Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 372: What Would Tony Peterson Do?

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Ep. 372: What Would Tony Peterson Do? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this is episode number three
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  Speaker 1: seventy two, and today I'm joined by renowned public land
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: deer hunter Tony Peterson to break down exactly how he
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: would handle some of the toughest, most interesting public land
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  Speaker 1: hunting situations I could think of. All right, welcome to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on
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  Speaker 1: X Today. As you just heard, We've got Tony Peterson
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  Speaker 1: back with us. Tony is a good friend, He's a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: great hunter. He's been on the show quite a few
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: times over the years, and I think he's one of
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  Speaker 1: the very best folks we've had in the show. So
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  Speaker 1: I'm excited that he's back. If you're not familiar, Tony
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  Speaker 1: Peterson has writ for just about every deer hunting magazine
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  Speaker 1: out there you can think of. He hosts the Hunt
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: for Real podcast. He has hunted all over the country,
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  Speaker 1: and he specializes. I think you can say that he
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't do primarily or only, but he definitely specializes in
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  Speaker 1: public land d I Y type situations. He's got a
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  Speaker 1: great perspective from a lot of different parts of the country,
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  Speaker 1: and and he can I don't know, he can just
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  Speaker 1: communicate what he's doing and why he's doing it better
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  Speaker 1: than a lot of folks, which is why I enjoy
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: chatting with him. We chat with him today through the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: whole lens of this what would you do format that
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  Speaker 1: I started testing this past summer. We're gonna continue to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: do these here and there throughout the season when we've
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  Speaker 1: got somebody who we've talked to before, but we want
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to try to get a different perspective from them. If
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  Speaker 1: you didn't hear those past ones, you should definitely go
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: back and listen. We've done these with John Eberhardt, Steve Bartilla,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Mark Jury, and Dan Infult. And basically what I do
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  Speaker 1: is I put out a specific, unique situation, some hypothetical
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: set of circumstances, and then ask the people to explain
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: what they're gonna do how they would handle it. That's
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  Speaker 1: what I do for Tony. We chat through a bunch
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of different public land scenarios. We talked through some specific
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: things related to my recent Idaho public land hunt. We
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: hear about his recent North Dakota public land hunt and
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  Speaker 1: even a little bit about the Wisconsin opener which just happened.
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  Speaker 1: So it's good stuff, great conversation. You're gonna come out
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  Speaker 1: of this one learning some things that you can apply
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  Speaker 1: to your future public land hunts or even private land
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: stuff too. So we're gonna get right to that. But
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a couple of quick heads ups on things. Number one,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: dost Boat Season two. That is the fishing show that
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: we've put out over at meat Eater that has just
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: launched the second season of the show. It's terrific. It's
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: on the meat Eater YouTube channel now that first episode.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Gotta check it out. The first one's got Steve renovating
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: an old boat of a family friends and going fishing
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: for a trout in Lake Michigan. And then there's a
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of other cool stuff from the Upper Midwest.
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  Speaker 1: From everything I've heard, this is going to be top
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  Speaker 1: notch and first season, the first season was definitely top
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: notch too, So check it out again. Is that the
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  Speaker 1: meat Eater YouTube channel. Speaking of other things we've got
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: going on, you probably know this, but just in case
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: you've been skipping over them. Starting last week and again
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: this week, you'll have seen our new rut Fresh radio
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: mini series episodes coming out right. That's something we've been
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: doing every year for five years now. Coming out on Wednesdays.
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  Speaker 1: We've got a special mini episode where we interview four
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: or five hunters from across the country and we're asking
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: them what kind of deer activity they're seeing, how are
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: certain conditions impacting the deer hunting, what are certain seasonal
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: factors that are influencing how they're hunting, What kind of
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: tactics are working for them right now? All that kind
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of stuff we cover. It's going to get you the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: most up to date and helpful intel before your next hunts.
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  Speaker 1: So don't skip those episodes. Listen to them asap because
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: they're timely. We put them out on a Wednesday, we
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: talked to those people on Tuesday, and the following week
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we do the same thing, so make sure you tune
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: into those. And finally, speaking of up to date updates,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: this is the time of year where I start sharing
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: a whole lot more over on the Wired to Hunt
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  Speaker 1: Instagram account as far as my own personal hunts, different
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: things I'm seeing on the field, different things coming out
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: across Meat Eater and Wired to Hunt when it comes
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: to whitetail content, So make sure if you're not already,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: follow Wired to Hunt on Instagram. Check out my Instagram stories,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: check out the feed. Plan on pumping that up a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: lot here over the coming months with plenty of new content.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So that is all I got for you, my quick updates.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in, Thank you for being here.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: If your season started already, I would love some updates.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Shoot me a note on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: If you've had some success. I hope some of these
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: things you've been here and have helped. And I definitely
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: think what you're gonna hear the rest of today's episode
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  Speaker 1: will help. So I think where that said, I will
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  Speaker 1: stop talking. I'll let you get right into it. Here
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  Speaker 1: we are with Tone Peterson. We're gonna find out what
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  Speaker 1: would Tony Peterson do? All right? With me back on
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  Speaker 1: the show is the one and only Tony Peterson. Tony,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: thank you for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: having me, buddy. Yeah, I was hoping we could do
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  Speaker 1: this in person a few weeks ago, when you were
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: out here in Michigan on the back forty with me.
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  Speaker 1: But we just we're working too hard, too tired. You
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  Speaker 1: know how that goes. You don't want to do a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: podcast after twelve hours in the field hanging stands and stuff.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So we're doing this one. Yeah, we kicked it around
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and we decided we would uh the podcast episode would
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: be way too low blood sugar, and decided we'd do
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: it when we were a little more rested after after
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. So I think we made a
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  Speaker 1: good choice. I think so too. I was forced into
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a couple of those end of the day podcast like
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I did one two weeks ago, after having driven twenty
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  Speaker 1: five hours straight across the country and then getting to
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  Speaker 1: my desk nations scouting through the midday and then hiking
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in a mile and a half and hunting, and then
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: hiking out and then driving back to our camp, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: we recorded at twelve thirty at night after everything that
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I just described, and somehow we managed to talk for
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: about sixty minutes. I don't know if any of it
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: made sense, but we did talk at least for the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: minimum amount of times. So yeah, thanks, no, thanks um,
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, man excited for a bunch of stuff because
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: for the first time, actually we've talked about doing it
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: for a number of years, but for the first time,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: we're finally going to hunt together this year, having you
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: out in the back forty, which which I'm I'm excited about.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I'm excited about it too. Man, I had mixed feelings
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: about burning up a week during the rut in Michigan,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: when when I'm sitting on in Iowa, after getting out
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: there and working on that property a little bit and
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  Speaker 1: seeing what's going on out there, I'm excited for it.
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  Speaker 1: And honestly, this is gonna sound so bad, but I'm
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: just excited to hunt a private property in November. Yeah,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: you know, it's funny after the week I just had,
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  Speaker 1: I'm excited about that too. Um, I want to talk
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: about a bunch of different things, but I have to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: get your your thoughts on the back forward you a
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, you're gonna come out, as you
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  Speaker 1: just said, we're in hunt together during the rut, but
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: we wanted to have you out in August to just
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  Speaker 1: help with some of the scouting, some of the stand prep,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: some of the you know, just hunting prep, and we
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  Speaker 1: checked tryal camera as we did a little evening glass
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  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Um, what's your take
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  Speaker 1: in the property you're seeing it now in year two, Um,
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  Speaker 1: what do you think about the place? Man? I think
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  Speaker 1: it's cool. I mean, it's just it's it's always surprising
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  Speaker 1: to me even with you know, I mean that property
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: what six acres, you know, so that's not a big property.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It's a nice size property. But it's always amazing to
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: me when you see what can be done on small properties,
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  Speaker 1: you know, And it's it's a weird thing when you
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: when you hunt a permission based property like I have
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: here in Minnesota, where around the cities where it might
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: or something like that, and you can't work on it,
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  Speaker 1: you feel really limited as far as what you can
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  Speaker 1: do with it. You know, you're just gonna show up
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  Speaker 1: and there's a couple of good spots and you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: hope it works out. But when you have when you
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: can get your hands on a property and just work
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  Speaker 1: on it and do the things you want to do
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  Speaker 1: and develop it, it's like a never ending process that
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: takes you into like a year round white tail plan,
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  Speaker 1: and it's just it's it's such a different thing than
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  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff we do with the public land hunting,
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  Speaker 1: and it's so appealing on some levels because of that
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  Speaker 1: because you can look at that blank slate and go,
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  Speaker 1: I will if I if I want to, I'll never
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  Speaker 1: be done trying to make this into something else and
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  Speaker 1: something better. And that that property is just cool. Man.
