Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 717: Rut Lessons Learned from my Shot at the Wide 9 and Tony's North Dakota Hunt
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
- 0:04Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
- 0:08Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
- 0:13Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
- 0:19Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
- 0:23Speaker 2: the show, Tony and I are breaking down our recent
- 0:26Speaker 2: rut hunting adventures. Some highs, some lows, and a whole
- 0:30Speaker 2: bunch of takeaways that can help you on your upcoming hunts.
- 0:40Speaker 2: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
- 0:44Speaker 2: to you by first Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative,
- 0:48Speaker 2: in which a portion of every sale of first Light
- 0:51Speaker 2: Spectra Camo goes back to help the National Deer Association
- 0:55Speaker 2: and the good work they're doing for deer and deer hunters.
- 0:57Speaker 2: And today on the episode, we are talking rut hunting stories,
- 1:02Speaker 2: rut hunting tactics, rut hunting tips, rut hunting survival ideas.
- 1:11Speaker 2: Tony and I have just come back from very interesting
- 1:15Speaker 2: hunts in which we, I think both of us experienced
- 1:20Speaker 2: the wild swings that the rut sends you, without a doubt,
- 1:23Speaker 2: the big highs, the big lows, the roller coasters of emotions.
- 1:28Speaker 2: We had it all, and so we're going to share
- 1:30Speaker 2: the story. We both have very significant stories to share.
- 1:34Speaker 2: Big things happen with both of us. They are dead
- 1:37Speaker 2: deer on the ground, they're deer still running, and there
- 1:42Speaker 2: are a whole bunch of things. I think that both
- 1:44Speaker 2: of us probably have learned from it, and I think
- 1:46Speaker 2: that we can share with you guys to make sure
- 1:48Speaker 2: that your upcoming hunts here for the next couple weeks
- 1:50Speaker 2: in November are better. So that all said, before we
- 1:54Speaker 2: get into the meat and potatoes of a tony. You
- 1:57Speaker 2: probably haven't heard yet, but we have a new rock
- 2:01Speaker 2: Christmas Carol this year. It's called Big White Tails. So uh,
- 2:06Speaker 2: Phil Triva, cue the music, Here we go.
- 2:10Speaker 3: I love those be algy bibe big white tails, those
- 2:16Speaker 3: sneaky run beagy bie big white tails. I love those
- 2:22Speaker 3: beachy big yeah ah shats e e tales. I love
- 2:28Speaker 3: those beachy big white.
- 2:31Speaker 4: Tails, big white tails, big white tails, Big white tales
- 2:37Speaker 4: are great.
- 2:39Speaker 5: Hold what fun it is to sit in the freezing
- 2:42Speaker 5: cold tree all day?
- 2:44Speaker 4: Big white tales, big white tails, big white tales are great?
- 2:50Speaker 5: Hold, what fun it is to sit in the freezing
- 2:53Speaker 5: cold tree all day, dashing through the woods for the
- 2:58Speaker 5: morning light turns great across the fields and draws creep
- 3:04Speaker 5: in all the way, climb into the tree. Big folks
- 3:09Speaker 5: are on the wave. What fun he is to sit
- 3:13Speaker 5: and wait for my gosh don deer all day? Oh big,
- 3:20Speaker 5: I'm sorry? What is this? Pitsocado strings? Who do you
- 3:23Speaker 5: think I am? And you get this out here? I
- 3:26Speaker 5: don't want to hear it. Thank you? Big white tails,
- 3:29Speaker 5: big white tails. Big white tails are great. Hold fun
- 3:35Speaker 5: it is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day.
- 3:39Speaker 5: I hope sand dreams are high the rut. He's finally here,
- 3:44Speaker 5: Mark said, it's the most wonderful time to kill o
- 3:48Speaker 5: whitetail deer bingch points and pettings. Where you'll find me? Hang,
- 3:52Speaker 5: it's twenty feet in a tree, grunt tubes, my bowl,
- 3:56Speaker 5: inspector Cambo. It's really camp nah or two ago. I
- 4:04Speaker 5: thought that this was fun, but now I'm frozen to
- 4:08Speaker 5: my seat and the good times they are gone. I've
- 4:12Speaker 5: ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes unnumb
- 4:17Speaker 5: and we're gonna climbed down from my stand. That son
- 4:20Speaker 5: of a but decided to come out.
- 4:22Speaker 3: Of those beg be white takes. Those you meg be
- 4:30Speaker 3: white takes.
- 4:33Speaker 5: I love those be I g big up yall eight
- 4:37Speaker 5: shot gie etails. I love those big white tails all day.
- 4:48Speaker 2: All Right, that's pretty good, right, Tony?
- 4:51Speaker 6: Not bad? Man, not bad?
- 4:55Speaker 2: So that said, how are you feeling like you just
- 4:59Speaker 2: got back from your North Coata trip?
- 5:00Speaker 6: Right, I'm not even unpacked, buddy, everything's still in the
- 5:03Speaker 6: back of my truck just about. Yeah, just just got back.
- 5:07Speaker 6: I'm tired, but I'm feeling good. You know, I went
- 5:10Speaker 6: through I went through a lot of emotions in a
- 5:12Speaker 6: very short hunt out there, and I left on a
- 5:16Speaker 6: good one, So I feel I feel good about that.
- 5:19Speaker 6: But man, this stuff, I know, it's so cliched, and
- 5:22Speaker 6: we talk about it all the time, but it's when
- 5:25Speaker 6: we say like, oh, it's you know, it's an emotional
- 5:27Speaker 6: roller coaster. Bow hunting anytime, or bow hunting during the
- 5:30Speaker 6: rut specifically, it's literally like that hour to hour all
- 5:36Speaker 6: day long sometimes. And you know, when you think about it,
- 5:39Speaker 6: you think it in your head like, oh, you have
- 5:40Speaker 6: a couple of good days, a couple of bad days
- 5:42Speaker 6: or whatever. But I was thinking about this when I
- 5:44Speaker 6: was in North Dakota. I was like this, this happens
- 5:46Speaker 6: to me and this same thing in Oklahoma earlier. I'm
- 5:49Speaker 6: up and down all day long, every day just about
- 5:54Speaker 6: it's so inconsistent and it can break bad or good
- 5:58Speaker 6: so fast.
- 6:00Speaker 2: Dude, you had an episode of Foundations out this week.
- 6:05Speaker 2: I think it was this week or last week, I
- 6:06Speaker 2: guess it was where you talked about just the added
- 6:11Speaker 2: chaos that the rut brings to shooting opportunities, right, And
- 6:14Speaker 2: I think that's just true, not just to shooting opportunities,
- 6:17Speaker 2: but decisions, to your emotional state of mind, to everything,
- 6:20Speaker 2: because everything's happening fast, everything's you know, there's all these
- 6:24Speaker 2: heightened expectations. There's all this heightened pressure on the moment
- 6:27Speaker 2: because like this is supposed to be the time, this
- 6:31Speaker 2: is when you took your vacation, this is when the
- 6:34Speaker 2: deer's finally daylight. There's all these things stacked on top,
- 6:37Speaker 2: not to mention you might be hunting a new place,
- 6:39Speaker 2: you might be out of state, or you might be
- 6:40Speaker 2: you know, doing all these different things. So it is
- 6:42Speaker 2: as its energy, tension, stress, excitement, everything packed to the brim.
- 6:50Speaker 6: Yeah, and the whole reason I wrote that episode and
- 6:54Speaker 6: it really hit home. I thought about it a lot
- 6:56Speaker 6: when I was in North Dakota on the first day
- 6:58Speaker 6: was how many people each out and are like, man,
- 7:02Speaker 6: I cannot get a big butt killed like I. You know,
- 7:05Speaker 6: I had three opportunities yesterday morning and I got busted
- 7:09Speaker 6: drawing twice and I shot over his back once and
- 7:11Speaker 6: you know, I thought he was gonna be at twenty
- 7:12Speaker 6: and he stopped at thirty seven. And these these shots
- 7:16Speaker 6: during the rut that you get, they are just amped
- 7:20Speaker 6: up like they's so it's so rare to just have
- 7:23Speaker 6: that like nice relaxed deer and just like you have time.
- 7:28Speaker 6: It's it's always a little bit of chaos or a
- 7:31Speaker 6: lot of chaos, and it's it's hard to close during
- 7:34Speaker 6: the rut sometimes.
- 7:36Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I think you and I both have very
- 7:38Speaker 2: uh perfect examples of this to talk about and so
- 7:43Speaker 2: get I mean, like, in the interest of time, let's
- 7:45Speaker 2: get into it. If you want to take maybe you know,
- 7:48Speaker 2: half of this time that we've got here today and
- 7:50Speaker 2: share the story of your rut hunt, share your North
- 7:54Speaker 2: Dakota hunt, which I don't know if you experienced this,
- 7:56Speaker 2: but even though the hunts we're talking about half and
- 8:00Speaker 2: at the end of October at least where i've been,
- 8:03Speaker 2: it has felt like full blown peak rut. Like I mean,
- 8:06Speaker 2: I'm seeing them doing everything they would do on November seventh,
- 8:08Speaker 2: but they were doing it on October thirtieth or thirty first.
- 8:10Speaker 2: I mean it was banging over by me. And I
- 8:13Speaker 2: don't know if that was just because that amazing cold
- 8:16Speaker 2: front we had just had everything feeling comfortable moving in
- 8:18Speaker 2: daylight or what. But I the last few days of
- 8:22Speaker 2: hunting I've had have been full blown peak crazy. What
- 8:26Speaker 2: have you seen?
- 8:27Speaker 6: Well? You know what I think is interesting about that.
- 8:29Speaker 6: I think that that's tied to being around a high
- 8:31Speaker 6: deer density, because where we were is not a high
- 8:35Speaker 6: deer density, and where I have a bunch of cameras
- 8:37Speaker 6: up over in northern Wisconsin's a real low deer density.
- 8:40Speaker 6: And you would be like maybe the pre ruts kicking in,
- 8:44Speaker 6: like maybe somebody's going. But there's like if you just
- 8:48Speaker 6: took my life in the last five six days, you
- 8:50Speaker 6: wouldn't be like, I wouldn't be like it is banging.
- 8:54Speaker 6: I'd be like, it's like creepy, you know what I mean.
- 8:56Speaker 6: And I think it's just part of it is just
- 8:57Speaker 6: a function of you know, I've got a buddy who's
- 8:59Speaker 6: hunting south theasterm Minnesota where I killed that buck earlier,
- 9:02Speaker 6: and he's he's like you, He's like, oh my god,
- 9:04Speaker 6: it is on like they are chasing I'm seeing good ones.
- 9:08Speaker 6: So I think I think that's partly tied to it.
- 9:10Speaker 2: But real quick, before you go in to further, I
- 9:14Speaker 2: think that's a really important thing for like people to
- 9:15Speaker 2: key in on and remember, like, and we've said this
- 9:19Speaker 2: over the years, We've all seen it. The rut is
- 9:21Speaker 2: here but not there. It's now, but you know it's
- 9:23Speaker 2: it's yesterday in this spot, but it's today in this spot.
- 9:26Speaker 2: So so never assume that what's happening right now will
- 9:29Speaker 2: be the case six hours from now or twenty four
- 9:31Speaker 2: hours from now, because it is so different what you
- 9:34Speaker 2: experience from property to property, or day to day, or
- 9:37Speaker 2: state to state. I mean, you know, our rough Fresh
- 9:39Speaker 2: radio episodes I think illustrate that very clearly. Every week too,
- 9:42Speaker 2: when you're hearing about what's happening in different parts of
- 9:45Speaker 2: the country, it's usually pretedar and different. Or in one
- 9:47Speaker 2: week in November when we were doing that over the
- 9:49Speaker 2: last couple of years, lots of times like I'd be
- 9:52Speaker 2: having something awesome while you guys are sucking or whatever
- 9:54Speaker 2: it was. So that's I think for people's mental state
- 9:57Speaker 2: of mind, that's a good thing to remember, Like if
- 9:59Speaker 2: it sucks right now, don't be too stressed because it
- 10:01Speaker 2: can all changed.
- 10:02Speaker 6: Yeah, well, that's that's an easy thing to say, and
- 10:06Speaker 6: I think it's hard for people to understand. I mean,
- 10:09Speaker 6: I go into this stuff in most of the places
- 10:11Speaker 6: I'm hunting where I'm not that surprised to either blank
- 10:16Speaker 6: or not see crazy rot activity. I mean, when you
- 10:19Speaker 6: see it, you're like, that's pretty sweet. But you get
- 10:22Speaker 6: to the point where you're kind of conditioned to realize
- 10:24Speaker 6: even though I'm anticipating this and I know it can
- 10:26Speaker 6: happen in any moment, which is what makes it kind
- 10:28Speaker 6: of fun. Like that's that's what makes the time pass by,
- 10:31Speaker 6: is just the expectation and the anticipation. But so often
- 10:34Speaker 6: it just doesn't happen, like for whatever reason why you're
- 10:38Speaker 6: when you're there in that spot or that area, it's
- 10:41Speaker 6: just it might be to moral, but it's not today.
- 10:44Speaker 6: And that's a hard thing, you know, And I think
- 10:47Speaker 6: you know, one of the things I noticed where I
- 10:50Speaker 6: was hunting in North Dakota that I've never seen before
- 10:53Speaker 6: was the sheer amount of trail cameras in where I
- 10:56Speaker 6: was hunting, because you know, it's public land. And I
- 10:58Speaker 6: was like, man, if you had one of those days
- 11:01Speaker 6: where it was happening there and then you had one
- 11:04Speaker 6: of those stretches where it wasn't happening for a couple
- 11:06Speaker 6: of days, that trail camera would only tell you that
- 11:08Speaker 6: you should have been there, do you know what I mean? So,
- 11:11Speaker 6: I think a lot of people would look at their
- 11:13Speaker 6: you know, and they were all cell cameras, and they
- 11:15Speaker 6: would look at it and go, man, they're going today,
- 11:16Speaker 6: I'm gonna get in there tomorrow. Well tomorrow might be
- 11:19Speaker 6: no bueno.
- 11:20Speaker 4: You know.
- 11:22Speaker 2: That's a good point. So so walk me through, like
- 11:25Speaker 2: the most important points of this story. What how to happen?
- 11:29Speaker 2: What happened?
- 11:31Speaker 6: Man?
- 11:32Speaker 2: I'm interested.
- 11:33Speaker 6: So I went to a place not way out in
- 11:36Speaker 6: west north Dakota, more in the kind of sand hills
- 11:40Speaker 6: flatter area of the state. And my goal was I
- 11:45Speaker 6: had a couple pinch points. One I hunted one time.
