortable enough to bed forty
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: yards from that scrape and walked in and knew what
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: he was doing.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: So that time I got him on camera was that
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: the only time he was ever there until the time
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: that he showed up that bed. If I were a
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: betting man, I would say not yeah, right, no way,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: He's just he's consistently going to be in that general
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: area until the dough that needs to get bread in
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: that area is bred, right, And so that deer's consistently there.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: So it just kind of goes back to what I
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: was saying, where it's like, I don't need more than
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: two pictures. I just need the two pictures to be
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: at the right time to know that that deer's home
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: range is in that area, and that may not be
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: true for everybody. That's just kind of how I look
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: at it, And it's not the gospel, but it's how
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: I kind of approach it.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Well. That lesson there is one probably for a different podcast.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: We could do an entire thing on it, but I
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: think that we look at the rut so wrong most
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: of the time. Like you said, you know, Eberhart's talking
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: about how they look a look at the strategy there.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: If you know that there's do is going to come
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: through there, there's no reason to go wear yourself out
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: looking for them when they'll come to you. You know.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: It's like I've written about this a whole bunch, but
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I see bass like I bass fish a lot, and
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: I see them adopt two strategies to hunt. One of
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: them is they ambush and they sit in a stump
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: like next to a stomp or a you know, a dock,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: and they use the shadows to their advantage and they
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: wait for something to crawl into their world and they
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: eat it or you know, you see this with a
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: lot of younger ones that form a little wolf pack
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: and they go looking and they go find that school
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: of minnos to chase or find a place where the
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: crayfish are. And it's like two different strategies. But the
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: old ones, like the big ones, you don't see them
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: out like schooling up burning a bunch of energy to
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: do what they could do without burning a bunch of energy.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: And I mean, I I I'm dumb. I'm a slow learner.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: So every year I got and I hunt the rut
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: and five thousand times in the in a couple of weeks.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: During the run, I'm like, why aren't there deer running
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: all over the place? And you know, this happened to
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: me last year when I was hunting southwestern Wisconsin where
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I know, I'm around a ton of deer.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: This area has a ton of deer, and I'm like
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: blanking or you know, seeing very little. And it's like,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: you know, if you if you look at this on paper,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: there's no reason for a buck to have to work
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: that hard there, So you'd think, like, you know, some
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: kind of chase is going to end up in your
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: lap or some kind of cruiser. But it's just not
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: necessarily the case, especially if they're not ways spread out
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: and there's not a lot of competition. Why why would
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: they And you know, and then you say, like, well,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: some of the scrappers are going to come through, and
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: like that's what happens. Like you sit all day and
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: you see like a four ky or you know, like
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: you're in like a primo spot and that little basket
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: rack six comes through. But it's not the chase best
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: that we always assume it's going to be, because that's
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: just not how nature works most of the time.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a couple of things, like speaking going
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: back to like summer scouts, Like the one thing that
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I started doing regardless of whether it's winter or summer,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: is if if I find a really really good kind
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: of community scrape area, it always gets a camera. Even
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: if I see like something in the summer that looks
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: to me like okay, I can still see that there's
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: some liking branches broken, you know that this is obviously
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: something that they're using it as a scrape. They're hitting
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: a licking branch, and especially if there's a couple of
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: rubs that are around that that to me kind of
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: like okay, this is worth a camera, and I'll just
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: see what happens, you know, and I'll qualify scrapes that
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: way where I'm just gonna hang it. I'm gonna let
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: it run for the whole year, and then if I
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: see deer hitting it during the summer, then I know,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: like okay, yatzie, this is like a communication hub and
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: then we just have to figure out how good it
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: is or if it turns on at a certain time.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: The other thing I started doing, and I learned this
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: from actually hunting with my buddy Chad in this big
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: woods piece in Ohio because there was this area that
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: he got this one deer I think it was this
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: deer he called we called Chriser because there was a
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: guy used to hunt there. His name, last name was Chrysler,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: I believe, And and it was just like this really
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: small spine back and like so the dose would always
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: run like this spine back right, and like you would
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: never see deer during daylight in there really ever, right,
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: it was always kind of like night nighttime. But there
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: was this giant bed that was just like off that
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: spine back maybe four or five foot in the brush
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: that was just huge and like warmed to the dirt.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: But we would never get a picture of a buck
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: in there like any other time of year other than
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: like the rut right, and so it was kind of
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: a rutbed er. It was like, so, huh, interesting, rutbed
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: does traveling us a lot? Makes a lot of sense.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: He can sit here and just pick does off? Okay? Cool.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Another area there was this big primary scrape that we
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: would just get like these hammer bucks on, like one
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: of them was like a world class animal. And two
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: years we've watched this scrape and like hunting in and
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: around it and stuff like that, and nothing ever really happened.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: And we were scouting the following year and I just
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: happened to be on the I guess the leeward side
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: of that ridge behind that scrape, about sixty yards down
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: the side of the ridge as we were coming up,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: because we went all the way around the ridge and
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: then we were coming back up and our rendezvous point
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: was kind of like to come up and meet right
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: around that scrape because it was in this old ballyard
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: And as we're coming up, there's like a giant bed
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: that's perfectly downwind of where that scrape was at about
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: sixty yards from it, like on this little bench. So
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: I pull up my map real quick and I'm looking.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: I'm like, you gotta be kidneing, man. I'm like, this
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: thing is like literally rate below that scrape, and so
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: not a big surprise all of a sudden, you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: that rut rolls around or pre rud or whatever timeframe,
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: and a buck starts bedding there waiting to catch doze
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: and just scent checking. It never has to move right.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: So now what I started doing is when I find
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: these community scrapes, I don't take a ton of time,
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: but I take like a quick like thirty minutes and
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: just kind of like do like a pinwheel out from
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: that from that community scrape and just start pinning me
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: whee on my way out to where I get maybe
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: thirty forty fifty yards in all directions out from it,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: to see if there's a bed that's around there somewhere
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: that a deer might use during the rut right to
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: see like, because I don't think I don't think every
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: scrape is every scrape is not created equal, but certain
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: ones when you get spidy sense if you pin wheel out,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden you'll find that bed that they'll
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: use as like that rutbed. And so that's what I
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: found last year. I could have never found it because
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: it's so thick and swampy in this area. But whenever
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: I walked in there to hang a camera two three
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: weeks or to check the camera that had in there
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: two or three weeks ago, I went back to see
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: where that deer was at, and sure enough, there's a
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: bed there, and there's a down log. There's an easy
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: way for him to get in, an easy way for
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: him to get out. It's like a perfect setup, right.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: And so that's the other thing I started doing, Like
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: even in the summer, when I find those areas, I
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: just kind of pin wheel out and see if I
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: can't locate a bed that's somewhere close by.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: You bring up an interesting point there, and I'm I
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: look at like probably ninety five percent of scrapes like
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: they do mean no good, yeah, but the want five
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: percent that do I really like, and they're always tied.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Like what you're talking about. You treat them a little
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: bit differently than I do. But what you're saying is
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: you have this community scrape. It's at it. It's in
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: a spot where a buck can bed down when he
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: can wait for the action to come to him. He
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to go to it. He could probably wait
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: for the little scrappers to chase by and gauge that
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: situation or whatever. But all of that is tied to
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: some kind of travel hub, Like, all of it is
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: tied to a place where the deer just like to
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: go and be. So what you're saying is like that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: scrape is like it tips you off, Like it's like
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: that's the one thing where you're like, Okay, now I
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: need to investigate this spot. But most people think, well,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: there's a big community scrape here with a good looking branch,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna hunt this. But what does that scrape like signify,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Like what's going on in that area that matters more?
