Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 264: Hunting Desert Whitetails

Transcript

Ep. 264: Hunting Desert Whitetails · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this episode number two and
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: today in the show, we're diving into the story of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: my very first hunt for desert white tails also known
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: as cou'se deer. All right, welcome to another episode of
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunting podcast, brought to you by Onyx
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and uh we're here today. It's myself. We got my
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: buddy Andy May, and we got further and we're talking
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: desert white tails. I just got back from a Mexican
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: CU's deer hunt, a really cool hunt. I was out
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: there with the Meat Eater crew, and I thought a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: good way to do this would be to have a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: couple of people interview me, um, rather than me just
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: kind of tell a story. And Dan couldn't be here today,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: so I knew that Furtz and Andy could fill in well, um,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And so you know, in a second, here, I'm gonna
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: give them the keys and we're an turn around on
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: me and we'll kind of walk through this whole hunt.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: What happened, What I learned from it. Um, you know,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: maybe a few things that might be able to help
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: other people out there that want to try a CU's
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: deer hunt someday. Um and nice for those who aren't familiar,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Cuz deer are basically just white tailed deer that lived
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: down in the desert southwest um so a really really
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: cool critter. But we'll get more into that later. Before
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we do that, though, I wanted to kinda shift gears
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a tiny bit here for just like two minutes. I
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: had to make sure we cover this because further, last
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: time I was hanging out with you, you and Andy,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: we're together. You went on the dough hunt um on
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: on one of the properties that I usually hunt. The
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: two of you guys went out there and had a
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: pretty cool night. And since you're both here, I figured
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: we should at least talk about that a little bit. Um.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: You guys had a pretty good time, didn't you. Man,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: that was a great time. That was a lot of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: fun that night. I don't know if Andy had any
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: fun having to sit with me for a couple of hours,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I had a good time. So yeah,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it was a good time. Yeah. So Josh, you were
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you came to this property that I hunt, You're gonna
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: come out and try shoot a doll. And then Andy
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: happened to be stopping by my place to pick some
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: stuff up, and you were over my house the time
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: before you're gonna head out to hunt, and just kind
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: of worked out that Andy, you're gonna hunt somewhere else.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, why don't you just go hunt
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: with Josh? And uh? So you guys, did, do you
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: want to walk us through that that hunt? Josh and Andy? Sure? Yeah.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I mean so I was actually out there the uh
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the night before at your at the place you're hunting,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately missed one. I'm not sure what happened, but
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: didn't come didn't come together for me. So I came
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: back the next night, just as I was about ready
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to go out and started getting around to head out
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and hunt, Andy showed up and um, yeah, I just
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: worked out perfect to her. We went out and sat together,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and you know it was just what was that like
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the seven or something like that, Andy, I don't know,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: December there and the late late this season and I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: hadn't filled a tag yet all year, so I was
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I was feeling the pressure to to put some meat
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in the freezer on the last couple of days of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the season, and um, luckily enough, it kind of all
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: came together and worked out for both of us to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: get a shot. You know, we were talking leading up
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to you know, prime time, like, all right, what are
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: we gonna do? We're gonna do a one two three shoot?
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Are we gonna you know? Am I going to shoot
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: one and then you shoot one? So we kind of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: had it worked out where if it if it, if it,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: if it happened, Um, I was going to take the
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: first shot and then ah, but if we could make
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: it happen where we could do the one to three shoot,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: would give it a try. And you know, as soon
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: as deer started piling out, that just went to that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: all went out the window, just a little bit of
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: chaos for a few minutes, figuring out which one we
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: get to shoot and all that stuff. But well, how
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: did that? I don't even remember hearing me. I know you,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I know you, I know you shot first, Josh, And
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I guess that's all I really know. I saw, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: saw a little Instagram video you guys too, But but
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: how did that all turn out? I gotta remember back
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to this, how it all happened, and you may have
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: to help me out. But if I if I recall,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the first group that came out was like one mature
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: dough and a couple of yearlings. Um, I mean one
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: of them was a button buck, and uh, there may
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: have been two two mature doughs that came out, and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: with how we were set up in the blind, Andy
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: had a pretty good shot at them, but they were
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: behind some some brush and some limbs for me, So
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: it was kind of just a waiting game for them
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to to get to clear those those limbs for me.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And finally they did, and we were trying to communicate
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: back and forth, all right, should we do the one
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: two three shoot? And I just kind of blacked out.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I think I don't remember that thing. I just shoot
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: one as soon as to get a shot, and pretty
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: much what I did, and then you dropped yours. And
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: what was it maybe an hour later, Andy that your
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: dog came out. Yeah, yeah, Josh put a great shot
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on his, and UH pretty much thought that was kind
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of the end, because you know, there there was actually
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: when Josh shot his a couple another big group of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: uh Antler list deer had entered the food plots, so
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: there was several um and a few mature uh mature
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: does and and I was gonna let him shoot first
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and then me try to get a quick second shot
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a second shot off. But um, when he shot, they
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: all kind of ran back into the cover, you know,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: a big group of them. So I thought that that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: caused enough commotion where you know, it was probably over
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: for the night. But then yeah, probably in that last
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes of light or so, um, we see another
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you know, small group of antler lists come out and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: they enter the food plot right there, much closer, and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: uh gave Josh the camera and and he was able,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I was able to video him, and he was able
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: to video me and put a good shot on her,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and she went, she went a little ways, but you know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a pretty easy track job. So it was cool. It
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was it was really like, at least for me, a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: low stress kind of just fun hunt. You know, we're
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: giggling in there like a couple of kids and just
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: you know, just having fun, you know, just enjoying each
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: other's company. And you know, it's kind of a nice
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: change of pace. Sometimes when you're after you know, after
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: a buck all the time, it's usually kind of like
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: a solitary you know, endeavor. But it's I really enjoy
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, partnering up once in a while
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: like that and sharing a hunt. Yeah, me too, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that spot is particularly good for it. Yeah. It may
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: have been most stressed for Andy, but I'll tell you what,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: it's pretty stressful for me sitting there. I was like, Man,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting Andy here just too, just like gets it
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: done every time, and I don't want to screw up.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I can't do anything stupid like I usually do. And
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: it's pretty low stressed with marking the blind. I know
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not the only one who will make a dumb
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: mistake then, but when I'm when I'm with Andy is
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: like I had to I had to bring it up
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a notch. So I was a little nervous. Yeah. Man,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: it's like when I'm on this mediator hunt with the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: with Stephen those guys, That's exactly how I feel. Don't
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: do anything stupid, mark Um. So I was gonna ask
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: then further, Um, this is your first hunt with the machine, Andy,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: may uh did you have a takeaway any like lesson
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: learned or or anything from this experience? I mean, he
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: is like a machine. I mean, it's just like the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: moment of truth. Man just like just gets it done
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and uh, there's no like wavering at all. Just went
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: into that, you know, that that mode and man when
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: that when he had that shot opportunity, he made a count.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So that's uh, you know, I always try to get
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: into that, like the autopilot, you know, just muscle memory,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you know, just kind of when the time arises to
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to be present and just you know kind of let
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: every everything take over and not not get lost in
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the caught up in the moment. And that's probably my
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: biggest takeaway just watching him kind of go through that
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and what he does is pretty cool to watch. Yeah,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: he's automatic and uh and Andy, this is probably your
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: first time ever hunting with an icon in the hunting
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: industry who just goes by a single name. Just further
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: um and he he takeaways from that, oh man, Yeah,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it was he was just you know, we he was.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I couldn't tell that he was you know, feeling pressure.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: He was. He seemed pretty laid back and we were
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: laughing and having fun and um, I don't know, he
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: just seemed like a really like fun guy to hunt with,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you know, like you'd have a lot of laughs. Um,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, the whole time leading up to the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: two kills, you know, we were just having a good time.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: So I know he's someone definitely someone that I would
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: like to share a hunt with. You know, doesn't take
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: himself too serious. Um, can can laugh and have fun.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And uh, man, I'll tell you when when his dog
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: came out and he had that shot, he sure looked
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: like a machine to me. Put her down right in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the plot. Yeah, Well, I've enjoyed hunting with both of you,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: so I figured you guys and get along, would get
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: along just fine. That was fun for me. I'll take that, Andy,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I'll take that as an invite to Nebraska next year
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: with you too. Then there you go. Yeah, that was
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: that was a heckular trip. Draft you would have you
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: would have enjoyed that. Yeah, alright, So speaking heck of
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the trips, though we do, we probably should focus on
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the main event here. Um, I just got back from
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: this couise dear hunt. It's quite a trip. Um, but
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I wasn't surely what's the right way to to kind
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of walk through the story should we talk to just
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: like kind of strategy focus? Like what did I learn?
