Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 396: How to Learn From a “Failed” Hunt with Janis Putelis

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Ep. 396: How to Learn From a “Failed” Hunt with Janis Putelis · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: nineties six and today the show, I'm joined by mediators
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Janice Proteller to analyze his Wisconsin whitetail bow hunt and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to explore ways that all of us can better learn
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: from our hunts and unfilled tags. All right, welcome to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: X and Tanna show. We've got Janice protell Us with me,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and most of you probably know Janice. He's a producer
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and host and do it all extraordinary over at mediator
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and a damn good hunter. But most of that hunting
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: over the last two decades has happened out West for
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: big game animals other than white tails. But this year
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: his white tail interest was rekindled as he planned a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: return trip to a property in Wisconsin that he grew
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: up gun hunting. Now, Janice and I talked a lot
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: leading into this hunt about all sorts of different ideas
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and strategies. He was listening Wired Hunting podcast and he
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: was pretty pumped to get out there and try a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: bunch of this crazy white tail stuff that we talked
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: about here, but which he never really had a chance
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to try back when he was hunting white tails in
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: his teenage days. So very interesting to see a really
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: experienced Western hunter like this come back to the Midwest
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and and try to explore this different aspect of hunting.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And that hunt it happened last month spoiler alert, he
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: did not fill his tag, but he had a great
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: experience and some interesting learning experiences. So today what I
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: want to do was get your Honest on the show
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to debrief on what happened on that hunt, the challenges
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: he's faced, what went well, what he struggled with trying
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to take his white tail game to this new level,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and and maybe what he was able to learn from
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: all of this too, And that last aspect, that's I
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: think what I'm the very most interested in, which is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: how can Yannice or you and I better learn from
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a quote unquote failed hunt, or really any hunt for
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: that matter. How can we learn from a hunt? How
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: can we learn from a hunting season? Um? You know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I know that for some of you listening, maybe that's
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: not something you're worried about. For you, maybe hunting is
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: just an opportunity to relax and have a good time
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and you don't want to overthink things in that kind
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: of way. You just want to enjoy it. And that's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: that's absolutely fine and dandy and great. I think you're
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: gonna enjoy Janice's story just for the sake of a
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: good hunting story. Um. But I also I also know
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  Speaker 1: that there's a lot of you out there like me,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: who are driven to just go deeper and deeper into
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this thing and constantly find ways to fine tune what
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: you're doing and take your hunting experience to the next level.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And so for those of you out there like that,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I want to spend some time here today talking about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: this larger idea of how do we learn from a hunt?
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's something we talk about on this podcast
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  Speaker 1: a lot, but usually pretty generically. You know something some
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: something you gotta learned from your experiences or YadA, YadA, YadA.
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  Speaker 1: As long as you learn from a hunt, it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: a failure. You've heard me say that kind of stuff,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you heard Dan say that kind of stuff. But how
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: do you actually do that and is it really just
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: that easy, as you know, going out there hunting, screwing
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: things up or doing something then saying well I learned
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: this lesson. I don't think it is that easy, at
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: least from my experience. I think there's more to it
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: than that, or at least there can be more to
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it if we have a little bit of a more
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: thoughtful way of trying to learn from these things. So
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: over the past year so I've been doing a lot
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of reading and studying about this, in particular, you know,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: studying decision making and how to analyze your decisions and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: how do you learn from your outcomes? How do you
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: how do you come to some kind of clear takeaway
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  Speaker 1: that you can you know, move forward from. Ah. I
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  Speaker 1: know this is some some nerdy stuff, um, and it's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's usually written about and thought about in the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: context of something like business or war or poker or
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  Speaker 1: other strategy based activities. But I just see so many
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: parallels to hunting, especially white tail hunting, because white tail
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: hunting rights as many of you guys know, it's it's
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: very strategy focused. You know, once you understand the basics
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: of dear biology and behavior and some kind of standard
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: foundational elements of hunting strategy. From there, it all comes
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: down to decision making. Right, what am I going to
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  Speaker 1: do today based on all this stuff? I know? Do
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I sit there or there? Do I hunt today or tomorrow? Uh?
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  Speaker 1: Do I, you know, take this risky move or not?
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  Speaker 1: And then learning from all those things. So here we
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: are in December, and for a lot of us, probably
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: most of us, there's a bunch of hunts in our
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: rear view mirror, a bunch of decisions have been made
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and some turned out well, some maybe not so well.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And the question now is, at least for me, is
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: how do we learn from that? What do we do
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: different next time? What do we do the same next time?
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  Speaker 1: What should we be thinking about as we plan our
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: next hunt or our next sit or what the hell
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: we're gonna do in one I'm gonna talk about some
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of these things with Janice, and I want to hear
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: his thoughts. But before that, I want to lay out
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: some ideas that I want all of us to keep
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  Speaker 1: in mind as we listen to you, honest, and that
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  Speaker 1: I'm hoping that you can try to put into action
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: for yourself when all this is over. So, as I mentioned,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I've been doing a bunch of reading on this UM.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: A couple of the most interesting books on this topic
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  Speaker 1: were written by a woman named Annie Duke, and she's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a former professional poker player who has then applied a
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: bunch of the decision making strategies and analyzes from poker,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: um and and and taking all that and apply it
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to the business world in other places. So she's got
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  Speaker 1: some really interesting ideas. I'm gonna share some quotes and
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: ideas from her books UM for reference if you do
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: want to take a look at these. The books are
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  Speaker 1: one titled Thinking and Bets Making Smarter Decisions when you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: don't have all the facts, and then secondly how to
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  Speaker 1: Decide Simple Tools for making better decisions. Some good books here.
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  Speaker 1: I definitely recommend them. UM. So let's get into a
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  Speaker 1: couple of ideas here. I think it's I think it's
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: fair to say that one of the keys to getting
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: better after and you know, an unfilled tag or a
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: failed hunt, right, it's it's learning from them. If that's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the case, we need to understand what can help us
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: learn from an experience or hunt and what keeps us
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: from doing that. And there's a couple of things that
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  Speaker 1: Annie talks a lot about in these books that keep
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: us from learning, keep us from being able to accurately
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: judge our decisions, and they're something that are referred to
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: as cognitive biases, and basically cognitive biases a fancy word
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: for a mental shortcut that our brains make to kind
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: of make life easier. There there are ways that the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: brain kind of jumps to assumptions that oftentimes they're right,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: but sometimes they're not, and they can lead to mistakes
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and are thinking. The first one of these is something
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: you've heard me mention a few times this season as
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this, since it's called resulting and resulting,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: you know, I'll quote the definition here from the book
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  Speaker 1: is is the tendency to look at whether a result
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  Speaker 1: was good or bad to figure out whether a decision
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  Speaker 1: was good or bad. So, in other words, it makes
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: you think you know something about the quality of decision
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  Speaker 1: because you know of the outcome. So because this bad
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  Speaker 1: thing happened, my decision was bad. Or because this good
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  Speaker 1: thing happened, my decision was good. But sometimes that's not
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the case. So for example, let's say I make a
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: decision to hunt a certain tree based off a bunch
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of stuff, trail campis win direction and observation so on.
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  Speaker 1: But then the hunt progressive and I see the buck
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  Speaker 1: I was targeting and he moved a hundred yards away. Now,
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  Speaker 1: given that result, it would be easy for me to say, well,
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  Speaker 1: that was a bad decision to hunt from this tree
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  Speaker 1: because the buck was a hundred yards away. It didn't
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  Speaker 1: kill him, So bad decision because of that bad outcome.
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  Speaker 1: But maybe it was a damn good decision based off
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  Speaker 1: everything I knew, But it was just outside factors or
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  Speaker 1: luck the influenced where that buck was and kept the
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  Speaker 1: outcome from matching that good decision. Right, there was a
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  Speaker 1: whole bunch of different potential outcomes, even though it might
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  Speaker 1: have been a really good decision to be there based
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  Speaker 1: off what I knew. If we give into this tendency
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  Speaker 1: to focus just on that result and let the result
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  Speaker 1: dictate how we judge our decisions a k A resulting
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  Speaker 1: excuse our ability to learn from those experiences. And here's
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: another one of these tendencies that we humans have that
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  Speaker 1: mess up our ability to learn, and it's called hindsight bias,
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  Speaker 1: and this is the tendency to believe that an event
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  Speaker 1: after it occurs was predictable or inevitable, something happens, and
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: then after it happened, we will sometimes say, well, of
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  Speaker 1: course it happened. Um, it's that whole hindsight kind of thing.
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  Speaker 1: So for example, we decided to go sit the corner
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  Speaker 1: oak tree on a hunch and a big buck comes
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  Speaker 1: rolling through and when you get a shot, and after
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  Speaker 1: that happens, you look back on it, and you know,
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  Speaker 1: the power of hindsight bias will make a lot of
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  Speaker 1: us jump to the conclusion that, yeah, of course it happened.
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  Speaker 1: I sat there because you know, there's two trials that
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  Speaker 1: came together, and yeah, it worked out just like I
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  Speaker 1: planned it. I knew, I knew this is gonna be.
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  Speaker 1: Where would happen, right, I know you all have a
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: buddy who will tell you the story. And man, just
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: like I called it, I knew it was gonna happen.
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  Speaker 1: But in reality, yeah, it did happen. But there are
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: plenty of other outcomes that are possible. This time it
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: panned out. But if we're being honest with ourselves and
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: if we honestly think through our decision process and how
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: we execute on it, was it really just right? Or
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: we may be giving ourselves a little bit too much
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: credit sometimes, And if we do that too often, if
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: we start patting ourselves on the back too often, if
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: we look at things say well, of course that happened
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that way, sometimes that's going to start impacting our future
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: decisions too. Now, the same thing can be said on
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the flip side, when the outcomes didn't go our way
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: and you see the buck traveling off in the distance
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and you tell yourself, dang it, I should have known that.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Of course you'd be over there. But really, you know,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: this hindsight bias is something we've got to watch out for.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So these two little mental shortcuts resulting in hindsight bias,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: these things can mess with our ability to learn from experiences. Um,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you know, they can keep us from analyzing a hunt
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: clearly or or learning from a decision clearly. So here
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: are two things to think about that can that can
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: help us battle that, I guess, and I'm gonna I'm
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: gonna read two quotes here from one of these anti
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Duke books that I think are are pretty key. Here.
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  Speaker 1: Number one, what makes a decision great is not that
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  Speaker 1: it has a great outcome. A great decision the result
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of a good process. So thinking about the process, not
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the outcome, but the process. And then number two, to
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: assess the quality of a decision and to learn from experience,
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  Speaker 1: you need to evaluate your state of mind honestly and
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: recall what was noble and what was not noble as
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: accurately as possible. So one of the keys to determining
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: decision quality or you know, learning something from a hunter
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and experience, is to think more about the decision process
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: than the actual outcome, clearly remembering and identifying what did
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  Speaker 1: I know as I was trying to make that decision?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: What did I know? What did I not know? What
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: couldn't I have known? And being able to separate those
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: two things from you know, the future and from what
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the actual outcome was, And then you have to think about,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: you know, Okay, this is what I knew, this is
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: what I couldn't have known. Now what was the whole
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  Speaker 1: process given what I knew, now that I've had time
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to thoroughly think it through. Did I use that information
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: to put myself in the right position? And then did
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I execute on that decision and that idea the way
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: that it could have Did I just not have enough
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: information or did I have the right information? But I
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: just got lazy or tired or sloppy. This this step here,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: this idea of reflecting back on your hunts and thinking
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: through not just the outcomes of your time, but the
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: process you took. I think that is what's actually going
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to help us get better. And here's the real kicker though,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in a really important point that I think Annie makes,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and it's it's so true when it comes to hunting.
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  Speaker 1: She says, a lot of experience can be an excellent teacher,
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  Speaker 1: but a single experience not so much. Think about that.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Let me say it again. A lot of experience can
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: be an excellent teacher, but a single experience not so much.
