Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 1: the show, we are continuing our new series exploring the habits, mindsets,
Speaker 1: methods and routines of the best deer hunters in the world,
Speaker 1: and today our guest is the one and only Andre
Speaker 1: de Quisto.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
Speaker 2: the whitetail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 2: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 2: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
Speaker 1: to you by First Light, and today we are continuing
Speaker 1: our new series. As I just mentioned, this is our
Speaker 1: Mindsets of the Whitetail Masters series, in which we are
Speaker 1: trying to get a behind the scenes look at what's
Speaker 1: going on in the minds of these absolute top tier
Speaker 1: elite deer hunters. What are the mindsets, what are their philosophies,
Speaker 1: What are the habits and routines and little things that
Speaker 1: they do and little things that they believe in that
Speaker 1: continue to help them have consistent deer hunting success. That's
Speaker 1: what we're trying to figure out. So far, we've spoken
Speaker 1: with John Eberhart, Ben Rising, and now today Andre de Quisto.
Speaker 1: Andre is pretty legendary within the whitetail hunting world. He's
Speaker 1: the founder of Lone Wolf now Lone Wolf Custom Gear
Speaker 1: as well. He was a part of the white Tail
Speaker 1: addictionous TV show, still is, and he is just truly
Speaker 1: a master and an innovator within the white tail world.
Speaker 1: So many of the tactics and strategies that folks use
Speaker 1: now in large part stem from Andrea's kind of kicking
Speaker 1: this aggressive mobile hunting movement off decades ago. He's still
Speaker 1: doing that today with incredible success. And so my hope
Speaker 1: was to try to get a better understanding of why
Speaker 1: that is the case, of what's going on behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: or what is it about Andre's personality or about his
Speaker 1: drive or about his motivations that has led to all
Speaker 1: of this. I think those are some of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm starting to pick up on as we have
Speaker 1: these conversations. In some cases with these guys, they don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily have a specific habit or routine or mindset
Speaker 1: that they explicitly overtly realize that they're following or realize
Speaker 1: that they're implementing. But there are things going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes that maybe even are happening without them realizing
Speaker 1: that all seem to be in common. These people have
Speaker 1: tremendous drive. They are very, very goal oriented. They are
Speaker 1: unwilling to accept failure in the way that they define it.
Speaker 1: They are able to push through whatever challenges face them.
Speaker 1: They are dog headed, they are determined, and they learn.
Speaker 1: I think that's a key thing, is that they have
Speaker 1: learned from their own experiences. They've let their eyes, their
Speaker 1: experiences inform what they do. They are not beholden to
Speaker 1: some magazine article or to some preconceived notion of the past.
Speaker 1: That those are a few things that have stood up
Speaker 1: to me so far, and I think you're going to
Speaker 1: see some of that pop up here in my conversation
Speaker 1: with Andre, and a lot more so I will just
Speaker 1: let Andre speak for himself. Now, this is another great one.
Speaker 1: I think we're all going to learn something here today.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one more plug. I mentioned this last week.
Speaker 1: We have a new educational series from Meet Eat for
Speaker 1: whitetail hunters. This is for newer deer hunters or people
Speaker 1: that just kind of want to shore up their foundation
Speaker 1: and make sure that they are locked and loaded on
Speaker 1: all of those core foundational whitetail concepts. Things you just
Speaker 1: have to have drill down before the season and starts.
Speaker 1: So we cover topics and really some of the biggest,
Speaker 1: most common questions we'd get. Our first episode that just
Speaker 1: came out recently was all about what deer eat and
Speaker 1: what times of year they eat different things, and how
Speaker 1: to determine what deer feeding on right now and the
Speaker 1: importance of scouting and understanding the right here and now
Speaker 1: aspect of deer food. We also are going to cover tracks.
Speaker 1: We're going to cover rubs and scrapes and droppings and
Speaker 1: calling and impacts of weather and lots of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So make sure you're subscribed to the Meat Eater Clips
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. So this is like where our short form
Speaker 1: content is going to live now. So that's Meat either Clips.
Speaker 1: Subscribe there. Take a look at our most recent video.
Speaker 1: Please give it a like. Subscribe to that channel, give
Speaker 1: that a watch. More to come soon. Thank you for
Speaker 1: following along, Share it with anyone who you think can
Speaker 1: benefit from this stuff. And same goes to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Of course, I've been hearing some good things about the
Speaker 1: first couple episodes. I hope you are feeling the same way,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do my very best to make
Speaker 1: sure these next few episodes.
Speaker 3: Are even better.
Speaker 1: So with that said, and without any further ado, let's
Speaker 1: get to my chat with Andre Dquisto. All right, with
Speaker 1: me back on the show, we've got, mister Andre Dquisto.
Speaker 3: Andre, thank you so much for joining me. Hein no problem.
Speaker 1: I greatly appreciate every time that you make time to speak.
Speaker 1: It means the world to me, and I know our
Speaker 1: audience is always is always really happy about it. So
Speaker 1: as I as I told you off air, We've got
Speaker 1: this new series going on right now in which we're
Speaker 1: trying to get a different look at how people achieve
Speaker 1: white tail success. You know, rather than asking people, you know,
Speaker 1: where do you put your tree stands? What's your favorite
Speaker 1: time of year to hunt? You know, rather than those
Speaker 1: kind of like surface level questions, I'm trying to kind
Speaker 1: of look under the hood, like see like what are
Speaker 1: the things going on in the best of the best
Speaker 1: white tail hunter's minds that help them have so much success.
Speaker 1: So those those are the kinds of questions I'm going
Speaker 1: to run you through today. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: little different, so hopefully you're up for a change of pace.
Speaker 1: That's I'm good, always up for a change of pace,
Speaker 1: all right. So so what I want to kind of
Speaker 1: start with is a little bit of an understanding about
Speaker 1: how you.
Speaker 3: Define success.
Speaker 1: So really to take us off simply that under how
Speaker 1: do you define deer hunting success for yourself?
Speaker 3: For me, it would be.
Speaker 4: Harvesting the animal that I set my goal out for.
Speaker 4: I'll know in advance, know the animals that I'm going
Speaker 4: to be hunting, and actually getting on those deer and
Speaker 4: getting them on video. You know, we have the show
Speaker 4: White til Addictions now, So a successful hump would be
Speaker 4: target book on video and getting good, good footage self filming.
Speaker 4: So that's where I'm at in my days.
Speaker 1: Now, is there any scenario in which you don't kill
Speaker 1: a buck but you would still view it as a success?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know how it would be a success. So
Speaker 4: I have multiple tags, multiple states. No, I guess for
Speaker 4: me it's it wouldn't be success. And last, sexually, there
Speaker 4: was an you know that deer on video at the
Speaker 4: end of the at the end of the season, fair enough,
Speaker 4: so I know that I can discuss failure.
Speaker 1: Well, that's my next question is, how do you define
Speaker 1: deer hunting failure?
Speaker 4: A full season, over one hundred days of chasing around
Speaker 4: a deer, getting your opportunity and blowing a big time,
Speaker 4: which was one of the worst scenarios I've had in
Speaker 4: a lot of years. Happened to me last year, and
Speaker 4: I still normally can it off, get it over with.
Speaker 4: But the scenario, the situation I was in in any
Speaker 4: other year, any other year's past, there's no way this's
Speaker 4: deer would have made it out of there. And I
Speaker 4: hit the steering high over the spine and that living.
Speaker 4: So that's a big failure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's brutal. So how do you what do you
Speaker 1: do with that? Like, after that happens, how do you
Speaker 1: process it? How do you try to come back from that?
Speaker 4: The weird thing is that I always go back and
Speaker 4: replay what happened in my mind time and time again,
Speaker 4: and as long as I come up with the same scenario,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't have done anything different. It just whatever happened happened.
Speaker 4: You know, I got locked down with another huge buck.
Speaker 4: You know, I h pretty low, so I'm twelve feet
Speaker 4: off the ground and there's another deer that's basically got
Speaker 4: an idea. Something's up, and it's within ten yards of
Speaker 4: the stand, staring straight straight through me, and I'm facing him,
Speaker 4: and the other buck is like an eight yards to
Speaker 4: the right of me, and I got to go from
Speaker 4: there now and get to that deer before it gets
Speaker 4: on behind some pines and out of the scenario. And
Speaker 4: it was like I was just locked down, froze up.
Speaker 4: Like normally I just would not even pay attention to
Speaker 4: another deer. I would just make the move and go
Speaker 4: to shoot that deer. But this thing goes literally I
Speaker 4: were a head net down and I get away with
Speaker 4: murder on it.
Speaker 3: The deer look my.
Speaker 4: Way, but they don't basically see me or can't figure
Speaker 4: out what I am. But being so close and solo,
Speaker 4: I figured I just play it out and at some
Speaker 4: point in time you'd just take a turn the other
Speaker 4: way with his head or give me that little opportunity
Speaker 4: to ship my butt on a stand and get quartered
Speaker 4: on that. So this deer was on my you know, octually,
Speaker 4: on my week's side and starting to get buy me,
Speaker 4: and it's I literally had to at the last minute
Speaker 4: just jump up, swing around and stand, lean out and
Speaker 4: get a shot.