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  Speaker 1: There's a lot of neat stuff on there. Yeah, it's
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  Speaker 1: got it's got a lot of potential. And we've just
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  Speaker 1: been kind of slowly doing a few things here and
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  Speaker 1: there that I think are getting it there. But but
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  Speaker 1: you know, as we discussed when we were there together,
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  Speaker 1: even just in the one year, I can see things changing.
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  Speaker 1: They give me new hope. I mean, like the trail
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: camera poll. We checked cameras, and last year in August,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: when we checked our summer cameras, and I've had cameras
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: running for like two months, we didn't have a single
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: buck over a year and a half old all summer
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: on camera. And this year we checked and I'd only
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: had the cameras out for ten days or twelve days
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: or something, and we had several bucks that were two
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: years old, three years old, maybe a four year old couple,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: four plus year old bucks on there. Um. It was
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: a dramatic improvement from year one to two, at least
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: on that in that one kind of sample size that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: we're looking at. Yeah, there was. There's a pretty nice
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: representation of different year classes in there, and it's you know,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: some of that probably can be attributed to having beans
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: close in the time of year that you're there, but
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is just the place is more desirable.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It works for them better, and they're gonna move move
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: in when you when you make a property that gives
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: them some more advantages and more places to bed and feed,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: they're just gonna come there. That's what they're gonna do.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And so it's it's amazing to see that progress in
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: two years. And and like you said, it's a never
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: ending thing. For if we had this thing for a decade,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: there's so so much more we could do. But it
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: is fun just trying to think through It's just a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: different kind of chess match. There's the public land chest
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: mass where you're trying to figure out what to do
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: with a concrete set of circumstances, at least as far
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: as the ground itself, Like this is the terrain, this
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: is the habitat, Now deal with it. You've got moving
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: variables like hunters, but otherwise you have to adapt to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the situation. While this kind of thing. You've got a
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: set of circumstances that is fluid. I can change the circumstances.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I can move this here, I can move this there.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I can place this habitab feature there, um, and then
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: see how the deer change and then adapt to that.
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  Speaker 1: So there's I just love that whole process in both
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  Speaker 1: types of places. But um, there's something fun about getting
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: to get your hands dirty in this kind of project.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So it's gonna be fun to try to try to
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: apply the Tony Peterson hunting tactics to the sixty acres
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: in Michigan ground and see what happens. Yeah, Well that's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that's one way to put it. It'll it'll be interesting
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to see what we come up with. A November, we
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: got a little drop time buck. We got a little
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: little droppy or whatever you're calling him. I don't know
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: if it's a drop time orfits of main beam that
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: bends down at the end into it into a drop appearance. Um,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: but he's a cool buck. Yeah. And and we have
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the Spencer new hearth buck out there too, the really
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: weird sided one overcompensating lower voice one. That's the one.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, man, there's a couple of nice Bucks, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: then we never well, I think I showed you the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: pictures of that just big solid eight pointer. Um so yeah,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and who September is here? Bucks rearrange their home ranges sometimes,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: so there might be different deer in there now. I
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: don't know, but there'll be something for us to chase.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So it's gonna be fun. November will be fun. Um. So,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: what I really wanted to talk to you about the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Tony rather than back forty stuff, was, um this, I
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: want I want to talk a little about your North
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Dakota hunt. I know you just did a hunt in Wisconsin.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about that a little bit. But
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: maybe we talk about that by way of a little
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: game that I've been playing with some people. It's this
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: whole idea of of throwing you into different situations and
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: then finding out what you would do. So, what I
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: want to do, Tony, rather than my usual podcast where
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, hey, Tony, what do you think about rubs?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: What do you think about? What do you think about?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the rut um? I want
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to lay out as many different, relatively detailed scenarios for
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: you and then ask you what you would do in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that situation. How would you approach it, how would you
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: think about it, how would you execute on the game plan? Um?
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: All that kind of stuff. So I will give you
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: as many details as I can about these different scenarios,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and then just feel free to walk me through your
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: thought process. Walk me through. Maybe you'll have to fill
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: in some gaps, um, but let's just see where that
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: kind of thing takes us. And I've got some questions
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: that are related to some things I know about your
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: North Dakota hunt, UM, so feel free to jump into
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: some anecdotes from that, UM, and we're just gonna kind
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: of see where all that goes. And UM, I don't know.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I think it'll be a fun thing to to get
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: a new way of learning from you, since you're always, uh,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: you're always a treasure trove of information, and I think
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: this will be a new opportunity for us to dig
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: to a different level. So are you ready for the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt? What would you do? Challenge? I am, buddy. Okay, Well,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: then let's start here. Let's say we are in North
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Dakota and you're on your public land whitetail hunt that
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you like to do in states like that. We're gonna
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: say it's September or October, somewhere in that relatively early
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: part of the season, and you've got a set of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: conditions that a lot of guys do not like to see. Now,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I know that you are different in this, so I'm
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: setting you up on this one, but I just want
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: to hear a little bit more detail. You're on your
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: week long public land hunt. You gotta get going after it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: It's early season, and then a very hot weather front
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: comes through, so everybody wants that cold front to come through. Right.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: You get this warm weather pushing through, most guys are
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: going to maybe play it safe until the cold weather
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: hits three days in. Let's say some cold weathers coming later,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and they're gonna observe, observe, and then they're gonna hunt
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: tight to whatever they see on the third or fourth
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: day when the cold weather hits. Um But what would
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you do in that scenario if you have hot weather
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the first part of the week and then it's can
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: be cold the second half. Walk me through how you
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: would be thinking about having those two different types of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: weather conditions and how that would change your strategy in
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: this this quick hunt where you've got to make something
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: happen fast. Um. You know, the beauty about western river
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: bottom situation is it's really easy to figure out bed
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: to food and food to bed patterns because there's so
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: much more visible than then a lot of places you
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: white tail hunt. So my my default setting in those
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: scenarios is always to glass first and just see what's
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: going on. And you know, if you're talking a uh
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: unseasonably warm weather for three days and then a cold
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: front coming in in that situation, what you're really talking
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: about it is, okay, are you playing the water at all?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: You know, are they are they coming to the river
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a little earlier because they're thirsty or there's some stock
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: tanks in there to glass and then later in the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: week when it gets cooler, the ideas they're going to
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: be moving more, Well, they might they might come to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the river earlier in the day, you know, before all
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the shadows of stretched across the land and you have
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: that magical half hour. But really, what I'm doing in
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: that situation is I'm just gonna look first. Because we
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: we think about deer being super pattern able in the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: early season, which they are until somebody comes in and
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: blows them up. But what I've seen in those states
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: where you can glass really well. Is those patterns stick
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: till the rut like they're they're just timing them, maybe
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit different throughout the day and not going
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: quite as early by the time it's October. But when
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: you can watch them get up, or you can watch
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: them on their feet where they were probably really close
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to their beds, or come back in the morning as
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: their head to their beds, you see you see these
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: patterns unfold. And it really doesn't matter, at least in
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: my experience, whether it's October tenth or September one, they're
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: doing the same thing. They might not be all bachelord up,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: which can actually help you. And so my my default
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: in that situation is if I can get eyes on them,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to If it's really hot, like kind of
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: miserable hunting weather, I might just I might just go
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: to where I know there's water and sit it. I mean,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I did this in North Dakota for the opener. We
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: had We had kind of a weird weather there too,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: where the one day it was really hot and overnight
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it was getting pretty cool. Overall, it was pretty cool
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: for for the opener. But instead of just going back
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to camp. I went. Every day that I hunted, I'd
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: i'd sit to stand in the morning, and then I'd
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: go hike up the river to this stock tank I
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: knew about. They had water in it, and I would
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: go sit on that in the midday hours for like
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: four or five six hours, and then I'd go back
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to a tree stand somewhere along the river. So I
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: hunted all day. And it sounds like an awesome plant.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I never saw a deer come into that water, but
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: there was nothing. There's nothing else to do, you know,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: either go back to camp and you take a nap,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: or you stay out there with the deer. And so
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I would probably do that if I couldn't get eyes
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: on him. If I just had to go blind and say,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: all right, well, it's you know, it's seventy five degrees
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and these deer are gonna be thirsty. They're either come
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: into this river, They're going to go to one of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: these little tanks in the middle of the day. I'd
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: probably go post up at one of those tanks and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and try to sit a good crossing in the evening
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and in the morning. Now, what about a scenario like
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: that where you know you have hunted some of these
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: spots and scouted these spots and you know where there's water.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: But what if you were on a brand new property
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: that you don't know where there's water, but you get
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: that hot weather. Would you take that first day and no, Okay, hey,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I've got three or four days of really warm weather.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I gotta find water somewhere and just criss cross stuff
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: until you find it. Or would you still try to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: glass and still hang hang back a little if you
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: don't already know where it is. Um Man, it just depends.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I would not set out west to just randomly stumble
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: across water, you know. I mean. The good thing about
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: on X and you know satellite imagery now is you
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: can find water really easy, you know, so you you
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: can scout, you can do your east scouting and find water,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: especially because most of this public land has cattle on it,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: and so you can see those trails spoked out in
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the water, and you know, you might have to mark
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: a few spots and walk in to see if there's
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: actual water in there at the time you're hunting, because