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  Speaker 1: So so one single hunt, one single decision, one single
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: outcome that ship can will you. Sometimes things happen because
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: he made a great decision, But sometimes things happen because
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of good luck, or on the flip side, because of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: bad luck. If we focus too much on any one
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: single data point or one single experience, or risk of
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: being fooled by randomness. But if if on the you know,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: on the flip side, we focus on the entirety of
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: our experiences or the averages, the trends, the overall some
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of our progress. I think that's when we can start
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: getting a more clear and honest picture of what's happening
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and how our changes in process are either helping or
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: hurting us. So here's what I want you guys to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: try to do, if you're willing to play along with me,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: here a little bit, while you listen to J Honest
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and I break down his hunt. Don't just listen to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: his story, but also try to listen for examples of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this resulting or listen for examples of hindsight bias, you know,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: as the Honest is discussing what he's doing, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: listen to his decision making process and how he interpreted
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the outcomes he saw, and use this as a little
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: bit of a aisle run for your own future reflections.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't tell you Honest about any of this kind
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of stuff, leaving up to do it. So he's just
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: recounting what happened and questioning his decisions and all that
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: just naturally. Um And it's a fun story on its own,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: but I think it's it's it's interesting to hear how
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: he worked all of this and then think about that
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: through the lens of what I just told you. These
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: these tools, these biases to watch out for, and these
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: these ways to think through things a little bit differently.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So when you're done listening to the to the story,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the next time you've got a long car ride, or
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: maybe on your next morning run or during a long shower,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: try to apply a little bit of this thinking to
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: your own hunting season or maybe your most recent hunting trip.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Think through the decisions you made and the outcomes that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: came from those, and then the conclusions you drew from.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Push yourself to consider whether or not resulting or hindset
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: bias might have clouded your vision a little bit. Try
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to pick apart that process and be honest about it.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Be honest about what you could have known in the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: moment and what you couldn't have. Tried to remove the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: stuff that you discovered later, like yeah, the big buck
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: jumped the string and you missed him, or yeah, the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: big buck came out over here, or yeah the neighbors
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: there was fifteen neighbors hunting on the other property, and
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: you know that stuff after your decisions, But try to
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: think about what did you know in the moment when
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: you were deciding what to do and when you were
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: actually doing it, And also then think about not just
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: one single moment or experience or decision, but the some
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of those experiences. So we're not going to be fooled
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: by one single data point, We're not gonna be fooled
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: by randomness, and we're gonna look at the sum of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the whole. And then after all that, after all that
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: thinking and reflecting and picking things apart a little bit,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I think then you can have some useful, clear, uh takeaways.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And my one thought on that is to is to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: try to focus your takeaways to just maybe one or
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: two things. Um, At least for me, it can be
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: easy to you know, look back on my hunt. Let's say,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: look back on my hunt for Tram. Right, you've heard
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: me talk about that and reflect on that, and I
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: could sit here and I could list off like three,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: four or five six different things that I learned from
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: this hunt, and that maybe, you know, I want to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: incorporate into future hunt so that I want to change
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the different takeaways some lessons learned. Um. If you do that, though,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: it's really easy to get overwhelmed by all that and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: then none of it stick. On the flip side, if
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: you can focus on just one or two things and say, okay,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: from this hunt or this season. These are my two
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: big takeaways. These are the two things I want to
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: get better at, or that I want to do different,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: or that I have to remember for next time around.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: If you can have it focused there, you've got a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: much better chance of actually being able to take action
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: on them and to actually do something with It's like
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: a New Year's resolution, right, If you've got fifteen New
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Year's resolutions, you're not gonna keep any of them. But
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: if you've got one of them and it's achievable and
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: actionable and clear, then you got a chance. So so
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that's that's my that's my homework for you. I guess um.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I know you sure as hell didn't want homework from me,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: so sorry about that. But but if you're if you're
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: game for this, try to come up with a couple
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: of things. Keep it tight, keep it actionable, keep it achievable,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: and write it down. You know, And maybe this is
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: something that's best done at the end of the year,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: when your whole hunting season is done, but maybe maybe
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: not write down this couple of things, and you know,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: leading into one, you've got something to work with. You've
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: you've been able to take a clear look at what
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: you did. You're able to have a clear, accurate and
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: honest understanding of your process and have a few actionable
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: items to think about or two to move on. So
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: there you go. It's a lot to think about there.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I realize, UM, maybe I lost a couple of you,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But for those of you that are still here with me,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I think and I hope that this is going to
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: be a helpful frame work for us to have in
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: place as we dive into this conversation with Joannice. Um,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So there you go. I think enough of me rambling,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Let's just get into Jannice the story, think about these things,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: enjoy this, and uh, I hope you find it helpful.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: All right with me on the line now, is my
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: buddy Janice tell us Janni thanks for thanks for joining
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: here on the show. No, thanks for taking the time
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to uh make me a better white tail hunter. Mark. Well,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I gotta tell you it has been it's been fun
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: seeing you kind of get re excited about white tails
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: this year and getting these random text messages and phone
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: calls from you picking my brain about this thing or that,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: because I'm not used to that from you, and uh,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm digging it. And I'm hoping you're gonna keep
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: keep on the white tail train. So are you feeling
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: like it's going to continue? Or was this a one
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: and done? No, for sure, as long as they when
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I say they, you know that the powers that be. Uh,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: if I did a good enough job with my white
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: tail hunt this year and made some good entertaining content,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: then hopefully they will let me do it again next year.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, I think I plan on being back
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: in the on the same ground for well, that's something
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: we can talk about. I don't know if it'll be
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the same dates, um, but roughly during that somewhere in
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that three week peak white tail period, I'd like to
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: be back, um, hanging in hanging off out of a
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: tree for you know, a solid week or so for sure.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So what I wanted to do here, uh was, you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: basically take a conversation I think you and I wanted
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: to have anyways, which was hearing about how your hunt went,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, kind of dissecting and maybe doing it
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: almost an autopsy of the experience and what were you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: thinking leading up to it, what happened during the hunt itself? Um,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you know where the things you could have done differently
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: where the things you did. I kind of want to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: walk through the whole hunt, your whole experience, kind of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: diving back into the white tail thing after you've been
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: somewhat removed from it over the past couple of decades,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and in seeing if not only can you learn something
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: from this hunt, but maybe there's some opportunities to help
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: everybody else learn how to kind of dissect their own experiences,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: because this is something I'm always trying to do myself.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And you've heard some of my past podcast you hear
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: me lots of times trying to analyze what I was
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: thinking at a given moment, or did I make the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: right decision here? Should I have done something differently? And
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: at least for me, I kind of geek out about
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: this constant fine tuning and polishing of what I'm trying
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to do. UM. And I hope that's something that people
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: can take away from this and do themselves. So this
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: seems like a perfect case study. UM. And then the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: goal would hopefully be that you come out of this
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: having found something valuable too. Uh So are you are
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: you game for that? For me to just start picking
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it away at everything you did and see what we
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: can and fine, oh yeah, please please. Like I said
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: before we started recording, I think I'm gonna get more
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: out of this than uh than your listeners. Um, but
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: hopefully it's of equal value to both them and me.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But yeah, man, have at it. Well, let's set it
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: up a little bit, because right you grew up having
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: done some white tail hunting and then you headed out
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: west and started chasing all sorts of other things. Can
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you just lay the groundwork as far as what those
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: early white tail experiences were, like, how did what did
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: you have coming into this from your past? Yeah, so
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you know I started hunting white sales. I don't know.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I probably started sitting in the blind with my dad
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: at ten or so, and I think I could hunt
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: at twelve. I can't remember which state was which. What
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: is it in Michigan now to over fourteen, it's it's
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: it's removed. Now if you've got a mentor with you,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you can start hunting super young. But it used to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: be I think thirteen with a bow, twelve with the bow,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the two of the guns, something like that, and you
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: right about that age, I started, you know, carrying it
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: going a few years later, I got a bow, started
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: shooting a bow a little bit, and it's hard to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: put an exact number on it, but definitely there was
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a couple of falls before I left, because I left
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Michigan when I was eighteen, I believe, to move out
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to Colorado, So there was probably two or three falls
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: there where you know, I probably spent a dozen days
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: or you know, haunts in a tree stand on my
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: own with the boat. UM, took a few shots, never
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: killed one. UM over the years, I don't know, killed
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: probably ten does and then three four small you know,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: basket rack, Michigan special box and UM, I know Wisconsin
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I killed like a crotchet horn was my first buck
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, and I think I was probably sixteen ish
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: when I killed that. UM. So as much as I
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: say like I grew up white tail hunting, you know,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I think I left right as at the point in
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: time where I could have gotten kind of real serious
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: about it. And I know some people get more serious earlier,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: but UM for me, I think, you know, roughly at
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the age of eighteen, I probably could have started, you know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: really you know, focusing in on it, and I just
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: was was gone. You know. So there's some white tail experience,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: but it's definitely limited. And then over the course of
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: the next twenty years, I would go back probably every
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: three or four years to Wisconsin and just haunt the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: gun opener and then the following two days, um, all
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: on the same property that I hunted this year for
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a full seven days. So um, there's definitely some familiarity.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: But I think one thing I learned this week, like
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: big time, is just how you know the different levels
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of familiarity. Right, you think you sort of know a place,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and then and spending a whole week there like just
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: pounding it, I just have a whole different view on
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: it now, you know what I mean. Yeah, And you
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and I were talking the other day about how, you know,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: just going from being in a situation that you're typically
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: in out west in Montana or Colorado or wherever, chasing elk,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: mule deer, all the stuff you've been doing over the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: last twenty years. You obviously have you know, developed a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: real level of expertise doing that stuff. But then you
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: go back to something you did a long time ago,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and it's it's a little bit humbling being put in
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a slightly different position now. Right when you headed back
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to Wisconsin taking on this you know, hunting in a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: different kind of way, bow hunting during the rut, pounding
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: it for seven days. What was that like for you?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Just going from something you're super comfortable with tow now
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: back in a different type of situation and kind of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I wanted to say you were
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what the right word would be,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: but but in outside your comfort zone in a weird way,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah. I mean I think mostly what I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: noticed they were that was that I just I lacked
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the confidence in decision making, you know, because even though
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't done a lot of it. Um, you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I spent a couple of years ago, you and I
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: hunted in Michigan kind of on the same hunt, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I spent you know, three or four days in a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: tree stand. Although I hadn't really like picked locations there.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: We kind of showed up and you were like, yeah,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I go sit here. Um, because I didn't really have
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to do much of the homework. But um, yeah, it
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: was just like the lack of confidence, Like when I'm
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: in the woods out here out west, I just sort
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of have like, like, I know him maybe not making
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the right decision, but I have confidence in my decision
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and I go and execute on it and you know,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: let the chips fall. But that week in Wisconsin this year,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I'll just constantly just battling my in my head like
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: should I stay? Should I go? You know, just this
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: classic fomo of fear missing out of what's going on
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: over the next ridge, and should I give it some
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: more time or should I not? Is it too indeed
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to be on a ridge top? Um? Is if I
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: go off the ridge top, is the wind gonna suck?
