Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 303: Four Hunters, Three Bucks, Endless Lessons Learned

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Ep. 303: Four Hunters, Three Bucks, Endless Lessons Learned · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, this episode number three and three
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and saying the show, we are analyzing a series of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: stories for you in which we'll hear from four hunters
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: about five hunts with three bucks killed, two tags left unpunched,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of lessons learned. All right, welcome
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to the Wired don podcast, brought to you by on X.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: We're here today to talk about several hunts. We've got
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: four people on the show total, but at different times.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Right now it's me and Dan, and then a little
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: bit later will be me and Tony Peterson, and then
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a little bit later will be me and Andy May.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And we all have been out hunting this month so far,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and some of us have had success, some of us
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: did not. I want us to break down these four
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: sets of hunts and what went right, what went wrong,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and what we can learn from them. So first up,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I got nine fingered wonder Dan Johnson here from fresh
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: off of the Colorado Hunt. UM, I want to hear
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: about what's what's you know, how they went? We haven't
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: got talk. I mean we texted a little bit around it,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: but we haven't actually got talk. So I haven't even
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: like texted you in a while right now, since your
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: last day of the hunt? Right, how is the how's
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the fam doing? First and foremost fans? Good? I have
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: some news on that front, by the way, which which
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: you don't know. Uh, we had our ultrasound and baby
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: number two is another boy, so we got another another
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: pack of boys over here. So Knox and Mac will
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: have a couple of buddies here in Michigan. Yeah. I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: hope that they're just as ornery as my kids, just
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: so you know, Like I don't know why, but I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: just envision your children being very polite, me being very
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you know. Okay, it's time to go to bed. Yes, father,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I will go to bed, and they go to bed
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: like for me, I have to get out like the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: hog taser and like get them into their rooms. Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: My my son already keeps his hands folded neatly behind
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: his back. He carries he balances a book on his head,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and then he walked slowly and quietly to bed, puts
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: himself to sleep, and then sets an alarm. Yeah, not
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: what my kids do. I'll tell you what. It's so funny,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Like every month, probably at least once a month, I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: find myself Yeah, Dan was right about this, the Dan.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: It's been funny seeing all these things come to fruition
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: that you warned me about for years. So yeah, it'll
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: be it'll be a whole new adventure with the second
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: one coming. And it would have been you know, I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: just was hoping for a healthy, happy baby, but having
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: another boy. You know, I always wanted a brother growing up.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of cool to know that Ever will
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: have a brother and they'll be able to you know,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: adventure of the world together and be best friends and
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: worst enemies and you know all that brother stuff. So
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I'm excited sister Ever getting like big fights, you know,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: not super bad. There was a like we're great, we're kids.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: And then when I was in like late junior high
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and she was just about to start junior high, we
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: had a period where I was like just like an
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: asshole to her. Um just I knew how to push
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: her buttons to really irritate her all the time, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I got a lot of joy out of that. So
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: that was that was a period I just I found
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it really funny to make her cry and we're like
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: driving to school or whatever, because I knew I could
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: like but she'd get mad at the stupidest thing that
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I was breathing too loud, or I was eating my
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: food too loud or stuff like that, and so of
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: course I saw opportunity there and milked it. So right,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest fights that me and my brother
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: ever got in was, I don't know, did you ever
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: have a sega growing up? I never? Well, yes I
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: had the sega. Was there a dream something? Um that
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: was the Nintendo Dreamcast or something like that, Right, yes,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I had. That was the first one I got, and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: then it was gotcha. Okay, Well, anyway, me and my brother, um,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: he's closer to your age than he than to me.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: My brothers like five years younger than me. So we
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: would play college football on the sega, and he was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: always better than me. But I didn't want to ever
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: have my record show on the stats on the game.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So with like one or two seconds left, if I
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: was ever down, I would kick the I would I
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: would kick the plug in out of the wall so
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: that stat would never show up. And he would get
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: so mad, like he would charge me and try to
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: fight me. That's great. Yeah, it's like when I play
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Xbox of my when he was like a ten year
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: old my nephew, that's what he would do. And so
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that's eighteen year old Dan did well. That was like
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that was earlier. I mean by the time I graduated,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: by the time I graduated high school, I think the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: first PlayStation was out maybe or maybe my first year
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: in college. Anyway, Yeah, we've gotten some knockdown, drag out
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: fights over Bill Walsh's college football siblings. Good times, good times. Um, Yeah,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: that's funny. That was a piece of news, the family
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: piece of news. And then there's a whole other, big
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: piece of news that I want to talk to you about.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Um that I don't know if we should lead with
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: us or if we should dive into your hunt? What
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: what are you most passionate about right now? Dan, Like,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: do you just need to release the story of your
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Colorado el hunt and your thoughts and your frustrations or
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: do you want to simmer on that while hearing a
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: little story from me and then get into it. Where's
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: your where's that your emotional state? This is completely up
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: to you, because the more I simmer, the more raw
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the actual Colorado trip and my thoughts on um, all
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the other stuff that kind of goes along with it
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: while flipping through Instagram and Facebook will come out. So
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: we can have uh a somewhat censored version, or we
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: can get like the Eddie Murphy raw uh raw type
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: addition to share your story. Okay, I want Eddie Murphy.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I want Eddie Murphy, so so share a mark. Alright,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So um, we'll talk about my North Dakota public land
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: hunt maybe after your outcome. But I do need to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit because on the last episode of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the podcast, I shared an announcement, but you and I
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: have not talked about this yet because I'm waiting to
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: talk about it an air. So as maybe you saw
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: on social media, we dropped a new project here that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I'm working on with media in which we bought a farm. Yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and I haven't got to tell you about this because
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: we've been keeping a pretty hush hush and working on
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: this thing behind the scenes. But all of the bullshit
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: I've been doing this summer when I was talking about
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: being frustrated, this thing is not working. This thing is
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: not working this is breaking, this is failing. It was
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: mostly all happening on this new place that we are
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: trying to trying to use like a showcase for private
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: land conservation and small land management and stuff like that,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and it's been kind of a disaster. But I haven't
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: been able to fully share that with you and and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: articulate why it's even more stressful. So so now it's
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: this huge weight off my shoulders that you know, we
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: have this sixty four acres of land here in Michigan
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that we are trying to turn to a cool little
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: hunting property. But we are also trying to use as
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: like a as an education tool or almost even like
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: an inspiration tool to show like, hey, we can do
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: some really cool things for the local area, for the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: local wildlife, for the water and the soil. There's a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: lot more you can do than just try to shoot
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: boone and cracker bucks on it. Um. So it's like
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: an exciting project that I'm excited for and and it's
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: been fun. But man, there have already been some epic
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: fail stories Dan that I haven't got to fully flesh out.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So it's just it's exciting that it's out there, and um,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be much more to come on that front.
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  Speaker 1: You're gonna have to You're gonna have to if ever
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you decide to fulfill and act. What's the word to
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to to God, I'm having a brain fart here. If
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: you ever decided to come to Michigan like you promised
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you would, you're gonna have to come and check this
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: place out. Okay, I will. It's uh, it's maybe not
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: gonna impress you from a buck standpoint. Um, up to
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: this point, Dan, I still I don't know if there's
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: gonna be anything like serious for me to ut out there.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: It's not. It's not looking good right now. So if
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I have to knock on a door to get permission
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to that piece, is that you? Or is that Ronella? Yeah?
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: You know, go knock on Ronilla's door? Um, yeah, it's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be a challenge. I thought. You know, I
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: looked at a whole lot of things when we are
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: going through this process of trying to find this property
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: and trying to find the right little piece that would
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you know, both be a great hunting property but then
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: also have the potential to experiment with a lot of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: these things. Um, and I think it has that but
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: right now on the deer side, like we are struggling.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything decent on trail camera yet. Um. Now,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: to be fair, we've been out there filming stuff like
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: a ton, so that has not helped them. Sure, But
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: moral of the story is hunting season opens and like
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: a week and a half or something like that, and
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it's little unnerving. I don't know what we're gonna have there,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: So it might be a real slow Michigan season for
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: me if if half of my hunts or whatever are
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: are out there and if it's not improving, well, you
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: had the guys from Landing Legacy on right. Those guys
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: are some hardcore habitat experts. I'm going to say. Now,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: one thing from following along on their podcast that you
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: learn is that this there's no overnight solution to increasing
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: like quality deer on your property overnight, and this is
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: this is something that takes potentially years to accomplish. It's
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: definitely a long term project, that's for sure. And UM,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and I really like their philosophy on land management in
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: general and the definitely taking a lot of things that
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: they talk about into account as we're thinking through this.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I think they're one of the few resources
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: out there these days in the deer hunting world that
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: they're doing a really nice job of looking at this holistically,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you know, not just big bucks there. I love the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: fact they talk about pollinators and they talk about native ecosystems,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and they talk about everything upland birds, dear, the whole,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the whole gambit. So, um, so I might even try
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to I haven't asked them this, but I might try
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: to see a thing come out and take a look
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: at the property someday and share the thoughts and knock
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: out some some cool content while we're at it too.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: So they'll they seem to be a good fit for
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: what we're trying to trying to achieve here. Absolutely smart,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: smart guys. Yeah, so that's that's the farm news. Um,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: you can win a hunt. You want to win a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: hunt to come on with me? So I was I
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: was thinking about this, you know, like you guys were
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: talking about, Hey, you could win a hunt with Mark
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: kennyon and just do you Ronella or whatever, And I'm
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: just like, um, like, been there done? How bad does
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: your hunting situation have to be in order to apply
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: for this hunt? When you just admitted that there's hardly
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: any deer were shooting on this part. It's hey, that
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: hunt's gonna happen next season, so it's gonna be really
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: good bye then, yes, so yeah, it's all about you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: if if we got this thing and it was loaded
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: with big box rough out the gate, then where do
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: we have to go from there? Right right, there's there's
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: no story if that's the case. So I would just
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: want to win the hunt so I could see you
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: in person again. And how like you're slowly becoming a
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: man every time I see a picture. Every time I
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: see a picture of you, your goatee just looks better
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and better and better. Well, you know, I just keep
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: on rubbing rog gain and pixie dust on it every
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: morning when I wake up, so better be amen. Uh yeah,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: So so that's that's my Michigan private land stuff. Still
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: knocking out a bunch of public land stuff this year,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and I know you are too. So let's let's get
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: into our hunt breakdown. I guess, of sorts, we'll start
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: with our two hunts. We'll move on to the other guys.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You had big Colorado elk hunt You've been talking about
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: all year, You've been dreaming about all year, been working
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: your tail off leading up to it all year. Um,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: before we hear the step by step play by play
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of it, Just what is your what like when you
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: get back, When you got back from the trip and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: your wife was like, well, how did it go? Like
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: what was your initial like vomit of how you were
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: feeling about this thing? Yeah? Man, I'll tell you what.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: You go into every one of these trips knowing that
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the odds are stacked against you. Right in that particular unit.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I think the success rate on and this this is
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a whole that is guns and archery combined and public
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and private combined, the average is in eleven percent success rate. Now,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: if I had to guess where we were hunting, you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: cut that success rate in half and I would put
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: it at about five of a success rate based off
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the terrain we were hunting, the the the part of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the unit that we were hunting, and just all the
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: combination things. Uh, the odds are just waste act against us. Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: So you look at something like that and based off
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: statistics and odds, which I'm you know, I'm a numbers
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: kind of guy. You you almost come to the realization
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that based off those stats you're not going to kill
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: an elk for you know, you're gonna kill one elk
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: every ten years, right, and so at that point it
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: kind of just the statistics alone take a load off
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: your shoulders and you can enjoy the experience a little
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: bit more. And yes, you're focused on going out and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: trying to kill an elk, but at the same time,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you're you're you're working hard, but you kind of you
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: kind of understand that you know it's it's probably not
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: gonna happen, but regardless, you work hard. So what does
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that mean? That? That means that when I got home,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: my wife said, how is your trip? Um? I said,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it was tough, but I had fun. That's that's what
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I That's what I said. Okay, that that that is
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a good way to wrap a hunt. If you can
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: have that attitude at the end of an outcome, that's
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: that's that's pretty good. If you're gonna come home without
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: killing something, that's about the best you could ask for.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I love like, I love going hiking, and someday my
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: goal is to like hike some fourteen ers out in Colorado.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: But so we did a lot of hiking on this trip,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and we got to experience some really cool things like
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: these views at eleven thousand five feet eleven thousand, I
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: think the highest we got one day was eleven six right,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and the elk were still above us. Yeah, so we
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: were we were up pretty high. And when you get
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that high, you can see a long waist off some
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: of these um off some of these mountains, and just
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: sitting there eating your snack or your lunch what looking
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: at these views, you just kind of forget about what
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you're actually there to do, and you're just you just
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: become this sponge of energy. I don't know. This is
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: kind of some hippie talk, but I love it when
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: you get hippie. Yeah, I know, but but like you
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: just all the stress in life just kind of goes away.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You don't even realize what you're doing anymore. You're just
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: kind of staring off your You're you're able to the vision.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: You have just become so much more crisp and you
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: can see the details in nature as opposed to you know,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: right now, I'm doing this podcast. Later on, I gotta
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: do some work. I look out my window, I see
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: a tree. But when you're up there and you get
