Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 394: How I Killed My #1 Target Buck in Michigan

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Ep. 394: How I Killed My #1 Target Buck in Michigan · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: brought to you by on X. We are here for
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a podcast that I am really damn excited to be recording.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Uh it's it's me here and the Nine Fingered Wonder
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Dan Johnson. Dan, we are here for a celebratory conversation.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I know, if it wasn't so early in the day,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I think we both should be hammering some beers while
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: we record this. Who says who says? We're not right? Okay,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I guess you are on Eastern time, yep. Um, yeah, dude,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Today we are talking success stories. Um, you killed a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: great buck in Iowa. So I want to hear about
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: how your rutcation went and how you killed that deer
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and dive into all that. And then, as you know, um,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: my three year story chasing the buck I called tran
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: just came to a close too, So I want to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: recap that entire saga. Um, dive into details, dive into
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: how it ended and some of the lessons learned along
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the way and all that kind of stuff. So this
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: is this is uh man, it's a culmination with a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff for both of us. You know, Yeah,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I love the I love the text messages. You know,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the got him that's it and instantly we I know
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: what you're talking about, right, And uh, I think I
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: threw you a text when I shot mine too. It's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: like arrow launched or whatever, and those are the text
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: those Yeah, those are the best ones. That's it's It's
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: what I enjoy probably more than anything. This time of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: years is just you just wait and wait and hope
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: that there's gonna be some good news from someone and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: when it comes waiting it's what we work for all
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: year long. Man, So you want to should we just
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: get into it? I mean, we got a lot to cover. Um.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I do have one quick kid story that I have
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to tell and it is Yeah, it's a So if
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you're the kind of person who bitches about this part
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of the show, fast forward about two minutes and then
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I should be done. So um, so don't fast forward.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: This is the good stuff, all right. So I'm rotating laundry, right.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I take the laundry out of the washer and I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: put it in the dryer, hit start go away for
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: about four hours, do something come back? Open. I just
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I'm getting angry even thinking about it. Open the door
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: and someone had ad put a entire canister of glitter
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: in their pocket and it is now I don't know
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: how many times. I don't know how many times I'm
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: gonna have to dry those clothes to try to get
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: it out of everything and take the filter out. It
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is all over the place. And I don't know if
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you've ever been so so angry with your children that
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you skip the anchor and you go right into this
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: deep dark depression because yelling Adam isn't gonna do anything,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: can change Nope, And you know, you get the dad
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: son of a bit. And then and then oh man, yeah,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: all I did was shower and she's just like figures.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And then when she walked away like she just like
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: kind of left it in my hands. You guys are
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: that phase in life right now where it's just like,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, another ship on the floor that we need
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: to deal with exactly exactly. Oh wow, man, Mark, it
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: must have been full because it is all over I
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: mean we had a fleece blanket in with that load
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: of laundry. I don't know if it's ever gonna be
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: like if if I'm afraid to take it out of
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the dryer, because it's probably just gonna do one of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: those things where it just continually spreads all over the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: house until it's literally everywhere. So the only way this
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: could have been better is if this had been you
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: drying your hunting clothes and all of you was covered
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and glitter. That would be the one way this could
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: be better. Imagine you're hunting closed covered in glitter and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: dear just pegging you from the sunlight bouncing off, and
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: there's really it happens like if it happened like November four,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: So you have to hunt the next day. You're not
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: gonna not hunt, and you're not gonna have time to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: get new closer to deal with it. So you're just
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: stuck out there with pink glitter everywhere, and then you
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: shoot a buck and you have to take a picture
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: with your glittery camo too. That would be Oh, but
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: you would deserve it, man. You know what I would try.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I would try to market the gimmick uh somehow and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: make money off of it. Oh, there's always an angle.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: There's always an angle, man. Is that is amazing? That's right?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Back into the world world. Huh, you had all this
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: grand hunting success and then right back to domesticated life.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: There's no easing into anything anymore. It is straight kick
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to the nuts every single morning when I wake up
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: dead life. Welcome to your life, buddy. You should have
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: pulled out so so so tell me about the glory
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: days back when you used to sit in a tree
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and see big Bucks and uh weren't worried about glitter
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: bombs in your laundry? How did how how did the
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: rotation kickoff? Man? It seemed like it was fast and furious.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: So here's what I'm gonna here. Here is my I'm
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: gonna say two things. South winds and warm temps is
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: what I deal dealt with. So I'm gonna preface this
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: conversation with a conversation that we had all the way
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: back on episode seventy eight with Matt Ross the science
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: behind um the white tail rut or whatever. Some guy
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: uh two days ago hit me up and it was like, dude,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I love that episode because you kind of call out
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: some things that people think are uh you know, like
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about moon phase, we talked about
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: warm tempts. We talked about weather patterns, deer movement, all
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of these things. So I go back and I listened
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to it, and I'm I'm reflecting back on the seven
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: days it took for me to harvest my deer this year,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm can back. I'm like, dude, oh, what Matt
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: said is is really right? And if I'm open to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: observation and looking around, even in warmer temps, I I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: would say that I saw equal deer compared to last
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: year's rut, which was below average temperatures. So I'm sitting
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: here thinking to myself, like, man, I should maybe I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: should stay out for a night or because the temps
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: are worm Well, I didn't do that, and I saw
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the same amount of deer. The only thing that gets
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: tried that started to get tricky with this rut vacation
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: was that I had so many south winds in a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: row that I was worried I was gonna bump some
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of my best spots, and I ended up having to
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: really play off a handful of hunts, like a morning
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: hunt or an evening hunt and goes somewhere so where
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: else where. I knew it wasn't the best option, but
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I knew I knew that I would have a better
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: chance at connecting with a deer un let's say the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: next morning, as opposed to maybe sitting in that place,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: uh back to back for three days in a row
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: or whatever. So I opted to go to a different
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: south wind area that would be like choice number three
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: or four and hit choice number one after it sat
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days. Right, dude, I saw great.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I was seeing great deer all, you know, Like I
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: saw some shooters uh way in the distance. Um. I
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: passed a couple of four year olds this year, uh
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that had less than desirable racks. Um, I passed a
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: couple of really good three year olds this year in
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that time frame. And I did it all without freezing
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: my toes off. So I mean, I wish I could
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: sit here and say I had some hardcore strategy story
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: for you about how I, um did things different or
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: made all these game plans and chess moves to try
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: to to shoot a deer. Um. And I'll get to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: this the kill story here in a second. But man,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: it's like I just follow through, followed through with what
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: my goal was, and that was check trail cameras, look
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: for fresh sign cycle through my stands. Uh, you know,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the best possible stands on the wind direction that I'm giving,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: make the best choices for access routes, and uh, you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: run and gun whenever I needed to, and I put
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: myself in position of some really good deer. The only
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: thing is the big deer that I would was chasing
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: did not show up while I was in the tree
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: stand for that area. So real quick, those best stands.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know we've talked about in this place
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: in the past, but can you illustrate, like, what are
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: these things look like? This is all on pinch points.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: These are all back in the timber, I'm assuming, But
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: were you mostly do em betting area sits, transition, etcetera, etcetera.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yep of my hunts. So I'll tell you this an
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: evening and a morning of that seven days, So two
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: hunts out of fourteen hunts resulted in me hunting, betting
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: down wind, of betting down wind of betting or or
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: flanking betting, uh, and putting myself What I would say
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: would be where betting an edge connect? Does that make sense? Yeah?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So you're saying all but two or just two were
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: betting everyone except to OK. Yeah, that makes sense then Ye,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So my access points or my access routes were on point.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I mean I took no liberties there. I was played
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: that wind hard and with a south wind, you can,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you know, and in some of the areas you've hunted
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: them throughout the years, you get really comfortable with and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: knowing what the deer are gonna do, how they're gonna
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: do it. You know what the thermals are doing, if
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the sun's out or if the attempts are where they
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: need to be. And uh man, I had some really
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: cool encounters with a lot of deer. I didn't get busted,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and it just it was one of those It was
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: really fun to be in the tree that first week
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: in November watching all the action happened. You know, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: watched the three year olds and and some of the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: four year olds really do that rut thing where they
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: were chasing those around, and you know, watching them just
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: dive in and out of betting areas all morning long.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It's settled down probably about ten thirty ish eleven o'clock,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I'd get out of the stand, go to a new spot,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and then pick right back up about two thirty ish.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Uh and just kind of nothing really crazy where one
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: dough brings about fifteen deer through, but more of this
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: one on one interaction where you know there may be
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: spike buck following a three year old or something like that. So, Uh,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I really focused heavy this year because I felt like,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: for some reason, I felt like the warm weather was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: going to keep them out moving around all day long.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: So what did I do. I went to where the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: concentration of deer movement is going to be the highest,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and that's betting areas. So I put myself down wind
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: or flanking with a flanking wind into betting areas, and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: man had some really good encounters and and uh had
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: a blast doing it. And you were passing on these
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: good bucks? Was that just because well you're you're seeing
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: these good bucks passing on them? Was this because the
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: best bucks that you had on camera were still showing
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: up and you believe they were there? Or where was
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: your head out with that? Did you have a couple
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: of mine? Yeah? So that buck I passed last year. Uh,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: he was a really beautiful three year old, probably in
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that one forty class maybe one forty five class. Uh,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: he was in eleven, and so this year he blew
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: up to a I'm gonna say low one seventies as
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a as a four year old. He could be five,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: who knows, but he made the hit list for sure.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And then there was the buck that I ended up shooting.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I had maybe one picture of him throughout the entire summer,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: but the other guy who hunts the property had pictures
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: of him all summer and all October and all November. Right,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: So we kind of put our trail cameras in a
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: little bit different of places, um, just so we're not
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: really overlapping each other, and we've kind of had a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: We communicate now more than we used to in the past.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So you know, I'll send him a pick of a
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: deer and say, hey, you run into this guy, or
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: he sends me the deer that he kills, and I
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: send him the picks that he kills. And then we
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: exchanged any trail camera photos that we have of these deer. Yep.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: So it was you know, I had definitely the one
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: hit lister on camera number two and number three. Uh
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: you know both were big ten pointers. Uh, No, one
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: was a nine and one was a ten. And so
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I go to check trail cameras the first day back.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I hunted up here the morning of like
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: November two, and the evening of November two before that hunt,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I went and I checked all my trail cameras, pulled
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: all the cards, went looked at him all on the computer,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and number two and number three were both broken all
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: the way. I mean, like dramatic. You know. They were
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: just a G two and a main beam, so they
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: had knocked off a ton of points. One broke off
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: almost his entire side. So number two and number three
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: were to me, we're both like, you know, I don't
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: even want to hunt the areas where these dyer running
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: because I don't want to shoot. I don't want to
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: shoot a broken buck. I want to shoot, you know,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: something that's put together and that just that what this does,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: is it now if these deers survive into the next year,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: it automatically takes him out of the equation and now
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: they can come back. Right. So I wasn't really into
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: shooting a broken buck, and so I stayed out of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: that area and UH focused my attention on a couple
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: other places where the big one had run a couple
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: of times he was kind of hit and miss on
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: trail cameras and let's see and then I went back
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to the one betting area that I shot my dear