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: What did I do? How did it go? Or was
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: just the story of the adventure most interesting? I don't know.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make these decisions, so I just
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: thought I would I would take my my host hat
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: off and give you guys the host seat and controls.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: You guys are now the host of the wire Hunt podcast.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I'm your guest. I'm here to talk about hunting desert
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: white tails further you can. Maybe I'll let you you
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: you kick things off if you want. Do you want
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: me to just talk about something from the beginning? Walk
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: you through the story? Do you have any initial questions?
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: What do you want to Well, yeah, I guess I'd
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: kind of like to know kind of what all led
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: up to the hunt, and like it just seems like
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: quite the undertaking to plan that type of a trip
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: um So I'd love to hear some of the just
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: from the start kind of everything that went into it,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the uh, you know, packing or the planning, you know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: what what can you bring, what can't you bring? A
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: crossing the border and kind of how how do you
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: how did you prepare to be gone for you know,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: however long you're gone for on a trip like that. Yeah,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: that's a great That's a great question, because that was
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of the uncertainty, Like there was a lot
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: of uncertainty around the trip leading up to it, for sure.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: UM just having never you know, I've never even hunted
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: deer of any kind in the mountains like this. I've
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: never muled here hunted, never cous deer hunted. UM really
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: almost never rifle hunted for deer at all, other than
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you know, when you and me take our rifles up
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to deer camp up north. But that's like a forty
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: yard shot, Max. Um, nothing long distance. I've never done
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: any kind of long distance deer hunting like this. So
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of different things coming to this one. UM.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: As far as planning though, the logistics of the trip, admittedly,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: this one was was not too hard for me because
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it was with the guys from met Eat so it
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: was planned by them to film for a TV show basically, UM,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: so Janice and Seth and those guys handled most of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the logistics. UM. Janni has got a buddy, Jay Scott,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: whom who Yanni used to be a guide for, and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Jay sets up hunters down in Mexico with ranches to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: hunt on, so he helps organized logistics of getting focused
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: across the border and finding places that they can hunt. Um,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and then just kind of gives you the gives you
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: access to this place, and then you go out and
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: do your thing. So that was kind of our situation.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I basically just needed to have all the gear I needed.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I needed to be able to shoot, and um just
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: needed to be able to fall instructions as far as
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: getting down to Arizona, and um, you know, we got
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: done there and I met up with Janice and Steve
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: and cameraman Chris Rick and Seth and uh Ryan Callahan
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and then um a couple of other guys. So we
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: all met up there in Arizona. We all flew in
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: from our various places, got a rental vehicles. When you
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: got that many guys, I have to say, they're so
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: much luggage, so many groceries. I don't know how much
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: money we spent the grocery store, but we had three
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: vehicles just loaded down to the absolute brim. So we
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: just we crossed the border with a lot of stuff.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: You had sent that picture just before you guys lanted
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: like holy cow, like man, that is some gear that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: they got going across the border right there. Yeah, man,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and that kind of made me a little bit. I
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: don't want to stay nervous, but it was just a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: little bit unsettling because you kind of hear some horror
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: stories a little bit about crossing the border, and you know,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: there's just been a whole lot of stuff in the
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: media lately about some some rough stuff going on um
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: on along the border in Mexico and kind of drug
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: cartel related violence and stuff like that. So like that
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: was like a little bit of a shadow that hung
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: over all of this. Um Janice and the guys had
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: all said, Hey, we've done this trip a bunch of times.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: We crossed the border many times. It's a it's a
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty darn easy process. There's nothing to be
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: worried about. It's very safe. So um, I felt pretty
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: comfortable coming into it, but I'd be lying if I
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: didn't admit that the little, tiny part was a little
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: voice in the back of my mind that was thinking, Man,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: you're gonna roll over the border and these pickup trucks
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: with like who knows how many dollars worth of camera
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: equipment and like twenty yetti cooler sticking out the back
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. There was a lot of money
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: rolling over the border there. Um, if there was someone
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: who you know, was into some shady dealings, we certainly
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: would have been a good target. So there was just
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: this small little bit of apprehension as we went into it.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: But uh, but it ended up being not bad at all.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: We went through the border, Um, it was a long process,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: like a whole bunch of different customs things. I don't
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: We're probably there for several or as they dealt with
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: tourist visas and gun permits and vehicle permits and I
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: mean a lot of paperwork. But again Jay and Janice
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: really made that pretty easy. So a couple hours of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: custom stuff and then we rolled through and basically you
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: know this, we we came into this little border town
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: on the Mexico side. We drove through it for five
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: minutes and then it's like you're in the middle of nowhere.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: You went from like this this kind of admittedly kind
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: of rough town into then this like wide open, beautiful landscape. Um,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it just looks like southern Arizona, maybe some
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: parts of southern Texas um cactus and akatillo plants and
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: maybe some mesquites and places and desert grasses and these
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: big rolling hills, um, and it was just it was
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: just gorgeous and uh, and then made our way to
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the ranch. But I think, you know, other than those
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: things that just laid out, the other biggest piece preparation
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: for me, Josh, was when it came to shooting, um,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: because as you know, as I mentioned, I just don't
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: do very much long range shooting, mostly bow hunting. And
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: then when I do pick up a firearm, it's usually
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: a shotgun or muzzleloader. I'm usually shot, not shooting much
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: past a hundred yards UM. But these guys are saying, hey,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: you know, we're probably have to be taking shots at
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: three hundred yards UM. It's really hard to get close
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to this deer and this kind of terrain, and and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: that's kind of something you to be prepared for. So
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: leading up to the trip, I shot my my rifle
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: quite a bit. Um. But I was using to make
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: a long story short, I've gotten very late notice about
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: needing to get these guys information on what gun I
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: was gonna take. Like, they need to send in this
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: paperwork and they needed it today from me. They said, hey,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: we need to know the serial number of whatever rifle
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: you're gonna take on the trip. And this is a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: long time back, like back in the spring or summer,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and the only rifle I have is my grandpa's old
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: deer gun. It's like a night remming to in semi
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: automatic rifle. UM. Probably never been shot past hundred yards,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: and that's all I had. So it's like, well that's
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: all I've got. Here's the serial number, UM, and that's
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: kind of what I've stuck taking. So I'm shooting that
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: leading up to this trip. And is when I go
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: past you know, two yards, I mean, it is all
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: over the place. I mean you I sent you some
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: pictures of the group's Josh. I was like, man, I mean,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I'm getting it in the kill zone, but past two yards,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was not something I felt really comfortable with.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So when I was driving out that morning to the airport,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: in my head, I'm just thinking, man, I'm just not
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: gonna shoot past two hundred yards. These guys are gonna
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: think I'm crazy. They're gonna give me a hard time
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: about it, but I'm just not gonna do it. I'm
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: gonna keep it close. UM. But as I'm driving, I
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: kept thinking, Wow, you know, maybe UM Janice had mentioned
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to me he was going to bring a gun and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: hopefully hunt if everybody else felt attacks. And then I thought, well,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe I could just use the Honest gun because
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I use the honest As rifle on our Carabot hunt
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: last year, so well, maybe you know, I should just
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: use his. And that's dialed in and a good bolt action,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: accurate gun. And long story short in that I gave
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: him a call and started chatting about the situations like, yeah, yeah, man,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: just use mine. Um, it's dialed in. It'll be great.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad I did because when we got
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: there that first day, we all went out and checked
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the zeros on the rifles, and it was just a
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: night and day difference. I mean, my groups went from
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: being embarrassing past two yards to being like dead nuts
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: inch inch and a half groups. Um, So I felt
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: good that I wasn't as horrible as of a shot
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: as us thinking after shooting earlier. So I don't know.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest part as far as preparation was,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: was making sure I can shoot at those distances. Um.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I had all my basic hunting equipment that
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I would take like on an elk hunt. Um, same
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: kind of close, same kind of temperatures, was like a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: September elk hunt kind of weather. Um. You know. The
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: one interesting or a unique set of gear that I
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: did brain that was different than maybe another Western hunt
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that I've done, was just longer range glass and equipment
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: that was going to be UM. I was told a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: huge part of what we're doing is just glassing hillsides
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: at a very long range for a very long time.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: So I brought not just my regular ten by forty
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: two buyos, but I also brought a pair of eighteen
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: power by nos. I brought a spotting scope, and I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: brought a tripod for all of those UM and that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: ended up being very very important. UM. So that that's
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: kind of what got us there. We all that stuff happened.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Got to the ranch is huge, huge property, untouched, I