Speaker 3: Off before it got between two pines.
Speaker 4: So and whenever I do that and I lean right,
Speaker 4: I always end up shooting shooting high.
Speaker 3: But that's what happened.
Speaker 4: I can't even go back to the same spot on
Speaker 4: the ground and look at the stand site and everything,
Speaker 4: and it's like, how the hell did this? Did this
Speaker 4: even happen to me? So yeah, I belong and short,
Speaker 4: but that was a big failure. That was my main
Speaker 4: target buck. I did chase around some other deer, but
Speaker 4: I mean I was just on him like a hound
Speaker 4: all year, all over the property, and all boils down
Speaker 4: to one one minute, you know the song, and I
Speaker 4: blew it on this one.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, Do you have any.
Speaker 1: Favorite failure in the past, Like, is there another failure
Speaker 1: you can think of in your history of deer hunting
Speaker 1: that ended up really helping you, that you ended up
Speaker 1: really learning from.
Speaker 3: Could you tell me about that.
Speaker 4: I don't know a failure, but I a deer I
Speaker 4: shot in Wisconsin many years ago. I ended up being
Speaker 4: like the number two in the state. I almost closed
Speaker 4: the deal in that deer the year before. He was
Speaker 4: probably one seventy ish, actually was one seventy fourth some
Speaker 4: with on his sheds anyhow, But I mean it was
Speaker 4: literally within a second or movement that the deer just
Speaker 4: decided to turn back around head in a swamp. But
Speaker 4: if I had to kill that deer, I never killed
Speaker 4: the deer at you know, one hundred and eighty nine inches,
Speaker 4: So that that's a failure. And I talk about that
Speaker 4: a lot sometimes a lot of those, you know, those
Speaker 4: deer that you.
Speaker 3: Don't get or tie into.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's nice that you're fourth now to
Speaker 4: let that deer get a year bigger, and sometimes they
Speaker 4: do get bigger than a round for you to hunt.
Speaker 3: So that one worked out for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there any deer like that that got away for
Speaker 1: one reason or another, whether you know, bad luck or
Speaker 1: a mistake on your part or something. Has there been
Speaker 1: any one of those that got away that then you
Speaker 1: learn from a dramatic.
Speaker 4: Way, Oh, learned a lesson on getting away?
Speaker 1: Yeah, or something about that hunt that even though it
Speaker 1: didn't end up well that year, because of that hard lesson,
Speaker 1: you learned you killed that deer in the next year,
Speaker 1: or you killed a lot of deer in the subsequent decades.
Speaker 1: I've made a few screw ups in the past, that man,
Speaker 1: it cost me that deer, But I never made that
Speaker 1: same mistake again, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh that way.
Speaker 4: Wise, I'd have to go way way back on in
Speaker 4: my hunting career, probably to to find otes, because there
Speaker 4: was tons of mistakes that came up to becoming a
Speaker 4: pretty efficient hunter. Yeah, the things I learned on scent,
Speaker 4: the things I learned about cam ow and deer's habits,
Speaker 4: probably helped down the road I've keyed in over the
Speaker 4: years and over the decades. That complete and utter surprise
Speaker 4: attack I call it a virgin sit. You're in your
Speaker 4: best scenario, first time in never been in that stand before,
Speaker 4: you scoured it out. You got the sign and there's
Speaker 4: your there's your point right there, and now you ambush.
Speaker 4: To me, it is absolutely criminal. And this is what
Speaker 4: happened to me last year, that a deer can get
Speaker 4: within bow range your stand and get out without getting
Speaker 4: getting killed. That that should not happen. Everything should be
Speaker 4: prepared right, you go through your scenario, when you set
Speaker 4: up your stand, and when you mobile hunt, and you
Speaker 4: hunt like I hunt. Every stand in every tree is
Speaker 4: a complete new setup. So there's a little trimming that
Speaker 4: has to be done on there. Some loomb's going to
Speaker 4: be pulled out away. You got to play scenarios in
Speaker 4: your head, so you know it's game time, and a
Speaker 4: lot of these spots are so I read the sign
Speaker 4: and I know I'm getting my opportunity tonight. It just
Speaker 4: happened three years ago to it. There's another one. I
Speaker 4: actually blue and missed the deer. I've missed the deer
Speaker 4: in ages and I missed this thing big.
Speaker 3: But I knew I could even tell them.
Speaker 4: I told my wife, I told my friend that there
Speaker 4: is getting killed tonight, you know from camera, until I
Speaker 4: got what happened to the Snareriro, He's he's going to
Speaker 4: come out through that draw. He's been coming out all
Speaker 4: year checking that scrape, and I'll be there waiting. Well, yeah,
Speaker 4: you do all that, and if a deer comes in
Speaker 4: within these these ranges that you can shoot, it's just
Speaker 4: to me, it's like it's just criminal that you didn't
Speaker 4: be able to get a chance. Offer excuses, you know, limonoe,
Speaker 4: which happens, but you learn those hard lessons. But there's
Speaker 4: always something that can get get thrown at you. But
Speaker 4: a lot of my setups and my shots are really
Speaker 4: close range twenty yards and under, so there's really no
Speaker 4: excuse for me to be missing any animals.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The one I did miss was a longer poll for me.
Speaker 4: I don't shoot thirty five yards this year here was
Speaker 4: so close to you know, you probably stab them with
Speaker 4: a with a spirit at and that just should not happen.
Speaker 4: And that that's kind of stuff that kind of hurts,
Speaker 4: you know. Yeah, And I'm not going to start saying
Speaker 4: I was playing, but that year I had some really
Speaker 4: some some major health issues, was burnt out. I have
Speaker 4: a sleep app in me. I've been slept in probably
Speaker 4: two years, so I was like I was going to
Speaker 4: war and having a sleep deprivation, and you know, it
Speaker 4: was just it was a brutal probably the most brutal
Speaker 4: season I've I've had over the years last year.
Speaker 3: And and I should.
Speaker 4: End up getting a couple deer on video, but not
Speaker 4: the one that I really wanted. So yeah, that's things,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't been in that EXAC scenario, but similar,
Speaker 1: And I know how that feels. You mentioned that when
Speaker 1: you're setting up a location like that like virgin sits
Speaker 1: your brand new setup. Every time one of those points
Speaker 1: that I always struggle, I don't have to struggle with
Speaker 1: but in the moment, it kind of feels like torture
Speaker 1: is when you are trying to pick the right tree
Speaker 1: in that scenario and you're thinking through all the possible
Speaker 1: things that could happen.
Speaker 3: Well, there could be a deer that.
Speaker 1: Could come down this trail, but there's also a chance
Speaker 1: that might cross there, and then they might do this.
Speaker 3: You know, how do you approach that decision.
Speaker 4: You're probably overthinking that scenario, and that's probably what I
Speaker 4: get down to the more brass task. I'm not really
Speaker 4: an overthinker. The year I killed that real good one
Speaker 4: in Wisconsin, we finally checked the cameras, me and a
Speaker 4: buddy who were at the walmart. We put the film
Speaker 4: in there and also boom, the deer's back and my
Speaker 4: buddy gets paralyzed.
Speaker 3: You know, he's stuttering, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: I said, I'm getting my ship together. I'm going to
Speaker 4: that swap and killing him, That's what I said. And
Speaker 4: he was just lost on He didn't know what to do,
Speaker 4: you know, so.
Speaker 3: I just go to it.
Speaker 4: I need an animal that's there and then just go
Speaker 4: after hunt them down, redesigned, just keep on them, and
Speaker 4: then you know it changes up as the seasons and
Speaker 4: and different things happened. But if he's there and he's
Speaker 4: living on the ground, you got uh, there's probably no
Speaker 4: reason why you shouldn't get at least an opportunity after that,
Speaker 4: especially the amount of time I hunt and stay on.
Speaker 4: Now in between that, there's tons of other animals, good
Speaker 4: animal that are passed up that you run into. The
Speaker 4: big problem I had last year with that scenarios I
Speaker 4: was running into and that's something I I guess there's
Speaker 4: something that I could get a little better on. I'll
Speaker 4: be scouting around for that animal and I run into
Speaker 4: something as nice or bigger and I already got like
Speaker 4: a certain animal kind of close to figure it out
Speaker 4: where you're getting close, and it's like.
Speaker 3: You know, screw that.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm jumping on this one because it's it's here
Speaker 4: now in the times right. You know it might be
Speaker 4: coming from you know, a neighbor's property or whatever. So
Speaker 4: I'm like a kid in a candy store. And last
Speaker 4: year was on those years, it was a lot of
Speaker 4: really nice bucks around and being able to have multiple tags.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking, you know, cocky sucker, I'm gonna dive in
Speaker 4: here for two days kill this one, and then I'll
Speaker 4: get back on that one.
Speaker 3: You know. I type of thinking that by the time.