- 11:47Speaker 6: I'd hunted this place one time four years ago, killed
- 11:50Speaker 6: a pretty good one in there, kind of same timeframe.
- 11:52Speaker 6: So I thought, I've got that pinch point. I've got
- 11:54Speaker 6: a couple other pinch points with waypoints on them, and
- 11:57Speaker 6: I'm like, this is going to be a volume hunt deal.
- 12:00Speaker 6: Like the wind was forecasted to kind of be west
- 12:02Speaker 6: northwest mostly for the whole trip, so I'm like, if
- 12:06Speaker 6: I get set up right, the wind isn't gonna you know,
- 12:09Speaker 6: it isn't going to switch one to eighty and then
- 12:11Speaker 6: force me to recalibrate or whatever. So I'm like, this
- 12:13Speaker 6: is going to be kind of a simple rut hunt.
- 12:15Speaker 6: And we got there Sunday probably I don't know, midday,
- 12:21Speaker 6: like noon ish, so we had enough time to suit
- 12:23Speaker 6: up and go. I was like, we're going to hike
- 12:26Speaker 6: into this one pinch point I know of and ride
- 12:30Speaker 6: that out. And so we're walking in there, and you know,
- 12:33Speaker 6: this out there everything is either a section or a
- 12:36Speaker 6: half section, so it's a mile by a mile or
- 12:38Speaker 6: a half a mile by a mile. Basically is pretty
- 12:40Speaker 6: pretty consistent shape of the properties and the size. You know,
- 12:45Speaker 6: a lot of checkerboard, some of it's bigger. But anyway,
- 12:48Speaker 6: this piece that I wanted to go to is a
- 12:49Speaker 6: mile long and it's mostly worthless till the back, you know,
- 12:54Speaker 6: like ten percent and then you've got some river bottom
- 12:57Speaker 6: stuff and a really nice funnel pinch point type thing.
- 13:01Speaker 6: So walking out there, and I know you've heard me
- 13:03Speaker 6: say this, you're gonna smirk when I tell you this,
- 13:07Speaker 6: we find this one oak tree, just one giant, great,
- 13:11Speaker 6: big oak tree that didn't get you know, like there's
- 13:13Speaker 6: not very many trees out there to begin with, but
- 13:15Speaker 6: this is just this big, towering oak tree. And as
- 13:17Speaker 6: we're walking up to it, there's a little kind of
- 13:20Speaker 6: scrubby tree and there's two fresh scrapes under it, and
- 13:24Speaker 6: then under the oak tree there's acorns everywhere, and there's
- 13:27Speaker 6: there was fresh snow, like twenty four hour fresh snow,
- 13:31Speaker 6: with obvious sign that there was deer all over picking
- 13:34Speaker 6: those acorns up. And then another big scrape, then another
- 13:37Speaker 6: big scrape, and then a little patch of kind of
- 13:42Speaker 6: dogwood and brush rubs all on the edge. And I
- 13:48Speaker 6: was like, should I walk past this? Like I'm looking
- 13:52Speaker 6: at this, going I did not expect this here. This
- 13:56Speaker 6: is more signed than I saw the last time I
- 13:59Speaker 6: was out there. And so anyway, I walk past it,
- 14:02Speaker 6: and it's like bothering me a little bit, but I
- 14:05Speaker 6: get to I get to where this river bottom pinch
- 14:08Speaker 6: point is and the trails pounded by there there's fresh
- 14:11Speaker 6: tracks and it's like a funnel of trees along the river.
- 14:17Speaker 6: And then there's even a pinch point there, so imagine
- 14:19Speaker 6: like a bluff top of ridgetop and then you have
- 14:21Speaker 6: that kind of drainage on the side that always pinches
- 14:24Speaker 6: them up or on top or in the bottom. You know,
- 14:26Speaker 6: like a real consistent kind of bluffy deal. That's what
- 14:29Speaker 6: I have going on. And so we get set up
- 14:33Speaker 6: in stand and I'm like, this is you know, you're
- 14:35Speaker 6: you're you can't be real picky and your trees out there,
- 14:39Speaker 6: and I'm like, we got two of us.
- 14:41Speaker 2: I don't know, like we're not you know, I hate
- 14:44Speaker 2: I hate trying to get a tree that will work
- 14:47Speaker 2: with two people.
- 14:48Speaker 6: It's so hard, man.
- 14:49Speaker 2: We we have either neither here nor there.
- 14:52Speaker 6: But yeah, dude, we had. We had to use an
- 14:54Speaker 6: extra strap on the bottom end to get it around
- 14:56Speaker 6: this tree and get up there. And you know, the
- 14:59Speaker 6: way the ground away. It's one of those deals and
- 15:01Speaker 6: people run into this a lot where you're like, I'm
- 15:03Speaker 6: gonna get up you know, sixteen seventeen feet whatever, but
- 15:06Speaker 6: the ground in front of you is already eight feet
- 15:09Speaker 6: higher than where the tree was because the train falls away,
- 15:12Speaker 6: you know, I mean that's super common. So we were like,
- 15:15Speaker 6: not real high, but whatever it was. You know, they're
- 15:18Speaker 6: North Dakota deer. They don't look up as much as
- 15:20Speaker 6: a lot of the deer I hunt. So I'm like,
- 15:21Speaker 6: we'll probably be okay. And as we're sitting there, I'm like, man,
- 15:25Speaker 6: there's a huge oak tree right on this pinch point
- 15:28Speaker 6: that maybe that's got a bunch or a bunch of
- 15:30Speaker 6: acorns under it. I can see down into dreamy river
- 15:33Speaker 6: bottom stuff. And we sit for I don't know two
- 15:38Speaker 6: and a half hours, and I look and see a
- 15:39Speaker 6: deer coming up this cut right in front of me,
- 15:42Speaker 6: this this little drainage, and so I grab my boat
- 15:45Speaker 6: and I say, there's a there's a deer coming. And
- 15:47Speaker 6: it's like a one hundred and thirty inch type eleven pointer, beautiful,
- 15:52Speaker 6: like heavy, you know, short times, but a really cool deer.
- 15:56Speaker 6: And he walks up and we weren't quite on the
- 15:59Speaker 6: same page for being able to like being able to
- 16:01Speaker 6: shoot right away, and this deer walks up underneath that
- 16:05Speaker 6: oak tree and just starts like nose in the grass
- 16:09Speaker 6: looking for acorns first, dear, we see right like right away,
- 16:14Speaker 6: and so I'm I range him twenty six yards and
- 16:17Speaker 6: I can't shoot. He's standing there. And finally he takes
- 16:20Speaker 6: a couple steps forward and I got this window to shoot,
- 16:23Speaker 6: and you know, Dylan's like, I got him. And so
- 16:25Speaker 6: I'm like, this deer's freaking toast and so I draw,
- 16:29Speaker 6: put the pin on him and shoot and just hear
- 16:31Speaker 6: this twang and he runs off. My arrow went over him,
- 16:37Speaker 6: and I was like, what I thought something broke on
- 16:39Speaker 6: my bow. Like I'm like, I don't know what happened here.
- 16:42Speaker 6: And I'm like looking around and like, is there something
- 16:44Speaker 6: loose on my bow from travel or something? And I
- 16:48Speaker 6: can't find anything. But I see that buck cutting back
- 16:51Speaker 6: into the river bottom stuff. So I knock another arrow,
- 16:55Speaker 6: and I'm like, maybe I just shanked it, you know
- 16:56Speaker 6: how Like when that happens, and like, you know, I
- 17:00Speaker 6: I was keyed up. I'm like, maybe I just screwed up.
- 17:02Speaker 6: But we were both like something was loud. So this
- 17:06Speaker 6: buck cuts down into the river bottom. We lose him,
- 17:09Speaker 6: and I'm like, I can't believe I just missed a
- 17:11Speaker 6: deer like that on public you know, right away in
- 17:15Speaker 6: the hunt. So I hang my bow and turn around
- 17:19Speaker 6: to give, you know, to just talk about this like
- 17:23Speaker 6: colossal screw up that I just did. And I'm like
- 17:28Speaker 6: talking to the camera and Dylan goes buck, big Buck,
- 17:31Speaker 6: big Buck, and I turn around like to grab my bow,
- 17:35Speaker 6: and this buck is like ten yards away on this
- 17:39Speaker 6: hill right next to us, So he's like right there
- 17:42Speaker 6: and he's looking at me, and I'm like, I get
- 17:45Speaker 6: my bow get clipped on, and he's kind of like
- 17:47Speaker 6: keyed up, like should I keep going through the cut?
- 17:50Speaker 6: Should I turn around? And he looks away and I
- 17:53Speaker 6: get drawn and he starts to walk, and I thought
- 17:56Speaker 6: he was turning to go away, and so I just
- 17:59Speaker 6: murped like like like really quietly, and he took off
- 18:03Speaker 6: like a freaking rocket gone, you know, Like so dumb, right,
- 18:09Speaker 6: Was that the same deer or different deer? Beautiful aid pointer?
- 18:13Speaker 6: Just just dumb? Like I should have just let it
- 18:17Speaker 6: play out, because the way he was probably gonna go,
- 18:19Speaker 6: I would have probably got a really good shot either way.
- 18:22Speaker 6: But I was like, you know how it is when
- 18:23Speaker 6: a deer looks at you and gets wiggy and then
- 18:26Speaker 6: he starts to like turn, You're like he's gonna leave,
- 18:28Speaker 6: like I talked myself. Yeah, I talk myself and the
- 18:31Speaker 6: like he's gonna leave, but I have gotten drawn. I'm like,
- 18:33Speaker 6: and he's ten yards away, Like all he's got to
- 18:35Speaker 6: do is just give me an opening, and just instinctively,
- 18:38Speaker 6: I just like tried to stop him, and he bales,
- 18:42Speaker 6: and I'm like, holy shit, like I just I just
- 18:48Speaker 6: screwed up on too awesome deer, like great deer for
- 18:53Speaker 6: public land, A great deal for private land in most places,
- 18:56Speaker 6: to be honest with you. So then I'm sitting there
- 19:00Speaker 6: and I'm like, okay, what happened with my bow? And
- 19:04Speaker 6: we watched the footage and you can see that buck
- 19:08Speaker 6: is relaxed. It's windy, that's that front was coming in.
- 19:12Speaker 6: He's relaxed eating acorns. And when I shoot, he drops
- 19:17Speaker 6: so hard that you can see his stomach his belly
- 19:20Speaker 6: hit the snow on the ground and turn so you
- 19:24Speaker 6: can watch the arrow just missed him. And so when
- 19:27Speaker 6: we got back and watched it on the big screen
- 19:30Speaker 6: with the sound, I don't know what I did. I
- 19:33Speaker 6: was all bulked up, you know, and I just my
- 19:36Speaker 6: string hits something on me. I don't know what it
- 19:38Speaker 6: was because you can hear it in the mic, the
- 19:40Speaker 6: microphone you have right on your you know, right below
- 19:43Speaker 6: your mouth, and so he got like a head start dropping,
- 19:48Speaker 6: you know, and it didn't it didn't look like it
- 19:51Speaker 6: really threw my shot off hardly at all because it
- 19:53Speaker 6: went right over his vitals, but it missed him, and
- 19:56Speaker 6: it was just like, what are you gonna do? So
- 19:58Speaker 6: then I was like I took you know, practice, I'm like, okay,
- 20:00Speaker 6: I can't recreate this. So it was just one of
- 20:03Speaker 6: those deals where you know, I just bulked up and
- 20:06Speaker 6: all my clothes because we were sitting up on a
- 20:08Speaker 6: ridge in that north wind and just total rookie like whatever.
- 20:15Speaker 2: So what's going through your mind after that happens? Like
- 20:18Speaker 2: two epic colossal failures on this hunt? You've got all
- 20:22Speaker 2: this excitement built into leading up to those moments and
- 20:25Speaker 2: then bam, it's there and gone. Do you have that
- 20:28Speaker 2: thought like as that hunt ends, that night ends, Like, dude,
- 20:31Speaker 2: those are my opportunities. You usually can only ask for
- 20:33Speaker 2: one opportunity on a hunt, let alone two. And then
- 20:36Speaker 2: there was on your first day and no dead deer?
- 20:39Speaker 2: Where was your head at?
- 20:40Speaker 6: Well? So what I didn't tell you? I should have
- 20:42Speaker 6: told you is when we walked in there and I
- 20:45Speaker 6: looked at it, I was like, we're just going to
- 20:48Speaker 6: volume hunt this and kill a deer, like this is
- 20:50Speaker 6: gonna happen. So I was way confident sitting there, and
- 20:55Speaker 6: then some dude drove out, and this is before the
- 20:59Speaker 6: bucks came in on a road that I didn't even
- 21:01Speaker 6: know existed. There an access road from like a neighboring
- 21:04Speaker 6: property or something, I don't know, parks. We can watch
- 21:08Speaker 6: him getting all of his stuff on, and we had
- 21:10Speaker 6: found one person's tracks in the snow, not coming to
- 21:14Speaker 6: where we were hunting, but like close enough where you're like, okay,
- 21:16Speaker 6: he was probably in here this morning. And that guy
- 21:19Speaker 6: suits up in the back of his you know, back
- 21:22Speaker 6: of the truck whatever, grabs his bow, grabs a camp chair,
- 21:25Speaker 6: and starts walking right at me. And so I'm like
- 21:29Speaker 6: kind of hanging off the tree, waving because there's only
- 21:31Speaker 6: a little bit of cover back there, and he got
- 21:34Speaker 6: finally got close enough where he saw me he waved
- 21:36Speaker 6: and turn around. So that was really cool. I really
- 21:39Speaker 6: appreciated that guy doing that because you don't you know,
- 21:42Speaker 6: you don't know, like that's what I would do if
- 21:43Speaker 6: somebody was there, but it's a small spot. So then
- 21:46Speaker 6: I go from you know, I was real optimistic getting
- 21:50Speaker 6: in there to seeing him pull up really kind of
- 21:54Speaker 6: knock me down a peg. Then two deer come in
- 21:57Speaker 6: that are great, and I screw up on both of them.
- 22:00Speaker 6: So I'm like, I don't at the end of the day,
- 22:02Speaker 6: those are the only two deer we saw, two big bucks,
- 22:05Speaker 6: and I'm like, this is still probably a volume hunt spot,
- 22:09Speaker 6: but I don't know if other people are going to
- 22:10Speaker 6: be coming in here, Like I don't know, I don't
- 22:13Speaker 6: know if I did just lose my two chances, Like
- 22:16Speaker 6: I don't know if those were my only ones or not.