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: last year, just kind of hoping that Natalie Charlie would
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: show up, right, you know, almost like holy field, Yeah,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: wish on a prayer, maybe he'll be there again. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure you thought about that too, where it's like,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: well I really don't know where to go, so let
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: me go to us hit, let me go to a
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: historically good area or stand location, and let's just see
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: what happens, right, Yeah, And and basically that was it
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I had. I got there and one of my cell
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: cams had been stolen, and I got pissed, and and uh,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I was hoping that he would show up on one
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of those cameras. But if he shows up on that camera,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: he typically shows up on a couple of other cameras
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: on the farm. He did not, So, um, I think
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it's fair to say he has either gone and disappeared
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to go somewhere else, or he's been you know, shot
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and killed or died of a disease or whatever, because
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: typically deer stick around and they don't necessarily come back
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: if they if they're gone, If that makes sense. Yeah,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: So so I hit that betting area up a couple
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of times, and that's my favorite. That's my favorite betting
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: area to hunt now, because the wind does something so
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: awesome in there. And we I'm sitting at the actual
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: top of a ridge and on this ridge, it's real
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: thick on top and it created opens up and creates
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: this edge and along this edge where this edge meets
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: this I called a spur ridge. And it's a really
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: small terrain feature, really small ridge that flanks a bigger ridge.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: And sometimes there are those terrain features are so small
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't show up on topographic maps, or if
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: it does, it's so subtle that you really need to
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: focus on what you're looking for in order in order
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: to identify it. Now, the closer that the topo lines
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: are to each other, the easier it is to tell.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: But if they're you know, they're you know, thirty ft
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: apart or a hundred feet apart you and you'll never
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: see it. Right. So I sat there, I passed a
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: really good three year old and then basically sat on
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a really big ridge where the south wind blowing over
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the top of the deer and the does just weren't
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: coming through there yet, which took which tells me that,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, they're still they're not getting pushed all over
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the place yet. And so I went back to um
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that main betting area again. And you know, like I
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: said before I even started rambling, here is I wish.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I wish I could sit here and break down everything
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: for you. But at the end of the day, it's, uh,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: most of my success this year was just dumb luck explain. Yeah,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: so it's it's November seven. I don't even remember what
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I did that morning hunt. I think I uh, I
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: hunted that big ridge again, and that I went and
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I checked some trail cameras, went back home, did some
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: work on the computer. And I'll be honest, man, I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't hitting the timber until two thirty. And some of
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the times I wasn't even I wasn't even set up
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: in my tree until three o'clock or a little after three.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And just because I was trying to get work done
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: at home, so I wasn't up until midnight trying to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you know, get you know, get work done and then
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: wake up at four and get back out out there.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So so I ended up driving to Uh. I was
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: gonna do a hanging hunt on where a corner of
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the marsh meets uh like a tree fell over a fence,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and they really crossed there a lot. And throughout the years,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I've had really good trail camera pictures of really good
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: deer crossing through there. My number one hit lister had
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: been through there, I think two days before I got
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to the farm. So I was just kind of like,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it's a new south wind. Um, it's a new place
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: on a south wind. I can flank their travel real hard,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: easy access. And so I parked at the end of
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: this little sliver a timber inside of it was in
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: an egg field, but once they combine it, they let
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the cattle in, so then it turns into a cattle pasture.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So I I said, man, there's no need for me
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to walk so far. I'm gonna pull up about two
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: yards closer and just save me, you know, three minutes
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: of walking or whatever. So I put my I load up,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm getting ready to go to that fence crossing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: And what I I get loaded up stand bow, backpack, everything,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: and I've been running my osonics in my backpack as
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I'm walking to and front of my tree stands. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and that's a little foreshadowing because I think that actually helped.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: But I park about so I get out of my truck,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I loaded up, start walking, and I'm about eight two
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: hundred yards. This is no joke. A d two hundred
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: yards away from my truck, and it's pretty windy out
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and I looked to my right and I'm looking in
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: this big thick section of timber. Inside it's like just
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: a pocket of timber. And I said, man, that's gotten
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: thick throughout the years. I bet you there's some deer
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: that feel real comfortable in there. I took two more steps,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and I see times come up out of these bushes
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and then just come straight back down and come up,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and they come down. So this buck is raking a tree,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and I go, oh my god, that's my number one buck.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: He's right there, and so I I I get lucky
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: here and there's a giant, giant tree right in front
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of me. So I just take one big step and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: now I can see his back half, but he can't
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: see me because I'm behind this big tree and I'm
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: abe and the wind's blowing right at him. I mean,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the wind is going right at him. I slide my
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: backpack off, get my arrow knocked to put my release
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: on and I creep around and I I couldn't see
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: him anymore, but I kind of I thought I saw
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: some fur something, and I click the I range the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: bush in front of him nineteen yards. I range the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: bush behind him twenty nine yards, and he's right up
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: against he's he's closer to the back end of that gap.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: So I turned my dial to I got a single pin.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So I turned my dial to yards, draw my bow,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: get my uh kisser button anchored, and I step out
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and his nose is straight up in the air. He's
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: caught something right, like what what? What is this? Like?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You could tell his body language was changed. He wasn't
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: rubbing the tree anymore, and he had since kind of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: quartered away, but he was looking straight back, you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: like sometimes when they itched their aunt their back with
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: their antlers or their their grooming themselves, their heads turned
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: all the way. And he was like that. And I
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: stepped right out. I'm already drawn, and his noses in
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: the air, and I'm like, man, I was well before that.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I was shaken so bad because I thought this was
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: number I thought this was number one, and I was
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: missing the D loop on my on my bowstring. With
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: my release because I was shaking so bad. And I
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: said to myself, Johnson, settled down, because if you mess
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: this up, you're not getting a crack at him again
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: this year. So handle it. So I took a deep breath,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: got composed, drew back, step out anchor, and let it fly.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And he me he I heard. I could hear the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: thud through through the wind, just like this little best
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: sound mule kick. And he runs off, and I was
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: so fired up. And when he was running away that
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: deer looked running away, I was like, oh my god,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: what did I just do? Like never happened. First deer,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: first deer I ever shot on the ground. And so
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: anyway he ends up. He ends up diving down into
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: this pocket running across a cattle pasture. I can see
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: my arrow hanging out of him, and I thought to myself,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: oh my god, I did not get the penetration that
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I wanted on that. I'm gonna say a little. I'm
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: gonna say less than half an arrow. And I'm like,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: but if it's that much, you're still it's still a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: good soul. I just stop what I'm doing. I pull
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: out my phone and I call one of my buddies
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: up and I'm like, dude, I just shot what I
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: think is an absolute giant. Everybody at the time that
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I knew my my buddy who helps me drag out
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: sometimes down there he had COVID. My mom and my
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: stepdad they both had COVID. So I was sleeping in
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the garage during rut vacation. I wasn't in the house. Yeah,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: so I I I call it my buddies. He's like,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I'll be there, and I said, I'm gonna go to impact.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if there's blood, and then I'm gonna
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: back out and then I'll wait for you. Well, I dropped.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: After I hang up with him, I called my wife,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: told her what happened. Dropped down into where I shot him.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Really good blood, like perfect bubbly bubble blood right like
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and and like good splots of it. And so I
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: end up following it for ten yards, following it for
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: twenty yards, and then I just it starts to open
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: up and it's really good and it's it's for a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: for a seasoned hunter who has been on a lot
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of blood trails, it is a no brainer lung shot.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Now my question, I had to myself was is it
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: one lung or is it both lungs, because he was
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: kind of quartering, you know, quartering away at the time.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And so I back out and I wait a handful
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: of hours for my buddy to come and and uh
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: help me act this deer. And he brought one of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: his buddies to another guy that I know, and long
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: story short, we start picking up this blood trail, man,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and uh it just it's very good blood, very good blood.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Now we're starting to see where there's two blood spots
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: every bound, right, So there's there's two holes in this
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: deer somewhere right, and he is starting to bleed really
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: black bad. We find the arrow and it's broken off right,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: and there's blood all the way up to the fletchings.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So that tells me as he's running he kicked he
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: kicks it out and it broke somehow. And then we
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: get into the timber where we where he disappeared from
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: me after I shot him. Right, that's probably a hundred yards,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: so I watched him run a hundred yards before he
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: disappeared into this really thick, nasty little area again. And
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: uh um, the blood trail not gonna lie. It's awesome.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: When you can just at a normal walk follow it,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: no hands and knees, grid searching, just blood all over
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the place up here, absolutely absolutely, and uh, man, we
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: walk up on we walk up on him, and uh
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the shot ended up being one lung front side lung
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and trachia and jugular. So he he just got smoked,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: he got destroyed, and uh he ended up running about
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: a hundred and hundred twenty yards maybe and then pile
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it up and uh, and then you know, you get
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that moment that is I don't know, man, it's one
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: of those it's it's a surreal moment the first time
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you ever get to touch the animal that you just killed.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I don't have the same feeling for turkeys. I don't
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: have the same feeling for fish or any other animal
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: that I've ever hunted as far as you know, big game.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: But that moment where you get to grab his antlers
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and pull his head up and sit down and put
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: your hands on this animal and appreciate it, it's uh,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it's just there's no words, man, you can't. It's different
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: for everybody. And uh, I just felt so happy at
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that moment. And and it wasn't my number one buck,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: but it did not matter. It's if we're gonna sit
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: here and put numbers or a level to it. It's
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: probably my second biggest buck I've ever shot. And it's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a beautiful deer with awesome characteristics, and he's a beautiful
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: ten pointer four year old, and uh I'm just I'm
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: geeked out, man, you should be that he's a heck
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of a deer and a crazy story how it came together.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, it's not like you put
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: together this master plan for him. But it's really cool
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: in its own unique way. When sometimes you have these
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: crazy things happened that you find yourself in and you
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: can take advantage of it, that's that's awesome in its
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: own right. So I'll tell you what what what I
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: will say is that from a strategy standpoint, I was
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: going to where he had already crossed, so he was
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: already on his feet. He came through the area that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I wanted to hunt, and uh so from a strategy standpoint,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I guess if you want to say I was going
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to the right location, it's just he beat me to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: it and I ended up shooting him on the ground.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Well well done, my friend. Congratulations on a another successful
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Iowa season. Yeah, man, I I'm so happy. The best
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: and one of the other parts is today today I
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: picked my buck up from the processor and there, my
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: my deep freeze is now full again. And that puts
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: an equal smile on my face as it does walking
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: up and touching him for the first time. Gotta have
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that full freezer. Yeah. So, um, my story isn't crazy, right,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: first time I ever saw this buck on the hoof probably, um,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I got a shed laying out. It might be from him,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it might not be, who knows, not a big deal.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: But this uh, this dear name Tran, that's uh that
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you've been following for a handful of years, kind of
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: met his match. When did you end up shooting him?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: What day was it? Shot him? Sunday? November I think
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: would have been the date. Um, that's what it was.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And that's after the rifle season. Yeah, in rifle season. Okay,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: so rifle season eight? So did you shoot this with
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a bow or with a rifle. Let's wait till we
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: get to the story. Dan oh, okay, ship, Sorry, I
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: know I should know better than this. So, so why
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: don't you kick it? Kick it off? Go all the
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: way back? So This story begins in two thousand eighteen.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So that year, if you were call, was the year
