Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 388: Overcoming the Challenges of the Whitetail Rut

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Ep. 388: Overcoming the Challenges of the Whitetail Rut · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
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  Speaker 1: and today the show, I am joined by Tony Peterson
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  Speaker 1: and our back forty camera crew to discuss the challenges, trials,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and tribulations of hunting the white tail rut and how
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  Speaker 1: you can overcome those things and the story of my
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: back forty buck. All right, welcome to the Wired to
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  Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today we
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  Speaker 1: are talking the rut. As this episode is dropping, we
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: are kind of right in the midst of it for
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: people listening. I think this is going to drop on
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  Speaker 1: November twelve. So if you're listening to November twelve, and
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: if you're a white tail junkie like I am and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the guys with me are, I'm sure you've been spending
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  Speaker 1: a lot of days in the woods. I'm sure you've
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  Speaker 1: hopefully had some exciting days, but probably some frustrating ones too,
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of what I wanted to focus on today,
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  Speaker 1: is the the side of the white tail rut that
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  Speaker 1: you don't always hear about in the off season, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the off season we talked about, Oh, it's the super
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Bowl of the deer hunting season. Oh it's the time
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  Speaker 1: when dreams come true. It's it's everything you dream of
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  Speaker 1: as a white tail hunter and then it gets here.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes it can be like that, but sometimes it's
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  Speaker 1: something different. There are trials and tribulations. There are many
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: things that can be frustrating. There are many times when
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: you're sitting there and you're thinking, this is not the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: way they talk it up to be. So that's what
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I want to cover, is how to deal with the
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  Speaker 1: challenges that the white tail rut can throw you. With me,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I've got the crew that has been with me hunting
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  Speaker 1: on the back forty over the last week. To my left,
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  Speaker 1: I've got Mr Tony Petersondy, thanks for being here, Thanks
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  Speaker 1: for having me man, thanks for hunting with us, coming
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  Speaker 1: over to Michigan, leaving the promised land of places like
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Iowa and Minnesota and Wisconsin and coming here to the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Mitten State. I think maybe your buddy Dan Johnson and
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I will start a support group because he came here
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  Speaker 1: and you guys have had a very similar experience. Yeah, don't.
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  Speaker 1: Let's not let's not talk too much about your experience yet.
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  Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's it's it's Michigan. We'll we'll dive
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  Speaker 1: into that in a second. So Tony's here, and Tony
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  Speaker 1: is everyone listening should know as an incredibly experienced successful
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  Speaker 1: d Y Bohunter travels the country, hunts a lot of
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  Speaker 1: public land, hunts a lot of kills, a lot of
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  Speaker 1: great bucks, and as a contributor to mediator, a writer,
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  Speaker 1: a podcaster, and he has joined me as my partner
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  Speaker 1: in crime Hunting the Farm this year for one of
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  Speaker 1: our episodes of the Back forty show. Uh. To the
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  Speaker 1: left of him is one of our cameraman extraordinaire who's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: taking off his shoes in the middle of the podcast,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: making a lot of noise. Charlie, do you want to
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  Speaker 1: introduce yourself? Hey man, how are you? My feet were hot?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: We're sitting in a wall tent and it is getting
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: really warm. Now, um can I interject here for a second.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So this guy's my camera guy. And if you think
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it's awkward when he does that stuff, he's just sitting
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a tree with him all day. His timing is wild.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I am not surprised to hear that, Oh, can you
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: give me one example of a Charlie is symmetry I've seen? Well,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: so can he talk about that stuff? Yea, yeah, that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: this might be l rated. It's it has been a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: wild experience sitting with Charlie. We have figured out all
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: kinds of conspiracy theories, We've figured out aliens, We've figured
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: out different stuff about psychic behaviors. The thing with Charlie
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: is is he just has these random thoughts that come
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  Speaker 1: up into his head and he can't keep him inside.
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  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, it you know what I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: was thinking about. You know, I had this dream the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: other day and I woke up and the things that
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: pop out of his mouth. Or this morning he told
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: me about he had a stint where he had six
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: months of werewolf dreams in a row. When Charlie starts
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  Speaker 1: talking about you just always look at your face. It's
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: always gold. Oh yeah, yeah, we keep it interesting here.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Next in line, we've got Justin and I always say
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: his last name round Michelle. Michael's okay at this point, Sorry,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: it's fine. Justin is the guy that has been stuck
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  Speaker 1: following me around the woods filming photographing, being a general trooper, um,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: dealing with all my manic O C D. Strange things
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I do in the woods. What's one strange thing I do.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: You won't be fired, you won't be criticized. This is
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  Speaker 1: the trust. You shouldn't have to think that hard. Oh man.
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  Speaker 1: I just I think there's a level of being on
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  Speaker 1: edge that I'm always on. So I try to think
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  Speaker 1: one step ahead of Mark. Like the other day, I
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: was like, I really wanted to eat my breakfast, but
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I knew it had a rapper yeah, And so I
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: was like, Mark, isn't it time to for a snack
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: or something. He's like, yeah, you're right, and it's like yes,
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  Speaker 1: So what he did He wanted to snack, but he
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: knew that if he started unwrapping the snack with me,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: he was worried. Mark has here's, here's It's not a
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  Speaker 1: weird thing, but it is a I've now sat with
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: him quite a few times, even with his dad, and
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I have these immediate reactions to I know, like, I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: just know that if anything goes wrong, he is going
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to go to like level ten. So so I was
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: just always like, oh man, if a camera lens or
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: something clicks. I'm like, so there's a level of anxiety
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  Speaker 1: that has now passed. What do you say, go to
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  Speaker 1: level ten? What do I do? What is a level ten?
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  Speaker 1: For me? I just know that you're swearing without talking.
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  Speaker 1: It's always in my head, unless for with your dad. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just a perfectionist. No, I'm just man, I'm just
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: a perfectionist. But if I said this to you the
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  Speaker 1: other day to make you feel it makes me feel
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: like that I am cussing it myself. And I make
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: mistakes too. Oh yeah, we've had that going to We'll
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: have to tell that story eventually here. Um so, so yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we're here in the back forty and what I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to do was was use the story of what we're
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: doing here and how the hunts have been going to
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  Speaker 1: illustrate some of these Rutchen olenges. So I'm hoping this
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: can be kind of a story podcast a little bit,
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  Speaker 1: but really it's how to podcast. We're talk you through
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  Speaker 1: how to handle some of these things, uh, and just
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and just kind of share our story along the way.
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  Speaker 1: That's gonna blend it all together. And I will give
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: you the teaser here. The fact that we have had
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  Speaker 1: some success here in the Back forty a deer has
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  Speaker 1: been shot during the rut, and I want to tell
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  Speaker 1: that story too. So Back forty Whitetail Rut or hunt
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  Speaker 1: start on November seven, and on November seven, we have
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  Speaker 1: had both the for the three or four days leading
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  Speaker 1: up to that and now the three or four days
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  Speaker 1: since then, really hot, unseasonably warm, miserable weather for the rut. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: and that has been something that a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: all across the country have been dealing with right now,
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  Speaker 1: dealing with hot weather in the rut, Tony, what are
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  Speaker 1: your thoughts on that when it comes to gosh, sorry, guys,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hear winds, very windy. We're recording in a
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  Speaker 1: wall tent on the property, so work with us here.
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  Speaker 1: Hot weather during the rut Tony, what are your thoughts, uh,
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  Speaker 1: specifically on this property. My thought was, I wish, I
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  Speaker 1: wish that you had spent less time on bees and
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  Speaker 1: more time on building ponds because there's no water to
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  Speaker 1: be found here and it has been hot. It has
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  Speaker 1: been an early morning kind of deal with the deer,
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  Speaker 1: and then you just feel that sun at like ten
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  Speaker 1: o'clock and it just feels like it's over and it
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  Speaker 1: it feels like it's it's the kind of heat that
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  Speaker 1: really will shut down the cruising. You know, we always say,
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  Speaker 1: oh the rout will trump everything, but this is like
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  Speaker 1: extreme and it's you know, it's at least bared out
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  Speaker 1: from what we saw. It really really got tough in
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the middle of the day. But it's you know, I
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  Speaker 1: look at this like the bad winter thing. If you hunt,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you know, up in the up or northern northern Minnesota wherever.
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  Speaker 1: It's like when the bad winter comes, everybody's like, oh
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  Speaker 1: my god, this is the worst one ever. But you
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  Speaker 1: get them like every five years, you know. And so
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  Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, like these hot ruts in
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  Speaker 1: it was ridiculously hot. You know. I remember hunting down
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  Speaker 1: in Nebraska and it was the same kind of weather
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  Speaker 1: pattern where it was just brutal. You know, it's only
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and so this stuff happens.
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  Speaker 1: So you just gotta kind of you don't, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you don't want it, like this is not ideal, but
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  Speaker 1: it's coming. Like you keep hunting the next five years,
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  Speaker 1: you might hit another one of those. So it's just
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  Speaker 1: it just is what it is. So what do you
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  Speaker 1: do though, So when you when when you saw this
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  Speaker 1: in the forecast and you're thinking through how we'd approach it.
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  Speaker 1: Do you approach things any differently when you've got four
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  Speaker 1: or five days of tempts or whatever. Well, when you're
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: on a when you're on a small property, it's just
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  Speaker 1: time on stand, you know. I mean, it's kind of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the same pattern. You go, Okay, well, I gotta I
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  Speaker 1: gotta get the hours in and if I see something actionable,
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  Speaker 1: it's time to move, you know. But it's just a
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  Speaker 1: a lot of this is a mental thing. You know.
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  Speaker 1: It's so much easier to sit all day when there's
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  Speaker 1: a cruiser every couple of hours and it feels right,
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  Speaker 1: this is this is between your ears, this stuff. Yeah,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: that's that's very true. And it's easy to get so
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  Speaker 1: down about it that you lose that sense of readiness.