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: sometimes there isn't. But I would I would start there,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So I wasn't you know, wasting a bunch of time,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and then if I couldn't find anything that was like
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a rock solid little tank or a guzzler or something,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: then it's going to be time to glass. And there
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: might be a situation where those deer betting on a
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: sage flat or something like that where they don't have that,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you know, that that pond or that tank, and they
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: got to get to the river to drink. And you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: might see those bucks follow a route that doesn't take
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: them out into an opening anywhere, and they can dip
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: right down a bank, grab some water, and go back up.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: And that's really important because if you can watch them
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: drink in those situations where they're like, this is the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: safest place for me to go get water when I'm thirsty,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: that is just a money set up. And all of
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that is is getting on the spotting scope above the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: rivers and just watching to see who comes down and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: where did they come down. Let's look at a different
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: situation now, public land, same kind of thing, but this
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: time we're moving into mid October, and we're hunting mid
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: October in Iowa. Typically most guys are going there. Out
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: of state hunts in Iowa maybe sometime in November. Right,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: you saved up to get these points. You want to
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: hunt to the peak of the rut when there's gonna
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: be giant bucks running all over the place on November five,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: or eight or ten. But you've got a jerk of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a friend who invites you to hunt in Michigan in November,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and so you can't do your allan when you wanted,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and so instead you try to get You gotta get creative,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and you gotta figure out a way to kill a
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: buck in Iowa in October. Let's say that you have
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to do the middle of the month for some reason.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're gonna give you a long weekend. You've got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: October fifteen through the nineteenth. Let's hypothetically say, what kind
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of game plan would you put together for that kind
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: of hunt. If I told you that that's not just
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: a preliminary hunt, that's your only hunt, that's your only
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: four days to kill a buck with your Iowa tag,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: that's when you got to do it. Walk me through
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the unique set of strategies and put in place to
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to cash in on this really special tag in that
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: what some people call a suboptimal time. Uh. Some people,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: including me, that Um, that's that's a that's a wild scenario,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: pulled out a thinner their market. Um I that so, yeah,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it's hitting real close to home. Uh. I was openers
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: October one, and so my my plan is to get
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: down there on the opener and then to swing back
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: through in mid October if I don't kill one then
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and so just like in a lot of states like
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: maybe Michigan, maybe Minnesota, you know, if you're talking least
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: in mid September or later opener, it's always it's always
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: worth playing that gimme on a field edge right away
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: because you might get it. You might you know, opening weekend,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: you might get that buck that comes out to the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: beans and you can kill him when you in a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: place that's just dumb. You also know that the the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: pressure is gonna come in there on those field edges
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and the easy to get two spots, and those bucks
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: are going to react, and by mid October it's going
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: to be a staging area deal on public land. I
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: mean it just at least in my experience, that's the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: best scenario for for getting on one when you you
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: know when the lulls supposed to be happening, is those
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: bucks you know where they're gonna end up. You know
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: you can look especially you know, if you're in Iowa,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: you know the destination food sources are out there. You
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: know which ones they'll probably be. So now it's a
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: matter of going, Okay, I'm not killing him on the edge.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: How how far back into the cover do I have
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to get? And the good thing about mid October is
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you can start to piece together a lot of rubs.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: There's gonna be a lot of rubs out there. You're
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: gonna start seeing, Okay, these if you get in on
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: some of those ridges and get a couple hundred yards
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: off those field edges, you're gonna see those places where
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: bucks are killing time in the daylight. You're gonna see
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: those concentration of rubs. And so that for me is
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: going to be just a hanging a hunt. Get in there,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: look around. You know. I'm gonna go in with a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: plan as far as like, okay, these ridges come together,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, try to try to give myself a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: few advantages beforehand. But it's gonna be one of those
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: sort of freelance hunts where you walk in and go, Okay,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly where these deer are staging. But
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: if I sneak through, you know, I'll probably bump some deer.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: It's it's not going to be like an ideal scenario,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but you're probably gonna stumble across a couple of areas
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that are just tore up, and you go, okay, this
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: this looks like where these bucks are. They're getting up
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: out of their beds. They're coming here. They're not going
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: to poke their nose out in daylight, and they're gonna
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: stay here. They're gonna mess around, they're gonna make some rubs,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: maybe work a scrape that time of year, and they're
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: just gonna kill time until the clock runs out and
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: it's dark and they can walk acko. That's that's like
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: my I love hunting that way. Let me put it
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: that way, and so that that'll be the Iowa strategy.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Can you describe an example of one of these types
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: of spots you would pick out on the map as
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: giving you an advantage. You described like some ridges coming together,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: but could you give me a little more detail of
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: what one of these spots specifically you'd be looking for
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: in a map that would give you, Okay, this is
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: about that's worth me sneaking into and looking for that
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: fresh sign and setting up explain what that looks like
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a little more detail for that October fifteen to kind
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of time frame. So you'll have to bear with me here.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: What what I think about in those situations is what
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: what what's the predominant wind? Right, It's going to be
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a north or west probably, um, So I'm I'm operating
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: on that assumption, and I'm looking at these ridges going Okay,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: which which way do they run? Like, how can I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: get in there and play the most likely down wind
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: side of this where I might find uh a bunch
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: of rubs in a staging area. Because those bucks are
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: gonna get up and they're gonna cruise that ridge, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: they're gonna cruise it in a way where the wind
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: is in their favor, so they're gonna be on the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: same side I want to hunt, but I can hopefully
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: hang off the side a little bit and have my
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: scent blowing out into nothing, blowing out into a valley.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: So those bucks are moving along and they're using the
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: wind to tell them either what's kind of what they're
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: kind of paralleling or what's in front of them. And
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: so it's blowing across most of the woods that they're
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: traveling through and there and they go, Okay, I know
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I'm safe. Like I can, I can pitch off this
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: into this valley if I need to, and I can
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: smell everything up ahead of me, and you you see
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: them travel like that a lot, and so if I can,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: if I can pick out some of those spots close
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to a destination food source and and and look at
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: them on the aerial photos and then occasionally because I'm
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: gonna be hunting a lot of bluffy type of river,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: you know, type of land where it's pretty up and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: down and it's it's gonna have a lot of benches
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: in there properly. So I'm gonna look at this and go, okay,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: can I get in this way? If the wind is
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: blowing here, They're probably gonna travel on this side of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the ridge and feel safest. And you know, a hundred
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and fifty two hundred yards away from this spot, I
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: like there's some benches. You know, those big bucks operate
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: just like bull Elk. They love benches. They love these
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: places where they can play the thermals, and they have
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of escape routes and so you can
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: kind of I mean it's like it's a moving target.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You can look at on X and zoom in there
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and see these things, but you don't know until you
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: get in there whether you're gonna actually find the sign
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of whether it sets up correctly or not. But if
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you have a couple of those places picked out with
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that that offer that kind of advantage to you, usually
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you'll find one where you're like, okay, this is this
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: is the concentration of deer. This is where the good
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: one is working. And then you can really, you can
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: really put it together. And the thing I like about
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: those spots is if I get in, I'll play it
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: a little safe, and I won't I won't push it
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: too hard to get in too deep, and you can
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: set up and you can observe too. So if if
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: you see one doing something you know, and he's he's
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: crossing the ridge in a different way or coming out
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a little later than you expected, you can you can
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: move the next night, move in on him, you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and you might screw it up, but you can. You're
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: in public land, you can get a little aggressive, and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of times the first night you see them
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: and the second night you move in and get your shot. Yeah,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and that's that's something very reminiscent of what I was
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: trying to do this last week. Is exactly that. It's
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's trying to pick a spot on the map
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that has potential. Then you move in try to find
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the spot within the spot, and if you don't have
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that exact thing, then you you set up, observe, adjust.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: But what if you go in there and you're doing
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: something like that and you never find the sign that
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: you expected or that you're hoping to see. You go
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in there and it seems relatively barren. Is there ever
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a situation where you would just pull the plug and
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: not even set up for the night and observe. You
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: would just say this isn't it's two hours before dark.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: You walk in there and it's just sterile. Would you
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: ever say, Okay, I'm not even gonna hunt tonight, I'm
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: just gonna keep scouting and keep walking, or I'm gonna
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: pull the plug and go glass of field or anything
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: like that. Is there ever a scenario where you would
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: do that? Yeah? I mean it's i it's hard to
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: imagine in Iowa, you know, with with a good deer
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: population that if you had two hours left you wouldn't
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: at least set up to see what's going on. But
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I've had that happen in other states where I've wandered around.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I can remember two times, once in South Dakota and
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: once in Oklahoma, heading out on public land with the idea,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going into this certain spot and I'm gonna find
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: a tree and set up and walking around for like
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: five hours and not finding anything and ending up in
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a totally different area. And you know, in in North
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: or in South Dakota killing a uck that night, sitting
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: on the ground in Oklahoma, just bailing on an entire property.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So it's it's just situational. You know. The thing you
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: have working working for you down in Iowa is you're
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: gonna have, even on even on hard hunt in public land,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have some deer to work with in a
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: lot of different spots, and so it's just it's less
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: likely to think about having to bail on something. But
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: in a lot of states you would and you just go, Okay,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that didn't happen, or you kind of you have to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: kind of reassess what what you consider to be just
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: that banging spot right, like is it is? It? Is? It?