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: And what it is is it's a hub. It's those
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: are going to be located in a place where deer
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: move morning and eve and for multiple reasons, they come
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: through there, usually from different directions, and there's just like
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: a high odds chance of being around traveling deer where
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: those show up.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to me, it's it's it's like the
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: you know, when I was a kid, you'd hang out
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: in the parking lot of like the burger king or whatever.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: It's the burger king hang out for deer, you know
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: what I mean. Like they're just you know, it's like
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: there's so many things that kind of connect in those spots.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: It's like if you're in hill country, it's oftentimes it's
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: some type of thermal hub.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of times where multiple ridges are kind
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: of coming together and they're all kind of dumping down
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: into this bottom at the same spot, right, and it's
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: really easy for the deer to be able to smell
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: everything that's happening on every ridge, and so all of
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: a sudden, a lot of deer congregate congregate there, and
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: then they start leaving sign there their sin is there,
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: they lay down a scrape, and that becomes like a
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: central central hub. One hundred percent agree with you, Like
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: they're not all huntable. What I do, going back to
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: what we were talking about with summer, what I'll use
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're like me and you're a working guy,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: I have to time my hunts and be very strategic
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: about the days I'm going to get out, right, And
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: so that's why I focus a lot on scrapes because
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: I can usually predict not what's going to happen directly
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: at that location, although sometimes I can, but I can
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: predict what's going to happen in the general area much
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: better if I have a really good scrape in that
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: spot to kind of start to be my barometer for
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: the area, if you will, right. And so, what I'll
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: do during the summer, and what I'll use summer for
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: is I hang my cameras on those scrapes, you know,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: And people are like, when you're hanging cameras on scrapes
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: in the summer, it's like, well, yeah, but what I
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: want to see is that if there aren't any deer
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: hitting it during the summer, then I'm like, Okay, that's
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: just like a rut pre rut scrape. It might be decent,
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: it might not be. If it's not connected to something
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: else that's nearby that really kind of trips my trigger,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: then it's probably not worth a hunt unless there's like
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: a terrain feature that's close by that like is really
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: good that I want that I want to hunt. But
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: if I get deer hitting that thing almost daily during
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: the summer, I'm like this is like a main kind
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: of artery for deer activity, regardless of whether it's that scrape,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: the things in this area this is a play or
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: is are things that are drawing deer to it on
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: a daily basis, regardless if it's does you know, bucks
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: and velvet, whatever the case is. Deer just want to
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: be here. So whenever I see that, that's whenever I
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: start to pay a lot of attention to it. And
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: it's not like they hit it once or twice. It's
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: like I'm looking for multiple days a week during out
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: of season, right that they're hitting these scrapes, and those
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: are the ones I'll prioritize and I try to find
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: those on every piece I have. And then what I
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: do is I use that summer intel. I watch the
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: fawn drops. I try to find if there's an early
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: fawn drop, which the one I do know that I
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: have as an early fonnd drop. So that's why the
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: eighteenth of every October I'm in that spot because the
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: past two years I've had an encounter with my shoot
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: with my target deer on the eighteenth in that spot right,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: because that does is getting ready to come in and
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: she's bread somewhere between the fifteenth and the twentieth, and
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: so I use the fawn drop data during the summer
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: for the upcoming hunting season to kind of know when
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: these spots are going to come in. And then I
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: watch them during the rut as well to understand, you know,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: when are these dough groups actually cycling in, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: because they'll cycle in the same every year. And so
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: I just watch these scrapes and I start dating these
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: scrapes going right this week for this scrape, this week,
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: for this scrape, this week, for this scrape, And then
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: I don't waste my time hunting in an area where
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: I don't have those that are warming up that are
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: going to attract deer for me. You can't bait in PA.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't anyway. But that's the closest thing you can
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: get to get in an attractant to bring a buck
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: in is to know when those dose extra states are.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: And I do that by kind of, you know, just
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: dating the scrapes.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Man. That's that's high level. I want to take a
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: step back here a second. Yeah, And because you brought
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: up something a while ago that I made a note
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: on that I want to talk about because I've been
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: thinking about it a lot, and you were talking about elevation,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: and you were talking about like the subtlety to terrain
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: and like finding the difference of you know, ten feet
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: in elevation or twenty feet or thirty feet, how important
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: that is. And I'm starting to get to the point
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: this is something. You know, I grew up hunting the
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: bluffs in southeastern Minnesota, and I'm I'm I love bluff
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: country stuff, Like, I like the terrain traps, and I
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: like I like that style. But where I live, and
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I've lived the last seventeen years, it's pretty freaking flat,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: but not like pool table flat. And I started to
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: just appreciate, you know, if there's a little bit of
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: a rise in the woods or there's like I'll give
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: you an example. This. This kind of hit me right
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: over the head this turkey season. So this farm that
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: I've been turkey hunt in the last few years pretty flat, right,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: There's there's not much to it, but there's one field
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: on there. There's one field left that we can hunt
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: because it's being developed, and it's got this little rise
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: in it that comes out of the woods. You know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: there's a it's kind of on the edge of a
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: cattail swamp. It's actually kind of between two cattail swamps,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and it's maybe an elevation change of like six feet.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: But if you walk out on it, you can see
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: everything on that side of the field. You can look
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: from one end to the other. And so scouting turkeys,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I would see turkeys strut on there all the time.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: And so this, you know, I put a blind on
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: there for the kids. Took my daughter in there. She
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: killed the bird in there. Took my nephew in there.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: He killed a bird in there, took his dad in there.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: He killed a bird in there. And it's it's just
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: a spot where they expect to see turkeys and they're
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: just so visible. So it's like it's got that going
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: for it. And then I was thinking, you know, I'm like, man,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: the buck I shot last year with my muzzleoder was
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: standing right here. Out of all the places he could
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: have come out of the woods, he picked that and
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: he was a little scrapper. But he's like, there's that
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: just difference because he knows if he walks out there,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: he can look down there all the way to the
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: end of the field, and he can look the other
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: way to the end of the field, and I think
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: we don't appreciate how like tuned into those tiny little
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: elevation differences. All those deer are out there.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hunting. The flat kind of terrain is is
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: something that it drives me crazy, to be honest with you.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: You know, it was something I had to get used
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: to locally because locally where I live in eastern Pa
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: is flat. Where I hunt in the north, you know,
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: there's there's mountains, and so it's it's very like there's
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: extremes right here. It's like, you know, you don't even
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: rarely get that little five five foot ten foot elevation
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: change here. It's like, you know, you're dealing with primarily
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: you know, using transition lines and you know, in hard
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: edges that are set by swamps or whatever whatever the
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: case is. But I think sometimes, you know, I was
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: talking to there was a fella I talked to from
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: Virginia and he hunts a very similar kind of terrain
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: where it's a lot of flat. It's just like with
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: the little knobs and knolls, and he was like, anything
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: that had like five to ten foot elevation, man, He's like,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: you could almost they might not be bedded there, but
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: they're going to spend time there, and something kind of
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: I don't remember if he's the one who said it
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: or if someone else mentioned it to me. It's like
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: we often forget that deer a lot of times want
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: want the same things we want, you know. It's like
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: we want to be fed, we want to be safe,
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: we want cover a house or you know, a shelter
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: of some sort. Right, they're looking for the same things.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: They just go about getting it a little bit differently.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: We want to be able to see, right, we want
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: to be able to observe. Well, they want the same
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: They want the same thing, you know what I mean,
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: And so they'll go to the place where they can.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: It's not it's not a when you think about it
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: that way, it's not a surprise if you're thinking about,
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: you know, the the hunting beast style of things, right,
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: the dan enfold approach of like you know, uh, setting
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: up on like the leeward edge of a of a ridge,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: knowing that deer want to spend time there. It's like, well, yeah,
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: they're going to bed with the wind that's coming over
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: their back and they're going to look down directly where
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: they came from. Because now they're covered in all directions, right.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: It's like the one reason is because they got the
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: visual right. It's like, I think we oftentimes discount the
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: visual element of their protection because we focus so much
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: on their smell, the smell aspect. We spend so much
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: time trying to beat their nose. I think we oftentimes
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: get beat by their eyes, you know. And that's been
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: true for me, you know, in in Kansas for sure,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: you know, because I you know, I've been to Kansas
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: the past two years. I drew the tag again this
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: year to go back. And that's the hardest part for
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: me out there. It's like I I've been within bow
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: range and we'll say fifteen feet a sorry, fifteen yards
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: in under all three years. But I've gotten beat by
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: their eyes and never once have I've been beaten by
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: their nose yet, you know what I mean. And so
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: that to me was a thing that kind of just
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: pointed out to me, like there's little rises, there's little
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: changes in elevation, especially when you're out there, make all
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: the difference, you know, between you being skylight or them
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: skylighting themselves, or them getting into like a little you know,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: a little ditch and they're two hundred yards away in
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: your glass them and then they seemingly disappear and something
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: that looks flat, you know what I mean. It's like
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: it's just those little undulations and we overlook them. But
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: you know, we'd be fools to think that the deer
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: don't know exactly where those things are at and know
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: exactly when and how to use those Oh Man, when.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: You when you talk about that souf, I think about
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: so many situations in my life, and I think one
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: of the easiest ways to understand this is if you
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: have the opportunity to glass in the summer, so you know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: sit that alf aalpha field, sit that being filled whatever,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: and watch what you see. And so pay attention because
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: we go out and go I want to find that
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: bachelor group and I want to watch them. But the
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: real benefit besides finding them, of course, is how do
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: they use the land? Like are are they tucked into
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: a little drainage to feed so you can't see them?