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: after I found another buck who I hunted for a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: long time, holy Field. I found his shed that spring,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and so I thought maybe that buck was back for
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: a year number four. So I planning for him, looking
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: for him, and you know, the summer. The summer arrived,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: he didn't show up. In September arrived, he didn't show up.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: October arrived, and he didn't show up. I got pictures
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: of a big eight pointer. I'm like, maybe that's him,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: but it was kind of like weird pictures, like foggy
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: or not great lighting, different things. I couldn't really tell.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: But he had tall G twos and I'm wondering, maybe possibly,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: but probably not well that buck I was getting pictures
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: of was this, dear. I eventually did get clear pictures
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: of him and realized, no, it's definitely not holy Field.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: This is a new buck um, or at least one
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: that I hadn't identified in the past. And he was
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: like just a really nice tall eight point with kind
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of curving times um. And my guest was he was
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: just a cool three year old and I pinned pointed
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: him as is like the best up and coming buck
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: ahead in the farm. Right then, I started seeing him
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: quite a bit, got some cool video of him, UM,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and knew that he would be the deer that if
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: he was around next year, he'd be one I would
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: probably the best buck that I have around based off
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: what I was seeing. So I started keeping tabs every
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: time I saw him, every time I got a daylight
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: trail Cara Pitcher. I started noting it way back then,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: even though I wasn't trying to kill him. UM. Fast forward,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: you know, later into the year, the whole frank thing happened.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: If you remember, this really big ten pointer showed up
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: on Halloween that year, UM, and I hunted him for
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a month and ended up seeing him on the evening
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: of December. It's like the seventh, eighth or ninth one,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: somewhere right around there. And Trans showed up that night
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and I passed on him at like sixty yards. Um.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: This was this was the late firearms season, and UM
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and passed on Tran that night. Uh. And then like
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes later, the big guy showed up and killed him.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: So that was basically year one UH with Tran. I
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: guess I should make one other point, I did actually
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: see him in person once in the summer and got
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: velvet video of him. Just didn't connect the dots until
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: later in the year. But but he was there in
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the summer, was there all through the fall, and was
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of of bucks of that caliber, Like he was other
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: than Frank, who was this big new buck, Tran was
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the best dear. There was one three year old that
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: was him that was shown up a bunch and so
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I kind of just knew, like he's the one. If
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: he makes it, he'll be the one next year. Um question, Yeah, alright,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: So as you start to calculate or put together an inventory,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: and you know, like Frank that one year was your
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: number one target buck. Um, Holy Field in the past
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: has been your number one target buck. How much thought
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: do you give to these other dear throughout the season
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: or what are they doing while you're in the process
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: of hunting your number one target buck. Well, the thing is,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: because I'm hunting such small spots, there's almost never more
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: than one deer I would actually shoot. Um, Like the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: main farm my hunt is a little over eighty acres,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: but half of that's just open crop field next to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: a road. So really it's like forty some acres that
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I'm actually hunting, so there's only ever one. They'll sometimes
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: be some other bucks that are up and comers I'm
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: keeping tabs on, but I've rarely have I had like
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: multiple definite mature bucks that are there consistently that I
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: could actually like put a game plan together. There's usually
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: one that calls at home. UM. I also got permission
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a few years ago on on part of a small
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: like twenty acre piece that I could start hunting a
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: little bit too, so that gave me a little bit
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: more um. But basically what I do is usually there's
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: one mature one that I'm after, and I'm keeping tabs
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: on him hunting him. But if I get a buck
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that's like a really nice two year old or a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: three year old, I start kind of keeping tabs because
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: it seems like, from what I've seen this area, usually
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: one buck of that caliberal caliber will make it through.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: So there might be three bucks, three or four deer
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: maybe that I'll see in a given year that are
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: two or three years old. It used to be all
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: two year olds. Now we're getting to the point where
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing some three year olds. Um, But I'm I'm
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: passing on those now. So in any given year, there's
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: maybe one buck that's four, and then there's a couple
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: two or three year olds that I'm watching. I'm observing
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: when i'm hunting, I'm paying attention to what they're doing. Um,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: but I'm not actually gonna shoot him. So in two
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: thousand and eighteen, that was the story with Tran. He
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: was the one deer like that. Um. And you know,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: coming into the following winter, I thought, all right, man,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: this is the year. Twenty nineteen is gonna be the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: year of Tran. I'm really hoping he made it. I
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: really hope I can find the sheds. I'm gonna get
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: after it hard. I'm gonna review everything I learned about
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: him last year, put together a game plan. So shed
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: season came, I pounded the timber, I got permission on
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: neighboring properties to shed hunt those spots. Never found him. Um.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Fast forward into the summer and in August he shows
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: up in the field. Was a being field next to
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: one of these places, and I saw him and instantly
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: you could tell as him. Um. Just essentially the exact
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: same formation was last year. Just everything bigger, um, awesome, tall, tight,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: eight pointer, Um, biggest eight point I've ever seen in
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: this area before. So he was he was awesome, and
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I was smitten um. And then the whole thing was
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: reviewing all that Dad I had thinking through, Okay, when
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: did he start showing up in daylight? Where were the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: daylight pictures? Where did I see him in person? There
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: was a lot of activity with him towards the back
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: of the properties I had permission on, so I kind
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: of assumed that that might be, like, there's there's a
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: couple of different betting areas on some neighboring properties that
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I kind of hunt around, and I'm playing movement going
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: in and out of those spots, and it was the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: back betting area of this eight acres that I thought, Man,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: he seems to be spending more time back there. So
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: my assumption was that that's when that would happen. But
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: we get to Oh, I guess it would have been
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: opening day. It was opening day, opening day of two
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: thousand nineteen UM, and it was a hot one. It
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: was gonna be really warm, way above temperare, way above
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: average temperatures. But the next day, day two of the season,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: was going to be this big cold friend hitting. So
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: every year. I always look at opening days like one
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: of my best chances in this area. It seems like
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: year after year there's if there's a good buck around,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: they'll be active in late September, in the first day
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: of October, maybe the second day of October. But then
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly they change when all these other people around
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: me start hunting and I start hunting. Um. But because
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: you know, because I it was a little bit too
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: stuck on the weather and and folks, I know you
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: know these you've heard some of these stories. I want
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: to put it all in one place so we can
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: kind of see the whole traject three. So bear with
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: me as you hear some of these stories. Again, I've
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: been talking about this guy for years, I know that.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: But as we've talked about last year, I decided to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: observe on night number one. So I sat on a
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: hill on the ground a couple hundred yards away from
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: this front food source, this actual little food plot system
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: I've built specifically for these types of scenarios, tight to
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: a betting area in the neighbors. UM. I didn't have
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: any much good cover on my side, so I kind
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of carved in these food plots and playing all these
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: sorghum strips and UM created a really cool zone of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: food inside could cover right next to the best betting
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and it's year and year out turned out to be
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a pretty good spot UM to get at least an
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: encounter or two per year with one of these good bucks.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: And opening night, I decided, I'm gonna watch him afar
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: and then strike the next day with this big cold
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: front hitting, and that's the night I thought that the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: big boy might hit that spot. Well, long story short,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I sat that night and watched this front food plot
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: and Tran shows up that night even with the warm
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: temperatures and walks right past the stand that I would
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: otherwise have hunted. So that was a bummer and one
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: in the next day and he didn't show up the
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: next night, but another really nice three year old did,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: like a hundred and thirty class nine pointer, and I
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: passed him. That's the best buck I've ever passed up
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: to that point. So it's cool that a really nice
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: up and comers showed up um and and we usually
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: don't have multiple deer like that, but that year, so
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: en there was Tran, who I believed to be four,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and then there was two other like hundred thirty class
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: three year olds UM at that point in the year.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: So it was a weird thing and that, for whatever reason,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: we've had more good bucks survive. UM. And I was
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: just at a new place in my hunting journey where
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I was gonna pass on deer like that. But it
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: felt crazy having a deer like that, which is really
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: top tier deer for Michigan, having a fifteen yards broadside
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and not shoot. But I I knew I had to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: save one of my buck tags for the back forty
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and I knew I wanted to save one of my
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: buck tags for trains, so that's what I did. UM. Question,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: So do you feel that holy Field was the dominant
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: buck in this little area that you have access to?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: He definitely was for that two years when he was
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: mature that I was hunting him, and I watched him
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: for three Frank, same question, Frank. He really didn't live
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: on me. He showed up out of nowhere that the
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: year that holy Field disappeared. So the previous two years
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I only had like one sighting of him. I got
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: one trail camera picture, Frank, three years before I shot him.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I saw him one time in December the year before
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I shot him, and in the year I shot him,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: he showed up in a big way on Halloween and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: basically stuck around for a month. So for that month
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: he was the dominant guy there. But the rest of
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the season there really wasn't a dominant buck. Okay, So
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: we'll just say that dear though, was the dominant buck
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: in the area for that moment. Yeah, okay. And then
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: the other the buck train this year dominant buck. Uh.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Starting twenty nine he was the man. Okay. Cool. So
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the question I have for you then is do you
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: what what is it about this area, this property that
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: you hunt, whether it's the management that you do, whether
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: it's the does the terrain, whatever, what is it about
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: this little area that brings in and above average dominant
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: buck for Michigan to stay in this little area for
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: a given period of time. Yeah, So I think I've
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: got a set of circumstances that that's that's nice to have. Um,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: even though it's a small property that I can hunt,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I've got a couple of things. I've got myself who
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm the only person who hunts my little piece
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that I have sole permission on. The eight um, the
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: eight five or whatever it is. Um, So I am
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: very picky there and I don't shoot anything under the
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: under the four. And then I also have within our
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: like square mile block. Um, there's a handful of other
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: people in that square mile who also are you know,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: they're not shooting everything. Um, they're at least passing on
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: year and a half old bucks. So there's a handful
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of people in our square mile who are at least
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: letting deer get to two, which in Michigan is not
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: a given. So there's a lot of places where everyone
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: will shot the first buck they see. So to have
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: a spot where you know you can get some of
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: these bucks through, that's that's a good thing going for me.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: There's also a couple of the pieces in this square
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: mile that don't get hunted very much. There's a bunch
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of get pounded, but then there's also a couple almost
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: sanctuary properties, and I think that's a big thing that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: helps me. I'm next to one of these spots that's
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: relatively lightly hunted, and that one of those spots has
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: really good betting on it. So there's like a twenty
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: acre chunk within one of these pieces that is just
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: nasty tall grass bushes, brambles Um just kind of the
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: prim mere betting habitat for for Michigan. UM. And that
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: is this zone that is just packed with does every
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: year and whenever there's a dominant buck, which there usually is,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: one buck will make it to four. Usually there's usually
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: one dayer like that and he always is is hunkered
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: in and around that stuff. That's just it's the best spot.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: They always lay claim to it, and there's a lot
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: of ladies in there. So every year I know there's
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: gonna be one of these guys in and around that spot,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and traditionally I've just had to hunt around the edges
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of it. But that would at least give me opportunities
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and and once or twice a year they would come
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to my side. Um. In the case of Frank, I
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: was able to get a shot at him. In the
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: case of holy Field, I saw him a bunch but
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: never was able to get a shot at him. In