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  Speaker 1: At times, it's so hot, it's no way anything that's
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: gonna happen. It's ten o'clock and it's already seventy degrees,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and it's really easy to think not not today. But
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: if it's in those moments typically when you lose your
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: focus and you start looking at your phone or think
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: about what do I get out of here that something
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: does come through. Now. Now all that said, though, I still,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: like you said, it does seem like once you get
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: to the middle of the day, it's shut down, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: so I have not felt like we needed hunt all
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: day because of that. Do you agree with that? Yeah,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I mean we were just talking right right off air
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: here about how we all kind of drove the same
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: spot to go get lunch and there's a random does
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: bettered in the middle of a wide open cut bean
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: field today and you see that and you go, it
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: just makes me think they're getting chased all night long,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: or they're getting chased in the cover, and so they're
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: just betting like you'd see them in you know, January
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: when it's one of those really arctic fronts comes in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and you see them right in the food source. We
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: saw that today, and it's like we haven't that always,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Like there's still things going on and things change in
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and it's just it's just one of those things you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: deal with. I mean, I think about this with you're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: kind of the current state await till hunting in a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: lot of ways is to try to create this a
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: spot where it wouldn't matter, you know what I mean,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Like you got the food plot, you got the cover,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you got the pond build That wouldn't if you were hunting,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that situation wouldn't matter. But you take a step back
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: from that, you don't have that, then you go, Okay,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: now I gotta deal with this and what do I do?
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And it's like, well, you can look at the forecast
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and sit it out, but you know, if you're sitting
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: out like November seven, eighth, ninth, like, you're still missing out.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And we had great mornings. I mean it was still
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: it was still absolutely worth going. It just wasn't like
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the ideal situation as it still pretty good. Yeah, and okay,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: so but here's something that you have We have talked about.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: We have like a seven day window and typically November seven,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: number November eight, I would be typically thinking I'm going
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: into my best stuff, my best rout spots now. But
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: because of how warmer it was, we have not necessarily
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: gone into all of our best spots yet because we've
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: got a cold front that was hitting on day five.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: So we have had some discussion around hunting some stuff
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: that mean maybe wouldn't otherwise in order to preserve some
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: better spots or areas once the cold front hits. Can
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: you walk me through some of your calculus on that, Tony,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: because that's it's a little bit of a hard one
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: because like you said, you still can get the great
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: red action first thing the morning or late at night.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So is it worth sacrificing that? I mean I've waffled
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: on a little bit myself this week. Yeah. I mean
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: what we haven't touched on about that is when you
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: get a weather pattern like we've had, we've been we've
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: been dealing with south winds the whole time, and so
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: when you you know that's obviously this is so variable
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: by property, but here that shut down an awful lot
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of options. And you know, the kind of the main
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: swamp on this farm that's really that little microclimate, a
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: cooler area and thicker cover that south wind make. You know,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a no go zone. And so you're
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: sitting here playing around with other areas and going every
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: single day, all day long, we get in there and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the winds the same direction, and so you kind of think, well,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: if it were if you had winds to deal with,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: at least diving into some of that stuff on the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: seventh eighth would have been worth it. If the wind
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: worked for it, Yeah, but it just doesn't. We Yeah,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: we didn't have that here. And that's something you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: it's like, uh kind of kind of like parallels this
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: rout thought process, where like the rout's gonna save me,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it's gonna send a buck by me. We're as deer
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: hunters were like these eternal optimists, and we go, Okay,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: this is gonna be the day or there's gonna be
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the time where I hung this stand, and it is
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: freaking perfect. And then you look at the forecast and
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the winds wrong, or you look at the forecast and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the winds right. You get out there and the winds
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: that's the worst. And you know, I keep thinking about
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that this year. Just how different if I walk a
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: hundred yards or I climb a bluff, what the winds
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: supposed to be doing and what it's actually doing in
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that little spot I'm at is so vastly different. And
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: so it's like a it's this dumb lesson you learn
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: run over and over and over again. And so we've
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: we've dealt with that here too. Is just okay, what's
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: what's the wind really gonna give us? And it's been
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: pretty stingy so far. Yet we I never anticipated straight
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: southwest or south winds for our rut trip, so we
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: really don't have much set up for that. We had
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: to go in and hang new things and kind of
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: figure it out as we went. UM. But it is
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: what it is, and you just have to roll with it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: So let's talk through our setups for these first few days.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Then that we did try to um make work here,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about we did here. But
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: then I also would be curious to think of here
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: about what you would do on a place not like this,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: but if you were somewhere where you had hundreds or
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: thousands of acres of public land, hot weather. But let's
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: get to that in a second. First first night here, UM,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: what we did for the first morning we simply looked at,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: is there anywhere we can hunt with a southeast wind
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: on a small property? And this is a sexty four
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: acre property. One big chunk of cover in the middle
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of the rest is these wide open fields and fence rows.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: There's some food plots, there's the improvements we tried to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: make to the fields that have helped a little bit,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: but they're still you know field, UM, so relatively limited
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: in certain ways. Uh. I think the first morning it
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: was kind of get somewhere that we know we can
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: be safe with that wind and observe and kinda put
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: us in a position to get reset up with the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: new spots for the evening. Would you uh agree with
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that general sentiment when we started the first morning was
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: a sandbagger. Yeah. We didn't hunt the worst places. Um.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I mean I sat the corner stand where the where
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: one of our fields cuts into the swamp, and then
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the honey hole ridge drops down into that corner, and
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: so there's a little bit of a pinch. If anything
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: wanted to be along the edge of that swamp, they
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: basically had to come through that little juncture there, and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: that is where I killed the wide ape from. He
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: actually came out of the field, came out of the the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: honey hole across the field and ground him down. Um.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: But we didn't see much at all. I saw five
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: does all the way across on the other hillside. Um,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and you saw a couple of those, Yeah, so something
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: pretty similar. Then midday that day we both decided to
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: move somewhere else. Um, walk me through your thought process
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: when you're picking that spot. Um, well, we I was
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: looking at just getting into a situation where we could
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: see where the does that we saw in the morning
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: kind of where they were originating from where they were going,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: and you've got this this property is there's a lot
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: of visible stuff from it. So it's like, I don't
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: know if I should say this or not, but I
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: felt like hunting the back forty was like going to
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the strip club, like you where's this going? Like you
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: can look, but you can't touch, and so you just
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: keep We're sitting here and we're like, oh, there's a
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: corn field there we can see, and there's a bean
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: field there we can see, and so you're just playing
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: like okay, are they coming and going? And you're and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: really what what it ended up being? At least, so
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: what I think I saw this week was if it
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: was cover, it was good, and if it was open
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it was bad, just generally. And so that first night,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: we you know, we're just looking like, okay, where can
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: we kind of observe and certain moving in and the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: spot we picked a look over that cornfield was the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: wind was terrible, and so we just backed off into
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: that corner, the far corner of the property, thinking, you know,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: there's there's kind of a swamp behind that, you know,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: and there's there's one ridge you can see on one side,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: kind of a ridge leading in on the other and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it just sort of looked like a hub. And so
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: that's that was the place that I ended up at
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: that night. And I've sat there more than I've probably
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: sat any stand in my life. And it is now
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: pulled and done, and it treated it treated me really
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: well in the in the mornings and not well in
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the evening. So, uh, those and little bucks, I know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I made a comment this morning when we were filming
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that I'm not name them guy, like I know, you
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: name lots of stuff and spots and deer, and I
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: named that place the nursery because because it was if
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: there was you hear that coming and you're like, oh,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: that's a buck, and you'd look and it would be
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a you know, the Michigan eleven point with a little
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: pencils on his head or some kind of scrapper, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it just we never it never became anything else. And
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: so it was every morning that we hunted there, it
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was at least one or two encounters with bucks, and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: they were all scrappers and you just you just go, okay,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: this is this just isn't it. You know, like you'd think, man,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: you see him cruised through like this, like a little
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: one does it, A big one could do it, and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it just never materialized. It's one of those things though
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: we certainly could. Yeah. I mean, we've got pictures of
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the big bucks coming through that low spot rip Aneath
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: where you're at, coming past that camera relatively recently, but yeah,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: right now. It's it's a weird. One thing that I
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: thought was really weird about that because I spent so
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: much time there was there was very consistent deer and
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: very inconsistent movement. You know, you'd sit there one day
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: and and the wind never changed so and the conditions
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: didn't really change a whole lot, so you don't I
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: kind of don't give that a whole lot of credit
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for being the reason for it. I don't know what
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the reason was, but you know, one day there's like,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: you know, a dozen deer come from behind us and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: passed by, And then another day the bucks all cruised
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: through one spot and it was never like where I
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: how I set up this morning. I was like, they
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: never come down the way I planned when I when
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I hung this thing. They always doing something different, and
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: then three deer come right down the way that I
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: was like, what what happened in the last four days?
