Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 723: Four Strategies that Led to Mark and Tony’s Rut Success and What to Do Next

Transcript

Ep. 723: Four Strategies that Led to Mark and Tony’s Rut Success and What to Do Next · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, folks, Mark Kenyan here and real quick, before we
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: kick off the regular episode, I want to make up
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: for an error we had last week in which we
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: forgot to appropriately celebrate the month of November. And as
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: any of you longtime listeners know, when it's November, we
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: celebrate that most wonderful time to kill deer. And with
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: that in mind, this year, we launched our latest rut
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: themed tune, Big White Tails. So before we get into
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: our main episode, our main topic of conversation, I want
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to set the mood appropriately and get that song playing.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Enjoy.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: It's that time of the year again. I'm back, Marcus Kenyan.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: How are you your son of a gadwall? You look terrible.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: I'm just kidding a remma. I'm sorry, I'm late.
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side of a
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: quiz nose and I know what you're thinking. I am
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: as sober as a newborn blue crab. I swear to you,
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: this is just kombucha.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I'm watching the gut health.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: You gotta do it as you get older.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: And also I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: beep beep sound. If I have a drop of the
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: stuff also alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: parole officer. So there'll be none of that in the
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: studio today. I promise you.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Let's get go.
• 1:15
  Speaker 5: Oh you're queueing it up already.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Okay, I thought we'd learned a lesson this year, but
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: I guess not.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Here we go.
• 1:23
  Speaker 6: I love those dagy bi big white tape, those beachy
• 1:31
  Speaker 6: bi big wide tails. I love those be achie b
• 1:37
  Speaker 6: get eight chats eat tales. I love those be atchie
• 1:42
  Speaker 6: b wat tails.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Big white tails, big white tails.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Big white tails are great.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: Oh, what fun it is to sit in the freezing
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: cold tree all day? Big white tails, big white tail,
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: big white tails are great. Hold, what fun it is
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: to sit in the freezing cold tree all day? Dashing
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: through the woods for the morning light, turns grave across
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: the fields and draws creep in all the way, climb
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: into the tree. Big folks are on the wave? What
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: fun he is to sit and wait for my gosh
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: dan dere all day?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Oh big, I'm sorry? What is this?
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: Pisocado strings? Who do you think I am? Enya?
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Get this out here. I don't want to hear it.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Big.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: White tails, big white tails, big white tails are great,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: hold fun.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: It is to sit in the freezing cold tree all day.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: I hope sand dreams are high the rut. He's finally here,
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: Mark said, it's the most wonderful time. I'm to kill
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: o whitetail deer bingch points and pettings where you'll find
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: me hang it twenty feet in a tree grunt tubes
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: my bowel inspector Camos really can't be belah, he haught
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: two ago. I thought that this was fun, but now
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: I'm frozen to my seat, and the good times they
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: are gone. I've ate up all my snacks, my hands
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: and toes unnumb and we're gonna climb down.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: From my stand.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: That son of a but decided to come out.
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: Of those meegy be white takes those e bagy bee
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: big white tastes.
• 3:46
  Speaker 7: I love those beagy big dup yall eight shot ge etails.
• 3:51
  Speaker 7: I love those big white tails all day.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: I don't know why this is happening, I swear to God, Oh, officer,
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: what seems to be the problem here? Oh this, I
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: don't know why this is happening. It must be a malfunction,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries run low.
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: You don't need to smell that. That's just Kombuchai. Okay, yes,
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: you've got me. It's ever clear and pacific. Kuli Caprice Son.
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: I am so so sorry. I don't know why my
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: life has brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: Enjoy the rut or whatever.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Good luck.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light,
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the show, Tony and I break down our recent success
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: in the Brow and Wisconsin and detail the strategies we
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: employed and how you can apply them yourself. All right,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: by First Light and Camo for Conservation. If you are
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: listening to this on the day it drops, it is
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: November twenty three, twenty twenty three, and you might be tired.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You might be wor out, have a sore tail end
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: or a sore back, droopy baggy eyes, or whatever it
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: might be in your case. Because we've just endured the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: marathon of the peak of the rut. That's when rocations
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: usually happen. That's when we're pinning all of our hopes
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and dreams on a certain set of days. And Tony
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and I we've survived it and we came out the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: other end, and we've got some stories to tell, don't we, Buddy?
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: We do. And I got to ask you, Mark, is
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the Greater White Tail community kind of ghosting you now
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: because you keep calling me to be on these episodes.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering, did you lose a lot of your buddies
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: in the industry or what?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're getting blackball. No guests left, it's just me, Tony.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: No.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: But it is hard to find guests this time of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the year because everyone's hunting all the time. But it
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: worked out well because coming into the season, you and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I talked about how I want to have more episodes
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of you and me talking about our own hunts, right
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: because people like to follow along with what we're doing
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and like to hear our first hand experiences. But the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: risk of that is that if you and I have
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a bunch of crappy hunts, we have not a lot
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: of exciting things to tell. Fortunately, every single one of
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: these episodes that we've done just you and me, we've
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: each had a shot out, a deer or a kill
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to talk about, so we've had big things to talk
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: about every week, and the same ghosts for today. Because
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I killed the buck during the rut in Nebraska, you
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: kill the buck during the rut in Wisconsin, and you
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: with your daughter when she killed a deer. Was that
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: beginning of November as well?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yep? Okay, yep, So that was first week sometime six seventh,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: something like that, So pretty much the heart of it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have got a lot to cover. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: want to cover those stories, and I want to, you know,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: as we try to do not just tell the story,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: but really break down the strategies we employed, the tactics
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that worked, maybe the things that didn't work along the way,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: any lessons learned, and really try to make this useful
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: for folks so they can take what we learned from
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: this and apply it to their own hunt.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So that's the game plan.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk through a bunch of things related
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to the last three weeks of hunting, and then also
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: at the end, Tony, if your game for this, I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: want to look forward a little bit too, and just
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: kind of start setting the stage for what's to come.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So how we might be thinking about our hunts the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: last week of November, how our mindset must shift once
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: December comes around, and just help people you prepare for
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: this next phase of the season, because I think you know,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you feel this way, but once
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving hits, it's a big shift as far as my
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: hunting approach and really what I'm expecting and planning for.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we should probably cover that a little bit too.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Me too, man. I go from I set my boat
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: down and I pick up my twelve gage and I
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: call my dogs, I go chase roosters for a while. Yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: you might have the right idea.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So tell me this first off, how are you feeling
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: right now? Like we're we're talking here mid November, when
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: we're actually talking, Are you feeling good? Are you feeling tired?
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling anything in between?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Where are you at? I feel good, man. I've had
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a I've had a fun season. I've had a you know,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I had fun with my daughters and I had fund myself.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I've hunted a few different states and had good hunts,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and I'm I'm feeling good man, and I still have
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I have one on left that we can talk about
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: later that I'm really looking forward to. And it's just been,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it's a weird I feel like this
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: season has been weird for me, you know, Like I
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: know you'll probably talk about this with your Nebraska recap.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I feel like I've had a lot of stuff kind
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: of go wrong, but also the opposite end has hit
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: pretty quick. And so even though some of these things
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that like could ruin a hunt happen, I mean there's
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: going to happen. I feel like I've had a pretty
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: level season as far as the you know, the downside
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: being meeting the upside and it kind of just being
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: a really really productive season. So I feel good man.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. That's a good place to be at
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: this time.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I've I've had seasons where I don't feel
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: this way.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I kind of feel somewhere less than I should,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and I don't I don't quite know how to process that,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: but I guess I am letting the situation with the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Y nine cloud everything else because I have not felt satisfied,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: felt and I keep on telling myself, like you got
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to shake yourself out of this.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm working on that.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: But I've let my self dwell on that longer than
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I know I should. But you know, if anyone didn't
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: hear two weeks ago or three weeks ago when we
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: lasted our episode together, you know, I've had one buck
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I was after in Michigan, lot lots of history. That
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was like my number one goal for the year, without
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: a doubt, and you know, got the shot at him,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: hit him in the shoulder and couldn't recover him. But
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: coming out of that, I felt so confident that he'd
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: be back, Like just what, you know, I can see
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the footage, We see the arrow like ninety nine percent
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of it sticking out of the shoulder, and then we
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: do the blood trail, and the blood trail is exactly
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: like you would expect with a shoulder shot deer, Like
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: there's decent blood fur ways, drippy, droppy, and then just
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: slowly dries up and then nothing. And we were able
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to follow like a little tiny drip drop blood trail
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: with a dog for three quarters of a mile, you know,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And after that, I was like, man, we all were
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: at the end, We're like, hey, we're following a living deer.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: This deer's just been walking in a straight line forever.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: And now he just curled back into his bedroom. And
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you know he's going to be chasing dose tomorrow probably
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: or something like that. That's what we're telling ourselves on
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: October thirtieth. But I still haven't seen him. I still
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: don't have pictures of him, and now it's mid November,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: and so I just have not been able to shake that,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Like I just keep thinking about it and dwelling on it,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and so that's clouded over everything, like even and.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: I hate that this is the case.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: But I killed that buck in Nebraska, which we'll talk
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: about here in a second, and my dad. I was
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: talking to my dad in the drive home, and he
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: was so excited for me. Was like, oh man, that's awesome.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: You must be so stoked. This must make up for
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: what happened the other day. And I was like no,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I got mad at him. I was like like no,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: not at all, Like I'm not I'm hardly even celebrating
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: like this because of what happened. So this is a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: long winded way of saying that I know I shouldn't
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: feel this way, but I've not been able to shake
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that kind of gloom that has settled on me because
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of what happened with the why nine and and so
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I you know, I got to work through that. I'm
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: working through that, and I think, you know, some of
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: the upcoming hunts will help me with that, because I'll
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: be going out with my kids, taking them to deer
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: camp and that'll be a lot of fun and all
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: those other things.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: But November for me, are you are you at a
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: place with him where you're starting to doubt whether he lived?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: That's I mean, like, are you getting there where you're like, man,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: maybe I really really did kill him. I don't know
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: how I could have.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've had this conversation with myself a thousand times, Tony, Like,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I've gone back and forth so many times. I've watched
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the footage so many times, and I don't see how
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: that could have killed him. But I also don't understand
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: why it's been sixteen days or something like that, seventeen
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: days and I don't have a picture yet, and I
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: haven't seen him yet. And he was prior to that,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: it was like every single day. Maybe there'd be a
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: two day gap here there, but I mean almost every
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: single day or two i'd have pictures of him. I mean,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I'm in his core, of his core. And I'll jump
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: ahead a little bit to one of the things I
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: was going to tell you about, which is, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: after so I shot him, had the shoulder shot, had
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff happened. And then a couple
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: days later I went to Nebraska, which we will talk
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: about here shortly. And then as soon as I got
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: back from that, I got back out hunting in the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Wide Nines area. But then I also started bringing new
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: cameras with me, and so every time I went and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: hunted around his core zone, I put a new camera up,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and so I like, I got cameras now, like right
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: in the good stuff. Like before I was all on
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the xterior and safe locations, but now I was hunting,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I was like diving into the good stuff and placing
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: cameras in there now too. So the level of surveillance
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I have on this deer is way beyond anything I've
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: done before, just because I so badly want to know
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: when he's back or if he's back, and despite that,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: it just just nothing's showing. So that has just, you know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: every day, I've lost a little bit of hope every day,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I've like, ah, gosh, why is he not back?