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: You know? Um? So yeah, because these days with so
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: much information out there, you know, listening to all your
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: podcasts and listening and watching the hunting public guys, um
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: you know, reading stuff, there's just so much out there
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that you sort of like gain like us like going
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: into it before you get your boots on the ground.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: You kind of have a false sense of confidence, especially
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: when you got twenty trail cameras out and you've got like,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you know, six or more like I'm happy to shoot
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: kind of bucks. And then you all of a sudden
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: you have to put it all, you know, put the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: boots on the ground and make it happen. And then
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: you realize that like, oh, it's not gonna be that easy.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: It's just like everybody makes it sound like on every podcast. Yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: So so set me up with the place. This is
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: somewhere that you have hunt in the past, but never
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: like this. This is somewhere Wisconsin. Kind of paint the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: scene a little bit for what you were heading into. Yeah,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: we're up in and kind of like pretty central, like
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: over by Eau Claire across are kind of the two
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: nearest bigger towns. Um. What's interesting about his property is
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that it lacks any real agriculture. Like we have a
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: couple of small fields that are on the neighbors on
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: one side of us, but other than that, it's just
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: all big oak woods, you know, and it's been it's
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: been managed, you know, had you know, cuts done on
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: it over the years, and so you have you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: like the poplar and and uh maple, you know, kind
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of younger thickets you know here and there. Um, but
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: there's just there's it lacks that edge habitat. You know
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that if I was gonna go and like just pick
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a place to go hunt, I would like find a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: place that had a lot of edge habitat, right, because
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: it seems like like deer like it and also seems
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: like a good place to ambush deer is on those edges. Um,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and it's got a live topography for white tailed country.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I mean it's not quite the you know, white tail
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: country of Montana, but like it's got ridges that go
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: two to three feet up from the bottom and definitely
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: has stuff that's deep enough to you know that that
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: you could ski. And it's sort of just like this
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: interconnected woven it's either you can say that the ridges
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: are connected or the bowls are connected, you know, through saddles,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: however you want to look at it. But like a
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: lot of ups and downs, a lot of little finger
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: ridges popping off the main ridges. Uh. It's a place
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: where when you're taking the ridge out, you know before Onyx,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: where there's a lot of times where if you you know,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: take the finger ridge down too early and don't walk
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the extra if you're seventy five yards to stay on
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the main ridge, you know, you end up going into
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a hell hole and having to walk around another ridge
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: versus taking an easy way home, you know what I mean. Um,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: it can just you know, and it it all looks
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: the same. We have it so easy for navigating out west. Uh,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: you know, big mountains, it's just easy to you know,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: know which way is downhill and which way to go,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: and when you get into you know, um, not that
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: this train is flatter, but it's just more covered in vegetation,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I guess. So it's always it's harder to just see,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you know, around you and just kind of go, oh, yeah,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: there's the you know sun in the south or whatever. Um.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: So anyways, yeah, big ridges, big balls, all hardwoods, um
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and UM I also want to say about it, Um,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: is there anyone hunting other than you? I mean, there's
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: a pretty good group of guys at all hunted over
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: rifle season, um, you know, and this year it's in
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years some of the only fellas
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: have retired, so that this year they actually put in
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: uh two weekends over rifle season. But otherwise no nobody
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: really hunting it for for both season. UM. I mean
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: every now and then, you know, someone might come and
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: put a day or two in, but it's fairly unmolested. Okay,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: So then what about fo acres is about what I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: had access to. So then what was the game or
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: what was the prep work that you put into it
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: leading up to the hunt. We're able to come out
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and scout or do anything in the spring or summer
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: or was this you know your dad hung some cameras
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: and then you came right out during this actual hunt. Yeah,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: so I didn't get to make it out there. I
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: tried thought about it. Um, in retrospect, I think it's
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: like there's some things I could have done. I don't
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: know if I would have done these things that would
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: now do if with a trip in the summertime. But um, yeah,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: so I didn't make it. So really I just poured
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: over you know, the topography layer on on X probably
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: more than anything as far as like digital scouting goes,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and just really try to just from what I know
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: from like general dear movement on this property and then
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: really just try to fine tune it and look and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: like pick my saddles because like everybody knows, right like
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: rich country, it just seems like saddles, you know, our
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: our places where deer travel, you know. So I just
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: really try to bear down on those and figure out,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: you know, where I should try and you know, set
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: some you know, set of stand up. Now my dad
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: did hang I don't know, approximately twenty cameras. I think
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: we had like eight of the Moultrie um cell cameras
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: and then a dozen or so of just the the
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: standard cameras. UM. He did most of the work on
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the ground. UM. I kept asking him to find me
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: like the thickest bedding cover, and it was something that
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: just never really material materialized that in him. I've kind
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: of realized that my dad at seventy, you know, I
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: can have a long list along to do list, and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: m he's only got so much energy, you know what
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, So like where you and I could go
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and cover seven miles and pretty much cover the whole
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: place and be like all right, here's the you know
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: four main really thick looking betting areas. You know that
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: that took all summer and more UM to get out
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of him. So he did pre set um I think
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: six or seven tree stands for himself, UM, which I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't too worried about. I mean, I helped him pick
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: locations and again we used just historical you know data,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and then and then just where we had seen a
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: lot of activity you know from the cameras UM. And
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: then you know, he picks he picked whatever it was
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: six or seven spots to set up his tree stands.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: The guys from River's Edge actually came out and helped him,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: just like they helped you on the back forty two uh,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to set up the stand. So that was super nice
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: of him. Yeah, huge help with the assembly of some
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of those things, that's for sure. Um, for sure, it
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: takes some time. So that was it. Man. I wouldn't
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: really call it a lot of like prep work, you know.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I was counting on you know, having some at least
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: having an an inventory idea of of what we had
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: with the cameras and knowing what was there and what, um,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: mostly just so I would know like, oh, okay, like
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: there are no big bucks, you should just shoot the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: first basket six you run into, or like oh no,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: there are enough like what looked to be three to
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: four year old deer too. I could hold out and
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: try to get shot at one of them, you know. Yeah,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: so so walk me through where you're dead. Ended up
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: putting some of these trail cameras. I know you and
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I had some discussions through the summer, um, but well
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: what ended up being the plan for where those were
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: placed to get you that inventory? Um, well, what happened
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: with the cell cameras we quickly realized that you can't
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: just put those anywhere, you know, if you don't have
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: the best coverage, right. And I definitely seemed like we
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: just had to be up on the You could be
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: like halfway up a hill and get decent, you know, reception,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: but if you had them on the ridge top, they
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: were going to be working the best. Um. So we
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: basically did you know what what from what he could
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: tell in the moment, you know. And again he was
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: setting them in the summertime, so it's really hard to
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: set in the summertime when the woods don't look like
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: they're gonna look you know, come October November, you know. Um.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: But I had a couple of spots where like historically
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: I knew they there's a bunch of scrapes. Um. He
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: would set them there. Um. Sometimes he just like you know,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: was walking and just you know, I was like, all right,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: here's two trails, like you know, come across the saddle.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put one here. Um, Like I said, a
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: lot of them we put in locations that we wanted,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: but we ended up having to move them. We definitely
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: put a couple down where we do have that little
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: bit of edge habitat where where like our woods, about
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the neighbors agriculture and he had beans and uh corn
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: um and then otherwise. Yeah, just like you know, I
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: kept telling him, just trying to you know, when you're
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: walking the boundary or walking, you know, walking the road,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: just look for where there's a lot of tracks crossing
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the road, you know, and put one up there. So um, yeah,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that's I guess that was our tactic for where to
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: set them and okay, walk me through and what you
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: ended up discovering? Did you find out what you're wanting
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to find all those cameras? Yeah. What was really interesting
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: is that early on, like for most of the summer,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: like I'd say, like well even well into October, it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: was as if there were no Bucks living there. Like
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I was quite kind of surprised. I was like, there
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: was like literally nothing, especially nothing mature. Um. And I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: think that sometime in September we finally got like us
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: ten point and it was like I don't know, points
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like sweet, like there's one. You know. It was amazing
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: is that like whatever whatever tripped them in October when
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: they finally started moving, and I'm guessing just had to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: do with the scrapes because all of a sudden, like
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: we had one camera. It was funny. It wasn't just bucks.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: There was one camera my dad had set up on
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: a place that he named like mouse Meadow, and I
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: forget the reasoning behind it, but like it's it's an
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: old scrape that's been there for whatever as long as
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: he remembers. So he's like, yeah, I put it up
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on this old scrape. And I was getting to the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: point where I was gonna tell him he yanked the
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: camera because like literally we had zero deer on this
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: thing at all, and then all of a sudden, something
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: change and there was doze box, doze box, doze box,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: like every single day hitting this scrape and coming down
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: this ridge like to to this scrape. Uh So that
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: was like, that was very interesting, and that happened in
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of places. Um, Like I was telling you earlier,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Like I had a spot where I kept telling him
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: like please, there's like there's like a ridge where you
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: almost kind of go through a little tunnel of like
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: just like real early growth, successional growth. You know, I
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's Pulper's maples whatever that are have
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: grown in and it's probably been five to ten years,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and it's kind of like you go through a tunnel almost.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: It's so it's so thick on this ridge top, you know,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: and we've got to cut open just as a trail,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and right when it pops out, you kind of you're
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: on a kind of a three way where the ridge
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: is intersect and there's always you know, scrapes there and
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I had n't put one up there, and the same
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: thing there for like but when we finally put it
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: up there, that was getting towards the end of the summer,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: but still two weeks nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, And then
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, sometime in October, it was like
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: scrape time and there was just constant activity in that zone.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And that was one of the big things that I've learned.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: And then obviously I learned that there were more bucks,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: like more shooter type bucks around than than you know,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: we had we had previously thought, you know, how many
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: do you think? Mm hmm. I think we had like
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: trying not to count the neighbors, because the neighbors sent
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: me some pictures too of bucks that we never even
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: got pictures of, but we probably had like two or
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: three ten points two eights We had one that we
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: called the straight eight because he just had these main
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: beams that just like we're out and then went just
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: straight out in front of his nose, no more curb,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: you know, no more cur up or in, just like
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: straight out. And then we had another one that we
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: called like the big eight, and he just had a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: little bit bigger frame and the main beam that like
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: curved and it curved up at the end, curbed up
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: so much that it would almost make him look like
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: a ten in some pictures, you know, because the main
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: beam would kind of throw you off because it kind
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of pointed upward. Um. And then uh, we had one
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: kind of non typicals, you know, I don't know, I'd
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: i'd call him a giant. We never never got to
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: see him in daylight. It was only on nighttime pictures,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: but it was like, I don't know, he had plenty
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: of little stickers and points, and he's a he's a
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: big giant buck, you know, definitely like a you know,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: one fifty plus kind of buck. Um. So I don't know,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: i'd say at least six maybe eight bucks that I
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: would be like super happy to shoot. You know, what
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: what did you think about? And maybe maybe this isn't
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the case. I don't know how you guys did things
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: back when you're guiding elk hunts and stuff. But was
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: this interesting situation going to a hunt knowing like, Okay,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: these are the bucks that I can probably expect to see,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and you you sort of were setting expectations based on that. Um.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Did that feel different compared to when you head out
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: into Colorado or the mountains of Montana or something, don't
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: really know what's up there? Um? Or what? Was this
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: not too different and you were just gonna kind of
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: set your goals as you went. Yeah, I mean, I
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: just I wasn't. I wouldn't say I was like hunting
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: particular bucks because I just I quickly realized that man,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: I just didn't have it dialed in enough to be like, oh, yeah,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the you know, the Big eight is always running this
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: ridge or he's been seeing here a bunch, or this
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: is his favorite travel route and maybe this is where
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: he bets. Like. I didn't have any really thoughts like that,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: So I was going out there just thinking like, Okay,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna just like, shoot, you know something that looks
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: more like he's two, three four years old and not
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: a one year old, you know, and um, there's plenty
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: of them out there that I should have an opportunity
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: in seven days behind Yeah, okay, so do you? I mean,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it was cool to know that there was like some
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: big box roaming around, but I definitely wasn't like zeroing
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in on one of them. What about that big giant
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: buck though I know that that got you a little excited.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Was there any part of you that when you started hunting,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you were thinking, Man, should I should I be patient
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: these first couple of days because there's this this super
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: big guy out here, or or were you honestly that
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: realistic from day one and you were thinking, ah, he's
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: probably not around. Well, I will say, because like we
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: rolled in in the evening, I didn't really have like
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: a spot set for the morning. And then one of
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: the few spots where like I have walked it and
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: been there enough where I literally knew, like I could
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: go in there in the dark and probably get into
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: a tree without a lot of commotion. The first morning
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: it was in the area where we had picked him
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: up on camera. So like, certainly the first morning I
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: kind of was drawn, you know, you know, towards his
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: his little zone where we would pick up on camera. Um,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: but man, just like yeah, I said, I guess I
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: was pretty realistic then because I just knew that I
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: just didn't have enough like data to be like, Okay,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna sit here for seven days and it's gonna happen,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we'll walk me through what you did.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Then let's let's let's just here the day by day.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm kind of curious from you not only tell
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: me what you did, but I'm also curious if you
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: can remember, like what your thought process was when you
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: were choosing what to do, or what were the things
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: you were struggling with, Like did you have questions like
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: were you struggling to think what the hell should I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: do on day one? Um? That would be interesting and
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: then we can kind of walk through and I might
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: pick some of those things apart as we go. Sure,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: So that was open and morning, and I want to
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: say that I saw I saw too deer like just
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: cutting cutting through the woods kind of at a quick pace,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and it was hard to tell it like if a
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: bok was chasing a dough like they were that far
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: off you know where it was just flashes and I