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Nobody could do this before? And now you're doing it
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: just it was weird and I don't know what's going on.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's funny you mentioned that I've
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: this rut to thought a lot. I've been chasing my
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: tail on the other buck up and out and on
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: some other spots tram and I was trying to chase
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: him around based on observations and things and historical patterns
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: all this, and then finally, by the end of this period,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I've been honey, and I started saying, Okay, you know,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try different text. I'm gonna stop chasing something
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I think can put my finger on. Instead, I'm going
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to double down on the randomness and find a spot
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: where the highest percentage of activity with him has been,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and I will wait till he returns there. Instead of
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: trying to go where I think he's gonna be next,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go where eventually he's gonna go when I
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: have the right wind, and waited there until he does.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Hasn't worked out yet, but that was the idea of
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the last day or two of the hunt before I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: came here, and that's what I'm gonna return to when
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I get back. Um. But you know, oddly enough and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: kind of a piggyback on that, it's like it's been hot.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: We've known like that, probably there's not gonna be a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: lot of cruising during the middle of the day, but
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: we knew like those like the first hour or two
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: in the morning and the evening, it was going to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: be like our like our our moments for these first
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: hot days. But nothing replaces like getting eyes on things.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And I think if nothing else, we like none of
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: us have hunted this property a lot. I mean, this
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: is only your second year. And but even sitting still,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: being in the stand and getting eyes on things, I mean,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I think we had honed in on taking what we
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: saw in August and then taking or not August. But
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: when we're here with your dad and then our couple
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: sits the other day, like there was obviously some pattern
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that we figured out that we ended up sitting once
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and it didn't work out. But like now, I feel
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: like like nothing replaced us. Like Tony said, time on
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: stand and if you had this place for another three
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: or four years, like you're still adding and like to
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: your library of like now, this is what I saw
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: them do last year. And even though it's the rut,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: like we know, like we need to find the does,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and we've found the does. So it didn't in the end,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it for you and I didn't help us capitalize, but
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: for these guys like depending on where yeah, and I
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: still think I mean it helped us still to a degree,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So you know, kind of along the lines of what
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: you just described. When it came to our first evening,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be somewhere where I could see and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: for an evening hunt. I knew it would be like
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a last part of the day kind of evening type
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: of setup. So where would we have our best chance
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: during that last cool hour of the day while it's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: going to be looking at the best food source we've
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: around here, that's where the most doughs would be during
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the rut. Usually if you can be where the most
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: does are, you're at least in the game. Was my
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: thought for the starting point. So I sat a stand
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that we hung last year that sits and one of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: our fence rows that's runs between field five and six,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: right kind of at the point of where our bedding
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: honey hole areas, and the last hour it was really
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: slow all the way to the last hour, and then
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: some does start coming out with five or six doughs
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: come across, and then several dolls from behind, and several
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: dolls came popping out from this little western part of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the honey hole crossing into the field. And then finally
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's Justin who saw first. He's a big buck,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: big buck. It was Buck ran out of there chasing
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: a dough and I pulled up my by nose and
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: it was the droptime Buck, that little dropy buck we've
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: been talking about that you and I saw in trail
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: camera for the first time this summer. Who we saw
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Justin when you and I were sitting with my dad
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: on the very first time of the year. He came
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: out that night. Well, here he comes again, chasing that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: dough and he runs out of the field, stops and
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: feeds a bit, and turns and goes back with the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: dough and runs back out. And now we're getting to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the last ten minutes, the last five minutes, and we're
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: down to a couple of minutes left a daylight and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: he follows the dough out and gets to right in
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: one of my main shooting lanes where these these oak
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: tree branches open up and I could shoot, and he's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: on in the food plot. He stops broadside, starts to
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: feed fifty yards and he's sitting right there, and I'm like,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: he is right there, But just I wasn't. I'm not
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the type of lit'll shoot that long with shot, um,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So we just watched him and then he turned and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: went back, and then they ran back in the brush,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and then there was crashing and a deer ran right
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to the bottom of our tree standard, right where there's
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: a path cut between the two fields, and I was like, oh, man,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: that's the dough. He's gonna be right behind her and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: it's gonna give me shot. But instead it was a
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: little six point or something. And that was the night
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: we saw, you know, the draft time buck was one
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: of our target bucks here, um, one of the most
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: frequent visitors on camera. We've seen him more than any
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of their buck. So it's great to see him, great
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to know he's in the area, great to see the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: number of does we saw. I think the biggest thing
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: that confirmed for us what I had worried coming into
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: this a little bit was well, we have the lack
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of deer movement that we had last November, like just
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: dough activity in general. Last year was just so few
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: deer at all. Um, in the early season when we
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: hear with my dad, we saw a lot of deer,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: But I still don't know the farm well enough to know,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: you know, is that a thing that's gonna keep happening
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the changes that we made this year. Is that going
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: to continue to help? Or are We're gonna get here
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: in November and it's gonna be dead again. So after
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: our first morning it was pretty slow. I was starting
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to think of right back into nineteen all over again.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: But now we saw twelve thirteen does and a couple
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of different books, including a good one, so that was encouraging. Um.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: But something I was thinking about as you described your
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: setup and as I was thinking that this set up,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and you mentioned the importance of Getney eyes on things,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a challenge that we have here is the limitations of
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: just the property size. Like you just said, you can look,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: but you can't touch a lot of stuff. A lot
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of things we've seen or would want to hunt, you
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: just can't. We're stuck with these few limiting factors, and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: this is a challenge I think a lot of people
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: deal with during the rut in particular. Um, you know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: when you have thousands of acres of your great big farms,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: or if you're hunting public land, you can look on
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: the map and you can find Okay, these are natural
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: pinch points. These are seven different great betting years. These
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: are eight different great looking ridge staddles or something like
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: that. That That would make sense during the rut and you
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: could hit all these different places. But Tony, I feel
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like when we've looked at the map here and looked
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: at the weather and thought there are plans and have
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: our wind directions, like, well, we gauts it there or there, Ah,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that is that's a big challenge during the rut that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I've struggled with. In that case, it's it's how do
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: you balance the pressure versus being in the right place,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: versus trying to have a fresh set. I don't know.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I know you don't hunt a ton of places just
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: like this, but what are some of your thoughts about
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: how you would approach the rut in this kind of situation.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: You've und some small properties in the past, Yeah, I
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: mean this is this. This is just kind of you know,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: we we went into the swamp for the first time
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: today and it was like just obvious, like you get
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: in there and like this is where the big ones live,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean every this kind of property is
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: like a pass through property, you know, so you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: like you could catch one cruising. But it's not like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: it's not like you have sixty four acres in bluff
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: country where there's gonna be like telltale pinches and funnels
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and stuff. This is like a it's not flat, but
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it's not real roly until you're sitting here going okay,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: this is this is the kind of thing where you
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: know you're not gonna get that like awesome funnel. Probably
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get the concentration, right, like where are the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: bucks going to be concentrated? And it's just that nasty
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: cover with you know, like they're gonna have muddy feet,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and so you're always looking for that. And
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: what's what's sort of it's it's cool to see anyway,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: is yeah, this the swamp on here is is pretty
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: big when it's when you look at it in its entirety.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: The part that you guys have is it's like okay sized, right,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: But a lot of these little woodlots that we're seeing
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: some of the better buck activity and are small, but
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: they're just there. They're not lighting out across the open,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: they're just hanging in there. And we had a couple
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: of really good chases breakout next to us on on
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the neighbor's ground, and that chunk of ground is just tiny,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's the where where they were
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: actually running. It's probably only like eight or ten acres.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: And so it kind of makes me think in this situation,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: like instead of just sitting where you want to see
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and where you think you're gonna see all this run
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: thing and it's chasing like you would on the Sportsman's
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Channel or whatever, like, you need to get in tight
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: into the stuff that they just feel comfortable in, you know,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: because we talked about this before off air is like, yeah,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: it's the rut, but you still have to factor in
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the pressure. And we can look on the neighbor's properties,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, like we we were joking, we were filming
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you know, bow hangers in every tree we got into,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: like or we could see them hanging. I mean, there's
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: obvious pressure here. So then you take, you take it's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: a little cooler in those swamps, you take it, you know,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: like that's just the safe that's a safe space, man.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And so it's really looking for that and making something
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: work in there, versus kind of taking the easy way out.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: You know, a nice place to hang a standard saddle
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: on a field edge and see a bunch of stuff,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: go where you can kill them, not where you can
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: see them. And something I thought, And we didn't have
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to quite do that yet here, um, but something I thought.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: One of the things I'm constantly worried about on the
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: other small properties I hunt, is over pressuring spots like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I'm always trying to be so surgical with when I
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: go in and timing that to the right times, and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: only hunting those when you have to or in the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: chance of their best and letting them, you know, be
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: safe otherwise. But a circumstance like this, we have a
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: weak trip and a small, relatively limited property. There is
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: something to the approach I mentioned a little while ago,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I think, which is find one of those those best
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: places like what you described, and then kind of camp
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: on it if you had the confidence in it, and
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: if your little property only has a few places like that.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: You could bounce around all over your forty acres if
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: you want, or you could say, you know what, it's
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: going to happen in one of these two places, and
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put three days in each one if it's
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the winds right, and yes, some days are gonna figure
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: me out. But the buck I might kill eventually could
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: be two miles away on this day, and he might
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: be four acres away in the second day. And if
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't sit there three straight days, I would have
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: never had the opportunity for him to come through. So
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: part of me thinks, you know, if if we had
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: had good cold weather here and we you know, at
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: a different set of cards, I might have said, I'm
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: gonna go into the honey hole of the swamp, and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a couple of these corps spots every
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: day and yeah, you're going to leave an impact, and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: yeah things will change, but eventually one of these deer
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: will come through. Um. I think this is the time
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: of year when sometimes you have to care a little
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: bit less about your pressure because you have to make
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: hay when the sun shines. And I think this is
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that time in some of these places on a small spot.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Did you agree with that or what are your thoughts
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: on that? Yeah, I mean I think you know, obviously,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: even even trying to be safe, we put a ton
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: of pressure on some of these spots. But I always
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: think about this. I mean I was in I was
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota last week doing all day sits on a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: private place and you think, like I think, Okay, i'll
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: rest this spot or I haven't been in here, and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: then I'll go in and there'll be some dudes tree
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: stand Like so when you get used to hunting around pressure,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you go that luxury of savings stuff. It's not it's
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: if you have it, it's all. It's a great strategy, right,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people don't have it, and in
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: this time of year it maybe really doesn't. It should
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: be pretty low on the list. I think, Uh, justin
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: you've hunted some pressured stuff, some small stuff. Have you
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: seen anything different than what Tony and I've been talking about?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Or Charlie you kind of too. I don't either one
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: of you guys seen their thought of anything different. No,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I was thinking as you were saying that though,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: like you know, this is what you wait all year for,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Like there's no use to save the property at this point.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: You know, if you if it's good, you've got to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: be in there, like those spots, Charlie. Basically the same
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: thing um the land around our house is it's a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: mix and there's a lot of egg fields, so there's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: plenty of things that you can watch, but at the
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: same time, there's these core areas where the deer always
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: end up hanging out, and if you're not in there,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: you're most likely not going to see them. The rest
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of the rest of the properties that are connected a
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: couple of miles, like the next mile over, the next
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: woods across the road, they're they're just travel corridors to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: those core spots. But it seems like each each big
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: section has its own own place. And that's kind of
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: what I noticed here because it seemed like the there's
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: a swamp on the south side, and then the north
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: property has that little bit of swamp connected to that
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: woods on the neighbors. So we kind of felt as
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: if maybe like the smaller bucks and like that's why
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Tony called it the nursery, because like the smaller bucks
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: hang out this this swamp and it's like a little
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: bit of a smaller swamp and less deer activity, but
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: like the better like you got big blue stem over there,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: you've got thick cat tails, you got cedars and all
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: of that. That's where the moture bucks were hanging out.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: So I think it's kind of like a contesting like
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: game for whoever gets what swamp and then they kind
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: of just circled through it and check them out as
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: they go, got DIBs and some of the better stuff.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe maybe, I mean, they certainly could be. But then
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: at the same time, I always go back and forth.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think we overthink things a little bit too,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: because again, like the cameras, we definitely over think. Sometimes.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I think you overthink. There's tens of thousands of people
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: laughing really hard right out and saying, yeah, we heard that.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you a little story? So one of
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: my buddies is like, what's it like to hunt with Mark?