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the time to slow down and observe. You don't just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: see a tree. You see the leaves, you see the branches,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: you see the bark, you see the bird that's living
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: in it, you see the grass that's growing up around it.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: You you see the whole picture, but in much more detail. Yeah,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and and then and then another thing that I know
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: you and I have talked about this in the past
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: when recounting other adventures. But another thing I like about
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that kind of landscape when you get up into a
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: big wild place like that, especially when you get up high,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: is you really realize how small you are, Like the Sale,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the scale of everything is just so vast when you
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: can see miles and miles and miles and miles and
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and you're just this tiny, little insignificant dot in a
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: massive ball of life and rock and dirt and trees,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and that is that's a huge That's a I don't know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: it's it's a special thing to experience. So I absolutely
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking about up there. And then people
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: some people really like the feeling of being big and
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: in charge and and having power. Like for me, I
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: almost enjoy the opposite feeling when what unprofessional I forgot
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to rookie move but anyway, like just feeling like you're nothing,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I get off. I get off on that. Man, I
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's something amazing. And I gotta believe that
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: not only does a big mountain landscape make you feel powerless,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: but probably elk in general do too, as they often
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: don't follow our plans, right, right, is that the story
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of what happened on this hunt? Did that just not
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: turn out the way that you guys had seen in
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: previous years. So last year, every day was cold enough
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: to where we would come in and it was it
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: rained a little bit more throughout the hunt. So last year, um,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: we were cold and we were wet, so we'd come in,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: we dry our clothes, we'd start a fire, we'd warm up.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: This year, we didn't even need a fire, right, It
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't cold there. It rained once a day maybe, um,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: while we were out, but then you know, by the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: time we got back to the cabin, we uh, you know,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: it was hot. It was warm throughout the day. We'd
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: go out and we'd do an evening hunt and you know,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: just warm. So I think, what what happened? And I'll
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: walk through the first day here of the hunt and
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: then the rest of the you know, four or five
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: days is kind of just one big giant day. So
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I'll we wake up the first day of the hunt.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: You know you're excited, right, I had all this energy.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh man, we're gonna hear a bugle today.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be awesome. Me, my buddy Ryan, and my
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: new friend John uh walk out of the cabin walk
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we're we're We started at about ten to Okay,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: can I ask you one thing before you wrap this
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: or before you get going to the first day? How
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: long had Ryan been hunting before this? Yeah? Right, So
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: he'd been hunting a whole week and he wasn't in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a cabin. He was in a tent, right. And was
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: he hunting the same area or a different area? Um?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: He was. He wasn't hunting the exact same area, but
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: he was hunting. I would say, you know that there's
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a million acres of public land in this area. It's huge.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: So he was hunting about two miles west of where
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: we're at on day on my day one different yeah,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: different elk. He had an encounter him and a guy
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: shot the same elk, but like they never found it. Yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: which yeah, which sucks. So um, they had a couple
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: encounters for two days, but then they experienced the same
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: thing that I'm about to talk about, right, But but anyway,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: so day one, right, get out of the cabin. Um
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: this year, we waited just a little bit longer. We
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: weren't tromping through this deadfall in pitch black dark with
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: our head lamps right we were. Um, we waited a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: little bit for a little bit of light just so
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: it was easier maneuvering, and I think that really helped
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: us get to our place faster. Right, So it's almost
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: like we arrived at the same time that we would
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: have last year, because last year it took us longer.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: But this year, because of we had more light, we
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: were able to navigate this. So we dropped down to
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: about ten thousand into a creek. We walk up this
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: creek about three quarters of a mile maybe a mile,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and then we get out of the creek. So we're
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: talking about from the time we leave the cabin to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the time we get out of the creek is about
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: an hour. Then we have to climb up a real
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: big bench, so it's almost like straight up, just probably
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a hundred feet straight up just to get to the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: place where we can start calling these these benches and
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and these avalanche shoots and these meadows that are up
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: there where they typically hang out. So we set up
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: just kind of a fact, My buddy Ryan had a
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: watch and on this watch a calculated calorie loss calories
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: burned based off heart rate, and so every day that
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: we walk there, you know, you're forcing yourself to eat breakfast,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: so you have some start to the day. You're burning
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: five d seven hundred calories just on the hike up
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: two where we start calling. And so that just kind
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of of an idea of the terrain and how brutal
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: some of these hikes can be, just to just to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: start hunting. So we get in position, we make a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: couple of calls, nothing answers. Um, we're starting off with
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: some very light cow calling. We start off with maybe
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: one bugle, and then we work our way a little
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: closer to the meadow. We set up and boom, we
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: hear a bugle. A bull, a bull bugling probably about
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: three yards away from us. So we're like, what we
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: learned last year was you go straight to them, you
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: set up, you get in their face, and that's kind
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: of how we found success last year and how Ryan
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and John had success earlier in the week. Right, you
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: get up into where they're at and you make it
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: feel like there's another bull encroaching on their territory and
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: this is what's this is what's worked for us. Right,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So we move in slowly, bugle again. He bugles back,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: he starts to chuckle, and he's going back and forth
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: with us. We get close and then we're probably a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: hundred yards too yards set up away from this bowl,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: but he's straight up onto another bench that's above us,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: probably fet above us, right, So he's got the advantage.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: We have the wind, but he's got the advantage as
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: far as terrain. Right, it's still the morning and the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the wind, the thermals are coming down out of the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: off the mountain, and I get a chance to look
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: at him, and this is the biggest bowl that I
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: have ever seen. I'm not gonna say like on TV,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: but he was giant. I would put him and I'm
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about Elk, but I'm just comparing
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: him to what my buddy Adam shot a couple of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: years ago, and his bowl was three twelve. You could
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: have set that ball inside of this bull's rack. So
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: we're talking about like I'm gonna say, somewhere around a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: three fifty class bowl, which is gigantic. He had big
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: whale tails. His body is what was so impressive to me.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: He had that typical two tone elk look right where
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: like the front of him is this dark brown and
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: then the back end of him is kind of this
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: lighter tannish color. Right, just an absolutely gorgeous animal. Uh.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: He turned sideways and his his beams just go all
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the way back, all the way back to his hind legs.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, just this very impressive bull. And he starts
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: going crazy, right, He's just bugling and chuckling, and and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: then we're working in on him. We set up and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: we think like there was a period of time where
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I thought he was coming down right towards me, so
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I was getting fired up, and then all of a sudden,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: he just shuts off, and so we're like, so we
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: wait there probably another thirty minutes just to kind of observe.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: These guys. Come back over to where I'm at because
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I was flanking hard to the right and we see
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: this meadow and I said, okay, if me and the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: guys started talking, Okay, well, here he is, let's follow
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the terrain. Let's try to get above him before the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: wind switches, because it was a bright and sunny day
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, we we needed to get above
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: him before the wind switch so then we could call
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: back down and work our way down to him. So
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: we come out of this little thicket and we're now
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of this avalanche shoot. It's like a
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: meadow slash avalanche shoot from this past year. Huge avalanches
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: were all over there because of the snow, and so
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: we start working our way up, winds blowing right in
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: her face, working our way up, and I look up
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: into a shoot and there's another bowl, a smaller one,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: but I feel like these guys were all kind of
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: in the same gang, and not too far from where
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: we saw the big dog. So we we're climbing up
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: look at him and I said, okay, we gotta go
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in case he sees us. He's probably yards away. But
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: but straight up this this smaller avalanche shoot with a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of grass that they could eat, and some
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: pine trees were well, long story short, they're betting up
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in there. So we flank around. We go up this
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: this another shoot that paralleled it. We start calling a
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: little bit nothing, nothing, nothing, And so we work our
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: way back down. And as we're working our way back down,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we see three, three or four cows pop out of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: that original shoot that we were that we saw this
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: bull in and they run out. So I'm thinking to myself,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: maybe the bull went out first because while we were
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: climbing we couldn't see him, or maybe he's still up
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: there but left the opposite way. So we climbed back down.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: We I think we we had we stopped for a
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: snack at about like eleven three or eleven four, you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: really high up there, and come back down and we're like, okay,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: well when this wind switches and starts going up, uh,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: we'll just we'll just sit here and we'll glass and
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: maybe they'll they'll work their way through. Well, this is now,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: this now becomes the story of the entire entire week. Right.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: We had this is a a north facing slope of
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the mountain Range. Okay, so we're on the we're on
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the north facing slope. We had a north front come
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: coming in that week, so the wind was predominantly out
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: of the north, which was fighting the down wind thermals
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in the morning. So I'm sitting there, we're glassing, and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I'm watching this piece of fuzz come off this drainage.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: It must have been a tree that had like little
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: seeds on it or something, and it just comes floating
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: all the way down the mountain and connects at the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: bottom of this drainage that we were in to the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: shoots that we're going up to where the elk were.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: And I watched this. I watched this piece of fuzz
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: float all the way down to where these shoots and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: then it takes a hard right and go straight up
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: that shoot. So I turned around to the two guys
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that we were with, I go, hey, guys, I just
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: watched this. These elk, no we're here, and they're not responding.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: They caught our scent. They're either gone or they're just
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: done right. They're not gonna respond to it, especially when
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: they're getting a huge nose full of us. So the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: reason that they were there is because they could just
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: smell everything in the area. I mean, the wind was
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: just going crazy, and to be honest, that was the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: story of the entire hunt. Right we were fighting shifting winds,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the thermals were consistent last year, the thermals were up,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: they were coming down. At ten thirty, ten o'clock, they
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: would switch and go straight up. And that is the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: That's what it did every single day this year. Well,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: there's one morning it was still somewhat dark out, the
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: wind was coming down off the mountain. I'm I'm gonna
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: go sit out of wallow or climb up so I
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: could glass this bottom of this meadow. But at about
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: seven o'clock the wind shifted and started coming back up
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: because the prevailing wind was pushing those thermals, the downward
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: downward thermals away, and so you couldn't even you couldn't
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: fight it. You couldn't. You couldn't fight these winds because
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: it was just like a pendulum, just whoop up and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: down all day, up and down. There was no consistent
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: wind all day long, and it's hard to set up
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: on an elk or try to get into a calling
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: sequence um when you know when you're fighting that. And
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: there was a full moon that week too, so it's
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: almost like the the odds were stacked against us. Inconsistent winds,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: hot weather, and a full moon. Just it just seemed
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like they were quiet. The quiet and very high, so
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they got your wind after that encounter, And what happened
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the rest of the trip though, did you ever see
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: out here him again? Nope. We didn't see another elk.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: We didn't hear another elk. Um. We we found some
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: fresh sign, we found some good bed like good betting areas,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: um in some different meadows. We hiked up to different
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: parts of the mountain, you know, searching this this vast
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: expanse of uh Land and they were quiet. Um. My
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: buddy Adam and his brother uh they peeled off a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: different day and they had an encounter with three uh,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: five by five or six by fives, I can't remember.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Three or six by sixes came out of this one
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: little thicket and a guy drew on them. But I
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: think that was more of hey, we got we happened
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: to just get straight lucky on being here. They came
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: in dead quiet, there was no bugling or anything. And
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: that was an evening hunt. So they saw some bowls
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: but didn't get an opportunity on them. And I mean,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I wish I had some more. I mean I saw
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: two bear dens. That was kind of cool. Didn't see
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: a bear, but saw two bear dens. Um, I saw
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: these gigantic avalanche paths that where the avalanche broke away
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: from the mountain, it just flattened like hundreds of acres
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of trees. Um. But as far as the hunt was concerned,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it just became a hiking expedition at that point. You know.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So did you have like a plan B. Did you
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: have like a another area you considered moving to, or
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: or was it like this is our spot and we
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: gotta I don't know, was there any alters? Yeah, we moved,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I mean we moved around. We went to that place
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: two miles west. We went to different, you know, two
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: different drainages within that big so like there's there's one
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: big drainage and off these drainage there's several small drainages.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: So we worked all those right, and then we would
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: head west and we would go high and then we
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: would work some lows. But so I had guys hitting
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: me up on Instagram and they're just like, man, we're
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: out in the same unit as you are, and there
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: is nothing happening, like nothing, So it's very hard to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: call in number one in this this dark timber deadfall.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: You can get in there and you can try to
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: sit and quietly call him in, But you can't call
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: him in if this wind is swirling all the time.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: There there's no way that you can set up on
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: an animal like that that relies on its nose for
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: survival when the wind is one minute blowing towards them,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: one minute blowing away, and then it's left and then
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: it's right. It was just it was nasty. Yeah, that's frustrating.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Was there was there anything then, like in your post mortem,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: like when you're hunt ended, you're driving home and you're like,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure you're like me, and you're stewing
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: on it to some degree. At some point in that
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: drive you were thinking there, what happened? Was there anything
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that you look back on, or like, man, I wish
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I did this differently, or I wish I hadn't done that,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: or like, was there a mistake or something you could
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: point to that you would have changed if you could.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: You know, not really, And I'll tell you why. It's
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: because this wind. You know, of all the things that
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: you can control, I could control my physical fitness, I
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: can control where I hike and how far I hike
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: in but I cannot control the wind. And when the
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: wind is like you're just at the mercy of nature
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: at that point, right, I feel like I prepared good
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: for this hunt. We we did everything we could to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: put ourselves in position. I mean we were dropping out