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Like a no brainer. I gotta sit here because there's
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: rubs everywhere, or is there is there a little bit
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of sign, but it doesn't really it's not really getting
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: your spiky sense is tingling. Sometimes you sit those spots
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and you see something, and sometimes you just do go
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: like this is I'm not feeling this. I gotta go
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: figure something else out, and you just go use your
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: time more efficiently somewhere else. I want to better understand
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: what gets your spity sense tingling. So let's let's layout
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: this situation where let's say you've already gone on somewhere
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and you've you've picked up a spot, You've found a tree,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: you like a spot. You think, okay, this is a
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: spot where something good could happen, but you have to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: access it, for whatever reason, you have to access it
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: from a different direction when you actually go into hunt it.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe let's say it's the next day, when you go
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in from this new direction to hunt this spot that
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you think is pretty darn good. You start walking through
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: some new cover and it's it's it's ripped up. This
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: stuff's different, this looks even better. Is there any scenario
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: where you would have this sputty sense tingling so much
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: that you would say, oop, this is where I've got
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: to be and yank your set and come to this
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: new area. Or would you or would you just kind
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: of stash that knowledge for the next day and instead
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: sneaking push on through that sign to get to this
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: spot you set up previously because you've got it, it's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: more well thought out, you already have it set. It's
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: good to go. I guess, answer me that and then
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: described to me what it would take from a sign
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: to make you do that, if you would audible in
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: that kind of way. So I try to be really
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: open to that. And I think I think one of
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the problems a lot of deer hunters have is we
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: become so married to our ideas of how this should go,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: like it's I think it's one of the reasons why
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: the private land management situation has gone to such extremes
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: as far as like food plots and box blinds, and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: we want to control it, like we want to know
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: we're gonna walk in, we're gonna take this trail, we're
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: gonna climb into this stand, and the deer come out here.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: When you're a public land hunter, you don't have that
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: luxury and I've I find myself with ideas all the time,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: like I'm gonna go, you know, in North Dakota's a
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: prime example. I would have bet you a lot of
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: money I was going to kill a buck on a
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: little stock tank in there, and it didn't work that way.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And it never works the way I think. And so
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm sitting there and I go, okay,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I gotta I got this Iowa tag and this is
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the spot I want to go to, and I'm walking
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: through an area and it is tore up with rubs,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: just tore up, and there's a lot of bucks signed there.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: There's no way I'm walking past that, no way I'm
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: gonna set up there. And and I say that because
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: over the last couple of years, I've killed a lot
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: of bucks just going on my way to somewhere else
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: on public land and stopping and going, holy cow, like
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I have to hunt here. That these trails are pounded,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: these scrapes are tore up, these rubs are thick, and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: it's just one of those places where you you can't
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: not hunt it. And I get that, like that is
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: a thing that is reinforced to me a lot in
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of different states, and so I
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: used to go out and go, I have to get
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: to this tree, or I have to get to this spot,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: because this is where it's going to be. All my
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: research says this. Now I'm like way more open to
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the possibility. When I'm walking there, I'm gonna find something
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: that's way better than what I was heading to. And
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I can think of several public land bucks I've killed
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: where you know it just in the last few years
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: where that happened to me, And I hunted stupid close
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: to a parking area or a place that just on
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: paper you'd be like, no way, But when you get there,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it's a different thing. It's kind of like the the
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: elk situation now, where you hear people, you know, the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: whole get seven miles into the back country thing is
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: so pervasive that you hear about a lot of kind
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: of seasoned veteranel hunter is going. You know, I kill
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of my bowls in this gnarly little drainage
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: right off the road now because everybody's going past them.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: And in the white tail world, the same thing happens
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: on a smaller scale, and so it's just where are
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: they like, It's just a matter of where do these deer?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Where are these deer right now? And that's where you
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: hunt and you find that just by seeing the sign.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Like it's for me, you know, I've talked about this
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: on here a bunch of times. But I absolutely love
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: rubs if it's a middle October thing. I like scrapes
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to not not as much as rubs. If I see
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a ton of rubs in a spot, that's that really
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: does it for me. If there's some good trails in there,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: that's just kind of a bonus. But if I see
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that concentration a good buck sign there, I don't I'm
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: not moving past it. Yeah, I've heard you're talking about
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: in some of your podcasts about this idea of finding
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: these buck concentrations where in public land you'll find these
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: little hotspots where they've they've all kind of found their
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: safe place, and it can sometimes be in unexpected places
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: as you just described. Um, Other than what you just described,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is there anything else you're looking for to help you know, oh,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: I've found a buck concentration one of these zones or
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is it simply that a lot of rubs, a lot
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: of good trails, um and anything else As far as
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: finding those and knowing that you got it. No. I mean,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: it's there's no way to do it unless you see them,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: you know, And I'm not. I just I saw a
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: post recently, I can't remember who it was talking about
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: how you know he would go into public land and
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: he had an end table full of trail cameras. There
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: was probably ten trail cameras on this that he was
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: getting ready for his trip. And I look at that
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and I go, well, that's probably one way to find
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: these if you have enough time. But I don't have.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Most of my trips probably average four days four days
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of hunting anyway, And so I'm I'm really reliant on
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the sign that I find. If I find a lot
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: of fresh sign, I know bucks are using it now
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and I want to hunt there. I don't have time
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: to put out a bunch of trail cameras and let
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: him soak and then figure out where the concentrations are.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And so it's just a matter of signs, observe, move
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: if you have to, or you know, a lot of times,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: if you find that sign, you get it right right away,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: and if you get it wrong, you just keep looking
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: back to the back to the scenarire. We just outlined
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: before that, and we talked about walking this new routing
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to a prepared location, and then you hit this fresh sign.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Would you if you find it, it looks so good,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: you know you gotta hunt it right now. Would you
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: rather sit in the ground right then and there so
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: you don't need to push any further and just you
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: just figure out some way to hunt it right then
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and there. Or would you want to go past it,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: get your tree standing which you hung the night before,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: maybe pull it down, sneak back, set up in a
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: tree at the new spot. Which which situation would you prefer?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: It's totally situational man um I If I can get
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: up in a tree, that's my that's my preference just
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: most of the time. But sometimes these things happen depending
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: on where you're at. Where you do find that place
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: that's awesome, and the tree situation doesn't work very well,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and so you do have to sit on the ground.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: But for the most part, if i'm if I'm hunting
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a constant like if you if you want to take
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the Iowa example, I'm gonna get that stand, I'm gonna
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get up in that tree and you know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I think is is
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: sort of a barrier for a lot of people in
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: this public land deal. And the saddle thing has helped
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a lot, but it's just that that kind of thing
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: happens all the time where you get up in a
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: tree and you can't trim and you look at it
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and you go, I can't shoot anywhere, or you get
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: into a spot and this the trees where you want
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: to hunt don't work, and it's it's put stands up,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: take them down, or climb trees, climb down. It's it's
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a the willingness to just do that. And you know
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that's where the comfort with your saddle or your stand
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: set up is a huge and just just just understanding
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like dealing with the pressure, the other
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: hunting pressure. You just have to know that this is
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: a part of it and you're gonna have to work
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: around it like it's it's you're just not gonna want
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: to settle, and so you have to work through it.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: So in that situation, most of the time, I'm gonna
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: go get that stand and you know it's gonna it's
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: gonna be a little more effort and a little more work,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: but it's probably gonna be worth it. Yeah, okay, Well
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: here's something very similar to or that's related to this
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: whole idea of yanking stands, moving, adjusting all that in order.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Pain in the butt that can be. What if you've
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: got a spot that you liked a lot, you hung
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: at the night before something. You've got a spot plan,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: You've got a good reason for going there, you're excited
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: about it, and on your way in you see fresh
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: boot tracks part way back there, So somebody else is
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: coming here. You don't know exactly how far they went.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: You don't know when they broke off. You don't know
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: if they pushed past where you want to hunt, or
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: if they just scooted off to the side and or
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: ahead of you. You just don't know. But there's somewhere
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: back there. Do you keep going with your original plan
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: or do you say, you know what, it's just it's
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: too likely that this person pushed into something that's gonna
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: screw me up. I'm audible and gonna try to pivot
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to something that is definitely outside of this guy's uh
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: sphere of influence. I'm probably gonna just carry on with
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: my plan, And I say that because you know, like
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: like in North Dakota last week, there was nowhere I
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: could go where I wasn't encountering people. I've never seen
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: anything like that. And so if you if you keep