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the case of Tran in twenty nineteen, UM, you know,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: he had a couple, had a couple of encounters with
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: them on my side, but it was it was a
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: lot more sightings on properties that couldn't hunt him. But
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: there are spots I could see into but couldn't shoot him. Um,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: that's to answer your question. I think that's why I've
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: been able to get some of these deer that that
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: make it to that age and then stick around because
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's a relatively small pocket, but it's a
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: really good pocket that usually doesn't get bothered. So I
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: think these deer just no it come guns season, I'm
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: not leaving it and traditionally I haven't been harassed here
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: and and that gets them through. Yeah. So do the
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: does stick around all year long on on that property. Yeah,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: it's usually uh just consistently a lot. It's high deer
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: density area too, so there's a lot of deer, a
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: lot of does. Um, you know, always a bunch of
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: young bucks. And then you know over the hunted this
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: area now for ten years, I think, and you know,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's come a long way. The very first year
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I hunted it, there was one deer that was three
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and that was the best year, or that was the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: best deer. The next year there wasn't a single deer
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I thought was three. Um. The following year there was
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a couple three year olds and a five year old Um,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: no sorry, two year old or three year old and
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: then a five year old. UM, and and then a
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: fast forward to the last couple of years and we've
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: had you know, multiple three or four year old or
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: even a multiple four and five. Um. This year, I
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: had a buck that I think was four and a
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: buck that I thought was five. So, you know, I
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: think between my efforts to pass on some of these
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: deer and then some neighbors that I think are doing
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the same in a couple of different pockets in our
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: square mile, I'm guessing that's starting to help. Um. So
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: so yeah, that that was the situation. Um. You know,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I passed on that buck on the second day of
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the season, and then it was looking at historical data
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: which told me that, you know, based on the last year,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: he's at least the first year years around. He didn't
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: really start moving like a whole lot until around the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: last week of October, which is is kind of a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: that's common for deer all over the place. It's common
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: for this property year after year of October's when things
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: seem to kick into gear and there's almost always a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: hot dough that last week, like almost like clockwork, somewhere
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: around there, there's gonna be a good buck chasing, there's
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: gonna be a hot dough with a bunch of box
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: on them. So every year, right around that time, I
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: make sure that that's going to be when I start
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: getting after it. And and so that's what I ended
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: up doing in But it wasn't until Halloween night that
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I actually saw him Sam chasing dough on Halloween night,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: and then after that it was almost DAILI or every
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: other day sightings at least or encounters. The second of
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: November was my closest encounter with him in BO season.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I hunted the backside of a small betting area that
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: was on my side of the property line that was
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: closest to the best betting here that's other neighbors, and
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I've found that I can catch during the rut, these
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: bucks will sent check each of these betting airs, so
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: they'll leave the best cunney hoole pocket on the neighbors,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and they'll come down to hit the kind of ancillary
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: spots that I that I could hunt if I if
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I hit those places long enough, eventually one of these
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: good bucks you know, typically will come through one of
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: these mornings or mid days during the rut. That's what
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: happened holy Field when I almost got a shot at him,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: but I was reading a book in the middle of
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the day UM, And that exact same stand is where
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I had my closest called Tran. It was the second
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: of November, and there was a dough in this thicket
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: right behind me, and Tran was weather and they came
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: out of there, but just passed a little bit out
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: of range. I think it was fifty yards somewhere in
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: that ballpark. I remember them coming through and um and
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: passed out of range, went into the big betting area
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and that was the last I saw them that day.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I had six more sightings um over the course of
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: November after that, and again mostly was in that honey
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: hole thick stuff over there, and I'm just bouncing around
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the edges, trying to make a guess like when's it
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: gonna come to my side, thinking through wind, thinking through
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: different hypotheticals like where most of the dough's coming out
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: to feed into my stuff? Because because the property that
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: I had access to, as I mentioned, was mostly a
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: cut corn field on one side and the cut bean
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: field on the other. So most of what I have
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: to do other than those little back betting year as
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I mentioned was hope that he'll follow a dough that's
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: feeding in the food plots or the fields of my side. Um.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: To to make a long story short, I do that
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: see him, but never on my side or never in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: range all the way until December rolls around. Now it's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: gunn season and we're in muzzle other season. Ah, I
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: have no qualms about shifting to whatever the legal weapon
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: is of choice. I put in a ton of work
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: to get after these deer, and it is not an
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: easy thing to do in these spots where I'm so limited,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and with so many other hunters around me, they're taking
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the guns out there. I certainly have no problem. You know,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: played by the same rules all of them. So I
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: took the gun out there. It's December, se I've waited
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: until a big cold front and like the blue Bird
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: skys high bear metric pressure, UM cold day. UM. I've
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: been watching this cut corn field that I could hunt,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: and a lot of deer been feeding there, but I
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: hadn't been seeing the big guy. But with a weather
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: system that was coming through, I thought, man, um, this
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: is probably the night to push back in there where
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I thought most of them were coming out. And sure enough,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: that's what happened. He came out of the neighbor bedding,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: crossed to my side, but by the time he crossed
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: to my side, he popped into the field but was
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: heading straight away and behind branches of these trees that
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: stretched out over the edge of the field. And I
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: had him in my sights, like the back of his neck.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: But I just I didn't feel taken, didn't feel comfortable
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: taking the shot as he was moving and branches, and
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: didn't like that angle of course. So that was that
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: was the closest I really came to killing him that year. Um,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: it was. It was exciting. It almost came together but didn't.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: And um, a couple of weeks later I saw him
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: one more time on the last day of the season.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Something spooked him off another neighbor's property, like twenty five
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: deer come running off another property and he was in
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: that group and came running by like a hundred yards away. UM,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: so I knew he made it to the end of
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: the season. That was like the last twenty minutes of
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: daylight of the last day and he was still alive.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: So that was how wrapped up. I was hopeful that
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: he made it, but it has been a long tough season,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: you know, chasing him only to you know, kind of
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: have to watch him the distance so often. Um so
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: that's how year two ended. Yeah, and and knowing what
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I know, it's kind of cool because, um, I think
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: this is the same deer your when was your youngest
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: son born? Yeah, so my youngest son was born at
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: the end of January. Okay, alright, so so we have
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: this this time frame. Is there any like throughout the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: rest of the time until we start getting into that
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: February March time frame? Any any anything else significant happening
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: with Tran? So No, all in new was that I
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: really wanted to find his sheds. All right. All right,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: so you're foreshadowing here your wife. Your wife is super pregnant,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: and she says, let's go take a walk. What happens?
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: So she she's due, she's supposed to be given birth
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the baby like any day now, and she, like you said,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: she's like, we need to go for a walk. I
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: need to kind of just work this thing out. And uh,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I said, well, if we're gonna go for a walk,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: why don't we just do do it at this spot
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I can hunt and let's walk the cornfield and maybe
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: we'll get lucky and uh find an early shed. And
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: this would have been like January, I don't know, January,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: something like that, late January, but still pretty early to
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: find antlers, very early to find ailers for a lot
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: of places. Uh. But I thought, we're gonna walk around somewhere.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Might as will do it where there's a chance to
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: find something. And so I go out with my wife
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: who's very pregnant, my almost two year old son, and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: both of our dogs, and we just barely get into
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: this cornfield. I mean we're forty yards from the road
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: or something like that. We're just getting out into this
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: cut cornfield and I see times and I'm like, holy crap,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: there's an antler right there. And I go running up
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: to it. And once I got close up to see it,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: I realized, holy crap, that's it's the antler. It's him.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: It's trans shed. And then I look a couple of
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: feet away and there's the other side his match set
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: sitting right there, just barely off the road. Uh. My
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: least hard shed hunt of all time, Like the craziest,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: most lucky thing that's ever happened to me. The match
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: set of the number one buck I'm after, and I
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: got to do it with my wife and my son,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: and uh, it was wild. It was crazy, and I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: guess I should have looked at it as maybe foreshadowing
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: of more good things to come, but uh yeah, they're
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: sitting here right behind me on the shelf. And and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: that just sent tran fever to another level because now
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I had the match set off a buck that I
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: was hunting in Michigan. I've never had a match set
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of a deer. I've never found a match that of
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: any buck in Michigan, I don't think. And now it
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: was one that I could actually hunt, and it was
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: a deer that would be five if he made it
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: to hunting season. Um, so it was really excited about that.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: What what's awesome is like these stories that you have,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if they're almost unbelievable because it's
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: it's like you're you're writing it, you know what I mean,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Like here here's you know, this year, this is what happened,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: and it's like this climactic, this climactic story and then boom,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: here's just the sheds and it's it's it's almost like
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: you don't even know I need to know the rest
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: of the story because you are gonna shoot this deal.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: It's just like I found the sheds, had all this
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: history with him now and now it's just a matter
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of time until you kill him. Man. It never feels
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: like that to me, though, Well, you're the guy who's
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: spending time in the trees. Yeah, man, it uh, But yes,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I've been I've been lucky to have a little pocket
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: where these bucks feel comfortable and I'm able to, you know,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: not always be right on them, but at least be
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: seeing them and having the occasional encounter and getting to
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: know them. And and the other nice thing about this
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: area is that I can because there's a little bit
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: of topography more than a lot of places of Michigan,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: And there's some spots where I can sit up on
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: hills and seed down into some of this betting, which
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: is relatively open when you're looking at it from above.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: So I've got good visibility to some of these places. Um,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: which leads me to having all these settings to um.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I found the sheds. It's crazy. Um. Fast
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: forward into the summer. My whole plan, you know, in
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: preparation for the season, was all about this buck. Um
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: prep and new trees that I wanted to hunt in
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: the saddle for him this fall my year. You know,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: as we talked about a few months ago, I was
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I was going to be more aggressive than ever before.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to you know, basically, I was, I
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: was gonna make moves immediately. I was going to push
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: into some spots that I typically maybe wouldn't have, maybe
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: even earlier than I would have. Um, I just wanted
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: to hunt him down. I was, even though I'm limited
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways, I was going to hunt him down.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Was my plan. Um. And then a few things changed,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: which which change. This year three was really all about change.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: I had all these plans, at all this historical data
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: again like I did in year one. In year two,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: I've I've documented every daylight sighting, every daylight photo, what
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: the wind direction was, what the temperature was, where this was,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: where he was coming from, where he was going. So
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I have all this stuff, and this, you know, has
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: fully informed what I think I'm going to do. In UM.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: You know, I changed my food plots to try to
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: encourage him to come out a little bit further. I
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: planted different stuff, I plan it in different ways. I
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: changed tree locations. Um, I see him in August, he
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: shows up again. I'm seeing him. He shows up a
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: handful of times that I'm out there, and I'm confirmed
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: if he's alive. He's a mega stud Michigan five year old. Um,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: this is incredible. I'm so excited. Quite a few daylight
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: sightings leading up to the opener of season. I think
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I saw him two nights or three nights before opening day. Um.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: But then a few things changed. Um. Number one, I
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: end up getting a little bit of additional permission on
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: another neighbors who I'm able to hunt some of that
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: good betting now that in the past I had only
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: been able to watch. Now I was able to hunt