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: What's going on?
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And I know intellectually, like there are possible reasons for this,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Like I've talked to numerous I've talked to Mark Jury,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Bill Winky, Jeff Sturgis and several other people who have
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: like been through this before multiple times and have all
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: told me, like, hey, it's not unheard of for a
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: deer with a hit like that to disappear for a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks a month or something and then have
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: him show back up. So I know it's possible. I'm
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: hoping on that. I'm banking on that. I've actually debated.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I've wanted to go and just like do another tear down,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: like walk everything all over again and like check every
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: single place in the world. But I've been battling like
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: do I do that because I need this peace of mind?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Or what if he's alive then that ruins my chance
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of being able to kill him and everything says he's
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: should be alive.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: But I don't know.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: This is this is me speaking. The thoughts have been
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: going through my mind for weeks.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I saw that video. I don't I
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: think it's way more likely that there was just a
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: lot of intrusion into his world in a very short
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: period of time and he has other places to be
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: and just said, nope, I'm that place got too risky
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: for me for a while. I don't I just don't
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: see that, Dear Dan from that that that video was
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: pretty telling, man, And I think he's just he's playing
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: it safe somewhere else and he's like, I'm not going
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: in there for a while. There's too much going on.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope so, because my my strategy now has
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: been to leave it completely alone for quite a while
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm not hunting, you know, until i know he's back.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So I've I've left it untouched for almost ten days
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: now or something like that, and I'm planning on, you know,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: continuing on through gun season until something pops. Now, all
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: that said, last year in November I did not get picked.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I got pictures of him in a two week window
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: from October twenty you know, from October twenty eighth through
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: November fourteenth, I only had pictures of him two or
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: three times. Last year, and the year before I only
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: had one picture of him all of November. So history
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: has shown that he does kind of vacate a little
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: bit in November compared to other months of the year,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and then at the end of November last year he
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: showed up in a big way. So I'm hoping that
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: maybe that's what's happened here, Like he had this crazy
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: thing happen at the end of October, like you said,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: he's like, hey, I'm not into this, and then he
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: usually kind of ruts somewhere else anyway, So maybe he
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: took off and was doing that kind of thing.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And then hopefully, just like last.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Year, when November twenty two or twenty five or twenty
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: eight hits somewhere in that ballpark, he's back feeling good.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And that's that's what I'm banking.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping for.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: But it's just it's just been weighing on me, like
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: I just have gone through a thousand times and.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And I can't I can't get past it. I don't know,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think he killed him, But
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the thing about that is a
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: deer like that could go get hit by a car
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the next night and you would like you might never know,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: or some other hunter might have shot him, or like
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of things that could happen there, that
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: could just be coincidental. But I think you'll just show
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: up again, like I would just I would just think
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: a deer like that is like he's going to play
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: it safe for a little while and then he's gonna
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: start sniffing around and come back in. And I don't know,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: I think he'll be back. I sure hope you're right, man.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: That would That would make me feel a whole lot
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: better about a lot of stuff, because I don't know,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: there's there's some people who can say, like, oh, it's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: just a deer and just brush it off and move on,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: And I just haven't been able to do that like
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: ever you've known me, Like I get worked up about
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: deer every year. But what do you mean? Yeah, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: but like in a case like this where I just
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you just invest so much time and energy
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: and everything into it and you try so hard for
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: it to go right, and and when it doesn't, just
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: kind of it's a tough pill swallow.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Man. So yeah, Well, the worst that's the worst negative encounter,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Like that's the worst outcome you can have is hitting
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: one like that and losing it after all of that,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Like it's it's the worst thing that can happen, and
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: it just sucks. But yeah, I mean, you know, like
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: you know, you're on a bunch of group texts in
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: the fall, and you know, every everybody who haunts and
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: has their buddies, I mean, stuff breaks bad a lot,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: like it's so it is just you know, we we
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: are like force fed and you know, like we're like
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: hyper aware of this through hunting media. We're like force
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: fed the positives, the sizzle reels and like the ones
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: that go right. And it is just so the hunting
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: deer with a bow is so ripe for something to
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: go wrong and it just happens.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So true, and it doesn't get sad enough. And I
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: feel like I've I've with you and I have screwed
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: up a lot of times and talked about it a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: lot of times, and still I feel like it's not
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: said enough.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, I missed a spike this year, Like I mean, it,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: it freaking happens, like it's it sucks, but it's like
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: things go wrong and it you know, so frustrating. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: unbelievably frustrating. He'll come back probably, Yeah, probably might, We'll
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: see we hope.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't help, Like, I've got a couple buddies
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: who are just like they know how to push my buttons,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and so like, whenever this topic gets brought up, they'll
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: chime in with the negative perspective all the time, like, well,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, it could have this could have happened.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: They know they're just doing it so I won't sleep
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: at night and it's working. Classic Peter, Yeah, classic Peter
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: or us. Anyways, that's that's, I guess, not where I
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: expected to start this, but but that is where I am,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: which is awaiting the Wide nine's return, and and in
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the meantime, I've been hunting a different buck, which I'll
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: tell you about here a little bit later on a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: different place. But let's start with some good news. How
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: about we start with a good story and some good takeaways.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Do you want to talk Wisconsin?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Sure? Sure? Yeah. I mean, honestly, the the best hunt
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: that I've had this year, the most enjoyable encounter was
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: with my daughter, you know, a couple of weeks ago
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: in Wisconsin and we I, you know, you and I
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: talked a lot about the deer population over there this
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: summer because you were going to maybe come up there
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and man, it's like there's a region of that area
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: that's about fifteen miles from where I typically hunt that
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: has a lot of deer, and the area that I'm
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: in is like rough. I mean, the deer population is
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: just low. I've I've got I don't know, five or
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: six cameras over there, and I think I've gotten pictures
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of two dos that had faons the entire fall, and
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: so it has just been a grind. My one daughter
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: killed a little spike right away, and then my other daughter,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: you know, we hunted I guess five sits, saw one
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: little three pointer. No, you know, no shot nothing. I mean,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: it took me twenty days over there between hunting with
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: them and myself to see a dough. Just it's like
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: it's hard to describe it. It's just like you're hunting
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: where there are no deer, and but it's a it's
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: a it's big woods. It's fun you see gross like
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: it's a cool. I like the environment, it's just tough.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: So I told my daughter, I was like, this is
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: our chance, Like we have a rut hunt to go
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: do because usually you know, they'll kill pretty early and
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: they're kind of out. They don't usually have a buck
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: tag this late and so I was like, we're going
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: to go do put a decoy out. Put that Dave
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Smith do out. We're gonna do all day sits and
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: we're gonna get one like we because we're hunting anybody,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: right and know she's dude, she's awesome, man. I mean
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: we've done We've done all day sits for turkeys, you know,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: like we'd never done it for deer because we never
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: needed to. So we go over there and I had
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: put this blind up in this spot and we sat.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I said, let's sit here till noon and then we're
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: going to go to another spot. We're just going to
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: carry everything and move over because I think we have
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a good chance this evening the wind was going to switch.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Whatever we sit. Nothing perfect, you know, like November sixth seventh, whatever,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: like frosty, beautiful, no dear, nothing moving. So we moved midday,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: walked over there, set up in this box blind on
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: this on this private ground that's just in this kind
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: of corner that's just good. Like they cut through there
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: coming from the neighbors and they kind of go around
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: a swamp through this little corner and I'm like, man,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: if they come through here and we have this decoy out.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: They're going to come in, you know, like they especially
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: a little guy. Right, So we sit till like, you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: ten minutes after sunset, right, like you got like a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: little bit of time left. Maybe it was maybe it
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: was a little earlier than that, but it was like
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: we were staring down the barrel of an all day blank, right.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: We had twenty minutes left, half hour whatever. And I
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: heard a stick snap back in the swamp, and I
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: was like, that's a deer. He might be going to
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the neighbors or he might be coming here. And I'm like,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: but we got to get ready because this is going
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: to be our chance if he shows. And I look
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: and this little six pointer comes walking out of the
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: swamp and he comes out and he looks at that
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: decoy and he's about, I don't know, forty five yards away,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: and it was so cool because his body language just
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: shifted like he was just like a little scrapper on
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: the hunt. And then he saw that loan though, and
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: he like kind of puffed up, stuck his chest out
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a little bit, and he walked to this scrape and
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: scraped it and he got on his hind legs and
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: he raked his antlers and he like it was like
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: such a palpable difference in his body language. And he
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: finished that up and he just walked in and he
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: couldn't take it and ran right up to the decoy,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: you know, stuck his nose right on the butt, sniff
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: it and she laced him at you know, fourteen yards
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: and he ran off and tipped over, and it was like,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: it was so awesome, Like you don't you know, I don't.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I don't use decoy as hardly ever, And you know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I've had very I've killed a few deer with him,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: but I've had like, you know, at least way more
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: negative interactions than positive. And to have it just position
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: one like that and it just him play the game
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: and put on a show man. It was so freaking cool.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And she was just geeked.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So what was the decoy set up? Like, how do
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: you run a decoy in that situation? How'd you position it?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: All that stuff?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Well, so you know they're gonna approach if it's a
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: if it's a buck decoy, they're coming in head on right,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: because they're not gonna they're gonna keep track of those antlers.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: If it's a doe decoy. They're interested in the other end,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: And so I set him up fourteen yards away, you know,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: so that deer, if he if he plays the game,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: he's gonna come in and he's gonna be quartered away,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: focused on that decoy. And that we were on a
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: corner of a field that was supposed to be planted
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: this year and the farmer never planted it, so it's
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: basically bare dirt, worthless to the deer. But I knew,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: like the eye lines, like the site lines are really good.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, if if a deer pokes his head
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: out and sees this in this field, he's going to
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: see that decoy. And so I'm like, you know, if
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: they cross through or you see a cruiser or whatever,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: there's a good chance that they're just gonna lay eyes
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: on it and come and a really good chance they're
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: going to pop out of that corner where they kind
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: of pinch around that swamp. And so it was like
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: it was like scripted. Man. I mean, the way he
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: came out as soon as I saw him look at
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: that decoy and his body language changed, I'm like, this
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: deer is gonna die, Like he's going to come you
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: could tell, and it was just so fun, you know.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, you know, everybody breaks about their kids
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: and they're so biased toward their kids. But she's eleven,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: and she did all day out there, and she smoked him,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: and I was like, that is badass, man, that is
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: cool man, that's great. That's that's as good as you
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: can get. Yeah, especially you know, especially when you're in
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: a situation where I you know, I told her going
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: over there, I'm like, we might see a couple deer
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: this weekend, like we might. But in that situation, if
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: you you know it's the rut, and if you that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: and I know we own Dave smith whatever, like take
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: this for what it's worth. That freaking decoy looks so good,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Like when you when you look at that in a
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: field and you're like, man, especially a little scrapper sees it,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: they're not going to turn that down during the rut.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: So I have never used a decoy in Michigan before