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Or like how did they come out of the woods,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: or how do they travel from one point of the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: woods to the other. And you start watching deer actually
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: move through the landscape. It's not just a betting thing. Man,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: like they're using little, tiny, almost insignificant folds in the
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: train to their advantage. And they they probably don't even
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: think about it. It's probably just like a gene deep thing.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: But when you watch them do that stuff, it's the
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: same thing like I talked about the turkeys, like, oh,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: they strut in a field, No, they strut right.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: There, right.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can see them anywhere at any given point. Maybe,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: But if you want consistency, which is what we're all
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: looking for when we're scouting, we're not looking for a
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: one off encounter. We're looking for high odds places. That
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: stuff matters so much. And so yeah, like you said earlier,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the advantage of bedding, you know, I mean, if there's
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: a six foot rise and it's otherwise flat, that's a
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: better spot for them to bed than almost anywhere else,
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: just for that because if they can use the prevailing
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: wind and they can use their eyes and they're just
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: a little bit above everything else, that's a win. Like,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: and if they can travel in certain ways and use
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: that stuff. The more that you figure that kind of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: stuff out, like, the more you figure out how they
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: use the terrain that way, like, it just opens up
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: a different world to you and you can take that.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Like you said, you know, you go from Pennsylvania to Kansas,
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: your scouting opportunities are so vastly different. But those little
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: usages of the terrain, and you know, those deer that
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: live in open country will teach you a lesson about
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: how they use like a little fold in the terrain.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: I mean it. It is mind blowing when you hunt
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: them in that open terrain, how easily they can dis
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: or how many deer can hide from you where you're like,
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: there's no way, like I would see every coyote out there,
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: and then you figure it out and you go, man,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: there was there was a whole little herd of them
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: in the same section as me that I had no
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: idea to I walked over this little lip of a ridge.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I want to You're hund percent right, man.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: And there's there's like an approach that I have like
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: whenever i'm you know e scouting for Kansas that I
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: kind of like, I don't want to say I developed it,
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: actually I kind of I want to say I learned it,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: But I kind of was tipped off by just through
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: a conversation with Eddie Claypoole. I know, you're good buddies
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: with with Eddie. And but to go back to before
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: I get to that, the one thing about terrain, Like,
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: so when I'm talking thinking about that north piece, those
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: small little kind of undulations or high spots, they become
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: really really important, especially the spot that I'm gonna be
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: spending a lot of time in this summer and then
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: hunting this fall in and around those swamp ears, because
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: that little three foot five foot rise that is the
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: primo betting opportunity in those wet in those wet areas.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: And that's also in those areas where I'll find those
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: land bridges that are kind of connecting two swamps sort
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: of like the passageway between two swamps and stuff like that,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: and that's really the only high ground until you get
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: out of the swamp, right, And so it's those things
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: that kind of dictate the movement of the deer, dictate
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: the betting opportunities and stuff like that. And so it's
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: I start to try to focus on those things. The
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: second part in that big woods piece that I started
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: kind of focusing in on are almost like these big
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: like what I'll call like just big drainages or big
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: draws that are kind of cut into the side of
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: the mountain where it probably has a stream runoff in
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: it whenever there's a bunch of melt in the in
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: the winter or whatever. What I've found is that I
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: found a lot of trails and sign that are following
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: following those drainages, almost up to the top of those drainages,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: and so I started kind of focusing in on those,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: and lo and behold, found a hammer scrape. Whenever I
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: was there, like the Midish May hung a cell camera
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: on it, and sure enough, a deer that had like
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: popcan sized bases already and it was already split in
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: a brow on like May eleventh, showed up on that scrape.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: So there were two things there. It was like that
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: draw is kind of dictating the movement, right, and also
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: a scrape there. Knowing that, okay, there's a there's a
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: terrain feature there. It's also near a logging road like
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: a bench that they're using, so there's two you know,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: avenues of travel and then deer using it during the
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: summer consistently, and so I'm like, yachtzi, I'm like, that
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: is a spot that I'll be spending time and it's
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: a bitch to get into because you have to climb
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: the side of a mountain, so the thermals are really
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: kind of odd where you can really only get in
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: the morning when your thermals are falling, and it's an
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: all day hunt, Like, you can't really get into the
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: afternoon to hunt it. It's got to be a morning
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: sit in, an all day or a morning hunting you're
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: out type of thing. But pivoting to the Kansas thing.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: The thing I started like, so I lived too far
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: away from Kansas to drive there to scout during the summer.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: The first year we were fortunate my buddy Chat went
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: out and actually turkey hunted the first year before we
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: went there, and so we got a little bit of
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the lay of the land a little bit. But you know,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: what I really kind of have to rely on is
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: just looking at maps over the course of the summer,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: and it's all walk in access. So it's not like,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: you know, I have like a big piece of private
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: or a big chunk of public that I'm going to
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: have fifty thousand acres to hunt. I'm going to be
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: hopping pieces. So it's a lot of like looking at
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: small parcels and stuff like that, and what I started
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: doing was really kind of focusing on areas that have
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: a drainage system that kind of runs through it. And
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: what I kind of figured out was talking with Eddie
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: the one time is we were kind of talking about it,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: and you know, Eddie's a little bit of a different
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: animal where he goes out in like the middle of
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: like a blue stem patch like field and it will
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: sit up and like the only tree that's out there,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and the deer wall just magnetically walk toward that tree, right.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: But I was asking him about Betted Bucks and he
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: was like, well, he's like Betted Bucks, you know, you know,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: oftentimes during the rut, because he knew I was going
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: out during the rut. He's like, you know, they'll cut
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: these dose out and they'll take him to the heads
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: of these drainages, you know what I mean. I was like, Okay,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: He's like, but it's not the main drainage. He's like,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: when you look at you get in there and you
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: look at a drainage, He's like, there's drainages just have
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: like these little offshoots like tributaries that are running off
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: of them and stuff like that. He's like, it's you
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: usually in one of those like secondary offshoots off the
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: main drainage because they're usually the most brushy. He's like,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: and that's usually where they want to cut deer out too.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: I just kind of paused for a second, and I
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: was like, shoot, I was like, that drainage is just
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: an inverted ridge. I was like, and so those offshoots
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: of those secondary kind of tributaries of that drainage is
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: like our secondary ridges. He's like, well, by god, you're right,
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: you know, it's like one of those things. I never
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: thought of it that way, And so then all of
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: a sudden it made sense to me on how to
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: scout it and how to look at it, because it
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: was just an upside down ridge and those you know,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: if you have a west wind that east side, you know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: tributary off of that main drainage, that's your spot, you
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: know what I mean, Because that's the that's the place
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: where they're going to have everything under under control. They're
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: going to smell everything and able to see what they
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: need to see. You got to backdoor it, but that's
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: the area they're going to want to play. And so
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: I've seen that kind of play out the path last
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: year because I relied on that approach was just like scouting,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: you know, uh east scouting and kind of finding these
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: drains and then heading to those drainages to the heads
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: of those and kind of looking for those kind of
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: like offshoots and then kind of setting up in those areas.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: And that's where I was having my encounters and where
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: I was seeing, you know, and if I wasn't having
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: the encounter, I was glassing the deer in those areas
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: before I went in to actually make a move.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: When you when you're hunting them, are you sitting on the.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: Ground, Yeah, hundred percent on the ground for those no
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: trees to get into. No, no, I mean there was
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: one tree in this crick bottom. I was able to
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: get into a thorny ass locust tree, and you know,
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: I did that like one day, and I was like, yep,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: not doing that again. And but all my encounters have
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: been on the ground. You know. It's like I've not
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: had any good encounters with quality, you know, with good age,
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: structured deer. I've had like the one day I was
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: in a tree the first year I was there, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: I had like a decent buck kind of like walk
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: right underneath me. But like anything that I was willing
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: to draw my bow back on have all been on
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: the ground.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's an obvious reason for that, right.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: Like I was in spots. I was in spots. They're
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: just hard to wiggle your way into, you know what
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: I mean. It was like, you know, and that's the
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: name of the game out there, is like you try
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: to find because you think it's all flat. But there's
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: a lot more role to it than you think, you know,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: and so you really kind of have to examine, especially
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: when you're doing all your es scouting, and kind of like
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: be very mindful of like that little rise, that little
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: role is a big deal when you get out there,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: Like I look at it, and if I have my
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: pennsylvani your brain on, I overlook it.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: But I got to kind of shift my mindset when
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: I start looking at that stuff. Over the summers, I'm
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: getting ready to go out there, because there's like a
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: lot of times I'll be like, I'm not dropping a
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: pin there. Then I have to go, Hey, put your
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: Kansas brain on. You need to drop a pin there.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: You need to probably walk that because that's probably a
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: little bit more significant than you think it is, you know.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: And so that's really my approach for out.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: There, dude.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: That is a.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Real common problem if you if you head to a
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: state like Kansas and you haven't hunted that kind of
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: terrain you know, I mean obviously not the whole states
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: like that, but you look at it like eat scouting
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: and you go, Okay, you know there's a drainage here
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: or whatever, like I'll go glass that quick, and I'll
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: check this spot out, and there's a few trees in
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: the creek bottom here. And then you get out there
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: and you see the scope of that terrain and it's
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: it's big country where you know, those drainages are way
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: bigger than you think, and yet you still have the
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: opportunity to blow everything out so fast. So it's like
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: a weird like you're right, you have to kind of
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: reconfigure how you look at this stuff. It's not like
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: you're walking into a section of timber and you're like,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: I'm going to find a concentration to sign and start hunting.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: It's a totally different animal. And I think it's so
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: important to try to hunt different styles like that or
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: different different terrain because it just teaches you, like what