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: mean really beautiful other than cattle being ran there and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: cowboys working the ranch and stuff, but a very cool place.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And when I got there and checked the zero on
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: the rifle and got unpacked, it was kind of you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: here we go, all right, we need to take a
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: quick break here to think our partners at Onyx, they
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: are the creators of the Onyx Hunt App is a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: very very handy tool for whatever you might be doing
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: during the hunting season. And right now we are on
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the precipice really of shed hunting season. I usually like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to get kicked off in mid February, and I'm using
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Onyx a lot during shed season for a couple of reasons.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Number One, if you're out there walking around with your
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Onyx Hunt App, you can see exactly where you are
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: in relation to property borders. So if you know you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: can only hunt this one property, you're walking around looking
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: for sheds, you want to make sure you know where
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: those lines are. You can see private property lines on
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the Onyx Hunt app, and you can see public property
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: lines very handy. Another thing I'm using the Onyx Hunt
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: ap during shed season four is getting property owner information
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: so that if I want to get permission on another piece.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm walking around somewhere and I see that, Oh man,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: all the deer sign kind of looks like it's in
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the hillside next to the corn field. I wish I
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: could walk over there. Well, you can get that person's address,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: show up at their house, knock on the door, whatever
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: it might be, try to get permission there. And this
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: is going to give you all the information you need,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: so highly recommended, very handy for a lot of different situations.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: You can find the Onyx Hunt app on any mobile
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: app store or by going to onyx maps dot com.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Mark I got a question, Um, One of my favorite
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: parts of like Steve Shows is that he sometimes like
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: dives into like the history of a certain species. Did
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: he did he do any of that in regards to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the Couz deer? Did he did he talk to you
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: guys about that at all? Yeah, that's a great point, um,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you know, a little bit the probably the the most
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: interesting thing, or a couple of the interesting things would
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: be number one, articulating the fact that Cus deer are
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in fact white tailed deer. There's a lot of people
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: other questions because it's a different species of deer. You know,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: is this same thing? Why does it look so different?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And yes, CU's deer are white tailed deer um. But
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they they're kind of subspecies of white tailed deer, and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: so basically they just have some morphological differences. Morphological differences
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: being just some things of their appearance that have have
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: adapted over time to their surroundings. So they're they're much
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: smaller body body sized compared to deer up by us.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I mean like a buck down there could be like
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: eighty pounds, ninety pounds maybe something like that body size. Um.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And then of course the antlers are smaller too. They
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: are also much more adapted to living in mountainous environments.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: They're moving up and down. I wouldn't say like rocky
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: craggy peaks in this area, but they certainly weren't afraid
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: of some elevation. Um. And then I guess the one
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: other interesting thing that Steve had talked about was this
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: guy who had given the name Cou's Deer to these guys,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Elliott cous Um. But I mean, if I'm going to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: get this story wrong, I think his name is Elliott Cows.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And so that's why some people believe they're supposed to
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: be called cows deer because this biologist or whatever it was. Um,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna butcher this store, so just forget me.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember this from a late night podcast
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: that we did with Steve Um. But I think his
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: name was Elliott Cows and that's how they originally got
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: their name. And then over the years, hunters kept calling
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: coups and so now there's this debate. Are the cou's
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: deer cows? Deer supposedly the proper pronunciation of cows, but
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: everybody says cous. So that's that's why they are what
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: they are. But but you know, probably one of the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: biggest thing that took away from the whole trip was
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that these are still white tails. Like, they
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: looked a lot different in some ways. The terrain was
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: super different in a lot of ways. Um, but I
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: saw a lot of things that were really similar, like
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: the running behavior, this is the rut down there. Um.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just like watching white tails up
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: by us, which was pretty cool to see bucks chasing
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: does the sea bucks making scrapes, sea bucks cruising down
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: a ridge line, just like you might see in Iowa
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: or here in Michigan or something. Um but I was
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: seeing it, you know, with cactus in the background. That
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: kind of contrast of the familiar in the in the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: unknown was maybe one of my favorite things about the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: whole deal. Did you get a sense of like, I know,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: probably tough as you you know, hunted them for a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: short time, But did you get a sense if you
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: thought they were, you know, more weary than you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: your typical Midwest white tail less weary or is it
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: more related to the terrain they live and it's more
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: open they can see a long way. I think they
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: are much more dependent on site because of that kind
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of terrain. So definitely site was the biggest thing. Like
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: we were just worried about being seen. Um. Hardly ever
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: thought about winding direction at all. Um. Now that was
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: probably partly because we were just so far almost all
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the time, even when you're you know, sneaking in your
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: long long distances still um, but you know, the guys
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: there were talking about how they're so weary and how
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: you know they are. There's a lot of predators coming after.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of mountain lions, coyotes could definitely take
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: down a deer this size. Um. Supposedly there even have
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: been jaguars in the general area too, which is pretty cool.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Um or a jaguar, I guess. Um, So a lot
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of predators, But man, I still think that these deer
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: they're not getting messed with by humans anywhere near as
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: much as dear by us are. So so no, they don't.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think they're nearly is is you know, on
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: a string like our deer are up here. Um, there's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: there's cowboys, you know, riding around on horses, pushing cattle
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But I just I just don't
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: think it's like what we have here. So um, they
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: seem to be in, you know, a very natural behavior.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: They seem to be just doing the thing, doing what
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: dear do. UM not nearly the level of I don't
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: don't apprehension or or just general paranoia that I feel
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: like our deer have. Um. But you know, like you said,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: it's hard to say just having watched them for seven
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: or eight days or whatever. But we got out there
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: that first morning, and then for the next seven days,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: all I did was watched these deer. I mean literally
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: every day all day. You we drove in through the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: ranch to an area where we want to hunt. We
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: hiked up to the top of a mountain or a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: big glassing peak or something. You sit down, you put
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a pad down on the ground, You pull out your
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: tripod and your buying binoculars, and then you would just glass.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: You would just scour, going left or right or up
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and down, over and over and over and over and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: over again with other binoculars for for like ten hours.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Eleven hours just staring through your binoculars. A lot of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: time watching these things. I guess it would be more
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: accurate to say I spent a lot of time watching
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: hillsides occasionally watching these things. Um, because that was Bryan.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Another thing that stood up was just how hard it
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: was to see these animals. Um. You'd think, with how
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: open the country looked, you'd be seeing deer all over
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the place. But Cusier been called the great ghost. I've
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: been I've heard they've been called, and I think they
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: definitely lived up to that reputation. Um. You would you know,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you'd be scouring the hillside, you would maybe watched it
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: for two hours and there haven't been a single deer,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, go over one more time,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: and then boom, there's a deer right there, like out
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: in the wide open. You can't believe you missed it
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: two seconds ago, but here's this deer. And within two seconds,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: maybe you blink your eyes or you look over to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the person next to you and say, hey, I got one,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And then the next second you look back and the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: deer's gone. I mean that happened to me so many times, Um,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I mean that very first morning, we went up to
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the top of this mountain, did what I just said,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: set up glass glass glass, And that whole first day
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: was basically what I just mentioned. You We would spot
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: a couple of deer, would see him for a few seconds,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes maybe, and then they passed behind
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: one bush and then you never see him again. Um.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: It was pretty bizarre. And that really was was kind
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: of how the first two days went. Um. Just a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: big crew of us hiking out glassing a lot, seen
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: a few deer and then washing the same disappear um.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And we saw you know, not a huge number of
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: deer um, maybe maybe ten deer day, a couple of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: bucks in that group a day spread out of the
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: course that ten hours um. But it was definitely you know,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: it required a lot of patients, like a different kind
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of patients than we have in a tree stand, I think, um,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: because you know, when you're a tree stand waiting for
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: a white tail to come through like home, you know,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: if they come, you feel pretty certain and you see
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: something and you feel pretty certain. In most cases you
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: can see something that's gonna be kind of close, like
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get to really experience it. Here you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you could search for seven hours and not see anything,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: but if you did, it might be yards away and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: you're just watching like a little speck on the other side.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: So it was different for me, Like these these guests
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: had all done those kind of hunts. This is like