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: And my response was that Mark gives a deal a
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: lot more credit than I do. I'm just very analytical
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and very risk reward focused. I think I'm constantly weighing
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that stuff, maybe to a fault, but it works all
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the time at least um I think you I think.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: But the difference is like, like you you've hunted how
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: many states already this year? So? And where have you hunted?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Three states? But like you really hone in on like
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: a core, you know, so I feel like you have
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: to to a certain extent. Well, I think, yeah, especially
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: on a couple of these little spots that I hunt
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: local to home, where I've got one buck that I'm
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: after and I've got, you know, forty five acres to
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: make it happen on or something. But I'm really obsessed
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: with in that one deer. I think that infiltrates so
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: much of the rest of my thinking with everywhere else
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I go, maybe things like I think the perspective that
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: both of you guys have is something that we should
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: all have. But you know, I think it's property based,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: in situation based because like Tony, you gotta get it done,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and and a lot of different scenarios where people like myself,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: I think, Mark, you you even have gone more than
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I have, but I have, like a lot of us
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: just have a couple of spots. We have to make
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: that count. And I think you do need to be
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, go have fun. But if whatever your goals are,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I think the analytics come in to help you achieve that,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and if you don't, if you didn't, if you do
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: go in Willie Nelly and you don't do your homework,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: then you can't at the end of the season say well,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't see anything right. I couldn't get it done.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Like it's it's all situational based, but there's certainly are
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways to get the job done. That's
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: something I've definitely learned over the years is that there's
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of approaches that can work and different situations,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: different places, different people's styles. Um, whatever works for you.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: But this, this brings me to then another thing that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I think is right in line with it you said
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: justin and which does make things different for you and me. Tony,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: you hunt, I want a decent amount public land. You
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: want a lot of public land. Um. You're also less
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: picky than I am in a a lot of cases. You know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: you like to let him, let him sing um, but
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: still shoots good to hear it does, which I But
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: you're also willing to shoot different deer, which is Believe me, buddy,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I almost shot a spike, That's what I'm saying. I
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: looked over, dude, he had his bow ready and his
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: release was on the street and I was like, are
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: you gonna shoot? If it wasn't for the onslaught of
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: internet dickheads, I had just shot that sucker in a
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: heartbeat because I was he was. It was just over
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: and I was, like, I told Charlie, like when he
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: was walking in, I was like, that guy looked at
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the delicious like I want to shoot him so bad,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: walked back up here with it in his backpack. I've
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: been just as happy. So so this is what I
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: want to get to, which is hunting the rut on
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: public land. So for a lot of people, that's what
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: they're doing. And it goes back to this whole expectation
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: thing we talked about, like the ruts supposed to be
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: this time when giants are running all over the place
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and it's exciting and it's everything you dreamed about. But
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: on public land maybe that's not always the case. Sometimes
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: it can be. But walk me through some of the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: challenges on hunting some of your public pieces you've done
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: in the past. What are some of those trials and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: tribulations and know what they will be, But talk me
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: through some of those and how you deal with them. Well,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I think, and finally sorry. And finally, also how and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: when sometimes that forces you to change your standards and
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: how that is is a good thing for you there, Well,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to unpack there. I mean kind of
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: what Justin said. I mean it really like I could
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: describe us like I'm a pioneer and you're a settler
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in some ways, like everything I do, I just have
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to I don't have a history, you know what I mean. So,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: like you're working these properties, and so I was thinking
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: about that, Like my strategy for coming into most places
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: would be to take a long walk around and look
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: for the sign and everything. But when you're dealing with
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a property like this and you've kind of like you
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: know your way around, you've been working on it and
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you kind of got your ideas, and I come in
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: here and I go, I can't this is not like
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: my style, you know, some kind of just like taking
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: a back seat and going all right, well we'll just
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: play it safe. But that just comes from you know,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: going to multiple states every year and just stepping into
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: new public land and always trying to new experiences. Like
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: there's no hunting on memories or like the plan is
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: like you know, you do all your research right, and
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: you get in there and it's like always different, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: so you know, you don't rely on the plans the
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: same way. So I I go in with you know,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: a plan of ABC whatever, and it's always like you
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: walk in and the rubs are here, they're not here,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: or the river crossings here are not there. And so
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: it's just more of an in the moment thing. So
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that's like I'm I'm like way more of a deer
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: freelancer than you, like when you're talking about being analytical
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: and working these individual books and stuff, and like, man,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: most of the time when I'm hunting, I have no
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: idea what bucks lived there. And so this is this
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: is actually kind of my nightmare, like getting bogged down
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: into a place because and this is something I've said
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: this before, and I know people who have private property
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: or a lot of deer hunters don't really believe this,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: but it's one of the things I love the most
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: about public land is like you're not if you're if
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: you're willing to go look, you're not confined in a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: lot of places, so you have options. So we always
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: have that goal of like, man, I want that private spot, right,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: I want that place that I can build up and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: build a food blot or whatever, and like that's great,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: but you know, like what if you get that south
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: wind for five days and you're not set up for it,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't have that other option to go out,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: like then you're gonna go, well, I'm not gonna hunt
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: because I'm playing it safe and I'd rather hunt. And
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: so it's just a different It just amazes me how
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: many different ways you can come at this stuff. And
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you know, something you you kind of said there before,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: like you know, you you kind of asked me like, well,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: what what does it take to get you to like
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: drop your standards in one of those places. One thing
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: that I've kind of become obsessed with is there's a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: huge difference like when you're sitting on sand, You're like
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I passed a buck. I'm like, did you actually try
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: to kill him? Because there's a difference, you know, So
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: like I hear people talk about that all time, like, oh,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: you know, like it's been three years and I haven't
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: shot when I'm waiting for a big one, like hey,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: you do you whatever? But I know when you switch
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: from active observer to participant in only want to deflate
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: some lungs. Yeah, And so I'm at the point now
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: where I'm like, if I if I go into the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: woods or if I go into the season, I'm like,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I want a whole bunch of venison before this is out.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: And what I realized is, like I love big Bucks,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: but if you were to say, like you can have
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: the antlers or you can have the meat, at this
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: point in my life, I take the meat every time.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: And so I'm kind of looking at it like I
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: like shooting deer. I like going out, you know, like
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: you buy that nonresident tag somewhere and you've got four days,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Like I would rather go home with a forkey and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: eat um and be happy and make a shot and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: go through the whole process then just not. So it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: kind of depends, you know, like I drew iye with
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: this year, like I wasn't gonna do that in Iowa,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Like that was kind of a special thing. And then
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: you know, part of that is you get in there
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and you go not only do I feel like I
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: have a really good chance at a big one, but
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just having fun, you know what I mean. And
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: so I've had this happen where you know, if you
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: go to like Oklahoma blind, right, and you're from the
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Upper Midwest or something. If you go there and you're like,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonnahunt public land I've never been to and I'm
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: only going to kill one thirties or better, like you're
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: going home empty hand, it probably right. But if you
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: go and you're like, let's just go have fun and
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: hunt deer, You're gonna have fun, you know. So it's
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: it's not like what fits into the typical kind of
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: hunting media mold where it's like, you know, we're targeting
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: these age class of box or whatever. It's like just
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: kind of like we're going in the moment, we're gonna
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: just enjoy it. It's kind of like going fishing for whatever,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like bring you've got nightclers,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: you got for you, you know, spinner baits, whatever you
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: whatever you're gonna do all day along instead of just
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: being like I am a fly fisherman and I am
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: targeting trout, you know what I mean. Like there's a difference,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and like again I don't I don't care what people do.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I just know from my experience going to all these
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: different places, it's just like kind of just looking for
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: that and that like elevated enjoyment factor for me, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that's why I lean into this stuff. I just enjoy it.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. It definitely does come down to like personality
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: types probably too, Like you're describing the things you would do,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: and I'm listening like, oh see that, Like my brain
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: just couldn't work. Like I am the guy that if
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going fishing, I'm going fly fishing and I'm going
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: to catch trout and that's the mission. That's the thing
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I want to do, and I'm gonna do that. Like
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not the guy that can go willy Nilli. I'm like,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: let's catch whatever, and I'll throw a spin and round
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: in a bait casting round a fly rod, like I'm
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: gonna go into these rivers and this specific thing and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Like when I go on a hunting trip,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: even public land or something, I have the exact opposite thought,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: where if I go in with a set of goals,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. I would much rather not kill a deer
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: than then shoot the shoot the deer that I originally
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: didn't want to shoot. Early on, even though what you're
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: describing makes sense and I totally get it, I just couldn't.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I just can't do it for my personality. So I
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: want to fight to the bitter end to try to
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: achieve whatever the goal was. And that's my fun. It's
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: a different kind of fun, but that's the fun that
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for. Is I really want to try to
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: achieve whatever that thing is, whatever that end goal I wanted.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I just want to keep pushing for it all the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: way to the end. And then if I don't get it,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't get it. And I know I'm gonna fill
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: my freezer eventually by the end of the season with does.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: So I look at my oddes, state trips and those
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: other things that this opportunity to go for that thing
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: no matter what, and and I'd rather eat the tag
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: and fill my freezer later. Um. And so it's just
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: like I'm weird in that way and you're weird in
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: your way both. You know what the difference is, though, Well,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of differences there. But you you probably
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the way you're wired with the white tail thing, you
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't go on a lot of the trips that
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I go on, you know what I mean? Like you
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: probably you would probably be more meticulous in your planning
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and going. Okay, this is the place I want to
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: go to in Nebraska. And here's why, Like it's got
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: this history or whatever, and I'm just kind of like,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I want I've never hunted X date, I want to
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: go there, you know what I mean. And so you
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: you're I think this is like, this is what I think.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: This is why this platform has gotten so big for
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: you is because you are wired to just be like
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: white tales, like and and big white tails or you know,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: mature white tails or whatever. And like if you look
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: to my daily life, you know, I love deer hunting,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: but I love hunting everything, and I love fishing, and
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I love fishing for it, Like I don't get I
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: get like board really easily. And so I don't have
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: any problem just being like I'm going to a state
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: that probably sucks for big white tails, but maybe it
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: has got maybe it has a lot of deer or
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: it's just I'm I'm making my decision. I used to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: make decisions like that, like where can I go to