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: some of these places, and and that was totally new
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: for me. There's are places I've watched but never been
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: able to get in there. So all of son, all
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: my ideas of having hunt these edges, having to hunt
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: this back betting air, but not being able to hunt
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: the primo betting, having to kind of depend on him
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: chasing a dough into one of my food plots are opening.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Now all of a sudden, I don't need to just
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: wait for those things. I can actually go into the
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: best of the best stuff that I've dreamed of forever. Um,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: So opening day, all that stuff passes and and he's gone,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: He's one second, one second. I think you're undervaluing that
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: right there. I mean, we can't just skip, you know,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: you can't just say, well, I gained it access to
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: this farm, because I think I've been in a scenario
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: where that little bit of access plays a big role
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: and maybe not killing him, but figuring him out. And
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: So did that small little access that you got to
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: that additional property get you closer? Did it get you
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I mean did it did it help in just a
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: little way or did it help in a big way?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Helped in a big way. Um, if that hadn't happened,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the story you're about to hear would be dramatically different.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Um because of several other changes that came about. There's
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: all these things that changed. And Um, if I hadn't
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: gotten that extra permission, I would have probably had my
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: worst hunting season out here in years maybe ever. Yeah.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: So my whole point of me bringing this up and
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: kind of emphasizing that particular point is what Mark did
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: here is big. He went after it. He just didn't
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: sit and wait. He he went and he made moves
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: to try to access a piece of ground to get
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: him closer to this buck. And I honestly think people
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: don't do that enough. And access can make all the difference,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: that is for sure. And um and it certainly did
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: for me because I got I had this extra access
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: now and you know, opening A couple of days went by,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: and I stayed kind of conservative. For the first couple
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: of days. We didn't have super great weather, so I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: hunted some of the edges of that stuff just to
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: see what's going on, and there was. There wasn't as
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: much going on as I was hoping, So I had
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: some back forty filming, I had some other things going on.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I was gonna kind of just just because now I
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: could get into that great spot. I didn't want to
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: abuse that. I wanted to say, Okay, I'm gonna wait
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: until I know he's there, and then I'm gonna go
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: to the spots I've always wanted to go but couldn't.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: But I'm not going to rush in their prematurely. Um,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: So I kind of hunt some observation things, just trying
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: to say, Okay, when's gonna start, you know, moving around
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: a little more. And then my property that I have
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: my original permission on the farmer disks the fields under completely,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: so not just like a light disking. I mean we
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: go from a bean field to a dirt field and
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: dirt And I had to laugh because that when I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: was in Michigan and I spent the night at your
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: house that one night, and I just like listening to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: you tell me that story about how the the field
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: got dissed under, I felt like like you were suffering
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: some kind of depression because like you must have felt
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: that that was gonna play a huge impact in how
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: the deer we're going to move through your property this year.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Huge and it and it did. Man. I mean all
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: of the movement through the stuff I can hunt is
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: predicated on having these food sources on the outside. All
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: the movement goes from these interior bedding years to these
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: exterior agg fields, and without it, they're not going to
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: come onto the stuff I can hunt at all. They're
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: just gonna go the opposite direction to the other side
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: of the square mile where there is food. So what
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: I usually have like fifty acres of food that I
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: can hunt on these farm fields. That brings a bunch
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: of deer through the areas that can hunt, and now
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: it's dirt, and I mean immediately that the next day,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I was going from seeing you know, fer coming out
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: to these spots from any given location to zero. So
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: if I hadn't been able to push into some of
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: this neighbor stuff, it would have been almost no action
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: at all. I had some food plots on my side,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: but this is the worst year that my food plots
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: have ever been because right when I planned, I'm a
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: drought hit and so there's still food and there were
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: still some deer hitting those little food plots, but it's
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: very minimal. I mean it's it's an acre compared to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: fifty that I would usually have. UM. So, as you mentioned,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: super depressed, really worried about how this is going to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: change things. And now I say, okay, well I'm not
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: gonna be hunting a bed to feed pad anymore. I'm
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: gonna be hunting. I needed like a rut kind of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: movement kind of thing, because they'll still be in these
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: betting areas and now I can hunt the stuff I
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: always hunted, plus some a little bit extra. UM. The
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: night of and I do see him finally from a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: distance the evening of I'm now pushed into. By the
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: time I started hunting, I should preface this, like around
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: the twenty or somewhere around there, I started getting into stuff,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and my plan was to, based on the wind, kind
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: of rotate around this main betting that historically had been
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: checking for does and hanging out him and and just
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: kind of slowly pushed my way in further and further
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: as observations or sign tells me I should. Yeah, um,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: because again I hadn't hunted in this stuff before I
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: watched it, but I hadn't hunted it, so I was
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: going to kind of like tightening, I don't know, just
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: squeezing down day by day as as I based off
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: what I saw, right, And you had some restrictions too,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: because you had an X amount of time to do
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: it before you had to leave and go start the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: back forty stuff exactly. So so yeah, so I knew
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: that there was this countdown clock coming down that eventually
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: i'd have to you know, I had to. I had
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: to leave. Even if he was still there and still
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: running around, I'd have to leave. Um. So I see
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: him the twenty seven, and from a long ways away,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I see him with a dough and he's locked on
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: a doll, and I told this story a few weeks ago.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: He's locked on the doll. They're heading the opposite direction.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: I can finally get into this stuff he's in, though,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: So I actually get out of my tree and I
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: chase him down, and I tried to stalk and as
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: close as I could get to them, because I knew
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I knew where they're going. There's nowhere else they were
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: going to go except for to the corn field that
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: was north of this area. So this isn't this would
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: be a field that's adjacent to my dirt field. Um,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I can't hunt the corn field, but I can now
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: hunt some of the betting stuff that gets close to it.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: So I get out of the tree, I stalking as
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: close as I can get. But eventually that wind dies down,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: they get out of sight and they're they're basically in
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: the corn field. It's dead, no wind now, and there's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: other deer around. So I realized, okay, I'm stuck this
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: As far as I got, I got a hunker down,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: but I was close to one of my food plots,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: and on the seven and twenty eight I had seen
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: him sent and check that food plot and I'd also
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: seen a lot of doughs that for whatever reason, we're
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: leaving that corn field and walking the edge down to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: my food plot. So I thought, well, there's a chance
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: that that dough will go to the corn feed there
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: for a while, and maybe she'll transition down to hit
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: the food plot, like these other doughs have been doing
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: that I've watched. So I just was able to move
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: another like, I don't know how far I went. I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: was basically there. I just just kind of crept a
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: little bit closer to the spot where if they decided
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: to come along this edge and cross the creek to
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: check that food plot, they'd be in range. How uh
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know. The night, I don't know. By
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: this time it was down to the last half hour
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: of daylight, maybe by the time I had to hunker down,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: And with maybe ten minutes the daylight left, I see
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: a dough pop over the hill and then times and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: it was him, and they did exactly what I was
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: hoping they would do. Almost she transitioned from the corn
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: to the food plot, which I still do under dan.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: They left like a hundred acre corn cut corn field, right, yeah,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: I think it was still cut. Yeah, yeah, it would
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: have been cut by then. Yeah, So they left a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: huge cut corn field to walk a hundred yards across
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: the wide open dirt field to get to a one
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: acre food plot. Um and a bunch of deer were
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: doing that. I would have thought it would be the opposite,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: and usually it is they would hit the food plot
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: first and then go to the big field. But for
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, these deer were doing at the opposite and
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: this buck followed her. But instead of them walking the edge,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: which most of the deer would do, they were about
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: fifty yards farther on the field. So I'm forty yards
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: inside the cover and their fifty yards out into the field.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: And they crossed daylight fades the closer they haked about
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: seventy yards from me. Um. But that was it so
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: very exciting encounter, super cool that had happened. Um, it was.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: It was exciting to see an aggressive move like that,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: you know, not quite come together, but sort of proved
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: out like the concept could have worked. And Um, you know,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: then it was I'm gonna be hunkered in here and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: he's gonna be locked on that dough. And in the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: next two days, next day and a half, I did
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: see him again. Um. Basically I was trying to push
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: in on where I thought this dough was gonna go
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: back and forth, and I saw him, but never was
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Aliot super close. Um. Which takes us then to November two,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: and we're staring my back forward to start date in
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: the face or running that of time and um again
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: you know this story. I made an aggressive move right
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: to the very smack deb middle of this betting and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: hunted a tree that I watched for years that I
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: always wanted to hunt, um but hadn't been able to.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: And I got in there, got a new stand set up,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and and I should say, like I'm not hunting prepped
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: stands or anything. This is every single day. Every morning,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going in there and hanging a new set. Every
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: night I'm tearing down and moving. Um. I've never been
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: that mobile before. This is every single set. I was
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: in new place almost. UM. So that was a lot
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: of work, but I think it helped me in a
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: lot of ways. Um. And you know he came through
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: before daylight. He was there at ten yards, couldn't shoot him.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Eventually got to my downwind side, blew out. Um. Some
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: chasing does and cruising still in there throughout the day. Um,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I think I think a couple of things about this
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: because because that happened right he he winded me right close,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: busted out of there, but then he stuck around chasing
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: does and then like four hours later he crossed the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: creek with my wind was blowing down about two yards
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: away and caught something again and caught my wind there,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: but uh, you know, headed off after that. And then
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: the next day I bump him when I'm walking to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: an evening set. He's better with a dough about a
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards from there. He's still in that area,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: better with a lock down dough. I bumped him out
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: of there. Then the next night, now I'm making another
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: adjustment based off you know, he's locked on this dough.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: If she's gonna come out, you know they're not gonna
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: come right by where I bumped them, but she might
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: come out, you know, down wind to that spot. So
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I make an adjustment, and here he comes fall in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: the doll the next night. So keep seeing him in
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: this damn little area, like a ten to twenty a chunk.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: He doesn't want to leave it. And I've I've tried
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to think about this, like how come, I'm seeing this
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: mature buck over and over. I'm hunting the heck out
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: of this general area. Um, and he's still moving in daylight.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: That's something that you don't see from a mature buck
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: in Michigan very often. So either is he dumb or
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: is there something going on here? And my best analysis
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: is that number one, I am being, you know, as
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: obsessive as it possibly can about all the details. Right,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: So I'm not perfect, but I'm as close as I
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: can possibly be. So yeah, he got down winded me.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: But he must have, you know, with those with my
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: O zone, with all the things I'm doing. It must
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: have not been like the obvious, Oh my god, that's
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: a human that's right there. It must have been like,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I don't like it. I'm getting out of year. But um,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: it was enough of head scratcher that he was willing
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: to still be active in their Number two, this deer
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: or this is a mature buck that wanted to get
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: on these doughs. And there was hot dos and that
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: cloud's judgment. So the role of clouding his judgment. And
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: finally a lot of this hunting was going on in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: a place that this deer historically had not been bothered.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: This was his safe zone. And for years he called
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: this his safe zone, and it was always safe. And
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: so now in year five, all of a sudden, you're
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: telling me that my bedroom is no longer safe. It
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: might take you a little while to come to grasps
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: with that. So I think he was a little bit
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: hanging onto his safe place. He's like, damn it, this