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: a little different, like a mental shift to be able
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to like be in it in that kind of way. Um,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: so that's something to keep mind Andy for. I know,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I know you've wanted to do a cous dere on someday. Um,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: that would be one thing I would recommend to, like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: anyone who's gonna try something like this is just be
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: prepared for for a very different experience and go into it,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like realizing there has to be a tremendous amount of
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: patients associated with this kind of hunt and just willingness
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: to sit behind the glass and in search and search
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: and search. Yeah, how much how much time did you
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: guys spend Like like let's say you guys set up
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: you know, you find out, uh, you know, a high knob,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: a good glassing point in your glass, and say you're
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: there for an hour or two hours? Like when did
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: those guys or when did you guys have the inclination
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to move and change positions or did you just stay
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: patient and trust in the spot that you were in. Yeah,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: that was one of the big questions I had coming
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: into the whole thing too, um And it seemed to
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: vary by person um. When we first got there, j Um,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the guy that j Honest had worked with the past,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: he you know, took us out to the to the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: property and drove up to one of the hillsides with
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: us and kind of pointed out some different areas that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: he thought might be good. And his thoughts were, um,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: you know, don't feel you know, don't get tied to
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: anyone area for too much, you know, move around to
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: find some deer um. But you know, cal Ryan definitely
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: was of the mind like he found a spot and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: he found some deer and then he kind of wanted
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to stick with it. And he has a ton of
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: experience with you know, hunting mule deer and sick of
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: deer and blacktail deer and all sort of stuff like that,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: so he definitely has a system that works, and he
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: kind of found an area that he felt confident there's
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: there word deer. He'd seen some and it's just a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: matter of just eventually seeing the right one, And that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: was kind of the That was kind of the trick,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: was that you could watch a hillside for hours and
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: not see anything. But you know, the guys that had
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: hunted here before in different places in Mexico always said,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: there's deer here, Like they're there, you just can't see them.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: They're so small, they're so well hidden into these hillsides,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: these little juniper bushes and little trees and scrub oaks
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and stuff. All you need is the deer to take
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: two steps and all of a sudden you realize that
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: they're so I think we're constantly dealing with that bouncing
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: at like do we bounce around from place to place
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: or do we just sit here long enough and then
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: wait till one steps out? Um? For me, I found
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: myself like wanting to move to different places just because
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I needed the change of scenery. Um. But you know, Steve,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Steve and Janice and me kind of were on like
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: a half a day kind of system. In most cases,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: we usually kind of stuck it out in the same
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: general region for two or three hours and then maybe
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: just move over one little knob or look at the
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: other side of the ridge for the next couple of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: hours and then by the time afternoon rolled around, if
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: nothing had been going then we would shift. Um, But
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: definitely as the trip progressed, as the as the week progressed,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: we started kind of zero in. Like we found a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: few zones where we started having some confidence that there
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: were deer and they were going to be dear. And
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: once we had that zone in mind, then we did
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: stick around in some some certain spots for for a
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: little bit longer. Um. I don't know if we ever
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: did figure out what the right answer was, but I
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: think if anything, confidence has something to do with it. Um.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: You know, no different than when you know, any of
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: us go out and hunt a spot during the rut
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: or something. If you feel confident in why you're there
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and what's going on, it feels a whole lot better
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: sitting there all day, you don't mind it. But if
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: you're really uneasy about the decision you made or you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: don't have that confidence, um, you know, it's a whole
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: lot harder. So that proved to be true here too. Yeah,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: that was one of the things that I struggled with
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: myself when I was hunting mule deer in Wyoming, just
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: how long to give each glassing position. And I think
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I was probably, like you, not quite as patient as yeah,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: not quite as patient as I should have been. You know,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: in a lot of instances, I kept wanting to, you know,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: see the next canyon, and you know, I'm sure I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: missed some deer doing that. Yeah, it's kind of funny,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: like you hear like Western guys talk about white tail
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: hunters sitting in tree stands, like, oh, I don't know
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: how you can do that. That's gonna be so were
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: sitting in a tree all day. I could never do it, um,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And that's what you and me do all the time.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: But then when I go out west and I'm sitting
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: on a hillside for a while, I get impatient, you know,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: after a few hours, and I think it's I think
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it's probably just because I know I can move, Like
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the possibility is there to move while sitting in a tree.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: You just know you're locked there and you're you're gonna
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: stick it out for however long you decided to um.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, it definitely definitely was different from me.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: I definitely had this wander lust um boiling up in
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: me early on. And uh, yeah, it's kind of funny
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: those first two days it was that kind of situation
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: where sat most of the morning one spot mostly even
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: another spot glass glass glass soft you you dear. Um.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: The third morning, though, we had up to another hillside
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: glass glass glass. I spot a pretty nice buck, thinking
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: he might be a shooter. He goes over the hill. Um,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: decide we're not gonna go because it's like a mile away.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Keep lasting. Maybe an hour later we spot some deer
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: on this other ridge not too far away now I
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: think a thousand yards away, and UM, glass up another
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: nice buck and I'm like, man, that's that's probably that's
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: probably a shooter. And one that was one of the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: hard things leading into this was knowing how to determine, like,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: what's what's the shooter buck here in this area? Um,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: because these deer are so much smaller than than a
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: lot of like mature white tails would be elsewhere. But
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: what was kind of easy for me was that a decent,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: a good cuse deer buck is kind of the equivalent
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to like the buck in Michigan that guys would shoot.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: So I just said, like, if somebody in Michigan would
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: shoot that deer, it's probably a shooter here. So basically
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: anything that was like ninety inches or bigger. Maybe it
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: was like, okay, that's that's probably one that we should chase. UM.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So we saw a deer kind of like that, I
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: don't know, nine hundred inches, like it's just a nice
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: solid eight pointer. Um. And that's when I got to
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: enjoy that. My wanderlust gotta come out. Then, because we
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: saw this deer, I decided the shooter and then that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: when I got to actually stock and move. So me
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and Janice and Seth took off after this deer. So
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Janice was running the main camera, Seth was running what
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: they called the long lens camera, like a big zoom
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: in camera. UM. And then I was hunting. Steve stayed
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: up on the ridge to glass from his position and
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: um if if I got down to the bottomless ridge,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and I looked back at him and in the deer
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and moved somewhere. He was gonna wave an orange bandana
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: at me to kind of indicate where that deer went. Um.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: And so I just kind of ran down this big
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: hillside all the way down to the bottom. There was
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: a little creek drainage. Follow this creek drainage and in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the valley separating the ridge we were
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: sitting on from the ridge where this buck was. There
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: was a little knob um kind of like a mini
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: ridge that maybe went up one third as high as
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the others, and it kind of was was perfectly position
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: to put ourselves within range of that deer. So to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: make this as fast as possible, snuck up to the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: top of this rise. Didn't see anything. We thought maybe
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the deer had gone lower down the ridge that we've
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: We've seen this one tree with a white spot on it,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: and that was the last spot we saw this buck.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And from our position, I could just see that white tree.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: But if the deer had gone any far farther beneath it,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have been in sight. So we belly crawled
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: another like seventy yards, well, we kind of stalked in
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: on foot, and then Bailly crawled to this final little
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: lip and uh. And then from that point I could
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: see this dough up there, watching the dough, and then
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I see a buck. Glass at the buck, and I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: see that he's wide, but then he turns his head
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and he's kind of got shorter times and I'm thinking, man,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: is that the same one? Um? I don't know, but
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: it's got to be that same buck. There was no
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: other bucks in there with that dough. Um. He moves
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: into another spot. He's in this big, shady, brushy patch.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I get my binos on him, I get my range
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: finder on him. He's in shooting range. Janice and Seth
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: are all set up. They can film it. Um the bucks.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a there's a lane to this deer.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: He's a two hund thirty yards, so he's like within
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the range. I felt pretty comfortable with it all kind
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: of lined up perfect, um, but I was pretty you know,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: pretty excited at this point. Even though two or thirty
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: yards is really long. It's it's it's a it's a
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: it's a significant distance between me and the animal compared
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: to most of the encounters, right like twenty yard encounters,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: thirty yard en counters when you're bow hunting. So you
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: wouldn't think, at least I wouldn't have thought leading into
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: this that would be like an intense moment. But it