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're trying to get away from people NonStop,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's a zero sum game, like you just can't
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: do it and you just have to go. Okay, the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: deer are showing me they like this spot. Maybe this
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: guy blew it up. Maybe he didn't, but I'm gonna
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: take a flyer on it and hope he didn't. And
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I've seen that a few times in my life, like
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: the buck that I killed in northern Wisconsin last year.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I walked into this chunk of public thinking I was
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: going to go to this creek bottom that I that
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: I've hunted a few times and and find a crossing
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and just set up on it. And on the way
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: in I checked a little old kind of disused logging
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: road that I found winter scouting that had a ton
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: of sign on it. But it's right by the road,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: and it's in a place where tons of people go
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: in and they ride their four wheelers in there and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: they go try to shoot grouse off their four wheelers
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and it's it's a high traffic area, but it's just
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: just off of that. And I walked in there with
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: a totally different plan, just peeked up onto this, saw this,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: The scrape was there again. It was fresh. I could
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: see some rubs down the logging road, and I thought,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: if you walk past this, yere an idiot, Like they're
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: they're showing you they're using this right now, even though
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: people been in there, there's fresh four wheeler tracks in there.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: So I walked in there and set up and the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: first year that came out was like a one sixty.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And then I killed, I mean a legit giant, one
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of the biggest bucks I've ever seen anywhere. And later
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I killed a great eight pointer that came right down
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the logging road, and it was just one of those
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: deals where you could assume these deer blown out, or
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: you can think, man, they deal with this. You know
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: there there you a lot of your listeners are probably
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: hunting public land that gets hunted every day, you know
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: what I mean. And so it's like if you're if
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna play that game where you're like, well, I'm
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: gonna go where nobody goes A lot of people don't
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: have that option, Like a lot of people just don't.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: They have no way around that. So you have to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: hunt where other people are. And those deers still live there,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: they still do things like they're you know, they're the
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: toughest deer to hunt, I think, But you just have
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: to work with what you're given there in some of
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: those situations. So yeah, fresh bootprints sucks a lot, but
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: it's something you you kind of learned to live with.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And if the deer are showing you it doesn't really
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: bother them, then it shouldn't really bother you. Now. I
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: guess if I'm in that scenare and I see something
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: like what you mentioned and I see that fresh sign
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: in that spot, that's well hit. I would have thought
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: to myself, well, yeah, there's still deer using this, but
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: it's happening after dark. How do you how do you?
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: How do you know or what makes you think that
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: this might be a daytime spot versus a nighttime despite
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: all the stuff you just listed. Uh, if it's in
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the cover, how much cover is it in? I mean,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I don't I know. I'm sure we've talked about this
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: in past episodes. I'm not a big believer in the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: nocturnal dear thing. I don't think there are very many
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: true nocturnal deer out there. And I know that's like
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: contrary to popular opinion, especially in October, but when you
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: watch I was thinking about this this weekend when I
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: was hunting with one of my daughters. We had we
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: had deer come in pretty early on on opening night,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and the first three does that came in, they came in,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: they bedded down in front of us twice, and they
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: got up and moved a little bit. And I was thinking,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: every time I ever see dear bed down, they don't
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: bed down that long, even when it's in the morning
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: and you know that buck comes back in and he
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: lays down, He might lay down for an hour or two,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: and he gets up, goes, browses on something, nibbles around.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think I think we give them way too
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: much credit for being nocturnal. So if you if you
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: get into you the cover, the best cover they have,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: the thickest woods, or something that they're going to feel
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: pretty secure in. I don't think you deal with a
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: lot of truly nocturnal deer. So if I see a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: bunch of rubs way back on a ridge, and it's
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: pretty thick, and there's multi floora rows in there, something
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that's that's really given them some good cover. I'm just
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: gonna assume somebody's going to move through there in daylight.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Like those bucks feel good enough in there to move
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: around and and do their thing and not expose themselves.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: But they're in a place where they're comfortable, and I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: think that I think that exists all over. We just
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: don't get in there enough to know. Now here's an
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: interesting scenario we're dealing with a lot more today related
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: to this, where right there, there used to be this
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: assumption that you're going to have all this activity from
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: humans and from other hunters in certain places like the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: edges or by access or whatever. But as public land
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: hunting has become more popular, there's a lot of people preaching,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: you know, go into the bedding years, go deep, get
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: into buck bedrooms, you know all that kind of stuff.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of really eager guys and girls now
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: they are pushing into the really best, best stuff. So
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: what if you're going into hunt and you realize that
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: all the pressure is going right into the interior um,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: how do you how do you adapt to that? Because
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I gotta believe, right if that if that intense pressure
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: is being applied to the bedding cover right then and
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: there while you're hunting, the deer going to react in
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a way that maybe you can get them on these
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: unexpected places on the outside, but maybe they're just jumped
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: out of their skin for the next few days and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: there they are nocturnal or something. What would you do
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: if if all the pressure you're seeing from other guys
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: is this really aggressive right into the good stuff kind
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: of pressure. Yeah, well, that's that's one of the things
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I love the hunting public guys. But I'm like, can
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you guys leave one betting area alone out there? Like
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of convinced that they might be killing bucks
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: because the bucks they're hunting are so exhausted because they
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: never get a good day's sleep because they're in the
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: betting areas every day. Where dude, what what I think
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: about that is you just have to work with the variables,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: you know. So if it's if it's an evening hunt
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: and you know they're going to the beans or this
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: cut cornfield, that's that's the best information you have. So
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: if you think, okay, well, I think this is the
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: betting area, because I think a lot of times we
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: get really really locked into the belief that we can
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: just go this is his bed or this is the
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: betting area, and they use this every day. I think
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: that those bucks have lots of different beds and lots
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of different betting areas. And if somebody goes in there
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and they throw their saddle up and they're sitting in
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: one spot and not playing the win very well, those
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: bucks have other options. They know, they know where to go,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: and so you're just you're just working on the premise
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of like I know where he's gonna end up, but
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: where is he now? And how is he going to
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: get here? And so again it's just a matter of
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: if if people are going deep and you know, like
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: we we dealt with this in North Dakota. Like I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: saw people going into places I've never seen people go into,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and I know they're betting areas because I've watched deer
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: walk in there in bed there. But somehow those deer
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: magically find trails and make it down to the river
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: in the evening anyway, And so I think what happens
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: is we we sort of we we overestimate the amount
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: of influence we have on their daily life. So if
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: you go in there and you jump a buck and
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: he takes off, it's very easy to assume you put
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: that buck on a nocturnal pattern. You you you blew
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: out the area. And I've had it happened where I've
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: walked in on hanging hunt situations and I've jumped bucks
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: out of their beds and set up and they've come back.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: You know, they used to call that the bump and
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: dump or whatever, but I don't. Or you know, if
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: you sit on public land long enough and you see
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: bird hunters come through, those deer are so good at
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: at just avoiding us very subtly, very minimally, that we're
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: not probably pushing them around the way that we think
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: they are. We're probably not killing our chances to the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: degree that we think. And it's I think it's more
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: of a mental thing too. I think you've got to
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: be out there and you have to see this stuff
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: play out enough to know, Okay, this wasn't the end
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: of my trip, This isn't gonna These guys walking through
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: here pheasant hunting are doing whatever. This isn't the end
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: of this spot. It might change it. Those bucks might
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: relocate a little bit or something. But I think a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: lot of times it's it's in our head and we
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: we kind of hit the quit button and go, well,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: this is over, and now I have to start over.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: And you're not operating on the same way. But when
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time on these hunts where
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, I got four or five days to
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: get it done, here's the best spot I've found, you
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: realize that we're kind of overplaying that a little bit,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: and and a lot of times, even though it really
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: really sucks when people come in and other hunters blow
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: up your spot or you walk through the wrong area
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: and blow it up, it maybe isn't as damaging as
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: we a lot of times think, and we just have
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: to get back up in that tree and figure out
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: what happened. Okay, So you set me up perfectly for
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: my next question, which is a very very very specific scenario.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just a really creative person. I can pull out
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of details, So so bear with me here,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Tony as I lay this one out for it. But
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: let's hypothetically say you're hunting some public lan you have
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: been dealing with hunting pressure and other spots all over
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the place. So you decide, you know what, I'm gonna
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: go to this new area based off of something I
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: saw in the summer. I think there's some good bucks
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: in this general area. I'm gonna look at the map.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to pinpoint the most likely spot that
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: there might be buck betting, and then the most likely