- 22:17Speaker 6: So it was like, you know, looking at the forecast
- 22:20Speaker 6: and everything, it was like, we probably have enough time
- 22:23Speaker 6: to get back on something. But my confidence level was
- 22:27Speaker 6: like not quite as it wasn't quite as high as
- 22:30Speaker 6: it was.
- 22:31Speaker 3: You know.
- 22:31Speaker 6: All that goes like, I mean, you can go, I
- 22:34Speaker 6: can go a whole season and not have two bucks
- 22:36Speaker 6: like that that close to me, let alone in five
- 22:39Speaker 6: minutes on public land.
- 22:41Speaker 2: Yeah, so what'd you do next?
- 22:46Speaker 6: So the next morning, same wind, cold, I mean it
- 22:49Speaker 6: was like twenty five mile per hour winds and we
- 22:52Speaker 6: were up on this ridge, and you know, in North
- 22:54Speaker 6: Dakota there's no tree, so it's like it's just whipping
- 22:58Speaker 6: across the prairie. But I'm like, we gotta go back,
- 23:02Speaker 6: you know, like we gotta go be in there, cause
- 23:03Speaker 6: I kind of thought that pinch Point would be even
- 23:05Speaker 6: better in the morning. So we go in there and
- 23:07Speaker 6: sit till eleven o'clock and freeze and see nothing. And
- 23:12Speaker 6: so then I was talking to Dylan. I'm like, we
- 23:14Speaker 6: we'd kind of thought about doing an all days sit,
- 23:17Speaker 6: but I was like, there's just no way we're gonna
- 23:19Speaker 6: be It's it was brutal. So I'm like, let's go
- 23:23Speaker 6: get down and go back to that oak tree. See
- 23:26Speaker 6: if we can find a set up to just go
- 23:28Speaker 6: grab the saddles and just do something or eat, like
- 23:31Speaker 6: sit on the ground whatever. And I could tell Dylan
- 23:34Speaker 6: was like, Uh, do you really think you should leave
- 23:37Speaker 6: this spot? Like we might we might be in Jurassic
- 23:40Speaker 6: Park here and you want to walk away. But we
- 23:42Speaker 6: get down hike over there, and it's halfway back, so
- 23:45Speaker 6: it's like a half a mile from the truck, half
- 23:46Speaker 6: a mile from where we were sitting just about. And
- 23:49Speaker 6: we get there and it's just it's just covered insigne
- 23:52Speaker 6: and we look at like every tree, like, could we
- 23:56Speaker 6: get in there, could we stand on that limb? Could
- 23:58Speaker 6: he film this way? Could I shoot from this direction?
- 24:01Speaker 6: Like and you only have a couple options, you know,
- 24:04Speaker 6: And we're just looking at it, and I'm going, we're
- 24:06Speaker 6: not We're not gonna be able to do it, Like
- 24:08Speaker 6: I just I don't see it happening to be able
- 24:10Speaker 6: to shoot to this specific tree. And so I'm looking
- 24:14Speaker 6: at the ground where that all that dog wooden stuff
- 24:17Speaker 6: is and I'm like, man, we could almost just tuck
- 24:19Speaker 6: in here. There was like kind of some dead fall
- 24:21Speaker 6: stuff and some brush and it was so windy that
- 24:25Speaker 6: all these little, uh kind of like poplar saplings just
- 24:28Speaker 6: blowing in the wind or these aspen saplings whatever they were,
- 24:31Speaker 6: and they all still had their leaves on because they're
- 24:33Speaker 6: low to the ground. And it was just movement everywhere
- 24:36Speaker 6: like kind of you know, sawgrass and just brushy stuff.
- 24:40Speaker 6: And I was like, if we tuck in here, maybe
- 24:42Speaker 6: like maybe a buck will come through or go grab
- 24:45Speaker 6: a bite acorns and not spot us. So we kind
- 24:50Speaker 6: of set up and drag a dead tree over their
- 24:52Speaker 6: little ways and whatever or you know, some dead brush
- 24:56Speaker 6: and sit down and he's just behind me, and I'm like,
- 24:59Speaker 6: look around them like there's no way, Like there's there's
- 25:03Speaker 6: no way. But it was it was, you know, it
- 25:06Speaker 6: was like kind of out of the wind. We were
- 25:08Speaker 6: a little buffered thirty five yards from the base of
- 25:11Speaker 6: that giant oak tree, you know, kind of some patches
- 25:15Speaker 6: of brush and one patch of trees where they could
- 25:17Speaker 6: just filter in, you know, and not get spotted. And
- 25:19Speaker 6: then on a neighboring property you could see this private property.
- 25:23Speaker 6: You could see on onex a giant slough and I
- 25:26Speaker 6: was like, man, it's that slew probably has doze bedded
- 25:29Speaker 6: all over in it. So I'm like, let's just ride
- 25:32Speaker 6: it out. And we're sitting there. It's like noon, you know,
- 25:34Speaker 6: so you can hunt till almost seven there, a quarter
- 25:36Speaker 6: to seven something like that. So we have like seven
- 25:39Speaker 6: hours of sitting on the ground where I'm like, we're
- 25:42Speaker 6: not going to have like a crew, like a one
- 25:45Speaker 6: o'clock cruiser coming through, Like this is just not that spot.
- 25:48Speaker 6: So we sit there all day, you know, like the
- 25:51Speaker 6: rest of the day, and it gets to like six
- 25:54Speaker 6: twenty five and it's blizzard. The wind has blown even hard.
- 26:00Speaker 6: We haven't seen anything. And we had been talking and
- 26:04Speaker 6: I was like, there was one patch of big cottonwoods
- 26:07Speaker 6: that had some dogwood underneath. It kind of like a
- 26:10Speaker 6: three acre patch in the middle of this big grassland.
- 26:13Speaker 6: And I was like, there's like, why wouldn't there be
- 26:15Speaker 6: a buck bedded there that would just walk into here?
- 26:18Speaker 6: And He's like, yeah, I wouldn't be so awesome if
- 26:20Speaker 6: we looked up there and just like across the prairie,
- 26:22Speaker 6: here comes this buck. And like five minutes later, I
- 26:25Speaker 6: look up and here comes this buck, just like we
- 26:27Speaker 6: envisioned it. And I'm like, oh my god, there's one coming.
- 26:30Speaker 6: And that buck walked in and it was like he
- 26:33Speaker 6: was committing a suicide. He walked in like he could
- 26:37Speaker 6: have come in from any direction because it's pretty wide open,
- 26:39Speaker 6: you know. And he like takes a route right at
- 26:42Speaker 6: us and then takes a hard right and just goes
- 26:45Speaker 6: to thirty yards and puts his head down to feet
- 26:47Speaker 6: on acorns, never looked at us. So I dialed into
- 26:51Speaker 6: thirty and shot him right through the heart. He took off,
- 26:54Speaker 6: and it was like first year we saw being out
- 26:57Speaker 6: there all day and I'm like, we've seen three deer
- 27:01Speaker 6: and they've all been awesome bucks, just wild.
- 27:06Speaker 2: Wild man. That is uh, that's the rut it can be.
- 27:11Speaker 2: You're right, well, that was very much a rut type
- 27:15Speaker 2: classic on craziness dude.
- 27:17Speaker 6: And you know what so that, you know, there's two
- 27:20Speaker 6: lessons there, right, Like again I walked by the sign
- 27:23Speaker 6: that I shouldn't have walked by, and he was like,
- 27:25Speaker 6: he's like, I did not think we should have left
- 27:27Speaker 6: that other spot. Like he's like, I can't believe we
- 27:30Speaker 6: came back here to do this. But it was just,
- 27:33Speaker 6: you know, it was cold. Those deer were looking for calories,
- 27:37Speaker 6: you know. Like the two bucks that I shot at
- 27:38Speaker 6: were both they weren't rutting up. They were just zero
- 27:41Speaker 6: point A to B to get to this one tree
- 27:43Speaker 6: they knew about that had acorns under it, you know.
- 27:47Speaker 6: And as soon as that, so he was like, don't
- 27:50Speaker 6: walk by this, like, don't walk by this sign over
- 27:52Speaker 6: and over again. I keep running into that. And the
- 27:54Speaker 6: other thing was when when that buck ran off, he
- 27:58Speaker 6: ran off, jump the fence and died right in front
- 28:02Speaker 6: of us. Basically we were like, oh my god, I
- 28:04Speaker 6: cannot believe that just happened. After a day of not
- 28:07Speaker 6: seeing anything, and then I looked and I saw deer
- 28:10Speaker 6: legs coming from the backside of the tree through some
- 28:12Speaker 6: of this brush. I'm like, there's another one coming and
- 28:15Speaker 6: looking it's a dough And she walked in through the brush,
- 28:19Speaker 6: pegged us, and ran away like and so, you know,
- 28:23Speaker 6: people are always like, you know, like when we went
- 28:25Speaker 6: down in Oklahoma for that, when I hunted with Steve
- 28:28Speaker 6: and I killed those two little bucks and he killed
- 28:29Speaker 6: a buck, like, people will be like, how come you
- 28:31Speaker 6: guys didn't shoot some does? It's like we literally didn't
- 28:34Speaker 6: have a chance. Like sometimes, you know, we take it
- 28:37Speaker 6: for granted that, you know, these big bucks, like they're
- 28:40Speaker 6: so cagey and everything, but a lot of times they're
- 28:43Speaker 6: super confident, and it's the doze you have to worry
- 28:46Speaker 6: about busting you and blowing up your hunt. Like they
- 28:49Speaker 6: they're tolerance like pressure does They're tolerance is so freaking low.
- 28:53Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. So he was kind of on a
- 28:57Speaker 2: pre rop pattern then, still like he was just like
- 29:00Speaker 2: coming to eat at a high traffic area, right, So.
- 29:04Speaker 6: I think, yes, I think both of the bucks I
- 29:07Speaker 6: shot at were just like I'm gonna go get some calories,
- 29:10Speaker 6: and I know I'm gonna be where dose are gonna
- 29:12Speaker 6: go by, Like when you see it, when you see
- 29:15Speaker 6: a fresh scrape line like that right now in a
- 29:18Speaker 6: place with that much food, like concentrated kind of seasonal food,
- 29:22Speaker 6: It's like the reason those scrapes are there is because
- 29:24Speaker 6: there's a ton of dose using it too. So I
- 29:26Speaker 6: think he was just like, I'm gonna go fill up
- 29:28Speaker 6: my belly a little bit, like he knew that dose
- 29:30Speaker 6: were gonna come to him too.
- 29:43Speaker 2: So if you were hunting that spot today when people
- 29:45Speaker 2: are listening to this November ninth, would you what would
- 29:50Speaker 2: you do on November ninth? Would you go to that
- 29:51Speaker 2: pinch point that you originally went to and just stick
- 29:54Speaker 2: with that original volume strategy, like sit that terrain funnel
- 29:57Speaker 2: and wait it out for days?
- 29:59Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I would. And I'll say this too about
- 30:03Speaker 6: that spot. This is real hard to describe, so I
- 30:05Speaker 6: don't want to bore everybody, but this is like a
- 30:08Speaker 6: ridge along a river that connects a bunch of cover,
- 30:12Speaker 6: but it gets real neck down there. So you have
- 30:14Speaker 6: a funnel where it's like if they want to stay
- 30:16Speaker 6: in the cover, they're staying somewhere in this little band
- 30:19Speaker 6: of river bottom cover.
- 30:20Speaker 2: How little are we talking like, what's the distance this
- 30:22Speaker 2: pinch is down to.
- 30:23Speaker 6: From from the wide open stuff At the widest point
- 30:27Speaker 6: to the river is one hundred and thirty seven yards,
- 30:29Speaker 6: so anyway, it might be anywhere from like seventy five
- 30:31Speaker 6: to one hundred and thirty seven yards. And it's a hillside,
- 30:34Speaker 6: so they could be on top, they could be on
- 30:35Speaker 6: the bottom, they could be on the side. But if
- 30:38Speaker 6: they don't want to show themselves, which they don't, they
- 30:41Speaker 6: stay in that band to cover somewhere. So then you think, okay,
- 30:45Speaker 6: well we have that situation which is a banging funnel.
- 30:48Speaker 6: But then you get to the point where that little drainage,
- 30:50Speaker 6: that little ravine's running down there, and now you have
- 30:52Speaker 6: a funnel with a pinch point in it where they're
- 30:55Speaker 6: either going to go above it or below it. So
- 30:57Speaker 6: you have like you have a good spot. Then you
- 31:00Speaker 6: have the spot on the spot. And it also just
- 31:02Speaker 6: happened to have those oak trees in there too, But
- 31:04Speaker 6: that was like a that was like a bonus thing.
- 31:05Speaker 2: Like so I would go there and was your wind
- 31:09Speaker 2: blowing out into the open stuff or out to the
- 31:11Speaker 2: river over the river? Okay, nice, so that's perfect.
- 31:16Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's a sweet setup. And apparently me and
- 31:19Speaker 6: every person in North Dakota knows about it because it
- 31:22Speaker 6: was covered in Hunter sign. We when we went back
- 31:26Speaker 6: and looked around, I was like, I just kind of
- 31:27Speaker 6: want to go see it and figure it out in
- 31:29Speaker 6: case I go back. I could not believe how many
- 31:31Speaker 6: tree stands and cameras and stuff were in there.
- 31:32Speaker 2: It was wild. Well, it's amazing there's still those all
- 31:36Speaker 2: those bucks in there.
- 31:38Speaker 6: I think a lot of people set up some cameras
- 31:40Speaker 6: out there waiting to get real cruisers, and I think
- 31:44Speaker 6: that they were just like I mean, this week now,
- 31:47Speaker 6: they're probably all over out there. But the other thing too,
- 31:50Speaker 6: this was a really good lesson there is you have
- 31:53Speaker 6: that ridge top which is like the trail there's pounded
- 31:57Speaker 6: right and it's obvious, like you look at it on
- 32:00Speaker 6: a fence line. They're following the top of the woods
- 32:02Speaker 6: there above the river. Most of the the Hunter Sign
- 32:06Speaker 6: was concentrated there. Halfway down the hill, which is where
- 32:10Speaker 6: the Big eight came in that I messed up on,
- 32:13Speaker 6: is a pounded trail like a side hill trail, and
- 32:16Speaker 6: then on the bottom there's another trail and so it's
- 32:19Speaker 6: like if you if you were like I found this
- 32:21Speaker 6: amazing funnel. I'm gonna run this camera on here and
- 32:24Speaker 6: wait for them to be cruising. You might have most
- 32:27Speaker 6: of the bucks cruising forty yards below you, below that camera,
- 32:31Speaker 6: and you would never know it till you got in
- 32:32Speaker 6: there and watched.