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: kill a big one and then kind of laser in
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: on that, especially when I started the public land thing.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Now I'm just like I just want to go with
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: my buddies and have fun you know, it's just different.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: And that's that's the cool thing about what we all do.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Everyone listening, and we can all deer hunt for our
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: own reasons, with our own set of goals and go
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: in there to achieve whatever does he want. If you
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: want to go see a bunch of deer and shoot nothing,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: or if you want to go in there and shoot
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the first deer you see, if you want to go
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: there and be picky and wait forever and not shoot anything,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: it's all good. It's all awesome. And um, I think
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: important part is too, Like these podcasts and YouTube and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: everything is all like gold mines, right, and you could
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: spend the rest of your life digging down into those.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: But the the important thing is to figure out what
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: makes you happy. Don't let other people's expectations and goals
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. Those don't have to be your goals. Um,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you set your own goals. Figure out what Because you
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: guys both have wanted this property, you guys are both
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: having fun. But I know that if Tony like knowing
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: you and thinking about your history on this property, like
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you didn't want Steven Yanni walking past the swamp last
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: year and when was that and if Tony could have
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: come in here on day one. He would have probably
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: gone all through that and be like, I'm gonna find
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: my spot. I want to make it very clear, I
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: never once told told of what I said, Tony, what
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: do you want to do? Yeah, and I will second
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: that I've I've seen that, but like it like it's yeah.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: It can be deflating for like people listening because like
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: if you you know, we all like shooting big deer
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and like that. I think you know, but set your
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: own goals and don't accept other people's goals for your
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: and you bring up maybe the most important part of
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: this entire podcast, one of the greatest challenges of the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: rut is looking at your phone and looking at social
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: media and seeing everybody else killing all these big deer
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: and if you haven't yet, and maybe if you get
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to a certain point where that doesn't bother you, but
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I think everyone a little bit. If you're struggling, or
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: a few day has been bad, or if your week's
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: been bad, like dang it, this guy and this person,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: this gale, and you're seeing all these like why can't
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: happen for me? And it's easy to fall into a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: little bit of a bummer phase when you're seeing that
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: it's like the doom scrolling and that's happened so much
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: this time of the year because it's lightened up. How
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: do you guys deal with that? For me, definitely, earlier
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: on in my hunting world like life, I would get
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I was jealous and insecure and would feel bad for
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: myself or feel like, oh my god, I look like
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: such an idiot because I can't kill anything that all
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: these people are. And just over time I've got more
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and more just fine with who I am and with
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: what happens. But you still sometimes like, Jeus, why Kim,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: why isn't that happening for me? Yet? Um? I know
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people listening that are feeling the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: same thing, because I get all these messages people saying, man,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it's so nice to see all the times you screw
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: up and don't kill deer because that happened to me.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And otherwise everything I see on Facebook is this guy
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: killed when, this guy killed him, this one killed one. Um.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Does that ever hit you justin yeah, yeah, I'm preaching
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: myself over here, you know, But yeah it doesn't, um man,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Like I think it's easy to get wrapped up in
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: that especially like if you you know again, you too
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: too different perspectives. You both work hard, you do it differently,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: but when you work hard, you you want results, you know,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: whether it's like putting in food plots or saving these
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: spots or walking six miles in public land like you
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: want it. And so I feel I feel like it's
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: with anything, we all fight the tendency to want what
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: else you know other people have or you know, just
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: but especially this because you know, for myself, I'm super
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: passionate about this and like there's not a day that
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: goes by that my head is not in this hole.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: You know. So when you spend all year thinking about
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: it and it's here and you're like working hard and
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: it's not happening like it, it takes some air out
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: of your balloon, you know. But you just gotta stick
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: with it, man, because like you, it eventually will happen,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and you got you gotta remember that you're hunting, you're
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: not shooting. You gotta enjoy hunting. You gotta enjoy, you
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: gotta enjoy. Slow down when you're walking out and just
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: look around, like that's the stuff that like when I'm
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: when I'm not deer hunting and and it's spring or
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it's you know, Christmas time, and I'm thinking about it.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: It's not like the shot that I'm thinking about. It's
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: like sitting in the stands watching the sunrises, and like
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: even even with this warmer weather, like I've I've commented
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to you a couple of times like gosh, listen to
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the freaking birds, like it like sounded like spring again,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and like that's the stuff that that needs to feed
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: our soul, like not not what's going to hang on
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the wall, which I think we all get some gratification from,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: but enjoy hunting and uh, and I think if we
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: can kind of bring ourselves back to that, then not
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: seeing things are not killing you know, a booner or whatever, um,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: we should still come out feeling fulfilled. Yeah, that's that's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: absolutely right. And I'm given everything we just talked about.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: With my own personality being an obsessive kind of personality
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: and very mission focus, this is something I struggle with
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: every day. Not every day, but I mean like every year.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: At some point, I'm so goal oriented that I have
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: to have like this internal dialogue and I have to
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: have these little resets with myself and I don't know
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: if other people do that, but that's what my craziest does. Um,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: because yeah, if I didn't, if I just like let
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: my animal self go, that's the kind of stuff that
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: would be frustrating me all the time. And so I
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: constantly have to like mark, chill out, enjoy the process.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: This is, this is what you love. Don't let somebody
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: else's success make you enjoy your thing less and take
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the thing you love so much and turn it otherwise. Um.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: But that's like a hard thing to kind of learn
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to do and to remind yourself of often. Um, Tony,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: do you ever I mean, I know you're different, but
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: do you ever find yourself like, damn it, why isn't
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: it working this here? You've had a few tough years
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: all the time, man, And you know you started that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: with like the social media thing of seeing all these
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: dead bucks out there, and it's like, I just I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: just want to say this, like social media is fake news.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: It just is like you're you're seeing you're seeing the
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: end product of something, right, and it might be a
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: guy like Andy May, who is one of the best
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: deer hunters out there. You might just see the result
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: of somebody who's got it all like and like in
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the capacity we're we're talking about, or you might see
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: a buck that somebody didn't didn't earn at all, they
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: showed up whatever for whatever. Like the spectrum is huge,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: and the problem is we're seeing all of those deer
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: all day long. Every nobody shoots the buck and doesn't
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: post a picture, right, and so you're just getting exposed
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to that. But if you go out there and you
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: look at like the success rates from state to state,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: it's not changing. And so we're just getting exposed to
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: these And the problem is, like we sit here and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: we look at that and go it's it's just human
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: nature to be like, why didn't Why am I not
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: killing one fort every year? Like, well, almost nobody is,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like almost nobody is doing that. And then
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you see some of these people who are doing like
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: awesome stuff out there. I always think about like the
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: hunting public, and you watch those guys and they're young,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: but I think they're probably some of the best hunters
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: to come into the industry. I really do. And part
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: of that is they are in a place where they
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: embrace this this brand that they built, but they're they're
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: layering experience in there. I mean, those guys are knocking
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: out state after state and hunt after hunt after hunt,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: and they are layering experience in in a way where
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: the average year old out there, it's going to take
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: him a decade to get one year like that. And
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: so if you compare yourself to that and go, well,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: there's so many variables that are keeping like the normal
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: average deer hunter from even approaching that orbit, you know
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: what I mean. And so it's like it's a weird
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: world where you see that all the time, but it's
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: it doesn't factor in anything in your life. Or you
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: might just be somebody who just kind of likes deer hunting,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: or even if you love it, you might have a
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: life situation where you know, you're you're like five days
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: a year, six days a year, like you're not gonna
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen unless you have that just banging spot,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: you know, like otherwise you're gonna be like, you know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: mostly unsuccessful most years. And so it's just it's you know,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: having little kids, like I do I look at that
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and I go, that is you know, and there's a
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: whole different issue. And you get little girls and you
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: look at it like it's a scary thing and it's
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: just not reality, Like it's just such a like you
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: pick the worst thing, like we want people to see.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: We're like here you go, here's just this. Here's nothing else,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: like all the mistakes I made all day long, like
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: you're talking about and so it's dangerous ground. But you
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: know that that's the thing that I I worry about
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: with us the most in this industry right now is
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: just like what what reality are we presenting? And just
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: by sure nature of like doing what we do, like
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: content creation, you leave stuff out like it's just you
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: just have to. But like is it an honest look
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: or is it like how far is it skewed one
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: way or the other? And you know this, like you're
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: always checking yourself like, okay, am I showing as much
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: of like the warts as I am of the beauty shots.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: And that's it's it's a tough thing to do. Yeah,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: my problems. I show too many warts And I get
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: people saying, do you ever do you ever not screw
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: up a hunt? So the other day justin do you
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: want to tell my ward story? Oh? Speaking of these
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: kinds of things, So I am O c D. I'm obsessive.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I'm a perfectionist. I am so analytical with all this right,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and I'm going in and we're gonna go hang a
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: set midday right on the edge of the gray betting
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: ever been hunting, uh, to be better positioned for the
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: shifting wind direction we had from day one to day
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: two and it was gonna be a relatively still day.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to leave really early, slowly walk our
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: way in there. And then I stopped justin about a
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: hundred fift yards out or something, said hey, man, this
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: last hundred yards or so, I want to freaking stealth
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: mode it to another level because we're gonna be setting
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: up within like forty fifty yards maybe or worth these
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: doss We betted. We cannot afford to spook these doughs.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Let's let's be perfect. So we filled me in on
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: stealth mode. Oh well, it was like step step, Yeah,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I was. I was fearing, like, I'm film this, but
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think people are gonna realize Mark's moving, like, so,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: yeah we were. How long did it take you to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: go from start of stealth mode to end of stealth mode? Yeah,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: we were. I don't know time, but it felt like forever,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: the last, the last, like forty yards of the heart
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: because we were walking across the field, but then when
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: we get into the timber, it was like there was
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the tall way to get through tall brushy weeds and
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: then into some buckthorn. Everything's crunchy. So just like every
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: single foot step, I'm trying to place it in the
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: right place, slowly, ease it down, edge around every branch.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: You're not snapping and cracking and popping. Um. Of course
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I got I got headphones on so I can hear
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: two um mikes that are amped up a little bit,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: so everything sounds like three times a little and I
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: know like Mark soul is dying when when I'm stepping
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: out things. So yeah, I'm kind of letting him pay
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the way you did. Great. I never once thought that.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I never once thought you let me down. Okay, good,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: I thought you let me down, but I wasn't. That's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: what we're getting. Can you tell us how Mark let
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: himself down? Here? So so well, what do you want?