Speaker 4: You get back to the other one, things are changing
Speaker 4: up and moving and you got to start reworking it.
Speaker 4: So I put on a ton of pressure on these animals.
Speaker 4: But the spot that I picked to set up is
Speaker 4: I read all that sign going in right to about
Speaker 4: where I think it's going to happen, and then from
Speaker 4: there on, from where that deer is going to be
Speaker 4: coming through to there, he ain't got a clue until
Speaker 4: he gets has to get by me, and then he,
Speaker 4: you know, get the scent of all the shit that
Speaker 4: had to happen or me walking around. And I never
Speaker 4: let other deer, like you were just talking about what
Speaker 4: if something comes this way or this scenario. I focus
Speaker 4: in on that dear, and I don't give a shit
Speaker 4: about anything else. I don't care about screwing up other
Speaker 4: deer on the way in. I don't you know, if
Speaker 4: I got that one pinned down, I know where he's coming.
Speaker 3: To and going from.
Speaker 4: I just focus, stay focused like a laser on that
Speaker 4: that scenario, you know, So I don't let a lot
Speaker 4: of other stuff cloued my mind.
Speaker 1: And do you look do you when you're setting it,
Speaker 1: when you're picking a spot or setting up your stand,
Speaker 1: do you have like one place Like me, my highest
Speaker 1: probability of where I think that buck's going to come
Speaker 1: through is like this one spot, and then you set
Speaker 1: up one hundred percent for that and say like, that's
Speaker 1: what he's going to do, and I will be perfectly
Speaker 1: prepared for that.
Speaker 3: The rest of the possibilities be dan, is that your pros.
Speaker 4: On that on that particular day and that set up
Speaker 4: that I read the sign and I pick it, I don't.
Speaker 3: I tried that years ago. Try to hog yeah, big areas, yep,
Speaker 3: to be able to shoot out further.
Speaker 4: Put an extra pin on my will cover, you know,
Speaker 4: sixty yards instead of forty or thirty five yards.
Speaker 3: You know both way.
Speaker 4: When I say thirty five yards, I mean the whole swatch,
Speaker 4: not thirty five this way, thirty five that way. And
Speaker 4: it's always come back to bite me. And the one
Speaker 4: thing I've learned over the years is I picked the
Speaker 4: fricking spots. These deer ended up coming right in right
Speaker 4: to my almost like a deer magnet to come right
Speaker 4: to where I when coming. So it's you know, fifteen
Speaker 4: yard shot on animal that size, you know, you put
Speaker 4: a pin on his chest, there's a lot of area around.
Speaker 3: It's very very easy to get it done, you know.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I don't do that trying to cover you know,
Speaker 4: major spots, so that I kind of focus in on
Speaker 4: one good kill, get the wind right there, everything's perfect.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I'll offer a little further away if I think
Speaker 4: the I get right on the edge of a bad
Speaker 4: wind or when that could be crucial. So you just
Speaker 4: want to I want to set up the best opportunity
Speaker 4: for me to get a shot at that deer. And
Speaker 4: that's all you u is that one opportunity I call it,
Speaker 4: you know, capture in one moment in time, that's all
Speaker 4: it takes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So so I got to believe that thirty forty
Speaker 1: years ago, it probably was harder for you to know
Speaker 1: that perfect spot, perfect time, perfect setup. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of evolution for you there. And I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you were to look back over all the years,
Speaker 1: over all the decades you've been doing this, is there
Speaker 1: any single change you made or choice you made that
Speaker 1: has made like a huge impact on your success that
Speaker 1: took you from an okay deer hunter to a great
Speaker 1: deer hunter. Was there any shift that you made at
Speaker 1: some point that was like that fork in the road.
Speaker 4: I think it was a slow burn all the way
Speaker 4: I was a trapper. I really look at things different.
Speaker 4: I'm look suck sick. I really tear apart and dissect everything,
Speaker 4: whether it's mechanical or in the field or sign that
Speaker 4: I read, and I'm really attuned to it. So even
Speaker 4: years ago, I was a big field edge hunter. I
Speaker 4: could go walk a field edge could be an eighty
Speaker 4: yard or eighty acre open fields. I could walk the
Speaker 4: whole edge and just about be on the right trail
Speaker 4: with the biggest buck coming out and get my get
Speaker 4: my cracker, get an opportunity. I didn't capitalize all of
Speaker 4: it because I wasn't all that greater shot. I still
Speaker 4: need that greater shot, to tell you the truth, which
Speaker 4: I'm going to work on this year. I got a
Speaker 4: new white and I'm going to start start practicing a
Speaker 4: little bit more. I know I was never one for
Speaker 4: I'm not a guy that likes to shoot bowls for archery.
Speaker 4: But I would say the biggest thing that I've learned
Speaker 4: over the years is this is not a team sport.
Speaker 4: Hunting white tail at a bowl is a it's a
Speaker 4: lone wolf sport. And the more guys going in, the
Speaker 4: more guys munning up the water, just like with me
Speaker 4: and my son.
Speaker 3: Now we hud a lot of same properties.
Speaker 4: He's got all the tools I got, but I don't
Speaker 4: know what he's doing or where he went. I know
Speaker 4: exactly where I went. I went covered the whole forty acres,
Speaker 4: ran all over. I know everywhere I stepped, everywhere I
Speaker 4: went everywhere. I kind of burged it up. So I
Speaker 4: want to get my virgin sit. I might be sitting
Speaker 4: on a virgin sit that I think is a virgin sit,
Speaker 4: and he might have been running around just inside that
Speaker 4: all over. I might have been the opposite, right, and
Speaker 4: we're kind of messing each other up, so we'd like
Speaker 4: to You know, you're gonna hunt the north.
Speaker 3: Side today, you go.
Speaker 4: Don't come burning up and reading all the signs on
Speaker 4: my side and then go hunt the north side.
Speaker 3: Just here. I gotta take my area now.
Speaker 4: As the day goes by, or if it's a couple
Speaker 4: of days, then it's it's everything. Every day is a
Speaker 4: new day, so you go read it. And I used
Speaker 4: to laugh to on the lease. I had an ILLINOI
Speaker 4: I was so much all over that, chasing these deer
Speaker 4: around and just staying on their asses. These big bucks
Speaker 4: would come out and they literally had a look in
Speaker 4: her face like where the hell is this guy today?
Speaker 3: Type of look like I know he's in here, and
Speaker 3: they just they're.
Speaker 4: They're moving through this property because they live there and
Speaker 4: they gotta and I would be putting that type of
Speaker 4: pressure on them, so really aggressive now, more of a
Speaker 4: control aggression. I think I know a little bit more
Speaker 4: than I knew. In the past. My curiosity was always
Speaker 4: the peak of while I learned a lot of poking around,
Speaker 4: getting a little too close. I don't know how many
Speaker 4: times in my career I've literally walked within five ten
Speaker 4: feet of a huge bucks stealing their beds. And then
Speaker 4: I was just ready to seen what I want to
Speaker 4: see im. I was just ready to like turn around
Speaker 4: and leave, and I turned the opposite way. I'd fricking
Speaker 4: run face to face right up with these damp things.
Speaker 4: They'd make eye contacts and they just bust out of
Speaker 4: their gone. So that's that was the thing I had
Speaker 4: to You know, you never know how far you could
Speaker 4: take it.
Speaker 3: You take it too far. Well, that's taken a little fire.
Speaker 4: But some of these deer they get up, they get
Speaker 4: up early enough, but they don't move out of a
Speaker 4: little safety area. And if you're out of that little zone,
Speaker 4: you might as well be a couple hundred yards away
Speaker 4: because you're not killing him until they get out and.
Speaker 3: Move out of there.
Speaker 4: So seasons changed, at weather, it's changed at there's a
Speaker 4: lot of things. So you just work those those scenarios in.
Speaker 3: At least.
Speaker 4: I'm to the point now that I really ever second
Speaker 4: doubt any anything I see, you read, or my setups. Again,
Speaker 4: same scenario that I did there. You know, I should
Speaker 4: have did this, I could have did that. I probably
Speaker 4: would have just had to handle it the same and
Speaker 4: maybe fake could have took over and did something different.
Speaker 4: But I don't feel I made the wrong move. I
Speaker 4: just feel I failed in my completion of that task.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple of inches off, you know, make all
Speaker 4: the difference. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what about you know, it sounds like that
Speaker 1: was a slow burn over many years, You've gotten to
Speaker 1: this point now where you just so much confidence in
Speaker 1: your instincts. Has there been any recent change, like, has
Speaker 1: there been any recent new belief or idea or habit
Speaker 1: you've picked up on in the last like five years
Speaker 1: or so, that's made a big difference for you.
Speaker 4: No, because actually, well so I kind of backed I
Speaker 4: backed off. I've hunted all my life, every year, harvested
Speaker 4: deer every year in the last ten years, I think
Speaker 4: I kind of I mean, when I went out of Howard,
Speaker 4: I was hunting out of state, doing a lot of hunts,
Speaker 4: really aggressively, going after deer. I normally wouldn't even hunt
Speaker 4: a property that didn't have a caliber deer that I wanted.