- 32:34Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 32:34Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. Don't do not fall prey
- 32:37Speaker 2: to cameras knowing everything. Yeah, that is so so so true. Hmm. Well,
- 32:45Speaker 2: congrats on the buck.
- 32:46Speaker 6: Man, thank you. Yeah, it was, it was. It was
- 32:50Speaker 6: cool man. I mean that area is there's not very
- 32:55Speaker 6: many deer there, like overall, but the quality, like I've
- 32:58Speaker 6: only seen I've hunted that air six days. I've seen
- 33:02Speaker 6: way more good bucks than dose. I've only seen two
- 33:05Speaker 6: doughs while I was hunting the whole time there.
- 33:07Speaker 2: That's weird.
- 33:08Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just I don't know. I don't know what
- 33:11Speaker 6: the deal. You know, if when you drive around the
- 33:14Speaker 6: private fields and stuff, there's there's enough deer there where
- 33:17Speaker 6: you see the dose out whatever, but for whatever reason,
- 33:19Speaker 6: that spot has just been good bucks mostly. I don't
- 33:22Speaker 6: even see scrappers in there.
- 33:24Speaker 2: Hmm.
- 33:25Speaker 6: Well, worked out, it did, it worked out. It left
- 33:29Speaker 6: me feeling pretty good, and it made me when you
- 33:33Speaker 6: were when you were texting our little group text about
- 33:35Speaker 6: what you're going to get into here, I was like,
- 33:37Speaker 6: I don't want to tell these guys what I just did. Like,
- 33:39Speaker 6: I'm like, I'm gonna let Mark just have this thing
- 33:44Speaker 6: right now because I know he's in a rough spot.
- 33:46Speaker 2: Yeah, So should I tell my story?
- 33:48Speaker 6: Yes? You should?
- 33:50Speaker 2: All right. So since you and I last talked here
- 33:53Speaker 2: on the podcast, when I had left you last, I
- 33:58Speaker 2: had hunted a few more times for my target bucket Michigan,
- 34:01Speaker 2: that buck the Wide nine, and i'd seen him, you know,
- 34:05Speaker 2: from while glassing a few times. And I've gotten more
- 34:08Speaker 2: than a few times, a good number of times I've
- 34:10Speaker 2: seen him glassing basically like every evening I can get
- 34:13Speaker 2: away for fifteen minutes or ten minutes, I'll glass this area.
- 34:16Speaker 2: And I think I've glassed him like maybe four times
- 34:21Speaker 2: in October or since September thirtieth, I think, in this
- 34:24Speaker 2: kind of little bedding region. And I've also gotten a
- 34:29Speaker 2: few more daylight trial camera pictures of him. So throughout
- 34:32Speaker 2: the month of October, I had kind of been circling
- 34:35Speaker 2: around the edges of this like core area. He ninety
- 34:41Speaker 2: four percent of like all my daylight sightings or pictures
- 34:44Speaker 2: of this deer have happened in like a ten acre
- 34:47Speaker 2: fifteen acre ish type of region, you know, like tight,
- 34:52Speaker 2: which is a betting area type thing. Yeah, and it's
- 34:55Speaker 2: like a it's grassy autumnolives and little bru she things
- 35:00Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So like from my hilltop where
- 35:03Speaker 2: I can glass, I can see down along this creek
- 35:06Speaker 2: into these different openings, so I can see like kind
- 35:09Speaker 2: of the center pivot right in the middle of it.
- 35:12Speaker 2: And so that's why I've been able to see him
- 35:14Speaker 2: so many times. And I've got a couple spots where
- 35:16Speaker 2: I hunt in there that also give you visibility in
- 35:18Speaker 2: there seat. So I've just been over the years been
- 35:20Speaker 2: able to you know, observe this deer doing this thing
- 35:23Speaker 2: in this betting year. That's like I said, like it's
- 35:26Speaker 2: you know, ten ish ach five. I don't know the
- 35:28Speaker 2: actual I think I did a circle the other day.
- 35:30Speaker 2: The actual like betting betting, the best of the betting
- 35:32Speaker 2: is about seven acres and then you know the surrounding
- 35:35Speaker 2: area around it that I have cameras or that I
- 35:37Speaker 2: can hunt, you know, maybe gives us like a fifteen
- 35:39Speaker 2: acres zone where I've kind of said, like since the
- 35:41Speaker 2: beginning of the year, like it's gonna happen somewhere within
- 35:43Speaker 2: this like fifteen to twenty acres, and I've just kind
- 35:46Speaker 2: of worked the edges based on wind and some days,
- 35:51Speaker 2: like I know he does come out of that. Course,
- 35:53Speaker 2: I knew it was possible on the edges, but earlier
- 35:55Speaker 2: in October I wasn't going to bust into the middle
- 35:57Speaker 2: of it. But I did that and did not see
- 36:02Speaker 2: him other than the scouting days, and I could glass
- 36:04Speaker 2: into the middle of it. So then first third week
- 36:09Speaker 2: of October went up to the family deer camp to
- 36:11Speaker 2: try to help my dad get a deer up there.
- 36:14Speaker 2: That was that week in October. It was really hot everywhere,
- 36:17Speaker 2: or at least warm and rainy. We had like the
- 36:20Speaker 2: entire hunt five days. It was high sixties and torrential
- 36:24Speaker 2: rain almost the entire time. It was lousy and did
- 36:29Speaker 2: not see hardly anything moving. Unfortunate, but my plan is
- 36:34Speaker 2: I was going to get done with that, and then
- 36:36Speaker 2: there's this big cold front hitting back in southern Michigan.
- 36:39Speaker 2: So as soon as I got back from that hunt,
- 36:41Speaker 2: I was going to start hunting back locally after the
- 36:44Speaker 2: Wide nine and I would have three and a half
- 36:46Speaker 2: days before I had to leave for Nebraska, So I
- 36:49Speaker 2: was planning on at that point that hit it hard,
- 36:51Speaker 2: like get aggressive, get into that core area, get tight,
- 36:55Speaker 2: tight tight to where he's betting. You know, went between
- 36:58Speaker 2: where he's going to leave that betting and train position
- 37:00Speaker 2: out to you know, check does or head out to
- 37:02Speaker 2: the dough spots where he's gonna feed in the evening,
- 37:04Speaker 2: where the doughs will be feeding and he'll do a
- 37:05Speaker 2: little both. So that was my game plan going into it.
- 37:09Speaker 2: That coal front hit. It dropped, you know, twenty some
- 37:12Speaker 2: degrees here, and my first hunt was a morning hunt,
- 37:16Speaker 2: and so I was going to slip in and do
- 37:19Speaker 2: a hanging hunt, saddle hunt just on the downwind edge
- 37:22Speaker 2: of like his core bedding zone. Like if I had
- 37:26Speaker 2: to narrow down like that ten acre area down to
- 37:28Speaker 2: like the best three or four, that's where I was now.
- 37:32Speaker 2: And so it was like I was right on the
- 37:34Speaker 2: edge of this super thick downwind side and then there's
- 37:37Speaker 2: an old like cut like maybe a I don't know,
- 37:40Speaker 2: decades ago, maybe someone cut a pipeline there or an
- 37:43Speaker 2: old two track or something, but there's like a twenty
- 37:45Speaker 2: yard wide cut where there's no trees, it's just grass
- 37:49Speaker 2: that kind of separates this timber. And then there's the
- 37:51Speaker 2: cut and then there's like the thick, thick, thick, nasty
- 37:54Speaker 2: brushy stuff where they really bed. And I've historically seen
- 37:57Speaker 2: that when I'm hunting on this edge of it, you'll
- 38:00Speaker 2: yet a good number of deer will follow that track
- 38:03Speaker 2: because that's that path at least resistance. So I was
- 38:05Speaker 2: downwind and I was also on that perpendicular track, so
- 38:08Speaker 2: that was like kind of like a funnel on that
- 38:10Speaker 2: down one side was my hope. So that was the
- 38:13Speaker 2: thing I was hunting. My wind was gonna blow away
- 38:16Speaker 2: from that back into some open timber behind me where
- 38:18Speaker 2: there just isn't you know, compared to the rest of
- 38:20Speaker 2: the area, it's it's lower deer traffic. So got in there,
- 38:24Speaker 2: hung my sticks, got up there in the saddle, and
- 38:27Speaker 2: right away there was deer chasing. There was like three
- 38:29Speaker 2: little bucks on a dough running them around. Then I
- 38:33Speaker 2: look in the another direction, there's a little buck chasing
- 38:35Speaker 2: a dough. Look in the other direction there's a little
- 38:36Speaker 2: scrappers just kind of cruising. So it was like on
- 38:40Speaker 2: and this was the twenty ninth I think and I
- 38:45Speaker 2: don't know if it was maybe nine thirty nine forty
- 38:48Speaker 2: five something like that. I look to my north and
- 38:53Speaker 2: so this would be like on the other side of
- 38:55Speaker 2: the creek, on the north side of his bedding zone,
- 38:58Speaker 2: and there's a dough standing there on the edge of
- 39:00Speaker 2: this thick, thick stuff. And then you see like a
- 39:02Speaker 2: deer like shake a bigger body deer, and then pull
- 39:05Speaker 2: my bi notes and there he is. He's standing behind her,
- 39:09Speaker 2: just doing that thing that a big buck does to
- 39:10Speaker 2: get this little dough in front of him, and she's
- 39:12Speaker 2: like cowering, and he's just standing tall over top of her.
- 39:16Speaker 2: And then I see him this is probably one hundred
- 39:20Speaker 2: and eighty yards one hundred and fifty yards something like that,
- 39:22Speaker 2: because I can see up that cut across to the
- 39:25Speaker 2: creek and then on this other thick stuff on that side. Okay,
- 39:28Speaker 2: so he's like, I've got the really thick stuff to
- 39:31Speaker 2: my right where I couldn't see more than like twenty
- 39:33Speaker 2: thirty yards, but he's north of me, just on the
- 39:36Speaker 2: edge of the edge, so I see that. Then he
- 39:40Speaker 2: pins his ears back and I see him like start strutting,
- 39:43Speaker 2: and then I zuome my glasses over to the left
- 39:44Speaker 2: and there's another buck that was like staring at him.
- 39:46Speaker 2: So he goes and pushes that buck off, and then
- 39:48Speaker 2: he trots back and I see another buck come from
- 39:50Speaker 2: the right, and he goes pushes that deer off. So
- 39:53Speaker 2: right away, I'm like, okay, I know I've seen this
- 39:55Speaker 2: movie before. He's on this dough. Everyone's circling him, like
- 39:59Speaker 2: the sad lights are all circling around him, you know,
- 40:02Speaker 2: hoping to poke in there and get a shot at her.
- 40:04Speaker 2: But he's locked on this dough. So I watched that
- 40:06Speaker 2: for a while and then she squirts back into the
- 40:08Speaker 2: thick cover and they disappear. I stay there till midday,
- 40:12Speaker 2: watching hoping to catch him again, see him again, anything,
- 40:15Speaker 2: don't see anything else. I do see a few other
- 40:18Speaker 2: bucks that like come up to this thicket and stop
- 40:20Speaker 2: and like stare at it for a while and just
- 40:23Speaker 2: like linger and so everything's telling me like they're still
- 40:26Speaker 2: in there, right that's you just see this over and
- 40:29Speaker 2: over again. He's in this thick, thick thick. It's you know,
- 40:32Speaker 2: about two hundred yards away ish, maybe maybe a little less.
- 40:36Speaker 2: So I decided I got to pull down the set,
- 40:38Speaker 2: and I think the best thing I could do is
- 40:39Speaker 2: get as close as I possibly excuse me, get as
- 40:44Speaker 2: close as I possibly can to where they are, and
- 40:47Speaker 2: be right in that zone if I can, Because every
- 40:50Speaker 2: time I've seen a buck locked on a dough like this, like,
- 40:53Speaker 2: they're usually not going to move a whole lot like
- 40:54Speaker 2: once they're in their little spot, he's going to be
- 40:56Speaker 2: there all the way till that dough decides that she
- 40:59Speaker 2: wants to move on to feed, and then he's going
- 41:01Speaker 2: to be right with her, and they're probably going to
- 41:04Speaker 2: be there for twenty four hours or something like. I've
- 41:07Speaker 2: got to I've gotta the way I looked at it,
- 41:10Speaker 2: as I said, I have a unique piece of intel
- 41:12Speaker 2: right now that I have to move on, and I
- 41:15Speaker 2: know where there's a really strong chance he's going to
- 41:17Speaker 2: be for the next day or so. So I got
- 41:20Speaker 2: to be as tight as I can and hopefully take
- 41:23Speaker 2: advantage of a few things that I know about this area.
- 41:25Speaker 2: So Number one, get as tight as I could without spooking.
- 41:28Speaker 2: Number two, I had to make a judgment call on
- 41:31Speaker 2: where if this dough does want to push out to
- 41:33Speaker 2: feed tonight, what's the most likely way she'll go to transition?
- 41:37Speaker 2: So I can pick the right, you know, side of
- 41:39Speaker 2: that betting stuff that they might go out on. So
- 41:42Speaker 2: that was going to be to the west. Based on
- 41:44Speaker 2: where I've been seeing a lot of these deer head
- 41:46Speaker 2: out to feed. There was a standing cornfield a few
- 41:49Speaker 2: hundred yards away, probably three hundred yards to the west,
- 41:52Speaker 2: give or take. I figured that was the best guess
- 41:56Speaker 2: of where they might head. So it's pretty windy and
- 41:59Speaker 2: wet that more so I was able to tear my
- 42:01Speaker 2: set down and I went back to the truck to
- 42:06Speaker 2: grab some stuff. And then when I went back out
- 42:08Speaker 2: maybe an hour later, it died down. And now it's
- 42:12Speaker 2: like completely still, and it just the leaves had just
- 42:16Speaker 2: crisped up enough that now like everything feels loud. So
- 42:20Speaker 2: now I'm like paranoid, and I'm like, oh man, we
- 42:23Speaker 2: can't get to where I want to get. There's no
- 42:25Speaker 2: way we're gonna get there without blowing things up, YadA,
- 42:28Speaker 2: YadA YadA. So I'm all stressed out about it, but like,
- 42:30Speaker 2: you gotta get in there, And so I had to
- 42:32Speaker 2: kind of I readjusted where I thought I was going
- 42:34Speaker 2: to try to get to. I was originally thinking I
- 42:36Speaker 2: could sneak right up this line of trees and get
- 42:38Speaker 2: like forty yards off of where I saw them. I
- 42:42Speaker 2: thought I could like get really tight because it's so
- 42:44Speaker 2: thick where they're in, like as long as they weren't
- 42:46Speaker 2: right within like a yard or two of the edge,
- 42:49Speaker 2: I thought I could use this tree line to like
- 42:51Speaker 2: literally line up a line of trees and travel right
- 42:53Speaker 2: along that line of sight and then get up in
- 42:56Speaker 2: the back of a tree. But when the wind died
- 42:58Speaker 2: down and it crisped a little bit, I really I
- 43:00Speaker 2: was like, Okay, there's no way that's going to happen.