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: got my binoculars up and never really couldn't identify them. Um,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: but that was all I saw all morning, and so
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I decided to pull out and then go to a
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: place that's called the Oak Flat. And the Oak Flat
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: like I didn't have a camera up there, but it was.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: It's basically it borders a neighbor, and the neighbor had
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: just like in the last two years, I think, pretty
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: much clear cut, like a like a forty acre chunk, right,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: And I just figured that that clear cut would for
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: for multiple reasons in my head, would be holding dear
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: whether it was just young and thick, so they'd be
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: betting in there. Maybe there'd be some like enough sunlight
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: getting to it where there would be some forage that
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: they'd want to be eating on. And so I decided
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to go hunt this oak flat, which is on top
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: of a ridge. And I get in there and I
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: actually bump two does like right when as I'm basically
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: on the oak flat kind of looking for a tree
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: to to set up in, and I'm thinking, all right,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: that's like a decent sign, right, There's like they were
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: probably betted here or they were just feeding here off
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: this edge, I don't know, but they didn't bump too hard.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: They just kind of scampered off and you know, didn't
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: really know what it was. So I don't know if
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: if they just barely caught a whiff of me or what.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: But um, this oak flat has so that was like
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: off to one side was this clear cut, but it
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: also has like probably maybe like a ten year old
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: cut on another side of the flat, like coming off
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the steep ridge, which is super thick, and the wind
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: was blowing kind of out of that ten year old
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: cut thick stuff up onto the oak flap. So as
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I'm the oak flats maybe I don't know, hundred yards
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: wide or so ish, and I just in my head,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I thought, Man, if a buck comes up onto this
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: oak flat and he's cruising and checking like a betting area,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: he's going to calm like closer to this thick stuff
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: then farther away from it, because he'll just be right
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: on top of it, you know, trying to smell what's
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: down in there. Maybe, so I set up, like if
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: you divide it into thirds, probably a third of the
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: way closer to like this thick edge that dropped off,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: and I could still see the whole oak flap um,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: you know, in the other directions, so you know, it
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: felt good. It was a good tree with. What I
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: found interesting too is like just learning how to pick
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: trees like quickly, you know, when you're when your saddle
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: n ng um. Yeah. These like in this big oak
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: forest and on like an oak flat like that where
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: it's like a lot of mature trees and the leaves
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: were like gone. Like you get up there and man,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: there is not a lot of cover, you know, so
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you're like looking for ones that have a couple of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: extra branches poking out maybe, or looking for one that
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: is next to a white pine that you know might
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: break up your slhouette a little bit. This one, actually
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I did have a nice white pine next to me
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: kind of in my like no shooting lane, which was perfect.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Well anyways, um, I think I have a like a
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: forking hornbuck come in maybe I don't know, an hour
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: before dark, Um I catch. I think one of those
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: does up and feeding again out in that clear cut
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: that's brand new, and then like fifteen minutes left to
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: go before dark, up onto the oak flat flat pops
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: up like I think it was the straight eight. It's
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: like nice eight point buck. I'm like sweet, you know,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: like from whatever distance. It was less than a hundred yards.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I cannoculars, I can be like, oh yeah, sweet, but
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you're bot And he kind of came. He was actually
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: paralleling walking. He's kind of coming up out of a bowl.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: And then his path was paralleling that the fresh new
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: cut was on one side of him, and then the
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: kind of the that the ten year old cut was
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: on the other side of him. It was he on
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: top of the ridge or sidehilling. Well, he came, he
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: came straight up out of a bowl and then popped
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: right up on top of the ridge. He got up there.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And then for whatever reason, instead of like as soon
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: as he popped up, taking a right like I thought
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: he would, and then coming along that edge that would
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: have brought him, you know, right into like where I
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: was hoping that he would walk and he would continue
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: to basically sent check that super thick stuff that he
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: had kind of come out of it. But but he
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: had kind of come off the edge of it, you
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like he didn't seem like he
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: had come right out of the thickest part of it,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: you know, just knowing what was below me. Well, when
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: he pops up on the oak flap, my wind is,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty much going the same direction. He's traveling right.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: So if he takes it right, immediately he's gonna come
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: across the wind and never cash my wind. But for
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, he goes almost across the Oak flat and
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: gets like down wind, but he's we're still here, I
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: still have like a parallel wind. And then he then
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: he takes the right and basically comes and then you
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: could tell he was he had actually turned and was
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: gonna come back across the Oak Flat to I don't
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: know where he was going to go at that point.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: At this point I was guessing, but he had made
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the turn and then literally as he made the turn
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to come back towards me, and this is probably I
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: don't know when he popped up. He was probably sixty
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: yards and then he went stayed at roughly sixty yards
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: maybe seventy, made that turn and then was gonna come
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: back towards me. But at that point he caught my
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and caught my wind, and that was it. It's so
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: funny because you're watching, You're like, oh, yeah, these big
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: bucks are gonna be so stupid. It's November five, you know,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I'll get away with everything. It's like, well, you get
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: away with everything except for when they smell you. Yeah.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: So do you looking on that then that night, given
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: what you knew, if you took the fact of what
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: he actually did, but do you feel like you were
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: set up in about the best place you could have
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: been given the information available, or after watching that night,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: did you learn something that would have change your thought
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: process next time around up there? Mm hmm. Man, it's
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: a tough call. You know. We saw I sat that
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: oak flat probably at least three more hunts, three or
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: four more hunts. That's probably like the one spot that
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I spent the most time in because I was having, um,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: you know, continual success there right, Like I was at
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: least seeing deer there, even if it wasn't like a
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: mature buck. Um. And one of the following days when
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I set up, I set up probably thirty forty yards
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: more down wind. It was interesting. We had a south
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: wind pretty much the whole week, which was hot week,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't it. Yeah, very very very warm. Um. I think
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of people battled that in the Upper Midwest
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: that first week of our November this year. Um. But yeah,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: it was just like the south wind. So a lot
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: of my planning in my head, you know, and I
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: was like looking at saddles and and just like thinking
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: about where to put stands. Everything in my head was like, well,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: you're gonna set up for a west wind, because that's
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: just gonna be like more than likely what you're gonna
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: be dealing with, you know. And so that really threw
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: me off was to constantly have to go in there like, Okay, no,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be south wind. South wind, you know. And
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: so the when I set up consequently, I was I
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: was setting up more down wind. And I think every
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: deer that pretty much came onto that flat, like I
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: would have gotten close to getting a shot on him,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: you know. Um, but the flat is just big enough,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, where you can't cover it
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: all if you decide to set up like on the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: actual down wind side, you know. Um, and a lot
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: of these like where these ridges break off and fall off.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: If you get right on that edge and the winds
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: blowing anything more than four or five miles an hour,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I feel like that your winds kind of getting blown
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: out into I don't know, just like the universe, as
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: opposed to like kind of falling down the hill, you know,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, you'll blow overtop anything right that
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: comes close. Yeah, so you're almost like getting the best
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: of both worlds because even if something comes up the
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: hill down wind of you, it's a really good chance
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: that your winds blowing over the top of them. Right.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: So anyways, Yeah, that's what I did. The following sets,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Um and I had like a I forget what it was.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: It's like either either a fork at horn or maybe
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: like a real small six that that I messed around
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: when he came in and um, one of those talks
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: that really anxious right like comes by once didn't make
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: it within raine, So I let him get to like,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you know, just where I could barely see him, grunted
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: at him. Then he came all the way back, came
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: went down wind of us, definitely could tell he was
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: smelling us, and then came right back under the tree
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: again asking for trouble. Yeah, asking for trouble. But it
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: was early in the hunts. I'm like, I'll let you go.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: It's gonna get better. Man. What what about? What about
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: you know? Send control? Is that something you did? You
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: run the Western route, which is just play the way
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and don't worry about stuff. Or did you try to
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: adopt some of the white tail fanatic approach and do
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: some stuff to minimize a little What did you do
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: on that front? Uh, not too much. A couple of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: bottles of this sent away. We're kicking around, you know,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: we would spray ourselves, you know, periodically we left. We
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: did leave our hunting clothes outside. You know, we wore
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: rubber boots um while we hunted. But and you know,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: being that like it's two of us, right because we're
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: videoing it, and the fact that we were like doing
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: some pretty serious walk and it wasn't like mega hikes,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: but like you know, a solid like fifteen twenty minute
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: hoof in the dark is definitely enough to like, you know,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: if you're not dressed properly, if you've got too me
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: clothes on, you're gonna get lathered up a little bit.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So Um I was. And you know what, I can't
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: tell if it or not, because anytime like a deer
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: got directly down wind, um, it seemed like they were
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: onto me. You know. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: hard with the camera. I definitely agree with that. I
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: feel like if I do everything just as best as
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I possibly can, when I'm solo, I can maybe get
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: away with it thirty percent of the time, you know,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: thtcent times something like that. The rest of the time
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I'm getting winded, but I get away with it a
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: few times. But when you've got another person up there
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: with all the additional possibilities that come with that, it's
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: it's really hard. Although we definitely had a few, uh
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: examples this year on the back forty where we at
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: least got deer that were confused. Um, but I'm running
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: things even you know, further than what you described with
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: also using ozone too, but with two guys in the tree,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: both of us being super serious and in having what's
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: it's called ozonics machine, so it blows some ozone out there,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: which foils things up a little bit more. Even we
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: had a couple of times where bucks would get down
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: wind of us and know something was up, but not
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: enough that they buggered out of there right away. And
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: actually that was the buck I end up killing on
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: the back forty. That happened on the very first night
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: of our hunt. He got down wind and was just, yeah,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: I don't love it, but there's a bunch of doughs
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: around and I'm more interested in that, and so it's
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things that sometimes it can help,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But I don't know. It's it's for me.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I usually air on the side of I'd rather do
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: too much too than too little. But I don't know.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: It's tough with the caraman. Like you said. I digress though.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Another thing on the this first night's hunt, you talked
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: about getting into this oak lot and trying to pick
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: a tree, and how so many of them lack cover.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Did you find yourself having to sacrifice at all on
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the spot you want to be to get cover? Because
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: this is like a thing I'm always battling with. Do
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: you pick the tree that is in a slightly less
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: than ideal location but it's got great cover and you
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: know you're not gonna get busted. Or do you get
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in the perfect location in a subpart tree where it's
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: you know, a little more risky, but you're in this spot.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: What did you have to do in this time? In
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: this example? You know, I got lucky and there was
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: there was enough good solid oaks to climb up there,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: and like I said, just a couple, like a little
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: smattering of white pines. Um It seemed to work. We
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: even had like I think the second tree we chose
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: for the for the follower following sits, it had like
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: a nice v right at you know the height that
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: we were setting up. You know. Also it gave us
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a little bit more cover. Um. But yeah, just in
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: general throughout the week, you're definitely weighing that a lot,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you know, along with I mean, I don't know if
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: you want to get into that now, but like just
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: the prep that goes into you know, picking your spot,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: you know, and how much that ways into which tree
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: you're going to get into, Because you can get into
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: one where there's you know, almost zero you know shooting
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: lanes needed to cut and just a few limbs on
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the way up. Um, but it's like way too open, right.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: But then if you go ten yards over, you know,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: to get a little bit more cover, the next tree
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: that's you know whatever, yeah, just giving you more cover.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden you got like you went from
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: four shooting lanes down to one and it's not the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: best one, um, And then you've also got to cut
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty limbs and make a racket going up
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: the tree. A lot of that did you find yourself
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: airing towards one of those extremes of the other man. No,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: not really, It's just because again it's like, you know,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: days are short, you know you ye, we would I
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: would sit until you know, never came down, probably earlier
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: than like ten thirty eleven, And so if you sat
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: to like one, it's getting dark at whatever it was
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: five thirty, and so you've only got so much time left, right,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: so you just have to, like, if you're going to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: a new spot, there's not let a lot of time
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to be walking around, and and plus you don't want
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: to walk around too much and stink to place up
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: and so a lot of times I'm just I was
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: probably hasty. Um, And that's something I thought about retrospectively too,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: is like, but I probably could have done some nights,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and I actually did it one night. Is actually because
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't feeling my spot. I just got out
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: of the tree and just kind of sort of still
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: hunted my way up this road where I thought I
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: might intercept something. But there's probably other times where I
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: had like just to set up wasn't right, the wind
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: was wrong or whatever, and I should have just gotten
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: out of the tree and went for a walk. You know,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and went and did some still hunting and see if
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: I can make something happen as opposed to just sitting
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: there and cussing the wind. You know, that's hard to
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: do though, hard to bail on a hunt like that.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Think it's gonna lay out and it's gonna get good,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: or you're like the app keeps saying that it's supposed
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: to be straight out, So why is it blowing out
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: of the north on me? Right now? I was tricky
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: in that rich country is and I think that happened
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to me a couple couple of sets is where I
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: think I was getting like a recirculating wind maybe right,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: So it's like blowing off the top of a big
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: ridge and then somehow like turning underneath itself and then
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: blowing back against it, like midway right where I was
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: set up. And um, you know, obviously you're like, I'm
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: like looking up this ridge expecting these deer to come
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: down it towards me and the you know, the winds
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: blowing right at it. Um. But yeah, hindsight, you just
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: described all this prep and work it takes to get
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: up in these trees and and moving around and whatnot.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: This is the first time this this season at least,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: has been the first year that you've tried using a
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: saddle extensively like this and and been really mobile, um,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: you know, elevated hunting from new places, hanging sticks up
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: and down, you know, climbing up and down every hunt.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: What what was that like for you and and your
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: preparation leading up to it. I know you were, you know,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: practicing in Montana and you did some hunts out there.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Just I'm kind of curious where your head's at and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: now having done it, used it over the course of
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a of a good rut hunt. Now what what? What
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: kind of prep did you need to make it work?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: And then when the hunt actually happened did you feel