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: definitely still was, like, it definitely was still a rush.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: It was definitely definitely just had me amped. Um. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that was just you know, like
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: it would be with any hunt, or maybe a little
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: more pressure given like how different this was from anything
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I've done, or the fact there's a camera crew. I mean,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: all those things definitely ramped it up, probably, but um,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it was it was. It was a situation
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that didn't think I could pass up. So squeeze the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: trigger and and the buck basically rolled. He ran like
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: five yards and was dead and um, and that was
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: very exciting. And then like twenty minutes later, twenty minutes later,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Steve comes walking on the hillside. He walks up to me.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: He's like, what happened, man? You shot the wrong buck.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what, I shot the wrong buck? He's like, yeah,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I'm about my spotting scope on the buck. All of
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a sudden, here gunshot and another deer comes running into
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: my view with blood coming out of his chest. Classic
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: classic canyon. Oh yeah, three, you said, Mark, I'm day three. Yeah,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: day three of actually hunting. Um, kind of day four
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: or five of the trip. But yeah, I mean they're
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: had another bucket went in there, and it was a different,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: smaller buck than the original one we spotted. So um,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: it was kind of I don't know, it wasn't too disappointing.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: It was kind of like a little bit bummed, especially
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: because like five minutes later, another nice buck, possibly the
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: same original nice buck, came walking back through and I'm
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: watching like, oh wow, that is a nice buck. Um.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: But in the end I was like, man, this is
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: just too cool. Like first, cuise dear, I can't complain
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: at all. It was just kind of a nice little
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: six pointer, beautiful little deer. Um. We went walking up
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: to it a little bit later, and I mean beautiful,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: beautiful coat on the just this like gray and white
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: modeled coat. Um, but it looks like a white tail otherwise,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: just really small. I could literally pick it up by
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: all four legs and just lifted up and you know,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: throw it over my shoulder if I wanted. And you
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: guys know, I'm no Cameron Haynes, but I could have.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I could have thrown this buck over my shoulder. Um. See, yeah, man,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I killed my first couisier and uh I managed to
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: kind of screw things up just enough to make it interesting.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: But I was it wouldn't have been right if you didn't. Yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I was just glad the shot was good. You know,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: there was no fiasco with a shot or anything. That
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: was the I just wanted a good, clean, quick kill,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: no issues, didn't want to embarrass myself, didn't want to
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: mess anything up with it with a deer or anything.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: And so that was, you know, huge relief. I mean you,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I think you remember, Josh, I told you my story
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: about last year in the caribra hunt, how that was.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: That was nerve racking for me in that situation too.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And I had to take two shots on that caribou
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: um and that you know, bummed me out. And so
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: this situation, it was a nice kind of uh, what's
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the word not retribution, but oh gosh, I'm having a
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: brain fart. Whatever it was, it felt good. So that's
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: how my part of the heart end are part, my
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: part of the hunt ended, got my got my buck
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: core amount. You could literal really fit all of the
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: meat from the deer, all four quarters, backstraps, tenner loins, roasts, scraps,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: all everything, and the skull, nandler's everything into one backpack.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Packed the whole thing out in myself one load. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: How much you think the live weight would have been
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: on that, I don't know. Estimate eighty pounds, ninety pounds
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: something like that, not very big difficult. So you hunting
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: him with a rifle, and I'll say you went back
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: with a bow, How difficult would it be to get
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: one down with a bow. Yeah, So that's the big
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: question that I had coming out of this too, because
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: by the end of the trip, by the end of
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: my part of the hunt, and then you know, I
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: stuck around and still went out and hunted with Steve
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: and Ryan as they were hunting, and I kind of
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: helped out with glassing. Um. The one thing I kept
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: craving the whole time was just closer encounters. Like I
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: wanted to you to be here the deer. I wanted
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: to feel like the deer might be all seen me
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: if I did something wrong. I wanted you know, I
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: kind of wanted that bow hunting experience again as far
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: as being close. Um, and even you know, even gun
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: hunting in Michigan or somewhere in the Midwest, you still
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: get deer close to you. We never had deer close
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: to us, at least not to me. I know Steve
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: had a couple of times and Ryan did. Um were
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: some deerer close, but I never saw a deer closer
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: than probably just under twos. So that was the one
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: thing I missed, like that close engagement with the animal. Um.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: So bow hunting. If I were going to go back
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and do it again, I would want to try bow hunting.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I think it is possible if you had kind of
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: low standards, at least for someone with my skill level
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and experience. UM, in a good area, I think you'd
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: go in there with a reasonable opportunity to shoot a
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: deer possibly. UM. I think what you'd have to do
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is you would need to spend a bunch of time
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: in the glass to identify a couple of these zones. UM,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like where these little rough parties are. Like
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: we ended up finding a spot where I killed my buck,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and then one other spot where Steve and Janice end
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: up killing their bucks. Um, where there's this little pocket
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: of rutting activity. You know, just like when you're hunting
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: white tails up by s, you'll sometimes find this little
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: section of a property where there's a ton of rutting
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: activity going on today and tomorrow or something. You know, Um,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: there'll be a hot do in the area, a couple
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: hot doughs in the area, and there's a bunch of
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: deer activity. I think The way I would try doing
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it is I would glass and glass and glass from
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a distance until I found one of these little rut
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: spots where there was a hot do in the area,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and then I would sneak in there with a bow
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and put myself in a position where i'd have some
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: opportunities to move up and down a ridge, you know,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: like I could I could kind of hunker down the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: top of a ridge and watch, and if I saw
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: some deer approaching, I could see where they're headed, because
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: there's definitely like bucks cruising just like they do by us.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: There was definitely bucks following does just like around us.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: And I think if you could see one of those
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: deer heading your way from a distance, and maybe you
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: were like in a little crevice on a ridge, or
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: maybe you're you know, near a little bend in the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: ridge or something where you could just get behind some
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: cover and move into range of where that spot would be,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I think you could have a chance. Um. But it
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: definitely wasn't at least in what I was seeing. It
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't like the archery mule hunt early season type things
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: you see where you watch a mule deer feeding all
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: day and then you watch whee beds and then you
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: sneak into where he was bedded and shoot him out
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: of his bed. I'd never we never, at least I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: didn't see that kind of behavior. I didn't see a
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: buck of beds somewhere that you could actually see and
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: then stalking on him. Um. I would kind of think
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: I'd be trying to take advantage of a rut movement
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: as I see it happening and sneak in. Um. But man,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: it would be a it would be a serious challenge.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Like I said, the deer hard to see, um, big
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: big country and uh, I mean it was a challenge
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: for all of us just to get you know, within
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: rifle range that didn't come easy. So trying to get
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: within bow range that would be you'd have to go
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: into with a little bit of like a oh, I
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: don't know, a suffer complex, like you want to suffer
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit. You have to be willing to really
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: go through some crap and probably not have it work out,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: but be okay with that. That's probably the mindset I
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: would take if I was gonna try, you know, hunting
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: these deer in that kind of way. M hm. Do
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: they have a um, do they have a tendency to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: be I think I've read before that they have a
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: tendency to be pretty aggressive towards each other. You know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I Are they an aggressive species? I don't know. I
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: hadn't read one way or another there any more aggressive
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: than any other white tail. Um, but I definitely saw
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: aggressive running behavior. Uh So on our fifth day, I
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: think it was, Um, We're coming into one of these
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: zones of good activity that we noticed the night before,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and we spot a couple of nice bucks on this
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: hillside and turns out there's a hot dough and the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: nicest buck is locked onto that hot dough. Steve and
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the crew go chase the necklace buck. I stayed back
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: on the spotting scope, um, just glassing it, just keeping
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: an eye on the buck, and if somehow it ran off,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: they could come back to me and I could tell him, Hey,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I saw go over the ridge or whatever. Um, So,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: while I'm watching this whole thing go down, that buck
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: stayed with the dough. But had it was either four
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: or five other different but I think four different bucks, no,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: maybe five different bucks over the course of a couple
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: hour period came in trying to make a move on
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: that dough. And every time that big buck would like
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: charge them, he'd run them off. Um, I wouldn't be
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: surprised if there was like some snort, wheezing and stuff
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: going on. It was that kind of behavior. So he
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: would run after this buck, scare that buck off, and
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: then run all the way right back to the dough,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: standard of the dough, and then another buck would come
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: slinking up from the other side. He'd charged that buck,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: run at fifty yards off, then come running back to
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: his dough. And he did that for for a long time.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: So definitely that kind of terrialtorial running behavior that we