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: route they would take down to this food source. You
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: sneak in two miles, You set up in a tree,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and you actually see three nice bucks, including two giants,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: but they're just out of range. Okay, So you see
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: these bucks. One is like fifty yards the next one's
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: about ten yards behind him. So you say, okay, I
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: know what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm gonna move to get
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to the other side of him and be within shooting ranch.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: That happened to come through the same way. That nothing
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: spooked him. They moved past me, past you, very easily
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: and calmly disappeared. Next day, you sneak in, you make
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: your move, You come into the backside, so you don't touch,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: you don't walk over anything. These deer came through you.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: There's no way you spooked anything. You get set up.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: It's great. One of the three bucks comes out along
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: with four other deer. They walk all within shooting range
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: of you, but the big boys never show. You think, okay,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: this is this is this is where these bucks like
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: to come through. I still haven't spooked anything. I'm feeling good.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: So the next day he just said, okay, I want
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to get I want one more good sit in this
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: spot because it feels like this is a killing spot,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: and to my knowledge, I haven't spooked anything. So you
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: come in the next day with those conditions. You just
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: get to the tree when all hell breaks loose. A
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: bunch of kids start driving U t v S all
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: around you, yelling, screaming, knock and metal together ye hying, uh,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: just making a mess of everything. You see them drive
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: back into where you think these deer rerebetted. You see
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: them drive to the other side of the property, way
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: down this other section, driving in there, blowing stuff up.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: You got out of your tree and you tried to
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: make a move on the ground, but they went that
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: direction to it's just a disaster of the night. But
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: they drive out just before last light, and at last
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: light you see a decent number of deer still pop
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: out and go right by where you were sitting originally,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: or where you want to sit originally that day. Now
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: that happens, it's frustrating, but you tell yourself, man, gonna
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: keep at her. We're gonna figure out how to adjust.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Next day, a huge storm rolls through with like damaging
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: dangerous winds, like sixties winds, high wind warnings, don't go
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: in the woods, blah blah blah. So you don't hunt
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the next day because of that. But a cold front
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: comes through, So now you're two days removed from this
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: disaster night, but temperatures are like thirty degrees lower, and
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: you did see some deer moving immediately after the saboteurs
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: came through here, thinking okay, these deer might have been
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: looking at that as just like a farmer in here
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: doing stuff, etcetera, etcetera. So would you, after all that,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: would you go in and hunt that killing tree that
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: you still have set up because it seemed to be
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: in the right spot prior to the disaster, because you
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: knew exactly how the bucks are moving through that area
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: in that spot, and you could look at that pressure
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: from the crazy people coming through is is hopefully this
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: one time thing that the bucks thought was farmer intervention
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: or something, and they reacted to it, of course that night,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: but very quickly a day passes, they go back to
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: their normal things. Maybe you're two miles back from public access.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: You think these deer feeling relatively calm, and you did
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: see two giant bucks moving in daylight, very calmly, you know,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: half hour before dark. So number one, would you go
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: back to that same spot for one try more? Or
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: would you say? No? Way? Man? That was a disaster. Uh,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you already hunted in the general area two previous days,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: even though you don't think you spoot them. They might
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: have caught your ground center something coming back. Blah blah blah.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I'm pulling up stakes and pushing in deeper or somewhere
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: different because there was just too much commotion, so very detailed.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: What would do The very first thing I would do
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: in that scenario is I would I would order up
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of books on witchcraft and casting nasty spells,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: and I would try to make sure that those kids
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: caught every std out there in the Twitter sphere. The
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: sphere I should say and hope that they I hope
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it burns when they pe For the rest of They're like,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: put this way after casting some spells on those guys,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: I would I would go hunt it one more time,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: just just because, you know, So if they drive through
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: there and they're acting like pricks and they're doing that
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and trying to blow the deer out, but you see,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: dear still follow the script after they're gone. To me,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty good sign. And when you've got those
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: bucks there, and you're talking good bucks, that's somebody's home range,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: maybe both of them, and so they those guys might
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: have really killed your chances that night or maybe for
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a couple of days, but that deer is not gonna
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: probably move out of there. He's just gonna probably play
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: it a lot safer. And if you if you've got
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: a place, do you feel it, you feel confident enough
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: to name it the killing tree, get back in there
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: and find out, you know it, just just to see,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: just to know, because when you've got to start over
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: on something like that, now you're talking to multi day
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: process for just finding other bucks and finding spots to
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: hunt them, and you've you've got enough invested in there
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: where it's worth the risk just to see how it
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: plays out. Yeah, yeah, well that's what I did. And uh,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: spoiler alert. Uh that's what I did, and uh, I
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: didn't see shit. So we cast any spells and give
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: those guys a bunch of STDs. I cast the spells.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know what happened, but I did. I did
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: cast some bad karm or their way. Um, and it's
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: it's funny. So I sat there again that that night
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: to try to kind of was thinking some of the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: similar things you were, and I thought, you know what,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: I gotta try it one more time and end up
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: being like just a completely dead night. There were a
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: couple of deer in there when I snuck in. It
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: was a dough and a fawn, and I thought, okay, yeah,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: they're feeling comfortable. It's all good and uh, and then
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: it was just dead and some moose came through. Now
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I talked to some guys that said that lots of
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: times in these western places when you get a bunch
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: of moose and some spots that will push deer out
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: for a day or two, they don't seem to like
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: to mingle as much. I don't know, um, but that
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: could have been a thing. Um. But funny story. Uh,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: just to kind of put a cap on my trip
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: that I didn't mention in my last episode where we
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: described this trip. Um. For those that aren't following, I'm
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: describing the exact thing that happened to me about seven
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: days ago in Idaho. Um. So I sat as I
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: just described, didn't see anything. The next day, I just said, Okay,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: I'm moving back to a different place where I had
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: hunted about six days beforehand, and we were seeing a
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: bunch of deer, but then there was a bunch of
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: hunters over there, and that's what pushed me to this
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: killing tree area because of that pressure. But I've been
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: keeping track of the parking lot in this other spot,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the original spot, and there hadn't been hunters there for
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: three or four days. So I thought, okay, let's go
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: try this zone and pushing deeper from the places I
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: was originally hunting, and I'll try that. So long story
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: short of push into this new place, I get into
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: a really cool looking area. I felt really good about it. Um,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I don't end up seeing a deer I want to shoot,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: but see deer and have a good night. And I'm
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: walking out and I'm just thinking, man, Um, this whole
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: trip has been just hunters and just every day dealing
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: with a new hunter, new group of hunters, a new
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: group of pressure, and it's it's been just constantly trying
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: to adjust. I'm like playing pinball. I go here and
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: then I'm bounced off another wall of hunting pressure that
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I go here and I'm bounced off another hunting wall.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: And as I'm walking out and thinking, you know, finally
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: maybe I found like the threshold of where you need
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: to get to and push past to get past all
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: the guys in this this area I've been hunting. And
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: as I'm thinking through all this, the end of the hunt,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: the whole trips is done, and I'm thinking through all
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: this stuff, I smell something strong and I'm like, what
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: does that smell? And I keep walking and it's a
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: really a strong smell. Now it's after dark, it's evening. Um,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: I'm hiking out now, and I realized I'm smelling weed.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: I'm smelling marijuana. I'm like someone burning one down out here.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: And I start shining my head lamp in the trees
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and I'm walking out and there's a hunter sitting in
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: the tree in front of me smoking a blunt after
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: dark as I'm hiking out. If that's not the most
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: like representative way to end this hunt. I don't know
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: what it is. Ah. Yeah, I don't even know what
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: to say about that. I guess I wish I was
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: more surprised, but I'm kind of not. It kind of
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: sucks that that doesn't That isn't as shocking as it
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: should be. Mark Man, it was. It was just like, yeah,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that that's how this hunt should end. Uh. So back
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to scenarios that aren't my scenarios, back to imaginary scenarios. Then, UM,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: a couple more here for it, Tony. What if you
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: are hunting and you realize that you've got a situation
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: like we've just described where there's this pinball of hunting,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: whether it's your North Dakota hunt where there's more hunters
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: than you ever saw before, or whether it's my recent
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: hunt where it was more public land hunting pressure than
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I've ever dealt with I don't western hunt before. Um,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: and you realize like, wow, this isn't what I was expecting.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: But you are seeing some deer, and you know there's
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: some nice deer in the area, and you know they're there,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: but there's just all this stuff that's seriously blowing up
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: your hunt. When and how if at all, do you
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: begin thinking about adjusting your standards? So I know this
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: is something that happened to you, walk me through how
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: you think about that. When you go into a hunt
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: and you think, yeah, I want to shoot a nice
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: buck and maybe that's a three year old or four
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: ye old, there's a nice eight or whatever it is
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: for you, do you change it? How do you change it?