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: you think you know, you know, like you said when
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: you when you look at that stuff on your EA scouting,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: you're like, ah, maybe maybe not. And then you go
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: look at it in real life and you're like, man,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I just dismissed the better part of half a section
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: cause est scouting, it doesn't look like this stuff I
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: typically eat scout. Then you get out there in the
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: real world and you're like, you could tuck five thousand
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: booners in there and not be able to see them
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: from the road. You know, like it's a different thing.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I love that kind of stuff because it just challenges
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: you to, like your worldview changes a lot when you
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: start getting into that kind of stuff.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so whenever I'm in Kansas, you know, or a
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: place that has that, you know, just flat terrain, you know,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: my focus really in E scouting and stuff is really
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: primarily on figuring out how to try to find a
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: spot to get into an area that I want to hunt,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: so I can actually glass and get a visual before
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: I kind of trump into a place, you know, just
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: because you don't know what's kind of you know, laying
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: in the head of that draw or what's out in
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: the CRPI field that you kind of need to make
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: your way through whatever the case. Keeping the wind in
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: your face is the easy part out there. The hard
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: part is trying to get to a visual vantage point
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: because everyone thinks it's flat, but it's not, you know.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: So it's trying to figure out how I'll get into
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: a spot without blowing everything out so I can actually
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: glass and get a visual on where I want to
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: get to without alerting the deer that I'm trying to kill,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: that I'm that I'm there, you know. And so that
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: to me is kind of the game within the game
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: out there, so to speak, and really where a lot
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: of my time is spent, you know, scouting well, and what.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: That makes me think of and a lot of the
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: stuff you've said is we look at deer. Scouting is
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: like I gotta find the deer. I gotta find my
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: target buck, or I got to find a bachelor group,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: or I got to find a concentration of deer. But
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: that's like foundational, Like that's like basics, Like sure, you
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: want to know he lives there, he walked through there
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: one time or whatever. But like figuring out how to
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: hunt those spots is what scouting does for you. It's
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: not just like, oh, I'm going to identify a target
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: buck and give him a name good enough, Like no,
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: And when you talk about this Kansas thing, finding where
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: the deer should be is pretty easy, like you can
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: you can e scout and look at it and go,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: you know, like there probably should be a concentration in
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: this drainage and a concentration in that one. But figuring
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: out out how to work against that disadvantage of you
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: being so much more visible than they are, even though
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: it's open country and theoretically you kind of should be
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: on the same level, you're not, Like that's what the
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: scouting like, that's what that's what you need to figure out,
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Like you need to figure out how to how to
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: get in there without them seeing you, because their advantage
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: there is so much greater. You know, it's different than
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: when you're home at Pennsylvania and you're like I can
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: walk through the woods and a lot of stuff's not
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: going to be able to see me because I'm in
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: the woods. Now, I got to figure out where are
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: they going to go to find those or where are
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: they going to go to get away from the rest
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: of the pressure. Like that's a different game than scouting
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: that Kansas ground, you know, like finding a buck there,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: and I think I think we've kind of done a
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: disservice to the like hunting community by there's been a
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: lot of hunting content that comes out of like spot
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: in Stock Kansas Bucks and you're looking at guys finding
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: a buck, getting in there and shooting in it's action
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: packed and it looks amazing, but you're not looking at
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: the days and days of glassing where they're just not
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: on them, or they're seeing deer where they're like, there's
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: a great buck, I have no chance of getting anywhere
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: near him, and I got to go find something else.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: It is not It looks easy when it's distilled down
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: to a YouTube video and that shit is tough.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it was. It was eye opening for me, man,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: and it's maybe a better hunter, you know, because your
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: earlier point. You know, we focus so much of the
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: scouting on finding the deer where that's actually the easiest part.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Like if you think about it, because they're laying down
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: sign and they're telling you where they're at, they're telling
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: you where they're spending time. They may not tell you
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: exactly what time of year. That's like you have to
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: do your due diligence. Maybe sit, hang some cameras, do
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: some observation sits, you know, scout during the season, whatever
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: the case is. But definding the deer part is the
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: easy part. Figuring out how to like get in there
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: with close enough to get them killed without them knowing
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: that you're there, That's where the scouting actually takes place, right,
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: because then it becomes that's really when you're battling your
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: wits against the deer's wits. You know what I mean,
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Because I'm I think I know how you're using this area.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: I need to I need to kind of pull a
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: fast one on you, make you think I'm not there
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: while I'm there, you know, and try to use your
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: senses against you to a degree, is what you're kind
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: of doing. Right, and then so that's very much like
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: a Pennsylvania or just like a timbered kind of approach. Right,
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: you see the sign, do you know the deer's in
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: the area. You figure out how you get your you
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: know your access, et cetera, et cetera. When you're in Kansas,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: you know those flat areas, finding the deer's really easy.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: It might take some driving around, right, but you're just glassing,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: sitting behind your Bino's watching and you're finding where they're at,
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: and then then becomes the chess match, right, especially if
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: you're out there during the rut, might be a little bit.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: I might take your advice this year, I might go
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: out in October. So we'll see, because you know, during
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: the rut, it's like, so I found you didn't just
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: find a buck. Most likely you likely found a buck
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: in two or three dos that he's pushing around. If
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: it's you know, a dominant buck, you'll might find some
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: pecker heads running around by themselves or nudging a do around,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: you know, or run around like they're lost. But if
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: it's a mature deer, at least what I've seen out there,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: they usually they're pushing two or three around because there's
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: a small dog group that has a hot dough in
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: and he's pushing them around, and eventually he's going to
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: cut around, but he's just pushing the whole group around
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: until it comes time. And now you're trying to beat him,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: which he's not as hard to beat because he's kind
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: of an idiot. At that point, you know, it's still
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: not easy. But then you've got his lady friend and
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: whatever other lady friends that she might be hanging out
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: with that you're having to beat at the same time,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: And that's where the game really kind of gets interesting.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: That's where you start to kind of how far can
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: I push the envelope. You know, is rattling going to
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: work to try to entice him, is decoy going to
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: tick him off to get him to come in. That's
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: when you have to start kind of reading the deer.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: So this is like the next level of scouting. It's
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: not just find the deer. Okay, now I got in.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: The next step is I can't close the distance. How
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: do how do I get him in range? Right? And
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: so it's just I've fallen in love with it because
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: there's so many layers to that game that you don't
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: sometimes get to play in timbered areas.
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Man, you're you're so right on all this stuff. I
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: want to back up a second and talk about the
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: finding the deer thing that you went through just a
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: little bit ago, because I think this is maybe the
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: biggest disservice that widespread trail camera usage has given us,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Like it is not that hard to get a picture
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: of a good buck, Like I don't care where you live,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: where you hunt. If you got a little bit of
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: you know, a little bit of horsepower between your ears.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: At some point in the summer or at some point
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: in the fall, you can probably get a picture of
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: a buck. Goot to make you real happy. You know.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: That might be a one to ten somewhere and it
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: might be a one to seventy somewhere else, but you
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: can do it. And we've kind of convinced ourselves that
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: that's good enough, Like that's you know, we've got it
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: figured out then, And it doesn't mean anything until you
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: scout enough to figure out how to hunt them. Like
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: it doesn't you know, it's the same thing like you
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: said about you know, if you're out in Kansas and
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: you glass up one hundred and sixty incher out there
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: in the pasture, great, like what's next? Like that's awesome,
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: it's fun, But what's next? I mean what it reminds
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: me of God? You know, like for a long time
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: in the in the Turkey hunting world, you'd hear people
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: say like, oh, roosted, like roosted is roasted, and then
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: it kind of changes like roosted isn't necessarily roasted anymore.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: It's like because it doesn't take that long for you
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: go out there and you have that bird gobbling his
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: ass off one hundred yards away and you don't kill him,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: and then it happens again and he doesn't fly down
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: on your decoach, and you go, okay, this is this
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: is not enough, Like there wasn't enough to my setup,
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: or you know, like your your example with a buck
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: with a couple of dos, like you're competing with a
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: bird that has a couple of hens with him. Now
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: it's a different story. Like so much of this stuff,
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: we go good enough. I figured I found the scrape,
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: I found fence crossing. They like I got a picture
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: of three big ones on this trail in August. It's over.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: It's like no, like that's the start. And I'm continually
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: reminded of that when I talk to guys like you
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: and Andy May and some of these people who are
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: real obsessed with scouting, because it's not you know, like
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: it's it's always starts with I found this then, like
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: I found him then, or I found this spot then,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: and then it goes into this long process, like maybe
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: a multi year process of like now I gotta figure
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: out how to hunt it, or somebody will be like,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: you know, you drew your Kansas tag and you're like,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: oh my god, this world of hunting, these planes, you're
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: so vastly different, Like it started there, like now all
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, this journey to scout started with just
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: getting that tag or like walking into the big woods
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: when you're used to hunting you know, egg country and
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: going holy shit, like I have a new world. But
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: it's not, it's not. It doesn't hinge on just finding
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: the deer and done. Like there's that. That's just like
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: the you're opening the door, like you were standing on
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: the porch, you knock, they let you in, and now
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: you got to go like it's totally different.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting because I've kind of
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: done myself a disservice. Well, first I want to say,
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: you know, for people listening, like, I'm not one of
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: these guys who's it's like not one hundred and seventy
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: inch deer or a bus, right, it's whatever's going to get
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: me excited. You know, I'm not I'm not necessarily I
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: like big deer, don't get me wrong, but I'm not
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: into the you know the quote unquote horn porn. You
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: know that's not my that's not my game. You know,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: if a good one hundred and thirty plus inch deer
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: walks by me, you know out in Kansas, you know,
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: I get a crack at him. You know, awesome, I'm
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: gonna you know, I'm going to take a shot. But
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: you know what you were kind of saying around the