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: of one drainage, going over peaks, and I think the
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: highest we got was probably eleven five or six maybe
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: one day where we dropped down into this creek went
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: almost straight up the other way. I mean, if people
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: want to go look at the pictures on my Instagram
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: page to see how steep of terrain we were we
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: were at. I mean we were damn near to tree
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: line some days and just and I'm telling you the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: hiking was brutal. But we did everything that I feel
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: we could to put ourselves in position. But when that
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: end position where you're calling is just swirling with wind
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: and they're not responding, I mean we weren't even hearing
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: bugles several miles away. So yeah, that's that's not only
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: is that just hard to hunt coming from knowing that experience,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: it's also just very disheartening because a big part of
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: what you dream about and look forward to when you're
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: thinking about an elk hunt. Tell me if you're different,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: but for me, like so much of what you're excited
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: about is to hear the bugle, Like that's the thing,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: is to like be out there in the woods and
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: hear these bugles and be chasing them down. And when
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: that's not happening, and when it's just a quiet hiking trip,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: just because the expectations are so off that itself can
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: like kind of put a real damper on things. Um like,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: dang it, I really wish they were talking. Why aren't
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: they talking? God was neither one? Like, I'm sure that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: was popping in your head like it does too. Yeah, yeah,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I mean if we heard one bugle at least that
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: would allow us to go out and think of a
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: strategy to try to, you know, intercept that bowl. But
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: we didn't tell I tell you, I take it back.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: There is one thing that I wish I would have
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: done different, and that was that first encounter on that
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: first day. We knew where this elk was for about
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes, right, we had this this thirty minute exchange
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: with him. I didn't do it because I didn't want
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: to screw up the other two guys that were in
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: my group. But if I wish I would have just
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: flanked even harder and went up the mountain and cut
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: cut off, cut him off silent, and then let those
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: guys continue to call. And maybe he would have went
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: down to them, or maybe he would have done what
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: he did and went somewhere else, But at least I
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: would have been up at his same level to where
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: maybe I could have got a shot at him, or
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I could have did like a soft cow call and
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: change his mind to come maybe back to my direction. Right,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: so put him in the middle of us. And I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: didn't do that because I didn't wanna. I couldn't communicate
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: with the other guys because I was probably seventy yards
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: away from where they're at eight yards away, and I
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: didn't want to. Um, I don't know blow an opportunity
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that these guys have been working at real hard all
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: week as well. So uh, if I would that ever
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: happened again, I probably would have just snuck in to
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: his level and maybe tried to backdoor him while he's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: focused on their calling. But at the same time, there
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: was another bowl up there, There was another cow up there.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So what I've learned is you have to be aggressive,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: but aggressive can bite you if you're not, if you
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: if you're a little bit too aggressive. Yeah, I mean
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: it's just like white tail hunting, right, Like there's a
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: there's a fine line in between being aggressive and being
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: too passive, and you need to know how to strike
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: that balancing act and when to push it one way
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: or the other. And I'm sure that's something and I've
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I've experienced it too when it comes to elk hunting.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: You that that whole balancing act is something you have
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to relearn when moving from white tail's elk, right, And
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: that's the thing, I mean, you can't glass. I picked
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: up my binoculars two times in in five days. That
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: was it. Just so it's so thick, it's it's dead,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: it's it's dark, timber, dead, all with a couple of shoots,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: and you don't necessarily I wasn't looking to pick out
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: a specific bowl. I was gonna shoot any legal elk,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: cow calf. You know a bowl that had I think
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it's a four by four or it's a four by
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: four or it had like eight inch brows, right, so
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: it could have been a spike with eight inch brows.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Those are illegal animal. I was gonna shoot the first
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: legal animal that stepped out and never got never got that,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: do you feel like you're physical prep was on point,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it was. Um, I was still
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the caboose out of the trip, out of the out
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: of the group. Right, every train needs a caboose, right.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I was a couple of steps. I mean, these guys
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: were out here to uh you know, six days before
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: I even showed up, So they had already been acclimated.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: They'd already you know, they're getting used to it. They're
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: they're legs or um. You know. For for me, it
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: was the first three days, three and a half days,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: my legs were toast. But then day five hit and
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: it's just the last day of the hunt. I felt
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: like a mountain goat. I felt really good climbing up
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and down the mountains. Uh. I was recovering quickly. My
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: legs weren't tired. But uh, you know that altitude still
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: gets you, right, and uh, I didn't get I didn't.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I was recovering quickly. It's just you can't beat the mountain.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: You can't beat the mountain man. You can't beat the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: air at that at that elevation. Yeah. Yeah, that's uh,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: that is always a big challenge every time you take
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: on a hunt like that. But I think the cool
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: thing about this was I don't know how you act,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: but you get nervous almost before this. Hunt's like driving
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: out there, I was nervous. I was just like, oh man,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: this is gonna suck. This is gonna this is gonna suck.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: It's on my legs are gonna be toast. I'm gonna
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: be breathing heavy. But what that did mentally to me
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: was it was preparing my body for the worst possible conditions.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: So when I actually got out there, it still sucked,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: but it it sucked less compared to what my mind
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: was telling my body was going to happen to it right.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: So but but overall, man, like I said, I can't
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: complain because I don't get to see those views. I
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: don't get to experience that every single year or every day.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: And I was happy with what happened. I got to
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: see some good friends, I got to, you know, go
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: hike in the mountain. I got to chase elk and
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I got to at least here a couple of bugles
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: here some chuckles. The only thing that this has me
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: thinking about is I'm not to the point where I'm
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: only after a a bull. I'm after an elk. So
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: this terrain that we're hunting at is brutal. It's I
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: mean it is. It's thick. When you're when you're having
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: to climb over three or four tree stacked on top
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: of each other type of dead fall, and you're doing
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: that while trying to hike, I mean, it is. It's
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: not it's not cool, it's it sucks. So it has
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: me thinking about if I put this same amount of
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: energy in in a different unit or a different state,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: or a different area or whatever, will that increase my
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: odds of getting an elk? Like maybe a little bit
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: less terrain, but I put in the same amount of energy,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: will it? Will it? I don't know. It has me
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: thinking about things like maybe this area in this unit
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: isn't the best unit I need to be in right now,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: because yeah, there's some big bulls out there, but I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: don't care about the big bulls. I want to kill
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: an elk. And when an elk is already feet above
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you every morning, I got no problem hiking that. But
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: then when you're hiking over deadfall and you're you know,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: it's just like every step you take to get higher
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: puts them at it an advantage because it's almost like
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: they know you're coming. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: need to return to our old spot in uh in
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Idaho where there was there were elk the terrain. I mean,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: it's challenging in a different way, but at least I'm
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: assuming based on what you're talking about Colorado comparing that
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: to this one. Um, I don't know. I've been, I've been.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking that same question though. It's like, Okay,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I want to elkhoun again. Do I go back to
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the old faithful spot or do I keep exploring new
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: areas and trying to find something that that's better. Um,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. The answer is now
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: you you uh, you talked about going Eddie Murphy. You
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: haven't gone Eddie Murphy. You see you seem so calm
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and placid and a piece with how your hunt went. Uh,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: where's the rage? What are you angry about? Did you
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: come down? This is? This is? This is you know
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: we all have kind of hip side of us, right,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: we also we all kind of have this little asshole
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: side of us, right. I mean maybe you don't. Yeah,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I know, I know I do. I'm like so and
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I know you get people get bone envy, right, you
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: get envy. You're flipping through Instagram. You're you're looking at
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the success other people have had, and I'm I don't
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: know who who I'm following or not necessarily, but you know, I'm, Oh,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: my god, this guy slammed a giant bowl. That's awesome.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: And then I'm I'm I start to read the story
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: right of the text in the Instagram post, I'm like, oh,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: this bowl, you know, huge shout out to this outfitter
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: or this guy's service, and I'm just like, I busted
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: my fucking balls physically and mentally for five straight days
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: and didn't I saw I had the closest in elk
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: was to me was seventy eight yards, right, And so
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the asshole part of means like, well, I'm gonna I'm
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: gonna justify to myself why I didn't get this done,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, just just just being
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a creep, I guess. So I go to the outfitter
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that I go to their website and I see that
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: this these people killed an elk and they also killed
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a mule deer while they're out there, right, I think
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: they might have taken away two mule deer actually, and
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: so a mule deer hunt cost like thirteen or fourteen
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars and elk hunt was more like seventeen or
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: eighteen thousand dollars. So just for those two people to
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: harvest this buck, and I don't know what their business
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: dealings were, but it would have cost me or anybody
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: listening to go to that outfit ter. It would have
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: cost them thirty thousand dollars to kill one mule deer
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and one elk or not even kill, but just go
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: on that hunt thirty thousand dollars. And you know the
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: people that do do that, that go on that. Now,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say those people because I don't
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: want to generalize too much, but it's reasonable to think, like,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: if TV personality goes and does that kind of hunt,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: they're probably also the TV personality that's booked seven more
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: hunts like that across the rest of the country for
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: other stuff too. So imagine that time seven right, right.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: So now you're looking at right and I'm sure they
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: flex their their popularity muscle, right and they say, well,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: hey man, this will do this. Will you give me
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: these hunts and I'll promote your your company wherever I
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: go this year or whatever. Right, so maybe they get
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: an additional you know, some selections because of what they do.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what we do, right, So that's where
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I become a hypocrite, is um, I don't know, I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: just it's it really, it's really hard for me to
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: congratulate someone when yeah, they probably still had to get
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: out of a truck and walk to this. But it's
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: like it's everything set up. They have people watching these
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: elk all year round. They have people watching these mudle there.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: They already knew when these people came into camp where
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: they were going to go, what animal they were going
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: to go target. And um, again, this is me just
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: being a prick, you know, bitch and bitching about this.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: But uh so whenever I see a guy on public
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: land who gets it done just like what I was doing,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: kudos to them, man, because they're I know, they're grinding
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: just like I'm grinding. And uh, you know, if you're
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: you know, an East Coast guy or you actually live
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: out west, I don't know. It's just I I lose
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: any type of interest. You know, it's about experience and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: it's about the story. So as soon as I hear
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: that that in their story that we had to use
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: this service then, and I and it cost it would
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: cost me this much money to have to go experience
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: what they experienced. I lose interest in it. And I say,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I can't relate to that. And I just I don't
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: even care anymore. Yeah, man, And and I will just
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: add without even commenting or critiquing what the other people
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that you know choosing to do that, it just to
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: me seems like it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: experience that it wouldn't be the same experience. The experience
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: that you had even without killing bull, I would argue,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: is a richer, more fulfilling experience even than those folks
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: that did shoot one right now, not I don't want
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: to you know, this isn't a blanket statement, but um,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: keep on. I'm always gonna want to just keep on
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: grinding doing it on your own, because I think when
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: it does, every once in a while come together, it's
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: just that much more powerful. Right. And here's where it
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: because him like you start to walk this gray line
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: at some point because I hunt public land or I
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: hunt private ground in Iowa. But I'm knock on the door,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: I get permission. Right now, if I go out west
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and I get permission on a piece of property, Let's say,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: do I become a hypocrite at that point because you know,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not not necessarily paying for a guide service, or
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily paying for something. Let's say I pay
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: a trust pass fee because a lot of places out
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: west say, yeah, you can hunt my property, but you
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: gotta pay me a trust passing fee to to go
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: out there. I don't care what you shoot, but you're
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: gonna pay to be on my property. Is that the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: same thing or is it different? You know, I don't know.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I don't even think we need to like be trying
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: to like rank order. What's the most way, you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: like who are my brain? But I would say, like
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: I at least for what I'm interested in, I'm always
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: going to I don't care if it's public or private,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: if it's if it's whatever. But I'm all always going
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: to just want to do it myself. Like I don't
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: care where it is. I just want to be the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: person doing it. I just don't like the idea of
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: someone else tell me, oh, you gotta hunt here, or
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I put the stand here, hunt this, or we know
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the bucks here, go there. I just want to figure
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: it out myself. That's for me. That's what I get
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: the enjoyment out of, and I get the fulfillment after
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: having completed a hunt, whether it's successful or not. I
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: just want to do it. I want to struggle through it.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a challenge. I wanted to that
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: is the experience that I don't know for me, it's
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: just you need that struggle and like that work to
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: make it a real experience. Right. And the more I
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: get into this style of hunting, right because this I
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: got this South Dakota muliteer hunt coming up, the less
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I give a ship about any type of antlers, any
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: type of antlers. I don't know. I I think that
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the hunting community as a whole has been brainwashed over
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the years to think that in some way, shape or form,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: antler size matters in some for some reason. Don't get
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: me wrong, Mark, I'll be the first to admit I
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: like big bucks, like big ailer bucks. They're rare. But
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: at the same time, I don't give a ship about
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: a score. I don't give a ship about you know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: like if a if a guy goes out and he
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: kills a spike buck. Dude, kudos to that guy who
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: went out and harvested the meat off that animal. He
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: went out, he had fun. It's just I don't know, man,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I just see it every day now. It's like the
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: more I get into the Instagram and the more I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: get into the business of the hunting industry, it's just
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it's almost like it's poison here. You I so much more,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: at least for myself. It's it's coming down to like
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: the experience I want and so are you having fun
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: or not? Yeah? Like are you having fun? Like setting goals?