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: can't be happening. This has always been safe. It's always
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: been safe. So he's stuck with it. And and I
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: kept poking around, and um, you know that eventually proved
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: to be his demise. I didn't talk to you about this,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: but I did talk about this on a podcast two
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. UM. I eventually had to leave for the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: back forty hunted out there, killed the super cool buck.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: And because I killed that buck early in the trip,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I had a couple of day window where I didn't
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: need to be hunting out there, um until our next
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: set of guests came out. So I had two days
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: in between where I could come back and hunt the transpots.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: And so I did, and I had three encounters with them.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: One morning, I went in on the south side of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: this betting area, and at this point My plan was,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna stick to this area and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to kind of volume hunted. It's kind
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: of crazy that I'm spending as many sits and am
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: in this like acre zone. But this is where he
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: wants to be, and until he tells me otherwise, I'm
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: gonna keep pounding it. And so I got in there,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, an hour after daylight, here he comes
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: cruising and he cruises in like he's head and right
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: to me. I'm clipped on, I'm ready, and he gets
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: like fifty five yards and then kind of angles the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: other way and angles out, you know, to seventy I
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: tried to snort wheeze to him, and he didn't like it,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: and he kind of just buggered out of there. See
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: him again that night, chasing a dough way off in
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: the distance from another spot. Next morning, I go into
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the north side of this betting area. And most people
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: heard this story two weeks ago. Dan, I don't know
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: if you know this or not, but he follows in.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: The dough blows through my one spot I could shoot,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: gets into this thick, nasty stuff. I panic. I'm desperate.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: I've spent so many days and hours and so much
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: time and energy trying to get this buck. And in
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: that moment, I'm thinking, I gotta get a shot. I
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: have to get a shot. I can't let this, this
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: opportunity that's finally here, slip away. And so I've forced
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: a shot through a little tiny pocket in the brush
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: that really wasn't a good pocket at all, and I
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: miss him, hitting branches and crap. Um, And then I
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: had to go to the back for it again. I
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: leave the back forty. I'm out there for seven days.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: That takes me to the final hunt the gun season,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: right bum. Yeah, So gun season opens for seven days,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not there. I get back from the back forty
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and now I can hunt. I'm tired, I'm war out.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of sick and tired of it, but I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: feel like I gotta try. Um. Every day the gun
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: season goes further on, there's a chance that one of
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: these other people in the area going to shoot him. Um.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: So I go out and say, like, yeah, I'm gonna
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: stick the original plan. I want to get back there
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: in that pocket, see if he's still there. And the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: first day it was just dead. Um saw very little.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: A neighbor shot a deer and there's a bunch of commotion, uh,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: coming out. I saw what looked to be a trespasser
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: on a property that isn't supposed to be hunted. I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: saw flashlights out there, so I kind of ran them
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: down and wasn't able to connect, but kind of let
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: these people know that, hey, we saw you at least,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: So all that happens, and then there's no deer heading
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: to the food on the other neighbors like they had been.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: And I had seen that they had actually disc that
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: field under two So now all of the food that's
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: adjacent to anything I can hunt is all disked under.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: And I'm sitting here Saturday night thinking, all right, based
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: off what I saw and all this pressure and that
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: all the food's gone. Now these deer just I bet
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: you these doughs have just got to be going to
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: the other side of the square mile. And I still
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: bet you if he's alive, and I don't know this,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: I don't have confirmations alive, but if he is, I
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: bet you he's still gonna be betting in this area
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: and checking this area for does but he's probably gonna
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: be heading in a different direction than has been going
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: on all year. So the next day I just said,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna go hunt back on the main
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: stuff that I used to hunt all the time, on
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: my main property that I've hunted for years and years
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and years. I'm gonna hunt down on that side that
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: has been absolutely dead all season because of the dirt field.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been checking cameras, I've been hunting some
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: stuff where I could still see in there, and it
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: had been just a ghost town. But I thought maybe
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: because they're on a a different neighbor. Now I've got
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about two different sets of neighbors. There was
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: a recently cut cornfield on one east side of the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: square mile. Then there was a standing corn field to
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the south of the square mile that I knew of
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: that were now like the only food sources in the
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: area since everything up on me had been dissed. So
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: my theory was that I'm gonna hunt down in this
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: spot where I can intercept anything that wants to head
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: to the south cornfield coming out of this bedding year,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: and I'd be able to see from way off in
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: the distance anything that wants to go to the east
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: side of the square mile, and at least see if
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: my hunch is right, and then from there I can
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: make an adjustment. And it's gunned season. I'm taking a gun. Um,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: we're gonna see what happens and and kind of go
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: from there. That's what I sat up on. I'm sitting
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: kind of in between the good bedding that's off to
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: my north aways, and then there's a little swamp to
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: my south, and then there's other neighbor who that standing
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: corn fields further back behind that. The first three or
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: four hours the night were dead. It was snowing. I
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: thought it would be great, but nothing was moving. Nothing
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: was moving until the last half hour Doe pops out
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: and the dough starts walking down my way, and then
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: right behind her it's Tran And at this point think,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: holy crap, he's alive. This is amazing. But they're heading
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: into like this timber ahead of me instead of to
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: the excuse me where I'm at. It's kind of in
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: between a little finger of a field that goes into
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: this timber on one side and then a power line
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: on the other. And so they pop out in the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: power line, but then very quickly crossed into the timber
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: and I can't see anything, and I'm guessing that they're
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: gonna stay in the thick of that timber and foul
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: that all the way down to the neighbor that does
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: have the corn, and they probably won't come out to
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: the open where I can get a shot. I still
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: gotta be ready, though, so I get ready. I'm watching.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: I'm already thinking, like, okay, based on what I sell,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: what does that mean for tomorrow? He's alive. I can
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: adjust on this. They're heading to the south. Um As
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking to this, the dope pops out again. But
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: now she's closer to me on the power line side,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: like she's heading to this little food plot that I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: have over in this other direction too. I'm thinking, man,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: they're gonna come close. This is actually gonna happen. And
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: then I see a buck pop up and I look
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: at it and it's not Tran. It's this like mini
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: me of Tran. There's this other buck I've been seeing
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: all year that I passed a bunch that's like a
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: two or three year old miniature version of Tran, and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: he's with her, And now I'm thinking, damn it, that
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: was him. I didn't see the real trend. It was
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: the fake tran um ah like I'm having this internal battle.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: I swear to God it was him. How there's no
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: way I could have mistaken it. He's he's just massive
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: compared to this one. And as this is all playing out,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: Mini Tran pops over to my side of the tree line,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: comes across this field um this little finger and gets
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: to the downwind side of me. Comes all the way
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: across to the downwind side of man, stops, hits the
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: wind and has like that you know what when you
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: you do the same stuff I do, use nose onics,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: you're playing other you know, send control things. He stops,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: he looks, he's thinking. He's like, I don't there's something
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: over there I don't really like, but I can't quite
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: put my finger on it. And he's looking looking, and
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: then he turns and just starts walking back the way
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: he came. That doe pops out, he stops. He's getting
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: kind of like funky doing the head things, staring at me,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, anytime now this is gonna blow up.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: He's gonna bugger out of here. And if the real
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: trend is here, he's gone to And just when I'm
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: like worrying through all that, the real trend steps out
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: of the thick timber and starts walking right out to
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: the edge to where that dough is. And he comes
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: walking right out, gets to the edge, kind of turns
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: quartering to me, and I pull up the scope and
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: I look at him, and there's a huge tree close
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: to me in between us that he is rund the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: edge of. And if if I let him keep walking,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: he will go behind that big tree that's by me,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: So it covers like a like a sixty yard zone
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: or maybe not that much for meet yards of area
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: that he would cover. And then once he got to
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: the other side of that tree, he'd be almost down wind.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: So I thought, is it's an hour never basically, so
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I prop up the gun, my elbows on my knees,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: and he's kind of quarter two and basically put on
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: the shoulder and and that was it. I let her eat,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: and um, it happened fast. It was crazy. He went
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: pile driving out of there, disappears behind a big clump
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: of trees in the swamp. And you know, a couple
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: of hours later, I got some buddies and we went
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: in there great Blood Trail, and Tran was on the ground.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: It uh it came together. And you know that, just
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: just an hour before that, I've been texting with my
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: friends saying, man, I think it's it got buggered up
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: hard this weekend. All this food's gone. It's just dead.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: I'm betting I'm probably have to pull out for a
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks and just wait until December. Maybe, you know,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: I can refigure stuff out and I'm just gonna observe
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: and move cameras around. I did not think things are
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: gonna come together. And uh, it had been a long, crazy,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: wild ride, and I was definitely at the end of
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: my rope by the time that had come together. I mean,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: I had hunted a ton for this year, um and
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: he had he. I just felt like I was chasing
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: my tail. I was seeing him close, not close enough.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: I mean I had him within sixty five yards or
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: sixty yards so many times. I had the the miss,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: the almost shot at ten yards, the spotting stock, the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm here, he's there, he's there, I'm here,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: over and over and over. And that's exciting and amazing,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: but it was also really frustrating and being just so
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: close but not close enough, and also every day thinking
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: like any time now the way he's moving, someone's gonna
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: kill him. Um, And it's it's probably not gonna be
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: me because I seemingly can't get out of my own
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: way or can't get that final piece to fall into place.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: And I just remember as I was walking to the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: stand that day, actually, as I was walking in, I
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: remember thinking to myself, Man, you gotta get lucky eventually,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: like you just right, you gotta have I was like,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: you're doing the right stuff. Like I kept on trying
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: to think, like what am I doing wrong? Is there
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: something I should be doing different? Do I need to
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: be going about this different? I kept thinking, Man, I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: don't think I would be doing anything terribly wrong. You
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: just haven't had that find a little tiny piece of
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: luck go your way. Just keep doing the right things,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: and if you do the right things enough times, one
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: of these times that final puzzle piece will be where
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: you need it. And and that's what was on my
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: minds that went to the stand, and and finally that's
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: what happened, The one little chip went my way. Yeah,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and it happened. I'll tell you what, man, that's that
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: is a a statement in itself again, something that man,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: people get real frustrated. And I get it because they
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: don't get the time to hunt like me and you
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: do right. And some of them may be limited to
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: um weekends or only five days of vacation that they
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: can allocate towards hunting or whatever. But if if you
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: put in your time and you cover your basis and
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: you do the right thing, man, I am confident. Now
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: it doesn't happen every time, but I'm confident that you're
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: gonna get more encounters, You're going to have the tide
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: eventually turns your way. I feel yeah. And and sometimes
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: it really is like there's these different there's these different
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: um parts of a hunt, and you need to check
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: off each one of these different boxes. And sometimes you
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: can get away with checking a few of them. Sometimes
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: you need more of them to be checked. Um. You know,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes you're gonna get just straight up lucky, and then
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: other times you gotta do everything just right for it
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: to happen. And other days you can do everything just
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: right and it still doesn't happen. Um. So you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: I think it goes back to what we've said a
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: thousand times. You you check every box you possibly can.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: You work as hard as you possibly can you hunt,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: you know, as much as you can when it's right,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: and eventually good things will happen. Like you said, it's
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: not gonna happen every time. Maybe it doesn't happen every year. Um.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm fortunate that in this case, you know,