Speaker 4: I've done that. I've waited around, you know, deer't Sometimes
Speaker 4: something different will show up here. But there's nothing worse
Speaker 4: than hunting. You know, I got all this land, all
Speaker 4: this these acres to hunter. There's not a deer on
Speaker 4: there you'd want to hunt. It's that's horrible. It's like
Speaker 4: being in prison. So I've done that a couple and
Speaker 4: you shouldn't do that every If you want to shoot
Speaker 4: whatever you want to shoot, you should be on a
Speaker 4: trail in the woods, on a trail where an all
Speaker 4: at Kellerber's moving through. Imagine that the success you'd have
Speaker 4: of hunting forty fifty days out of a season. If
Speaker 4: every setup you're basically pretty close to being in the game,
Speaker 4: it brings your numbers way through the roof. I went
Speaker 4: down to Illinois last year for the first time a
Speaker 4: lease and hunted, had some cameras out, had some of
Speaker 4: the other guys, until there was a huge buck there.
Speaker 3: Went down just what I was knowing.
Speaker 4: I drove a little too deep in, but I set
Speaker 4: up and I almost played it safe on this one.
Speaker 4: I picked the tree because of the wind one off.
Speaker 4: If I'd have picked the original tree, the one that
Speaker 4: I should have, I killed the two hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: in frickin' buck. So I had to sit in the
Speaker 4: video and watch him. And the problem with that is
Speaker 4: i'd never done is either I was going to go there,
Speaker 4: harvest a decent one on video, get back to the buck,
Speaker 4: and I know what that I wanted to chase this
Speaker 4: one that I missed. So now that scenarios I'll for
Speaker 4: a whole day. Now I got a deer there that
Speaker 4: if I'm hunting there, it's like him or nothing. So
Speaker 4: as you know, now it's a struggle between do I
Speaker 4: run to Illinoy to shoot that one, or do I
Speaker 4: go back to Iowa to chase this one, and I
Speaker 4: hate that scenario because I just excited. I wanted to
Speaker 4: go there, take a decent bucket on video, and get
Speaker 4: the hell out and get back to work here and
Speaker 4: stay on it. So I did come back and I
Speaker 4: kept hunting here, and I think I ended up there
Speaker 4: a late season, earned the rut for a little bit,
Speaker 4: hoping to get that that deer disappeared. I ended up
Speaker 4: I think on a neighbor's property. I know, doing a
Speaker 4: certain scenario. But it's like, now you're you know that
Speaker 4: you're going there. Chances are not real good that you're
Speaker 4: going to get an opportunity coming in for a weekend
Speaker 4: here there to get a shot at that deer again,
Speaker 4: especially with like five or six other guys hunting and
Speaker 4: then neighbors and that. So you did it because you
Speaker 4: you might get a crack at it. But I wanted
Speaker 4: to stay on that one deer that was the one
Speaker 4: I really wanted a goal, So I spent most of
Speaker 4: my time on that buck there. It's it's a love
Speaker 4: hate type of thing, you know. It's it's almost like
Speaker 4: it gets it's more of a it's not a fun
Speaker 4: type und I know a lot of guys enjoy hunting,
Speaker 4: and it's a lot of fun for him. It's last
Speaker 4: year was the most AGNI magnifying. How can I even
Speaker 4: describe it? I mean, I literally, I shouldn't even say this,
Speaker 4: but I literally passed out a couple of times in
Speaker 4: the woods, literally physically was just spent completely out of gas.
Speaker 3: And I just, uh, I just pushed on. I just
Speaker 3: pushed right on through it and kept on it. Uh.
Speaker 3: And I was getting soregressed.
Speaker 4: I was getting down in prime time hunting at eight
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning and just scouting like a maniac.
Speaker 4: And I was coming up with all kinds of other
Speaker 4: nice deer, different deer and scenarios.
Speaker 3: So I was really I.
Speaker 4: Guess I was trying to rush it really a lot
Speaker 4: last year. I wanted to get a couple of good
Speaker 4: ones down, you know, our fortieth was coming in there
Speaker 4: on a kind of big year for the show and stuff,
Speaker 4: and I really was I.
Speaker 3: Probably took it a little too a little too fast.
Speaker 4: My normal mode is an aggressive kind of methodical deal,
Speaker 4: and I think I was really almost in a hurry
Speaker 4: to get something shot, move on to the next and
Speaker 4: and move on, which I shouldn't have done. I should
Speaker 4: have stayed focused on on that one deer.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have any specific ways you're going
Speaker 1: to try to dress things differently this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well this year myself.
Speaker 4: Issues have been all back in line now, uh, working
Speaker 4: out a getting back and getting back in shape the
Speaker 4: age deal. I can't I come to the assumption last year.
Speaker 4: Last year I grew old. I mentally basically submitted to
Speaker 4: I'm not the guy that I used to be. I'm
Speaker 4: not Cody anymore running around top physical shape.
Speaker 3: I mean I got a lot of jury.
Speaker 4: I think I run a lot of guys thirty forty
Speaker 4: years old on the ground he was still to this day.
Speaker 4: But I'm not the the machine that I was in
Speaker 4: the past, and I just I had a that was
Speaker 4: a big hurdle to mentally accept that this is the
Speaker 4: next step down now, so you're gonna have to hunt
Speaker 4: a little smarter. I guess I'm still I should I
Speaker 4: put in. I started in freaking Kentucky in a hundred
Speaker 4: degree weather. I think I had one hundred and over
Speaker 4: one hundred days of morning and evening sets plus scouting
Speaker 4: every day. I mean I was running myself completely freaking
Speaker 4: into the ground and then not sleeping on top of
Speaker 4: it or even good you know. So that's gonna stop
Speaker 4: next year. So I've decided I can't do that anymore.
Speaker 4: So hopefully I could pick out a good deer to chase.
Speaker 4: Hopefully there's not a bunch of different ones that can
Speaker 4: be pulled different directions, and I can stay focused and
Speaker 4: stay stay on.
Speaker 3: That one task, you know, and then move on from there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if now that you are kind of in this
Speaker 1: new phase where maybe you can't hunt quite as hard
Speaker 1: as he used to, but you mentioned you want to
Speaker 1: hunt smarter, maybe what does that look like?
Speaker 3: Like? What what's an example of how you might actually
Speaker 3: put that into action? This year, I'll have.
Speaker 4: To make decision that if there's two good deer, I
Speaker 4: can't be running all over, running down in Illinois for
Speaker 4: a couple of days, running back up here, running Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: you know, run around like a chicken my head chopped off,
Speaker 4: or a kid in the candy store. I'm gonna have
Speaker 4: to try and stay focused on now that dear is
Speaker 4: back here this year, that'll trump probably something even bigger
Speaker 4: anywhere else because now there's a there's a debt to
Speaker 4: be paid and I think that dear ows me an
Speaker 4: another crack. So I want to stay on that deer.
Speaker 4: Hopefully it doesn't get killed by somebody else or whatever.
Speaker 4: But I'm praying at the deer's back on the property
Speaker 4: that can stay focused on him, and again that he's
Speaker 4: as big as he was.
Speaker 3: Or or maybe bigger.
Speaker 4: But again, I think that one from Illinois is back too,
Speaker 4: So it's going to be a who knows what the
Speaker 4: hell that thing to turn into? Uh this year, but
Speaker 4: this one's going to be number one on my my
Speaker 4: list here, So stay focused day on this one, get
Speaker 4: the job done on this and then from there you
Speaker 4: can go take it easy and hunt another state, or
Speaker 4: or go hunt another a different buck, you know. So okay,
Speaker 4: but there will be less days in the woods. Probably
Speaker 4: there will be less days and there, you know, but
Speaker 4: probably still from opener right on through to late that
Speaker 4: I basically will be be in that field every every
Speaker 4: day that I can.
Speaker 1: So how do you how do you maintain that? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you maintain stamina? How do you maintain that
Speaker 1: level of pushing it without losing focus, without losing energy
Speaker 1: and passing out?
Speaker 3: Like you like you talked about well after you, I couldn't.
Speaker 4: Like you said, I had some major major issues with
Speaker 4: the sleep appen and things of that nature. So in
Speaker 4: a normal type of uh A year, I I just
Speaker 4: maintain I've diden't like that all my life. We'd want
Speaker 4: we'd run wind sprints in the football team, and I'd
Speaker 4: be the last guy freaking running. Everybody else to be
Speaker 4: puken and done, and I just keep keep going. I
Speaker 4: just had that kind of energy. And I love to
Speaker 4: be in the woods. I can't stand sitting still in
Speaker 4: a tree stand and sit in one spot. I need
Speaker 4: to see what's over the next hill, what's around the
Speaker 4: next bend, what's up the river. I'm a constant information junkie.
Speaker 4: I need all kinds of pieces of puzzles in my mind.