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I love having goals, so you know, like here on
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: a Michigan property, I'm hunting. You know, my goal is
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I'd like to wait out for an older buck, but
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at age. I really want to shoot a
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: four year old. Like that's the challenge and the experience
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: I'm pushing for. But then I'm gonna go up to
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Minnesota on a public land canoe and hunt and I'll
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: shoot a spike or whatever is legal, Like i will
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: shoot the first legal deer I see up there because
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for an experience up there that you know,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: it's very different from the experience I could get in Michigan,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: which is very different than experience if I had drawn
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Iowa tag next year. You know, maybe I'll be super
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: picky next year an now, because it's the one time
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt Iowa in five years and I want
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: to extend and fully you know, experience that. So I
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: think we get too hung up. But I'm right there
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: with you, Like I'm just as guilty as sometimes. You know,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: you see a big buck and you get excited about it.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I mean we can talk about that here in a minute.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Like my North Dakota hunt, I very much saw a
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: big buck and got my heart set on it and
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: you know, made a this aasion that maybe it was
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: a mistake because of that. Yeah. Um, So I don't
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: think there's anything wrong to like, like you said, like appreciate,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: get excited about have fun looking at and chasing them
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: and dreaming about big bucks. But it's I mean, we've
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: for years on the podcast, we've talked about this. It's
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: just like you can't let it go too far, right,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: you can't let that become a poison. Yeah. I have
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: one last thing to say about this Colorado trip, tell me,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and it is I got to experience this with my
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: dad and he we drove. When I told him about
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: this Colorado trip and that we were staying in the
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: cabin and all this stuff, he goes, may mind if
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I tag along? He's retired, and I said absolutely, So
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: he drove out with me. We shared the responsibilities of
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: driving out right. We um just get to experience this
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: crazy hail storm coming out of Denver where it sounded
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: like his truck was getting shot at. The hail was
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: like the size of all you know, a little bit
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: smaller than a golf ball, a little bit bigger than
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: a marble. He came and he stayed at camp for
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: two days, uh, two nights, and he was the camp
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: cook for the group of guys that was there. Yeah.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: He then he got to go do some experience some
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: things that he hadn't done in his life. While I
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: was hunting, he went to maceon Verde and checked out
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the cliff dwellings down there from the ancient Native American
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: civilization that was down there. Um. He went to Arches
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: National Park and he got to see the you know,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: the stone configurations there, and then you know, he got
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: to go meet a high school buddy that he hadn't
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: seen in a while on on the way back to Nebraska.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: So and just experiencing this with him, and my dad's
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: not necessarily he's not a hunter or he's an outdoors
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: but he loves to camp and hike and stuff. But
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I just I I loved that part
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: of the trip more than just about anything else. That
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: is really really cool. To be able to share that
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: with him. It's awesome. Yea. Yeah, So let's talk about
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: you now, buddy, about North Dakota. Yeah, further right, No, solo,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: further solo, solo, Yeah, solo. So drove out at the
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: end of August, solo. It's about a two day trip
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: out there. It's like nineteen or so hours, um. And
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: so I left in time to be able to get
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: there the night before the season opened to try to
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: do a little scouting. Yeah. So, I I had hunted,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: sort of hunted this place once before. We talked about
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: last year, Like I showed up after Josh had been
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: there hunting for like four days, and I showed up
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: and scouted one night in one morning, and based off
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: what Josh had been seeing and what I saw during
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: that day of scouting, I decided we should pull the
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: plug and go somewhere else. So that's my only hunting experience.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Here's basically glassing a night in the morning and then
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: we spot. Yes, we shed hunted and scouted one spring.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: So I came into this with a couple pockets picked
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: out that I thought would be worth exploring, and um,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I'm worth hunting, and I wanted to. You know, this
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: is an area you can get up high and you
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: can glass down on these river bottoms and you can
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: you can see a lot, or at least you think
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: you should be able to see a lot. So I
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: got there the first night, went to the first pocket
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: I've hiked into this big bluff on top of bluff,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: looked down into this bowl alongside of a river with
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: a bunch of cedars and cover in there. It looks great,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: and I saw a decent number deer. I saw more
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: deer that night than I saw all of the scouting
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: that I had been out there the year before, so
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: I was feeling pretty good about it. I was excited,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: but I didn't see like a mature buck. So for
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the next morning, opening morning, I thought, all right, I'm
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: gonna move to another area, another one of the spots
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: I had picked out. I'll glass that in the morning,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: just see if that's any better, and then i'll be
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I'll know that I've seen these two areas, I can
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: pick whichever seems like more promising and then hunt opening night.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: So the next morning, I'm up on a different bluff
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: several miles away from this original spot and seeing deer,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: seeing deer, and then I don't know, like an hour
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: and a half, maybe after daylight, I spot like a
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: deer silhouetted in a strip of cottonwood trees, and I
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: zoom in with a spotting scope and I see it's
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: a good buck. Like it's a really good buck. Definite
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: shooter um, definite mature buck, big tight, tall, ten pointer,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: still in full velvet um. I don't know, one forties,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: maybe high one forties. Awesome. I mean like just everything
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: was like amazing public lam buck. Yeah, so I'm really excited.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I watched him for I don't know, half hour. He's
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: kind of milling around this little area and then walks
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: off and beds down. So right away I'm like, okay,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I this is this is where I'm hunting. I'm gonna
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: try to kill that buck like I found a target.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: That's all I needed. And uh now it's just about
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: playing this game, trying to get this buck. And I'm
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: looking at Onyx though, and I see he has betted
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: on private land. There is a it'll strip, a private
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: that went into the middle of this public and his
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: little tree line that he's better than just so happens
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: to be in that strip of private public land butts
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: up to like yards of him on either side. But
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: there's like a hundred and fifty two yard wide strip
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: that he's in that I can't hunt. So that's where
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I'm at the first evening. So that was the morning
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, shot my bow, got all organized, got
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: all cleaned up, got ready for that first evening hunt.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Slipped down into the river bottom, trekked in through a river,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: across the river, follow the river for a way, is
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: hopped up, and then just slowly worked my way. And
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: my game plan was based off the wind. The wind
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: was blowing from the betting area to the to the north.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: It was like a southerly wind. And I basically said, okay,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna. Yeah, I can't get right on him,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna get as close as I possibly
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: can with the wind being safe, and watch how he
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: comes out of there, and then hopefully like, Okay, I'm
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: gonna see how he comes out of there. I assumed
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: he'd becoming the way he came from in the morning
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: going that way, but I couldn't, like I couldn't get
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: on the intersept path because of the private land, so
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I couldn't hunt him doing exactly what he did that morning.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: So I thought the best case scenarioly watch get a
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: better idea of how he leaves here just in the morning.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: So I get set up, climb up into a tree
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: that gets me as close as I think I can
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: get without him seeing me. Because basically this is like
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: relatively open grassy stuff with these little strips of cotton woods,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: and he was in one strip of cotton woods and
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I'm in then there's then an open grassy meadow and
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: then another strip of cotton woods. So I got to
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that other strip of cotton woods. I didn't want to
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: get to the very outside edge of it because I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: was afraid if he was just better there watching, he
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: could see me. So I tried to keep just enough
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: covering the way, and I actually almost crawled up to
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: this tree, got up in the tree, and I'm up there,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: and I realized there's way more there's there's one set
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: of trees in front of me, and I just could
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: not see where he was betted well enough from there.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I just I wouldn't be able to see right where
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: here is better. I could see one side of it
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: if he came out that way, but if he stood
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: up and headed directly the opposite direction, I would never
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: know it. So I'm all set, though I'm sitting up
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: there them for five minutes, I'm like, oh my god,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Like it really looked like it was gonna be a
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: lot better than this, and it's not. It wasn't even.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: It was just like, I'm having a hard time remember
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: exactly why I thought this about would work. But I
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: think maybe I thought I could get higher, maybe to
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: get above. Like there's one tree in front of a
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: small shrubby tree that I thought i'd be able see
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: through or passed. And it definitely wasn't too high, if anything,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: that was too low, and I didn't have enough another
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: climbing stick. So for whatever reason, I just could not
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: see this angle I need well enough. So after a
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: couple of minutes, I decided, you know what, forget it.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: What's the point of being here if I can't see
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: that spot. So I pulled everything down, got back on
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: the ground, and was going to move up to one
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: more tree. And then I realized, you know what, I
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: can actually see best just right from the ground. Um,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: and all I really care about. I don't really think
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill that buck here to I really just
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: need to observe, like this is more scouting session with
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: hopefully an opportunity. I got lucky, but really just gotta
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: be seeing it. So I found a little knob of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: grass and some shrubs on either side, and I tucked
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: myself into this tall grass with a shrub on either
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: side and behind me, and just got hunkered down the ground.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Great spot I could. I was able because there was
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: this knob, I was shelt. I could crawl up to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: it from behind it, and if that buck was you know,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: eight yards away in front of me, he'd never see me.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: And then I could just stay right behind that knob.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: But I can slowly rise up and see everything. So
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: that's my scenario. Wins great. I can see a great area.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I know exactly where this buck was betted. UM and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I set up for the evening, sat there, sat there,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: saw Dolan Phon come out and she leaves. If you imagine,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: like I've talked to these two strips of cotton words,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: there's a strip of trees that he's in, and then
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: my strip of trees kind of meets at a V
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: at the bottom. And in that v where those two
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: strips of cotton woods come together is like a grove
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: of aspen trees and shrubs and a real little thicket area.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: So these deer are all popping out of that. So
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: don't A fond pops out of that, enters the meadow
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in between me and him, and runs across the meadow
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: right at me, stops right in front of me, like
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: thirty yards and then kind of feed on some kind
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: of forbe that's in front of me about thirty yards.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: So Dolan Fond does that, and then a little buck
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: does that, and then another small buck does I'm like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: oh man, all these deer leaving this betting here and
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: coming right to me. Um. And when I say, it
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: was probably between thirty and forty yards away. Um. And
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: then here comes a buck like running right at me,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and I look at him. I'm thinking decent buck. And
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: then I'm thinking, is it the big buck? And that's no,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: it's not. It's a small eight pointer. So then I,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I let myself down and it's okay. What's
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: behind him? Is that big buck coming? Like this is?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: This has gotta be a big batchelor group. That's gotta
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: be the guy. So this eight pointer runs in front
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of me, stops like thirty five yards, starts feeding. He's
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: in really tall grass, like up to his head. Um.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I can still see him, like I said, probably thirty
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: five yards or so. But I'm just watching for the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: other ten point, not watching, watching, look at the eight.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: He's still there, watching for the ten, watching the ten.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: Look at the eighth. My god, that's not a bad buck. Um, Paul,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: I'm bin occulus. I'm looking at him, like jeez, he
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: looks like he's probably three or four. Um. I turned
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: back look for the ten, and I look back at
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: the eight and like, man, I probably shoot that buck
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: any other time. And I look back for the ten,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: and I look at the eight and like, should I
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: try to shoot this buck? Like he's in range? If
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I stood up, it took a couple of steps around
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the shrub. I could probably get a shot at him, um,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: and then look back for the other buck. And then
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: I just kind of saw, you know what, it's the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: very first night of the hunt. It's there's still like
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: an hour and a half a day like left. I'm
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: right here. This buck should be standing up any minute
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: now and coming my way. Um, we're coming somewhere. Then
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: I can adjust. So I decided not to try to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: shoot this nice eight point. He was a nice eight point,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: like really he'd be he'd be a good public lamb
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: buck any other day shows not to try shoot them.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Wait out the rest of the night. Another couple of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: hunters show up. Now they're above me, up on the hillside,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: but their glass in the same area I'm glassing, and uh.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Then they disappearedly move off somewhere else. But there's another
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: couple of hunters in the zone now, and I'm like, crap,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: are they gonna spook this buck? What's gonna happen? Fast forward,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: though I don't know what happened. The Big ten never
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: showed up. The Big eight walked away, and I saw
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: no other deer. And that was my first day of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the hunt. I saw the Big ten in the morning,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: saw a nice eight in the evening. Uh passed on
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: him now kind of like your hunt. The next four
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: days all were kind of like one big day. From
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: that point on, I was just bouncing as the wind changed.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: I would try to hunt around this zone where these
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: two bucks came out of as wind would allow, and
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: they just nothing. I never saw the good bucks again.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: I saw a couple of deer here and there, little bucks,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: you know, passed on little year and a half old,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: little two and a half year old, some does um,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: But never could see a decent buck again. After that
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: point I was working a river inside great access. I
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: would walk into the river and literally walk for an
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: hour and a half following a riverbed in the water,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: and then just hop up a bank, climb into a
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: tree right there. I mean I had a really good
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: in and out um, a good wind like I don't
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: think I was busting these deer and there was just
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: just could not find him again. So I don't know
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: if those other hunters were in there in this basin
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: with me hunting too and had spooked the deer, if
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: if they caught my scent, or if they had walked
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: past me past war I've been walking and caught my
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: caught my scent or what. I don't know, But the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: next couple of days I could not find him again.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: I in the mornings since I wasn't on them. I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: just glassed in the morning from observation spots, couldn't find them.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I eventually on day four went over to a plan
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: B went back to that other spot I scouted hunted there,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: found that there was another couple of guys camped out
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: hunting that zone to one day. To get to that
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: spot took me a two hour hike to get into it. Yeah,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: the longest hi I've ever taken. In It wasn't like
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: distance as it wasn't two hours long as far as
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: like it wasn't walking full speed for two hours, but
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: it was the fact that you'd get into the river
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: and I had to slowly wade through the river forever
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: to try to get to the spot without spooking deer. Um.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: That was very demoralizing when I saw only one deer
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: that whole night for like two seconds. Um. And so
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I moved, moved, pivoted around, you know, for five days
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: and just could not find a single good deer again.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: Could not establish any kind of pattern like these deer
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's much thicker than it looks from up high.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: From up high, it looks like, oh, it should be
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: pretty open, But when you get down at ground level,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: the covers all the way up to the top of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: the deer's heads. In many cases, um, there's not a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: ton of deer. There's no established food source, just kind
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: of betting everywhere. So like every deer I did see,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: you'd see it pop up and it would kind of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: miller round and then just move off in a random direction.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: There was never like an establishment. Okay, these deer betted
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: in this little pocket, and they leave that pocket and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: they head west towards the food source. No, it was
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: like one deer come out from the pocket and he'd
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: head west. Then I'd see another deer pop out like
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: behind me from some other random little patch of grass,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: and he'd head north. And then I'd see one other
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: deer pop off from the river an hour later, and
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: he'd head south. And that was the case for five days.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: You'd see like two dear day. They do different things,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: and they're just never ended up being something I could
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: key in on. There was no pattern, there was no consistency.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Wasn't like the herd had a pattern. It was almost
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: like individual deer at that point had their own pattern. Yeah,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and and it was there was just never anything I
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: can latch onto and never say that one of those
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: good bucks again. And so by the time it got
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: to day five, it's been four days about seeing the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: decent buck um. I had one other plan c pocket
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: that I thought I was gonna hunt, and there end
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: up being other hunters there too. I saw truck driving
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: in and out, So now I'm thinking, man, does it
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: even make sense to try to even go fiddle around
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: with that? And then checking with a wife here that
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Everett's sick and not feeling good, She's not getting work done,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: that's not going well, and I'm sitting here thinking, man,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I have nothing to work with. My next plan for
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: this next ton is I'm just gonna go in and
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: like still hunt. I was thinking at this point maybe
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: I should just walk around and try to bump something
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: get lucky, or go to way completely different area, like
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: pull up camp and drive an hour and go somewhere
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: completely different where the ideas I was considering for the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: last day. So I had this really stressful like hour
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: in my truck where I'm thinking, like back and forth.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: What should I do? Do I stick it out as
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: long as I originally thought I should another day, try
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: something off the wall, and just like keep trying because
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: I hate the idea of packing up and leaving. On
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: the other side of me, I'm thinking, man, you had
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: two days of travel, get out here, You've hunted five days.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: You've got another two days of travel. That's being away
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: from the family for nine days. You have no real
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: hopes of killing something. It'd be just a blind it
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: would be simply just persevering because you want to persevere.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: It's not like you really, really really think you're gonna
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: get it done. And so I had like this back
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: ended up designing to go home shows trying to get
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: back for family. But I, to be honest, like I
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: had I felt crappy about that. I feel probably crappy
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: about either decision I made, But I felt like, am
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I giving up on the hunt and my quitting on
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: this before I should like I need to push through
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: the advert. If I pushed through it and hunted that
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: one more day maybe would have came together. And so
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: the whole drive home I was like back and forth,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: back and forth, Like on one side, I felt good,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: like you're prioritizing my family and getting back and it's
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: already a long hunt. Didn't feel like a long hunt
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: because I didn't get to hunt that much, but the
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: travel made it so long. Um. And I just like
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: I just felt like the place beat me again. And
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: the biggest thing is like I felt the place beat
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: me last time because I couldn't figure it out and
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Josh couldn't figure it out. I really believed that I
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: could figure it out this time and it and it
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: didn't happen. Um. So that was like my conundrum, my
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: conundrum coming out of this hunt. I had two things
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: to like question marks or or lessons learned or debates,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: internal debates. The one debate was the decision at the end,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: like the decision of pack of camp. It it's like
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: this decision between I always talked about the importance of
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: pushing through the adversity and keeping at it. You want
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: to leave it all on the field, That's something I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: really believe in. And and so one part of me said,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: like you kind of bailed, like you didn't, you didn't
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: go to the very end. The fact lady wasn't quite
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: seeing you could have stayed another half day or three
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: cours of a day or whatever. So one part of
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: me says, like, dang it, Mark. The other side of
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: me says, no, you put your family through this. You
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: know it was the right decision. Even though it didn't
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: turn out from a hunt standpoint, You made the right
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: decision to get back and help your wife and and
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: all of that. So that was like a thing that
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: I kept debating about in my head, my two sides
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: of the family side of me and on the hunter
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: side of me, and and and I think ultimately it
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: was the right decision because I do need to prioritize
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: my family that I'm glad I did that. I'm glad
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I came home. I'm glad I was able to help out.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: But then there was the other side of me, like
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the hunter side of me, it was like, damn it, Mark,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: you didn't leave one. I feel he left ninety six
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: or whatever it was. And so that still had that
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: little whispering down in my head. That was my canundra
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: number one. And then my conundrum number two was the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: first night hunt I've never had. This happened before, where
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: you get a shot at a deer on the first
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: night of a hunt and you're left with that dreaded
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: situation where you're like, do you pass on something on
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: the first night that you would shoot in the last day.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: And it happened to me this time. I passed on
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: a buck that I would have shot the last day.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know if I'm happy about
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: there or not. If I part of me says, I
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: wish i'd shot it now looking back, because then I
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: would have had that buck, and you know, would have
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: had a successful public land hunt and it could have
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of did figure it out. I
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: guess it was a little bit lucky or it was
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: a good hunt whatever. Um. But then part of me says,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: it was the first night you didn't know was coming.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: You know, you wanted to have the full experience out here.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: You knew there was a really good, definitely mature ten
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: point buck that you know, you want to see what
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: what might have been possible. And so those are the
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: two things. On that drive home, we're bouncing back and
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: forth my head over and over and over again. UM.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: I think that with any out of state hunt, when
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: you're hunting a time frame, the end of the hunt
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: there's this window, right, it's like a gray area. Right,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: It's like there is the back end of that window,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: which is I cannot hunt any time past this because
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: if I cute something past this, then I have to
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: process it, I have to clean it, and it's just
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: gonna take an entire another day for me to get home.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: And then at the beginning of that window is the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: is this man, is it even worth me staying here
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: anymore because the conditions are bad or there's no animals,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So there's this window at
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: the tail end of every out of state hunt that
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: really almost tricks us, I feel, because I probably could
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: have hunted another another evening, potentially another morning, but the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: weather conditions were gonna do the same exact thing that
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: they were doing the previous five days, right, So um,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: I backed down. I got home. Right, It sounds like
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: you did. You did something similar. It's just you know
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: more than anybody else that the weather, the weather conditions
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: dictate more than anything, whether or not some of these
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: or in time of year, right, the movement. Right, So
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: if it's hot as balls and these deer aren't moving
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: until thirty minutes before light, or you can't find them.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: What's what's to say that they're going to do that
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: on the fifth day or the sixth day of the hunt,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: when you you know you could get home. Uh. I'm
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: all about reading that the scenario and making a decision
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: based off that. And I think that for me in
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: the elk hunt, Uh, we decided to leave because it
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: was just going to be more of the same for
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: the next day or two. And you did the same
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: thing because it was more more of the same. Now,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: anything can happen at any time in hunting, right, It's
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: just that you at that point it would be less
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: strategy and skill and more luck. Yeah. So do you
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: think I made the right decision? Oh? Absolutely absolutely, I
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: think you did. Now what about the buck the first night?