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: like you were ready for that? How did it go? Yeah?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: I shot a lot out of it, but I had
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: it set up to where I could just like step
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: up onto a tree and onto the platform and clip in,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: you know, and shoot. So I felt like I did
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: my homework there. I did my prep and I was
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: ready to ready to shoot out of it. And the
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: way I haven't set up in my house because that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't make it sound like I'm getting much of an angle,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: but I've got a very steep embankment kind of gully
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: at my house. So I would climb a tree that's
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: at the top of it, just like and get two
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: ft off the ground and then shoot down that slope,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: which so I could shoot these like twenty yard shots
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: that were it would it would be as if though
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: you were like thirty ft up in a tree, right,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: So very like steep angles, you know. And so I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: got all that practice in and I've got a full
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: sized deer target. Um, you know, they'll kind of let
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: me see, you know, what those arrows impact like. And
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: because I think a lot of that changes to you know,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: not I wasn't used to. That is where you know,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: you actually might have to aim a little bit higher
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: on that animal if you want to strike center of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: the of the vitals, because as if you just hit
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: the tin ring, but you're shooting from a high in
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: a tree, you're probably just gonna hit one long and
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: go underneath. I get long, you know. But um, otherwise, uh,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: I probably could have done more, just like trying to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: get in more haunts, just like actually climbing the trees. Um,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: but I went with me. I was using those uh
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: timber Ninja, the carbon fiber sticks and with the ropes.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: Uh initially had sent me the buckles, and then I
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: saw that, like it seemed like everybody was just running
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: ropes and you can just use that very simple cow hitch,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: and so I just went and bought some I think
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: it was like six mill static rope, and UH put
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: on some chunks. And where I learned there is that
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: like like I think I cut them all at seven ft.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Next year I will have probably and I was running
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: four sticks. Next sure, I'll probably run three of them
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: at seven ft or maybe three of them at six
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: ft and then have one that has like maybe ten
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: feet on it. Because a lot of these oaks, that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: very first step that you attached, like I couldn't even
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: get my arms around it, you know what I mean.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: And so you don't have enough cord to get around
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: that sucker, You're just gonna you're gonna be s o
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: l and you gotta go pick a different tree, you know,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: even if that's in the right spot. Um, but yeah, man,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like it's definitely a little bit of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: a workout, you know, especially the farther apart you spread
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: your sticks like, um, it takes an effort, and uh,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: but overall, Man, I enjoyed it. It's definitely like it's
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: sweet to just have the freedom, you know, to go
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: anywhere and any kind of work that you might have,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: like you know, getting up and down trees. I think
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: it's it's um outweighed by the benefit of just being
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: able to set up anywhere you want. You know, was
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: there any aha moment for you as you start doing
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it more and more where you had something click with
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: that process that made it easier or that helped you
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: become more efficient? Um? I don't know. Was there any
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: little trick to your system that ended up making things
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: start flowing more smoothly? Mm hmm. Man Again, it's like
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: you kind of as you know, we're kind of set
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: picking trees and making sets for two people, not just one. Um,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: but I know that just as the week went on,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I was much easier and quicker able to visualize, like
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: where do I want my platform? What is my three
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: o'clock that I'm not gonna like like that three o'clock
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: is like that a that the angle or the direction
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: off the clock that you are least likely wanting to
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: take a shot right, um, and sort of visualizing that
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: and setting the sticks up and climbing the tree so
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: that when you get up there, you know, you put
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: your you know, platform exact where it needs to be,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and you get in there and you don't get out
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: there and go, oh no, I totally like I'm off
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: by nine degrees and like where the same trail is.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: It is like not like my best shot angle, you know,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: or my shot position. So uh, just visualizing that, you know,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I started to come together and that was smart, um
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: knowing just like the height of like where you want
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: to put that first step, you know, my steps had
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: those eighters and I could pretty much take a step
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: and like the top of it, I would like pin
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: it to the tree with my forehead and and run
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: it around and then pull and pull my eighter down
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: and with the fact that it would slack a little bit,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the slack would come out you know when you when
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: you step on it. That would sort of put it
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: at the right height for me to get my boot
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: into that aid and start climbing. You know, now you're
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: a decent bit taller than then Chris, who is your cameraman.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Was he able to was he able to get up
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: the steps you're hanging or do you get the same
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: struggle that my caraman sometimes has with my long legged steps.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Now he was fine, he was fine. Um, I would
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: probably even like because what I would do is when
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: you get the first one up and you're like, oh,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: that's not bad, and it just it's just would seem
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: as though I wouldn't be as confident setting the next
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: steps as far as part using the aider to the
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: maximum advantage as I could. Um. And again, in just
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: these woods and I'm hunting, I feel like getting high
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: is gonna be key, um, both for wind and just
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: for not being detective, because just like so many times,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: I would just imagine, like I would look through the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: woods and like whatever seventy yards like down a ridge
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and be like if I was staying sitting in that
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: tree right now, what would I look like? Then you
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: just imagine that, and you're like there's no cover. Like sure,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: there's some branches and stuff sticking around, but like unless
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: you're like tucked in behind the trunk of the tree,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: you're like sticking out, you know what I mean. So
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: you can just not move, you know, and try to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: blend in. But like if you're moving around in that
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: open canopy, boy, I just you know, I think getting
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: high it is important. So I'll be next year, I'll
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: be trying to, like, you know, get the max distance
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: with those steps and get up a little bit higher. Yeah,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: you know, probably twenty you know on average, um, and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I got we got comfortable there. But you know, when
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: you're not used to that. And even though I shot
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: hanging out of that saddle all summer, it's just like
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: it's a different feeling when you're hanging at twenty Yeah, yeah,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: for sure. You know. Two things on that On that note, One,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: you talked about how it was a struggle sometimes get
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: your step, getting your sticks the straps around those bigger
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: tree trunks at the beginning of a tree at the bottom.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I've experienced the same thing. And so what I started
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: doing this year, especially because this year I was I
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: took my mobile hunting to a different level. Two, I
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: was moving almost every day, bouncing all over the place.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: And because of that, what I ended up doing was
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: bringing two screwing steps with me as well, so I
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: would have three sticks and then two screwins that I'm
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: just sticking a pocket on my backpack, so if I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: ever you know, it ended up being very lightweight and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: not cumbersome at all. And throwing two screwins into a
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: tree is is fast and easy, and that would get
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: me past the really fat part of a trunk. So
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: then I could be I could be five ft up
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: now or whatever with just two quick screwings that I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: do from the ground, and then once I got that
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: high up, then the straps would fit around really easily.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Um So I essentially had the height of an extra
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: stick and you know, something that just fit right into
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: my pocket. I wouldn't want to do that with fifteen
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: screw ins and do the whole thing that that's a
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: pain in the butt, But just two of them. It
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: was a nice little trick to use in certain situations.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Um yeah on the stick and and kind of back
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: to sent We had a dull one morning, and I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: don't know if it, like if it totally messed up
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: my whole morning hunt. It might have played into there's
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: no way to tell because I can't tell one dough
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: from another, you unless she's got like a one one
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: white eye and one black eye or something. But she
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: came in right, was she as she was supposed to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: coming cutting across this saddle, and she gets right underneath us.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I mean literally underneath us. It wasn't a strong wind now,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I had like, I think it was only forecast to
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: be like two or three, right, But it's blown enough
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: where I'm like, I don't think my sense dropping straight down.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: But she gets next to our tree and catches something.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Did she catch us like when we walked in? Was
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: she was that what she was smelling? Or did was
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: she smelling my steps on the tree? I would say both.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: It's really hard for them not to pick up your
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: ground scent. But then also imagine, you know, whatever was
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: on your boots and your bare hands or your gloved hands.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the some scent on that, um, you know,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: as you're going up those steps. And then where were
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: you putting your sticks? Where those in the in the
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: house or those in the bed of the truck. That
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: could be a thing too, So I would guess a
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: combination of both, probably, right. I I have wondered about
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: that too. I keep my sticks and straps outside all
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the time, or at least in a borrowed or garage. Um,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: but I have wondered. You know, I know you laughed
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: at me when I was spraying down trail cameras last fall, right,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: because I was touching those on my bare hands. But
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I have seen so many times where if I am
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: not wearing gloves and I touched something or I or
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: I walked through a brushy grassy field, and then later
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: in the day I'll see a deer walk through there
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: and when they hit that trail or where they hit
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: where I grabbed a branch and got lazy and didn't
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't careful about it. They can pick
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: up on that stuff, so asked. And if it's the
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: wrong dough, you know, and then and it's the dough,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: there's a buck behind or something when I could ruin
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: everything that one little thing. So I constantly trying to
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: find these little errors like that that I can fix
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: next time. So I'm trying to make sure I'm wearing
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: fully gloved hands when I'm walking in so I don't
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: have to grab and push a branch out of the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: way that maybe a buck will walk by and smell
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: or those little tiny things can sometimes make the big difference. So,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: like you said, you don't know if that made a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: difference in the long run, but it could have. Yeah, Well,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: so what happens is like she runs off kind of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the same way she came. And then like I don't know,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: a while later, hour, maybe more later down off the
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: saddle in this bottom below me maybe yards like mega
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: crashing and running chasing activity, right, and like the comment
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: or like the sort of like the path of least
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: resistance add this bottom would be up through this saddle
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: that I'm set up in. Well, like I get bits
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and pieces of deer running around there, and I finally
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: catch a g limb of this box and it's probably
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: the biggest box. That is the very last morning of
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: the hunt, the biggest buck that I've had in my
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: binoculars all the whole hunt. I'm like, wow, like look
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: at that, you know, like there's a mature one. And
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: they run around down there for a little while, and
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: we're far enough away that like I wasn't worried that,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: like they're picking picking up on us. But eventually, when
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: they're done doing their little thing in that bottom, the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: dough goes not directly away from us, but definitely like
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: just climbs up and out of this bottom and goes
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: to a high ridge like away from us and not
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: towards us at all. Now I don't know if it
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: was the same dough and if her experience from two
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: hours earlier, you know, like made like affected that decision
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: in that moment. But you know it's in the back
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: of my head that it could have been. Yeah, I
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: hear there. That's that's one of those things you never
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: know what little like It's the butterfly effect. They say
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: that one little butterfly's wings could change everything. I have
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: so many moments as a hunter where I wondered, was
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: that little thing actually what resulted me not getting the shot?
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Or if I'd done this one small thing different yesterday,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: could that have changed what happened today? You never know, um,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: but I do try to consider the possibilities and and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: so what you did there, you know, consider well that
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: might have been in an impact, that might have been
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: the thing. So so tell me this then, as you
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: sat there that day and we're thinking about well, ship,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: was that my sticks or my steps that spooked that
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: dough and then led her to go the other direction?
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Thinking is that being a possibility? Would you have done
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: anything differently now? Or do you think you try to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: do something differently next time around in any kind of
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: way with your setup or your gear something. Having the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: fact that yes, you've had a deer that win died
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: something down low on a day like that and maybe
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: screwed your opportunity. I mean, I don't know, I don't know.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: I mean all of our gear, backpack, sticks, all that stuff,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: if it was back at the camp, it all stayed outside,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: like on a deck where it was. It's like a
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: covered deck but open, you know, on three sides, so
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: it's getting plenty of you know, breeze all the time, um,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: not getting infected with smells from inside. Um. So yeah,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, what do you do? Carry
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: a bottle of sent Away and just spray down your
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: your sticks as your as you put them on the tree.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Probably probably can't do that. Oh that sounds like even
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: more worth than I'm willing to do. But yeah, happy
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: that Like there's like a direct route from camp to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: this saddle that we had said it up in that
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: would have been you know, ten minute walk, and instead
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: I did like climb the ridge kind of the opposite direction,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: walked our ridge top and came all the way around
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: and probably took me thirty to forty minutes to come
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: in from the down wind side and not come in
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: where I thought the deer we're gonna be coming to
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: me from and that that seemed to pay off. I
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: think had I had I come through the bottom and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: straight up into that saddle like those deer that were
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: there in there later in the morning, they wouldn't have
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: you know, they wouldn't have been in there. YEA interesting, Well,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: that certainly seems like the right way to go about
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: with that access route, at least. You know. One other
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: thing I do, which you know, some people will things
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: over the top, but a lot of things I do
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: are over the top. I guess, um, I spray vanilla extract.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: It's that there's a company that makes the stuff called
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: nose Jammer. You maybe heard me talk about it, But
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: I do spray a little bit of that on like
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: right by the tree and my first step, um, every
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: time I go up, as just like it's little, you know. Basically,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: the idea of this stuff is that it's a very
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: strong odor, kind of like the whole cover scent idea.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: It just kind of overwhelms or roll factory system. And
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: I have seen examples of times when I thought that
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: helped me. And so that is something I do at
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: the base of my tree, just just because you know,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that's the spot where there's a lot of human scent
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: pooled at the bottom. Not only do you have your
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: sticks there, but when you're getting set up you know,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: to head into or to set up your tree stand
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: or set up your sticks, you maybe had to set
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: your backpack on the ground, you have to set your
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: bowl on the ground. You're standing there for a long
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: time as you organize your gear and you get your
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: stuff prepped. So that's that point where there's a lot
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: of potential for contamination. Um, so doing that little sprits
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: of the of the vanilla maybe has held me a
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: few times too, and that might be something worth considering.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: But everyone's got away. How much junk did they want
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: to take it with him out there? You know? How
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: much do you want to deal with? But that's that's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: something to consider. Um, I'll definitely have that in my
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: pack next next November. So so rewind me a little
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: bit up because you told me about the first time.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Now you just told me about the last time. Talked
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: me through now like day two. It sounds like day
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: two you decided to push to another spot on that
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: same oak flat. Um what else? What else happened after that?