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: until this year. I got one of those Dave smith
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: buck decoys and so I was like, oh, let's try it,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: just see what happens. And this was when I'm hunting
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: this new property. After you know, I'd hunted the Wide
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: nine for a while after him disappearing, and then I
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: finally said, Okay, I'm gonna back out until he returns.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm on this new spot where there's lower expectations,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: lower risk. And my worry with the decoy Michigan was
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: always like, you put that thing out there, and deer
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: are gonna be blowing at it and freaking out.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: You're gonna mess up your hunt.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: So I would never use that in a place where
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I was really after a deer, but on this other property,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: yeah whatever. So I just kind of wanted to see
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: how it worked. And I did not have a single
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: deer spook from it, and everything came in to check
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: it out, little bucks does, and the doughs did not
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: wig out like the worry, you know, it was always
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: like a doe is gonna get spooky and wiggy on
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: it and start blowing and stuff, and I didn't have
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that happen. In fact, I had a hot dough what
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I think was a hot dough. Well, a doll that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: could have been approaching it came over and just hung
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: out by the buck and she just stood around it
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and would then start feeding next to it. And then
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I had another buck come in and you know, try
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to get that dough from the buck with my decoy.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: So it was very cool to see that. So I
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: mean TBD on killing one on one hopefully someday, but uh,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: it was fun to experience that. At least. A question
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: for you related to decoying. Back to what I just said,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the risk of using a decoy is that it can
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: spook some deer, at least other decoys. I've used a
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: different decoy in the past and have had that happen
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in Ohio and Iowa. But do you think that in
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a low deer density kind of place like where you
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: were at, decoying is actually more effective because you've got
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a lower risk of deer spooking, and it's maybe a
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: higher opportunity. Like if a deer sees another deer in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a low deer density area, they're even more keyed in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: to go check them out.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's just it's just a rarity thing, right,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: you know, Like I was thinking about this, you know,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm going to be writing some on this topic.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: But like people were so conditioned to think you got
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: to have like if you get your hands on some land,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: you've got to have these dreamy food plots and you
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: got to do like follow like a kind of a
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: certain pattern. But it's like, I don't know, if you're
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: in a place with tons of good food already, you know,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: betting cover might be way more important, or you know,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: water might be way more important. Or if you're up
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: in the big woods, you know you have betting cover everywhere.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: So like what's rare? Right, like the food is. And
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about this with this dough decoy, I'm like,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: there's so few deer here that if you're a buck
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: and you're on the if you're cruising and you don't
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: have a dough with you, which is very likely, there's
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: no way you're going to pass that up. Yeah, you know,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and the buck that I killed, we can talk about
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: this later, but the one that I killed in Wisconsin,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: this is the same scenario. So I went from never
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: taking a decoy into the field the killing back to
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: back deer on a decoy in similar situations.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is something that does not get
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: talked about a lot. Makes a lot of sense. If
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: you're in a low deer density area, you might want
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: to have a decoy out like all the time, yep. Well,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: because you framed it perfectly. It's the rare thing. We
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: always think about that, what's the rare thing from like
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a habitat perspective, But in some places it's just another animal.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: You provide that and boom, they're locked in and come
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and check it out.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Yep. And I mean I think you could kind of
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: apply this to calling and sense, Like I think there's
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: a lot going on there, you know, like if you
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: were if you were hunting there and you wanted to rattle,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I mean sure, maybe you would call in a buck,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: but it's like, I don't know, I just don't see it,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Like the density is so low, Like yeah, you could,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: you could rattle in a deer, but it just doesn't
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: seem like it would be nearly as effective or you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: calling it just it doesn't feel the same way, like
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I guess it would kind of
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: be like, you know, fishing in a pond with like
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: three deer or I mean three fish. You know, like
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: you'd be like I would, I would switch my tactics
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: on how I would do that versus just you know,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: like throwing top waters all over because I know there's
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: tons of smallies here now I'm in a place that
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: has nothing to work with, like I'm going to switch
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: things up, you know, And I think I think it's
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: like a really good teacher to hunt places with different densities,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Like I think it forces you. I mean, that's part
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: of the reason why the public land thing is such
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: a great educator. Like even if you're in a really
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: good state, you know, you if you go hunt public land,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: you've you've often disadvantaged yourself in a way where you
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: have to level up a little bit to have success
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: that you might not have to do on private land.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: It just forces you to think, like, how do I
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: get through this the right way to have that encounter?
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Interesting, So I guess now you've teed it up.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Tell us about the buck you killed with the decoy.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: So I you know how it is when we when
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: we do this, we have cameraman with us most of
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: the time, and if we don't, like I've had an
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: eleven year old with me the rest of the season,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: so I haven't had like a hunt where I'm like,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to go sit in a tree by
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: myself and hunt. And I kind of saved my Wisconsin
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: tag for this reason. I was like I just want
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: to have something for myself to go do, and I
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: kind of want to do a late rut thing anyway,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: because I was just I keep thinking it's going to
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: be like a good chance to kill a big one.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: So anyway, I went over I guess maybe like on
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: the eleventh or twelfth or something, and I had five
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: or six days to hunt. And my plan was, you know,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: like get in deep, you know, hunt these swamps, get
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: into these some of these places where I know there's
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: some big deer. And I knew it was going to
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: be like a mostly mostly I was gonna blank. But
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I feel like I have a chance. And
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: I had one spot I was saving. And this is
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: another thing that we should probably do a whole podcast on.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: But I find myself, I know you do this too,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Like there's a place I want to hunt, Like there's
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: a location where I'm like, that's where I want to
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: be now, But the wind isn't going to be right
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: for two days, So what's my next best option? To
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: leave that alone and just be smart about it. And
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I was doing that on this this spot that I
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: really wanted to hunt, this kind of travel right along
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: this swamp and I'm like, I can't go in there
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: until the wind gets right, and I've got to wait
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: like two and a half days. So I'm working other
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: stuff and blanking, and I finally saw a dough nobody
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: on her tail. I saw her twice like she was
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: like all by herself, and I hunted the wind was
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: It was like the third day I was over there.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I've seen, you know, one deer so far in three days.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: And I sat this stand, had some neighbors come in
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: with their four wheelers and stuff, and so it was
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: like early in the morning, and I'm like, well, I
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: was gonna go saddle up on this swamp edge where
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I really wanted to hunt. Anyway, like I was going
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: to do that midday when the wind switched. I didn't
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: want to do it in the dark, and so I
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: drove back to the cab and I switched my stuff out,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: grab my saddle and get ready to go do that.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And as I'm driving back, I saw this buck. You
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: know how like when you see deer run, they have
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: different kinds of ways of running, right, Like some of
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: them are just kind of trotting along. Sometimes they bound.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: But when you see that like greyhound just like down digging.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: You know, it happens a lot if you like heart
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: shoot them or you hit them in a heart and
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: a bone, like they just dig.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I looked up and I was like, holy shit, there's
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: a German shepherd or something like streaking across the road.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: But it was a doe and she was just booking
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: and this buck came in behind her and they ran
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: in to my buddy's place where I was staying. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: it was like nine in the morning, and I'm like,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen an ounce of running activity yet, and
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: I'm like, they just ran in there. They weren't anywhere
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: near where I was going to go set up, but
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I was like, maybe I should go do that setup
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I did with my daughter just for two hours, just
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: maybe there's maybe that dough is hot, maybe they'll come
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: streaking through like something, you know. Kind of just like
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: fell into my lap and made me rethink my plan
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: because I'm like, I still have time to go do
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: the thing I want to do, but maybe I should
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: give this just like a little bit of time.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I had all my close to where you.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Saw them, I probably set up maybe like five six
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: hundred yards away, but where they ran across that field
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and went back into the swamp. But I just thought
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: that kind of activity is like pretty rare for me
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: to see up there. So I'm like, there might be
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: something good, you know. And so I had all my
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: stuff with me, the decoy and everything. I'm like, I'm
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: gonna go do this set up again. So like a moron,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I'm walking across this field with a decoy at nine
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: in the morning and go put it out, climb up
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: in there. And I was like, this is so dumb,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Like I'm I know where I want to be, Like
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I want to go hunt like a real hunter and
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: not do this, Like this didn't feel right to me.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: But I'm sitting there and I'm like, you just you
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: just don't know, right, And I'm like at this point,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I just want a deer to come by
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: so I can shoot it. Like I'm like, i just
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: want that part of the hunt. And like ten minutes
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: after I sat down, I looked and here comes this
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: buck trotting and I'm like, oh shit, there's one right there,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and he comes through. I don't I don't think so
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't. Uh,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: but you know, in one of those box lines you have,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: like those tall windows on the side like to bohon
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: out of. So I've got the decoy out sixteen yards
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: quartered away, same kind of deal, and this buck's coming
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: through at like thirty five, and he's like not looking
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: at the decoy at all. He's just trotting. And so
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I know because I've ranged it a million
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: times because I sat there with my daughter forever, and
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: so I'm like, holy crap, like is he gonna stop?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: And I'm like trying to murp him, and he just
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: runs right on through and stops like where I can't
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: shoot him. And so I'm like looking at him, like
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I can't believe this worked. And there's a buck right here,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: and now I'm not going to get to shoot him,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: like he just he's going to ignore this decoy. And
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you, dude, that book. It was like his
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: brain was running in slow motion because he was like,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go run over here and go check for
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: doz on like this neighboring property. But you could see
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: it like kind of grind to a halt, and he stopped, dude,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: he stopped, yeah, facing yeah, He's like, oh my god,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: another deer. I can't believe this, like, can't be right.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: He's facing into the swamp and I'm thinking, I can't
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: believe that this is gonna I'm not going to kill
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: this deer. And he looks for like twenty seconds into
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: the swamp, spins a one eighty and runs right up
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: to my decoy and I shoot him just like it
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: was and he and I don't know, it was wild,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Like I couldn't. I could not believe it. And he
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: ran off and I could see the blood coming out
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: of his side. It was one of those wonderful blood
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: trails where you're like, I know there's going to be
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: a dead deer here, but I get to do the
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: blood trail part, you know what I mean? Yeah, And
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: so it was. It was wild. So I did basically
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: the exact same setup twice with that decoy, and the
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: two deer that saw it came right in. Just that's
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: amazing wild. So and I mean, he's he's a weird
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: deer too. I'll send you a picture. But when I
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: saw him coming, I was like, man, that's a big
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: deer with a runty rack, Like you know how when
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: you're like in Texas and they're hard to judge, Like
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: body to rack is just weird. This one's like it
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: looked like a horse coming in with this little eight
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: point rack and it's just it's just weird. Like I'm like,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: you know, like we always joke about like a call buck.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I think I just killed like the ultimate
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: call buck because this guy's his head gear sucks and
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I don't you know, but it was it was wild.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: It was cool.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Big was the big I mean, is he big? Body?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Up close?