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: game just kind of beginning, like I've kind of started
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: my game almost completely over whe where I kind of
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: tacked a big woods piece and I started going to
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: Kansas at the same time. So it was two brand
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: new kind of areas, you know, where I was like,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I went into those seasons knowing that like it's going
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: to be a while, you know what I mean, Like
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: if I really want to consistently be able to hunt
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: this big woods piece, I I got to be committed
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: to it, and I just got to spend my time
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: here and know that it's probably going to be a
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: couple of season endeavor before it happens. And then the
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: Kansas piece was a big slice of humble pie because
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: you know, I'd been to the Iowa and Ohio and
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: I've killed deer in those areas. I have, you know,
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: more target rich environment more so than PA and stuff
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: like that, and so I was like, Kansas, you know,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: we should get it, should get it done. And this
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: would be my third year back and I've had three
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: deer that I've been either at full draw on or
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: within you know, fifteen yards under that the smallest one
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: was like mid one forties. And being fifteen yards or
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: closer to a caliber or that deer on the ground
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: and just not being able to get an arrow in
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: him has just been extremely humbling, you know, because it's
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: just it's one of those things where, you know, the
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: first year out there, like I was playing it all wrong,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like I was just I
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: was just like one of those It was like I
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: turned twenty one and someone took me the Strip club
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: for the first time, got a water ones and I'm like,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: what's up? You know, that was how I was doing it,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: you know, And I blew a bunch of hunts, and
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: you know, the last day of that hunt, actually had
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: a really good deer, you know, probably borderline hundred and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: fifty inch deer, and he got within fifteen yards and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: he caught my thermal, you know, and I was hung
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: out the dry in the middle of nothing. And then
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: last year, you know, I had one it was you
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: know one forties, you know, clean eight awesome deer. It
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: was a hunt on a whim at the head of
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: a draw, like right, working the wind correctly, and I
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: clipped a small branch. When I went to draw back,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: my arrow hit a small twig and that was in
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: front of me, and it bounced. The arrow bounced off
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: off my off my rest, and he heard it and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: snapped his head around and he was gone. You know,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: I was at full drawing that deer. I've never wanted
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: to throw a bow so bad in my life like
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: that one almost went for a ride, like I was
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: so mad. And then so this is where like the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: game comes in. So so I started learning. I started
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: being more patient. That's why I had that really good
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: encounter there. And then the first day that was there,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: I just glassed the whole first day I was there,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: and I kind of started figuring out how they were
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: using the head of this one draw. And I saw
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: the second day when I was taught. You know, I
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: walked in during a little bit of daylight and I
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: ended up glassing from about two hundred yards away from
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: me up the CRP toward the head of that draw.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: Like the reason why you go to Kansas, like I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: ended up seeing him, you know, I ended up being
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: close enough to him. He was one hundred and sixty
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: plus audiench like mainframe ten, you know, junk Oliver's bases
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: like awesome deer. And so I saw him, and from
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: the previous year and watching him with those doughs, I
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: knew that he was going to cut that dough out
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: and he was going to go a breeder and I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: probably wasn't going to see him for like three to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: five days roughly, right, depending on like how close she
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: was to being bred. He was gonna lock down with
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: her for three and that was you know, and then
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: he'll be back. And so I ended up hunting a
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: bunch of other areas because I didn't get a shot
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: at him. I got about as close as seventy five
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: yards and couldn't rattle him in and he walked off
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: with her and I didn't see him again. I kept
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: an eye on that draw every day. I would kind
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: of check it. We didn't see him, and I was
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: like the last day of the hunt, I was like,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: this will be the day he should come off that
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: dough and so I just played it patient. I didn't
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: bust up that draw. I didn't mess with it. I
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: glassed it, just kept tabs on those deer hunted some
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: other spots. The last day, I went up to the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: head of that draw. Stayed inside the draw because it
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: was the last day I was going to be there,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: so I didn't care if my scent was on that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: draw anymore. Walked up the head of that draw, went
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: to a tree that I'd picked out, this locust tree
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: that he was kind of when I'd seen him previously.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: He walked in from it. When I glassed other deer,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: they were always walking in front of this one tree.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: So I'm using other deer to tell me what deer
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: want to do in that spot, not necessarily just him.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: This is again where the scouting part comes in, right.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: It's like you're just trying to take the pieces that
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: you can find. And I walked to that tree, walked
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: up out of the draw, and there was a deer
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: grunting to my right, and there was deer grunt on
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: my left, and there was enough like moonlight just starting
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: to get a little bit daylight where I could start
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: to see a little bit, and I saw deer out
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: in front of me, and net net was. There was
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: a buck to my right that was grunting. There was
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: a dough in front of me, and then there was
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: the deer that I was after that was with her,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: and he was standing right behind the tree I was
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: trying to get to. He's at thirty yards and I
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: can see his frame, and I'm just like, you gotta
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: be kidding me. What are the chances we both show
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: up the same spot at the same time, right, I
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: don't have enough shooting light. I tried to wait him out.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: He was kind of prancing around, getting nervous because that
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: other buck was grunting, and I have no I never
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: saw that buck. I just heard him grunting. And so
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: I think he thought I was a deer cause I
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: had the back. I had the back like the darkness
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: of the draw behind me, and he had like the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: skylight behind him, so I could see him. He couldn't
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: see me, and my wind was in my favorite So
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I think he thought I was a deer. So I
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: started grunting, grabbed my grunt call and shuffle on my
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: feet and got behind a tree, Harlily brown Christmas tree,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: and I made it to the hat and I got
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: k nelt down and got an arrow knocked, and I
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: was like, if I can just get like another five
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: minutes a day light, and if I can get him
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: to step in front of where I knew these saplings were,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: I was like, then I have a shot, and so
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: I got the five minutes that I needed. He snort,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: We used at me. He still thought I was a buck.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: I snort, We used back at him. He postured up,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: started walking toward me, and he walked right to the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: edge of where those sappings where I just stood. There
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: he was at like twenty yards and I just I
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: just did not have enough light to get a clear pin,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: to be able to to one have a clear pin,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: and two be able to see exactly where those sapplings
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: were at. So I didn't like clip one and have
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: a deflected arrow hit him and have a bad situation.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: So I ended up just watching him walk out of
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: my life. But that's you know, that's you know, that's
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: the humbling kind of nature of hunting somewhere like that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: and talking about like the game just starts when you
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: find them, it's the scouting you have to do in
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: between to figure out how you're going to put yourself
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: with like in their world, right, it's not just being
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: it's not like it's not being in there on their planet,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like I want to be
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: in his house, you know. And so that's that's where
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: the game really kind of comes into play. And then
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: when I left that night, was the last night in
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: Kansas and driving out, and I saw him in my
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: headlights and he's running beside my truck full Kansas gallop
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: through a cut corn field, chasing a dough right beside me.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: I just see like all these antlers. And that was
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: when I got the best look at him, because I
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: was like right on top of him. I was like,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: you kind of freaking kidding me.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: You bring up a point we don't we don't talk
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: about very often. Like I wrote an article last month
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: and for Meat Eater, and I've been I've been pounding
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: this drum pretty hard about finding another place to hunt.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: And so you know, what you're talking about is something
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: not everybody can do, right, Like, not everybody's gonna leave
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and go hunt Kansas. Like a lot of people
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: are staying home, right, And the goal that we've been
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: shown in white tail hunting for so long is get
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: a spot you can manage and make it so you
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: don't have to scout anymore. They're gonna come to the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: food plot, they're gonna go through certain you know, terrain
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: traps or whatever. Run some cameras keep tabs on them.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: But you don't have to scout anymore. But you don't
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: necessarily get a lot better without getting your ass kick.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: Like when you're talking about your first time in Kansas
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: and you're doing everything wrong. That's like a powerful motivator
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: to figure new stuff out that you can bring home
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: with you and you don't need to travel seventeen states
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: away to do it. Like I I think one of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: the biggest problems people have with white tails is we
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: limit ourselves to our spot. Like I hunt this place,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: this farm or whatever, and it's like great, you know,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: like that's that's great.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Like how are you limiting yourself? Like are you limiting
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: yourself on opportunities? If you have like the forty acres
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: you hunt and there's ten thousand acres of public land
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: down the road, like you could probably level up your
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: game a lot, scouting wise and hunting wise by by
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: putting yourself in that position where you're like, I don't
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: know what's going on here and I have to figure
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: it out. I think that's like the one of the things.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: You know, you hear a lot of like negativity out
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: there on people in the hunting industry and being like, oh,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: they're ruining everything, and I'm like, what you know, that's
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: a different topic. But I also look at it and
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: I go, these are some of the best hunters you're
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: ever gonna meet in your life because they're going to
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: places all the time where they have no history, where
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: they have to scout on the fly, or they have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: to really bring up their scouting game and figure it out.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: And we can all do that on some level. Yeah,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: you might not be able to go hunt seven states
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: a year like most people can't, but you might be
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: able to find a place an hour down the road.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Or maybe you live in you know, southern Michigan and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: you could hunt northern Michigan. You know, like maybe you
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: could do something that's still on your resident tag but
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: forces you to go I'm not just gonna go sit
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: on the same cornfields. I'm not gonna go sit on
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: the same ponds, Like I'm gonna go scout and figure
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: this stuff out. Because when you start challenging yourself that way. Man,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: things change, and like you get your ass kicked a lot,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: but you're getting better while you're doing it.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, as odd as it might sound, getting
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: my own handed to me is part of what I
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: like about some of these trips and hunting in these
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: different different areas. You know, to your point, man, like
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: you don't need to travel three six five however many
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: states states away, you know, just finding a pocket of