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I actually haunted the oak flat. The next morning. Um,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: so day two I was, I was there at the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: break of dawn, and I think that's I don't know,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: somewhere around day two or three, like the heat was
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: like overwhelming, and we definitely started realizing that it's like
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: the deer were moving like very early and very late.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I can't remember which if that was that morning or
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: if it was a morning after that, but we literally
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: walked in there, red lights going, and there's there's two
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: deer like standing right there on the oak flat, you know,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: ten yards from the tree. We get up in and
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: so we basically just you know, stood there and let
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: them just kind of feed away. They didn't bump out
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: of there get into the tree. And just as we're
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: finishing setting up, it's still totally dark, like a deer walks,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: you know, definitely within shooting distance right underneath us and
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: kind of goes the same way the other two went.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: And then it got light and nothing, you know, like
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: absolutely just dead. Um, and so we just started I
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: definitely still was starting to get the feeling like, man,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: I gotta like I got a zero in on on
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: something to like get a little bit closer to them,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: you know, or find the action. So I don't know
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: which day this was, but I did. I did a
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: loop and found like they just cut in a new
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: road where they're gonna get ready to do some uh logging.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: And so the road was fresh and soft, you know,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: it's like very sandy soil there. And so this road
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: is covered up in deer tracks and there's like a
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: nice buck track in there. I think I actually sent
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: you the picture of that buck track, and uh so
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: I basically just was like, okay, there's a thicket here
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: near this road. It was basically just to the north
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: side of it, and it was pretty big sized like thicket,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: like just thick young white pines with like interspersed just
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: brambles and whatnot. It seemed like a really good betting area.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: And I just went to the downwind side of that
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: and got into the first tree act that I could
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: and climbed in there and set up. Um. Nothing popped
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: that night, like zero deer um. At one point, because
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: I was getting a little frustrated of like not seeing
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: enough action, UM, I just decided to, you know what,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: instead of like trying to get somewhere and make a decision,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: you know, in the dark, and just have like a goal,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna actually wait until it gets light and then
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: leave camp and literally go for a walk in the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: its until something tells me set up here, whether it's
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: bumping into deer, a whole bunch of tracks, fresh scrape activity,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. Because you know, I heard so much
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: over the over listen to all the podcasts over the
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: months leading up to this about like during the rut,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: if you're not in the action, then you need to
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: go find the action, right. I kept thinking, Man, if
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not like seeing or hearing these doughs getting pushed around,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: or seeing the bucks looking for these dolls, like, I'm
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: just not in the zone. So the morning I did that,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: it actually as a day as a whole, it worked
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: out good. The morning itself was kind of uneventful, and
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: I think I didn't get into a tree and probably
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: till like I don't know, at least probably two hours
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: after he got daylight. But I got onto a saddle.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: I mean I had a rough idea of the path
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: I was gonna take, and I get into another saddle
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: and there's a scrape and like in I can't remember,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: it was in a leaf are just like in a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: divot in I think it was on a leaf in
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: the scrape, but you could like see fresh piss, you know,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: on this scrape. Sweet like this is like this is
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: good right saddle and I scrape got some fresh piss
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: in it. So I got into a tree, had a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: nice white pine next to me. Get in there and
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: I have a dough come in and bed down like
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know, seventy eight yards from us on the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: on kind of saddle, but just on the on the
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: least side of it. And I'm thinking, jeez, like this
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: is gonna work out, you know. Well, the whole day
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: goes by nothing nothing, not quite the whole day. But
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: it's getting like mid afternoon, like nothing, no action. I'm like,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: all right, we're moving. I get down. Chris is still
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: in the tree and no sooner do I like get
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: put my both feet on the ground. He's like there's
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: a book. I'm like, oh my god. Well it turned
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: out to be a small box, but still like a buck. Nonetheless,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: we let him pass. I'm like, all right, let's see
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: if something shakes out the bed. A dode gotten up
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: at some point and just kind of wandered off. Um,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: So I got back up for another hour nothing. We
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: get down and just the way I decided to go
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: down this ridge, it's kind of I was going from
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: a saddle to like one of these three way spots
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: where like a ridge splits kind of and we get
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: there and it's like fresh rub central and I'm like sweet,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: Like this looks good, you know, like stuff is crossing
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: through here. Get up into it, Get up into a tree,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: and it's dead until like literally the last twenty minutes
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: of the day, where it's already kind of getting dark
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: and you're starting to like look at your pins, going, man,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: can I make a shot? That's when the first buck
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: comes through and he was like a He's definitely kind
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: of a scraggling eight. But at that point I'm like, man,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: I'm shooting if I get a chance, and he actually
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: stops where I had a shot opportunity, but there was
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: like one just limb that I hadn't cut out during
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: my quick prep and it's like going right across his
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: body and I just don't have it. But I get
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: drawn back and he's like he starts walking again, and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: just like it's thick, thick, thick, And then there's like
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: a couple of shooting lanes and I try to give
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: him the you know map sound a few times, and
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: he just keeps on moving like he just he definitely
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: had a plan in his head, you know. He the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: whole encounter lasted like twenty seconds. It was fast. Well,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: then like ten minutes later, it's even darker, and literally
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: from the same direction that that buck just went. A
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: different buck just like an an eight pointer, comes almost
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: on the exact same trail. So I'm able to get
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: drawn back because he's coming through like the stiff, thick stuff, right,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a shot earlier, and I'm hoping for
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: him to pop up like same place that first bucket
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: kind of stopped in the open shooting lane, and for
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, when he pops up, like instead of being
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: at like thirty, he's more in that like forty yard range,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: and just like nothing I can do about it, you know.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: I let him go and then grunted at him, and
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: it kind of seemed like he half circled towards me
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: a little bit, but eventually he just faded away. Um
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: So I felt good about like the way that day
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: played out and the decision I had made. You know,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: it's like found signed set up like even though that
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: didn't work out. I moved and and then I only
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: moved like two yards between where that scrape was with
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: the with the fresh pists in it to where all
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: these rubs were on this like ridge intersection was only
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of hundred yards and um, you know, lo
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: and behold, like two bucks you know, came by me.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: Um and then like that's probably where where like I
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: started of like having because it sounds like I'm having
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: like retelling this story. I'm like, well, jeez, sounds like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: you're having a bunch of action the moment you're like, well,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: we sat all day and then right a dark it
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: was like two bucks that scurried by. For whatever reason,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: I never sat that spot again. Hm. I mean it's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, but I guess depends on
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: what you went on to do later. Um. But if
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: you had a terrain feature which sounds like a couple
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: of ridge ridges coming together with the fresh sign and
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: then you saw two bucks cruising through it last light,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: it certainly sounds like something I would try again, um,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: especially given the weather. So the big thing I saw
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: during that same week was what you just described, which
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: was zero activity throughout the heat of the day and
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: then a bunch of it the last twenty minutes. Um.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: And so in that case, because the last twenty minutes
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: with that weather is essentially your whole day, UM, it
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: might have been worth trying to get end because you
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: certainly had some pieces of puzzle working out there. Why
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: didn't you because it was just slower through the rest
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: of the day, um, Or did you have another plan?
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: You know? I want to say that was like far
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: enough into the hunt where we basically had I hunted
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: seven and a half days, and I want to say
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: we had four days of like that miserable heat, hot weather,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: and then we had a day of rain, and I
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: think that rain was coming on the heels of this, right,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: and so this is kind of like I was gonna do,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: like what would Mark Kenyan do in this situation. We
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: had a river's edge pop up line set up, and um,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: there's enough, there's a room for two people, and so
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: it was gonna rain enough to where it's like, especially
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: again with cameras, it's like I probably could have made
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: it by myself in a tree and just stuck it out,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: but with the camera were like, you know what, let's
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: just go and sit and stay dry and hopefully something
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: will happen. And we had like a small box passes
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: by like a hundred yards and it's just funny. It's
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: like this thing set on like a the corner of
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: this cornfield and we had a camera there and then
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: there's been does you know enough doughs there in that
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: zone where I was like feeling pretty good about it.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: But that morning zero um, midday, I think like three
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: or four dolls pop out. They go back into the
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: woods and we kind of see them trickle off up
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: a ridge um, which was interesting to me to see,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: like doz hit a corn field at like two and
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: then not just stay out there like I would have
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: thought they were just gonna be out there for the
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: rest of the evening, but instead they actually went back
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: into the woods and then went upper ridge, like up
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: into the big woods. So I don't know, I don't
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: have no idea why they were doing that, Like was
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: there were they going after acorns up there? Like it
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: was there not enough corn in the field. Um, didn't
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: make sense to me. Interesting, I would say, one thing
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: I would think is that I do see something like
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: this and that dear they require and desire diversity and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: what they're gonna eat so throughout that you know, they're
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: just not going to stick it on one thing forever.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: They're going to constantly want to get some other options
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: in there. So I'm not surprised entirely that that early
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: in the day that they would be bouncing from thing
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: to thing, and with with all those oaks that you described, Um,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I gotta believe that was a big part of what
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: they're eating. But but yeah, that is interesting to see
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: them go out there for so little time. Um, it
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: was cool that rain day. Unfortunately was on the neighbors
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have permission to hunt over there, but
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I did get to see out in the rain kind
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: of late afternoon, like a pretty nice shooter buck tending
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to a dough and just very much on lockdown. Like
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: they popped out of like a little thicket. Um that's
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: right off the side of the road. They fed out
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: there for an hour. He was pretty much just you know,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: just watching her, and then they kind of disappeared right
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: back into the thicket. Uh. And I think that was
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: the evening where it finally kind of the rain showed
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: out enough where I'm like, you know what, I'm done
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: sitting here and I'm just gonna go for a little walk,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: and uh, I kind of went for a walk, and
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: then for the last maybe hour, I basically just stepped
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: off the side of a trail and just kind of
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: stood there, you know, fairly well concealed, thinking that hey,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: you know, never know, like a deer might just come
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: walking right down um this trail that I was walking up,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: you know, but nothing panned out, So I don't know.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: We talked about this before we started. Is like the
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: reason I probably didn't go back to that spot that
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: had a bunch of fresh rubs and I saw two
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: bucks one night is that like I had four acres
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: to hunt, and it was almost like I had too
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: much to hunt, and so you know, you kind of
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like I gotta hit it all. I gotta sit
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: on every ridge top and the bottom of every bowl
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: one time. So so you just kept pushing into new spots.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: And after that, well, like I said, I did hunt
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: that oak flat like probably two evenings and three mornings.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: I think, Um, I kept I can tell you, like
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking like it's weird because you're like in
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: this country, You're like, am I gonna hunt on the
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: ridge top or am I gonna hunt in the bottom
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't really seem You told me about this
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: when we were talking about Prepper for this hunt this summer,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: about how like in that hill country, a lot of
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: these bucks like to run like a third of the
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: way down the ridge, right, Yeah, that's the side tell.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: These ridges are almost so steep where it seems like
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking that was going through my mind, and
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: maybe I just wasn't like looking at it right. Maybe
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: I was thinking just like I should have been a
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: third of the way down, like lengthwise on the ridge,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: like where a ridge goes from high to low a
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: little bit, and set up kind of there where they
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: might kind of like again cross the ridge as their
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: side hilling. But a lot of these ridges, when you're
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: looking at if you just go and set up, let's
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: say it's a three ft ridge and you go instead
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of a hundred feet down, like it's so steep that
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be, you're gonna have like a perfectly perpendicular
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: or parallel to gravity shot to the hillside right next
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: to you, you know what I mean. It's like it
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: just didn't make sense to set up like that. Um
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: So I kept thinking, like, man, the bottoms must be
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: where it's at, because I'm just not seeing the deer
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: moving that much during the day up top. Maybe it's
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: somehow cooler in the bottoms, you know, maybe that's where
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: there's more just thick bedding cover. But man, every time
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: I went into the bottom, I just seemed felt like
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: I was getting hosed by the wind. Yeah. I already
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: explained that one set up where I just felt like
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to be bowing south and I felt
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: like it was it literally blew north the whole time
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: and just totally screwed my evening hunt. And then every
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: time I was just popping in these bottoms, it's just
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: like it's I couldn't trust it like I could trust
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: it on a ridge top, and it made me. It
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: pulled me to those ridge tops where I'm like, you
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: know what, even if I'm not seeing as many deer,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: like if I at least if I see one up here,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: like it's gonna if it comes when I think it's
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: gonna come, the wind's not gonna hose me. Yeah, And
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: that seems I mean, that's pretty consistent both from what
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: I've experienced. And then a lot of guys you talked
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: to those bottoms are they are where dear want to
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: be a lot of the time because that effect you
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: just described, the fact that the wind does pool down there,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: it swirls down there. Uh, they can win a lot
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: of stuff going on, but really hard to hunt. Um.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: The only thing I found is sometimes you can find
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: with certain features there will be like one wind direction
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: where you will get consistent winds. You can sometimes get
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: away with it, Like there might be a valley with
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: little bowls coming off the side, but that valley runs
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: let's say, you know, from northeast to southwest, and if
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: you happen to get a wind that blows straight on
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: that angle, it doesn't spin around, and you'll get that
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: one consistent. But you have to kind of know that
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: from experience to know the little those little edges you
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: can cut on days like that. So I don't think
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: you made a bad decision trying to play a safer
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: with a wind that probably is the better bet. Nine
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: times that attend that kind of situation, did you did
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: you find yourself once you got to those last couple
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: of days, though, wanting to throw caution to the wind
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: for lack of better term, and conduce hail Mary stuff
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: like that. You know, I think what sort of educated
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: the last two days, because I think we had the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: rain day and then I think I had a one
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: full day of like good cool at Tempts, and then
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: I had a half day after that. And I'm trying