Speaker 4: I have to be able to visualize it and see
Speaker 4: it in a stand. If I can't, That's why I
Speaker 4: can't run into a span a preset stand. I even
Speaker 4: want to look around a little bit on a preset
Speaker 4: to make sure that the signs there. And I've been
Speaker 4: in trees already that I jumped in and was going,
Speaker 4: and it's like I'm taking my binocier if to look
Speaker 4: and see Jesus christis is it's hot enough here, Am
Speaker 4: I wasting a freaking night or a sit? And you think,
Speaker 4: what all the time I have in the woods, that
Speaker 4: wouldn't be an issue to waste it. Uh, But one
Speaker 4: day gone is a day that can't be taken back,
Speaker 4: and that that's an excess the numbers of times you sit,
Speaker 4: the numbers of times you sit in the right spot.
Speaker 4: So I'm always you know, if I'm scouting and setting
Speaker 4: up and in a tree, that tree is the right
Speaker 4: tree for that day and that win in the game.
Speaker 4: I've had numerous friends years ago down in Illinois. They all
Speaker 4: just jump up in a tree that I just left
Speaker 4: or dead and left, and they go in there and
Speaker 4: shoot one hundred and fifty sixty inch buck out of
Speaker 4: the amp thing and they're happy as in a lark.
Speaker 4: And I'm I'm seeing him, and I'm moving on. I'm
Speaker 4: moving on tour. You know, the one that I'm looking for,
Speaker 4: he's not there. So I'm kind of squeezing her down
Speaker 4: and checking other areas. And I've been well the start
Speaker 4: of all this, I've had so many guys. You know,
Speaker 4: back in the day, it was uh, you know, hun
Speaker 4: high and stay the hell outter and give him safe zones.
Speaker 3: I don't give anything a safe zone.
Speaker 4: If that deer is living on that ground, he's gonna
Speaker 4: have to contend with me coming after him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I'll do a slow, slow set up a couple of
Speaker 4: times on an evening post, trying try and work it
Speaker 4: where you know, I always said, if you find where
Speaker 4: he sleeps, you could kill him, right, So if you
Speaker 4: got that piece of that information at betting where he's at,
Speaker 4: I mean, the further out you get from that, it's
Speaker 4: a big it's a it's a tougher to get them
Speaker 4: sort of closer, and the more intimate you can get
Speaker 4: on that, your chances are better. So you've heard of
Speaker 4: these two three day cycles on Bucks where you guys
Speaker 4: will see him every two three days. Well, guess what, dude,
Speaker 4: there's a there's an everyday cycle somewhere, and if you
Speaker 4: can find that spot and be on that edge, your
Speaker 4: percentages come up. He might be on another property you
Speaker 4: can't get to, but he may be somewhere you can.
Speaker 4: And then you want to be You want to be
Speaker 4: in the game and get your crack. You know, there's
Speaker 4: nothing worse than knowing where dere's at having him there
Speaker 4: and got your backpedal, and don't even you never get
Speaker 4: up the back. You never get to take a swing,
Speaker 4: you know. So yeah, that's tougher guys. That's like diving
Speaker 4: on a cold water. Guys really find it difficult to
Speaker 4: do some of the things I do. It's like they
Speaker 4: just can't get theirself to get They think they're going
Speaker 4: to just mess it up for.
Speaker 3: Good, you know.
Speaker 4: And and I thought that way years ago. There's a
Speaker 4: big hat that one off. I mean, the more I
Speaker 4: did it, the more my success went up. The more
Speaker 4: aggressive I got, the more deer I jumped, the more
Speaker 4: I bumped, the more I got into the game. I
Speaker 4: was covered up with deer constantly all year, when other
Speaker 4: guys were just flatten kno October lull or just not
Speaker 4: seeing the deer because they're just they're just not they're
Speaker 4: not going to chase, they're not hunting them there, they're waiting.
Speaker 4: They're waiting for the deer to basically come to them
Speaker 4: instead of you going to the deer. So well, you
Speaker 4: might you might have just answered my next question.
Speaker 1: But but feel free to go a different direction if
Speaker 1: you want to.
Speaker 3: But my next question is going to be what is an.
Speaker 1: Unusual habit or belief that you have that most other
Speaker 1: deer hunters think is absurd or crazy, but you know
Speaker 1: helps you as a deer hunter.
Speaker 3: Would it be what you just described or is there
Speaker 3: something else? They always come back.
Speaker 4: Guys think they bought these big deer and they go
Speaker 4: leave somewhere, they go nocturnal, they start playing the gamest,
Speaker 4: running circles around you. But if you are hunting in
Speaker 4: their home range, you're not burning them out of there.
Speaker 3: And I'm not.
Speaker 4: Here's where they might be a little different different. I'm
Speaker 4: hunting the top dog, the dominant bucks.
Speaker 3: Now some of them that are.
Speaker 4: When I say they're the dominant, they're the kingpin in
Speaker 4: an area. There might be a deer there that's more
Speaker 4: aggressive and as dominant, but they are a dominant bucking area.
Speaker 4: They get their areas where they feed, they get the breed,
Speaker 4: they get the best of it. That's their home. They're
Speaker 4: not leaving because of you know, another buck. You see
Speaker 4: these studies about that, they're talking about these deer that
Speaker 4: the ranges that they got put these collars on.
Speaker 3: Those are two and a half year old buck.
Speaker 4: A two and a half year old buck can't find
Speaker 4: a place to bet anywhere. Every knob it goes on,
Speaker 4: it gets it's ass kicked by three and a half
Speaker 4: four and a half year old buck. So they got
Speaker 4: to go wander around and go find where they want
Speaker 4: top dog. These big deers I hunt, they are in
Speaker 4: them same betting areas for different wins, and they they
Speaker 4: work for them, and that's where they are, and that's
Speaker 4: that's there. Nobody else gets to that best spot.
Speaker 3: They get it.
Speaker 4: So I find those best spots that I get it.
Speaker 4: It could be just a property like this is a
Speaker 4: square mile. You could have all your books on one
Speaker 4: section of it. You can be hunting on the other section.
Speaker 4: There's still could be decent signing that, but you're not
Speaker 4: seeing shit, and it's they're not there.
Speaker 3: You got to go to where the deer are.
Speaker 4: And when you're going into where the deer are, you
Speaker 4: end up seeing a lot of deer in the morning,
Speaker 4: bumping them all, bumping deer.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go hunt. It's too noisy. I
Speaker 3: pray to God that I'm bumping all kinds of shit when.
Speaker 4: I'm because I know him the game. I'm in a
Speaker 4: bunch of deer. Then I don't want to go to
Speaker 4: somewhere it's like a ghost town. There's you know, no
Speaker 4: signs and tracks and waiting for it to happen. That's
Speaker 4: a different type of hunter. When it gets into the rout,
Speaker 4: you can do some crazy stuff like that, but and
Speaker 4: then an rotch, you got to go with some old
Speaker 4: school I read sign, I stay on sign, and I believe, well,
Speaker 4: my eyes are telling me I don't. I don't all
Speaker 4: the stuff you read years past, and you know, they
Speaker 4: say you can't do this, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: I've never was a big guy to follow that.
Speaker 4: I just cut it on my own and I learned
Speaker 4: it on my own, and it's a lot of that
Speaker 4: stuff just I don't know what you'd call it, but
Speaker 4: I know what works, and I'll stick with what's working
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, what what would you say is your
Speaker 1: very most important habit, whether it's in your daily life
Speaker 1: or during hunting season. What's that thing that you always
Speaker 1: have to do over and over and over again for
Speaker 1: you to be effective for hunting deer. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it's something in your regular life that maybe isn't obviously
Speaker 1: helps you.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm thinking about,
Speaker 4: whatever I'm I'm designing a lot of products. I do
Speaker 4: things that there's a whole half of that brain that
Speaker 4: while I'm doing all that, is always thinking white tail
Speaker 4: and where the next thing is and what you know,
Speaker 4: where that deer travel last year, what he did, what
Speaker 4: time he was coming out at this time of the year,
Speaker 4: and certain things. Was he was he one to just
Speaker 4: bust loose? He's really a big deer. Uh weather over anything.
Speaker 4: You know, get a good cold front coming and ship.
Speaker 4: It changes the scenario on that when that, you know,
Speaker 4: I pray for a season that the NBA temperature is
Speaker 4: colder than it normally, is not one of these hot,
Speaker 4: horrible seasons that it's uh so, I'm thinking this all
Speaker 4: out my mind all the time. That's all I think
Speaker 4: about is you know, his deer. I don't go out
Speaker 4: and do a lot of messing around now. I don't
Speaker 4: need to because even when I'll have intel on cameras
Speaker 4: and then I'm still I'm still a scouur constantly all
Speaker 4: year early season, reading the sign what's going on, and
Speaker 4: uh yeah, your head's always in the game. It's always
Speaker 4: thinking of and you're thinking bigger. Okay, where am I
Speaker 4: going to have an opportunity at the biggest deer. This here,
Speaker 4: nothing on this ground. So I got to leave this
Speaker 4: for debt until some cameras something pops up and I go.