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Do you want to lay the punch line or do
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: you want me to live? You can go ahead, I'll
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: just I'll add the sugar. Okay, So we we finished
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: this stealth mode, sneak into this edge of the timber,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: and we get in there, we find the tree, and
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: UM finally picked the spot where I thinks our best chance,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: and we get to the bottom of the tree. And
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: for the show, I want to explain what we're doing,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: so I kind of start whisper talking to the camera,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: explaining why we were just stealth moting it this last yards,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: why we're being so careful about it, why I want
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: to make sure we UM just pay attention to the
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: details here on this one. And as I'm describing that,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: I have been holding a can of nosejammer, which is
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: like an aerosol metal can, and we're standing on some
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: rocks underneath this tree, and his like the words he
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: was saying could not have been more precise about what
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: was about to happen. Is almost like it happened. We
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: went back and rerecorded, like what could be the worst
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: thing you could say to prep people for Like, because
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of having this speech, it's so
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: important to be perfectly quiet when you go into a
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: place like this. And as I'm doing this, I'm reaching
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: behind me where that can to put the can of
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: nose jammer into my water bottle pocket while you're explaining
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: some I'm like, so we're just taking our time and
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: we're going to be perfectly silent because there could be
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: doze betted forty yards away, forty yards from the best spot.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: And I released the can of nose jammer into my
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: water bottle pocket, but instead of there being a water
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: pole pocket, it was air and it dropped and crashed
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: down on the rid a pile of stones, Like I
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: almost wept myself. Yeah, and I just it was just
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: a classic. So that's that's classic canyon right there. Unfortunately
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: you were filming it. So can I tell you the
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: dumbest thing I did this week while we're while we're
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: telling secrets. So today Charlie and I are sitting there,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: you know, four hours whatever, we had some does come in,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: had a little spiker come in, and we're like, okay,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta get out here. It's been dead.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: We gotta go hang this new set. And I look
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: at my bow and I knocked my arrow in the
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: dark and I knocked my knock below my So I'm like,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking ship, Like if if a big one would
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: have walked in and I wouldn't have caught that. I'd
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: have sent an arrow right off into Ohio and missed
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: him by a mile. And I'm like, I've done this
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: hundreds of times. I don't remember once in my life
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: ever doing that and not like noticing for four hours.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, they're professional. Happens to us all. That's some
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: expert level stuff there, It happens to everyone. Um, let's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: let's go through a few more kind of rapid fire
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: because you know you want to get in the stand here, Tony,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: a few more rapid fire challenges that we might face
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: their the rut. I'll throw it out there in any
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: one of you three, if you have an idea or
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: a thought on this, just jump in. I'm just gonna
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: start pitching things that might happen during the rut and
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: howard to deal with them? So how about you go in.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: You're gonna sit somewhere in the rut. It could be
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: a small property, could be public land, whatever. And you
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: get set up and another guy comes in and he
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: sets up you know, within a hundred yards fifty yards something.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: He's close. You see him, someone bust through your good stuff.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with that? Anyone have a thought
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: on that? Do you keep hunting. Do you move, Tony,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I'm out of there. I've had that happened before on
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: public land and I can't. I don't hunt to be
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: around people, you know, and it sucks. But it would
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: be either time to pull the set or just go
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: build a natural blind or some reset for the night.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's no boy, No, Yeah, I'm moving too. What
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: about a situation where you know that there's a good
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: area you maybe you wanted to hunt this good spot,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: but your buddy shot a buck there the day before.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: If you blew it up like I did, or you're
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: hunting the gland and it's the spot you scottered in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: the spring, you know it's awesome. But then you get
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: to the parking lot and there's some guys dragging out
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: a deer or someone leaving, say hey, we're done hunting.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: We we were in there for four days. Uh saw
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: tons of action, killed one this morning or something like that.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Would you still hunt it or would you say, ah,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: they blew it up, it's not worth it, especially if
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: it's rot. Okay, yeah, it's sure. Some Actually somebody explained
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: to me why didn't kill them all out? I mean,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: how do you know? How do you know how much
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: of an impact they had, you know, I mean that's
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: just one of that you put it in the back
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: of your mind, you go sit it and if it's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: doesn't pan out after a couple of CITs and you go, okay,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: maybe it's maybe it's done. But you know, I always
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: think back, uh, when we were talking about the hot rut,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you know, and the last time we had this, I
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: was down in Nebraska hunting um public land down there
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: and it was seventy five degrees and before I got there,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: some dude had driven his uh dirt bike all over
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: the public land we were hunting, like just crazy covered
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: it and it was like a ghost town just cleared out.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: But we just kind of started figuring out like these
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: deer coming back. He got busted, like he got a ticket,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: but after that stopped. I mean, it was surreal. You'd
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: go to like a creek crossing or you I mean,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: just the scrapes, the rubs, everything was there. Everything looked perfect,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: timing look perfect. It was hot, but other than that,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: but the deer were just gonzo. But they started working
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: their way back in like the the disturbance is gone.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: And it was a weird scenario. For a little bit
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: if they come back like that's our home, you know.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: So So this brings me back to another one of
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: these things that people might experience the time of year,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: which is the rut dead spell. The rut is very
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: much like ups and downs here and not there, at
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: least from my experience. What do you do or what
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: would you do in a situation where you're hunting what
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: you think is a good area and you've put in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: three or four days in the general zone and it's
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: just dead. You're not seeing the running activity you thought
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: you should see. It hasn't happened yet. But you're in
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: a place that either from scouting or history or whatever,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: you know it should be good, but it isn't. We talked.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: I talked to a couple of weeks ago Andrea Quisto,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: who says that if you are sitting in a situation
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: like that, get up and go and go find them,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: because they're all in some other pocket with one hot
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: dough or something. So he would tell you to go
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: walk over the property to start bumping bucks and then
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: set up. Would you guys wait it out, because yeah,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: they might not be here, but it's their home. They're
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: gonna eventually get here and they will be coming back.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Or do you go and seek him out after a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: couple of days, go get them. I'd go get him.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: How long would you wait? How long do you hold
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: it out? Not long? Because you got it wrong. I mean,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that's that's the problem with this is we get this idea,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: this is where it's going to happen. This is how
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. You know they're gonna cruise to this
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: pinch point whatever. But you get that stuff wrong constantly.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: I mean it's all the time. And to ride out
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: a dead program, like a really dead program, there's no boy,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: you're in the spot that you have a ton of
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: confidence in. It's money you're sitting, and it's lots of activity.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: It's November seven, November whatever, and cruising bucks coming through.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: There was chasing your big buck that you want to shoot,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: or a big buck that you want to shoot comes
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: in and he blows out, you booger him. Somehow he
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: wins you or spots you drawn back, or you're shooting
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: you miss something like that. But there's still all sorts
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: of activity. Do you stick it out? Do you immediately
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: go and reposition? Do you stay there? That day. In
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the next day, what do you do in that situation?
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: You don't leave biting fish, buddy, Never leave fish to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: find fish. And again probably comes back to your goals, like, uh,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: if that's the buck you want to kill, then you
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: probably want to figure something ounce out. But if you're
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: if you're just hunting your I'd stick it out, Tony.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: What if it's the buck you want to kill? Or
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: is it like this? Is this is an exact snare
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: that happened to me. I have one target buck I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: want to kill on one of these small properties. And
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: he came in ten minutes before shooting light came to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: ten yards because if it had been daylight could have
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: shot him, but it wasn't. And so he walked past
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: me to my down one side, winding main blew out
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: And then I was sitting there the rest of the
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: morning think, Okay, he just winded me from this tree.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I know him in like the belly of the beasts,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: the best stuff around, and everything's happening around me, but
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: the one deer I'll shoot out here blew me out here.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: And I was sitting there thing and do I need
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: to relocate fifty yards hundred yards? Uh? Should I just
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: stick it out and wait for a dough to bring
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: him back and he won't care. What are your thoughts?
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I would probably stick it out for a little while
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: and see, I mean if that you know that that
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: like you said, there there's the wild card, like what
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: if he gets on a bill that smells right? You know,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: he's going wherever she goes. And what is their memory
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: on a situation like that? You know, you kind of
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: hope they're they're a little punch drunk during the rut
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: and maybe they'll maybe they'll slip. Maybe it wasn't as
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: impactful as if he'd got you on September, you know.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: But that's why I don't hunt one, Bucky, you might
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: be the smarter one of us. Two. Um, what about
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the situation where you are dealing with let's say you're
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: out there middle of November and it's that lockdown phase
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: that we often hear quote unquote lockdown phase mid November fifteen,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: sixteen seventeenth, that a lot of folks in the media
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: will talk about, Well, this is when it dies down.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: It's slower. All the bucks have got does? This is
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: a time period a lot of people struggle with at
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: times at least hunting conventional ways. Any thoughts on how
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: to deal with the challenge of mid November. Do you
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: hunt it differently than you would the first week or two?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: Um is going pheasant hunt an option? Fantt Yeah, I
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: would really Yeah, No, I no, I would actually, but
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, the lockdown thing is can really suck.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: But it's also I always look at that like they're
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: not all lockdown, right, you know, and that lockdown is
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: like forty hours whatever it's going to be, and they're
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: in different stages of that, and so yeah, it's not
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: the chasing crazy phase, but it's also one of those
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: ones where in some ways they kind of get more
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: visible if those doughs really get you know, they get
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: out into a certain spot and he gets her corral
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: in a certain way. A lot of bucks die that
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: way because they won't leave them, and so it's it's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: just a change, you know. I mean, it's kind of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: to me that's like the difference between the last week
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: October in the first week in November. Like they're close
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: in some ways, but a lot of a lot of
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: times you're doing something vastly different by the from the
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: front end of the back end and so the lockdown
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: just brings you into a new strategy, you know, yeah, yeah,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: I've always felt the same thing, Like, certainly there might
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: be less of that on their feet cruise and chasing around,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: but not every single book will all be locked out
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: all the same time. And when they do break off one,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: you do have those windows of opportunity and it can
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: be just as good as any other time. Then, and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: it goes back to the simplest part of the route,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: which is time on stand, being out there and being
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: able to capitalize on those moments when they arrived of UM,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: which finally gets us to the mental side of things
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit back. We talked about expectations. We talked
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: about how it's so easy to have these dreams of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: what the rut should be like, but then it doesn't
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: pan out. Um. What about just handling the mental side
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: of the grind of the rut? Long days on stand,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: morning after morning, waking up a three thirty whatever it is, uh,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: freezing your tail off most years. Maybe you're hunting all day,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: every day, hunting twelve hours on the stand, your worn out?