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: see here too. Um. You know, when they want to breed,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: they do not want anyone messing it up. So I
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if there's some fighting. I'm sure there's
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: some fighting. Um, I didn't see it, but I gotta
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: believe it happens. I'm just gonna ask you about these
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: little running zones that you're talking about. What was there
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: anything like specific, but maybe like a different terrain feature
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: or something that maybe cause that little area to be
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: a a hot zone of activity, Like did any of
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: these different areas have anything in common? Yeah, that's a
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: really good question. I I'm not sure, but if I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: had to go off of like the couple of things
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: that stood out to me, most all of the best
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: activities saw was kind of in the upper third of
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: all the ridges on the mountains, so most of the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: activity was kind of high up on the mountain top third.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And then always again, this is just like white tails
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: anywhere else near some of the best cover in the area.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: So if you had like a big thick patch of
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: junipers up on that upper slope, there's a good chance
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: that that was gonna be one of those spots that
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: might have some some running activity. So where I found
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: my buck was like the thickest strip of junipers, like
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: a hundred yard wide swath of junipers that came along
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: this ridge, And these deer were up on the upper
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: slope chasing around and stuff, and eventually they moved down
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: lower once that buck locked onto the dough um. But
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: it was a very similar habitat to where Steve end
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: up killing his a lot of junipers in the saddest ridge.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: And then there's a tiny bench at the right about
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: two thirds of the way up the hill, and right
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: on that bench is where the dough was bedded and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: the buck was there, and then all these bucks are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: kind of cruising along the bottom of the cover right
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: beneath them. UM. So I think these deer operate a
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: lot like white tails by us do. And the fact
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: that they if possible, they'd like to be in cover
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: or near cover, so they've got that safety close by. UM.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: And then I definitely saw them, you know, working ridgelines
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: kind of similar of the two white tails by us
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: when they're cruising, cruising two thirds up the ridge. UM.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they, you know, are sent checking
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the same way. I kind of assumed they'd be sent
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: checking the same way. But I don't know enough about
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: how these dear bed to tell you where these doughs
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: are bettered, if if there was a component of like
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: elevation or or what. Um. But but it seems like
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: they're doing similar things. So that's that's my guess. Did
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: you get a sense of you know, when they were
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: on the side of the ridge, was the it seemed
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: like they were on that leeward side, that downwind side
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: more often, or were they sometimes even on the windward side.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: You know, that's funny you asked that because at one
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: point when I was out there, I asked myself the
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: same question, and I realized that I had no idea,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: you know, what the wind was doing. There was no
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: cell phone service to ever check what the wind was
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: doing throughout the day, and we just never thought about
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the wind enough to even stick your finger in the
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: air and think about them. Um So, I don't know.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: It was kind of weird in the way that really,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: this is like a wind irrelevant hunt. Um And and
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the wind probably was very shifty from one era to another,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: like we're watching deer thousand yards away. The thermals were
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: probably doing something completely different there than they might have
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: been doing, you know, with the wind direction coming from
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: our direction mixing with the thermal's coming up. Um So,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I just don't know how that all worked. I wish
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it more at the time, but
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: it just wasn't like on our radar at all for
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: whatever reason. So that was kind of unique, and I
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: didn't think about too much. Now that I'm here, I
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: wish I had, did you? So, I know you probably
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: ate really well with with that crew. What was the
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the taste of the cus deer compared to you know,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: a Midwest white tells you notice any differences. That's a
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: good question. I don't think so. I think that just
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: tasted like a deer um. The only stuff we ate
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: from Cou's deer. We we made um. On our last
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: day there, we made venison tomali so cooked up. We
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: grounded up corn into like a flour mix, added lard
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and water and baking soda and made this. I don't
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: know if you has ever heard tomalls before, but make
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: this kind of corn paste of sorts that gets wrapped
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: up into a corn husk with this pulled venison um
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: that cooks in this uh chili Colorado spices, really really
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: good um, but some strong flavors in there. So it
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, I could really differentiate. You know,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you could have put elkin there, or deer or anything.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I probably would have told you it was great and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: couldn't tell the difference between anything. But I did, I
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: guess I did pull some some straight venison off the
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: big chunk that we got cooked, just cooked in water
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: for six hours, and that just tasted like any other
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: deer um. But good, I mean really good, nice and
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: tender and tasty um. And let me tell you, venison
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: tomales are very very good. We did. We did eat
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: very well. Um. We actually had um who was a
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: lady I think who maybe lived on the ranch that
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: we were able to hire to help us with some
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: of the cooking because we were out the entire day. UM.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: But living in this we stayed at this old ranch
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: house on the farm and UM. So she made a
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: couple of dinners with us that were really really really
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: authentic recipes of her own. So she made chili chili
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Colorado I think, um one night, and made thereiso um
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: another night, and we had like breakfast burritos with that.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: And we ate ate so many beans. I was in
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: the I was in the bathroom like seven times a day,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: so many beans over the trip. But it was it
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: was really good. I mean, I ate Mexican breakfast, lunch,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: and dinner for eight days. This is good. She sounds
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: like a much better camp manager than the last camp
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: manager you had. She definitely cooks better than you, jobh.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: But but it was it was cool. All right, we
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: need to take one more break here to think our
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: partners at Morton Buildings. And I'm excited about this one
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: because I've for a long time looked at Morton buildings
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: out there on folks properties and been very very jealous Morton.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: They're the builders of very high quality steel pull barns
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and steel buildings. Um you know, they can be used
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: just as storage for your tractor and your hunting gear.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: I've seen others where they're full born Paul Barn houses
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: where you have a large storage area for your truck
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and your tractor and your forward, but then also maybe
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: half of it is a living area. Um Man. I've
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: kind of dreamed of having my own little hunting properties
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: someday and a Paul Barn house on it. That is
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: is what I'm hoping to someday have And it's kind
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: of neat to be able to talk about on the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: podcast here, and it kind of tell you about my dreams.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe someday it will happen. But from what I understand,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Morten is the place to get this done. They have
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: over a hundred years of experience. They're fully customizable. Like
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I mentioned, you can have a Paul Barn house, you
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: can have a huge storage stility, whatever you want. They
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: have several different features that make these particularly high quality,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: like their energy performer installation. They have high ribs steel,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It's very low maintenance and right now there are some
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: special promotional prices going on that are running through February.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: So if you are in the market for a new
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: barn or Paul barn house or or a little living
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: space on your property, you can head over to Morton
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Buildings dot com to learn more. Alright, so, so and
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: he had bounced, But Josh, I mean great food, beautiful beautiful,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: beautiful country. Um. I think a few things stood out
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: to me though, and and feel free to happen here
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: if you've got some other questions. But looking back on
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: it now, I thought it would be helpful to mention
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like a couple of big takeaways for me. I guess
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: if I was gonna do this again. Um, you know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: I got to watch, you know, my hunt go down.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I got to see Steve's hunt go down. Um, Ryan's
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: buck we kind that looked into we're just walking to
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: another glass and knob and bumped this deer. Um, and
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: Ryan got shot at him at just under two hundred yards.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: And then Janice's deer was kind of a little bit
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: luck too, because that deer that Steve killed. Um. After
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Steve's buck got shot, one of those other four bucks
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I was telling you about that was kind of trying
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: to get his dough. He just stayed right there. He
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: stayed right in the area. Steve went up and looked
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: at his buck, checked it out, and that buck stayed
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: within like forty yards, like just stood there stock still.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: And Janice and Ryan were a couple hundred yards away
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: watching all this happen, and they're just watching this buck
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: standing next to Steve, not caring. And finally they said, well,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: if we can get Steve out of there, we can
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: maybe get a shot. And so they end up just
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: yelling at Steve, told Steve, hey, Steve moved two hundred
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: yards down the other way, and that buck did not move.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Steve walked two hundred yards away, he was forty yards
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: in the buck. He walked the other way a long
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: ways until he was far far away, and then you
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: got a shot at that buck. I mean, just the
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: craziest thing, um, But that hunting kills hunt him and
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: kales sounds kind of unorthodox, but I think you know
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: me and Steve's hunts, the way those kind of played out, um,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: kind of to what I've been talking all along about.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Just like a tremendous amount of patience behind the glass