Speaker 4: I go to the biggest and sometimes there aren't bigger
Speaker 4: than your you're looking for, and it's then you settle
Speaker 4: for the next best one, or settle to get a
Speaker 4: good video, or however it is. But I've always been
Speaker 4: one to just stay focused to quick story. So years
Speaker 4: ago Adam Hayes came to me and some other people
Speaker 4: to start a hunting show, and I told them, I says,
Speaker 4: this aint. This is how a white Tail addictions actually
Speaker 4: came about. I am going to run into a deer
Speaker 4: I want, and I ain't killing any deer that year.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna stand that you're not gonna get any kills
Speaker 4: out of me. I can't run a six different states
Speaker 4: and shoot media or box just to get them on film.
Speaker 4: I'll go there and I'll shoot some decent deer that
Speaker 4: are worthy of shooting. But if I got something i'm
Speaker 4: looking for, my season's done. Like this one here, I
Speaker 4: would have been locked up the whole season.
Speaker 3: Burn.
Speaker 4: You ain't gonna get no show out of me. So
Speaker 4: we made a decision to make a show about our customers,
Speaker 4: which are all great hunters, and they submit footage and
Speaker 4: we get kills out of them. You know, you get
Speaker 4: one kill out of me, maybe maybe two. And then
Speaker 4: now you got to show a full of a bunch
Speaker 4: of kills because there's a bunch of guys hunting. Some
Speaker 4: of these other guys that you know, this whole shows
Speaker 4: on them. They're running around just shooting just for entertainment,
Speaker 4: you know, mediocre bucks and then try to look excited
Speaker 4: about it when.
Speaker 3: They're doing it.
Speaker 4: It's it wasn't going to happen. So I'm still like
Speaker 4: that to this day. I just want to I want
Speaker 4: what I want. And when I first shot my popen,
Speaker 4: first Pope and young, it became a numbers game.
Speaker 3: And I don't know why. In my mind, I was
Speaker 3: always an athlete, and.
Speaker 4: When there's a bar and a goal the set, you know,
Speaker 4: you work different. You're you're not scattered all over the place.
Speaker 4: And uh, I started hunting bigger deer and if there
Speaker 4: wasn't a bigger deer on that property, then I just
Speaker 4: didn't hunt. And I went until I found a property
Speaker 4: or a spot that had the bigger deer, then I'd
Speaker 4: hunt it, kill it. Then it would be bigger, and
Speaker 4: then I'd have to go. I might go back to
Speaker 4: the other property had a bigger one. And I've said
Speaker 4: a numer times, but I think I didn't set it
Speaker 4: on podcasts, But people a lot of people don't know
Speaker 4: from from one twenty five and like an eighth my
Speaker 4: first deer, all the way up to that first boon
Speaker 4: and crocket, the score the deer I harvested every year
Speaker 4: never went backwards. It went up every deer that was
Speaker 4: killed every year with a little bigger, a little bigger score,
Speaker 4: a little bigger score.
Speaker 3: One year I passed up a buck hunting and or
Speaker 3: was like one fifty five class deer three different times
Speaker 3: just to shoot a one sixty. I already had it
Speaker 3: one fifty five, So it's like, what do you out
Speaker 3: of your mind shoot that?
Speaker 4: I only get one take. So if I'm want I'm
Speaker 4: a gold cetter, this is what I want. Then it
Speaker 4: got to the point where I shot that first one
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy and shannimal and then it was like
Speaker 4: then another light bulb went off, Wow, this is kind
Speaker 4: of nice. You know, this is another level and now,
Speaker 4: and you start just looking for one seventy plus, you know,
Speaker 4: and then you get to the point where you're running.
Speaker 4: You're running the openers, not a lot bigger, or the
Speaker 4: chances of being bigger on the ground you have.
Speaker 3: It's not real great. I'm lucky enough that we have some.
Speaker 4: Good properties that produce some real slammers just about every year,
Speaker 4: so there's something there to excited about. I traded it
Speaker 4: all back for the first I wish I had that
Speaker 4: rack here I haven't. In a garage I can show you.
Speaker 4: I just went and did a big around. I got
Speaker 4: my first first white tail buck with a bowl. It
Speaker 4: was I don't even know if you can put a
Speaker 4: score on it if it was sixty inches. It was
Speaker 4: an eight pointer that you could put a grapefruit in
Speaker 4: its rack. And I didn't give a shit about big
Speaker 4: deer back then. I loved I wanted to shoot any
Speaker 4: deer and I loved that. And that whole time on
Speaker 4: public land going up to them deer instead of getting
Speaker 4: into that one forty class. It was just awesome. I
Speaker 4: just was hooked on it. Didn't get about it until
Speaker 4: it got about score. Then I started getting about more
Speaker 4: of a work type of thing. There was a scenario.
Speaker 4: I was up north Honting public land and there was
Speaker 4: a non typical.
Speaker 3: It was a first virgin snow of the year.
Speaker 4: Went in and in the woodlot there was a two
Speaker 4: bucks chasing the door rum. One was a tiny little
Speaker 4: buck off the quarter of the big the big non
Speaker 4: typical ganting around. It was just about toppling over the
Speaker 4: immensity of that deer. Probably would have been it would have
Speaker 4: been a state record at that time. And at that
Speaker 4: time I seen two deer chasing around a dog.
Speaker 3: That's all that was. And literally I shot the smaller
Speaker 3: one when they came by.
Speaker 4: The smaller one claimed coles and I shot it. If
Speaker 4: that scenario ever happened like today or later on in
Speaker 4: my career, I would have went and moved up north
Speaker 4: and never came back seeing my wife and kiss until
Speaker 4: that deer. I'd hunt that deer to the ends of
Speaker 4: the earth. And things have changed. So that's how it
Speaker 4: is now. It's it's yeah, it's not about just the
Speaker 4: enjoyment of harvest and the deer which you're bowing at.
Speaker 4: It turned into harvesting good animals. And I like I
Speaker 4: like a challenge. I do like a challenge. I don't
Speaker 4: want to do that.
Speaker 3: Just topples over.
Speaker 4: So it's nice on there's one kind of out witting
Speaker 4: you and out smart and you or out lucking you.
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know what the word is, but something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, you gotta remember there's forty years that
Speaker 4: I saw. There's a lot of different scenarios that went
Speaker 4: through the whole deal with since the whole thing, with
Speaker 4: all this rattling and all this other stuff, and it
Speaker 4: all just boiled back that I learned what I learned,
Speaker 4: you know, and I stuck with what was learning.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I know, guys who rattled your ear, I can rattle,
Speaker 4: and I tested rattling. I can rattle in tons of
Speaker 4: books for the ones I want. It just seems like
Speaker 4: your best opportunity for me is when they ain't got
Speaker 4: a clue and they step into a setup.
Speaker 3: They just do not have a clue that somebody's.
Speaker 4: There on top of them, and then they get to
Speaker 4: make that mistake of just coming through that day.
Speaker 3: You know. But yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4: I learned a lot over the years.
Speaker 1: So well, you know, Andrea, there's so many people I've
Speaker 1: talked to over the years who point to you as
Speaker 1: being someone that they look up to or that they've
Speaker 1: learned a lot from that they view as, you know,
Speaker 1: an elite deer hunter.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious, is is there.
Speaker 1: Anybody that you look to or that you have learned from,
Speaker 1: or someone that you look as like, Man, that guy
Speaker 1: is really good and I've learned some stuff from.
Speaker 4: Is there anyone you can I plant to like that
Speaker 4: say I've learned anything from anybody. But back in the
Speaker 4: day years ago, I just thought Miles Keller. He had
Speaker 4: the state record for state of Wisconsin. He's a little older,
Speaker 4: he was at the shoals. I always kind of admired him.
Speaker 4: He was killing some really good deer consistently.
Speaker 3: Uh never prescribed to his methods.
Speaker 4: And then there was the guy that turned out to
Speaker 4: be a and end up Hulks or whatever in Michigan
Speaker 4: the Umpala. When he was on the scene, I just
Speaker 4: remember shooting the tiny deer and starting to get into
Speaker 4: a couple of pop and young's that I thought, to myself,
Speaker 4: holy shit, this guy is I thought that was amazing
Speaker 4: that somebody would be out there and that's all they
Speaker 4: were looking for. One seventy bucks, I though don't even
Speaker 4: more are state record was one hundred and seventy seven inches,
Speaker 4: So I said, they're not even out there, you know.
Speaker 4: So that was the guy that I kind of looked
Speaker 4: up to that but never you know, thought about or
Speaker 4: looked about it was his hunting style or what it
Speaker 4: was like that way, it's just that way wise. But
Speaker 4: I don't think because I didn't read a lot of magazines,
Speaker 4: I didn't listen to a lot of people. I basically
Speaker 4: took the sport up on my own, started out running
Speaker 4: after deer with a recurve on the ground, flinging arrows,
Speaker 4: to climbing into trees and finding success more from elevated positions,
Speaker 4: and just it evolved.