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Any um, any advice or thoughts on how to deal
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: with that side of things? UM? I'll say one thing
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I just post on Instagram about this yesterday. It's something
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: that I've had to kind of grow into. I used
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: to take the brute force approach to hunting all the time,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: both out of the rut and in the rut, and
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: I thought that the only way I could kill the
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: deer I wanted to shoot would be to hunt every
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: single possible time. I could put every minute into it
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: that I possibly could, so during the rut, I would
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: feel really guilty if I didn't feel like I was
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: giving two thou to it, and if I wasn't hunting
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: every spare moment and every opportunity and giving it. I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: wanted to leave every little bit on the court, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: if I didn't, I'd be beating myself up big time.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I've started to more recently realize that maybe that might
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: result in diminishing returns. Where if you are wearing yourself
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: down so bad and you are tiring yourself up so much,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: you're grinding so hard that you start making bad decisions,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: start losing focus on stand start making silly mistakes, and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: then most importantly, you stop having fun. And if it
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: gets to that point, a little reset sometimes can make
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: a big difference both in your enjoyment level and also
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: how effective is a hunter you are. So I've given
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: myself permission over the last couple of years that I
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: don't have to hunt midday every single day. I don't
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: need to do twelve artos every day. I don't need
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: to be superman. UM. I will when it seems right
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: or when time allows. But if it doesn't seem right,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go spend some time with kids or do
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: something like that. UM. If I need to take a
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: morning off, you know, five years ago, I would have
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: never ever considered that. Um. Now, if it's you know,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: if it's that sure, I'll take a morning off, reset
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: feel better, and then just kick it back into gear
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: even better after that. That's where my head has been
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit on some of this mental side of things. UM.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Any thoughts on that specifically or other mental challenges during
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: this time period, anybody, I think. I think all you're
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: describing is why kids need recess. You know, Like the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: single best day I've ever had el hunting is when
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I spent most of it fishing. Sometimes you just need to.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: I mean it goes back to what we talked about earlier, Right,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: is your goal to kill a big one and then
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you know what you gotta put in right like to
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: to have your chance. But are you like, at the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: same time, are you having fun you know? And if
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: it's not fun anymore or if you're kind of dreading it,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: like you know, you can tell. There's such a difference
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: when you wake up and you're like, oh my god,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: it's the road, I don't want to get out there,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: or you wake up and you're like another excited this deal,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: you know, And so that's that's the balance there, I think. Yeah,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: that's your take a break sign right there. A good
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: morning sleep band is huge, Charlie. Snack advice, snack advice.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Not those freaking apples. Oh man, you got freeze dried apples,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: like the dried apples. No, they're not. They're freeze dried.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Would they're not anyone? Okay, So I thought of the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: perfect explanation. Yeah, but you should preface this with you
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: have to have gushers all the time. Gushers are an
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: important snack. Look, dude, you've had that pack of gushers
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: in your pack. I have had my lucky gushers that
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: you gave me. You guys gotta understand that Charlie is
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: like our eccentric Davia. Charlie isn't after this is overcause
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: I've been staring at this handle and can't figure it out.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: What staring at the handle on a table and you
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: can't figure out I'll let you know. You fold it
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: up and you just carry a buddy. No, But like, okay,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: if it's nobody listening understands what's going on. Now. There's
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: there's this folding table like the plastic white ones, and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: it's got folding legs, and he folded up and fold
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: it in half. While this handle is shaped to fit
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: your hand, but there's grips and airspace on the bottom
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: of the handle, so if you're holding it, it seems
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: like the grip should be on the other side. I
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: was just wondering, this is what we're dealing with. Okay,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: go ahead into here. But anyways, that the meat eater
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: stuck me with perfect fit. Yeah, can you imagine? I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: Charlie was sitting with me though, Hey, I read that
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: short story. Also, Oh you read it? Ye? Did you
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: have a physical reaction to it? He told me not
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: to read it, so I said, read it if you want,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: but I am not going to be the one responsible
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: for telling you know, do you know what he asked
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: me this morning? Right away? It's like, does your hoptel
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: have a pool on it? Oh? God? You I know.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: She's like, I want to come over and go swimming.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: I was like, terrible. Yeah, gushers are important, though, so
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: gusher's any other commend the snacks because snacks are an
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: important part of maintaining your mental edge. And I'm actually
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: not kidding. Yeah, I honestly think of having some snacks.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: Justin's been making some good coffee. Yeah, and he said
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: he's like half as in it. Yeah. If I had
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: the stuff, we'd be rolling man coffee snacks. If you're
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: gonna yeah. Um. I was surprised because you asked for
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: snacks suggestions and you came back with pretty good, pretty
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: good haul. You got Golden Graham's, the bars, the bars
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: except when they get hot, like it's been right now.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: The marshmallow sticks, yeah, oatmeal cream pies, peanut butter crackers. Yeah.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: We had a full little Debbie discussion the other mine.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: If you didn't know what was going on here and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: you just walked into this tent, looked at the snack sele,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: actually you'd be like, man, there's some stoners kept up.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: There's like no redeeming every calorie there is just to
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: kill you. A little quicker sweet and banana chips. You
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: can't explain those astronaut apples. There's no way. I hope
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: back too, So I'm like, he's have to be good,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: so I hopen him. I'm like, you know the dried
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: ones that are just delicious. Yeah, that's what I thought
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: I bought, That's what I thought about. So I throw
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: a couple in my mouth and it's like, you know
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: how you're digging up worms like nightcrawlers to go fishing,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: you know how, like when they're in the grass or
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: in the dirt, they're just all relaxed and stretched out.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: That's my tongue before I put the apple on it.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: And then you grab the worm. It's like this sucks
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: right up. That was after and then out and then
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Tony yelled at me about baiting. So he's got this
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: handful of dried apples and he throws them out there,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: and I was like, dude, there they're gonna think for
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: baiting here, and he's like, deer are not gonna eat these?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, that's funny. That's very funny. So swinging to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: miss their buddy, swinging to miss um any other rut
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: challenges that we haven't covered, anything else that you can
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: think of, Tony justin Charlie, I think just clothing and comfort,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: you know, you want to talk about the mental side
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: of things we've I mean, we went out this morning
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: at four o'clock. It was sixty one degrees, but it
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: was actually felt colder by like nine o'clock the clouds
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: came in, and so you know, normally you're like, how
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: how much can I layer up? How much did I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: carry in so I don't sweat? And I just think
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: really kind of getting in tune with your clothing and
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: what you're capable of comfortable, you know, like comfort wise,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: like can you sit on a little tiny stand or
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: can you hang in the saddle all day? Or do
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: you need something more? Like until you've done it, you
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: don't really know. But it's like you kind of fall
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: in love with the idea, like I'm I'm going into
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: hanging on I'm gonna do this little set up and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit all day. Maybe maybe, but you might
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: get out there and at like eleven o'clock, like my back,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: hurt's hungry, this sucks cold hot whatever. My feet are
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: the first to go. I get cold feet, and then
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: it's just like, I can't take your mind off your
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: cold feet. You don't want something like that to keep
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: you from you're hunt. Yeah, it's I say this all
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: the time, but there's so many things you can't control
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: and hunt that the few things that you have complete
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: control over it you gotta nail it, clothing gear being
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: one of them. How you not your arrow? How you
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: not your arrows? Take snacks? You take when you open
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: your snacks? Where you place your nose jammer cans all that.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: So I guess this brings us to the moral of
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: the story, which is, if you can go through all
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: the challenges of the rut, And so I have faced
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: many of these things and others in the proceeding two
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: weeks ladly up to this moment where I did also
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: had all sorts of close calls and mistakes and frustrations
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: and YadA YadA, YadA, Ah did the nose jammer thing
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: whatever brings us to yesterday. If you can sometimes weather
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: the ups and downs of the rut, good things can happen.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Day three of her hunt here in the back forty
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: UM we headed in for another hunt. I decided that
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I wanted to hunt inside the edge of this betting
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: area that previously we've been hunting on the outside edge of.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: I just I just kept believing that I knew something
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: was going to come through Eventually. It was where the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: most doughs are coming in and out of on that
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: side of the farm, and I believe that if we
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: could make it work with the wind, it was worth
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: getting in there. And there was a stand that we'd
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: prepped the year prior, the very first tray ever prepped
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: on this farm, prepped just inside of this section that
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: we call the honey hole where there's this whole native
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: prairie ecosystem. We did a prescribe fire of the spring
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: to improve it. We removed some of the invasive autumnle
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: of buck thrown out of there to open it up
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit more. We've done this work. It's setting
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: up inside of it where you can see into these
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: openings in between theaters and stuff and tons of doors
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: bet in there. Historically, over the last two years I've
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: seen UM. I found the only two sheds in the property.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: I found in there this spring. UM we sat outside
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: of it in a little food plats just outside with
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: my dad, and he got a shot of deer out there,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and from that spot we saw the draft time. By luck,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: the night I saw the drop time about the first
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: night of this hunt was not too far outside of it.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: So again I've been trying to keep it simple. I
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: think this is where the most does are and I
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: think this is one of the best areas that a
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: buck might want to cruise in or around, and if
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: you can work the wind in there, I thought being
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: in that zone is worth it. So we get in
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: there that morning and I don't know, maybe well, first,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: just after first light, we're looking at the fact that
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: once it brightened up, you could actually see a little
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: more outside of the bedding air than we realized. You
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: can kind of see towards this food plot closer than
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: I thought you could otherwise, and there's some branches in
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: the way. So I was like, hey, you know, I
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: can actually shoot to that if those branches weren't there.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Just so you want me come down, I say, sure,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: I guess just if you can do it real quick
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: and quiet, which is you know, set up for failure,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: but quick quiet. So he starts it gets the saw
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: and he starts cranking up in the whole tree ship.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Come on, you gotta give me more credit, and that
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I was very meticulous. You were good, but still the
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: amount of like regardless, you were good as good as