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: I'm able to hunt more than a lot of people,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: and so in this scenario, it required a lot of volume.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: It required a lot of doing the right thing over
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: and over and over um for all the different mistakes
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: and things to iron out and for it to actually
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: come together for me. So so I'm thankful for being
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: able to do that, but I'm also I guess it
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: also came down to just keeping a little bit of
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: belief and persisting. Um, there were a lot of times.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of negative self talk over the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: last two months. There's a lot of days where I
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: was kicking myself or mad about picking this spot rather
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: than that spot, or thinking, man, you're never gonna get
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: another opportunity. Now, you're never going to see him again. Man,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: you're never gonna you know, there was just so much
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: built into this hunt because it was three years running,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: because all the work in the spring and summer have
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: been about this dear, I can't tell you how many
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: days I've spent with binocular staring out at these fields
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: and these openings trying to see him. I mean hundreds
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: of hundreds of hours um, watching and searching and thinking
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: and planning. UM. And then it makes what's kind of
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: an absurd thing the case, which is I was obsessing
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: over a deer and letting it consume a ton of
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: my mindset and my thought and my time and energy,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: and so it builds this thing up into this huge thing.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: And I kept telling my wife that, yeah, it's just
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: a deer, but it's also like so much work, so
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: much of me has gone into this thing, and and
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: there's not many other things in life I can think
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: of where I can work unbelievably hard. I can work work, work, work, work,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: and do everything I know I'm supposed to do and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: still not get the payoff. Like when I'm writing a book,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: I knew that if if I work my butt off
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: and if I do the stuff I need to do
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: that I know how to do, I'm going to get
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: that book done. If you know, if I put in
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: the work I need to to do a good podcast
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: and do the right preparation and plan and ask the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: right questions and spend the time leading into it, make
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: sure we do a good job atting. I know we'll
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: get a good podcast out. Um that's not the case
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: with a hunt like this. And that was like I
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: was getting to this point where I was I was
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: feeling I had actually reached a point of resignation. To
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: be honest with you, I gotten to a point where
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: I've been so frustrated and like stressing. I was loving it,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: but also stressing. And then I got two guns season.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: When gun season hits, I always kind of used to
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: just kind of hands off, and you realize that it's
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: out of my hands. Now, there's way more people out
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: there now than usual and a lot better chance of
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: than killing him, he's probably gonna get it smoked by someone.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: And I kind of had to be like, Okay, you
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: did your very best, you worked your damnedest, you put
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: in the time. Um. So I kind of made peace
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: with things when November rolled around. Um And and you know,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: I don't have much advice to give a person, Mark
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: and especially you, but one thing that I've learned throughout
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: the years is if you can learn to get us
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: that or over that feeling, hunting becomes so much more
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: than then that, if that makes sense. Like the stress part,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's like you can work as hard
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: as you want and the payoff still won't be there,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: and you start to get this this some sort of
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: stress build up or uh, the worrisome build up that
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: you were feeling. I'm telling you right now, man, I
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: used to be like that too, and i've since I
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: feel like I since planned prep, I do all the things,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: but I leave the worry at home. I leave all
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: the worry. I just don't do it anymore. I just
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: go out and I hunt. And I feel like when
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I was able to do that and make that step
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: and just say, you know, dude, if it happens, it happens.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: If it doesn't, it doesn't, and and accept that fact. Dude,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've reached a different level in hunting
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: and I've been able to enjoy it so much more. Yeah,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's awesome. Man. Um. I don't know
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: if I'm I'm probably not that person that I can.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: I can, I can I get to that point Like
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: I kind of got to that point. I had to
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: force myself into that and realize, like, hey, you tried,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: and this is where we're at and it is and
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: you know what what has helped me the most, there's kids.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: You know, whenever I have a bad hunter, or whenever
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like this stuff didn't go the way I wanted,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: I would just remind myself of the boys that I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: was gonna come home to and see him and hug him,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: and you know, that always bring me back to what's
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: really most important. But but I'm just so goal oriented
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: and I can't help but put so much into this
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: and and really really really wanted to come together. We
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: talked about every year. Um, it's something I worked through
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: every year, but um, I don't Yeah, there's the dogs, Um,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: congratulations man. Yeah, this one was a wild ride. He
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: he worked me over, he beat me up, he stressed
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: me out, he made me work my tail off. Um.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: And and it was pretty satisfying for me to get
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: to a point where I kind of was okay with
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: not being able to kill him. I knew that was
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: a possibility, and then to have it actually come together
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: was was a crazy, amazing satisfying ending that. Um that
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: leaves me in a very happy place today. Absolutely. Man,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: those these big bucks, man, they can make a smile
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: or they can make us cringe, you know. So congratulations brother,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: thank you, my friend. I'm glad that uh I could
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: share it with you over these years. And um, thanks
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: for all the thanks for all the kind words and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: advice encouragement along the way. Absolutely, and I guess what
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: here's to uh, here's two white tails for dare I
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: say one? It's gonna be a good year. It's gonna
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: be a better year. It's gotta be better than got
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: to be a better year. Is It's only up from here.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: That's all right, man, thank you. Let's uh, let's catch
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: up soon and talk about the plan for next year. Alright.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: So Dan had to bounce off, he had a he
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: had a hard stop. So we kind of had to
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: rush things a little bit there at the end. But
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I wanted to take a second here to kind of
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: tie a bowl on this and and synthesize some of
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: the main takeaways or lessons learned here for me, And
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: then I think maybe we can all take from this
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: because this isn't yeah, this is a story of my
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: own personal hunt and and this kind of journey I
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: went on. But my hope all along has always been
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: that by sharing these stories you all are able to
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: learn right alongside me. And so now as I'm wrapping
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: up this hunt and I'm trying to process what what
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: did I take away from this? Uh? I want to
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: make sure that that you all can take away something too. UH.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: When I you know, over this last seven days essentially
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: it's been seven days as I'm recording this, since the
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: hunt actually happened. Now at this point, um, here here's
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: what stands out to me. One of the major things
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: going into this hunt that I wanted to do differently
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: this year was to be more aggressive and mobile than
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: ever before. You've heard me talk about this throughout the year.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: That was a goal of mine. And you heard me
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: just mentioned to Dan that I thought I did that,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: and I really do. I think I was more mobile,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: more adaptable than I ever have. UM. I really fine
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: tuned my mobile setup. I've I had the process nailed.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: I mean I was going up and down, up and
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: down every day for day after day after day. From
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: you know. I did some of that in early October.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: There a lot of that laid October right on through
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: the middle and almost towards the end of November. And
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: because I had dialed in that process, and become really
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: comfortable with my gear. It wasn't something that held me
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: back previously. When I wasn't comfortable with those two things.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: It was a real inconvenience to to move from this
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: stand to that stand, to go hang a news stand
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: fifty yards over there, or to adjust twenty yards, or
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: to move at all. You just want to go hunt
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: the pre hung sets that were there and easy, um.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes that's not going to put you in the
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: place you need to be, especially if your bow hunting. UM.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: This year, I wasn't going to let that stand in
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: my way anymore. So I made the moves when I
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: had to make them. When I saw a movement that
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: was thirty yards farther away, I would bump up. I
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: would make that move. Um. I would go in the
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: next day, two hours before daylight and hang new sets,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: something maybe five years ago I never would have done.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: Now I'm realizing time and time again that that stuff
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: pays off. It's inconvenient, it's a pain in the butt,
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: it's not easy. It's hard at times. UM. It takes
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: some work to get comfortable doing that kind of stuff,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: But so often I'm finding that the hard thing is
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: usually the right thing to do if this is the
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: goal you're working towards. Of course, secondly, I had to
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: adopt a different kind of strategy as the season progressed.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: So early on when I started this, this a couple
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: of week period where I was gonna be hunting for
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: Tran pretty aggressively. That first week, UM, I was mobile.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: I was bouncing all around the outside of this area,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out where is this deer, what is
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: he doing. I hadn't seen him at all since late September,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: So during that period I was moving. I was moving,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: I was moving, adjusting based off wind, adjusting based off
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: of different things going on. But once we got into
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: that second week in November, I had been seeing him.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: I had been having these encounters. I kind of had
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: it die all day what he was doing. He was
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: staying in this little, tiny pocket, and every one of
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: the times I saw him or encountered him, it was
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: within this you know, I don't know, ten twenty acres
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: or less, even you could almost in zeer it down
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: to I don't know, I mean of it maybe was
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: happening in five acres um. It was really a small
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: little pocket where so much of this stuff was happening.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: So eventually got to the point where I was I
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: was bouncing from this spot to that spot, and that
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: spot to this spot, and I was realizing what he
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: was here, and then I was over there, and then
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: I was there and he was here, and I got
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: to the point where I realized, Okay, there's sometimes and
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: you need to be mobile, and you need to be
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: bouncing around, but maybe there's sometimes when you shouldn't do that,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: and you just need to hunker down and hunt a
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: basic zone that he knows right that you know you've
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: got the right wind for, and you know he will
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: eventually come through and give it two or three days
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: or two or three sits, give it the time for
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: him to rotate through there. And so I eventually realized, Okay,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop trying to get fancy with it, and
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop outsmarting myself, and I'm going to zero
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: win on these couple of spots and and just hunt
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: him until he's either here or he's not. And that
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: is what eventually led me to, you know, those last
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: two out of the final three encounters with him, one
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: of him was when he came in and got to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: about fifty five, and then the other one was when
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: I missed him with a bow, and then finally I
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: had to adjust later. But I do think that there
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: was something to be said about finally realizing that my
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: my comment, my my intuition was saying, Oh, this is crazy.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: He can't keep popping up in the same stupid places. Um,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: he's got to have moved on. He must have smelled
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: you right now. You must have done something. He should
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: have been educated. But I kept seeing something different, and
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: eventually I had to tell myself, Okay, don't don't what
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: am I trying to say here. Believe what your eyes
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: are telling you, and don't outsmart yourself. Sometimes you just
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: gotta be there and wait until things go the right way.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: So there's there's this interesting line you have to walk
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: between be mobile, be mobile, get that first set, get
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: that first set, adjust, change, surprise him. But then sometimes
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: you just gotta be there and wait. So that's something
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: that I don't know if what I just said there
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: cleared articulates this thing yet, But there's there's this balance
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: that I'm finding, and you need to learn how to
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: and when to strike that balance and go one way
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: or the other, which then brings me to another big takeaway,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: which is related to this whole idea of being mobile,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: and that's the importance of adapting fast. More than any
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: other year, this season, on this set of properties, I
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: had to deal with major changes, lots of different stuff
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: going on for the first time ever that I can
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: remember out here, these crop fields got plowed under, and
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: one of those happened in late October and change things dramatically.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: And then another set of fields got disked under and
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it was like November somewhere around there,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: and that changed things even more dramatically. So each time
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: that happened, it it was like a light switch event
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: for the local deer populations. And I went from knowing
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: what deer doing these places historically year after year, to
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they're doing things completely different. If
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: I had not been mobile, if I wasn't willing to
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: quickly say, Okay, things are changing, how are they changing?