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: and the importance of how you glass. Um. Probably the
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: most important thing was was having a tripod. I mean,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: I would never ever hunt the tripod for binoculars when
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: you're white tail hunting. But in this kind of situation
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: where you're sitting on a mountain for ten hours, when
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: you're hand holding him, you don't realize it. At that distance,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: it's so hard to keep it steady. But when you're
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: a tripod and you're looking for this little tiny thing
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: in your view, it made like a world of difference,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Like you could just see so so much better. You
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: could pan across the hillside so much more smoothly. Um.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I mean it was the difference between seeing zero dear
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: and being able to see ten deer day. Um. And
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: then that almost tho seems like an absolute necessity. Yeah,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I would say, absolutely must have. And then the other
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: nice thing is that you know, if you spotted a
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: deer and you looked away nine times attend, you probably
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: never will find it again. Like they're they're they're that
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: hard to spot. He might not have moved at all,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be able to find him again. So
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: what you would do is you see this deer and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: then you spot it and then I got one. And
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: then you can lock the tripod in place that had
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the tripod head, so you can just you lock your
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: binoculars right at that view so that you know, so
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: you don't need to rEFInd the deer. It's locked on
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: to where the deer is and you can see it otherwise.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: I mean I had a couple of times where my
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: hat knocked the binoculars and knocked it off. Yeah, I
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: could not find him again. So just crazy. We'd have
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: times when like I would spot one or Steven spot one,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: but nobody else has and so then you have to
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: try to walk the other people into that deer, so
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: they try to describe to them where the deer is
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: so they can find it themselves. And that was that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: was a whole challenge of its own, trying to verbally
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: convey where this tiny dot is a hillside yards away. Um.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: That that's another takeaway probably too, is like if you're
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: there with friends and you are trying to do that,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and it's very helpful if you can do that, because
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: the more people you can have on the deer, the
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: better chance that is that you're not gonna lose him,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: especially if one of you is going to go stocking
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: and try to hunt him. Um, so like being able
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to simply and accurately describe the the landmarks that you're
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: seeing and then a direction from it. So it was like, Okay,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: do you see that highest peak in front of us
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: with the two rocky bowlers on the very top, And
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: then you wait your free your partner and he says, yeah,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I see that. Okay, Now go to the six o'clock
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: from that, so the peak is the center of the clock.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Go to six o'clock from that, keep going until you
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: see the yellow strip of rocks that go across in
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: straight line. Okay, yeah, I see that. Okay, now go
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: three o'clock from that line of rocks until you see
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the juniper tree that has two branches on the left
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and five branches in the right. I've got that. It
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: was that kind of was like that was how you
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: had to get people to see this deer. Otherwise it
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: was just you couldn't you couldn't point him and say hey,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: right there. And then the same challenge applied to like
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: when you tried to stalk and close to find him again.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: You know, when I had to move in to try
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: to get close to my dear to shoot it. Same thing,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: you know, Stephen, I had seen the deer to the distance,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: but then when he had to try to close the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: distance to get a shot, it's so much harder to
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: find him again when you're close because the angles are different,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: or the deer might have moved twenty yards or a
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: hundred yards or whatever. Um. So the biggest takeaway in
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: that front I had was when you make your move.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: And this could probably apply to any kind of hunt
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: like this mulder hunt or whatever. UM find like a
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: very very specific reference point as to where you last
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: saw that deer. Um Like I got. I had a
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: reference point in my head when I took off, but
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: it was a little bit too general. I said, Okay,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: it's bottom third of the super wide strip of junipers.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I remember seeing him enter that that part of it.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: But Seth, the other guy with me, he had identified
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: a specific tree with a white circle on it, and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that was huge because then we knew exactly where on
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: that lower third within that strip of junior verse we
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: had to wait to look. That helped a lot. So, man,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: that's another thing I would definitely keep in mind. I
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: think it's just patience glassing. Having the right gear being
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: very detailed oriented when it comes to planning your stocks
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: into these deer and how you're going to spot them,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: um and patience. Again, I think it was just it's different.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: It was really really different. Very cool, but very different.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: And like I said, I did find myself wishing I
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: could I wish I could get closer to him. That's
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: probably the only my only regret is that I didn't
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: get to have a close call with him. There was
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: something kind of hunting the man. Would you ever do
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: hunt like that? Oh for sure, I'd love to do
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: something like that. It's just you know, followed along over
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: your Instagram storyline as a couple of days and you've
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: kind of been putting some small states on a man,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: I just look so awesome, just so different, you know,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: than what you're used to. And and even hunting like
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: white tails, like we've done a little bit out west.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: It's it's just so much different even than that, and
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: hunting the river bottoms and stuff like that. It's just
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: totally different world. It seems like, Yeah, well, I've definitely
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: found over the years that, I mean, I love white tails,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: and I've got to hunt a bunch of different things
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: now and I still just keep coming back to white tails, like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason, they're just the coolest um. But I
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: definitely have found um a growing desire to experience different
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: kind of white tail hunts. You know, like I love
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: my Midwest tree stand thing. But it's been a lot
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: of fun to go out west and hunt the river bottoms,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: and it was a ton of fun to go to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Nebraska and hunt the sandhill type terrains. And you know,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: I'm wanting to go do like a northeast hunt here
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: maybe this year and try to track one down, and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you know, just trying these different places that I mean,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you experienced it this year when you went
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: to North Dakota, right, Just that different kind of a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: different kind of terrain, slightly different behavior, but still the
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: white tail we love. Like, I don't know, it's just
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: a really cool way to engage in this critic, isn't it.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: And it's just so crazy as you go up to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: all these different places, how how adaptive they are to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: the you know, the landscape that they're in or the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: terrain that they're in, just you know, from Florida to
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Canada to Mexicota to the Northeast to the what I mean,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: it's just it's just crazy how they can just adapt
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: so well and thrive wherever they're at. I might be biased, man,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: but I think there. I think they're the number one
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: champions of the outdoor world. I think white tailed deer
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: have just like they're so adaptable they can survive anywhere.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: Like you said, I mean, they're they're all over this continent. Um.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: So for that reason, I think white tail hunters are
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the best to um. You know, sort of related to
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the fact that these deer are seen all over the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: place though. That kind of was something I was thinking
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: a lot about when it came to like the landscape
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: we were hunting, and I mean it was stunning down there.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: I mean beautiful, beautiful sunsets, really interesting different types of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: plant life, like I said, all sorts of different cactus
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: plants and um agave plants and century plants like big
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: palmy bushes aka tillo, which are like these long I
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: don't even know how to describe. It looks like something
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: almost like I would get Dr. Seuss book, like, like
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: imagine just like big sticks coming out of a single
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: bush at the bottom, but they stand like eight feet
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: tall and they have huge like two inch long spines
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: all over each stick, kind of like our pricker bushes here,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: multiplied by ten um but just stunning, really really cool. Um.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: But almost every night I'd be sitting on a hill
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: looking at these just dropped dead gorgeous hills and sunsets,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: and this does and I kept falling back in my
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: mind to thinking about home in America and thinking about
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the fact that we have places like this too, literally
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: just like that or other beautiful landscapes like that. Um.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: But they're you know, they're open to all of us.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: We have public lands like that that are open and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: available for everybody to hunt, to camp, to fish, to
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: do whatever. And they're just are not many opportunities. From
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: what I gather, there are not many opportunities like that
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: down in Mexico. Like it's people. Not many people, from
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: what I understand, hunt down there because it's really hard
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: to have guns. It's really hard to find places to hunt. Um.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: I just think that I, I, personally, and probably a
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: lot of other people probably take what we have in
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: America for granted. And this is a this is a
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: big time reminder for me, um, just how good we
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: have it. Incredible lands, incredible, you know, whether it be
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the rights to public lands, the right to bear arms.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've got a lot of things going for
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: us them very thankful for. And and probably the timing
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: that you're down there right now too, with everything going on,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: probably just makes you realize that you know even more,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, just with all the stuff
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: going on with with the southern border right now, it
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: makes it really appreciate, you know, what you got, especially
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: when you're right there in the moment at this point