Speaker 3: From where I started.
Speaker 4: So I think a lot of my hunting style and
Speaker 4: technique now is probably been adopted by all the guys
Speaker 4: and a lot of guys that I learned that, you know,
Speaker 4: these all of these guys were younger than me, and
Speaker 4: I sold in the first stands in that and the
Speaker 4: guys you're talking about, I actually become friends with and
Speaker 4: I hunting out just some of these younger crew.
Speaker 3: And it's amazing to me that.
Speaker 4: Like one would kill but like Keith killed a huge
Speaker 4: book on one of our leases and he told me
Speaker 4: where I killed it. And it's amazing to me. And
Speaker 4: I says, I says, how did you access that spot?
Speaker 4: And he he acts and normal guys, a lot of
Speaker 4: guys that would have would have not even thought. He said,
Speaker 4: it was obvious he had to he had to do
Speaker 4: this and go there. He went the same route that
Speaker 4: I took to ambush the deer on that same spot.
Speaker 3: That's the spot that you have to access. And he learned.
Speaker 4: He learns that people learned that by just hunting. And
Speaker 4: then some of the guys that when they first started out,
Speaker 4: some of the tiny deer they shot, you know, he
Speaker 4: got he's just going he got uh, justin Hollinsworth. So
Speaker 4: I visited some of their homes now years later, and
Speaker 4: I am impressed with the wall. Guys used to come
Speaker 4: into my house and you know, just about pistol he
Speaker 4: pants and they stand there in awe uh, and it
Speaker 4: happened to me.
Speaker 3: So this is how many years have gone by.
Speaker 4: So a lot of these guys have become you know,
Speaker 4: now they're twenty years in serious hunters. They learned the
Speaker 4: game and there there's successful every year and they got
Speaker 4: with work for him and they're doing it.
Speaker 3: Same with them.
Speaker 4: With Cody, I don't know how how it's been probably
Speaker 4: decades since we've hunted together.
Speaker 3: We have a hundred.
Speaker 4: He fucking ran off, excuse my language, ran off and
Speaker 4: own and was doing his own deal. And I remember
Speaker 4: I follow in law came out to the houses and
Speaker 4: he was over by Cody. He's looking in his living
Speaker 4: room and he's and these are some pretty nice deers.
Speaker 4: And then he came over my house. He was in
Speaker 4: the living room and I'm standing there watching this guy
Speaker 4: in the middle of the living room looking up in there,
Speaker 4: and he's like, I said, what the hell's problem? You know,
Speaker 4: like he was like just dumb phoning his boys. Was
Speaker 4: some decent deer over, but holy shit, these are really
Speaker 4: big deer because of the caliber. I had the same
Speaker 4: moment a couple of years back, as Cody had been
Speaker 4: stacking up on his own and doing his own hunting
Speaker 4: and not having the money for taxing him, and he's
Speaker 4: had racks sitting around. All of a sudden, he's getting
Speaker 4: them done. And I walked in his living room and
Speaker 4: I was impressed of the caliber and the amount of
Speaker 4: deer in the wall, and I was impressed with friends
Speaker 4: of mine, my own son. So there's guys that really
Speaker 4: stepped up to the plate and they are doing it,
Speaker 4: and a lot of them I think kind of adopted
Speaker 4: some of the technique that I had years ago, which
Speaker 4: is good to me. It's it's great, but stay off
Speaker 4: to have you know, we're on the same least now
Speaker 4: it's not so great. So yeah, they're kind of doing
Speaker 4: the same kind of thing. That's getting a little crowded,
Speaker 4: you know. So yeah, but no, I appreciate that, uh
Speaker 4: that dad is there, But yeah, I didn't come from
Speaker 4: hunting background. I came from a family that didn't hunt,
Speaker 4: so I really didn't have a father to teach me
Speaker 4: all the wrong lessons.
Speaker 3: I basically went and learned them all on my own.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, with all these people, we're kind of referencing
Speaker 1: all these best deer hunters that you've now surrounded yourself with.
Speaker 1: What's what's maybe one of the most common traits or
Speaker 1: mindsets that all of these best deer hunters all have, Like,
Speaker 1: can you point to something that is consisting across all
Speaker 1: of those best of the best people.
Speaker 4: Well, their whole life's revolve a wrong white tail hunting.
Speaker 4: I met some of their wives. You're a different this
Speaker 4: is a different breed of guy. I mean, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of guys that are hunters out there. There's decent hunters.
Speaker 4: They hunt every year to hunt a lot. But there
Speaker 4: are people that choose their career, choose their life, choose
Speaker 4: their partners around whitetail hunting. That's one thing when you
Speaker 4: get bit by that bug and then you get some
Speaker 4: success and they're smart enough to know, you go where the.
Speaker 3: Big deer are.
Speaker 4: You know, there's the big public hunting versus private deal.
Speaker 4: You know, I hunt public lan, I hunt private there
Speaker 4: are some world class deer on public land. I go
Speaker 4: to where the big deer are, don't. I would never
Speaker 4: go to an area that's got a shitload of guys
Speaker 4: in hunting that mess. It's it's just a waste of time.
Speaker 4: So two years ago there was a guy that we
Speaker 4: know here in Iowa. He had pictures of three bucks
Speaker 4: on public land that he was hunting within probably an
Speaker 4: hour and a half of our arm and the three
Speaker 4: deer were bigger, three bigger deer than any of the
Speaker 4: biggest deer we had on our farm.
Speaker 3: So they're there if you're firing him.
Speaker 4: But now he's going to have to contend with a
Speaker 4: bunch of guys to travel and all that. So you
Speaker 4: got to have a spot that's got him. And then
Speaker 4: you got to know how I'm going on. All of
Speaker 4: these guys are portable hunters here and they're gone tomorrow.
Speaker 4: They read sign and they set up accordingly, and they're
Speaker 4: not afraid to move in uh and make the make
Speaker 4: the move to to finish it off. So some a
Speaker 4: little more aggressive than others, but they've they've honed their
Speaker 4: trade over the years. I mean, they've been doing this
Speaker 4: for for decades too. And and you start out little,
Speaker 4: like I said, you should see the you're gonna see
Speaker 4: some of the pitchers in this forty year of the
Speaker 4: tiny little three point little bucks that I killed and
Speaker 4: I loved every minute of that.
Speaker 3: That was the start of it all. Christ guy's seeing
Speaker 3: you sitting into the north woods with a recurve for
Speaker 3: for for deer and they're like they thought you were.
Speaker 3: Are you out in your mind or your nuts? You
Speaker 3: know what?
Speaker 4: Are you chasing deer? A owing them what ball? I mean,
Speaker 4: that's I just love to do it, you know. So
Speaker 4: now that it's a whole well, you know though, this
Speaker 4: is huge. It's like everybody in their brothers hunting now
Speaker 4: and it's it's getting a little crowded, you know, so.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're more successful hunters. You know.
Speaker 4: Adam Hayes, he started a whole thing with two hundred.
Speaker 4: I remember him meeting him on the show.
Speaker 3: Young kid.
Speaker 4: He look like he just barely out of high school
Speaker 4: and he's out trophy. I've seen the stand he flipped
Speaker 4: over and bought one and and then got to you know,
Speaker 4: every year he'd come back and seen some of the
Speaker 4: nice year that he was shooting. He goes after big
Speaker 4: deer and the guys sit back watch. He's an observer.
Speaker 4: That's another thing that some of these guys are. I'm
Speaker 4: the same way. He got to be like a big buck.
Speaker 4: They sit back and they observe what's going on, and
Speaker 4: you got to sit back and kind of read what's
Speaker 4: going on, and like a binoc Here's most important piece
Speaker 4: of equipment for me. I mean, I have to not
Speaker 4: wage the day on post where you might get a
Speaker 4: glimpse of something and not see what it was. That
Speaker 4: just just I just get living on that. When that happens,
Speaker 4: I couldn't get the box up quick that could have
Speaker 4: been when I was after slipping out the back and
Speaker 4: I missed it, you know, or if you're sitting there
Speaker 4: and you can't see it, same thing. You know, you're
Speaker 4: you're there hunting, trying to get some intail to move
Speaker 4: in on these animals.
Speaker 3: So and a lot of these.
Speaker 4: Guys are I'm gonna have to say that they might
Speaker 4: have started out as killers, but a lot of them
Speaker 4: are hunters now. They literally are hunting specific animals, uh.
Speaker 4: And they're going after that that dear, and if it's
Speaker 4: not there, they goes to another specific big animal they
Speaker 4: go at. You know, at some point time you got
Speaker 4: to fill the wall at a bunch of deer just to
Speaker 4: just to make it impressive.
Speaker 3: But I never was about the numbers.
Speaker 4: You know, if everybody ever realized a mount in the
Speaker 4: caliber deer that I've passed over the years is just
Speaker 4: I got video you'll see in this fourth one of
Speaker 4: a Boon and crocket and that boone and crocket that
Speaker 4: I passed up twice on video back in the day,
Speaker 4: And what are you crazy?