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: When do you decide to make that change? Uh, that
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: just depends on who's walking by me at the moment.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: But really that one of the things, like your example
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: in Idaho being on those big bucks. What what that
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: does is it it shows you how valuable a backup
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: plan is or a backup spot is. And I run
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: into this a lot on public land where I'm like,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: this is the area I'm going to. This is where
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill. It's gonna be awesome. And then you
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: get there and there's people all over, and if you
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: don't have a couple of backup spots, gets really rough
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: in a hurry because you're playing catchup. And so just
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: just as an example in North Dakota last week, I
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: had the best group of bucks that I saw scouting
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: was there were five bucks in there The biggest one
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: was a solid hundred fifty deer. There was another one
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: that was probably one forty in there, another pretty good one,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: and then two smaller ones. And I watched those deer
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: walk through this patch of cotton woods on their way
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to the river. And in the next morning I watched them.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: They were already back across, but it looked like they
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: had probably come through the same area. And the biggest
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: buck was was hard antlerd some of the some of
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the other bucks were still velvet, and he was very
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: dominant there. There was a point where I could watch
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: him fight bucks, and I could look in two other
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: spots and see two other buck fights going on. So
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: at one point, from one glassing spot, I could see
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: three buck fights going on. And they weren't like you know,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: knockdown drag out there. They're sparring, pushing each other around,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: but you know they were feeling it. When the when
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: those deer go hard antler, they try them out. I mean,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: it's it's amazing to see. I've seen that many times,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: and so I thought, Okay, I've got this is the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: this is the group with the biggest bucks. I know
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: where they are. I know if they come out in
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: that spot. I can get in there and hang a
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: stand and and be on them. Tonight on opening night,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: and I saw other bucks, and I go, okay, these
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: bucks came in from this way, and they crossed the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: river here, or these bucks fed along here, And so
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I had some some backup options because you can see,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: you know, a long way is there. You can see
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: here a mile away. And so opening night I went
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: in on those big ones I ended up seeing. I
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: saw five bucks. They came down, they split me, and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: just I was just off just a little bit, just
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: enough where it matters when you're bow hunting. It wouldn't
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: matter when I was gun hunting at all, but with
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: with a bow, I was just a little bit off
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: on them. And so I thought, okay, tomorrow I come in.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I moved just a little bit and try to pick
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: one of these one of these deer off as they
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: come down the trail. And I had some backup spots,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: but I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna give these bucks
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: my best effort right now, because I think I have
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: a chance to killing them, and they're they're great public land.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: Dear well. When I went back in there the next
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: day after my morning sit. I was going to get
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: into this stand and I ran into some other hunters
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: in there who were looking for mule deer, and they
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: had just burned through that area, and I thought, I'm
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: still gonna sit here if they leave. But I talked
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to him for a while, super nice guys, and they
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: wouldn't leave. And I'm like, my stands like a hundred
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: fifty yards down the river, like I want you guys
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: to go because I don't want to climb into the
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: stand while they're standing there. And they wouldn't leave, and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: so I'm like walking down the river like pretending I'm
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: looking at rocks and just kicking at fish. I'm like,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: please go away, like and I kept kind of like
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: peeking over my shoulder, you know, like you guys gone yet.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: And finally I'm like, they're not gonna leave. They're gonna
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: stay here. They've got something. You know how it is
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: when you talk to people out there, you can barely
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: keep your lies straight because you don't want anybody else
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: on your deer. So I'm seeing some stuff whatever, you know,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: or like they seem to be here there, but you
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: don't want them to know, Like I'm on a bachelor
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: group that's coming down to the river right there, and
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: so they wouldn't leave something like Okay, I gotta go
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: to a backup spot. And as I go, I go
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to I go to my backup spot, get the stand up,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, the wind's terrible. Pull the stand downs.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Four o'clock and I'm like, I gotta move just a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: little ways to a different crossing. I move, get up,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: get that stand hung, pull my bow up. I look,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: here comes this guy walking up the river, turns around,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: walks away when he sees me, and I'm like, man,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: same kind of deal, Like you're just bumping into pressure everywhere.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: But I knew that crossing I was. I was not
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: going to run into a hunter fifty. I knew I
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: had a chance to have an okay buck come by there.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: And at that point, I'm like, okay, I know you
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: know I have two other buddies out there who are
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: who are bumping into pressure everywhere too. I'm like, it's
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: it's time too. If if a good shot comes my way,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: seriously consider it. And so I'm sitting there that night
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: and I look out way out and I see this
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: buck walking at me, and I'm like, you know, a
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: little velvet two year old. I'm like, I don't. I
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: don't really want to shoot him, but if he comes
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: in and gives me, like a really good shot, I'm
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: probably gonna regret it if I don't. And part of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: that was we only had a few days, and we
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: had this massive rainstorm that was supposed to be coming in,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people were bailing on our campground
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: because they didn't think they'd be able to get out
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: because of the road. And so I'm like, I can't
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: get I have to get home. So now four day
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: hunt might turn into a two and a half day hunt.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: And so I'm like talking myself into this buck because
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: he's walking in right and he gets oser, comes down
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: below me, and never I never get a shot, and
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: he's within like five yards of me. He goes down
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: the river, meets his little buddy comes across the other way,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, they're messing around, kind of kind of
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: pretending to spar but they're both still velvet. And I'm like, man,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: do I want to shoot him or not? And he
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: comes up the river bank and I'm like, my buddy
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: is gonna kill me if I don't kill this book
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't have a backup to this now.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: So if if I don't do this now, I have
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: to start over. And I don't know what to do.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: And so he comes up and gives me a pretty
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: good shot. I'm like, I gotta take it. So I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: killed him. So when I lower my standards is when
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like my my time is really running out
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: and there's a good opportunity in front of me. You know,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: if if those guys hadn't come down, I would have
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: worked those that Bachelor group a lot more just to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: see what would have happened. But it's just you just
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: kind of play the hand you're dealt and a lot
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: of times on public land when you go it's gonna
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: be a four and a half or bust, it's gonna
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: be bust. I mean it might be years of bust,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: and so it just it just is what it is.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: You just do what you have to in those situations. Yeah, yeah, man,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's the tough one. I just I, for
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, get my heart set on something. If I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: know something's out there, I have a really hard time settling.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: And so the last two years, because I've seen a
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: buck that catches my eye and I just get if
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: that's if I know that's here, I have a really
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: hard time not trying. And so uh, same thing last
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: year happened this year where I saw those big boys
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: and I just couldn't bring myself to shoot the really
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: nice eight point of the next day. Um, it wasn't big, big,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: but he was nice. You know, he was a three
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: year old. Um, I just couldn't do it. And and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think, like looking back on it, I still
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: I still think I owed it to myself to at
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: least give myself that one night at least to see
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: if they come. Now the rest of the trip, after
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: that whole debacle happened, then I swim two. Okay, yeah,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I'll shoot any nice dear um, But that I didn't
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: have the shot at the nice dear um. But it
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: is a tricky one, that tricky thing between you know,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: what do you want out of this hunt? Do you
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: want the fill tagged? Do you really want something that
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: meets your original goals? I don't know. It's probably different
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: for everybody in every different such situation, but it's it's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: one that it's at least I've found it's a good
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: idea to think through it before your trip, to kind
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: of have some idea of what you're gonna want to
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: do as the hunt progresses, rather than be in the tree,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: the deer is walking your way and you're having that
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: tough situation like you had where you try to figure
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: it out in the moment. I mean that that can
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: set yourself up. It worked out okay, but it can
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: always You can go the other way too, Yeah, I mean,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and I think you know you and I are in
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: different places, like I don't. I was thinking about this
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: the other night when I had my daughter out in Wisconsin.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't bring my bow with because I didn't,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: you know, this was her hunt. I wanted her just this.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: This is gonna go however it goes with her. But
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I knew there was a chance we were going to
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: have a big one come out, just just kind of
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: a wild scenario. And we had a bachelor group come out,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: and the biggest buck was a nine pointer that's all
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: of aftes and he came out too far for her,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: but the same exact distance I had just shot that
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: North Dakota buck at And I'm like, this deer would