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: to think where I started. Oh, I started on the
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: oak flat in the morning and Chris my my camera guy,
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: was like, we should see here all the day, we
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: should see here all day. I'm like, nope, it didn't happened.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: And I'm like I'm out of here. And again I
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: had some spots in mine and we slid down into
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: a saddle that was kind of like a it's like
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: a subridge um and I get into the saddle and
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: right as we were kind of entering the saddle, I
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: bumped I don't know, three or four dolls in a buck.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: Couldn't really tell how big he was, maybe a shooter
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: or maybe not, but they're they're just off the side
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: of the saddle, kind of in the bottom. And again
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: didn't bump real hard. I think they armped on seeing
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: or hearing us. And that was the other thing. Man,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: It was so dry that those woods were so loud
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: that like it was even hard to tell if you
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: were going to bump anything, because they were gonna hear
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: you a hundred yards away and they could just sneak away,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But I bumped him, but
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: then I could like still see a dough as she's
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: like kind of doesn't know what's going on, she's feeding.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: She kind of just walks away, something like perfect, I'm
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: in the saddle. We're setting up here, set up and
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: and get the saddle. Was kind of closer to some
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: of this agg than, uh than a lot of other
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: stuff I was hunting, and uh, I set up and
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think anything happened that evening. But then the
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: next morning, you know, it was the last morning I
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: told you about where I had like the dough right
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: at first light, and then an hour later I had
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: the buck pushing the go around and there was like
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: a little a small buck in and the monks them too.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: So that wasn't That was a day where I had
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: I was so confident that spot and it just look
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: good because it's just, you know, such a good saddle,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: and I had like a good thick looking betting area
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: off to one side of it. I'm like, I'm just
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: leaving the setup, you know, and number is gonna come
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: back here in the morning and hunt it, and um,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: you know it paid off. I mean I definitely got
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: a view of, like, you know, a real good buck. Um,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: he just didn't walk underneath my stand. So what we're
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: what were the questions you had out of the hunt,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: like did you did you the hunt wrapped up? And
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: did you find yourself like damn, should I have done
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: this different? Or was this did do this wrong? Or
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: did you did your head away from it thinking I
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: just you know, I just needed more time? Or what
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: was your thought process at that point? Oh man? All
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: the above? Um, certainly could you. I mean it's so
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: hard to tell to you because it's like you go
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: and hunt the rut and it's like you have highs
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: that were like almost reaching seventy in November. It's just
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: like not normal, you know what I mean. So it's
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: like it's really hard to like extraculate much when you're like,
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I remember that. It is like you could
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: hunt it in a T shirt the whole time, you know. Um,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think trying to get more out
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: of my trail cameras would be like sometimes it's funny
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: before you start using them, you're like, oh man, it's
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: gonna be so easy. If you just get trail cameras
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: up everywhere, you'll know that that box is here at
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: one pm, then he's here at two pm, and then
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: they're at three. And if you set up in this tree,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: you know what met you. And it's just not like
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: that great big buck that we had on camera. We
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: had had him only on camera maybe one time during
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: daylight leading up to the season, but during season, I mean,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: he was like running. He was probably the closest buck
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: to where we were sleeping um that we were hunting,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: like like literally sometimes crossing, kept cutting his tracks like
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: less than yards from the camp itself, but we only
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: caught him on camera at night, you know. So it's
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: like I don't even know if that if if I
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: would have sat on his travel route for seven days,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it would have paid off because
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if that buck moved during the
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: daylight during that week, you know, even though it was
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: November five, twelve. Yeah, trail cameras can only tell you
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: about one little snippet of time. And and the other
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: thing is that they only tell you what's you know,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: in front of you at that one angle, you know,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: there's there's a whole lot of space around that camera
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: that these bucks could be passing through and hanging out
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: and spending time and going just twenty yards of the
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: direction and you would never know it. So they give
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: you this little glimpse, but it is far from all knowing. Um.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: And I keep finding year for a year that the
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: less I depend on them the better, usually because when
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: you become too dependent on them, I think you get
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: your judgment becomes clouded by this like my opic view,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: Like you get you're looking at the world through a straw,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and you need to look at the world at a
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: much higher level when making these decisions. They they should
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: inform you. But if you only let that dictate your strategy,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: I think you really put yourself in Um, You're you're
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: just handicapping yourself if you do that. So it doesn't
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: sound like you did that though. I like the way
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: that you were, you know, looking for sign trying to
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: find the action, especially given the fact that you didn't
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: really have a ton of historical knowledge about what they're
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: doing at that time of year across the place like this,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: and you know, going in relatively blind. I think it
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: was smart that you moved around key did on stuff.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: One thing I was cure us about was just how
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: does factored into your hunting. You know, you were looking
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: for sign Excuse me, but did you did you ever
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: find anywhere that had the most consistent dough activity, Because
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: that's the one other thing that you know, from from
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: an outside perspective, I would have said, Man, if there
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: was anywhere the head that consistent doe group, you know,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: betting or feeding, I would have camped there to a
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: degree to because that's the one other thing that in
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: big country like this, if you can find that, it
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: can somehow, you know, you know, tighten what you need
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: to focus on. You know, the only place we were
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: seeing it, both just by through our own eyes and
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: through the camera were kind of on that corn field
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: edge there. And I probably didn't hunt down there quite
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: as much because we had more of the tree stands
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: that were set up for my dad in that zone,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: and so I was letting him, you know, hunt those
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: spots a little like that, just that general area, more
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: than I was um And again they were sort of
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: at the bottom and the toe of this hill, and
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: I was just getting so burned by you know, the
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: wind hunting the bottoms of those hills. That was probably
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: scared a little bit of that, but like, yeah, there
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: what I can't say, you know, besides that one road
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: that I cut across. And again it's hard to stay
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: there too because it's like, well, finally you have like
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: this medium that will show you a bunch of tracks
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: because it's not hard or it's not covered in leaves,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: it's not covered in grass, and you're like, oh my god,
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of deer tracks. But you wonder if
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: the whole forest floor on acres looked like this freshly graded,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: you know, soft sandy dirt road, you probably find that
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: all over the place, right, Well, it kind of you know,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, tracks, but then you gotta think, you like,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to see the tracks because there's just
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of places that just show tracks
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: like that, Like I know, hunting Doug Dern's um a
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: lot of times you just cut these tracks where they're
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: coming out of the woods and and coming out of
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: like corners or you know, some sort of strained feature
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: that that funnels them and and there's a there's a
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: trail that spits them out into a big field, and man,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: like my kids could walk down there and be like,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a deer trail, you know what
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, Like you don't have to be sure like Holmes,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: but I feel like in this country you so rarely
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: get that. It's just those trails are You're like, anytime
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: you're on a ridge top, you're like, sure, there's a
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: deer trail running down the middle of this thing, But
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: like every ridge top has that, you know what I mean.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: It's never like you're just like looking at that one
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: muddy trail and you're like, holy cow, look at the
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: deer traveling down this thing. You know they've got to
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: run it out. Um. And again, maybe I'm just making
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: excuses and not able to you know, read the sign
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: properly up there, But I don't know, when it's six
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: inches of oak leaves on the ground, how do you
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: find a trail. They're very at least from my experience,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: you're very rarely going to get what you described at
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: Dougs and and you have to just rely on those
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: those lightly just just seeing where the leaves are kicked up,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: and and then depending on sightings and sign to determine
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: if it is well used. But it sounds like this
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't a super high deer density area anyways, so you
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: probably weren't going to get to those pounded cow trails
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: no matter what. No, And we know that you know
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: where dogs areas, right, I mean, it's some of the
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: highest deer density probably in the state of Wisconsin, right man.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: That's one of the tough things when you get in
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: one of those lower deer density areas where there's the
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: one school of thought like you described in which some
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: folks in the podcast you know, talked out, which is
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: if you're not in the action, move to get to it.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: So there's that school thought. But when you're in these
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: lower deer density areas, you know there's not a whole
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: lot of action to be had, and sometimes you know
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: there won't be any dear action anywhere. You count for
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: several days or at least relatively few, until you wait
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: it out. So sometimes it's a matter of finding the
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: spot and knowing that, Okay, this has the ingredients I
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: need and it's the right time of year for this spot.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: If I give it three days, eventually something will come
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: through here. But I have to give it that three
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: days for that to happen. Um, But it takes a
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: certain amount of comfort and experience in a place to
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: know that. It's really hard to make that guess without
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: having the experience that tells you these kinds of spots
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: are where you need to put the time, because sometimes
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: you get a camp, sometimes you get a move. And
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I dealt with that a lot um this year myself,
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: where first I was like, Okay, I got to bounce
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: from here to here and keep moving, keep moving. But eventually,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: on the tail end of my rut on some of
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: my Michigan spots, I realized that you can sometimes get
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: to the point where you're chasing your tail a little
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: bit too much. And if you find those few key
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: places and if you can hunt it without buggering it
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: up too much, you do need to put in some
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: volume in your few key spots to allow the randomness
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: to finally work into your favor. Um walking that lines
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: the trick. That's that's the tough part is knowing when
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: to go those two directions. One of those two directions. Yeah, like,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: I like I like that Buck. The first night on
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: the Oak Flat smelled me like hardcore, right, Like, I mean,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: he just gotta win nose full, and three bounds later
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: he was out of my life. I never saw him
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: again up there. Like when you spook a buck like
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: that and he wins you. You know, even if it is,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: you know, the middle of the rut, like should I
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: just had given up on that spot because I'm like,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, how many bucks are gonna
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: be coming through here? That's the question too. It's like, well, whatever,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: you just bumped one out there, there should be at
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: least two others are gonna cross come through here in
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: the next two days, right, Yeah, I would have thought
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Yes, he might be less likely to
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: come through there, but there's other bucks I would have
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: I would have not felt bad at all about focusing
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: on that. And even even with a buck winning you
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: that one time during the rut, you know, if the
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: right lady comes through, I think they look past it.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: I mean I saw that this year that I had
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: a buck win me um and then you know, hours
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: later where it's a hot dough and he was right
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: back in the general area because the right dough was there.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: So you know, the rut does crazy things. Sometimes you
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: gotta put the put the overthinking glasses aside and just
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: realize that you gotta let mother nature do its work
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes too well. I did that definitely kept me in
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: the woods, and it kept me, you know, thinking optimistically.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a word, thinking positively, being
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: an optimist. It was just that, like keep telling yourself
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: it's a rot. It can happen any moment, just like
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: be in the woods and keep sitting still, you know,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: be in the woods, being the woods. What would you
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: do anything differently now when you when you look back
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: and think it through, are there any clear things? I
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: know that for me, one thing I try to do
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: after a trip or hunt or a season is I
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: will try to identify just two things, because it's it's
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: really easy to list off a whole bunch of stuff
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: I did wrong, but then be overwhelmed by all those
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: things and never be able to actually take action on it.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: But if I narrow it down to the two most
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: important things, then I can actually do something with that
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: and remember it and focus on that. Is there. If
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: you had to pick two things you would do differently
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: or try to do differently this next time, what do
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: you think that would be? M m m M. I
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: don't know. I guess I mean kind of sorry, yeah,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: I mean I guess one thing would be tree prep
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: right for the saddle, like even though you can just
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: move anywhere you want with that saddle. And again maybe
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: I'm maybe I'm placing too much, like sort of like
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: negative connotation on having to like cut limbs and cut
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: shooting lanes when you get to a spot, but like one,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: it took time where I wasn't hunting, and to it
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: makes racket right where you know, if there happens to
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: be something better than a hundred yards away, Like I
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: don't know, are they gonna be okay with hearing me
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: saw down thirty to forty branches and some small trees.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know. So I feel like maybe what I
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: could have done is like instead of just like being like, okay,
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: you gotta get in the wood and start hunting, maybe
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: I should just take in the first day and like
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: walk the whole property, which again some people be like,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: you don't want to do that because she's gonna run
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: your scent all over the place, But like walk the
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: whole property, identify like you know, some hot scrapes, some
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: hot trails, Maybe maybe find that road you know earlier
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: in the week they had the uh you know, a
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: bunch of tracks on it, and maybe you know, hunt
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: it at a different time, um and maybe just pick
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: out some trees and just go that spend a day
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: climbing up and down trees and cutting out shooting lanes,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and cutting out you know, just prepping the
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: tree itself to get into it. And that way leave
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: leave myself in six days where you know, not every
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: set up, but almost every setup, you could be like
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: I could go in there and know that I'm just
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: gonna slip in quietly and and get into the tree
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: and be hunting, you know, um man. Otherwise I could
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: probably have just sat more. You know, I think having
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: the ability to move so much, like I never in
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: those seven and a half days, I never sat one
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: tree dark to dark, like I moved every single afternoon.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: And I think that, like you just said, you gotta
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: you gotta give the animals the opportunity to walk underneath you,
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and every time you get down, and that
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: it happened to me that one day where I couldn't
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: take it any longer and got down at one or
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: whatever it was. Sure enough, you know, there's a buck,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: even though he's a little buck. But it's like, hey,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: he could have been a twelve pointer, you know. Um,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: so I probably just you know, two or three days
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: should have just been like you know what, it's as
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: good as spot as any else. Just sit it out,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: you know, and instead of taking those because like moving trees,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: even if even if you just moved two hundred yards
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: like I did that day after the I had the
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: scrape with the pists in it, even I only moved