- 43:02Speaker 2: I need to I need to figure out a different
- 43:05Speaker 2: way I can approach this but still be in that zone.
- 43:07Speaker 2: And so, to make a long story short, I decide
- 43:09Speaker 2: instead of getting right on the like on the button
- 43:12Speaker 2: where they were, I was going to get closer, but
- 43:15Speaker 2: more down towards where I thought they would transition, so
- 43:19Speaker 2: that way I would not have to get quite as
- 43:21Speaker 2: close but hopefully still be in the game. So I
- 43:22Speaker 2: ended up being able to get within about one hundred
- 43:24Speaker 2: yards of where I saw them and set up right
- 43:27Speaker 2: along the creek that I mentioned that they were on
- 43:29Speaker 2: the edge of. But there on the other side of
- 43:31Speaker 2: the creek in this thicket and I'm on the opposite
- 43:33Speaker 2: side about one hundred yards down towards that cornfield where
- 43:36Speaker 2: I was hoping they transition. This is also like I've
- 43:39Speaker 2: seen him, like this is that zone I can glass into.
- 43:42Speaker 2: So I've seen him right where I'm at, like a
- 43:44Speaker 2: thousand times over the years. I've seen him cross the
- 43:46Speaker 2: creek right here, Like there's a big crossing right there
- 43:48Speaker 2: where I'm lined up at. They transition along the creek
- 43:51Speaker 2: and then they bounce across the creek a bunch. So
- 43:53Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm right there where all this stuff happens,
- 43:56Speaker 2: and i know, like he's ninety nine percent sure he's
- 43:59Speaker 2: still going to be so or I'm within one hundred
- 44:01Speaker 2: yards and I get set up in that tree, and
- 44:03Speaker 2: within being like up there for five ten minutes, I
- 44:05Speaker 2: see two bucks set up of that same spot and
- 44:08Speaker 2: start lingering, you know, just that that zombie buck thing
- 44:11Speaker 2: where they're just staring in there together, and then they
- 44:13Speaker 2: start sparring, and then they start circling, and then another
- 44:15Speaker 2: buck comes in sniffing around. And so for the last
- 44:18Speaker 2: next like four hours, that's what was going on, just
- 44:21Speaker 2: like bucks circling around, bucks chasing little or little bucks
- 44:24Speaker 2: chasing dose, but they never popped out. Didn't see them,
- 44:30Speaker 2: so that was kind of disappointing. I thought for sure
- 44:33Speaker 2: I would see them. I thought, I can't guarantee they're
- 44:35Speaker 2: in a trend like they're gonna move down towards me,
- 44:37Speaker 2: but I gotta believe they're gonna come out of that
- 44:39Speaker 2: pocket somewhere. I can see them because I can see
- 44:41Speaker 2: all the way down this creek, and like there's grass
- 44:43Speaker 2: along the creek for like fifteen yards on either side,
- 44:47Speaker 2: maybe twenty yards, so it's like a forty yard cut
- 44:50Speaker 2: basically in the middle of this bedding air that I
- 44:52Speaker 2: can see. And I can see to the west side
- 44:54Speaker 2: of this thicket too, So I've got good even though
- 44:57Speaker 2: like for them, they feel incredibly incredibly safe because tall
- 45:00Speaker 2: grass and brush, but from twenty some feet up, I
- 45:03Speaker 2: can see down into all this stuff.
- 45:04Speaker 6: Like very well.
- 45:06Speaker 2: So I thought I was very confident that night that
- 45:10Speaker 2: i'd at least get something to work with. But didn't happen.
- 45:13Speaker 2: So the next morning that wind was going to shift
- 45:16Speaker 2: just a little bit. It was northwest that night, No,
- 45:19Speaker 2: it's northeast that night, and then that next morning is
- 45:22Speaker 2: gonna be northwest, And I thought with the northwest, it'll
- 45:26Speaker 2: be a little risky. It's gonna cut, like it's gonna
- 45:29Speaker 2: cut just beneath this bedding area. But I had to
- 45:32Speaker 2: be in there because I knew, like I thought he
- 45:34Speaker 2: should be in there. Again, he's probably still in that dough.
- 45:37Speaker 2: I gotta be in there, and I can make the
- 45:40Speaker 2: northwest wind work. So I get in there really early,
- 45:43Speaker 2: get I'll set up. Feels great, then starts raining again,
- 45:46Speaker 2: so it's rainy. Now it's windy and rainy and just
- 45:48Speaker 2: kind of bluck. But as those gusts pick up more
- 45:52Speaker 2: and more throughout the morning, that northwest wind all of
- 45:54Speaker 2: a sudden was like a west northwest wind, and I'm
- 45:56Speaker 2: throwing milkweed and it's not cutting the bottom of the
- 45:59Speaker 2: bedding area. It's like cut into the bedding aar. And
- 46:01Speaker 2: I'm like, ah, this is bad. And then I would
- 46:03Speaker 2: like throw another piece and then it cut beneath it,
- 46:05Speaker 2: and then I'm like, okay, I can this will be okay,
- 46:07Speaker 2: this will be okay. And then another gus comes up
- 46:09Speaker 2: and I throw a milkweed and it blows it right
- 46:10Speaker 2: into the bedding air do west. I'm like, ah, no,
- 46:13Speaker 2: this is really really bad, and so for like fifteen
- 46:15Speaker 2: minutes I played that game where like a little bit
- 46:17Speaker 2: of my soul died every time, and I kept I
- 46:20Speaker 2: threw so many pieces of milk weed, just hoping and
- 46:22Speaker 2: praying that one of these times it would just consistently
- 46:24Speaker 2: start going northwest. And it never did. It just got
- 46:26Speaker 2: worse and worse and worse and worse, to the point
- 46:29Speaker 2: where there's like fifteen to twenty miles on our winds
- 46:32Speaker 2: and they're blowing like right at the best stuff. And
- 46:35Speaker 2: the whole time, I'm thinking, like I gotta go. I
- 46:36Speaker 2: have to go, Like this is a disaster. We hadn't
- 46:39Speaker 2: seen a deer the whole morning, and I'm wondering, like
- 46:42Speaker 2: how many deer have winded me? How many deer have
- 46:44Speaker 2: gone into that thing? You know, this is disastrous. You
- 46:48Speaker 2: know you can't be here. You have to get out
- 46:50Speaker 2: of here. But at the same time, not only do
- 46:53Speaker 2: I need to get out of this tree and get
- 46:55Speaker 2: a saddle and sticks out of the tree, but I've
- 46:57Speaker 2: got a camera guy in the tree with all his stuff,
- 46:59Speaker 2: and it takes in like a half hour to get
- 47:01Speaker 2: unpacked and packed up right, you know, So I just
- 47:04Speaker 2: know that this is going to be a debacle, like
- 47:06Speaker 2: every time you get in and out of a tree
- 47:08Speaker 2: with two guys, it is so so so messy and
- 47:12Speaker 2: takes so long. So I was debating all this in
- 47:16Speaker 2: my head and trying to weigh like the risks of
- 47:17Speaker 2: the rewards of doing this, and I finally decided, like,
- 47:20Speaker 2: you have to go, and if you're ever gonna go,
- 47:22Speaker 2: you gotta go right now because there's no deer around,
- 47:24Speaker 2: it's rainy and windy. Cut your losses now, scoot and relocate,
- 47:29Speaker 2: get around the other side of this bedding year get
- 47:31Speaker 2: on the place where now it's like the right place
- 47:34Speaker 2: to be, and don't f this up anymore. So I
- 47:37Speaker 2: make that decision. I tell my camera, go, hey, we
- 47:39Speaker 2: got to do this. You know this sucks, but I
- 47:41Speaker 2: just think we have to do it. Otherwise I'm blowing
- 47:44Speaker 2: this best. I'm blowing the entire place that I'm trying
- 47:46Speaker 2: to hunt for half a day or whatever it's going
- 47:48Speaker 2: to be. You just can't do that. So we start
- 47:51Speaker 2: packing up, and I wait and I wait and I wait,
- 47:55Speaker 2: you know, waiting for him to get all of his
- 47:56Speaker 2: stuff put away, and I'm I usually don't put away
- 48:00Speaker 2: my bow or anything until, you know, he's mostly done,
- 48:04Speaker 2: and then once he's mostly done, then I can get
- 48:06Speaker 2: my stuff packed up, and then he climbs out of
- 48:08Speaker 2: the tree and then I come out of the tree
- 48:09Speaker 2: and take this the platform and sticks down with me.
- 48:12Speaker 6: Yep.
- 48:13Speaker 2: So I'm stressing though, like we have to get out
- 48:16Speaker 2: of here fast because anytime no deer are going to
- 48:17Speaker 2: show up. Anything we can do to get this thing
- 48:21Speaker 2: moving along will be better. So he's almost done, I'm realizing, Okay,
- 48:23Speaker 2: I gotta get I gotta get my stuff out of here.
- 48:25Speaker 2: So I start packing things away and put my quiver
- 48:30Speaker 2: on the bow and unknock my arrow, put the arrow
- 48:32Speaker 2: in the quiver, and I tie on my bow rope
- 48:35Speaker 2: and I'm just about and you know, all throughout this,
- 48:37Speaker 2: I'm like looking around. Then I'm working them, looking around
- 48:39Speaker 2: and working, and the whole time I'm thinking, like, this
- 48:42Speaker 2: is going to be so disastrous if the Y nine
- 48:44Speaker 2: shows up while we're doing this. I'm so worried he's
- 48:46Speaker 2: going to show up while I'm doing this. So I
- 48:47Speaker 2: do a little look around, panic, Do a little look around, panic,
- 48:50Speaker 2: But I don't see anything, and it's rainy and windy.
- 48:53Speaker 2: I start to lower my bowt like I lean it
- 48:55Speaker 2: over the side. I'm about to start lowering, and I
- 48:57Speaker 2: turn a look over my shoulder one last time, and
- 49:00Speaker 2: there's a deer twenty yards away over my back, left shoulder,
- 49:04Speaker 2: and I realized, oh, there's a deer. And then the
- 49:06Speaker 2: next thing, I realizes, oh, that's a big buck. And
- 49:09Speaker 2: then the next thing I realized, oh shit, it's the
- 49:11Speaker 2: why nine right there, twenty yards walking into my shooting line. Perfect.
- 49:17Speaker 2: So I'm like, Charlie, Charlie, why nine? Why note? Why nine?
- 49:19Speaker 2: Like trying to get my camera gus attention. I get
- 49:22Speaker 2: my bow back up. He's just slowly walking. I mean,
- 49:25Speaker 2: I can't tell you how amazing tony this would have
- 49:28Speaker 2: been if we had waited ten more minutes. I'm able
- 49:33Speaker 2: to get my bow up, I'm able to get an
- 49:35Speaker 2: arrow knocked. He's still just nicely dopedy doing along. He's
- 49:37Speaker 2: in my shooting line. I get an arrow knocked, I
- 49:39Speaker 2: clip on. I look up at Charlie. Charlie is still
- 49:41Speaker 2: packing his gear. He'd never heard me any of these
- 49:43Speaker 2: times when I'm telling him, so look at him again,
- 49:45Speaker 2: like Charlie, why nine right here, right here, right here?
- 49:48Speaker 2: And he looks at me and then he sees my
- 49:50Speaker 2: like complete panic stricken face, and he's like, oh my god.
- 49:53Speaker 2: So I'm like, get a camera, get a camera. So
- 49:54Speaker 2: now he's trying to get a camera out of his backpack,
- 49:57Speaker 2: and I'm about to draw back on him because im
- 49:59Speaker 2: I have him thinking, I'm s shooting this deer. I
- 50:00Speaker 2: don't care if he's on him or what. I'm shooting
- 50:02Speaker 2: this deer. And then I remember my toe rope is
- 50:06Speaker 2: tied through the cam still, So now I'm like, I can't.
- 50:09Speaker 2: I can't shoot this with a toe rope on there.
- 50:11Speaker 2: So I get my bowl like in my knees and
- 50:14Speaker 2: I start trying to unravel a thing around the cam.
- 50:16Speaker 2: And by the time I'm able to get the rope
- 50:19Speaker 2: off the cam, he had crossed my shooting lane and
- 50:21Speaker 2: got like to the edge of where my wind had
- 50:23Speaker 2: been gusting up into and he got wiggy. He stopped,
- 50:26Speaker 2: he freezes, he's like nose up, he's looking around. He's
- 50:30Speaker 2: like something's not right. He didn't completely freak, but he's
- 50:32Speaker 2: like this doesn't feel right. He turned and bounced back
- 50:34Speaker 2: like ten yards back across my lane. Stops and then
- 50:38Speaker 2: like takes like a ten yards straight away a walk
- 50:41Speaker 2: and then he stopped and he's fifty two yards, and Charlie,
- 50:45Speaker 2: at this point, it's like, I'm on my mom. I'm like,
- 50:47Speaker 2: it's fifty two I'm not shooting him there, and and
- 50:50Speaker 2: then he just trotted off, and so I'm devastated, you know, like, yep,
- 51:09Speaker 2: you only get you don't get a whole lot of opportunities,
- 51:13Speaker 2: especially when you're after only one deer. Like there's one
- 51:15Speaker 2: deer I'm trying to kill and I just had him
- 51:17Speaker 2: at twenty yards in my shooting lane and somehow was
- 51:19Speaker 2: not able to get an arrow off, you know, nightmare,
- 51:23Speaker 2: nightmare scenario. That is just such bad timing, Like how
- 51:29Speaker 2: unlucky can you get?