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: in time. For sure, a lot of talk about the border,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of talk about people that want to be
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: in America. Um And and yeah, I think my overarching
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: take home message from this trip for me was just
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: just how thankful I am to be a hunter in
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: the United States of America, with the places we have
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: to hunt, in the animals we have to hunt, and
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the tools and the rights and the opportunities that we
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: have in the management system we have in place. Um Man,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: there's just a lot of things going for us here
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: that um I suppose is just just another reminder for
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: us of the importance of trying to make sure we
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: keep it that way right. We gotta try to keep
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: republic lands public, gotta try to keep them, you know,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: as as wild and as intact as POSSI disturbed. Yeah,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: at the same time, we got to also fight for
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: you know, our rights to hunt, our rights to have firearms.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: There's just a whole lot of stuff these days that
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: makes you wonder. I don't know. There's a lot of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: folks coming for the things we want, and we just
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: need to make sure that we stand up for those
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: things that are important to us. And it's not easy,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: it's not convenient, it's not always comfortable. As my friend
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: is Randy Newberger always likes to talk about when it
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: comes to public lands, I think he always says, it's
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: not easy, it's not comfortable, it's not convenient, but it's
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: always worth it. And um and after that week in Mexico,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: that's that's something that's gonna be top of mind from you.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: So that's my Mexico cuz deer hunt dude. That is
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: what I took away from it. It looked awesome. Congratulations,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: that was an awesome buckets really cool to see what
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: do you guys have Four guys end up hanging out
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: four well, no, five guys. Because the four of us,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: four of us um killed and then our CEO of
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Meteor Inc. Kevin He killed one earlier in the trip.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I had to leave, so he wasn't in that fugle Um,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: but we filled five tags at six that we had. Wow,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: that's great, That's what a cool trip. Then I gotta ask,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I feel like we'd be leaving, leaving this out if
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: we didn't, if we didn't touch on it. What are
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: these guys like in camp? Man? You gotta it didn't
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: look like no hotel Beachmont that we said, what's the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: what's the vibe in camp with those guys? It looks
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: like you're probably laughing the whole time. Yeah, that's a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: good ess. That's a good point to make. Um, it's
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: probably probably what most people are interesting. They don't care
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: about if I shot a deer anything. They're more like,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: what's like to hang out in camp with Steve Rinella? Um,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: it's fun, it's cool. I mean it's very competitive. I'll say,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: is one thing like Steve, Ryan Janice all these guys
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: like super competitive. If so, there's a lot of like
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: one upsmanship going on, like like I bet you I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: could beat you in a arm wrestle, and then we're
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: doing arm wrestle competitions. Um that it'll be like push
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: up competitions. Then it will be how many pull ups
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: can you do? Um? So knowing me, Josh, you knew,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I wasn't clear, although I'll tell you after my caribou
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: hunt and then like hunting turkeys and in the spring
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: and deer in the fall, I kind of I kind
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: of knew what was what it was getting myself into.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: So I've been working my way into it. Like there's
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: this thing they called the Century Club. So every day
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: you want to do a hundred push ups a day,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and so it's kind of like a group thing. Like
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: someone's like, all right, where are you at? And like
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: someone's like, I'm at forty alright, bust out twenty five more.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: And then one person will get down start doing push ups,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: and then whoever you know needs to get some more
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: for the day. They all hop in and so. And
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: when they first started doing it this spring, in my head,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: I'm so shitty at push ups. I'm like, oh God,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I can't hang with him. I'm not gonna do it. Well,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: it's gonna embarrass myself. I do so a few push ups. Um.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: So this time around was like, no, I'm going to
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: be in the Century Club. I can easily do that,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: So I just started doing a handful every day and
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: work my way to the point now where I can
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I can hang with them. So I felt good about
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: doing knee pushups. Yeah, is that not right, Josh? I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: think it was. I think it was Ben. I think
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: it was watching like Ben O'Brien's Instagram story or something
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: that I heard. I think it was said, I gotta
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: show Kenny how to do push ups or something like that,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: right for him dogging on you a little bit. Yeah,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: it's true. He said that my stance on my pushups
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: is too wide with my arms, so they forced me
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: to pull my elbows and my hands in closer to
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: do my pushups. But I can't. I have to do
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: my push ups on like clenched fists because I don't
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: know if you remember this back in high school. Um,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: but I got like, yeah, man, so I can't remember.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: So I had to doing with fists. Um. So for
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, I usually do him wider, but now I'm
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: doing him tighter. Doing those, we had to do a
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: push up or not push up, but a pull up,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: not not pull ups. Arm wrestle competition on the last
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: day and I came in second, um sort of, I
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: guess third technically, because Steve was kicking everyone's butt like
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Steve was. Steve's got it pretty well handled on most
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: of these things, and um, so he was whooping on
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the cameraman and everything, and I'm like, well, screw it,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: I'll try. And I at least like gave him a
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: run for his money, like he gave his big push
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: town towards the end and everyone's like, oh, here it
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: goes just like everybody else. And then I was kind
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: of in my hand like no, I'm not I'm not
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: going down without a fight, and I was able to
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: hold him for a while. He like, you know, at
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: least made him think that this could be interesting. So
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: I felt good about that. But then, uh, but then Beeto,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw the video that Steve
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: post on Instagram, is pretty funny. Um, but Beeto was
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: one of the guys that helped us to the border
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: crossing and everything. It was just sticks. So he was
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: there on the last day and so we pulled him
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: in and he kicked Steve's butt. So that's pretty funny. Um. Yeah. Otherwise,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: otherwise it's just like a lot of stories, a lot
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: of laughing, a lot of giving each other ship, you know,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: just like any other hunting camp, except for this camp
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: has got you know, nine people in it, and um everyone,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: everyone likes to talk. Everyone's good at talking everyone. Um.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: So there's lots of debates and arguments and stuff like that,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: which is which is fun. So I'm sure it's hard
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: to get in a word, it can be for sure.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: And if you get a word in, if you get
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: a worden and it's a debate, you better be very
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: well prepared to defend it because you'll get jumped out.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: So I'd try to sit in the corner of that
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: crew and just listen. You gotta be prepared to be
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: told you're wrong and try to try to fight that.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, man, it's cool. I mean all those guys,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, both the folks are wrong can like Stephen
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Kle and Yanni or the guys behind the camera like
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Chris and Rick and Seth. I mean, just super funny,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: cool people. Uh, we had a We had a good time,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: I will say. You know. The only thing else I
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: would add about it. The only downside of the whole
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: trip it was just how long it was. It was
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: a long trip. I mean I was gone for twelve
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: days from home, and um, that was tough, being away
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: from being away from Everett and Kylie. You know, after
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a trip we took this Spirit or not Spring this
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: uh September. How long were you? Well, I was gone
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: longer new But I think I was gone for eleven
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: days for that white Tail hunt. Yeah, I think I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: was gone seven Yeah, seven or eight something like that. Yeah,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: And after that one, I kind of told myself, kind
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: of made a plan in my head that I didn't
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: want to do any trips that long anymore. I wanted
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: to try to keep future trips like seven days or less.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: Just you know, so it's not quite as tough on Kylie.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: And it's just, you know, it's just hard. It's it's
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: surprisingly difficult to be Like back when I, before I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: had kids, I was always thinking that it wouldn't be
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: that big of a deal, But now I'm realizing that
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: it is. Um And so in this case, you know,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: it was a trip that I was delonged for. I
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: didn't have the ability to really control the scheduling, and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: twelve days definitely had me missing, missing my family. So yeah,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and as Peter said our group chat, died without you
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: being around too to spark like that. So your family
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: and your group chat. I guess, uh, I guess I'm
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: more important to some folks than I realized. Something. Something's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: like shocking me. I can't believe Peter wouldn't have some
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: kind of odd picture to share with the group or
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: something to keep the group text. The things that got
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: very good at that, oh man, Yeah, welcome home, congratulations
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: looked like just an incredible trip, incredible hunt. And uh,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: glad that everything went well for you getting across the
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: border and getting home. And no horror stories, so that's
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: always good, right, Yes, no horror stories. I'm back, glad
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: him back and um so all right, well I think
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: we should wrap it up. Man. Thank you for hopping
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: on here and playing host. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: having me on. And since I'm hosting, I feel like
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I should maybe get to do the sign off. Yeah,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: go ahead, take it, take it away. Well, let' let's
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: see how I can do that. You might have to
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: hire hear me. Thank you everyone for tuning in this week. Uh,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: if you haven't done so already, please leave a comment
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: review on our iTunes helps everyone else see it. Leave
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: five stars and uh until next time, stay Wire very
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: well to Lay. Yeah, that was that was pretty good.