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: your your home state that just offers a different a
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: different scenario you know, is often enough, you know, Like
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: for me, I look forward, like even like locally, I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: don't hunt the same spots over and over again. Like
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: I can only think of one two spots all of
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: last season locally that I've hunted in the past, Like
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: every other spot that I hunted last year was was
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: was a fresh sit, was new, like I'd never I'd
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: scouted it, I'd hung a camera, check cameras in the summer,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: scouted in the summer a little bit, and then just
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: went in and hunted, right. And that's just kind of
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: what I like to do. I want to fill this
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: freaking Kansas tag this year because I want to go
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: to a different state and I'm determined to fill the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: tag before I there, fill a Kansas tag before I
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: venture off to another state because I've never been to Nebraska.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: I wanted to go to I want to go to Nebraska.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: I've never been to Oklahoma. I want to go to Oklahoma.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: I've never been to Minnesota. I want to go to Minnesota.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: I've never been to Wisconsin. Want to go there, you
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: know what I mean. So it's I just like to
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: I just like to experience brand new stuff. And for me,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: you know, going back to what we said earlier, you know,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: adaptability being your best ability. I just always want to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: kind of keep that at the forefront and force myself
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: to continue to adapt because whenever I'm incomfortable is it
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: makes that willingness to be uncomfortable and have to adapt
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: makes the game a little easier in some of those
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: spots that I have familiarity with, you know. And that's
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: why I think, you know, there's a time and place
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: for everything, you know, whether it's food, plot building, you know,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: smarter mouse trap, and I think that for people who
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: have access to that, I think that's great. I think
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: that's a great way to kind of start to understand
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: what deer like to do because you maybe see deer
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: more often, right, because I know you and I've talked
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: about like you've got to be around deer to learn deer. Right,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: So if you have a hard time finding deer and
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: you have a situation like that where you can just
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: be around deer and observe and walk, like that's a
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: great way to kind of cut your teeth and then
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: take it into like you know, a piece of big
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: woods or like the piece of public land it's close
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: to your home or whatever, and then start to see
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: how some of what you knew starts to fall apart,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: maybe just a little bit, and then what parts you
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: have to kind of like sharpen because there were skills
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: that you had, but they weren't quite where they needed
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: to be, honestly, to kill a deer that everyone else
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: has access to or that's not set up for you
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: to to put them in a certain spot where they're
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: doing exactly what they want to do and you're on
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: their terms, you know. And so I think there's a
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: time and place for stuff, But I one hundred percent
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: agree with you. Man. It's like when you force yourself
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: to go do unfamiliar stuff, you have no choice, but
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: to get better. Like that's when you're uncomfortable, you're growing.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: If you're not, if you're if you're not, if you're comfortable,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: then you're then you're then you're not progressing. It's kind
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: of like the old saying.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Oh man, and what you find out when you do that.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: And I don't care if you are traveling seven states
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: away or you're hunting something you know, a farmed on
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: the road you've never hunted before. You start to, like
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: you said, you start to realize the things that you
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: believed are bullshit, And man, I you know your your
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: obsession is getting that Kansas tag out of the way
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: and moving on to another state. I'm I really got
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: sucked into this this western Minnesota thing. So I hunted
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: there last year for a few days during the rut,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: got my ass handed to me, saw a few doughs,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: couldn't even get a four ky near me, Like really
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: really got rouffed up by it. But I'm like I'm
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: around them. And then I went back and pheasant hunted
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch again, which is the reason I wanted
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: to hunt there. And I'm pheasant hunting properties that I
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: deer hunted, and I'm jumping bucks, and it's pissing me
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: off because I'm seeing good deer right where I was hunting,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: and I go, people have told me my whole life
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: it's not worth deer hunting here, And then I go
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: pheasant hunt there, and I'm seeing good deer consistently. Then
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: I go deer hunt there, and I get my ass kicked,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: and so I go. The disconnect here is not that
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: there aren't good deer to hunt, or enough deer to hunt,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: or whatever, enough public land to hunt. It's it's all there.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: All of that is available. The disconnect was it's just
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: really hard, and so it's easier to say it's not
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: worth it than to actually go try to figure it out.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: But once you kind of get your like your claws
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: stuck into something like that, it's hard to not want
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: to get better. And you know, because I think, and
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: this is not everybody, Like I have buddies who they're
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: like wired so vastly different from me. For deer, like,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: they want a very consistent, pretty easy place to hunt,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: and that's like good for them. It's like they're working
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: hard in their life and they want to go sit
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: in a tree stand where they know if they put
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: in their time, he's coming by. But for a lot
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: of people, I think, you know, especially if you know,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: if you're listening to this podcast or reading our articles
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: or whatever, you're you're looking to level up, like you're
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: looking to get this stuff figured out, and man, hunting
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: a new place is one way to get you to
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: re frame your entire thought process on white tails and
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: kind of kind of get rid of that stuff that
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: you believe that just isn't true and start figuring out
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: what is true. And like that process doesn't end, like
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: you start getting hooked on it and you're like, I
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: want this more, and it just not only does it
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: help you become a better dear killer, it just makes
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: deer hunting more enjoyable, like you're just problem solving.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: It's and for me too, in like a weird way,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: it like whenever that when I have that type of experience,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: I just feel way more connected to the to the moment.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: I'm able to stay present more, if that makes sense,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: And like that's been like kind of a mantra for
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: me this year is like you know, trying to be
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: you know, more more present just in just in general,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: like in my day to day life and hunting being aware,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: you know, of my body's capabilities, you know my capabilities
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: you know, as a as a human, as a hunter.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: And I was just I kind of kind of I
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: don't want to say long. It seems like a weird
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: dramatic word, but like I do long for that like
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: like primal connection. And to me, like whenever I go
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: out and I get lost in these places and I
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: have to kind of figure it out, like that's when
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: I feel connected, as weird as that might sound, like
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: knowing jack shit, is when I feel most connected, you know,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: and so much so that like I've toyed around with
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: the idea of like switching to a trad bow just
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: for the sole purpose of it being more primitive and
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: being more connected, and it becomes part of me and
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: it's not there's not really anything mechanical, and there's nothing
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: wrong with I shoot a normal, you know, vertical bow.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: You know it's and I'm not poo pooing that because
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: you know, it's hard enough to try to do it
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: with that. But like I'm yearning this, like this like
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: primal connectivity that I seem to get whenever I'm in
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: places like Kansas and I feel like I'm out of
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: my element a little bit and I'm on the ground,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: you know. And that's the other part that I love
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: about when you go to these different places, they call
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: for different tactics. You know. Kansas was a big switch
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: me because like I really never hunted off on the
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: ground much at all, you know, except whenever i'd hunt
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: like elk or mule deer or whatever. And so it
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: made me get proficient at being able to be on
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: the ground and hunt, you know. And so now it's
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: like I don't shy away from those ground setups when
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: I'm in Pennsylvania. You know. It's like if there's a
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: good spot and nobody can get to it and there's
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: no trees, I'm like, hmm, this seems like a pretty
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: good spot, right, Like, shouldn't be a lot of pressure
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: in here. And so it makes you kind of you know,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: basketball players would say, like, you know, makes you, you know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: get a bigger bag. You know. It's like you got
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: a lot more handle, you know what I mean, so
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: to speak right, you know. And so that's the other
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: thing that I think it does not just from like
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: an academic kind of like mental how you process this stuff,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: because it's new standpoint, but you start adding things to
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: your arsenal because if not, that hunt is going to
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: be really long and hard, you know, until you start
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: to try some of that stuff, and then you know
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: the other part for me is just it is just
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: the connection to the to the challenge, you know, and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: the personal connection to it. And it seems like the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: longer I go, the harder I want to make it,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: because that's whenever I feel most connected and I feel
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: most present. Is whatever. Do you ever notice how when
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: you're doing something really hard, like you become a laser
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: focused like where you almost don't hear other stuff outside
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: of you, you know what I mean. And when something's
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: really easy or comes naturally right, you start to get
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: distracted by by things right. And I think that's the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: one thing that I've really kind of come to understand
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: and try to implement through like you knowing jiu jitsu,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: is that idea of like, when something is really really
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: tough and I have to really try, man, my focus
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: is laser sharp, and whenever it's not and something's easy,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: I don't perform as well, you know. So I meet
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: the challenge and then I will perform down to my
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: to my opponent. If you will right. My best roles
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: in the gym are always against guys who are way
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: better than me. Not a surprise because I'm trying to
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: keep up right. Same thing with deer hunting. It's like
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: if I'm at some place it's lazy, you know, just
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: say at home, I'm a worse deer hunter at home
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: than I am on the road. One hundred oh, man,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: that is.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: That is something you learn so fast when you travel
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: to hunt, is how much you phone it in when
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: you're at a place you you think, you know, I mean,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: it's it's crazy and you like you mentioned, you know,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: kicking around the idea hunting with a trad bow and
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: you know hunting, you know, going to Kansas and all
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, I got to sit on the ground.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, I'm gonna I'm gonna decoy when
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: you you might never pick up a decoy in the
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: big woods of Pennsylvania right like it. Also, you're out
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: of your comfort zone. You're doing things different. I I
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: hunted for a few years with a trad bow back
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: when I was in my twenties. And I'll tell you what, man,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: when you hear people talk about it and they go, well,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm not shooting a bowl with training wheels
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: on it, like you always think. It's just tied to
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: like the distance that you can be accurate, right, That's
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: part of it, you know, Like when you when you've
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: got to recurver a long bow up there, You're like,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I want him at fifteen yards quartered away, and I
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: want I want that dream me shot, you know, like
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: you're not sitting on the edge of a bean field,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: range in it and go, Well, if he comes through
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: that row, he's thirty five yards, I'll dial into that
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: and shoot him. It's a different thing that way. But
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: what really messed me up, or at least forced me
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: to rethink my setups was if you've got a re