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Did you see by chance the Instagram story or the picture? Yeah?
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: I saw it, great deer um, And that's why I
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: said to you, I didn't know he was kind of
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: bouncing back and forth between private and public. Yeah, you're
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: talking of the original one I spotted, Yeah, the one
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: that you set up originally for right, yea, just that strip.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: I mean it's a narrow strip that fingered into the
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: larger trunk of public and he just happened to be
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: in that little strip, um. And so I was right
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: on the edge of it. Um. See when I when
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I heard that story, I didn't know who was but
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: button up against private So I was like, dude, you
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: you have to go in there and make an aggressive
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: move on him right now. Um. And but you know,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: when you you know that there's that scenario, he was
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: on private ground, you didn't have access to it. There's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: nothing you could do about it. You did the best
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: thing that you could other than that. It's just like
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: when when you're hunting a piece of property that you
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: really don't know where you're you're kind of learning about, um,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: especially when you have limited time. I'm I'm the kind
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: of guys like dude, just be aggressive, um and try
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: to try to get the job done, like as soon
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: as humanly possible. Because as we we talked about on
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: this podcast all the time, first time in best time
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: in Oh yeah, So would you have shot that a pointer? Probably? Yeah? Probably? Um.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: It just depends, man, because you can be people can
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: become blinded almost and I was blinded for like seven
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: years when I was chasing that ship wreck buck right
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: or five years or whatever. You become blinded that the
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: end goal is something and you're willing to do whatever
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: it takes to get to that end goal. And whether
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: it's oh man, the rut is cracking here, I just
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: know I'm gonna see this I've seen or not necessarily
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the rut, just like dear movement in general. Right You're
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: you're seeing tons of good sign you're seeing dear movement,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: You're seeing all those things, and then it just shuts
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: off and then you all you're left with his questions
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: whether or not you made the right decision or not.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: When when it's hard for anybody to determine what what's
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: going to happen in the next minute or five minutes
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: or five days, you know, it's it's funny though, right, Like,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: there's like the end goal you want, so it's like, yeah,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I want to kill mature buck. That's the goal. Let's say,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: and I could have killed that buck and he was
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: probably three or four, and I could have said I
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: killed mature buck, and I could have left there achieving
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: my goal. But at the same time, back to what
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, this isn't necessarily like I
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have necessarily stated this as the goal on the front.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: But when I think about it, my goal is also
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: to have a certain experience, and like killing a buck
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: on the very first hunt, like an hour into the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: very first hunt out there, I think would be like
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a disappointing experience to like, well,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: now what do I do? Like I came all the
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: way out here. I didn't I didn't have to do anything.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: I just watched a couple of times and walked in
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: here an hour and killed a buck, and now I'm
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: gonna turn and go home. I probably would have been
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: a little disappointed, and to degree was stoked I killed
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the buck. I got the buck, but it would have
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: also felt a little bit hollow in some way, maybe
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: like what I really want is what I really wanted?
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Was I wanted a hunt for four days and on
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: the fourth night, after going back and forth, you figure
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: it out and you kill your buck four days in
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: or five days or whatever. It's like, that's what I
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: really want. Let's say the ideal scenario. Um So somehow
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I got. I got the end outcome that I wanted,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: but it arrived before the experience I wanted because they
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: didn't match up. I didn't take advantage of it. And
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: now I'm left wondering, like I got the experience, I
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: got the five days of grinding it out and trying
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: to figure out I just didn't get the the end
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: outcome that was given me too soon. It's a weird thing.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I've never I've never had that happen. You always here
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: about it happen, But is the first time I've experienced that.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: And I still don't know, you know what, um, what
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: the right call for me would have been. I made
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: the call I made, so yeah, It's it's funny on
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: a scenario like that. It has me thinking of are
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: we like, are we really hunters? Because I think of
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: a hunter as a bobcat or a mountain lion or
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: a lion or something like that, right, and they don't
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: give a shit about anything except I'm gonna feed myself
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: with that. And here we are out in nature with
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: our bows saying, okay, you get the past tonight. But
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the week, if you
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: come by again, I'm gonna kill you. Or hey, hey, hey,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: dog group, you know you're lucky this time. You know
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna shoot you this time. I just almost, yeah,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: I almost feel like I'm moving away from like I'm
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: still gonna go out and try to shoot some mature
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: deer or you know something with some good amimers whatever.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I feel like I want
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: to become this like ultimate predator, like this guy down
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: in Louisiana who has killed like eight hundred deer in
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: his life, Like he doesn't care about maturity. He just
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: shoots deer. Yeah, I mean it's a fine line. It's
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: like like we of course we want to have kill
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the animal, get the meat. But if all we care
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: about is just killing ship, then we could just go
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: to the farm and like put a bolt through Coyle's
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: head fifty times a year or whatever. You know? Did that?
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: Like the meat is is once you like, once you
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: fill and once you put enough meat in the freezer
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: to feed your family. Um, And you know you can
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: do that every year by killing a few does um
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: like the only reason to hunt in a different way.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Then if you've established you've got the baseline, it's then okay,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: I want my meat, but I want my meat to
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: have a deeper experience attached to it. And and that's
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: the thing is the experience, yea, And my experience is
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: different than everybody else's experience in your experience and whatever,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and everyone's got different thoughts on what they want the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: experience to be and how it impacts them and how
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: they go about it. And I guess, you know, it's
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's different for everyone, and and that's
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: what you know makes this sole hunting thing kind of cool.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I guess. So I don't know, that is what happened
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: to me, That is what happened to you. Um, listening
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: to your story, having processed my story, UM, there's a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: few things already that that that kind of stand out
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: to me as takeaways. What I want to do next
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: is I want to chat with Tony and chat with
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Andy here how their hunts went and they had the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: experience with the exclamation point at the end, and I'm
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: interested to hear what we can take from those two
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: hunts and then kind of compare all the notes. So
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do at the end of this is kind
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: of do a post mortem of our four hunts and
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: what the big takeaway one or two things. If there's
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: like a common common moral of the story from everything here,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if I can unpackage that, and we'll
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: wrap up the episode of that. So, do you have
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: any final thing you want to leave with Dan before
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: before I cut to that. Yeah, I wish you would
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: do this in two different podcasts because it really sucks
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: being on the same podcast with Andy May who's like
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: like Mr Automatic, Like the guy goes into any piece
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: of property and kills something, you know what I mean. Like,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: and then there's Hey, Dan Johnson, he looks at flowers
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and oh cool a bear den. You know nobody gave
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: Nobody gives a ship, right. Well, you know what they
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: say is that if you're in if you're the smartest
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: I think they can apply to like, if you're the
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: best hunter on the podcast, you should be on a
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: different podcast. You need to surround ourselves with better hunters
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: to push us Dan. That's that's what we're trying to
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: do here. So so I feel good about that I'm
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: in the same boat as you. All right, So now
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: we are going to transition to the successful side of
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: this podcast, and the first very successful hunter that I
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: want to chat with here is Tony Peterson. Tony, welcome
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Thanks for having me, buddy. I
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: love the fact that we're able to talk relatively frequently now, um,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: increasingly more this time of year, because every time it
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: seems like I get on the phone with it, you've
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: got another buck on the ground. So we're we're counting
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: on you, Tony, to show us how to get it done,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: because we just heard from myself and Dan, who both
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: did not fill a tag on our September hunts. You,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, have filled enough tags for the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: both of us. Um, you killed the buck Nebraska, right
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: and then just recently minnesot It was that opening day
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota, the second of this season. They were both perfect.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: So let's start in Nebraska. This was public land, I think,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: can you can you set us up, like, what was
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: your thought process going into it, how did you prep
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: for that hunting, and how did it all end up
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: going down? Sure? Man, So with Nebraska, you know, I
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: found this spot that I hunted two years ago turkey hunting,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and we just we ended up just we were driving
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: on through and saw a couple of birds on this property,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: turned around, started hunting it. You know, I saw some
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: deer sign until this spring, a buddy and I went
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: down there to turkey hunt again and get a better
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: feel for the properties that were there and found some
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: stuff and found some really nice cattle tanks and you know,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: water hole situations, and so I was kind of banking
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: on that for you know, I was down there the
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: last couple of days of August and then into the
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: first first of the September or so, you know, the
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: first of the day of the season, and so you know,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: you're kind of banking on it. Me in ninety degrees
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: every day, I wasn't banking on you know, typhoons all
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: summer long, putting water everywhere. And it changed the entire pattern.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I had talked to a buddy who
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: lives down in southern Nebraska before we went, and I
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: knew the water program was probably a no go. But
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: after getting down there to scout for two days, I
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: realized it was going to be food or nothing. And
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: so it was it was a matter of switching gears
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: from my primary plan to back up. And you know
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: it's you're you're talking the beginning of September, you're gonna
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: be talking food anyway. I mean, it's such a such
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: a driver that time of year, and I just happened
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: to I do there was a one tucked away field
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: on a walk in ranch down there that had good
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: potential if it was gonna be beans or alfalfa. And
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: as soon as we got there at lasted, there was beans.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: And so I knew, you know, you've got several hundred
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: acres with no food on it, you know, no destination
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: food sources, and then you've got this bean field tucked
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: in there. You knew there's gonna be deer coming in there,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: and so that was kind of what kicked off our
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: strategy down in Nebraska. So you found the beans, and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: you mentioned something that was interesting me, how you showed
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: up in late August and the opener wasn't until one
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: September one. So we got um two fold days. So
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: I knew I would have preferred a couple more, and
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't swing it. But we had two fold
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: days to you know, glass mornings, glass evenings, and then
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: hike in the spots in the middle of the day.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: And if you kind of divide and conquer like my
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: buddy and I did, you can you can figure a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff out. And so we we did that.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: And I mean that you know you talked about unsuccessful hunts.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: I mean so much of that scouting is just eliminating
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: places you're not gonna hunt, you know. I mean that's
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: everybody since you walk in and you figured out, okay,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: well I was on on X, I found this spot
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: and it's gonna be money, and you walk in there,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: and for me, probably I don't know, sixty or seventy
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: percent of time, it's just not right for some reason.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: And so it's it's just a matter of seeing a
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: lot of those spots to market, going Okay, this one's
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: no good, this one's no good, this one's got potential,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: and we just we got lucky getting to that beating
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: field before anyone else. And we found one other spot
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: that I had turkey hunted. When we we walked in there,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: there was a fresh stand and the camera there that
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: somebody had driven in. But we also had a like
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred thirty five in ten point across the trail
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: in front of us and just beat away while we
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: were walking out at ten in the morning, So our
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: backup spot, even though there was somebody using it, somebody
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: had been in there recently. I mean, we had, you know,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: seventy five yards away. We had visual confirmation of a
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: great public land here in that spot. So we did
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: have you know, the scouting paid off. We did find
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: what we needed, but we looked at a lot of
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: stuff that was not good. And was it so you
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: you located the spot that was best. Were there any
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: challenges with actually executing the kill itself or was it
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: kind of just textbook at that point? Um. The challenge
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: was the amount of brain that they had down there.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Everything was so tall that you're you would look at
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: a chunk of ground and you'd think, okay, well, you know,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: if I hung a stand in that grove oaks or something,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I can see a long ways and I
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: can shoot, and then you walk out into it, you know,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: and I'm I'm six too, and I would walk out
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: into that stuff and in some places to be over
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: my head. And then when I was glass in that
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: bean field because I glass the beans for two nights,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: those deer would walk out and if they were in
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: even like a slight depression or if they had their
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: head down and eating, they disappeared, so you couldn't see them.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: And so I never I couldn't like I couldn't see
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: the spot we killed in, but I could see some
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: of the some of the places they were coming in
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: to get there, and so I never I never actually
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: got to like lay eyes on the spot I killed
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: my buck and my buddy killed this buck. Until I
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: walked in there knowing that the deer were gravitating there
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: and knowing that it was kind of one of those
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: parts of the field that was closest to the best woods,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: and it kind of fell away, so it was it
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: just wasn't visible. You just knew like that was the corner.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: And I did see the big one that my buddy killed.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: I watched him go in there twice, and so I
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: knew that there were deer gravitating towards that spot that
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: we couldn't see. And was there anything about the tree