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Is he what you saw?
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: It was? Yeah? Nice? I mean it just you know,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: and we see that up there sometimes, especially like you know,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: after a bad winner, it feels like they put a
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: lot of resources into their body and not a lot
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: of resources into their rack up there. Sometimes, I mean
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: it catches up when you get like an old one.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: They're big, like they're you know, like you get one
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: fifty one sixty deer up there legitimately, but they're the
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: deer that like made it through and they have you know,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: access to the best stuff. Yeah. So but I don't know,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I was pretty I was pretty freaking happy anyway. Yeah
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: that's awesome, man.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So, uh, your tactic with the decoy worked very well
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: with a dough decoy. Would you say, now, like, if
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: you had a buck, would you always still use that
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: dough during the rut or would you go and use
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the buck decoy at some point too?
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Like I would make that decision. I don't think i'd
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: use a buck decoy up there. I mean there's there's
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: certain situations, especially like a Halloween type haunt or maybe
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: the first couple of days of November. I would use
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: a buck decoy. You know, it just depends, but that
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: that dough decoy, man, I think I think we've been
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: really conditioned to use buck decoys. And that's because we're
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: watching stuff that's created by people who are focused on
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: really big deer. Like if you're gonna if you're hunting,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: you know, a specific one sixty in the corner of
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: this field or whatever, like you want to challenge that deer, right,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: And like we said earlier, if there's you know, if
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: you're in a high deer density place, he might have
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: does everywhere, like that's not that special to him. But
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I think for a lot of people who aren't, like
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I don't you know, if you're like I just want
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: a decent buck, I don't need a one to fifty
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: or whatever, or you're like, I just want to put
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: a buck in front of me that will give me
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: a good shot. I think that dough decoy is like
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: way underutilized.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a really interesting point, and something like
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: you said does not get talked about very much.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I'm gonna talk about it. I'm a believer
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: now body.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: So other than using the dough decoy, and here follow
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: up questions that would you use this tactic only in
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: November or do you think in a low deer density
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: place where you're not too terribly picky about the deer
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: year after? Could you use dough decoy in a cut
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: cornfield in December on a late season hunt to just
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: get that like schooling fish effect?
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: Yep, maybe, I mean I used to use a Montana
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: decoy has made a couple of feeding deer decoys. They
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: had a meal deer one first and it was just
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: a silhouette of a deer with its head down, and
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: then they made a white tail one. I used to
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: use that in September, October, November and December because I
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: would have deer come out. You know, you take that
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: early season, you know, soybean field hunt those deer come out,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: you know, in seven different spots. They might make their
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: way there. They might not. But when I would put
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: that out, even the dose they'd come out, they get
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: they'd get a little wiggy. They'd almost always come right
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: over to it. And so this one and and if
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: you're calling, you know, if you if this, this is
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: obviously a heads up decoy. This uh, Dave Smith. You
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: know the head's up, it's looking you know, if you
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: if you could put one that was a head down
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: so you couldn't really see the head, but you could
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: see like it was a little body calling to deer
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: all season long. Would be amazing with that because they
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you know, a buck would look over there. You
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: could and you know, dose could look over there. You
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: could bleed Adam. Bucks could look over there. You could
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: grunt at them whatever. They don't really there, they don't.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: They just know there's a deer there that's making noise.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: And so I think there's applications for this in a
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: lot of ways. That would be really cool.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I want to experiment some more with these.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: It's very interesting these different ways you can go about it.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Is there is there any other takeaway from these two
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: rut hunts, tony or any other lessons you learned or
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that we can take from them.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Man, I know we say this all the time, but
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: there's there's two things I noticed with my hunt and
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: with seeing other people. And this is not just this
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: is not just in the Wisconsin thing. This was down
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: in Oklahoma. This was actually in North Dakota. There's a
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: there's this is gonna make me sound horrible, but there's
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: an element of laziness to a lot of people's hunting
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: that cost them. And so when I when I killed
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: this buck in Wisconsin, I went out just to shoot
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: photos and drive around. I had to go pull some
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: stands and blinds and stuff. So I was just in
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: and out of the woods in different spots, driving around.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: And the amount of trucks I see pulled like all
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: the way through the field parked on the edge of
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: the woods. It's like, man, you could have walked two
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: hundred yards and not done that. Like you put a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: totally different impact on there. And that's like that's super common, right,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Like you hear that story a lot. You hear it
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: during gun season a lot. Like riding the four wheeler
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: out to the tree stand. Like, man, you are advertising
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: your presence in a way. Like think how often there's
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: a there's a truck parked right there on the edge
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: of that field. Almost never? Yeah, and when when there is,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: there's always a person one hundred yards away in that
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: ladder stand, you know, like that that kind of stuff.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: How you get in there, where you park, that doesn't change, man,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Like it's it's like universal across the white tail space
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: that if you're kind of taking the easy way out,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: you're you're probably costing yourself some encounters, I think, you know.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: And it's and it's often the difference between you know,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: fifteen minute walk in a ten minute walk or a
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: fifteen minute walk and a five minute walk, you know,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: because this is white tails and we're not going that far.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: But it so that and just time, like you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I had two sits in a row between North Dakota
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: and my daughter's Dear that were all day sits where
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: the first deear that came in at the end, which
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: is right at the end, is the deer that we killed.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: And you know how it is like sometimes you kill
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: that noon buck, sometimes it's one o'clock. Sometimes you just
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: see something that clues you into what you should do
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: you know at eleven o'clock in the morning, and I
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: just think I'm getting to the point now where I'm like,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I just think most hunters don't put in as much
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: time as they should. Like if you if you're sitting there,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: and you're like, I could go out at three o'clock
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: or two o'clock or one o'clock, or I could go
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: out right now, go out right now, as long as
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: the wind's right and the situation works, because it's just
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: like it's just time in there, and it's it's like,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: you know how it feels when you walk out, especially
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: if you're sitting in the woods, you walk out for
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: an afternoon sit it feels like it takes a while
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: to calm down, like the woods has to get back
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: to like the normal rhythm. You know. It's like it's
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the same thing when you're you know, if you sit
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: an elk wall or a water hole out west in September,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: when the frogs start chirping again and things start settling, now,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: you're like, okay, now something could come in. But when
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: you walk in there, it goes quiet, and like there's
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: just things like that. And I just think that the
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: more time you give it the more time. And I
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: know that, like people want to hear something way cooler
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: than that, But I just think it's like you have
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: to put in the hours.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is not always rainbows and butterflies when
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you're sitting out there for ten twelve hours or whatever
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: it is for day after day after day. But to
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: your point, sometimes that's what takes well.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: And you know the thing sometimes to keep interested in that,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: you know, if you can do that midday switch or
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna sit this pinch point today and
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna sit that field corner tomorrow or whatever, like
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: giving yourself a different view because you know, we see
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: this a lot, especially we saw this when we were
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: filming one week in November the two years we did it. Man,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: you can be on a property and be in a
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: dead zone, just dead, and you can move five hundred
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: yards away to a different valley or something and it
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: is on. And so sometimes you know, sometimes you think
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: you got a volume hunt that pinch point, make it
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: happen there. But if you if you're not wired for that,
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: like okay, go sit a different stand, but put in
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: your time there, like you know, make a qualified decision,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: but make sure that you're giving yourself a chance to
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: like see this through, like what you need to see
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: it through. Yeah.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that changes. Scenery can make a huge difference, just
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: as morale and focus and all that. That's that's so true.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard going back to a place where you
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: blank a whole bunch. Oh yeah, yeah, it is.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad that you did not blank in the end, Tony.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I'm glad it came together. You put in the time,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and you and your daughter came out on top.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: That's very good. Victorious, Yeah, victorious cocky, and I love
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: that they both are. That's awesome.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I guess I should share my story and we can
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: break that down. And this one's quick because it was
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: a pretty quick hunt. We talked just after I shot
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the Y nine. The whole thing happened that we just discussed.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: A day and a half later, I had left for Nebraska,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: fourteen hour drive thinking the whole time about you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: what just happened to Michigan and what we just talked about.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So my head spinning, my wheels turning, thinking over and
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: over and over again about what happened with the Y nine.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: But I kept on telling me. I said, hey, you
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: gotta just set this aside because you're gonna you're going
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: on your dream hunt for the year, Like this is
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: your hunt that was just for you.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Like several of my other trips.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: This year have been like mentoring or helping other people
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: and like doing these different things. There wasn't a hunt
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that was just like go to a place where there
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: should be a lot of big deer and do the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: fun thing. Like this was the hunt where I was
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: gonna go hunt this property that I've hunted in the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: past that I was getting to know pretty well. I
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: you know, last year, in like two days, I saw
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: seven mature bucks and I shot that really nice seven
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: point in the first night. So I said, going into
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: this Hunt'm like, okay, Mark, let's take your time this time.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Let's be picky. I bet you could kill like a big,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: big deer out here if you just gave it time.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: It's the rut in the river bottoms of Nebraska, where
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: you know, anything's possible. So I was thinking, like, this
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: is gonna be the dream hunt. I'm bringing my decoy
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: in the evenings. I'm gonna put the decoy out in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: these open, grassy planes and gonna rattle and call and like,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: do all the stuff that actually might work in a
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: place like this.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: I was so excited.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: So that was what I kept telling myself. Every time
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: I'd start bumming about the Wide nine, I'd say, hey,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: shake it off, You're about to have this fun hunt
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: like pure on an undultered fun Big bucks are gonna
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: do big buck things. There's not gonna be anyone out
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: there to mess it up for because this is private