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: curve and it's you know, fifty five inches tip to
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: tip or sixty inches whatever it is, that shot that
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: you would take behind the tree with a compound, you
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: don't have it. You can't get around there, or you know,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: it depends how you hold. I can't. I can't my bow,
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: so I take up a lot of space. I'm not
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: shooting straight up and down or just like when you're
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: on the ground, like oh, you're gonna go get in
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: a ground blind and do this now? Good luck? Right,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: can't do it? You just have to think, like, now,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: how do I structure my setup so not only is
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: he going to be there at that range, I'm gonna
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: actually be able to draw on him and shoot him.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: It's a different thing, and it I mean, I still
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: I haven't done it in a long time. I'm gonna
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: go back eventually, probably when my job isn't tied to
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: killing stuff. But it forced me to look at everything differently,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: and I didn't think it would. I've kind of seen
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: the same thing taking my daughters when they cross bow hunt.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: I'm like, it's such an advantage that now it sort
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: of takes away like three layers of difficulty. Would you
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: don't have to worry about drawing? Okay, Like you know
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: what I mean. So that goes a different way, but
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: all of it forces you to think, like, man, you
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: know what, I was comfortable with one little variation and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: weapon or one little variation in like hunting styles. Now
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: you've got a problem. You've got a problem solve in
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: a totally different way, and it, like you said, it
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: brings you into the moment. And I man, I think
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: that stuff's important.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: One hundred percent is man, and it's like, you know,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it's you know, getting older or
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: whatever it is, but you know, the longer I do this,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: and and maybe for me too, like this year, you know,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: I kind of had a focus of some other stuff
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: that I was, you know, focusing on trying to trying
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: to get better at, and I think it allowed me
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: to kind of look at hunting a little bit differently.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: I think for a while I was getting wrapped up.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: You know, it was all consuming. And I'm not saying
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: it like that. You know, you shouldn't be dedicated and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: passionate about it because I love I love bow hunting, right,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: but there's also a part of like you sometimes need
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: things that pull you away slightly that way whenever you
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: get in it, that the passion and everything is there,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: right because you and I've talked about this, like there's
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: parts of this that suck, you know what I mean,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: there's parts of this that are a grind, right, And
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: to pretend that it's all rainbows and unicorns and stuff
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: like that, it just is a is a false narrative.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: And I was finding myself there where I was like,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: I love this stuff, but like it's starting to wear
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: on me a little bit because I do like hard hunts,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I do like the challenging stuff,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: and that's the part that I love. But you know,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: there's a part of me that's like I'm like, okay,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: this is this is getting brutal, you know what I mean. Like,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: and so I had to kind of you know, you know,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: I've talked like I started training a lot of jiu
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: jitsu and that's the thing that kind of took me
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: away from it, not away from it, but allowed me
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: to kind of divert my attention to where it's like
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: I wasn't so obsessed, and that distance actually gave me
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: more clarity, you know. And like you'll hear a lot
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: about this type of stuff and like leadership stuff, and
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: it applies whenever you're talking about deer hunting. It's like
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: whenever things are kind of getting rough or whatever, it's
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: like you need to detach and assess, right, you need
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: to be able to step back from yourself and almost
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: look at yourself as though you're like a ghost, you know,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: and go like what's going on here? Like what part
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: of this is the part that you don't get joy
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: out of any longer right, and then define what that is.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: Not saying that there was loss of joy in in
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: deer hunting or whatever, but like what aspects were starting
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: to grind on me, you know what I mean to
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: make me, you know, not love it as much as
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: I maybe did three years ago. And it was that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: assessment where I was like, Okay, cool, let's just cut
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: that shit out and awesome, and now it's gone, you know.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: And the part that I cut out was it was
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: actually a personal thing where I felt compelled that I
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: needed to be always doing something for it, otherwise I
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: was slacking, right, And it was that idea that and
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: then I what I realized was was that I was
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: doing that because I felt like these external pressures of like,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: you know, whether it was because I have a hunting
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: podcast or whatever the case, I don't know exactly where
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: they came from. But I was like, that's just no
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: one's expecting me to do that. I'm doing that to myself.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: And so once I removed that, you know, and was like,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: I'll do this whenever I on my time, when I
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: feel like it, and whenever I want to do it,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: as opposed to whenever I feel obligated to do it,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: you know, And that was really what And so it
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: wasn't like I spent any less time doing it or
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: thinking about it. It's just like I allowed myself to
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: be free to do it whenever the mood struck, and
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: it brought the joy back to it again, you know.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: I mean. And so for me, that was like the
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: idea of like the trad bow and stuff like that,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: because I was like, you know, I don't care if
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: someone thinks that, you know, I'm killing something smaller than
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: I should because I'm using a trad bow, or I
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: blew an opportunity because I'm using a trad bow. It's
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: like I want the experience, don't care what the other
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: person thinks, you know what I mean. It's like and
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: and so and that was kind of like, you know,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: it was good for me, like to kind of detach
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: train jiu jitsu. That's also mental shift too, that really helps.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: And now it's like I'm like I was sending you
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: dear pictures man, It's like I'm geeked.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: It's like like this season I'm like super pumped for.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: Like I'm just like probably more excited for this upcoming
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: season than I've been probably in the past two.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: Dude, I love that. And I think you know when
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: you talk about you when you start to feel that
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: this stuff sucks and it starts to be not fun.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, And if you're listening to this and you
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: haven't hit that stage yet, just wait, it's coming. Yeah,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: it's just sitting right up over the hill waiting for
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: you to walk over. Man, it's coming. And for me,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: you know, a change of scenery does me really well,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: like a new kind of challenge, but also just just
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: learning to trust the process because we always think like
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: if only I do this, or if only I do that,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: or if like it's going to happen, and the truth
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: is it's probably not. Like you're probably going to keep
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: failing no matter what. But if you learn, just like
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: anything like working out or anything like, if you learn
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: the long game process and you go there's a lot
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: of suck built into this, but the reward is coming,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: then it's like it's easier to just go, Okay, I know,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: I gotta do this. I gotta run these cameras, or
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: I gotta go look at this, or I got a
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: glass for the night, or I like, I gotta do
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: the process. I gotta give myself that shot because if
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: I do that, like, eventually, the reward's gonna come, and
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: it might not be seven bucks this year, it might
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: be one or two good encounters or whatever. It might
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: lead you two seasons down the road where you kill
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: three of them in three states and you have an
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: amazing season and then you start over like but but
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: you learn that it's like this is what it takes.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing like if you if you struggle
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: with like depression and you're like, I gotta figure out
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: a way to manage this better. One of the things
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of people learn is I need to move
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: my body and wear myself out. Like it's not the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: only answer a lot of times. But it's like I
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: don't want to run. I don't want to run five
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: days a week, but I know that sucky part is
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: going to make me feel better overall and be a
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: better person, Like I don't have a choice, Like I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: gotta trust that process to get myself into a better place.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: Deer hunting is exactly the same. Like if you're not
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: hunting a banging property where you can just count on
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: them showing up, you got to figure out that process
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: of scouting and you know, scout to learn how to
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: hunt specific spots, not just find the deer. The process
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: will deliver for you eventually, and once it starts to
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: it's like, okay, at least I have a template. When
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: I start veering off and I start feeling really shitty
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: or like I need that break or whatever, that's fine,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: you can return to the process.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's no shortcuts, right, this is It's
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: one of those things that's very akin to like working out,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: running jiu jitsu or whatever it is, where there's not
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: like a you know, pass, go collect two hundred dollars
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, like everything's good to go.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: You know, it's it just doesn't happen that way. It'd
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: be nice if it did, you know, But it's just
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: not the it's just not the truth of the truth
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: of the matter. And there's a lot of suck that's
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: built into it. And sometimes you said, you know, you
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: mentioned something there about scouting, and I was just thinking.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: I was like, sometimes you have to scout to learn
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: how to scout to where you're not going to do
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: it right the first time, you know what I mean,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: or the second time or the third time. You know,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: it's going to take doing it over and over again
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: to where you start to see like where the shortcomings
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: are right. And sometimes you're fortunate you have someone who's
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: close to you or that you know who can point
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: your shortcomings out to kind of help you expedite that
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: part of it. If not, you'll still get there. It
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: might just take you a little longer, and that doesn't matter.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: I think people get you know, hung up also like
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: in the idea that like it has to happen within
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: a certain amount of time, you know, And that was
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: probably like the biggest learning lesson with the training stuff
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: that I've been doing is that people don't advance the
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: same rate. There's a lot of reasons why people even
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: if you commit two people commit, you know, jiu jitsu
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: at the same time, same body size, same strength, same everything,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: and they train the same amount of days, doesn't mean
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: they're going to advance the same rate. And so you
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: can't get hung up on like this person that you
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: started with or that's around your skill level or whatever
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: is advancing more quickly than you. Right, It's all about
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: your your personal journey, and it's interesting once you start
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: focusing on that journey, all of a sudden the advancing
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: happens like I won't say overnight, but all of a
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: sudden you start to see it like it comes in spades.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: And I feel like hunting's kind of the same way.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: Whereas when you start, if you're comparing your journey to
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: somebody else, you're always going to lose because you don't
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: have the same Even if everything you think, everything you
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: can kind of put your finger on, is the same,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: it's not the same. You know your your inputs if
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: you will right, and so you're always going to feel
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: like you're not enough when you're measuring yourself against someone
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: else because they're advancing more quickly than you, or they're
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: achieving more than you are. But if you frame it
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: in am I atter deer hunter this year than I
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: was last year? Then you're moving in the right direction.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: And then that's all you need to be worried about
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: is just what is your journey? How are you being fulfilled?