- 51:30Speaker 3: Right?
- 51:31Speaker 6: Such bad timing. So but at least it got better, right.
- 51:37Speaker 2: Sure, So I tell myself like that all happens, and
- 51:42Speaker 2: I tell myself like I'm mad, like I'm frustrated, but
- 51:45Speaker 2: I say, hey, it's not the worst case scenario, Like, hey,
- 51:49Speaker 2: you didn't get a shot, but at least you didn't miss,
- 51:52Speaker 2: and at least you didn't wound him, so it could
- 51:54Speaker 2: be worse. So it's okay. You know he's still in
- 51:58Speaker 2: the area. You know he's not going to leave his
- 52:00Speaker 2: core core core, Like he's probably not gonna walk by
- 52:01Speaker 2: this tree today, but he's gonna be in the zone still.
- 52:06Speaker 2: He's thinking about does he's back on the move. He's cruising,
- 52:08Speaker 2: so he's not with his dough now, so he's on
- 52:10Speaker 2: his feet. You're still in the game. So I decided,
- 52:13Speaker 2: like I'm going to finished yank in the set and
- 52:15Speaker 2: I'm going to go make the move I wanted to make.
- 52:17Speaker 2: I'm going to reposition and get on the other side.
- 52:21Speaker 2: So I do that. I get I do a big
- 52:25Speaker 2: wide half moon circle. I go way south way, yeah,
- 52:29Speaker 2: so be way. I go west south and get all
- 52:32Speaker 2: the way up on the other side of the property,
- 52:33Speaker 2: to the opposite side of this betting air. So that
- 52:36Speaker 2: wind was supposed to be northwest but instead of his west.
- 52:39Speaker 2: So that meant I had to get to the east
- 52:42Speaker 2: side of this core zone of this betting of this
- 52:44Speaker 2: like you know, seven to ten acre area. Get over there.
- 52:47Speaker 2: And this is an area that I have not hunted
- 52:49Speaker 2: a lot in, but I've hunted around it, and I
- 52:53Speaker 2: know there's like three There's the main betting air that
- 52:57Speaker 2: I've been talking about, and then there's like two smaller
- 52:59Speaker 2: betting airs further to the south, and I've seen the
- 53:02Speaker 2: past bucks will cruise this line when you've got a
- 53:05Speaker 2: westerly the cruise from the big big betting are that
- 53:07Speaker 2: I'm on down to these two micro betting airs to
- 53:10Speaker 2: the south. And there's also basically a travel transition route
- 53:14Speaker 2: from that big big ed area down to another section
- 53:17Speaker 2: of this corn, another area of standing corn, plus a
- 53:20Speaker 2: little food plot I have in between them. So I thought,
- 53:23Speaker 2: all right, if I get set up kind of at
- 53:26Speaker 2: this far eastern edge of that big betting area, but
- 53:28Speaker 2: just south, there's like a tip of it that extends out,
- 53:31Speaker 2: so I could be south and east of the main bedding,
- 53:34Speaker 2: so I could catch deer cruising the downwind side of
- 53:37Speaker 2: the bedding, but also catch if there's a transition heading
- 53:40Speaker 2: from the bedding heading south to the corn, I could
- 53:42Speaker 2: catch that bed to feed transition. To get set up.
- 53:46Speaker 2: Had a heck of a time trying to find any
- 53:48Speaker 2: kind of tree with any kind of cover. It was
- 53:49Speaker 2: like all bean pole trees, you know, one of those
- 53:52Speaker 2: where you know where you want to be, but no
- 53:54Speaker 2: tree will work well for it unless you like. So
- 53:56Speaker 2: if I go to a good tree, I'm gonna be
- 53:58Speaker 2: right in the middle of where the travel will be
- 54:00Speaker 2: I'll get winded if I go to where it's safe
- 54:02Speaker 2: from a wind perspective. I'm in a tree with zero cover,
- 54:06Speaker 2: so I spend like I don't know how long, standing
- 54:08Speaker 2: around like and then I go to a tree. I'm like,
- 54:10Speaker 2: maybe we make this work. And then you can't get
- 54:11Speaker 2: your straps around because it's way too big. And ended
- 54:14Speaker 2: up having a dough walk in with two little bucks
- 54:15Speaker 2: following here, and I just lay on the ground for
- 54:17Speaker 2: twenty minutes waiting for them to go away. So just
- 54:20Speaker 2: everything was like just felt like a disastrous day with
- 54:23Speaker 2: everything that happened. We get set up in the tree.
- 54:27Speaker 2: Finally I find a tree that about twenty feet up
- 54:30Speaker 2: something like that. There's a big fork in the tree,
- 54:32Speaker 2: so there's there's a big y so there's no big
- 54:34Speaker 2: branches on the tree, but I've got a big fork,
- 54:36Speaker 2: and I thought, hey, we could get up in that
- 54:38Speaker 2: fork and tuck in between the two forks of it.
- 54:40Speaker 2: It's a pretty big tree, and I thought, that's that's
- 54:43Speaker 2: the best we can do. I think, so get set up,
- 54:47Speaker 2: and you know, the buck parade continues like lots of
- 54:51Speaker 2: year and a half old's just cruising around anytime there's
- 54:54Speaker 2: a dough, there's a buck like nosing there, bumping around
- 54:57Speaker 2: doing that kind of stuff. And to make what's been
- 55:00Speaker 2: a very long winding story a little bit quicker here tony.
- 55:05Speaker 2: After all that kind of stuff going on, the last
- 55:07Speaker 2: like forty five minutes or half hour of daylight, I
- 55:10Speaker 2: see a big bodied deer step out of the southern
- 55:12Speaker 2: edge of that betting area and start kind of cutting
- 55:15Speaker 2: through the timber towards one of those micro betting areas.
- 55:17Speaker 2: Pull my bid knows it's him. He's on his feet,
- 55:21Speaker 2: and he's heading from north to south. He's out of
- 55:23Speaker 2: range and heading towards that next little betting pocket south
- 55:27Speaker 2: of me. I try grunt, can't get his attention. I
- 55:31Speaker 2: try snort wieze. It stops him. He looks in my
- 55:34Speaker 2: direction and then keeps going the way he was headed.
- 55:37Speaker 2: I let him get right to the edge of that
- 55:39Speaker 2: betting pocket. He's now maybe one hundred ish yards, and
- 55:44Speaker 2: I give him one more really hard snort wheeze, and
- 55:47Speaker 2: that stops him. He looks at me, stares for like
- 55:50Speaker 2: thirty seconds, and then starts coming in, stops, makes a
- 55:54Speaker 2: big old scrape, and then starts hooking downwind, so instead
- 55:58Speaker 2: of heading straight at me, he does the down wind circle,
- 56:02Speaker 2: so he's he makes that scrape of like forty five
- 56:05Speaker 2: yards and then starts cutting. And I had ranged a
- 56:08Speaker 2: down tree in front of that scrape earlier in the day,
- 56:10Speaker 2: so I knew that that was about forty. So as
- 56:13Speaker 2: he starts, he starts walking through that lane I have
- 56:15Speaker 2: at forty. I murp him to try to get him
- 56:18Speaker 2: to stop. He doesn't hear it. He keeps walking. So
- 56:21Speaker 2: he's getting closer and closer and closer to my down
- 56:24Speaker 2: wind side, staying at about that forty yard wide area,
- 56:27Speaker 2: but behind trees. Now there's one more gap that he's
- 56:31Speaker 2: going to get to that I see that should be
- 56:33Speaker 2: right around forty. I'm able to range it and check
- 56:35Speaker 2: it's about I think I got like thirty nine on
- 56:38Speaker 2: one side of this log and like forty one on
- 56:40Speaker 2: the other side. So I said, if he comes right
- 56:41Speaker 2: through there, it's gonna own. I'm gonna use my forty
- 56:43Speaker 2: yard pin and my wind is gonna be blowing like
- 56:45Speaker 2: just a little ahead of that. So if he makes
- 56:48Speaker 2: his past this gap, I'm in trouble. So this is
- 56:53Speaker 2: also on my off shoulder with my saddle set up
- 56:56Speaker 2: so as he's making this hook. So for people to understand,
- 57:00Speaker 2: like in a saddle, you can shoot very well in
- 57:02Speaker 2: front of you. You can shoot very well to your left.
- 57:04Speaker 2: If you're right handed, you can shoot very well at
- 57:06Speaker 2: right behind you. The one place that is a little
- 57:09Speaker 2: bit more difficult to shoot is to your right side.
- 57:12Speaker 2: So the way to get that shot to your right side,
- 57:14Speaker 2: which is like your off side, would be to stand
- 57:16Speaker 2: up on your platform and spin and have your bridge
- 57:21Speaker 2: go over your right shoulder. And then now you're standing
- 57:24Speaker 2: up as if you're on a tree stand and that
- 57:26Speaker 2: bridge or sorry not your bridge, but your your tether
- 57:29Speaker 2: is over your right shoulder holding you to the tree,
- 57:32Speaker 2: and you're standing up right like like I said, tight
- 57:34Speaker 2: to the tree, like you're in a tree stand with
- 57:36Speaker 2: a rope holding you tight to that. So I'm able
- 57:39Speaker 2: to make that maneuver. As he's walking through and doing
- 57:41Speaker 2: that fork or doing that hook, I get all that done.
- 57:45Speaker 2: I get ready. He steps into that lane step step
- 57:49Speaker 2: step and stops. I mean perfect. As I'm drawing back,
- 57:52Speaker 2: I was thinking about trying to murp him again because
- 57:54Speaker 2: he was going to walk through that, but he stopped,
- 57:57Speaker 2: and my cameraman's like on him, and I released that arrow,
- 58:03Speaker 2: and immediately when I hit all I could see was
- 58:07Speaker 2: like he has moved a bunch and there's a bunch
- 58:10Speaker 2: of arrow sticking out. When when he's spun and ran
- 58:14Speaker 2: off and he goes running out of there like a
- 58:15Speaker 2: bat of hell, maybe one hundred yards away or something,
- 58:18Speaker 2: he stops for a second. I thought, like, man, is
- 58:19Speaker 2: he about to tip over? And then he bolts off again.
- 58:24Speaker 2: I didn't know what to think. My first thought was
- 58:26Speaker 2: shoulder based on the fact I can see this arrow
- 58:28Speaker 2: like it looks like all my arrow is hanging out
- 58:31Speaker 2: and like flopping, and so first thought was, holy crap,
- 58:37Speaker 2: I his shoulder shot him. But I don't know. Maybe
- 58:40Speaker 2: I poked it in there, maybe it slit underneath the
- 58:42Speaker 2: shoulder blade. I don't know. But to save folks from
- 58:49Speaker 2: more sob stories, we waited until I got some buddies
- 58:54Speaker 2: that came out to help me because I can't see
- 58:56Speaker 2: bad blood trails with my red green issues. So I
- 59:00Speaker 2: had the whole cavalry come out with hopes that maybe
- 59:03Speaker 2: you know, I had got in there, Like we watched
- 59:04Speaker 2: the footage a thousand times and it doesn't sound like
- 59:07Speaker 2: a really loud crack. So I started trying to convince myself, well,
- 59:10Speaker 2: maybe I didn't get the shoulder, despite the fact that
- 59:12Speaker 2: it looks like there's no penetration, that maybe I got
- 59:14Speaker 2: in there. But we got on the blood trail. There
- 59:18Speaker 2: was blood and it was consistent, but it was like
- 59:20Speaker 2: a drop here, a drop there, then like a smear
- 59:23Speaker 2: and then a drop here, drop there. We tracked it
- 59:26Speaker 2: for three quarters of a mile and he basically just walked.
- 59:31Speaker 2: It looked like, you know, he ran off, and then
- 59:33Speaker 2: he got into this cornfield and he walked for like
- 59:35Speaker 2: half a mile down this cornfield and then hooked and
- 59:38Speaker 2: made like a jay hook back into his bedding area,
- 59:40Speaker 2: and we were basically on I don't even know how
- 59:43Speaker 2: my buddy's well, my one front has a dog, so
- 59:46Speaker 2: it always brings his dog with The dog got us
- 59:48Speaker 2: through sections where there was no blood for fifty or
- 59:50Speaker 2: seventy yards, and the dog would gets across that and
- 59:53Speaker 2: then he'd find like a pin prick, and then we
- 59:54Speaker 2: would go for twenty or forty more yards and then
- 59:57Speaker 2: like a pin prick and I couldn't see any of
- 59:58Speaker 2: the stuff. So if it weren't for my friend, I
- 1:00:00Speaker 2: wouldn't have been able to do half of this, but
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: we covered about three quarters of a mile, cover a
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: lot of stuff. We were tracking until like, I don't know,
- 1:00:08Speaker 2: two something in the morning, and you know, dried up,
- 1:00:12Speaker 2: no more blood. And at that point, I think all
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: of us for a long time knew what had happened.
- 1:00:18Speaker 2: But you know, the way I saw it going was like,
- 1:00:20Speaker 2: either this deer either I poked it in there, and
- 1:00:23Speaker 2: that deer is dead fast, Like there's a bunch of
- 1:00:25Speaker 2: blood and he's dead fast, because if I got in there,
- 1:00:28Speaker 2: it would have been like a heart shot or the
- 1:00:31Speaker 2: front of the lungs. It's either that or I did,
- 1:00:34Speaker 2: in fact hit the shoulder and this is just a
- 1:00:35Speaker 2: meat hit and he's gonna dribble blood for a long time,
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: but he's going to live and we're never going to
- 1:00:40Speaker 2: find him. And so after we didn't find him dead
- 1:00:44Speaker 2: within the first couple of hundred yards and we never
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: got like that screaming blood trail, I kind of knew it,
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: but we're like, hey, we have to keep following as
- 1:00:51Speaker 2: far as we can and keep looking. And you know,
- 1:00:53Speaker 2: we walked all around where we couldn't find blood, circling
- 1:00:56Speaker 2: out and bring the dog all over the place, just
- 1:00:57Speaker 2: trying to hopefully smell something or pick up on any thing.
- 1:01:01Speaker 2: But no more blood, no deer, no recovery. And that
- 1:01:06Speaker 2: is where things stand out.
- 1:01:08Speaker 6: Have you got a picture of him since.
- 1:01:10Speaker 2: Not yet, It's been dead, Like my cameras are completely dead.
- 1:01:17Speaker 2: And I think that's because there was seven guys walking
- 1:01:20Speaker 2: all over the core betting area for like eight hours.