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: land that I have permission to hunt now. And you know,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: it's several miles of river bottom and so there's it's
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: just grass all around it, and then there's this river
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: that runs through the middle, and along that river there's
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: cover and the white tails hang out down by that
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and they cruise up and down. I mean, as we've
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: talked about the past, you couldn't ask for a better
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: rut situation because you've got a built in funnel all
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: along that river, and you also have visibility, so I
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: can call, I can decoy, I can do all that
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: stuff that works particularly well during the rut too. So
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I had a game plan going in to go back
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to the zone that i'd hunted the last two years.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So the I had permission two years ago, I guess
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: was two seasons ago and I hunted just two evenings
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: at the end of a public land hunt. But on
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: those two evenings I got to know a little spot.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: And then I came back last year and scouted the
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: first night, hunted the next day, same zone, got to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: know it better, killed this buck, scouted around some more,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: put up cameras and stuff. So I'd learned some more
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: that second year, and now coming back for year three,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: I had like a real game plan. You know, I knew, okay,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: this is one of the main betting areas. This is
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: one of the main betting areas. This is where I
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: think I can set up for a morning on day one.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And I, you know, thought through all this on the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: drive out there, and you know, I'm thinking, you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: definitely holding out for like a five year old type buck,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: a big, big deer. You know, I don't know what
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: that means, but like a deer that would be like
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I told myself, I'm gonna pass
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: some deer, like I'm gonna pass mature bucks that are
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: not giants, because this is like my only chance to
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: do that every other hunt. You know, I can't I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't possibly pass up on a mature buck. But this
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: might be the kind of place I could actually be picky.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: So I get there chatting with the landowner.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Great guy.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I'm very, very very appreciative of him letting me hunt here,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, he was gonna let me camp out
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: there on his property. So he went out and he
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: showed me an area he was okay with the ca
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: so I was all excited about that, And just before
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: he heads out to leave, he's like, oh, and by
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the way, there's two other guys hunting. They're hunting the
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: whole east side. So just as long as you don't
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: cross this line, you can hunt the stuff on the
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: west side. And my heart just dropped to my toes.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, I don't know what I said,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: but I think I just said what I just said
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: over and over again, because all of the cover, all
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of the habitat, all of the stuff that I had
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: hunted in the past, was all to the east side.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Like that was my entire game plan, was hunting the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: east side, and basically two thirds of the property were
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: now off limits to me because these other guys had
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: got there first and had claimed it, and so all
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I had was the other third to the west, which
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: had like very very few trees. There was cover, but
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: it's just like this buckbrush kind of stuff is what
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: they call it. It's just like shoulder high brush that's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: just right along the river. There's no trees, is set up,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm talking like there might be twenty yards of
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: it along the river, and then otherwise it's grass and
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: then there's a couple of pockets where it goes like
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: on an inside bend, and maybe there's like fifty sixty
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: yards of it, but I mean we're talking slim pickens.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: And I'm standing there thinking what am I going to do?
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: And yeah, just what am I gonna do? Like all
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: of my hopes and dreams went out the window, and
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm thinking, like, whoa, I won't
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: have a hard time killing any deer now.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: So he leaves and I.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Just like I am sitting there like my whirl falling down
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: around me and my poor camera guy. I just had
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: met him like half hour earlier, we just met for
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the first time, and the land on our leaves and
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I look at him like, hey, dude, this is probably
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: not gonna be the first impression I'm gonna try really
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: hard to stay positive. But you are seeing me in
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: full blown crisis mode right now because I just came
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: off this really bad day in Michigan and now my
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: entire plan for this week's hunt has just gone down
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: in flames. So we're gonna have to do some real
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: crisis management over the next half hour or half the head.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Hold on a second mark. So the two guys that
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: were hunting out there, didn't you say they're from Michigan? Yes?
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Did they know that you were? That was your spot?
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's not my spot, to be fair, right.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: What I'm saying is were they aware that you were
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: hunting there? Or was this just a coincidence?
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: So I believe they knew I was hunting there because
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: we met them last year and they had hunted a
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: different area last year, and and then and then this year.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not trying to throw these guys under
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: the bus.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: They have every right to be there, and I'm glad
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: they got to hunt it and they had a great hunt.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: Did they kill a way am I?
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Did they kill big killed a real nice one?
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah? One one of them killed a big one.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: So you know, I wouldn't be ashamed if somebody got
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: out there ahead of those guys next year, huh.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: I have no ill will towards them, and I appreciate
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: that they had a good hunt.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: I'm glad they had a good hunt.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: But selfishly I did feel like, oh no, this is
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: this is a bummer. So all that said to what
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I think is valuable to other people listening, I had
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: that happen. I had like that flood of like oh
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: shit kind of feelings, and then I, as quickly as
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: I could force myself to say, Okay, stop feeling bad
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: for yourself, stop freaking out, Like we have to reassess, like,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: here's the cards we have, here's the cards.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: We've been dealt.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: The only thing we can do is like think through
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: what is the situation now? Can't change past, can't control
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: who else is here. All we can do is like
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: analyze the situation we have and make the very best
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: of it and understand, like what are the positives here?
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Like what do we have working for us? And what
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I still had working for me was that nobody had
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: been hunting this section. So while there's not as much cover,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and while I didn't know much about it, it still was,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: you know, relatively unpressued. So that's going for me number two.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It's still the rut that's going for me number three.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: This is still river bottom stuff. So even though the
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: area that had a lot of good trees and a
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: lot of good cover and next to an amazing ranch
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: with tons of deer and stuff like, even though that
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: was like three miles away, I still am along a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: river that still acts as a funnel and there's still deer.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: They're going to cruise up and down this that the
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: deer do cover some ground, So I had to believe.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I just told myself, like, hey, there are still things
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: going here that can.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Work for you.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: It's still possible. You still have to follow like the
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: basic principles of hunting the rock, Like, still do the
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: thing you're gonna do. Instead of having like ten different options,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: you might have two now, Like I might just have
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: like one spoty canon on the north side of the
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: river and one spoty canon on the south side, and
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you're just gonna hunt the heck out of it and
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: hunt as smart as you can and see what happens.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: That was the mindset shift I tried to have. And
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: that first night, instead of going I was originally going
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: to go and hang a stand for the morning and
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: then hunt a different spot that first night over in
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: the zone. I knew, but when this all happened, I decide, Okay,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: change of plans. Instead of doing that, I'm just gonna
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: go get up on a hill with my spotting scope
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and glass this area and just learn it. So I
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: brought my bow just in case something crazy happened, but
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna need to learn.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I gotta get eyes on.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: This and just see if there's deer, see how deer
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: using it, See what's happening. So that's why I do
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: in day one. I think this goes back to a
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: major theme that we talked about after our September hunts,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: which was a theme that gets talked about a lot,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: which is just the value of learning stuff like scouting,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: whether it be through observation or on the ground. Like
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: one hunt that's well informed by scouting is worth four
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: blind hunts. You know. I think you and I have
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: both seen that be true time and time again. So
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: I knew in this case, like I'm going to sacrifice
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: the night's hunt to get a really good idea of
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: what's happening in this new spot. So I sat there
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: on the hill my glassed, and what I saw was
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: at first mostly discouraging. There was like nothing moving on
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: the proper da could hunt. But I could see to
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: a neighbor's property, and I did see some deer coming
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: out there and feeding out on a pivot field. They
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: head over there. The neighbor has a crop field. There's
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: no food on the proper deck can hunt. So I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: saw a lot of deer leaving the river bottom on
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: their side of the line and going.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: To the food on their side of the line.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: And then I saw one group of five doughs come
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: out right on the line and head up towards that food.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, all right, there's not a lot living
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: on my stuff right now or moving through, but there is.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: Food next door.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: So deer got to be cruising through my stuff to
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: get to that food eventually and check or check that food,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: you know, for does and all that. So I'm sitting
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: here processing and I'm thinking, all right, there's a gotta
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: be along the river, of course, Now can I find
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: a tree I can get up? And I spent a
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: bunch of that night glassing trees, just trying to find
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a tree that would set up to get a stand
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: or a saddline, and literally tony the entire night, I
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: could not find one tree that I could get a
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: saddle up into where I could like confidently say from
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: this view, like, oh yeah, that's a tree that would
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: get me up. It was almost all like the little low,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: scrubby junk trees that like are ten foot tall and
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a thousand branches of that kind of thing. There was
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a few cottonwoods like way down by the river, but
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: they're like, the way this area works is like a shelf,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: and so like the shelf right by the river, the
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: shelf drops down like ten to fifteen feet and then
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: there's like another layer there, and there were a couple
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: of cottonwoods down the bottom layer, so I could see
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the tops of them. I just couldn't tell like how
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: much there was to work with and if I'd be
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: able to get in it, because the thing is like
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: if I'm going and setting up, I can't be down
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: there and doing a bunch of limb trimming. So not
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: only do I need to find a tree that has
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: a trunk I can get up into high enough, but
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: it also can't have a million branches because I can't,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: you know, do major trimming renovations on a tree right
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in the area while I'm hunting that day, right, so
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: trying to find a tree, never find a tree. So
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: as the evening progresses, I'm starting to think, Okay, is
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: there somewhere I could hunt on the ground tomorrow, Like
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: maybe I could bring my saddle stuff with me, sit
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: in the ground for the first hour or two, and
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: while I'm down there on the ground, maybe I can
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: get a better look at these cottonwoods from up close,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and maybe I can find one I can get up into.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: And as I'm thinking through that, it's last light, I'm