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: you possibly can be, It's still there was still the
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: dangerous move. It's still a dangerous move. And the tree
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: branch drops that he had been cutting. And when it
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: drops where I like, oh, there's deer right there. You
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: had been cutting this Lindo talks about myself. Yes, stealth
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: mode all the time. So there's two doughs right there.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: They did not spook. They didn't even look. I didn't
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: even look. Um. But then I don't know, half hour
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: after that, maybe I go looking down in the swamp
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: beneath us and I just see Antler's coming. There's a
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: long way as away, four yards away or something like that.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Put my bios and it's that big funky side about
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: Tony that you and I saw on camera. Um that
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: that we don't know if we're calling him Spencer or
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: the wrong Spencer or whatever, but he's the funky side
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: of buck. And he looked big. He looked bigger in
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: person than he looked on camera coming through that tall grass.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, holy crap, that's a nice deer. He
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: came walk in our direction, but again very far away
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: and down beneath us. He walks as kind of cruising,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: disappears maybe ten minutes later. I look out there again,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: see movement both the buyos and there's a doe squirting
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: through and then right behind her, I see white times
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: and momentarily after that I realized that's Droppy. That's that's
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: the Droptime Buck from the first night. He goes following her.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: Around five minutes later, I see them come back through
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the swamp, but again pretty far away. We got a
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: little footage of it. I don't know if you have
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: you looked at yet. Can you see him? Um? So
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: it was exciting that those two bucks were in the area,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: but pretty darned far away. Um. We're just in a
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: unique spot up on a hill. We can see way
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: down there into an opening. I had this kind of
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: internal conversation with myself that was, Okay, it's nice to
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: know they're in the general area, and it's anything's possible,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: but it seems it seems far more likely that they
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: could go any other direction than this way. But thirty
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: minutes later see times coming through the cedars and just
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: was a real quick flash from one seedar to the next.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: There was like a couple of foot gap and you
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: could just see a side profile of white antlers go through.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And right away I'm like, good buck, good luck. I'm
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: not sure if it's a shooter, but definitely potential. So
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: I said, okay, we need to see what this deers.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: I grabbed the grunt tube, let out a couple of grunts,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: and then you, I don't know, A couple of seconds later,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: five seconds later, all of a sudden, here comes the
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: antlers out from behind the saar. It was one of
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. I mean, it's
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: it's dreams are made the dreams are made of It
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: was the droptime Buck, a little drop he as we're
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: calling him. He came walk out of the sea, came up,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: started ripping up a scrape and then he at this
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: point he's at forty yards facing us head on. I think, okay,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm shooting this deer. If he turns broadside, should I
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: take the shot? Can? I like forty yards in my range,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: but I'd rather have a twenty yard shot than a
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: fourt yard shot. So I'm trying to now think I've
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: got the ball right and think, Okay, should I draw
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: back and try to take the shot right away or
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: do I wait and see how this plays out. I
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: decided to wait and see how it plays out because
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: he never really gave me a good broadside. I think
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: if he'd gone totally broadside and did still, I probably
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: would have done it. But because he never gave me
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: a good angle, we let it play out. And then
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: he started walking towards us, but went behind this big
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: oak tree. He's behind the oak tree, and now I'm
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: thinking in my head, okay, he's heading towards the direction
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: of our wind. Our wind was kind of blowing straight
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: up the edge, and he was heading towards that. So
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: I knew that if he gets past this oak tree,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: there's the potentially he could get on our wind. So
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, as soon as he steps off from
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: behind these branches, I have to shoot fast before he
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: gets that wind that's going through my head. And while
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: it's going through my head, justin all of a sudden
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: like no, no, no, I don't have him. I don't
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: have him. I don't have him and then I think
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: I just shot that you I don't care. Yeah, we
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: had this, We had this prep talk like Okay, this
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: is what we say if we don't have it, this
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: is you know, if we're good, and I'm like, I
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: don't you know here, I'm thinking, this is just the
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: most beautiful moment. Please don't screw it up. And I'm
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: like I'm not on him, and Mark's like I don't care,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: and the like we'll find we have that documented and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: you don't get this, We're just going to revert back
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: to that. What I was trying to say was but
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: I couldn't communicate in the moment, was that I couldn't
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: shoot either. He was behind, so I can't. I was basically,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: don't worry that shooting this way to say I know,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: but but some other words I don't care came out.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: But what I was trying to articulous it don't worry,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not shooting. So it's like a nice way, like, oh,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: it's okay. I listened back to it and I was like, well,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: I have his antlers, so if you want to shoot,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: oh you did. Yeah. Yeah, those are high those are
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: intense moments. There's a lot of pressure window. There was
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: no thinking just in that moment, just base animal mark
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: is what you got. Yeah, but fortunately he didn't go
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: out that way. He stopped, Tony wouldn't talk to me,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: turned around, he turned around, came back the way he
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: sort of came, but cut closer and walked out from
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: behind the oak tree the direction we wanted to, right
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: to twenty yards, fifteen yards something like that, and perfect.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: I mean I drew back as he started coming through.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: As soon as he stepped out behind the branches, I
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: just kind of gave him a little quiet Marat stopped
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: him and let her rip. And it was just about
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: where I wanted, maybe an inch or two farther back
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: than I wanted. I wanted to be kind of center lungs.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: And it was back along and uh, he went tearing off,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and to make a long story short, we pulled out
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: for ways wait until Tony was done hunting. All came
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: back and he didn't run I don't know, sixty yards short,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: wonderful track job, just the way you want it. And
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: just like that, my season went from being what it
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: felt like when I'm almost frustrating, and it had just
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: seemed like everything I've been doing it just kept having
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: weird things happening and tough hunts and from Idaho to
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Ohiou to this long thing I've been doing in Michigan
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: and just been frustrating a lot of ways. But I
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: kept reminded me, kept having the same like internal talk,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: like it can change in a second any tamp time. Now,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: just like stay out there, stay positive, keep at it.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: It will chang change And then just like that, when
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: you least expect it, kind of it does. And that
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: was that was how we killed the first buck on
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: the back forty second buck. We're having a hell of
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: a season the back floor. It's been a new year.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: It's been a new year, so I don't know any
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: final thoughts. It was awesome. I had a blast. I'm
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: really glad you guys are all out here with me, Tony,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: getting your perspective on the property and how you would
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: hunt it and your thoughts. It's it's awesome. I've always
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: enjoyed learning from you, and uh, you know, now you
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: better understand my weirdness, which which is a good thing.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: Charlie justin I want you guys to know how much
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you dealing with all of my adosyncrasies, working
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: your tail off out here, being out here early, staying
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: out late, being here in the crazy hot summer when
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: we were working getting here as early as I make
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: you get here in the mornings for these morning hunts.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it's always good to sleep in the trees
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: dayn before daylight. That means you're in there earlier. Anybody
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: listened to this. We Charlie and I had this conversation
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: this morning because we we've been getting in there after
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: we finally told you, no more Mark, no more marks
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: setting the schedule, we've still been getting in there like
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: an hour and fifteen minutes early and just sitting there
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm doing the math this morning.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, Mark got us in here like two
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: hours before first life, Like this is terrible. Well, yeah
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: it was because we were what was that which was
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: the very first night, the first day we did two hours?
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: I think that was because I mean that was excessive.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I've realized that, Um, I should have just brought my
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: baby set up and just slept under my tree. I
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: just kept looking at the ground. I was like, man,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: but loved it, Like we have so much crap, we
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: have to get set up in these trees and double
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: sets camera gear and it's history. The worst the worst
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: thing you want is to be there and it's like
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes before daylight and there's deer moving all around
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: and you're spooking them. So this goes back to my
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: entire flow with the deer hunting. As if we've discussed,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: which is I overdo everything. I overthink everything. I'm doubly careful.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I try to be perfectious to the tea and it
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: results in all this stupid stuff you have to do
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: with well, you're I mean you're airing on the side
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: of caution there, and you see this with people when
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: you do this enough, if you're rushing, he sucks like
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: you're making mistakes. And so yeah, I mean getting in
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: seventeen hours too early is stupid. But like a nice
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: museum and an hour is what I usually like with
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: cameraman every over that first morning, Charlie and I were
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: sitting there, I was like, Jesus crazy, what is it
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: gonna get lighted? Like you know how it is like
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: you keep your zone out for a while, you maybe
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: like conk out for a little bit. You like look
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: over to the east here, like there should be like
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit of pink. Yet it is just night
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: times kind of like, oh my god, this is the
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: longest ever sending the dark out here was waiting, Yeah,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: we're sitting there so long. This morning, I was like
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: looking at the moon. I was like, the moon has
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: to go a long way before it even starts getting
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: to the way the sun comes up at a spot
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: picked out. Charlie is a star gazer, man, I'll talk
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: to you about stars for a long time. It's a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: lot of cool stuff. Well, there you go, guys, Thank
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: you all for joining. Thanks again to all three of you.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: And uh, two things I'll tell you Number one, make
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: sure you're checking out the back forty. Season two was
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: just launched on the meat Eater YouTube channel. The first
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: episode launched this past Sunday. The second episode will be
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: coming out in just a couple of days. If you
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: want to see how we got to this point where
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot more dear than we saw last year,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: where we've now shot a really nice buck. We saw
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: three shooters. We forgot to mention, I saw another shooter
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: to that too, Um, but that day. UM check it
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: out episode one now. Otherwise, best to luck out there.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: In the woods, shoot straight, and yeah you gotta grind
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: it out. Yeah you gotta put in the time, work hard,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: be smart, do all these things we talked about. But
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the most important thing is have fun. This thing is
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: supposed to be what we love, what we enjoy, what
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: we look forward to all year. Do not let your
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: obsession with the goal, like I sometimes do, get in
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: the way of that. Have a blast, Thanks for listening,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: and stay wired to hunt.