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: How are you enjoying the process. What parts of the
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: process don't you like? Then don't do them? You know
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: what I mean. You don't have to do you know
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: what I mean. It's just you find what works for
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: you and you focus on the path that you're kind
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: of creating and not the other paths people are, you know,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: creating for themselves. That's a losing battle, you know. And
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: once you start doing that, you know, it's all of
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: a sudden the amount of joy you would expect is there.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: And then something funny happens as that all of a
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: sudden the results show up too.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: Yep, dude, you start not taking it so seriously and
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: you start having fun. The big bucks are dying and
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: it's a hard place to get to. Man.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and it's not a it's not a not caring,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: you know, because I think that sometimes people get it
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: misinterpreted with like having fun and not caring. It's like, no,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: you care, but it's like you don't live and die
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: with the results the end result, you know, you you
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: appreciate the journey. Yep, you know. And that's you know,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: like you could equate like big bucks to like a
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: black belt. Right. It's like there's a saying, you know
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: in jiu jitsu that anyone whoever wanted to become a
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: black belt did because all itever is is takes his
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: time and commitment, right, Anyone who ever wanted to kill
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: a booner really everyone to kill a booner did right,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: because it just took time and and focus on that thing,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: and eventually it'll happen, you know, And so I so
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: that's kind of like what my new approach has been
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: has been.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: That My my new approach is mostly just take my
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: kids and then hunt when I can and shoot whatever
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: watch by and I freaking love it. Although I'll tell
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: you what, man, You know, like we talked about like
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: traveling in new places and scouting new stuff when and
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: then you know, you were just talking about like finding
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: the things you enjoy there. It's it's not like you're
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: going to find styles of scouting or find some kind
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: of terrain that you just love to hunt and that's
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: the end, because they'll drift away or over time something
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: will be like I'm not that into this anymore. I
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: need something else. So like you have to understand that
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: this is it's like all happiness, right. It's a moving target, man,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Like you hit it today and you won't hit it tomorrow.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: But you got to keep looking. And I found that,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: you know. For I hunted a lot of public land
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: for like a decade, like a bunch of states had
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: a good run. But I was burned Man. Like I
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: was like, I'm I'm sick of drive, and I'm sick
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: of camping. I'm sick of like the pressure. And you know,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: for the last couple of years with Meat Eater, I've
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: had to save tags and it's been different seasons than
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: I'm used to, and so I was like, this is
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: kind of a relief. I don't feel the pressure to
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: go kill a bunch of stuff on public land. And
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: what I found was that's actually kind of what I
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: need to be happy. Like I went to South Dakota
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: and we filmed a hunt with the Element Boys the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: buck Truck deal and didn't go that well. I had
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: a pretty decent hunt, you know, I had one really
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: good encounter at the end, but I told my wife
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: when I got home, I'm like, I'm going back without
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: a camera guy, and I'm going to go figure this
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: out because I just needed it. And I went back
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: and I had another you know, one hundred and thirty
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: eenter come in super close. Screwed that up, but I
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: left it going. Even though I didn't film my tag,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: I left it going like that was what I needed,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: Like it just it made me feel good, like I'm like, Okay,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: I got to have that kind of thing mixed in there,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: other wise the whole thing doesn't work for me, right,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: figuring the more the more of that stuff you figure out,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: the better it is to just go okay, Like, man,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: I'm veering off a little bit. I'm in the ditch,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: like I'm in the room bar, but like I need
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: to correct here and get back up onto the road.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: And if you know where that is, it's awesome to
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: like try that stuff and figure out new things because
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: you always kind of go okay, like I know where
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: my true north is, Like I know what baseline. I
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: need to just enjoy this and always find what I'm
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: looking for out there. I think that's so like that matters.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's funny that you know, people will
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of jump around or experience different things,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: Like they would never want to eat the same food
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: every day. We'll use that as an example, right, And
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: so when you think about like how you kind of
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: find like happiness or joy and something like that, to
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: expect to find it consistently in the same spot and
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: deer hunting, you know, seems crazy if you think about it, right,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: you didn't you don't find that if someone said, like
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: even like even when I was a musician, was doing
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: that right, and that was kind of like my gig
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: there got and that was all I ever wanted to
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: do when I was a kid growing up, Like that
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: was it, like that was my passion and I finally
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: got to do it, you know, eight nine, ten years
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: of doing it, you know, all of a sudden it
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: became a job, you know, and yeah, I still enjoyed
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: it. It was about as lacks of daisical you know, loose
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: call loose job as you could possibly have, you know,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: being a delinquent, but there was an element of work
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: to it that started sucking the joy out of it,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, because it became the thing
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: that you had to do, and it was a certain
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: type of music and I was expected to write a
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: certain way because that was what we were, you know,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: had a record deal for or whatever. That was what
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: you know, the producer was expecting or the management was expecting,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: or whatever the case was. And so it's crazy to
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 3: think that hunting is not the same. And that's something
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: that I've kind of you know realized and kind of
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: been spending more time paying attention to because you know,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: you asked me when we first started, like you know
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: about private land or any private land or whatever any
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: family owns some back back home. And I've been thinking
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: a lot recently, like why am I not going back
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: and spending time with my dad, like hunting his property
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: with him, you know what I mean? Like is it
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: because I feel so compelled that I've got to do
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: this public land thing because that's what I really like
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: to do, Or should I be hunting with the old
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: man because that will actually that will bring me a
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: different type of joy that I probably haven't had since
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: I was a kid, you know. And he wants to
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: go do an elk hunt, and I don't like using outfitters,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: and he only wants to go use an outfitter because
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: he's an older fellow. He wants the comforts, you know
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: what I mean. And we've kind of put it off
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: because I'm like, ah, Dad, it's just it's to a
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: public land piece. I got a buddy who's got like
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: a cab and we can stay at you know. And
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: then I'm thinking, like, dude, you're an asshole, Like your
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: dad wants to go do an elk hunt with you
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: at some like you know, outfitter like get off your
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: wallet and spend a couple of bucks to go make
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: a memory, you know what I mean, And don't be
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: a douche, you know what I mean. And so it's like,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: and you know, I'm being honest with people that are
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: listening here, It's like I've been very selfish in that regard,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: you know. And to me, I think when I think
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: about things, part of what was driving me a little
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: crazy whenever I did that step back and kind of
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: reevaluate was like, I recognize the selfishness that I had
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: in this and that was the other part that was
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: starting to suck the joy out of it for me.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 3: And so it was that commitment to like, man, spend
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: time with the buddies, you know, go hunt with your dad,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: even if it's a good weather day and you know
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: there's a deer somewhere that you could try to go kill.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: Like still go hunt with the old mand even though
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: you're probably not gonna see jack shit, you know what
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: I mean. Like, So it's just stuff like that, you know.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's like being an adult,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: you know, or you know, being a parent with a
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: teenage daughter or or what you know, because I'm thinking
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: in the back of my mind, you know, even if
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: it's not hunting related, like when she's my age, and
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: I hope she would make the choice to spend time
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: with me, you know, and and so I need to
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: kind of I need to give her the roadmap for that.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 3: She needs to see me do it. She needs to
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: see me be committed to spending time with my dad,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: you know, as we're both getting older and stuff like that.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: And I know that Mark's been doing like this series
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: on parenting and stuff like that, so I don't feel
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 3: completely out of place mentioning that.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: Well. I mean, it just changes you man, you know,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: taking your kids hunting or you know, you get to
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: a certain age and you realize, like the big buck
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: things kind of dumb. It's way overrated, It's not that important.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I mean there's just more to the
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: experience in that, and you kind of realize how much
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: of a gift this white tail hunting thing really is.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great way to end this. Man,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: Where can everybody find your podcast, the website, all that
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: good stuff.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: Social Yeah, it's a truth from the stand on all
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 3: the different social platforms and wherever you like to waste
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 3: your time running down the rabbit Hole on YouTube. It's
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: a truth from the stand your hunting podcast. All the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: places that you find, all the places you'll find podcasts awesome.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it, buddy. That's it for this week, folks.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: Be sure to tune in next week for more white
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: tail goodness. This has been Wired to Hunt and I'm
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: your guest host, Tony Peterson. As always, I just want
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: to thank you so much for your support and for
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: sticking with us through I don't know how many hundreds
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: episodes now it's bananas, but we really do appreciate that
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: you guys show up every week and you give us
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: the support, so thank you for that. If you want
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: more whitetail content, head on over to the mediat dot com.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: You can see articles that I've written. You can see
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: articles by Mark, Alex Gilstrom, Dylan trmp, Bomartonic, whole bunch
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: of white tail Killers. Tony Hansen's in there in the
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: mix too, or you can you know, if you have
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: a short attention span or you're just like watching stuff,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: you can check out The Buck Truck, a new series
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: that we dropped pretty recently that was produced by the
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: Element Boys who are absolute public land whitetail killers as well.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: If you like hunting, if you like phishing, there's some
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: content there for you that you're gonna love somehow somewhere.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: Go find it at the mediater dot com