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: still glassing. I spot a single deer come off of
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: my property on the other side of the river, about
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: six hundred yards away, maybe something like that. Five hundred
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: six hundred yards away. I spot a big body deer
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: come out of this brush right along the river and
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: kind of go up this grassy hill and cross over
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: to the neighbors. And I can see it is a
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: decent sized buck. It's a solid buck. I can't really
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: see well enough to tell you if it's a big big,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: but it's like a decent buck. And that gave me
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: a little hope. I'm like, Okay, there's a buck doing
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: the thing that you would hope they'd be doing.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: That positive.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: But again on that side, there's no trees, there's no nothing.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: So I decide the next morning, I'm gonna go do
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the thing where I bring in my sticks in my saddle,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go sit on the ground. I'm gonna
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: tuck myself up into a ceed or tree down by
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the river right where that shelf breaks. So I'm gonna
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: sit on the top of that shelf looking down to
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: that lower bit, and there's a couple like erosion ditches,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: like cuts, they go down to the river. And what
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I had seen the previous year in the other area
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: is that sometimes these deer would leave the river and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: take an erosion dish like can imagine, like like a
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: t junction, right, and the river bottom is the top
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: of the tee. But then every once in a while
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: there's this ditch or gully that goes into it at
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: a ninety degree angle, and if ever they were gonna
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: leave the river, they would take that out. So there
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: was a couple of those that kind of angled out
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: from the river up towards the crop fields on the neighbors.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: So I thought, hey, there's a chance that a deer
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: might you know, come into the funnel through that too.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: So I got where those two met, tucked myself into
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a seater tree. The next morning, sat there on the ground,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: hoping that some people come cruising through again, thinking, you know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: from a rough perspective, out there, hunt the funnel, which
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: is the river corridor, and then be close to those
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: bends in the river where there's a little bit of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: that brushy stuff where you'd hope some does would bed.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: And nothing did that. I sat there most of the morning,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: had no deer moved through it all. But late morning
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I spotted deer on the other side of the river
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: again and pull up my bios and it's a tank.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: It's a big buck, and he's over on the other side,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: on the neighbor side of the line. And then a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: second buck comes out and the two of them stand
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: there for a while, and the big guy starts making
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: a scrape, and I tried to snort weeze, and I
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: tried to grunt see if I could get this deer's
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: you know, curiosity peak to see if maybe he'd come across.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Never did, but they were out there doing the thing,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: just kind of milling around, and then finally five doughs
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: came out of this little brushy stuff he was standing by,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and they run down cross the property line onto my
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: side of the line, and go down to that same
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: little patch of buck brush that the buck came out
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: of the night prior. They drop in there, and then
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: that big buck runs down and follows them into the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: same stuff. So I'm excited to have seen like a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: really nice buck. And he's on my side of the line,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: and he disappeared into this cover, and I washed him
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: go into this brush, and then I saw him pop
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: out on the other side and then disappear right back
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: into it, and then nothing. And I keep on watching
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: further down the river trying to see if he pops
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: out of it again. I do not see him pop
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: out the other side.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: But don't think of a patch of brush as that mark.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: So if you were to imagine, you know, a snaking
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: river right that's making all these spends on those inside
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: curves where it goes in, that cover might be fifty
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: to eighty yards wide right at the biggest portion, and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: then where the river comes back up it gets tight again.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: It might be there might be no brush, or there
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: might be five or ten yards of brush, that kind
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: of thing. But that basic trend continues, you know, for
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: a long ways down the river. So if you were
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: to add up all that brush, you know, it'd be
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: it'd be quite a bit. But like the pocket he
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: went to was like, you know, an acre maybe two acres,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: and then and then you know, then it's just like
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: a couple of little scrubby trees. And then there might
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: be another half acre of brush, and then a couple
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: of scrubby trees, and then there's an acre or two
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: on another bend. Like I think, it's that kind of thing,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't look like much, but when
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: you're standing in it, it is, you know, tall enough
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: that a deer could be moving through there and you
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: would never be able to see him. So to the deer,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: it feels like, you know, great cover. So I saw
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: him going there, I couldn't see him go out the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: other side. But at the same time, I knew like
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: he certainly could just keep on going on that edge
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: and I would probably never see him. About an hour
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: or two later, maybe around noon, I'm still glassing over that.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I keep on glassing that whole area, watching, watching, watching
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: around noon, I see a little tiny scrubby tree in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: there start shaking doing that thing right, and I'm thinking, ooh,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: like that looks like there's a buck work in that tree.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: So it gives me another little glimmer of like hmm,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: because my big thing I was debating was is that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: buck in there and gonna hunker down with those dos
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: or is he cruising two miles down the river and
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: he's gone?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: And you know, on.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: November third or whatever this day was. You know, in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: my mind, I'm thinking, man, it was a very high
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: likelihood that buck kept on cruising and just kept on
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: going and he's not going to be anywhere near here,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: but you never know.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: And during the rut.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know what your thought is on this, but
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of times, if I see a buck do
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: something once, you can't draw too many conclusions off of
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: like a one time thing, because there can be random movements,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: there can be you know, things happen outside of the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: ordinary during the rut. But if you see something happen twice,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: I would say it goes from like a one off
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: to a trend. And I didn't necessarily think that I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: had this buck patterned by any kind of me, like
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: I did not go into this thinking like, oh, he's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: gonna do the same thing tonight. But I said, I
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: saw buck come out of this buck brush here last night,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: and I saw buck go into that buck brush this morning,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: and I've seen nothing else. This is something like, this
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: is the absolute best thing I have to work off of.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: I need to be over there where these deer moved
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: through there, because there's for some reason they prefer that
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: side of the river, and uh, they don't like to
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: side I'm on right now, So I need to figure
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: out a way to get to that side. Two problems
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: with that, though. One problem was that you can't cross
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: the river. It's too deep to get across the river,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and the only way to get across the river is
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: to go several miles down the river to a bridge,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: get over the river on the bridge, and then you
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: have several miles to get back to this area where
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the deer were. Now we could deal with that, but
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: we had a north wind, and this is the north
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: side of the river that we want to hunt, and
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: so if I were to cross the river and try
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: to walk down, I would be blowing my wind into
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: all that brush. For these deer bedded, so I can't
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: do that. So the game plan I have is I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: end up walking back to camp, get to the truck,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: drive the truck down a couple miles to.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: This bridge, cross the bridge.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: And then get off of the or get out of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: the truck, and then I was able to do a
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: really big half moon walk so that instead of walking
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: right along the you know, if I walk right along
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: the river, I would spook the deer. But if I
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: went like way way way north into the hills, I
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: could get several of these big, big hills in between
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: me and the river and hopefully not have my wind,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: you know, be able to get down to them. So
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: it's a long way away of saying I took a
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: very long walk to get way way way up winto them,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: get past them. And only once I was way past them,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I circle back down to the river on their backside,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: and did that that afternoon, got set up over on
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: that side. The issue with this spot again, there's no trees,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: so I can't hang a saddle sid I can't get
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: up in the trees stand. So I was thinking about
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: all this when I was sitting on the ground, thinking
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: about how I was gonna pull it off. I was
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: gonna have to just figure out a way to hide
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: in that buck brush right by the river, so that
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: with that north wind blowing, I'd be tight to the water,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: so my wind would blow straight into the water behind me,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and hopefully that buck or some other buck doing a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: similar thing would come cruising through that buck brush step
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: out of it, and then hopefully I could get a shot.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: I had to figure out a way to stay hidden
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: in there. And the other thing I didn't like about
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: it was it was gonna be uphill, so I was
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: gonna have to shoot uphill because down the river is
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: the lowest point and then the hill rises from there,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: so I was gonna be lower than the deer and
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way to hide myself in
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: this grass and brush. So long story short, we sneak
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: our way over there. The wind dies down, so it's
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: like very very very quiet trying to creep in there.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: I'm like a little part of my soul is dying
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: with every step because of how crunchy everything is. Plus
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: have a camera guy, so there's two crunches for every step,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and we just went really slow, painstaking as much as
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: we could. I actually was very frustrated because there was
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: cattle in there, and there weren't supposed to be cattle
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: in there, but there were. So that was like just
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: kind of like bumming me out because cattle sometimes don't
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: always mix well with deer. But it helped me in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: this case because I actually spooked some cattle as I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: was trying to walk in there, and I was trying
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: to be really quiet, but when those cattle spooked, I thought, Okay, well,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to take advantage of that. I'm going
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: to be a running cattle. So we just started scooting.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: As soon as those cattle started running, I started like
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: half jogging to like pretend like mix my noise in
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: with theirs. So I get down to the river. Then
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I spend like twenty minutes just standing there, thinking through, Okay,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: where's gonna be the best possible place to sit my
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: butt down and hide? And I'm weighing, Okay, I have
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: to be able to stay hidden, and I need the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: cameraman to be able to stay hidden. I need to
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: also be within forty yards of where I think this
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: deer is gonna pop out of this brush, and then
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: there's all this tall grass, and how do I stay hidden,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Like I want to use the grass to stay hidden,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: but then I need to be able to shoot, and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: I need to be able to range, and this tall,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: wispy grass, as you know, is a nightmare to try
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: to get a range on anything through. And it was
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: gonna make getting a clear shot really hard because not
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: only am I trying to use grass, but the deer's
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: gonna be uphill with me, so I'm not going to
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: have the downward advantage advantage. I'm going to be shooting
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: up and so that grass is going to be even