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: two hundred yards, it still took a solid two hours
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: from my hunting right where like I'm out of the tree, um,
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: walking around, um, you know, sawing limbs, I'm prepping the
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: next tree. And you know, you add that up over
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: the course of the week. And if I did that
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: every single day, and I'm guessing because I thought I
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: would be faster, it takes time, right, I bet you
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: it was two to three hours every time I wanted
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: to move. And so you add that up over you know,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: a week, and all of a sudden, it's like I
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: almost burned a day, right, You easily burned an eight
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: hour day middle of the day walking around, you know,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: And I know some guys don't even sit the middle
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: of the day, right, But like had I been in
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: the tree, I don't know, maybe something else could have
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: walked by me. Yeah, and you do have it's it's
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: um oh what do they call it? That there's just
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: basically the tendons see two, look at what happened, and
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: then trying to come up with answers for why it happened.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: When sometimes it's just bad luck too, Like there's this,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you need to be analyzing what you did and
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: and understandably or or clearly be able to say, Okay, yeah,
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: that was a mistake and this is what happened. But
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: then there's other times like this where what you just
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: described maybe you should have said. But in the back
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm also thinking, but it was also
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: seventy five degrees um probably wasn't going to be shipped
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: moving through there anyways. Now that could have been. But
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: at the same time, you were dealt a tough hand
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: with the weather during that week, and and so much
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: of the activity was pushed to the edges that a
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: little bit was out of your hands there. Um So
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know when I when I hear about what
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: you did, it seems like there's there's a lot of
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: stuff that made sense, But at the same time, there
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: was things where you know, I think if you had
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: a little more confidence with some of your decisions, you
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: maybe have stuck it out in places a little longer
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: than that might have helped you. Um All that takes time,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. It's like confirming decisions takes time. It
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: takes like years in these kinds of places to be
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: where I'm at. You know, in some days, I'm thinking, Man,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: I just know, with these three factors lined up, this
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: is a place that deserves time and attention. Or based
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: off the fact that I saw this happen last week
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: and this week, I know that this is somewhere somewhere
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: that I'm willing to sit eight hours without seeing anything
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: because I know that if I give it ten eventually
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: something should. Um. But you know, ten fifteen years ago
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: or whatever, before spending thousands of hours doing this stuff,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: I would have been questioning myself the whole time. Um.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how to you know, there's really
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: no way to build that up except for just time
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: seeing it, testing it and seeing what happens. You know. Yeah, No,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like you know, my dad actually ended up
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: getting a shot. Unfortunately, he had he had lost a
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: release and then was using a release that he hadn't
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: practiced with as his backup, and um, I think it
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: was much uh lighter released than his old one, and
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: so he basically touched the arrow off long before you know,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: he had even kind of settled his pen and uh
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: you know, had had a clean miss um. But uh,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's actually the rainy day. And he
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: basically went into a zone where we had been getting
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: some you know, fairly good activity, and he's like, you
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: know what, that's a place we haven't hunted yet. I'll
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: take my little pop up blind in there and set
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: up and hunt him. And sure enough, a bunch of
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: great running activity and he has a nice ten pointer
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: come right by him. And unfortunately he uh he uh
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: you know, didn't get it. But um, so yeah, I
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: think you know, between my dad and I, we got
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: like some pretty close calls, you know, how to just
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: a couple of things gone a little bit differently. Um
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: you know, might have gotten to you know, fling an
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: arrow at a or had a dead buck. You know,
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: do you think that is there anything you can point
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: to that you I feel like you really took away
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: as far as like a learning experience that that you
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: can point to. It is like, man, I'm gonna I'm
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be better because of that. Jeez, do you think
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: you're a better deer hunter now after after this hunt,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: having experienced all that, you know. I was gonna say,
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: just if there's if there's one thing, it's like the
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: whole thing of just like spending a full week, seven
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: days boots on the ground, you know, having to go
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: through all the all that decision making and pig trees
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: and and all that stuff, um, and just looking at
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: that proper which you know, I hunted since I was
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: a little kid, but never through the eyes of a
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: serious bow hunter. And now having done that for seven days, like, um, yeah,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: I've just got like such more intimate knowledge of the place.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: It's gonna help me, you know, informed decisions that I'll
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: make in the future. Um. Yeah. So I don't know
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: if it's like a better dear hunter, but I think
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: that joh. I mean yeah, I mean I guess you
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: could say that, you know, and hopefully hopefully when it
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: gives me out of more than anything, it's just the
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: confidence to make a decision right and be like, yeah,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: that was the right decision. You know, go with it
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: and not be swinging around that tree constantly going no,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: should I move? If it makes you feel any better, well,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: I just told you that I'm a lot more confident.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: I still have plenty of days where I'm sitting there
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: wondering should I move? That still happens to me too.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: I know one thing, man, if like the wind is
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: not happening, I'm not gonna waste my time if like,
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: even if I that up and it's just the best, best,
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: best spot, because I just don't feel like sure if
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: it's like kind of off, if you're like, oh, I
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: was supposed to blow south and it's blowing southwest, sure, like,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: I'll stay there. But when when it's blowing north and
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to be blowing south like it just is
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: not gonna happen, You're gonna I'm gonna have to get
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: out of the tree and do something else. You know. Yeah,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: it's a tough pill of swallow, but it's true. It is.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: And maybe use that evening to just go and glass
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: the field from the road and see what pops out
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: on the field, you know, and you know, get some
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: information that way. So do you did you like it?
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you went from like the deer hunting you've
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: done the past was was, like you said, a little different,
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: little gun season type stuff. But now you kind of
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: dove in head first this full blown bow hunting, A
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: lot of strategy, a lot of puzzle pieces you gotta
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: put together. Are you into it? Totally? Man? I love
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: you know, the older I get, the more That's what
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: I'm drawn to is the hunts that are hard for me.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I still don't get me wrong, I still
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: love a squirrel hunt because it's like casual and just
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: fun and it can be easy at times. Not the
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: squirrel hunting is always easy, but um, you know, even
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: though I haven't, No, I did kill a bowl this
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: year with my bowl, but like I kind of just
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: have an idea of what to expect when I go
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: out into the Elk woods, you know, And like I
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: had four really hard days of hunting a week ago
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: here to finish out the Montana Big Game season. But
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: it was tough conditions. You know. It's like I I
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: went and hunted, but like I know, like why things happened, right,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: Like I have answers for all of it. But I think,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: like I said was saying, I think What's what draws
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: me towards this and like any kind of new hunting
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: I'm doing, is that like I don't know it and
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: it's a challenge and there's like a lot to figure out.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: There's a lot more to learn, and that gets me excited,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and to know that like how close we were,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: you know this year, you know, having a dead bock,
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: um should I got a feeling we're gonna be like
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: that much closer you know next year with what we
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: know now. Um, But you just kind of have to
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: you gotta tighten the news a little bit, you know
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, Like we had like a kind
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: of a medium sized news going and never really snugged
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: it up, you know, to really to really dial in.
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: But yeah, h you gotta be careful. You gotta be carefully, Johnny.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: It's a slippery slope. When you start to get excited
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: about this stuff and getting into the nitty gritty details
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: and strategy, it can can grab hold you fast. So
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: be prepared. I'm ready, man, I'm ready. I told myself
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: one of my uh, one of my resolutions, and I've
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: already done it since I've since Big Game season has ended,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: as I've shot my bow once this week, and uh,
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot that socker all we're long. I'm not
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: gonna have this where like Turkey season ends and I'm like,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: oh my god, I better start shooting my bow. Yeah, um,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: because that's kind of where I've been in the last
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: three or four years. Um. And uh, I want my
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: like bow shooting be too like the lat It's like
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's something I can control much easier,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: and it should be the last thing that's on my
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: mind when I'm actually out there hunting. It's like, oh am,
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: I gonna make a good shot, you know. Um, I
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: want to have that all dialed. Like I'm gonna switch
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: arrows this year. I'm gonna go I'm going to the
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: super heavy set up, super high fo C. And I'm
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: gonna get that done in the next you know, month
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: or two and not in the summertime. You know. Uh,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: I agree with your your thought there with it, not
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: necessarily just the archer thing, but if there's something that
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: is in your control that you can do something about
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: right now, like do it because in the field out there,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: you know that next time you're out there for a
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: week in November, there's going to be so much that's
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: outside of your control. Whatever you can turn you know
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: and and have dialed. Now, that's that's one of those
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: things when you're trying to tighten that tighten things down
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: that you can control ahead of time. You gotta you
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: gotta try to do that. So where where you we
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: gotta wrap this up? Um? I feel like I do
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: have kind of one more thing I want to kind
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: of discuss quickly we have the time. Is like one
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: thing I saw in the trail cameras is that, like
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: I was telling you, there was like that it seemed
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: like it was the last two weeks of October. We're
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden we were like, oh my gosh,
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: like we're gonna have some bucks to hunt, you know,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: like they're here, like all of a sudden, they're showing up,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know, they're hitting those and they were hitting the
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: scrapes hard. And then it seems like when we got
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: there it like and again could have been this like
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: crazy hot weather too, right, like that played a part
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: in it, but like it almost seemed like the buck
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: activity on camera slow down and then it picked back
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: up like after what I mean most people would consider
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: like peak Rutt like sort of somewhere middle of November
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: or trying to think I left on the twelve, but like,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: so after that, towards the end of November, it's sort
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: of picked back up, and I saw like I caught
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: two box that we had never seen yet on camera,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: like completely new box, and so I'm like wondering, like
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: what my dates are going to be next year? Hmm,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: it's there's go still for the first week of November.
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: Do I maybe slide into three or four days of
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: October and then hunt into the first four days of November.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: I always look at the first two weeks as being
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: your safest bet. The first week or two November is
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: is just safe. But if if you get a weather
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: front like what we had come through, can really change
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: things and make things more difficult. So I mean, like
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: in your situation where you have to lock down the
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: dates way ahead of time, you're kind of s o L.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: I would still air towards somewhere in that range, just
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: because it's just hard to beat it in a year
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: in and year out if you had to average things out.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, hunting pressure could have impacted you a
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: little bit, right, I mean, once you start being around
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: there and you walking around and your dad walking around
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: all that stuff like that could be part of the
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: reason why things slowed a little bit. Of course, the
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: weather slowed things. Um who who knows what else is
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: going around there. I wouldn't read into it too much
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: given those factors, as I guess what I'm trying to
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: tell you. At the same time, though, you know, you
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: can start to get to know property, and like in
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: my case, I've got a spot that always is better early.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: I've hunted it for over a decade now, and I
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: have found that, for whatever reason, there's some doughs that
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: come into heat, you know, early consistently. There's always a
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: hot dough. You know that last week in October, so
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: peak rut type stuff starts happening for me that round there,
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: and so I hunt that week just as if I
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: was hunting November five. But it's taking me time to
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: figure that out. And you know, there's no other way
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: to find other than that kind of thing. So always
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: something more to learn, Ynni, Always something more to learn, man.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: But that's what fun it does. That's that's for me.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: That's what I love about it. Like you said, it's
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: the challenge. It's this puzzle it's it's chess and poker
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: and checkers all mixed in one and and I just
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: I geek out about the never ending process. So it's
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: it brings a smile to my face knowing that I've
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: got a kindred spirit over there in Montana right now.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: And uh, I think we just gotta figure out a
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: way to share the white Tail woods together here soon
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: and do something, do something, get a hunting on the books.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: Oh man, man all Uh let's uh we'll end this
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: and get on the phone, start planning. I like it.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: We're can people see this hunt? You honest? Where's where
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: is this all gonna be? And when? Uh? This will
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: be a meat Eat Hunts episode which will air on
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: the meat Eater YouTube channel, and I believe now they're
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: talking um like April time frame, ish um, and I'm
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: gonna have six episodes coming out and I can't tell
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: you which one this one's gonna be, but uh yeah,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: start looking forward late March, um and keep an eye
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: up for it through April and then if you still
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it, maybe in the first two weeks of May.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: But yeah, Meat Eater YouTube channel, Meat Eater Hunts awesome.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: I'm looking forward checking it out. Yeanni, thank you for
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: taking the time to walk us through all this stuff. Um,
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: I still feel like there's fifteen other things I wanted
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: to ask you about, But like we talked about, we
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: always go longer than the planned time and we already have.
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: So yeah, well maybe we'll uh maybe you ought to
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: come out this spring or summer to the property and
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: we can go do it two or and then we
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: can sit down to a podcast after we walk the
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: property and you can give me your your feedback. Sign
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: me up. I like that idea. That sounds like fun.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: All right, you're honest. Thank you, and uh, let's figure
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: out that spring trips in sounds good? Thanks again, Mark,
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: all right, that's a rap. I hope you enjoyed the
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: honest story. I hope that maybe some of the things
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: we talked on the front end we're able to help
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: kind of color some of this conversation for you and
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: and left you with some different things to think about
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: now that we're wrapped up. Um, if you can do
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: some of that homework I mentioned, hit me up on Instagram,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: leave a comment on Facebook or Insta, and let me
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: know some of the things that that you took away
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: either from this podcast or from your own hunts after
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: you were able to do a little bit of that
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: um decision analysis or or learning. So thank you all
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: for tuning in, Thanks for riding along with me as
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: as I go down these crazy rabbit holes. But I
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: hope and and really what I think this podcast has
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: the most opportunity to do, not just this episode, but
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: in general. Right I want to make the Wired Hunting
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: Podcast be a place where where those of those with
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: a similar passion can get together and have a good time,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: but also where we can push ourselves and push each
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: other to take that next step. And I think this
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: type of exercise is a way to do that. So
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: if you're game for it, give a shot, think about
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: these things, let me know what you're thinking, and uh,
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.