- 1:01:22Speaker 2: So I think I think every deer in this zone
- 1:01:27Speaker 2: has known now to vacate the premise for a while.
- 1:01:30Speaker 2: So I'm hopeful that eventually the deer will return and
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: he'll be one.
- 1:01:35Speaker 6: Of them, you know. I mean everybody's when that happens,
- 1:01:38Speaker 6: everybody's like, oh, he I'm sure he lived. But honestly,
- 1:01:42Speaker 6: seeing that video, I was like, you're chasing a deer
- 1:01:45Speaker 6: that's healthy, Like it didn't didn't look like that arrow
- 1:01:49Speaker 6: got in there at all, like I would. I would
- 1:01:50Speaker 6: be very surprised if you don't start picking that deer
- 1:01:53Speaker 6: up again eventually, unless he wanders off and gets shot
- 1:01:55Speaker 6: by somebody else.
- 1:01:57Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, man, it was, without a question, the worst
- 1:02:03Speaker 2: day of my hunting life. Like I've never had a
- 1:02:06Speaker 2: day like that where first I blow an opportunity. I
- 1:02:09Speaker 2: have my target buck at twenty yards and can't shoot him.
- 1:02:12Speaker 2: And then I say, well, at least the worst case
- 1:02:14Speaker 2: scenario didn't happen, at least didn't wound him. And then
- 1:02:17Speaker 2: that night get another opportunity shoot him and.
- 1:02:22Speaker 6: Wound him. Do you what do you what do you
- 1:02:24Speaker 6: feel like happened on the shot?
- 1:02:27Speaker 2: Man? If you look at the just like your situation,
- 1:02:30Speaker 2: that deer dropped so so so far, he dropped and
- 1:02:34Speaker 2: spun and so if he had stayed where he was
- 1:02:38Speaker 2: when you look at the video, it would have been
- 1:02:39Speaker 2: a hard shot. It would have been like right at
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: the like it was on the forward side of it,
- 1:02:44Speaker 2: but it would have been beneath the bone, beneath that
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: big bone plate and when it got you know how
- 1:02:49Speaker 2: you know how it looks how there's like a j
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: or like a big curve in right yep. So it
- 1:02:52Speaker 2: would have just ten ringed him right through that spot
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: if he had not dropped, you know, a big big chunk.
- 1:03:00Speaker 2: So could I have, like I always like my I
- 1:03:04Speaker 2: still don't ever wait quite long enough, like would I
- 1:03:07Speaker 2: give myself an a plus on the shot?
- 1:03:09Speaker 5: No?
- 1:03:09Speaker 2: But I was still like it was a good shot.
- 1:03:12Speaker 2: It would have killed him. Great if that hadn't happened.
- 1:03:16Speaker 2: So I the big thing I took away from it
- 1:03:21Speaker 2: is two things, Tony. The last five deer I have
- 1:03:25Speaker 2: shot at with a bow, four out of the five
- 1:03:27Speaker 2: have jumped the string in a really significant way. I've
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: hit high on four of the last five deer, all
- 1:03:34Speaker 2: because they jumped the string in a big way. So
- 1:03:39Speaker 2: in two of those, the last two deer have been
- 1:03:41Speaker 2: forty yard shots. So I know lots of people shoot
- 1:03:45Speaker 2: deer at long ranges, and forty yards isn't that long,
- 1:03:49Speaker 2: but I think I feel kind of done with forty
- 1:03:51Speaker 2: yard shots for a while. Like I'm just not dudetty
- 1:03:54Speaker 2: about this at all.
- 1:03:55Speaker 6: Forty yards were I was talking about this with Dylan
- 1:03:58Speaker 6: on the drive back. I'm like, forty yards is a
- 1:04:00Speaker 6: poke on a white tail and they are just different.
- 1:04:04Speaker 6: You know, you go meal deer hunting and you get
- 1:04:05Speaker 6: a forty yard shot, You're like, there's a gift in
- 1:04:07Speaker 6: the white tail woods. You're like, like, you know, it's
- 1:04:10Speaker 6: and it's different too. You know, if they're in the
- 1:04:13Speaker 6: beans and it's opening night and they are just nibbling
- 1:04:16Speaker 6: away and they haven't been hunted and it's like truly relaxed,
- 1:04:19Speaker 6: like different thing. But when they're keyed up during it's
- 1:04:24Speaker 6: just that's a long shot, man, Like a lot can
- 1:04:26Speaker 6: go wrong. And you know, I saw that video of
- 1:04:29Speaker 6: how much that buck moved and I said the same thing.
- 1:04:31Speaker 6: I'm like, this buck did just what my my first
- 1:04:34Speaker 6: one did. I mean, you can you know, that's one
- 1:04:36Speaker 6: of the crazy things about filming is you can sit
- 1:04:38Speaker 6: there and mark where their back line is. Yeah, when
- 1:04:41Speaker 6: you shoot and then watch how much they drop and
- 1:04:44Speaker 6: it is crazy even you know, we did this when
- 1:04:48Speaker 6: when my daughter shot that little spike with her crossbow
- 1:04:52Speaker 6: in September, that dear at twenty yards out of a
- 1:04:55Speaker 6: crossbow that's smoking fast. That deer still dropped like five
- 1:05:00Speaker 6: inches at the shot. And that's a tiny spike close,
- 1:05:05Speaker 6: So you think about, you know, double that distance on
- 1:05:07Speaker 6: a deer that's you know, been around and done that.
- 1:05:10Speaker 6: Like they can get out of the way, man.
- 1:05:13Speaker 2: Yeah, And I know, like I always aim like lower
- 1:05:16Speaker 2: third is I'm usually aiming for a hard shot, is
- 1:05:19Speaker 2: what I'm aiming for. And so I've always done that
- 1:05:22Speaker 2: thinking like, well if they if they jumped the string,
- 1:05:24Speaker 2: I'll still get in there. And you know that happened
- 1:05:26Speaker 2: with the bucket killed in Nebraska last year. Is like,
- 1:05:28Speaker 2: so I was aiming lower third, he jumped the string
- 1:05:30Speaker 2: and I hit high, like top of the both lungs.
- 1:05:32Speaker 2: So that worked out in that case. But in this case,
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: you know, it was four just enough so that when
- 1:05:36Speaker 2: I went high, you know, it wasn't high into the
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: back of the lungs. It was high into the back
- 1:05:40Speaker 2: of the shoulder. Yeah, and and so yeah, like, I
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: don't know, man, I feel like it might be thirty
- 1:05:49Speaker 2: thirty five yards max for me for a while. After
- 1:05:51Speaker 2: these couple of situations, I just I do I hate
- 1:05:55Speaker 2: I hate, hate, hate, hate hate this. Man, there's some
- 1:06:01Speaker 2: people I know who like they miss a deer like, well,
- 1:06:03Speaker 2: you know what happens early, they hit a deer and
- 1:06:05Speaker 2: don't find it. Like, ah, you know whatever, I don't
- 1:06:08Speaker 2: get that at all, Like I don't, I do not
- 1:06:10Speaker 2: get that at all. I can't. I can't swallow it.
- 1:06:13Speaker 2: And I would much rather watch a deer walk than
- 1:06:17Speaker 2: have this. So I think I don't think I'm taking
- 1:06:20Speaker 2: a forty yard shot for a while. Yeah, I'm also sorry.
- 1:06:25Speaker 2: I was also gonna say I need to figure out
- 1:06:26Speaker 2: what else I can do to maximize the sound reduction
- 1:06:31Speaker 2: of whatever archery setup I have, Like, I need quiet,
- 1:06:34Speaker 2: I need quiet, quiet, quiet, and and something's not quiet
- 1:06:40Speaker 2: enough about what I'm doing right now.
- 1:06:42Speaker 6: So do you do you know what the total weight
- 1:06:45Speaker 6: of your arrows is?
- 1:06:47Speaker 2: I can't. I'll say it wrong if I try to
- 1:06:50Speaker 2: guess it right now, I can't remember the top of
- 1:06:51Speaker 2: my head. And I know, like Yanni already told them
- 1:06:54Speaker 2: when it comes to like Yan's like, ah, you gotta
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: might want to reconsider your arrow setup or hitting shoulder blades.
- 1:07:00Speaker 2: And and I'm not on that track yet.
- 1:07:03Speaker 6: Well, what I was going to say is, you know,
- 1:07:05Speaker 6: the heavy one of the real benefits of heavier airs
- 1:07:08Speaker 6: is quiet your whole thing down, you know. And yeah,
- 1:07:11Speaker 6: I mean, okay, you might hit a shoulder and get
- 1:07:13Speaker 6: through it whatever. That's not why I would. I'm just
- 1:07:15Speaker 6: curious because if you shoot, there's there can be a
- 1:07:18Speaker 6: noticeable difference if you're you know, you have somebody who's
- 1:07:20Speaker 6: shooting like a four hundred grain pretty light set up
- 1:07:22Speaker 6: out of you know, sixty five seventy pounds versus somebody
- 1:07:25Speaker 6: who has like a five twenty or you know, like
- 1:07:27Speaker 6: a little bit heavier. I mean, it's it's one way
- 1:07:30Speaker 6: to you know, tone down the vibration a little bit
- 1:07:33Speaker 6: on your bow, but then you've got bigger pin gaps
- 1:07:36Speaker 6: and it changes things a little bit, you know, it
- 1:07:38Speaker 6: slows it down.
- 1:07:39Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I don't know. I think in the off
- 1:07:42Speaker 2: season I'm going to go back to the drawing board
- 1:07:44Speaker 2: and uh, change some things up, because four out of
- 1:07:47Speaker 2: five is not a coincidence anymore. Yeah, And those were
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: two forty yard shots and a thirty yard shot, and
- 1:08:03Speaker 2: I'm blanking on what other deal I'm thinking of here,
- 1:08:05Speaker 2: and there's a twenty five yard shot. I don't know.
- 1:08:08Speaker 2: What I'm getting is that they weren't all long shots
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: like I've had string jumpers at thirty two. So I'm
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: gonna mess with my archery set up a little bit more,
- 1:08:16Speaker 2: not right now, obviously. For right now, I'm just gonna
- 1:08:19Speaker 2: I'm not gonna shoot super far. So I'm leaving for
- 1:08:21Speaker 2: Nebraska here in like an hour, and I'm just gonna
- 1:08:25Speaker 2: get them close. Yeah, we're not shoot at all.
- 1:08:28Speaker 6: Well, I mean, that's that's one of those things like
- 1:08:32Speaker 6: twenty yard shots are just dreamy like that's just it's
- 1:08:35Speaker 6: just such a nice range and once you just push
- 1:08:39Speaker 6: it out. I mean, it's just everything changes and it
- 1:08:42Speaker 6: doesn't seem like it should be that big of a difference.
- 1:08:46Speaker 6: But man, you start getting to thirty to forty yard range,
- 1:08:48Speaker 6: like thirty. To me, thirty to forty is like a
- 1:08:51Speaker 6: world of difference. You know, forties out there. Man.
- 1:08:56Speaker 2: Yeah, Man, like thirty thirty and in feels like it.
- 1:08:59Speaker 2: I mean I shouldn't say this. I won't say it
- 1:09:01Speaker 2: because they'll jinx myself, but but I agree, Like you know,
- 1:09:06Speaker 2: a thirty yard shot feels like I don't know, throwing
- 1:09:09Speaker 2: a dart the wall from five yards away or whatever.
- 1:09:11Speaker 2: Compared to that longer range, just more stuff happens. So yeah,
- 1:09:17Speaker 2: I've been in a real low point for the last
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: day and a half, very bummed about it, very disappointed.
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: But at the same time, it is what it is.
- 1:09:27Speaker 2: It's hunting. This happens. Keep on keeping on trying to
- 1:09:32Speaker 2: figure it out. And I feel very confident, like you said, like,
- 1:09:35Speaker 2: I feel very confident he should be back, he should
- 1:09:37Speaker 2: be around. I don't think the hunt's done.
- 1:09:41Speaker 6: I don't see that that dude dying from that.
- 1:09:44Speaker 2: Yeah, so maybe get a little redemption to Nebraska and
- 1:09:47Speaker 2: then come home after that and pick it back up.
- 1:09:50Speaker 2: But I think my big takeaways as far as like
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: things other people could take from this is number one,
- 1:09:56Speaker 2: be careful about your shot distances. I think hunting TV.
- 1:10:00Speaker 2: I know we sometimes knock on Hunting TV a lot,
- 1:10:03Speaker 2: and we are hunting TV too, so it's a little
- 1:10:06Speaker 2: bit the kettle calling the pot black. But I would
- 1:10:07Speaker 2: say we're a little different than the usual. There's a
- 1:10:11Speaker 2: lot of stuff out there that make long range shots
- 1:10:14Speaker 2: seem easy. There's a lot of people that talk about
- 1:10:16Speaker 2: long range shots and it's become norm and I actually
- 1:10:18Speaker 2: feel I am guilty of this. I feel like, oh my,
- 1:10:21Speaker 2: like you won't shoot past forty yards. I feel a
- 1:10:23Speaker 2: little bit like people maybe think it's crazy that I
- 1:10:25Speaker 2: have a max range of forty. So many people shoot
- 1:10:27Speaker 2: to fifty or sixty now for white tails, and like
- 1:10:30Speaker 2: so many guys shoot to seventy to eighty out west,
- 1:10:32Speaker 2: one hundred yards out west, all this kind of stuff,
- 1:10:34Speaker 2: And so I was like, I'm still holding it forty.
- 1:10:35Speaker 2: I don't care what other people do, and now I'm
- 1:10:37Speaker 2: going to make it even shorter. But do not be
- 1:10:44Speaker 2: convinced because you see a few people on TV taking
- 1:10:46Speaker 2: these long shots to think that you should be doing
- 1:10:48Speaker 2: that too. It's so much better to let a deer
- 1:10:50Speaker 2: walk than have to deal with what I.
- 1:10:51Speaker 6: Just dealt with.
- 1:10:52Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not worth it well, and especially during the run.
- 1:10:56Speaker 6: And one of the things about it too is it's
- 1:10:59Speaker 6: just if there's like if you're pushing it some way,
- 1:11:02Speaker 6: whether it's distance or get a shot off quick or something,
- 1:11:05Speaker 6: if there's like a little bit of rush to it,
- 1:11:08Speaker 6: a little bit of panic to it, the odds of
- 1:11:10Speaker 6: it breaking bad for you are just they like orders
- 1:11:14Speaker 6: of magnitude worse. So you just got to think that, like, oh,
- 1:11:18Speaker 6: if I'm gonna oh now he didn't take this trail,
- 1:11:21Speaker 6: he's gonna be forty, and it's like I got one window,
- 1:11:23Speaker 6: I better make it happen. That is a recipe for
- 1:11:26Speaker 6: a screw up almost always. You know it's different at closer,
- 1:11:31Speaker 6: like you can still like it's different, but when you
- 1:11:33Speaker 6: start pushing that range and things like that happen, it's
- 1:11:35Speaker 6: so easy to screw up.