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: more challenging. So again, my cameraman must have thought I
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: was nuts because I took so long to Like I
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: would go to one spot and I was like, uh, yeah,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: this is good for cover, but I just don't think
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: I'll be able to get a shot if he comes
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Like if he comes this way, if he comes this way, no,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna work. So I'd move five yards over
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: and I'd sit here, and I'd think about, well, I
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: could I hide here, where's my camera got go? And YadA, YadA, YadA.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: It took forever to do this, but I just I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: didn't like the situation. I was worried about shots. I
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: was worried about us getting pegged, and I just if
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I had to be on the ground like this, I
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: had to pick like the very best possible place to
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: pull it off, and finally found a place that I
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: thought balance those criteria. I thought I could stay hidden
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: behind this tall grass, and then I had a patch
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: of that buck brush right on my tail, and the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: camera guy could hide behind the buck brush and film
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: around the side of it. And I had a little
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: bit of a lane where there had been like a
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: trail from cattle or deer or something, so you could
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: shoot through this trail, or I could get up on
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: my knees and kind of possibly lean around and shoot
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: around it to where it opened up just a little bit.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: So I thought I had the best possible scenario and
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: settle in, thinking to myself, like, what an idiot, You're
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: gonna sit here, You're gonna see nothing. You've got a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: thousand little cactus things stuck in your stuck in your hand,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: and YadA, YadA, YadA, like what a disaster this is
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: turning out to be. And then I hear some crunching
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to my side, and I hear like a twig snap,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: and another twig snap, and like, holy crap, there might
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: be a deer coming. I like get my camera guys
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: and say, hey, focus this deer. I hear another twig snap,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: and the holy crap, there's actually a buck's gonna come
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: popping out of here, cruising early afternoon because it wasn't
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: like primetime yet so anything like at this time here,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's got to be a buck, and so
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: I like.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: Grab my bow. I'm getting ready, and then.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Freaking cattle. So I'm like, ah no, I've gotten.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: All jacked up. It's just the cows again.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: So then I settled back in and sitting there waiting,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: and maybe another hour passes, and then the same thing happens.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: I get jacked up because I hear some twig snapping
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: and then you hear a move. It's the cow again.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: So this whole thing has got like up down uptown.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: We get to the last hour daylight and I hear
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: a crunch, crunch over there in the branches. Again, I'm thinking,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: just a cow. I'm not going to get all jack
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: eduff about it. But I'm still like on my knees
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: and I'm still gonna glass.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: I'm still gonna watch.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking off to my right side where this
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: noise is and knowing is probably a cow. But I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: still I knew, like, one of these times it's not
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: going to be a cow, so you better assume everyone's
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: a deer because one of the times it won't be.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking over there where the sound is, where
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: you know it's either a deer or a cow.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: And then I.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: Glanced off to my left, just by luck, I glanced
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: to my left where there had been no sound. This
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: is just out in the open grass, and there's the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: buck from that morning, standing broadside. He silently had materialized
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: out there while I was watching for the noise in
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the brush. He's standing out there perfectly perfect. I'm like,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: holy crap, buck's right there. Holy shit. Grab my bow
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: and he starts walking. He's like on a mission, like
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: he's just he's cruising, moving through the quickly doing his thing.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm trying to range and figure out what range
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: she was at. And I try to pre range a
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff earlier because I knew, like this is
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: gonna be a tough scenario, so I try to pre
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: arrange a bunch of things. But again, like everything is
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: ranging through grass, so I'm trying to like figure out, Okay,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: this little part on the hill is thirty and like
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: if you're over there, he's forty. But long story short,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: I'm able to get my bow get clicked on, can't
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: get a range on him, gets him at thirty shoot
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: and it sails right underneath his belly.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: And so I kind.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Of in that moment and like collapsing down out of
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: like dismay, thinking like how did you just muff another shot?
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: And as I'm like dropping down in dismay, I noticed
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: that he like stopped, he'd bound it off but stopped,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and so I crouched I'm crouched down. I see that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: he stops and he's looking back. He maybe only bounced
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: off like ten yards, stops, turns and looks, and he
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: starts doing the head swivel. He starts doing the head
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: bob and then just stands there and stairs for a
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: while and stairs for a while. And as I realized
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: that he's not running off, I'm thinking like, hey, maybe there,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: maybe I have another shot here. So I reached back
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: and grabbed my quiver, and I'm hiding. I'm behind this
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: great grass. So I picked a spot thankfully that actually
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: did hide me very well, because I'm able to get
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: an arrow out of my quiver, I'm able to knock
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: another arrow, I'm able to get clipped back on, and
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I'm like trying to melt into the ground as best
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: as I possibly can. And that buck starts walking towards me.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: So he has no idea what had happened. He never
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: you know, saw me, He never heard me. He just
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: heard like a weird sound and that was it. So
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: in his mind he's thinking, like, maybe there's a dough
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: down there, maybe there's you know, what's going on down there.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: So he starts coming towards me, you know, just very inquisitively, slowly,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: takes a few steps, stops, looks around, takes another step,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: stops and looks around, and just starts closing the distance.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, I shot for thirty. Later I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: ranged it, he was more like forty. So he's now
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: the win from he's at forty when I shot, he
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: bounded it off to fifty. And then he starts closing
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: from fifty to forty, from forty to thirty, from thirty
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: to twenty, coming head on at like twenty yards. And
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, okay, you cannot do anything obviously, when
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: he's coming at you like this, you need to wait
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: until he hopefully breaks off and starts to head back
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: off where he wanted to go. And I think he
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: will eventually do that if you just don't get spotted.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: So just wait.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: The big thing was like.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: Be patient, be patient, be patiently, don't be tempted to
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: try to pull off a crazy shot in the moment.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: You have to let this deer go off.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: And so, thank goodness, somehow, by a miracle, he got
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: to within maybe I don't know, fifteen yards, never could
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: figure out what we were, and then turn and started
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: quartering away, very slightly, heading back in the direction he
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: wanted to go. And as soon as he got to
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: where he was slightly cornering away so that I was
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: not fully in his frame of view, drew back, raised
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: up him right behind the shoulder, and because of the
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: angle that was at, because I was weighed downhill of him,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: I went through that front lung and top and like
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: clipped the back of his spine and it dropped him
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: right in his tracks and he died within ten seconds,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: right in front of me at twenty yards. It was nuts.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: It was very very intense, and I just like when
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: you when you watch the footage of me after that,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I when I turn and look back at the camera,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: my face is just like aw, it was just pure shocked,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Like did all that just happen?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: I mean just crazy, crazy situation.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 6: Man.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what uto up and down? What an up and
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: down hunt? Huh yeah?
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I mean we talked about it every time we have
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: one of these chats, right, But it is, and you
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: mentioned this last time, like, it's not only a roller
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: coaster day to day, it's a roller coaster hour to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: hour during the months, or minute a minute in this I.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: Mean, it just is. I mean that's but that's such
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: a I mean, I want to hear what you think
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: the lesson was. But when I hear that, the patience
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: to not rush that follow up shot after you've already
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: screwed up one is the difference maker. Like when I
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: hear that, I'm like, that's the difference between putting your
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: tag on that deer and not, because it is so
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: hard to not push it and try to redeem yourself
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: when he's doing that. But that's the right move, is
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: just to let it play out till he gives he's
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: when he's that close, he's probably going to give you
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: your chance.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I think you're right. I think
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: the patient it comes down to to a lot of
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: like the little things that in the moment maybe seem insignificant,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: but they can you know, once every twenty times they
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: matter a lot. So you know in that case, like
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: having you know, making sure that my quiver was accessible,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Like I don't want to shoot my quiver on, so
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I always take my quiver off. But you actually, like
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: three years ago, did a little video for Wired to
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: Hunt about this about the importance of like are you
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: ready for a follow up shot at all times? And
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you know that's something I thought about a lot. But
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: for some reason after we did that video together, I
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: just always think about that every time I get set
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: up in a new place, like double checking, like okay,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: if you have to have a follow up shot, are
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: you sure that your quivers accessible? Are you sure you're
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: at a good angle that you could reach it and
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: do it? And so like I thought about that that night,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: I made sure, like Okay, where am I going to
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: position my quiver? So if I need to carefully and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: hid and pop out another arrow, I can, So you know,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: of my last two thousand hunts. That's never mattered once,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: but this time it did matter. It made all the difference.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: Or another thing. I took so long to pick the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: right spot to hide on the ground, and I literally
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: apologized to my cameraman. I told them, like, hey, I'm sorry.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I know this is taking so long and you must
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: think I'm nuts, but trust me, this is this might
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: be important. I took so long trying to make make sure,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: like like looking at it like a ten yard square,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: but what's the best one yard square in this ten
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: yard square that might possibly give me the balance of
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: cover and a.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: Shot and all that.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: And if I hadn't been in that perfect spot, I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: do not believe I would have killed that deer because
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: he would have pegged us or I wouldn't have been
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: able to get that follow up shot. So I think
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: that stuff mattered a lot. So again, like the little
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: details and trying to think through Like I said this
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: to him that night, I said, I can't remember why
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: I said this, but I think that one of the
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: very most important things that white tail hunters do, like
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: good white tail hunters, to be a good white tail
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: hunter is almost all about predicting possible futures and accounting
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: for them. So it's all about, well, what if this happens,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: what will I do? And what if this happens, what
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: will I do? And this is what I think might happen,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: So because of that, I will prepare it in this way,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: in this way, in this way. So like that whole night,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: like as we're trying to pick the right spot, I
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: was then thinking through, Okay, if a deer's up in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: this spot, here's what I need to do. Here's what
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: you need to do. If a deer pops out in
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: this spot. Here's how we're going to react. If I
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: need to make a move, if I need to reposition,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: like I practice, how will I reposition in this situation?