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: be in trouble if I had my bow with and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: this is the biggest buck I've ever seen in Wisconsin
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: on private property, I mean a legit awesome dear, just incocredible,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: And I was thinking about it afterwards. It didn't bother
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: me at all to not get that deer. Like ten
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: years ago, I would you'd have to do like a
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: wellness check on me, because I'd be suicidal. Now I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: don't care. Now, I just don't care about the big
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: buck thing nearly as much as I used to. I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: still love them, but I realized, like, it doesn't really
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: matter what you kill, you know it, I mean it doesn't,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: it doesn't. You have to do what's good for you
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: and what makes you happy. And I realized like the
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: chasing the big buck thing for me solely was like
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: a false God. It didn't it didn't work because it didn't.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: It didn't really matter that much, and and what it
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: did for me in some ways was made it less
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: fun to be out there. I didn't I didn't enjoy
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: it as much. And I realized, like, I don't. I
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: want to focus on those deer to some extent, but
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: I don't care about that outcome so much anymore. And
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: so I'm just I'm kind of and I was. I
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: was talking to Mike Shae from Field and Stream about
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: this the other day. It's like you find yourself when
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: you've been in the hunting industry a long time and
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you've been doing this a long time, you find yourself
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: going you you there's this gravity to certain things where
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: you're like, I just I want to have fun. I
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: want to enjoy this, and I know there's certain paths
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I can take as hunter that will erode my enjoyment,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: and one of them is is a dead set focus
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: on big deer. And that's just me. I've been down
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: that road, and part of part of what that leads
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: me to is I want to hunt lots of other stuff.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: So like if I if I fill these tags, like
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: if I didn't fill that North Dakotate, I gotta gone
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: back somehow. And what that would have taken away from
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: me is a chance to duck hunt with my dog
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: or pheasant hunt with my dog or something. And I'm
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: terrified of that because I really want to do that
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: because it's fun. And so I know, like if I don't,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: if I don't control this thing, it'll it'll get out
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: of hand and I'll stop enjoying it. And so that's
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: like a weird way of explaining that. And I know
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: people are at different places and they just have to
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: You have to get out there enough to understand what
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: you really enjoy. And if that's like, hey, it's got
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: to be a four and a half year old or nothing,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: that's what really really blows the wind up my skirt.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Go ahead, like, if that's what makes you happy, that's
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: freaking awesome. Do that. But if you're going I'm not,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: that's this isn't happening for me. I'm not enjoying this.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, I really wanted to shoot that book,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: but I feel I felt like people would laugh at
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: me on Instagram or something like, dude, just figure out
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: what makes you happy out there and go lean into
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: that hard, because that's what this is for. Yeah, and man,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that is uh, that's important stuff for for me and
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: everyone to hear these days. Absolutely that and the fact
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: that I'm also going to take away the expression whatever
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: blows you're scirt up. I like that. Oh man, no,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: but that's this. This is the kind of stuff I'm
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: constantly thinking about out there too. I'm very goal oriented.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I'm very driven by what I set my sights on UM.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: So I'm constantly struggling between what you just described having
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: fun versus the fun of pursuing a tough challenge and
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: pushing through challenges. Like I enjoy that, but then also
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: sometimes I don't enjoy it. Um, We'll have those moments
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: of frustration. And so yeah, it's something that I'm kind
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: instantly working through and trying to find that right balance point.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: So it's it's a good it's a good thing to
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: bring up. I'm glad you did. I just I look
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: at it like when I see you fishing out there
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: in Idaho, now a lot I know exactly what's going
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: on there, Like you're finding a new outlet in the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: outdoors that isn't the pressure of of big Bucks and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: your job that's built around killing white tails. It's something different,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: and there's an enjoyment level in there. You can you
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: can watch like Lilakowski is super into fishing right now.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: It's not a like it's not an accident. You know,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: the dudes had to work around white tails so long.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: It pushes you. Either either you walk away or you
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: find other things that are an outlet. And I think
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's easy to understand when you talk about
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Lelakowski and you can just sort of look at his
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: life and go, Okay, well, yeah, it seems like that
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: guy should go find something fun to do in the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: outdoors that doesn't involve making a product around killing big
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: game animals. But I think I think a lot of
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: hunters out there, especially in today's you know, social media,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: everybody's out there showing you how wonderful they are and
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: how awesome their selfies are in the tree stand. Like,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: I think everybody has to figure that out. I think
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: we all bump into those issues regardless of what you
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: do for a living, regardless of whether you hunt two
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: days a year or fifty is just find those things
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: that you enjoy out there and get after them. And
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: if if it's not, you know, like if you don't
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: enjoy the pursuit of one booner out there, like find
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: something else, find something else that you really enjoy about it,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: and do that. Go fishing, dude. It's anything like that. There,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: there's something really to be said about not just having
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: that single focus, but to be somebody who can learn
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: to just enjoy the outdoors and a lot of different capacities.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: Very very true. Okay, Tony, we got to wrap it
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: up a little earlier than I usually like to do,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: but I've got some other time constraints. So I want
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: to ask you a few rapid fire questions to to
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: close a sucker out. Um. But first I guess one
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: one bigger question and then a little rapid fire series
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and and this is a hypothetical life post to everyone.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I've done one of these what would you do podcasts
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: so far, so I want to see how you'd approach it.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: Let's say I'm all powerful, I have control over the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: country and hunting privileges, and I am going to take
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: away your right to hunt, your privilege to hunt for
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: the next ten years. You can't hunt anything for ten
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: years unless you kill a mature buck let's say three,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: four year or something like that. You've got to kill
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: a mature buck this year, but you only have one
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: day to get it done. So you've got to pick
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: the one day of the season in which you think
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: you have your very best chance of killing a three
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: or four year old buck. And I want to I
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: want you to tell me what the day is gonna
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: be that you're gonna pick, and then describe to me
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: with as much details you can, like the hypothetical best
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: spot you would try to hunt for that very specific day.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Oh man, Uh, it's gonna be November seven. You know,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: the weather is going to be set up just perfectly
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: cold front, a little frost on the ground when you
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: get out there, and it's gonna be on just some
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: type of absolutely banging pinch point some kind of terrain
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: feature you know, maybe uh, a steep bluff that comes
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: down to a river and just pinches it down and
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: they have to go through there. That's in a state
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: like Nebraska, will say would be probably there would there's
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: a strong possibility if you pose that to me and
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: said you're down, You're done for a decade unless you
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: get this done, it would I'd probably be pointing my
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: truck to Nebraska on November six to get in there
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: on the seventh and do that beautiful all right now,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: the rapid fire you can only answer with basically one
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: word answer yes or no, or I'll give you a
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: couple of options here. Um, we'll just go through these
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: really quick and then we're gona wrap this sucker up. So, Tony,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: does the moon matter for deer movement? Yes or no? Yes?
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Would you take a fifty yards shot at a white
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: tail with your bow? Yes or no? No? If you
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: could only have one of these for the rest of
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: your hunting days, which would it be? Rattling antlers or
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: grunt tube grunt tube expandable or fixed blade broadheads fixed?
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Should you stop a buck with some kind of sound
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: before shooting with your bow? Yes or no? Yes? Which
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: state has better deer hunters? Michigan or Iowa? Uh? Probably Michigan.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: Here we go. All right, Tony, that's all I got
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: for you. All right, thank you, thanks for taking the
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: time to do this. I had fun and uh I
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: look forward to chatting more, hopefully in your podcast soon
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: and then getting me out here to Michigan. Awesome. Well,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: thank you man. Hey. Also, real quick before you go,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: for people that want to listen to your podcast or
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: follow along with your stuff, where can they find that stuff? Everywhere?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Podcasts are? You know? It's hunt for real podcasts. I
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: also host Sporting Dog Talk, which is all about working
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: dogs hunting dogs. Anybody who listens who likes dogs should
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: check that out and they're everywhere. So if you're if
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: you're listening to Wired Hunt, you can find my podcast
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: as well. Perfect all right, Tony, thank you, Let's check
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: in soon. All right, thanks buddy, and there you have it,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast in the books.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this one.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: As I mentioned at the top, make sure you check
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: out dost Boat season two, make sure you're listening to
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: those Rough Fresh radio episodes, and make sure you're following
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt on Instagram for all things wired to Hunt,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: new content, all that good stuff. Best to look out
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: there in the woods. I'm hoping you guys are putting
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: down some deer having a great time out there. Be safe,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: have fun, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.