- 1:11:37Speaker 2: Yeah, And to your point in that episode I was
- 1:11:39Speaker 2: talking about earlier, like in the rut, those things that
- 1:11:42Speaker 2: you just mentioned are almost the case all the time,
- 1:11:44Speaker 2: all the time, Like during this time period you almost
- 1:11:46Speaker 2: never get that calm, cool deer's feeding in the food
- 1:11:48Speaker 2: plot or in the beans kind of shot. Like almost
- 1:11:51Speaker 2: all the time. Everything's more stressful, everything's faster, everything's so
- 1:11:56Speaker 2: So if ever there's a time to shrink your shooting range,
- 1:11:58Speaker 2: now is the time to do it. This is not
- 1:12:00Speaker 2: the time to stretch it out because you really want
- 1:12:02Speaker 2: to kill that deer. But that's probably what a lot
- 1:12:03Speaker 2: of people do, right is they feel like this pressure like, oh,
- 1:12:06Speaker 2: I mean there is a forty five this is gonna
- 1:12:07Speaker 2: be my only chance. I better take it. Ah, shit,
- 1:12:09Speaker 2: there goes Yeah, don't do that.
- 1:12:12Speaker 5: Don't do that.
- 1:12:14Speaker 2: I mean, I wish I could take my forty yard
- 1:12:17Speaker 2: shot back, or I wish I could have I don't
- 1:12:19Speaker 2: know what. I wish this whole thing had not happened
- 1:12:21Speaker 2: the way it did, but it did. So learn from
- 1:12:24Speaker 2: my situation.
- 1:12:25Speaker 6: Yeah and yeah, and I mean one thing that happens
- 1:12:29Speaker 6: there too. The two things you do see that on
- 1:12:32Speaker 6: hunting shows a lot. But I also know that there's
- 1:12:35Speaker 6: a lot of self censoring out there. There's a lot
- 1:12:37Speaker 6: of stuff that gets left on the editing floor.
- 1:12:39Speaker 2: They don't show it.
- 1:12:40Speaker 6: Yeah, so take that with a grain of salt. Right,
- 1:12:44Speaker 6: like there's you're seeing a highlight reel, You're going to
- 1:12:46Speaker 6: see the heart shot and not the leg hit. You know.
- 1:12:50Speaker 6: The other thing is like it's so easy to panic
- 1:12:54Speaker 6: when you finally have that encounter. But if you if
- 1:12:56Speaker 6: you're kind of getting your act together and you're you're
- 1:12:59Speaker 6: like in the game that way, it's you'll have more chances,
- 1:13:03Speaker 6: like you can you can let it like like what
- 1:13:06Speaker 6: happened with you, You get busted by a buck. He
- 1:13:08Speaker 6: wins you your target buck and he's right by his
- 1:13:10Speaker 6: betting area. So often you would look at that as
- 1:13:13Speaker 6: like this is over for now, and you go scoot
- 1:13:17Speaker 6: on to the other side. And he didn't, you know,
- 1:13:20Speaker 6: go nuts and get out of there. He wasn't living
- 1:13:22Speaker 6: somewhere else. He just walked away and started doing his
- 1:13:24Speaker 6: thing again. Like you can. You don't need to always
- 1:13:28Speaker 6: force something to happen, because when you get into that realm,
- 1:13:30Speaker 6: like it's just a recipe for failure.
- 1:13:33Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, man, And that's my That was my next
- 1:13:35Speaker 2: big takeaway was that exact point, which is just that
- 1:13:38Speaker 2: you know, when shit hits the fan, it's not all done.
- 1:13:42Speaker 2: You know, pivot make an adjustment, Like if if there's
- 1:13:44Speaker 2: any silver lining I can take out of the other day.
- 1:13:46Speaker 2: It was the fact that, like I had, I was
- 1:13:49Speaker 2: set up in a spot. Like a lot of things
- 1:13:51Speaker 2: that I thought would be true proved to be true
- 1:13:53Speaker 2: like I thought. The first I thought, okay, hey, I
- 1:13:55Speaker 2: gotta be tight, tight inside this core betting air. So
- 1:13:57Speaker 2: I went in there, saw him locked on a dough.
- 1:14:00Speaker 2: Next thing, I decided like, hey, I got to get
- 1:14:01Speaker 2: tight to that again, tighter, and then I need to
- 1:14:03Speaker 2: give it some time here because I think he's gonna
- 1:14:05Speaker 2: stick around. And sure enough, the next morning he wasn't
- 1:14:07Speaker 2: on the dough, but he was still right in there.
- 1:14:10Speaker 2: Now it didn't work out because of what I described.
- 1:14:12Speaker 2: Then things got messed up, and I said, Okay, he's
- 1:14:14Speaker 2: not gonna totally change his world up and get to
- 1:14:16Speaker 2: the other side of this whole section. He's still gonna
- 1:14:18Speaker 2: be cruising, he's still gonna do his thing. I'm gonna
- 1:14:20Speaker 2: surprise him in the other opposite side where he's not
- 1:14:22Speaker 2: expecting me. I just basically did a wind push for
- 1:14:25Speaker 2: him to the other side, and there he was. So
- 1:14:30Speaker 2: I think, you know, sticking to your core RUP principles,
- 1:14:32Speaker 2: I made sure, like I'm always on the down one
- 1:14:34Speaker 2: side of dough betting area, or I'm in some kind
- 1:14:36Speaker 2: of pinch or something that's going to funnel some deer
- 1:14:39Speaker 2: activity together, I try to do the same thing on
- 1:14:41Speaker 2: the other side there as best as I could. And
- 1:14:44Speaker 2: I think that that general approach, like it's so easy
- 1:14:47Speaker 2: during the rut. It has been for me in the past,
- 1:14:49Speaker 2: like ten years ago, I would chase sightings, I would
- 1:14:52Speaker 2: chase pictures. I'd be here, then i'd be there, then
- 1:14:54Speaker 2: it'd be here, then I'd be there. And these deer
- 1:14:56Speaker 2: don't do the exact same thing from one day to
- 1:14:59Speaker 2: the next. So if you're chasing seeing like a picture,
- 1:15:01Speaker 2: it almost never works out. You gotta stick to principles.
- 1:15:06Speaker 2: I think, don't chase isolate incidents. Stick to principles when
- 1:15:10Speaker 2: it comes to the rut. The principle being like, Okay,
- 1:15:13Speaker 2: is there a reason for this deer, for for any deer,
- 1:15:16Speaker 2: but and maybe it's a specific deer to be downwind
- 1:15:18Speaker 2: of this betting or in this pinch point, or is
- 1:15:20Speaker 2: there convergence of all these things, like how many of
- 1:15:23Speaker 2: these things can I stack on top of each other
- 1:15:25Speaker 2: to make this an optimal location? Like in your case,
- 1:15:27Speaker 2: you've got that ridge kind of pinge with the river
- 1:15:31Speaker 2: cover pinch, and then you also had an oak tree
- 1:15:33Speaker 2: in there too, so you had like stacked attractions all there.
- 1:15:36Speaker 2: Like that's that's a principle for rut hunting success. That works.
- 1:15:40Speaker 2: So don't get hung up in these freaking trail cameras
- 1:15:43Speaker 2: and and this crazy like oh do this wiggy waggy thing, like,
- 1:15:47Speaker 2: just keep it simple, stupid, it's the rut. Do the
- 1:15:51Speaker 2: things you know that works, stick to those, stay focused,
- 1:15:55Speaker 2: don't go crazy with your shots, don't get caught up
- 1:15:58Speaker 2: in the craziness of the whole thing, and you know,
- 1:16:03Speaker 2: manage expectations.
- 1:16:06Speaker 6: Well that was a laundry list, buddy.
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all I got, though, Tony. I don't know
- 1:16:14Speaker 2: any other thoughts on your end or any other thing
- 1:16:17Speaker 2: that you want to add. To leave people here when
- 1:16:18Speaker 2: they're listening. It's November ninth, tenth eleven somewhere in that window,
- 1:16:22Speaker 2: so I mean people are like right there in the
- 1:16:25Speaker 2: heat of it. We're about to hit lockdown maybe for
- 1:16:27Speaker 2: some people. Any other suggestions on that front.
- 1:16:30Speaker 6: Man, I would say, treat the next ten twelve days
- 1:16:35Speaker 6: like you would have treated the last ten twelve days.
- 1:16:38Speaker 6: And even though you're gonna hear about the lockdown, and
- 1:16:40Speaker 6: even though your cameras are going to slow down and
- 1:16:42Speaker 6: people are gonna start talking about how it's getting harder
- 1:16:45Speaker 6: for me this I'm heading to Wisconsin here to hunt
- 1:16:49Speaker 6: some big wood stuff, and I know it's gonna not
- 1:16:51Speaker 6: be like too fast and furious, like it's gonna probably
- 1:16:54Speaker 6: be a little bit subdued. But I think I have
- 1:16:57Speaker 6: a better chance at a big one now. Even though
- 1:16:59Speaker 6: my days are going to be probably more boring, they're
- 1:17:02Speaker 6: still going to be out there doing their thing. There's
- 1:17:04Speaker 6: there's plenty of time left here, even though we're not
- 1:17:07Speaker 6: on the crazy chase fest that was Halloween or whatever.
- 1:17:10Speaker 6: Just stick it out like it's not it's not over
- 1:17:13Speaker 6: and it's not going to be over for a little
- 1:17:15Speaker 6: while yet, like keep going.
- 1:17:17Speaker 2: Yeah, that's whyse wise words are there, Tony. I guess
- 1:17:22Speaker 2: with that, let's wrap the sucker up. I appreciate you,
- 1:17:25Speaker 2: uh excuse me. I appreciate you hopping right out of
- 1:17:28Speaker 2: the truck after the trip home and doing this with me,
- 1:17:31Speaker 2: And thank you for the words of consolation for me
- 1:17:34Speaker 2: coming off of mine.
- 1:17:36Speaker 6: Yeah, but I gotta go. I gotta go finish. Butcher
- 1:17:39Speaker 6: in that, dear, do you need me to send you
- 1:17:40Speaker 6: some venison or are you good? Hey?
- 1:17:42Speaker 5: Now?
- 1:17:43Speaker 2: Hey, no, too soon, too soon.
- 1:17:46Speaker 6: Too good, there buddy, you'll get there all right, man.
- 1:17:50Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Tony, and thank you to everyone listening.
- 1:17:54Speaker 2: Make sure you're following me and Tony over on Instagram
- 1:17:56Speaker 2: to see any other more frequent updates or up to
- 1:17:59Speaker 2: date updates from us. Make sure you're listening to the
- 1:18:01Speaker 2: Foundations podcast every Tuesday. We've got the Rough Fresh Reports
- 1:18:04Speaker 2: every Wednesday, where we're getting up to the intel from
- 1:18:07Speaker 2: hunters from all across the country right now. That's particularly
- 1:18:10Speaker 2: useful and interesting as things are changing really quick, so
- 1:18:13Speaker 2: check that out. I think that's it, So thank you
- 1:18:18Speaker 2: for listening, Thank you for being a part of this community.
- 1:18:22Speaker 2: Stay wired to hunt, and this week we're gonna send
- 1:18:26Speaker 2: it out with some different tunes. Let's queue last year's
- 1:18:30Speaker 2: rut sing along of the Year, the most Wonderful Time to.
- 1:18:34Speaker 5: Kill Deer Boys. Good to see you, Hayden, it's been
- 1:18:39Speaker 5: a while. Hey, Sorry, I'm late. I crashed my Pontiac
- 1:18:41Speaker 5: Castec into a light pull and had to walk the
- 1:18:43Speaker 5: rest of the way, But I'm here now. That's what matters.
- 1:18:45Speaker 5: Give me a glass of scotch, please, Hey, just two
- 1:18:47Speaker 5: rocks in there. I don't my guys, we're starting already.
- 1:18:50Speaker 5: This is happening. Okay, just give me the give me
- 1:18:52Speaker 5: the glass, thank you. Okay, here we go. It's the
- 1:18:55Speaker 5: most wonderful time to kill deer. With the run now
- 1:19:03Speaker 5: just starting and dashing and dotting and veins cutting clean,
- 1:19:09Speaker 5: It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. There's far
- 1:19:14Speaker 5: too much isonus glass. It's the half happy seeds of all.
- 1:19:21Speaker 5: There's gotta be at least twelve cues with grunting and
- 1:19:24Speaker 5: bleeding and call fronts and sleeting the last weeks of fun.
- 1:19:30Speaker 5: It's the half happy seedssin of home. There'll be pictures
- 1:19:38Speaker 5: for posting and bragging and boasting, and truck beds with
- 1:19:42Speaker 5: big bucks in toe. There'll be narrow miss stories and
- 1:19:47Speaker 5: tales of your glories of booner bucks missed with our bulls.
- 1:19:53Speaker 5: It's the most wonderful time to kill deer. Not just one,
- 1:19:59Speaker 5: maybe two. There will be no dose of blowing and
- 1:20:03Speaker 5: looming knocks glowing and blood trails so clean. It's the
- 1:20:08Speaker 5: most wonderful time to kill de Excuse me, can I
- 1:20:15Speaker 5: have a napkin. Please. I just spilled some scotch on
- 1:20:17Speaker 5: my loafers. I can't have dirty loafers in the studio.
- 1:20:21Speaker 5: Thank you Tailgate Beers for drinking. And big Bucks is
- 1:20:25Speaker 5: slinking and chasing and sent jacking does They'll be fighting
- 1:20:30Speaker 5: and scraping and no more escaping and arrowshot true hitting.
- 1:20:35Speaker 5: Oh key, change what. No one told me that it's
- 1:20:42Speaker 5: the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very
- 1:20:47Speaker 5: unprepared for this. There will be much morning sitting in
- 1:20:51Speaker 5: cold fronts, are hitting the dawn, crispin clean. It's the
- 1:20:56Speaker 5: most wonderful time, most swonderful time, yes, the most swam
- 1:21:05Speaker 5: diffle time to kilty. There's too much ice in the glass.
- 1:21:19Speaker 5: Two rocks