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: What do I need to do? And I had to
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: do that within a day or two, and and that
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: was key to staying on this deer. Other examples would
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: be hunting pressure. Several different times I had hunters really
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: changed the game for me. Uh So you remember the
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: story back in late October, when I thought I was
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: getting in close. I was really in the best hot
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: fresh sign hunting this spot ahead meal hunt in the past.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Finally snuck in there, finally had the wind to do it.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: And then a neighbor shot a deer like fifty yards
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: away from me and blew their wind all three and
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: really blew that spot up. I thought that was going
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: to be the spot. It wasn't. I had to quickly
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: change put together a new plan how to attack this
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: core zone from a different direction where that hunting pressure wasn't.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: I was able to do that this year, and within
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: a few days got back on him. Another example, this
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: was the whole example, when Tram was locked on that dough.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: I saw him locked on the door heading a different direction,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: and he was the only darem after and he was
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: heading to a food source away from me. And in
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: past years I would have said, well, you know, there
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: he goes. I guess the next hour and a half
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: of the hunt is just gonna be me sitting here
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: and wondering what's gonna happen. That maybe would have been
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: me six seven, eight years ago, but this year it
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: was Nope, I need to think fast. I needed to adapt,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be aggressive and make this thing happen.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: So I decided, you know what, with this wind we have,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: I think I know where these deer going. I think
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: I know what they're gonna do. I might be able
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: to cut him off. And I went for it, got
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: out of my tree, took a stab at going after
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: those deer, and it didn't come together, but it almost did.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: So once again, I just have seen examples of quickly
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: analyzing the situation and adapting to those new things fast
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: and being confident in how you adapt. That proved to
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: be very very important. I guess the very most important
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: example was the very last one. I mean it is
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: the very most important. I went from focusing on this
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: core zone I've been talking about all day. Um, that
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: was where I focused like two weeks of the hunt,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: and then I get back from the back forty seven
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: days later, and everything is different. The deer gone, hunting
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: pressures increased, they're doing things different, and I had to
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: quickly fare, Okay, why are they gone and where have
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: they gone to? And my hunch was that they're heading
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: in a totally different direction out of this core zone.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: I made the pivot and lo and behold that was
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: where they were and I killed the buck that night. Now, yeah,
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: I got a little lucky, of course I did. Like
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: I mentioned, you have to get lucky every once in
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: a while. But I think because I was willing to
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: make that quick change, trust the gut, trust my analysis,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: and then move on it fast. I wasn't gonna sit
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: in my usual spot for two, three, four days. Well, eventually, change,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: eventually change. Nope, when you're not seeing what you want
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: to see, change fast with it. And that's what I did.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: This brings me to the final big takeaway, which is
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: related to what Dan was talking about there at the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: end when he made a really good point about how
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: he's been able to get away from the stress and
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: the worry of hunting season and just enjoy it. And
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: he's one correct, that is what we need to be
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: striving for. And for some people that's a lot easier
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: to do than for other people. If you listen to
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: this podcast, you know me. You know me well, you've
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: heard me verbally vomit for seven years now, telling you everything,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: telling you my deepest, darkest fears, telling you about the
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: best things I've done, the worst things, I've done. You've
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: you've heard me share my mistakes and my successes. You've
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: heard me try to verbally work out my thought process.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: You've heard me talk about my stresses and think through
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: my strategies. You know what, you know what you're gonna
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: get when it comes to me. And one of those
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: things is being very goal oriented, being very mission focused,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: shooting for the moon, and and having a hard time
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: not striving for those things. That's me, That's that's just
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: who Mark Kenyon is. I want to do that stuff
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: and I love that stuff, but it also inevitably does
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: lead to stress, frustration, and it leads to you know,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: every hunting season, I have this back and forth go
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: out in my head, and I've talked about it every year,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: so you you know this um and when I come
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: back to every year and this year again is being
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: able to find this strike this right balance. So much
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: of what we're talking about here today, you know, this
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: hunt comes down to striking balance. For me. It's this
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: balance between chasing goals, chasing a dream, chasing something you're
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: trying to achieve, or whatever it might be, filling the
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: freezer for the first time, killing your first dear, killing
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: a dear killing your first three and a half year old,
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: dear whatever um striving for them, pushing yourself to do that.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: I really personally think there is value and pushing yourself
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: to do things that are hard, to take on, things
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: that are challenging and that you might fail at. Maybe
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: that you probably will fail it. I think there's value
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: in trying to do really hard ship and forcing yourself
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: to grow and change and to face that adversity and
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: to push through that. I think that leads to growth.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: I think that leads to good things. I think that,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: at least for me, is a really important part of life.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: So I like that. But what I also have been
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: continuously trying to do is to get better at enjoying
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: not just reaching that pinnacle, but really enjoying the entire process.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: And I'm really good at enjoying the process prior to
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: unning season, when I'm thinking about it and planning for
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: I'm really good at enjoying the process after hunting season,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: when it's all said and done and I can look
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: back on it enjoy it in the moment. I'm great
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: at enjoying the process seventy percent of the time, probably
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: I really love it. And then thirty percent of the time,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: I get it too worked up, and I get too
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: focused on when things aren't going well or why things
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: aren't going well, or this decision versus that decision, or
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: this outcome versus that outcome, and that's this thing that
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I guess gotta keep on working on. But this year,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: again I'm reminded of process, process, process, And throughout this year,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: I kept on going back to this when I read
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: get into one of those little low points. Um, at
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: least what I've seen my progress has has gotten to
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: the point now where I'm not feeling like stressed out
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: and bummed for days on end. It's it's like I'll
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: have a moment and then I have a little mental
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: conversation or internal conversation and then I get out of it.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: But I'm gonna have those those ups and downs, and
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have these conversations, a little self talk crazy
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: markship where I say, Okay, Mark, you're frustrated, you're bummed out, Yeah, okay,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: but that's just part of it, or okay, that's not
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: achieving anything. What can you do next? How do you
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: move forward from this? Where do we go? And you
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: know what, something I didn't mention, but it probably should
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: be mentioned, is that this last weekend of hunting, all right,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: I told you that I got back from the Back
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: forty and then I started hunting that weekend, and that
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: first day, that Saturday, Saturday morning, Saturday night was a disaster.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: Didn't see anything, neighbor shot a deer, saw trespass, or
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: all that stuff happened that night. I came back in
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: Chattel my wife and I said, you know what, I'm
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: just kind of I've been given it my all. I've
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: been hunting NonStop between here and the Back forty and
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: hosting people and filming and doing all these things, and
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: it's great. I can't complain about it. I love it.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: I'm very I just want to make it clear that
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want it to sound like I'm complaining about this,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, it also is. It's a
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: lot of work still, and I had gotten to the
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: point where I was I was worn out too, just
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: worn to the grindstone. I'm not just whooped And I said,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not. I'm not going to go
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: out in the morning. I'd originally planned on hunting next morning,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: but I've been away from my family at I hadn't
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: had a weekend morning to wake up and play with
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: the kids and have a good time. I hadn't done
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: that in three and a half weeks. And I said,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not going out tomorrow. It's snowing,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: it's cold, it's awesome. You know, it's stupid not to go.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: I should go, but I'm not. I'm sleeping in. I'm
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: gonna play with the kids. I don't have a good time.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: I want to have a little bit of this back.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: I want to enjoy that, and then I think I'll
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: be more refreshed and enjoy it more when I go
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: back on the evening. And at this point in the
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: hunting season, that's probably what I needed to be a
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: little more focused on. And that's what I did, and
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: lo and behold a morning with the kids um led
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: to an evening with a buck on the ground. Coincidence, correlation,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know, But maybe that was Mother Nature or
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: the good Lord above or something telling me that, you know,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta take a step back, enjoy the process,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: have fun with this thing. This thing is about fun.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: This thing is about enjoying the connection we have with
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: wild animals and wild places. And our family and friends,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: and and once again that was you know, that was
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: that was illuminated, I guess for me, for lack of
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: a better term. At the same time, though, at the
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: same time, persistence is the name of the game as well,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: keeping at it, believing it could still happen, grinding in
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: a day after day, all those early mornings, I mean,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: nothing can really make up for that. Sure you might
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: get lucky some years and kill early. Sure you might
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: get you know, something bounce your way and you don't
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: need to put it in a lot of time and work.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: But if you want to have consistent success with anything, really,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: but in this case deer hunting, in my case, trying
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: to kill a mature buck on small properties in Michigan,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: you gotta just keep after it. And the three year
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: hunt for Tran all these things I just meant and
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: are definitely wrapped up into it. But the name of
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: the game, the big headline across the top over all
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: this is persistence. Persistence through every crazy thing, every obstacle,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: every mistake, every bad decision, every good night, every bad night,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: every early morning, every late night, every time where you're
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: tired and didn't want to get up in the morning,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: and I wanted to hit the snooze button on the
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: little harm clock. Persistence is what killed this dear, So
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: that is, uh is my typical Mark Kenyon long winded
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: way of saying. This has been a hell of a hunt,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: a heck of a journey. I hope that through this story,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: this one here on today's podcast, but also the story
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: that I've been telling you that has stretched over so
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: many podcasts over these years, I hope that there's been
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: something that that resonates with you or that you've been
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: able to learn from it. Maybe learned from my mistakes,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: maybe you learn from my success, may be learned from
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: all my knuckle headed um naval gazing, um talking all
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: this stuff out as I'm just thinking it through. I
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: don't know, but I sure I'm hoping that we all
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: can come out of this um having learned something. And
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: I just appreciate all of you following along. I know
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: some people tire of my stories of these deer over
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: and over again. UM, I hope that's not the case
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: too often, because I I enjoy the heck out of it.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: I find um, I find it just to be never
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: endingly fascinating, and so I'm thankful that you could all
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: be here along with me. So that is a rap
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: for today. Uh. The only other thing I'll mentioned is
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: that new back forty episodes are up. Speaking of high
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: points this season, my hunt with my dad killing his
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: first deer with the archer equipment that just dropped here
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: a few days ago. It was it was another one
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: of those examples where family friends enjoying the process, enjoying everything,
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: the ups and the downs. Um Man, that that really
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: came to life for me during that experience. So, man,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: it has been a crazy, crazy hunting season. I've I've
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: I've been really lucky to have a lot of things
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: come together and and learned a lot and enjoyed a
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: lot of incredible experiences out there. I hope you've had
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: a successful, fun and fulfilling hunting season with your friends
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: and family. I hope you're staying healthy. I know these
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: are tough times for a lot of people. Um So
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: I'm wishing you all the best here in these days
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving. I hope you can enjoy this holiday season.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: I hope you can stay healthy and safe and best
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: of luck out there hunting. Thank you for being a
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: part of this community. Thanks for tuning in and until
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: next time, stay wired to hunt.