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: that you ended up picking at that point, Like you
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: knew there was the right corner to being, but when
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: you had actually had to make the decision of where
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: exactly you were going to hunt, why did you pick
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: that tree? Was just the only option? Um? So when
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: I when I went in there opening night, I went
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: in way early. And I should say this, you know,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: we when I was glass in there. When I was
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: going in the second night, two guys from Michigan drove
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: in and stopped and talk to me, and they were
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: super nice, and they said, and we want to hunt
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: in there too, but if you're in there, we'll just
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: wait till you're gone. And so they went to hundred
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: other stuff. It didn't go in until we tagged out,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: which was awesome because you know, it's public land. They
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: could have went in there. But when I went in
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: opening night, I went in early and it was hot.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: It was eighty degrees, real strong south wind blowing, and
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: I got to the spot I kind of snuck into
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: where I knew I wanted to set up. Uh. I
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: could see that there was the fence was down in
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: a specific spot there, and it was pounded going through
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: that crossing, and so I started looking around for a
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: tree there, and there was a couple of little ones,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: but they were right on top of that crossing. And
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: then there was one that was about thirty yards away
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: but would give you a real good shot in the beans.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: And that one had tons of cover. It was a
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: multi trunk, multi limb, and but it was set up well.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: So that was it was just it was a gift
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: to have a good tree in that spot. So you
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: got the tree. You If I remember, and I can't remember,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: if I heard this in in your chat with Spencer
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: and Refresh Radio, or if it's just you met, you
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: and I talking individually. But as you were getting set
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: up in that tree, your bucks showed up feeding the
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: beans as you were actually getting set up, right, Yeah,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: so I should tell the whole story about getting set up.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: I uh, you know, I took this this tree and
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: I'm using uh, you know, climbing sticks and a little
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: lightweight stand, and it's my first sit of the year,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and you know how that is. It feels
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: like you're kind of like relearning what you're doing even
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: though you got Yeah, you always forget something. He screw up.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: So I'm you know, I get my first two sticks on,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm kind of hooking the third one on in
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: the way I wanted to face the stand. Uh. It's
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: like I gotta be a little killful with the sticks
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: the way I mound them, because you know, they weren't
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: they weren't blocking in great and so I knew when
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: I stepped on it, I knew right away I screwed up.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: And I had my lineman felt around the tree, and
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I slipped off that lineman spelt and it just instinctively
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: grabbed the tree trunk with my arms because I was
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: reaching around it anyway, and I ended up, um, you know,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: my lineman's belt caught me. So I ended up only
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: falling like six or eight inches, but I had a
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: big bruise on my arm I had. I had bruises
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: where I actually grabbed my right arm with my left
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: hand so hard that I left the hand print bruise
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: on my arm. Yeah, just just a dumb move on
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: my part. But you know, the safety gear saved me.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: And so anyway I do that, I get myself, you know,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: really situated, and I hang the stand and I was
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: using a little millennium and they have a kin for
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: the seat that that holds the seat in place, you know,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: so you can you can fold it down out of
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: the way when you're transporting it, but when you get
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: in the tree, you gotta put that in there to
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: hold it up. Well, I get up in the tree
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: and then my kin's gone. So I'm like, now I've
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: got to seek that's worthless, and so I'm like trying
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: to use my So I get a life line up
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: and I get always safety stuff squared away. So then
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: I had my linement. Felt like well, maybe I'll loot
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: my lineman felt through this tree and around the trunk
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: and try to support it because I'm like, I got
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: five hours still dark, and I'm like messing around with this.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: And I looked behind me in fifty two yards away
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: of the beet field. It's a ten point of feeding
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: full velvet, and I go, oh, Like I looked down
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: my bows on the ground. I don't have like an
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: honest way to sit down, and so I'm like, I
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: gotta I gotta get to that bow. And so I
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: climbed down the tree. And what helped me was it
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: was super windy. It was probably winds and I just
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: had a ton of cover around that tree. So I
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: shimmy down the steps and hooked up my tow rope
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: to my bow, shimmy back up while he was feeding there,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: and he couldn't hear me. It was way too windy,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: and if he looked in the woods, I was in
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: the middle of just a bunch of blowing branches and stuff.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: And so I got back into the stand, pulled my
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: bow up, you know, got him ranged again, and you know,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: too far away. So I'm like, he's gonna walk, He's
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: gonna walk, right down that road and give me a
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: phenomenal shot, and he betted down. So then I'm like, Okay,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: now I can't see him, but I know he's there,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: and I have time to actually get myself situated. So
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: I figured out my seat I had. I had an
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: old bow hook in the bottom of my pack, and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I could frown that through the seat so I could
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: actually support the seat and sit down. And then I
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: got situated, and in that process, another buck stood up
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: out of the beans and started seating a similar sized
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: eight pointer. And so I'm like these deer with with
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: the bugs that were down there because of the mosquitoes,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: I think they were just like, we're gonna live in
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: this bean field, and if we're here, nobody can see
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: us in this corner, less are on top of us,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: and that winds blowing all the way across this wide
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: open field and pushing all those mosquitoes off of them.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: So I think that that was one of those little
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: micro climate deals where those bucks were just like, this
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: is the best place for me to be right now, man,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: And then you got your shot. The next day. Sorry,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to continue, Yeah, So I should I should say,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: you know, he he got up and bedded down a
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: couple more times, and then I got my shot as
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: he as he worked his way closer, and then I
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: sent my buddy, I got out quit and then sent
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: my body in the next day because it was there
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: was still lots of potential there. Yeah, So what did
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: that next day's hunt? How did that play out? Did
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: a play out just like you were thinking the original
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: night was gonna going to based off of the scouting
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: you had. Um, it went different than I expected and
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: better than I expected. Um. He you know, it was
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: hot in ninety degrees, miserable hot conditions when he went in,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: and he didn't have any early movement, but he had
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: a buck come in, uh, you know later in the
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: evening when the shadows we're getting there. That was he
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: thought was like a close to pope and young type
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: eight pointer, really nice buck, and he was trying to
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: get a shot at that buck. It worked its way
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: down the beans, but it was like she hs outside
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: his range he felt comfortable with. And so as he
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: was trying, you know, wondering if this buck is going
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: to get there, he saw he saw a different buck
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: come out on that trail through the down sense and
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: so he switched gears. He said, I'm gonna shoot that one.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: That one walked out and it was that big one
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: that I'd go after the last two nights, And it
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: came right down the bean row the edge of the
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: beans at twenty yards and he stumped it. Wow. So
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: do you do you think now, having like two bucks
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: into the first two nights of the season on this
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: public land, do as as I listened to your story,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: if I were to pick what I what seems to
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: be like the most important thing you guys did, right,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: my guests would be that it is the fact that
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: you had the scouting. It was the having looked at
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: this area earlier in the year and then showing up
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: several days early glass and glassing glassing, picked the right
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: spot and winning then killed. Is that right? Or do
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: you think there was some other crux of the hunt? No?
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: That was it. I mean I I had pinned my
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: hopes on some areas that were unhuntable, and I had
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: really got high hopes over this different walking ranch I found,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: and we spent some time on that scouting in a
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: midday and it was worthless. There was there weren't any
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: deer in there, and so being able to glass for
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: two nights on that bean field. Put us on those deer.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: And you know that buck that you know I killed
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: a good one. That buck my body killed was awesome,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: you know. You know I watched that deer going there
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: two nights in a row, and that buck I I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: scored it when I was home here in Minnesota a
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: little bit ago. That was a hundred deer, you know,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: I mean on public triple Brow time like special. And
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: all it was was we we saw him in there
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: coming into a certain corner of that field, and we
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: were the first ones in there. You know, I'm sure
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: if you went down there now and try to play
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: that program, it would be too late. Yeah. So so
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: fast forward a week or whatever it was. We can
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: have two weeks from then to Minnesota. It's opening day
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: in Minnesota and you going for hunt. Now, in the
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: case of the public land, you shot a couple of
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: days earlier, you glassed. What did you're scouting entail leading
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: up to the opener in Minnesota? Oh? Man, um, you
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: know some random weekends all summer long. This is this
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: is a private dairy farm that I have permission to hunt.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: Uh and it's it gets a lot of traffic, but
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's a cool place. And you know, I went
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: down there. I try to make it down there like
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: once a month to hang stand the glass and check cameras.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: And that's like my traditional you know. I can hang
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: stand the trim shooting lanes and I can run cameras
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: and and do the whole thing. And that's that's like
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the place I have to do the entire process. It's
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: different on public, you know. And so I had stands
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: up and I had a plan in mind, and I
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: had a buck that I really want the case, which
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: is I think he's a legit typical booner in there,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: and I went after him opening morning, uh in in
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: kind of a it's kind of a year long or
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: a season long pinch point where a washout is on
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: the hillside, and I thought he might be in there,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: and I got in there super early. And it's the
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: entrance route that I made to get in there follows
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: this washout and it's like American Ninja bow hunter going
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: down through there. It's wet rocks and hugs and it's
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: like to not fall down. Getting in there is a
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: huge wind. And I got in there and got set up.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: It was awesome conditions were right when he was right,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: And at like seven thirty in the morning, I heard
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: voices in the woods, and I'm going, what is how
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: is it possible that I can hear somebody in here?
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: And then I heard a chainsaw fire up like a
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: hundred fifty yards away from me, and so my hunt
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: got blown up there because they were between what me
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: and what I expected the deer to come from, and
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: there was no deer coming through there. So I bailed
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: made my plan from the evening, and in the process
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: I entered to talking to another bow hunter on the farm,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: which took out one spot I could hunt it. And
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: then I saw a Facebook post from this girl I
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: graduated with her husband with a hunting their squirrel hung
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: with their kid. They were so that's the other end
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: where that bonner was living. And so I'm like, all right,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean that's just how it is. Well,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: you don't have control of it, so yeah, the standard
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I kind of had limited options. After the scorel hunters
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: and the other bow hunter and the woodcutters, I had
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: hung one uh one field that stand and another part
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: of the farm where you know there's usually some good books.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: At some point in the season and usually they back
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: up in there and that in the woods when it's
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: they go hard antlers. I figured somebody would be in
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: there that was good size, and so I, you know,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: it was partially I had limited options because of the
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: other intrusions by people, and partially because the conditions were right,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the wind again with south southwest smoking, same
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: kind of conditions as Nebraska, but they were they were
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: good for that stand that that was intentional, and so
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: I went in there early opening night. Uh, just just
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: partially because it was all mostly what I had going on,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: and because I knew there would be something in there,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: and you know, dear started moving pretty early. Had one
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: solid three year old type buck come out feed with
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: some does, and everything was like real it was feeling
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: really good. And then I heard a side by side
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: on the minimum maintenance road going real slow and probably
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: you know the roads by five yards in the stand.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: I can't see it, but I can cure it. And
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: those deer that they were in the field at that time,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: they heard that side by side and they all bolted
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: out of the field and so at at you know,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: this was probably about a half hour till the end
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: of the legal shooting light. The whole elf helfone field
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: cleared out, and I'm sitting here, going, man, what's going
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: on up here? Whether here's these here this spooky on
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: opening nights and I don't I don't know if somebody's
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: been shining in there or you know, off road or what.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: So you know, either way, you know, what are you
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: gonna do? So I'm sitting there and it's still a
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: half hour left, and I had had one bill come
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: out of the trail that I was really hoping they'd follow,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: because it takes some eighteen yards around that stand and
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: it dumps him into the field in just a perfect spot.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: And I was sitting there and heard something behind me
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: and had three little raccoons go by, and I was
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: watching them, but I heard something else and I'm like, man,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that's another raccoon. And I looked back
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: and I saw this rack going to the brush or
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: this this antler times and as soon as the buck cleared,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the trail twenty yards away, and I got
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: a good look at him on like, oh man, I
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: know what dear this is. And if he comes out,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: he's can be eighteen yards broadside and he's worth filling
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: my tag opening night, and that's exactly what he did.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: And he walked out and it was just like a gift.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: It was just a beautiful shot opportunity. What do you
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: think he's doing? I mean, he was heading out to feed,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: But why did he come through there? Do you think? Like?