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: And like there are all these little things that I
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: try to do that most of the time don't matter,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: but I think, you know, in this case, it did,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: And so I just think those little bits of anticipation
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: and preparation, the more of those you can stack up,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: the better, because, as we've talked about, so many things
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: are outside of our control, so many things can go wrong,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: so many things can be surprised when the deer does this,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: the deer does that. If the more of those possible contingencies,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: you are prepared for the better And this was one
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: of the best examples of that for me.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: And it like to further that point when you're telling
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: the story about how okay, well this is where I
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: need to be. Now I need to just like I
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: need to run through this and figure out where where
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: here is like the acts on the ax on the ax,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: like where do I really need to be? If you
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: don't have the confidence to saddle up, to get into whatever,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: to get on the ground and do a natural blind,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: you're gonna find spots you absolutely should hunt and you're
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: not gonna hunt them right, And that's I mean that
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: buck that I killed in North Dakota we did. I
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: did the same thing. I apologized to my cameraman too,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: because I looked at every tree, every angle, like can
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: I get a stand? Can we saddle? Can we stand
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: on a limb with our saddle? Like what? And then finally,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: just like the best scenario here is to tuck in
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: on the ground and pick the best spot and cross
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: your fingers that they follow the script. But if you
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: if you're going to force it or you're just like
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: not that confident in a bunch of different styles of ambush.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: You're gonna let some of those opportunities slip through, and
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: the only way to learn is to do them. I mean,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: that's that's why it's so beneficial to go on hunts
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: like you're talking about, where you put yourself in a
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: situation where you don't have like that tree cleaned up.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: That's you've been planning on hunting since March, you know,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: like when you when you have to show up and
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: the deer like we're here, now do your job. That stuff.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: It's it's different and it's important for your development. I think, oh, yeah,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: so so much.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: And it you know, that's that's a hunt I probably
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have tried ten years ago like I would have been.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: I would not have been confident enough that you know,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: I could pull it off. I would have been like, ah,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: well there's no trees over there, or jeez, I don't know,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be super risky trying to get up there
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: and not get winded and.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA or whatever.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: But I think to your point, putting yourself out there
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: hunting new places, being willing to take risks and try
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: new things, and then learning from them when they don't
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: work out you know. All of that over many years
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: of trying this over and over and over again has
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: given me the confidence to a to take the risk
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: and b to believe in it enough to pay attention
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: to the details, because the flip side could have been
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: like I could have been willing to take the risk,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: but then have gotten there and been like, man, this
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: is such a stupid idea. I'm just gonna sit somewhere
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and see what happens. But I tried really hard to
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: really believe in it and really believe enough to check
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: all of those things, to dot all those eyes, and
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and hey, nine times out of ten you do all
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: that stuff and it doesn't work out still, right, like
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: I got I happened to get lucky that on this
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: tenth time out of ten, this one time out of ten,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the buck actually followed the script and I got the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: opportunity and got the opportunity for the follow up. So
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of luck and good fortune that went
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: into this, of course, But you don't get to take
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: advantage of that luck and good fortune if you don't
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: do all those other little things that put you in
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: a position to take advantage of it. For sure, for sure, Man,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: that was That was the takeaway for me from that hunt.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: It was the you know, the little detail steck enough.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: It was shaking off the bad news and like believing
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: in the thing, like okay, hey, like everything I thought
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I was going to do, like Plan ABC and D
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: are gone. And I remember telling my camera guys like, man,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: bad news is I don't really have a plan B,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: Like I don't have a Plan C or D, Like
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: I really was all in on this zone and I
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: had a bunch of abcde options over in that zone.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: But now I'm in a.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: Totally different place miles away where I had no thoughts
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: of trying to be over here. So I don't know
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: what to do, but I'm gonna have to figure it
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: out quick. And after that initial hour, I was like, ugh,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: you know, it just got back down to okay, now
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: what now what? And that helped in a big in
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: a big way. And then finally, I think the last
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: thing to think about here is you hear a lot
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: about how you can't pattern deer during the rut and
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: everything's random during the rut or whatever it is, YadA YadA, YadA, Right,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: And it might be true that a buck, a single
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: specific buck, may not do the same thing every night,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: like he might do in September, right, But I think
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: in this case, like I saw a trend, and I
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: couldn't guarantee. I couldn't. I didn't know for sure if
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: it was the same buck from the night before and
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: that morning, and I didn't know if the same buck
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: from that morning would do the same thing that night.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: But I noticed a trend and that was enough of
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: a pattern, quote unquote pattern for me to say like, hey,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: I might be stupid, but I'm not that stupid, Like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: you gotta be over there. And and so I made
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: And it was inconvenient to have to figure out a
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: way to go over there and do a big hike,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: and knowing I was gonna have to hunt the ground
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: and again, and knowing that there was the.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: Risk of the wind and all these things.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: And I had moments where I thought, well, maybe you
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: should just, you know, do something different, but but every
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: time I went back like, no, you gotta be over there.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: You have to. You saw this thing. It's you got
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: to listen with the deer telling you. We say this
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: a lot like when the deer tell you something, you
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: have to listen, even if it's not the convenient thing,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: even if it's not the thing that lines up with
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: your original plan. And that was that was this case.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Yes it was the rut. Yes, I wasn't counting on
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: that exact deer do the exact same thing, but hey,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: you know what he did and he's dead now. So
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: that was a big lesson and reminder for me during
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: the rut that when you see something like that, you've
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: got to jump on it pretty quickly. If you know,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: there might be something like a random buck chasing a dough, right,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: and that happens in one place, and that happens someplace else,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: and okay, like in that situation, yeah, that's random if
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: it's a completely wild, random thing like that. But when
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: you see like a cruising buck do something and then
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: a cruising buck do the same thing again, they're telling
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: you something about that area, like they're cruising through there
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: for a reason. You got to listen to that.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: You gotta move on that. That's that's such an important
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: distinction to make. A chase is just different. But cruising
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: is reliable. And what one buck does to cruise, he's
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: doing because there's advantages to it, and it's point A
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: to B and he's got the wind in the right
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: situation and he knows where he's going and other bucks
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: know that so valuable to see.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was my hunt, man, That's awesome, dude.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was wild.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: It was unexpected many ways, but I appreciate it if
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: they ended well. And uh yeah, I wrapped up things
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: and hopped in the truck and drove home and right
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: away got back after the Wide nine. I was hoping,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: you know, thinking he'd be back, and so hunted another
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: three days for him, like I told you, and got
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: in all there around his core area again, like thinking,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: just be around this major area that he spent most
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of his life and be in the dough betting areas
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: and be on the edge of that stuff, and if
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: he's there, he'll show. And he did not, So now
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: I'm now I'm waiting, and went hunted a new farm
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: because I eventually decided I was gonna wait to hunt
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: the Wide nine until he shows back up. So I
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: went hunted a different spot where I was after a buck.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: There's a pretty nice deer over there, kind of a
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: funky titan tall deer. And the only interesting encounter I
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: had with him, I think, is the one that I
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: told you about. In the beginning where I saw him
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: runnerunerneath another other hunter and then another hunter came in
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of where I'm in.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: That's the only other deer in Michigan that I would shoot.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm just kind of in a holding pattern a
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: little bit waiting for of the Y nine to show
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: back up or to you know, try to get a
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: crack at this other deer and a little bit of
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: a lost puppy feeling at the moment.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: But I got to try to practice what I preach and.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Keep on keeping on and and uh, you know.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: See what You've been a running cow and a lost
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: puppy in the same podcast, Buddy.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's hunting season, Tony. Anything's possible. So really quick,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: we got to wrap this up. But I want to
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: take like just a couple of minutes here for you
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: to give me a quick rundown of your thoughts for
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: gun season hunting. I think you did a Foundations episode
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: about this this week that we should we should tease
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: for people, but give us like a real quick cliff notes.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: If folks have a gun season opening or that just
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: opened and now they're dealing with the ramifications of that.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: What's a few things people should be thinking about because
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: that's happened in a bunch of states right now.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: Man, I think the number one secret to being a
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: better gun hunter is not hunting like most gun hunters like,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: get in the cover, get off the easy views. You know,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: think if you think about your gun hunting setups from
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: a bow hunter's perspective, as far as the wind and
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: why they should be there, and you forget that you
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: have a gun that you can shoot three hundred yards
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: with and you want to be able to see three
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: hundred yards in every direction. When you start thinking about
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: what does the deer need? Right now? When half a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: million people go into the woods, it's always going to
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: be in the cover, unless unless you just have a
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: banging spot. But if you know, if you're primarily hunting,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: your crossing your fingers, do something different. Get in where
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: it's tighter, where your shots are, you know, forty fifty
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: sixty yards whatever, not this not just reach out and
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: touch them on the power line and go hunt where
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: those deer are going to go, you know, like that
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: that field edge stuff, the open clearcut stuff's great maybe
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: opening day, but after that they're pretty clued into what's
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: going on, and it's time to get into the into
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: the thick stuff. I think. I think that's like the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: the hardest thing for gun hunters to do, but probably
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: the most important by the time you're on day two
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: of the season.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty tough to have a three hundred yard
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: range but only be able to shoot thirty yards. But
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: to your point, probably the better option if you are
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: in a couple days into the season and after a
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: deer that's not completely brainded. Yep, all right, man, I
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: think that's a good place to leave things. Do you
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: remember the name of that podcast that you did that's
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: all about gun season?
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It dropped the fourteenth week. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what the title was.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: Something about like being your best orange clad self or something.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: How to be yourself? Yeah, I can't remember.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you want some more advice for being
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: more effective hunter during gun season, go listen to Tony's
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: episode from last week on Foundations and Well that Tony
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: appreciates you joining me man, sharing your story. Congrats and
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the buck, congrats to your daughter, and and I hope
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: that in another couple of weeks we will both have
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: another buck or two down to do another one of these.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep on keeping on and maybe maybe you'll
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: have a couple of pheasants down and I'll have a
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: buck down.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna have both, buddy, I'm gonna I'm gonna have
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: some roosters down, and I'm gonna see what I can
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: do about killing a public land muzzle or buck here
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: in just a little bit too, so we'll have some
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: more to talk about here in a couple of weeks.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: All right, sounds good man, And to all of you listening,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: appreciate you tuning in. Best of luck out there as
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: we round out on November, as you maybe are kicking
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: off gun season or late season.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: Which is quickly approaching here. We'll be talking about that soon.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: All of it is great and good and fun and
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: write for opportunity. So thanks for being here, thanks for
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: being a part of this community, and stay wired to hunt.