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: What made that be the spot? On the spot? So
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: there's a behind me and there's a sort of an
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: oak flat, and then there's there's an old fence throw
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: through the woods and just two ridges that they liked
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: to bet on. It's it's just thicker. It's kind of this,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: you know. I guess you can call it a soft
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: edge in there between two types of cover, like the
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: more open oak flats and a little more brushy stuff.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: And so somebody big usually claims that spot, and so
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: the closest route to play the wind in their favor
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: and get to the field is out of that trail.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: So he just you know, when he went hard antler
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: and he backed up into that spot started betting there,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: and it was opening night, so he just came out
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit early instead of waiting for it to
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: get dark, and he just that that that was just
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: like the perfect field that gimme on opening night. You know,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: like even the same thing in Nebraska, if it would
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: have been I wouldn't set that stand a week later,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: probably because I know people would have been in there
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: and that beer is probably not going to make that mistake. Yeah,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: it's interesting both of these situations, your Nebraska hunt and
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: your Minnesota hunt. It was you saw these bucks using
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: a food source with long distance observation, and then you
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: hunted the very first time you could in there, and
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: they made that mistake on the first night. I mean,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: is the moral of the story for you as you're
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: looking back on these two hunts simply that the value
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: of long distance observation and then striking before hunting pressure
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: changes things. Is that the takeaway here it's a big one, man.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: You know, there's there's so much value to that long
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: range scouting if you get away with it. But you know,
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: I think my takeaway for it, or a different takeaway,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: would just be that the scouting gives you options and
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: if you you know, if you pin your hopes down
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: one stand or one setup, or one food plot or
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: one idea, you know, if you're hunting places with lots
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: of people and so many variables, that are out of
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: your control. You're you're gonna like Plan A is gonna
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: blow up, Plan b's gonna blow up, like you gotta have,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: you gotta have some good options to fall back on,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: so you don't push a dead program or you don't
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: just not go. And so I think I think the scouting,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: you know, it obviously plays into ways you should be
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: and when you should be there, but it also just
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: gives you more places to be. And I just think
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: that matters a lot. Yeah, that's a great point, and
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: that that was the situation I guess with both of
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: those two hunts as well. So interesting how such similar
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: situations could play out in in very separate states, in
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: in unique ways in their own right, but with such
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: similar court truths, and you're able to take advantage of it.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: So I think we can all take something away from
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: that and learn from those experiences. Um, I hope, So,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: I hope you're gonna You're gonna continue the trend. And
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: in three p here with a kill in in Colorado. Man,
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: I am going into Colorado with low standard and I
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: have an either sex out take, and I have a
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: bear tag, and I have a small game take. I
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: fully intend to try to take advantage of every opportunity
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: that I'm given and to come away so Colorado with
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: some kind of meat at the back of my truck.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: So I hope, so, I hope so too. And I
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: hope some of the some of your good juju and
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: you're you're smart hunting will rub off on me and
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: help me get my season back on track after tough
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: September hunt. So thank you Tony for for sharing. Thank
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: you man, you just got you gotta come to North
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: Dakota with me. Then, I know your your timing keeps on,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: it keeps on not lining up with mind. But I
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: need to get out there. It sounds like it sounds
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: like a little different time of year and make a difference. Uh,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: it would give you a different respective. But there's always
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: so much going on out there that you just part of.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: This is just a lot, man, it is. And I yeah,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, as folks just heard me describe a little
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: while ago, and as you and I talked about the
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: phone a week or two ago. You know, I had
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: my chance at a great buck and I just got greedy.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: So that's a lesson to be learned, I guess to it.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: It does all right, man, we'll drive safe and I
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: can't wait to hear how it goes awesome smart. All right,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: So now we are here with Andy May and Andy,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: you wrapped up in early September hunt in Kentucky successfully.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: So what I'm hoping you can do here to help
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: kind of round out what we've done in this episode
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: so far is kind of here the cliff notes of
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: your hunt, how it ended up going down, and and
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: then I want to spend some time in the back
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: end breaking down like your big takeaway from this what
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: the crux of the hunt was. But I guess first
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: me through real fast, how this Kentucky hunt came together? Okay, um,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: I actually was not planning on taking a early September
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: hunt this year. That that time of year has quickly
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: become like one of my favorite times to hunt. But
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: this year I had an elk hunt planned in late September,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: and I just wasn't going to try to squeeze an
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: early season uh September hunting. It just seemed like too
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: much going on. But some things came together and I
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: had a lead and made a couple of phone calls
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: and I got permission to hunt a small I don't know,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: medium sized piece of private land. UM on the map,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: it looked very interesting because it was near town um
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, sort of suburban style, but it
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: was a decent sized piece for being near a town. Um.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: It clearly had some crops, had a river bottom through it,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: and it just looked like it had a ton of potential.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: And I decided last minute. It was it was a
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: Wednesday evening that I decided, you know what, I'm gonna
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: go do this for the weekend. Um, I only could
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: squeeze in the weekend, and the opener was on a Saturday,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: and I just decided to go for it. So I
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: made the decision Wednesday night, left Thursday UM and drove,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: you know, drove straight through to get there Thursday evening
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: and glass and my my plan was to just long
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: range scout this property and just lay eyes on a shooter.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: That was the goal. You know, if I knew if
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: I could just lay eyes on a shooter, then I
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: had a chance. And you know, that's always a long shot.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: But it's a good part of Kentucky, great genetics. Not
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: that particularly how to find decent books. That time of year,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: they're pretty active, especially if you got some some good food,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: which this place did, and the pressure was relatively low.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: There were some hunters around, but this isn't like a
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: highly pressured public land piece. It's a you know, it
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: was a private piece and relatively low pressure. So the
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: animals were pretty relaxed, as they are that time of
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: year anyway. So UM, I'll just jump into you know
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: how that first night of scouting went. UM. I set
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: up the spotting scope and I glassed. I got I
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: got on a high spot and I was able to
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: glass this giant river bottom in a really big bean field,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: and I felt really good about the spot, except for
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: my the number one spot that jumped out on me
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: on the map that I wanted to scout in glass. Um,
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: I couldn't see from the spot and the reason that
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: spot jumped out to me was was were t two reasons. Um,
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: it looked like the best type of betting or security
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: cover was down in that part of the river bottom.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: It was a little wider, there were some points and
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: some low spots in the field, and I just couldn't
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: see it from that vantish point, but I could see
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: the property from where I was, and I, you know,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: I just went with it that night. Two days before
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: the season, I glassed a couple of bucks like a
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: year and a half year old deer and a dough
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: and a fawn. So it didn't pan out like I hoped.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: So the next morning did the same thing, glass from
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: the same spot, and I did see a small bachelor
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: group of bucks, probably two year old deer, you know,
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: hundred inches to one fifteen type. It's dear, nice dear,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: but not really what I was looking for. And then
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: I for for Friday. Uh. For Friday evening, I was
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: kind of up in the air what I wanted to do.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: I was contemplating driving an hour or two an area
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: that I hunted before that I know quite well, um,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: and just trying that. And then the other part of
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: me was trying to decide is it worth maneuvering and
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: glassing that last five of this property that I couldn't
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: see from the previous Spanish point and in my opinion
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: on the map look to be like the best. So
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: I decided to just stick it out, and I basically, uh,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: I forego all the property, and I set up just
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: so I could see that low spot that five left
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: of the beans and that thicker part of the river bottom,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: and I set up for the evening and had some
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: deer come out, had a really cool encounter. I was
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: just set up in the beans, I like tucked down
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: in the beans. They were about waist high, and two
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: young bucks, probably a year and a half year old,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: came out and they ended up coming within like seven
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: yards of me in the beans. I got some really
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: neat video and they had no idea. I was there
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: and right before dark, well about probably about twenty five
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: minutes before dark, I see two deer come out of
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: this point that comes out into the field right out
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: of that river bottom and a glass and it's two
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: good bucks, two shooters, the one in the back a
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: little bit bigger than the one in front. And that's all.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: That's all I wanted to see. I wanted to lay eyes.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: Now I had something to go off of. Um they
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: were kind of working my way, so I just hunched
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: down and I got the heck out of there. I
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: didn't bother too much with with videoing or anything like that.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to get out undetected. So that goes
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: that takes us to opening evening and I went in
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: with the saddle and it was kind of you know,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: sneaking my way in. I knew kind of roughly where
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: I want to set up, but I just didn't have
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: the tree picked out, and wind was a little if
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: he I guess you could say it was not perfect
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: for me, but it wasn't what I would say dead wrong.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: It was kind of like a just off wind, which
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: is something that I do often, you know, when I'm
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: being I guess a little more aggressive, and on this hunt,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: because it was such a short term hunt two days,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: I was definitely leaning on that more aggressive side. Um
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: So you know, if if I had five days to
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: hunt here, truthfully, I probably wouldn't have pushed it that
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: first evening because Sunday's forecast was the perfect wind, but
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: I try, you know, I decided to roll with it
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: and I found a tree that was perfect, and judging
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: by the travel line of these two bucks, you know
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: they would have came within forty yards of this tree
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: the night before. I felt pretty good about the city.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: If the wind would hold true and I got up there,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: it was it was really hot, really humid, just swept
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: my butt off, and the wind was decent. It wasn't great,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't decent. I should be able to shoot
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: these deer if they come out before they win me
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: well about an hour into the hunter. So as you know,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: it starts kind of switching back and forth. You know,
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't always blow from the north. It's you know,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: it's a little northeast, it's a little northwest. And then
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know it, it gets a
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: couple of times through the night where it's just blowing
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: me dead right into their bedding area and I'm within
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: I'm within a hundred and ten yards maybe a hundred
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: yards of where these where I think these deer are betted.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, man, that's not good. So
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: maybe once maybe you can get away with that. Um
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I thought maybe maybe it missed them. But
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: then you know, two or three more times throughout the night,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: it just keeps blowing right in there, and I'm like,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: this is this is not good. So, needless to say,
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: they didn't show up that first night, and I kind
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: of thought I shot myself in the foot with with
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: that first hunt. So but knowing what I know about Kentucky,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: I've hunted their early season and their opener several times now.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: It's low pressure, you know, even in the even in
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: the public land I've hunted down there. To me, it's
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: it's really really low pressure that time of year. Now
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: they might think it's higher, but it's just not high
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: compared to what I'm used to. And even in this
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: scenario on the piece of private, it was really low.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: So I felt like there's a there's a good chance
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: that I didn't screw things up completely. And I looked
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: poured over the map, and I was really going back
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: and forth, and I want to sit in the same tree,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: or don't want to adjust, and that the two the
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: two adjustments that I was considering was moving closer to
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: the betting area, which probably eight times out of ten
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: is something I would do. But given this set up
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: in the way I thought these deer were betting on
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: this point, I didn't feel like that was a really
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: good option because if I moved closer, I literally have
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: to I have to go across the beans and kind
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: of get into that point. And the way dear bed
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: often in farm country is when the wind is at
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: their back, they will they will face the feeding area.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: So you know, vegetation was high. There's a chance I
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: could have got in there. It's really thick. There's a
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: chance I could have got in there, maybe got up
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: set up undetected. They couldn't see clearly out into the
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: beans just because of all the tangle on the vegetation.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: But it was really really risky. They could have been.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: They could have been bedded, you know, twenty yards inside,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: or they could have been bedded seventy yards inside. But
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: I knew there was a general area where they were
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: and it just like a way too you know, risky situation.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: So what I did was I said, Okay, what are
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: what's my other option? My other option is to kind
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: of hunt on the pattern. Then I saw that night
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: before the opener, but I did think that they were
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: going to adjust, and I felt like they got, you know,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: several nose full of my scent the night before. I
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: just didn't feel confident that we're going to go by
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: the tree that I was in. So what I did
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: was I knew where they were going, I knew the
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: direction they wanted to go, and I just rolled the dice,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: hoping that they would still move before dark. But what
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: I did is I actually moved farther away. And I
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: know I've told this to a couple of people and
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: they're like, what you move farther away. Well, I moved
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: farther away, um in anticipation, anticipation that they would skirt
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: the tree that I was in before, so I knew
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: the direction and the travel they wanted to go. I
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: moved farther down the line so that if they took
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: that same sort of angle but skirted that tree, eventually,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: if they moved far enough before dark, they would still
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: get to where I was. Does that make sense? It does,
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: But it also does seem like a decent leap, like
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: a leap of faith, to think like that they'll come
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: out again and then that yes, they'll skirt it, but
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: they'll make it far enough, even though they have previously
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: had humans scent now in their nose, but to believe
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: they would skirt that edge and still make it to
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: you during daylight. So what I'm wondering is what percent,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: like how confident were you in this? Did you go
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: in there thinking, well, is the best idea I've got
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: but probably chance or ten percent chance? Or you're do
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: you going thinking this is going to happen? No? I
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: would say I definitely didn't think it was gonna happen.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: So you and I and a lot of listeners out
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: here that hunt, you know, higher pressure deer. That's the
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: way we think. We know we typically only get one chance,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: and if they get they get your scent, it's usually over.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: You're usually not going to kill him in that location again,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: So we we know that we have to make that
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: first time count. This isn't that scenario. And a lot
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: of times I hunt out of state, it's not that scenario.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: You you can often get more than one chance, but
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: they may adjust. Now I'm not saying you can get
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: eight chances, but you might be able to get to
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: and um. So when I adjusted, it was it was
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: I literally sitting in the same tree. I I got
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: rid of that option. I just didn't think that was
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: going to pan out because I just felt like they
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: knew something of danger was there and just going off
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: you know, past hunts and past experiences. I just didn't.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: I felt like I could have seen them from there,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: but I felt like they were gonna skirt me. So
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: my two choices were moving tight to betting, or move
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: farther away down their travel route, you know, on the
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: way to where they were going. They were heading towards
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: this river crossing to some some other crop fields. They
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: were kind of just browsing through the beans when I
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: saw him moving at a fairly decent you know clip,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: So I just choose the ladder, and I would say, yeah,
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: probably roughly. I thought for sure i'd see them maybe
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: at last light. Will they get to me? That's the
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: that's the the question. So I was left with those
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: two options, and I chose not to skewed in tight
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: to the bedding because I had a pretty darn good
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: idea where they were, and I knew I couldn't get
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: I really couldn't get any closer without busting him. I was,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: I was sure of that. So I I guess I
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: took the lesser of two evils and hoped for the best.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: So you got up in your tree, what happened? Yep?
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: So I get up in my tree and wind is perfect.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Things are, things are looking good, things are feeling good.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, these dear the day before season, moved
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes before dark for last shooting light. The day
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: of the opener, they got a whiff of me. So
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: I'm expecting last minute shooting and then I'm sitting there
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: kind of just you know, be impatient. Some deer starting
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: to kind of filter out in the beans, and all
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: of a sudden I look up and these two these
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: two bucks, these same two bucks are exiting the betting
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: area about an hour before dark, so even earlier, which
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: which shocked me. But they did exactly what I anticipated.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: They didn't come off that point, off the tip of
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: the point. They came off fifty yards away from the
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: tip of the point, still out of the point, but
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: fifty yards further from where I was set up the
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: night before, totally skirting that original stand location. And I
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: could tell that they were on alert because they came
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: out and they spent that first five ten minutes staring
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: over in that direction of the old tree, so they
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: knew I was there, they knew I had been there.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: But they adjusted and they still came out. It's still
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: an early season, early September pattern, unrelaxed, unpressured deer, and
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: you know, a September early September deer are far different
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: than our opener October one. They act completely different. You know,
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: they're still a bachelor groups, they're still deer moving uh,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: you know, very early into um. The food sources and
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: the deer just feel more comfortable moving when they're in
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: groups and when when other deer are out in the
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: food source already unbothered. And that's what I think happened here.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: There were several deer already out in the beans, unbothered.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: These deer popped up, they came out and there they're
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: kind of looking in that direction of the old tree.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: And after I don't know about ten minutes, they just
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: forgot about it, start munching on the beans and slowly
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: start making their way right in my direction. And I
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: was like, Oh my gosh, this is actually gonna happen.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: I knew right then I was going to get a
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: crack at this as long as the wind held true. Yeah,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty wild. And like I said,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: I told the story to some friends and I was like,
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: what you did? What? But but I hopefully I explained
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: it in a way that the listeners can understand why
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: I made that choice. And I'm not saying I knew
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: this was the right choice. I felt super confident. I didn't.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: I just I made the less risky choice. Yeah. So
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: when you look at this, and I guess your story
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: ends when you get a shot at a great buck
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: and you killed a nice ten pointer. Um, when you
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: look back on it, what do you think was the
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: crux of this or your big takeaway. Was it the
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: fact that you observed, observed, observed until you saw what
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: you need and then struck um, Or was it that
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: you struck and then it wasn't quite right and you
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: knew how to adjust? Or like where's your where's your that?
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: When you try to analyze, like what came over this
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: and what you take from it? Yeah, probably a couple
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: of things, um exactly that you know. One thing is
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: again early September. These deer are a different animal. If
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: you can lay your eyes on a shooter, you have
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: a really good chance. And if you're in a state
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: like Kentucky or maybe a slightly lower pressure state where
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: you got that early September opener, you can be really
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: aggressive and you can move in on these deer. Um
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: there their ultra relaxed. They're usually hitting the crop fields
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: really hard, easy to pattern. The tricky part is just
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: finding a good one to go after. And that's where
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: I got lucky and and luckily um on my glassing.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: You know, instead of walking away after I observed of
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: the property and didn't see a shooter, I zoned in
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: on that five percent of the property that looked to
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: be really good and looked to be like it had
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: the spetting, the lowest point in the field where a
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: lot of times these big geer like to enter, and
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: that's exactly where they came out. So I would say
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: that would be one. And yeah, you know that that
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: time of year, Um, if you're in type of farm
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: country or or maybe more like western plains, the play,
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, is to sit back in glass. I
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: had I devoted four days to this hunt, but only
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: two days to hunt. I devoted those first two days
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: to just scout, and and that that that if I
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: if I didn't do that, then I'm then I'm just
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: playing that guessing game. Yeah, I can probably pick out
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: on a map. Yeah, this looks like the best spot.
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: This is the low spot. This is probably where a
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: good one pop out, but I don't know if a
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: good one is there. So that that time of year,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: that that scouting, that glassing in that type of habitat,
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: that type of country I think is hugely important. I'd
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: rather do that three days in hunt one. You know,
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: It's definitely something that every year I try more and
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: more of that type of this type of hunt. I'm
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: learning that the importance of that scouting, like you said,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: matters almost more in the actual hunt itself. The intel
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: get informed than strike. That's right. And then one more
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: thing too, you know, I I take a lot of
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: these two to four day trips. I've been on the
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: podcast enough. Everybody knows I don't get vacation time. I
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: work at a school. Um, So what I do is
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: I often take weekend trips or a long weekend like
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: a Friday, Saturday, Sunday something like that, and just drive
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: all night. And a lot of guys, I don't think
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: that that's worth it, and I understand that, like you know,
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: we all have in our mind that the hunts should
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: be a week you know, five days, seven days, that
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: should be your hunt. Well, I've never been able to
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: do that. Um It's always been the kind of that
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: weekend warrior type type hunt for me. But what I
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: what I tell guys is it's totally worth it, because yeah,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: you mightn't be able to hunt two or three days,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: but if you do that two or three years in
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: a row, that's a seven to nine day hunt. It's
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: just spread out, and not only that, you're learning the
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: area better. So every year you go back to that
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: state or that type of habitat or or even maybe
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: that property. You're learning it more and more, you're becoming
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: more efficient, and also on those short hunts, I I
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: think it's really kind of shaped my style to be
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: more aggressive and to be more attentive and to pick
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: out the exact kill spot rather than if I have
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: five days to seven days to ten days, you know,
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: I might kind of roll the dice. I might sit
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: here for an observation sid or I might you know,
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: I might sit the spot. I don't have a percent
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: confidence in, but it looks decent. It. I think it
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: just really uh helps you form an aggressive but thoughtful
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: type type of approach to get it done in such
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: a short time. And I'm not saying that you can
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: go and kill five year six year old bucks every
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: time on these trips, but I've been really successful on
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: two I mean on on some three four and an
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: occasionally even older bus than that, so it could definitely
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: can be done. I definitely tell guys, you know, if
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: you have the time to do it, go do it,
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: because you're only it's only going to help you improve
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: as a hunter. And I think a lot of guys
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: out there like you like me, that's our goal. We
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: just want to improve. We want to continue to grow
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: and become better hunters. And those short trips, you know,
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: they're not always successful, but I never, I never once
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: have regretted one, even you know, driving all night, driving
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: all night back I came, I drove all night Sunday
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: night and was back to work Monday morning, and I
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: was dog tired, But man, I had a blast deer
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: or not, and I didn't regret it. Yeah, And I
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: think you made a great point about even though their
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: short trips, taking like making sure you soak every bit
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: out of it with that learning experience. And it's kind
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: of like the more the whole moral of the story
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: of this whole podcast we've done with you know, before
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: you we talked to Tony Peterson, we talked to Dan
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: and then I all three of us now you we've
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: kind of done a post mortem on each of our hunts.
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: And we we had the hunt, but it's not enough
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: just to have the hunt, and then you need to
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: take a little time. Maybe it's on the drive home,
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: maybe it's the next night, maybe it's you know, with
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: a buddy talk through what happened, what did I do right?
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: What do I do wrong? What can I learn from this?
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: And I just think like that little step, that final step,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: can make a big difference. It's so easy to just
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: like continue on with life and life just flies by,
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it's, you know, weeks and
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: months later, and you never really stood on it a
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: little bit, taking this time to just I know you
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: do this. You look at your journals and you look
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: at the numbers. You look at Yeah, I know you're
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: a thinker on these things and think back and replay
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: and try to figure out why things happened and why
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: this worked or why it didn't. And uh, I think
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: that's why you're able to have this us now. And
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's uh. I think it's a good
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: This isn't the ultimate lesson that I thought we'd be
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: learning from this podcast, but I think it kind of
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: is do this, think about this break down your buddies, hunts,
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: think about theirs. That's kind of the magic, I think,
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: at least from my perspective, is figuring out how to
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: get the most I've ever experienced and learned from it,
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: figure out more for the next time. So thank you
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: Andy for helping us do that. And taking a little
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: time here. I know we went longer than we originally
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: talked about doing. So always always really helpful stuff. Alright, man,
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: no problem, my pleasure. All right. So you've heard a
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: whole lot here so far. You had the story of
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: Dan's outcome, you had the story of my North Dakota hunt.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: You had Tony's couple hunts over there in Nebraska and Minnesota,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: and finally we wrapped it up with Andy down in Kentucky.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: A lot of distance covered here, but if I had
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: to sit back and drilled down to a couple core things.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit harder on Dan's hunt because it
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: was an elk hunt, but I can still even find
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: something in coming here. The big things drilled down to
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: two points, I think Number one the importance of scouting,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: in particular watching deer from afar, watching animals from a far,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: long distance observation. We talked about it right there at
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: the end of Andy, and we talked about for sure
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: with Tony, and I of course is doing it in
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: North Dakota. It's so much better in most cases to watch,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: to learn, to become informed before you go diving in
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: trying to hunt those deer, right away. This can be
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: applicable in early September. This could be as applicable in
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: mid October. Many times of the year, Getting the info
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: first and then striking is better than diving right in,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: because if you go in there without knowing what you're doing,
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: you can blow a place up real quick. Now, of course,
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: this is gonna work better in certain situations like pre
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: opening day, like it was for Tony, like it was
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: for Andy. You can see a deer doing something in
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: his is you know, bed to feed pattern that he's
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: doing pre hunting season that first night, you've got a
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: great chance to take advantage of it. So in the
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: case of folks that still have hunting seasons opening October one,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: you can still take advantage of this. These deer are
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: still relatively on a bed to feed pattern. It might
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: not be the same thing they're doing the summer, but
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: you can take advantage of what they're doing right now
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: if you can watch them afar and then strike now
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: fast forward into late October, things will be different, of course,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: but still there's something to be said about watching. If
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: you already don't have some kind of great intel, if
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: you don't have trail camera patriots telling you what to
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: do if you don't have historical knowledge of the area
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: and you know that at certain times of the year
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: you need to be at this little spot. If you
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: don't have that, if you're going in blind somewhere, really
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: you need to consider the idea of observation stands. Of course,
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: certain terrain types, certain regions aren't going to give you
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: good sight lines. But if you can find some way
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: to work from the outside in many, many times, that
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: is a smart way to do it. That is a
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: big takeaway from this converse station here for me today. Secondly,
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: I think everybody here had to pivot. Everyone came into
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: their hunts with some certain set of ideas. Whether it
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: was you know, Andy thinking he was going to see
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: bucks on the beans right away and then moving in,
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: and then he screwed it up, and then he had
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: to pivot off of that original idea. He thought he
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: could set up right there by that betting area, and
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: the wind messed him up. The next day. He could
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 1: have done one of two things. He could have went
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: right back to what he had done before, that's the
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: easy option, or you could pivot and adjust. He took
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: a look at what the impact was and adjusted moved
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: in a different direction than most people would have and
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: he killed a buck. Look at Tony. He headed into
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: his main spot. He thought he was gonna shoot one
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: of the biggest box of his life, and then there's
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: some guys in there moen or not, mowing, cutting down
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: trees and stuff. He had to pivot, He had to adjust.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: He had to have a plan B that he could
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: fall back on. He had to have a plan see,
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: because the squirrel hunting thing messings up further. In my case,
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: I had it into an area. Now you know, my
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: hunt didn't have the happy ending that others had. But
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: I had three different chunks located with options. Ended up
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: being that one of them had other guys hunting. It
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: went to the other option there was someone else hunting
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: that one too. Fell back on the one and that's
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: where I found those bucks. And I No, I didn't
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: kill one, but I could have killed one that first night.
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: I do think there's a little bit of that pivot
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: option there. Now, maybe I could have done an even
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: better job of that. Maybe I should have had a
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: spot number four and a spot number five, and maybe
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: I should have moved to one of those new regions
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: sooner after things have gotten so tough. I still have
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: lots to learn, but I do think having that plan
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: be in place is so important. Same thing with Dan.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: They hunted that first area, realized it wasn't happening. He
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: moved across to another base and moved a couple of
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: miles to the west. If you go into a hunt,
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: whether it's locally where you hunt you know every month
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: of the season, or if it's a trip, if you
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: go into it was just one idea, one game plan,
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be left hung out to dry as soon
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: as something goes wrong because inevitably a will I mean
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, what you want to have
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: happened will not happen flawlessly. There's gonna be some kind
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: of wrench thrown into your plan. So you need to
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: plan for that. Go into your hunts, go into your
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: season assuming that option A probably is gonna get messed up,
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: so you better have a plan B. And really you
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: need to have a plan C, in the plan D
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: and a plan E. Try to account for all these
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: different possibilities, because the better you think about it now,
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: the better you'll be able to handle that situation in
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: the moment and in the moment. That's when stuff is tough,
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: if you're trying to figure it all out brand new
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: ideas in the moment, with the stress of the fact
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: that you've got you know, two hours left a daylight,
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: or with the fact that you've got one day left
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: to your hunt and you're sitting there, crap, what am
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: I gonna do? That's when mistakes get made. That's when
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: frustration flares up. That's when hunts get quit on early.
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: But if you've got a plan B, R, C R
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: D already ready, that's already been vetted, that's already you know,
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: has got some possibilities behind it, you can quickly then
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: flip the switch say Okay, this isn't happening, moving to
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: Plan B, execute on it. That right there, that extra
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: four thought you put in maybe a month beforehand or
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: a week beforehand, that can make all the difference. So
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: a couple things for you to think about here over
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: the weekend and coming into the next week. I hope
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: this is interesting. Hope by listening to all these different
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: stories and yeah, there's some bs and some bologna and
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: some fun in there too, But I do hope you're
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: able to take something from each one of our stories,
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: both the successes and the failures that can help you
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: in your hunt's coming up here and Jay's for a
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: lot of us in the coming days, if not weeks.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: It is upon us. Hunting season is here. That is
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: that's music to my ears. I know that I mentioned
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: this with Dan a couple of episodes ago, but just
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: a reminder from both he and I are two pieces
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: of advice to you that were true then and they're
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: just as true now as Number one, have fun and
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: number two, when the going gets tough, keep on pushing
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: through it, fall back on plan B or C or D,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: and just keep on getting after because that's type too fun.
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: And when you push through it, when you make it happen,
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: or when you at least have that feeling fulfillment that
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: you tried hard and you gave it everything you have,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: that's an amazing feeling too. So just a couple quick
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: reminders before we shut this down. Number one, the Back
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: forty Project has launched. Our first episode of the series
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: is up. It's online for you to watch. You can
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: check it out at the meat Eator YouTube channel, or
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: if you go to the meat eater dot com you
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: will see the page for the back forty. You can
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: go there, you can watch the video, you can see
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: other content articles, how to videos, see maps the property,
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: check it all out, follow along on social media of
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: course as well, and if you want to win that hunt.
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: If you want to win a hunt to join me
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: and Steven hunt on the back forty, go to the
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: meat eater dot com slash win a hunt. And finally, last,
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: if not least, we haven't asked for us in a while,
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: but if you're enjoying this podcast, and if you've got
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: thirty extra seconds, going over to Apple, iTunes or the
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: podcast app leave a rating or review for this podcast.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: It's a huge help. We have been just blessed with
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: so many great supporters and I appreciate that very much.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: So thank you in advance, and until next time, stay
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: wired to her. H