Speaker 3: Why'd you do that?
Speaker 4: Because I had one tag and there was one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty and twelve point running around That's why I
Speaker 4: did it. So those are things that you got to
Speaker 4: make personal decisions on. Whether you're chasing around two hundred
Speaker 4: inch bucks one seventies so world classroof, you just want
Speaker 4: to fill the freezer with meat, have at it, man,
Speaker 4: enjoy the enjoy the day.
Speaker 3: You know. I see a lot of these guys going
Speaker 3: back to recurves too.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not ready to get caught with a
Speaker 4: recurve in my hand and a world record typical stepping out.
Speaker 3: I'm not. I'm not that guy, So we'll wait on that.
Speaker 1: Speaking of world record typicals, I know, at one point,
Speaker 1: you know, you've been pursuing that absolute top, top, top tier.
Speaker 1: I know you had state records and things like that,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand you, you've backed away from
Speaker 1: that a little bit to where now you're killing the
Speaker 1: best thing around.
Speaker 3: But what would happen Andre.
Speaker 1: If you did get wind of the buck that you
Speaker 1: really truly did believe was, Man, this could be the
Speaker 1: new world record typical or something like that, I'd be
Speaker 1: all over it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, so you'd be all over it. What so
Speaker 3: I believe the start out with I've been in the game.
Speaker 4: Two different times of two different bucks that I believe
Speaker 4: would have beat the typical bowl world record two different bucks,
Speaker 4: and I got beat at them both. But when that
Speaker 4: comes on and that's it, it's I moved out of
Speaker 4: my state to another state to pursue that.
Speaker 3: So that's what I did.
Speaker 4: I left my family behind and everybody, and I went
Speaker 4: and moved to another state to chase a world record typical.
Speaker 4: That was my ultimate dream was to get a crack
Speaker 4: at or a shot at And you know what the
Speaker 4: chances are in the miracle of a guy even in
Speaker 4: the game for bloone and crockets, but let alone a
Speaker 4: world record tipic. But that's like, that's like win a
Speaker 4: lot of I guess I won a lotto twice because
Speaker 4: I had one on this property and I own when
Speaker 4: I first moved here that I believe would have been
Speaker 4: right there, and I want of Illinois definitely would have been.
Speaker 4: So in a career or forty years, I was on
Speaker 4: a two different bucks. I believe they've been at caliber now.
Speaker 4: I was on a lot of bucks. I screwed up
Speaker 4: one after I shot that one in Wisconsin the year
Speaker 4: after I almost killed the non typical state record Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: I fucking missed the damn thing.
Speaker 4: At fifteen yards, the thing dropped its belly on me
Speaker 4: and went over the top, and that deer was just
Speaker 4: I started thinking to myself, how the hell am I
Speaker 4: even doing this? How am I even in the game
Speaker 4: with all these things? And man, if I kill that
Speaker 4: dear and against, somebody's gonna think I'm up to no
Speaker 4: good or some shit. I'm just I'm staying on it,
Speaker 4: going to where the big deer are. When I find
Speaker 4: big deer, I go knock on doors, I get permission,
Speaker 4: whatever I gotta do, I gotta go. I want to
Speaker 4: be in the woods with caliber deer that I want
Speaker 4: to shoot. Then I'm happier than happy to sit a
Speaker 4: whole hundred days in a row and just chase them
Speaker 4: around and maybe not even get them. At least I'm
Speaker 4: in the game, you know, I can't stand not being
Speaker 4: in the game. So you had two chances of deer
Speaker 4: like that in the past and they won. Let's say
Speaker 4: you get chance number three. So there's a third deer
Speaker 4: that that you get wind of and you have an opportunity. Yet,
Speaker 4: what's the biggest thing that you would do different than
Speaker 4: you did the first two times around? Oh, I don't
Speaker 4: know if I could say there be anything different I
Speaker 4: gotta get so now is this on a piece that
Speaker 4: I have, or now I got wind of it where
Speaker 4: it's on somebody else's ground, I got to get access
Speaker 4: to r That's gonna be a goofy scenario. I have
Speaker 4: to say, I hate them, say that my friends that
Speaker 4: hate me, But if they ended up being one on
Speaker 4: a property that I have, that'side least none of you
Speaker 4: guys are getting on for the year, go find another spodcast.
Speaker 4: And so there would be that I might even have
Speaker 4: to tell my son, if it's it's my ground, then
Speaker 4: it's access. This is this is what I've been here
Speaker 4: this whole life to do. It's gonna be one on
Speaker 4: one with me, and I don't I don't want anybody
Speaker 4: else around to do it. So that'd be one thing
Speaker 4: that would be kind of. People might think you're a
Speaker 4: low life for doing or whatever it is. But I'd
Speaker 4: give up everything, every minute a time i'd spend just
Speaker 4: going after that, I'd be I'd be in heaven again.
Speaker 4: Seventh uh seventh heaven. Trying to get get a crack
Speaker 4: at that deer. But now you got me all excited
Speaker 4: at that there might be a chance for me left
Speaker 4: that I was. I let that water go under the
Speaker 4: bridge years ago and gave up on that. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of big deer and I still got
Speaker 4: access to hunt. But the typical world record and there
Speaker 4: are you got to be in the right states for
Speaker 4: and then to be again. You know, there there are
Speaker 4: caliber now being shot just about an every state that
Speaker 4: are out there.
Speaker 3: But it's still, dude, there's how many million bow hunters
Speaker 3: are you in the middle of.
Speaker 4: You talk about the numerical chance of the guy shooting
Speaker 4: the one seventies is huge, but it doesn't get bigger
Speaker 4: for a guy who's done it already. It's actually not
Speaker 4: a big number for him because he's been in that
Speaker 4: game and now it's just like another might be just
Speaker 4: another decent deer for it for someone. But but to
Speaker 4: have a so for me to have another typical world
Speaker 4: record deer on this property, I would think is would
Speaker 4: be almost impossible for all those stars to line up
Speaker 4: and to be here. I mean, never say number. But
Speaker 4: and the idiot I am last year it wasn't pretty garbage.
Speaker 4: There was a buck that if it busted off a
Speaker 4: couple of times, might have been that that caliber. So
Speaker 4: there are deer out there now that are just amazing
Speaker 4: where the hell l they go and where they height to.
Speaker 4: But I guess again, I'm going back to having them
Speaker 4: on your ground to be able to hunt is going
Speaker 4: to be. That's going to be like a win and
Speaker 4: a lotto type of deal, you know. The one that
Speaker 4: was here was actually passed through my ground very easily,
Speaker 4: but was on my lease on one side, and it
Speaker 4: was on a neighbor's ground that I had permission to
Speaker 4: hunt on another. And that year, for some reason, I
Speaker 4: burned up my my state tag early, so I was
Speaker 4: stuck on my ground with my landowner take and I
Speaker 4: was doing There was a kid, local kid here, trapper
Speaker 4: that was seeing this year and another piece I could get
Speaker 4: on like six different times where it was betting them,
Speaker 4: and I was just dying, I'm gonna get over, you know.
Speaker 3: And the one time he passed through.
Speaker 4: Mike ground, I didn't have a lot of cameras back then,
Speaker 4: but I seen him and I was I was actually
Speaker 4: getting down to make a move from their stand and
Speaker 4: I seen him coming on the ground with a don
Speaker 4: I went and jumped back in the stand hoping he
Speaker 4: would just chase that door around and get by me.
Speaker 4: And he never did, and he ended up on a
Speaker 4: different piece again. So I had my hands just strapped,
Speaker 4: you know. So there's a screw up that there's one
Speaker 4: screw up that we thought about that would never do again.
Speaker 4: I always look at my tags close. Now which one
Speaker 4: I'm filling out first, you know, burning up at the
Speaker 4: state wide tag?
Speaker 3: And also yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned earlier some of the mistakes you may
Speaker 1: have made in the past, or some struggles you made.
Speaker 1: You mentioned, you know, maybe shooting maybe being one thing
Speaker 1: you want to work on coming up. So I'm curious
Speaker 1: real quick. Let me just throw this out there to
Speaker 1: have the rest of this. What I want to understand
Speaker 1: is how you get better at something like when you
Speaker 1: identify something as like a weakness or an area that
Speaker 1: you can improve on a little bit, what's your process
Speaker 1: for getting better?
Speaker 4: Okay, So here's the problem that I probably had, and
Speaker 4: it's cost me, actually cost me a couple of deer
Speaker 4: last year or two.
Speaker 3: Equipment. So I don't like to shoot a ball.
Speaker 4: I shoot low pons now, so I don't have to
Speaker 4: shooting seventy years ago or shooting a rear curve. You
Speaker 4: had to have your muscles intact, and you have to
Speaker 4: consistently shoot.
Speaker 3: To be accurate with a bowl, you have to have
Speaker 3: I would shoot for a week.
Speaker 4: First five days, you're all over the place, your muscles
Speaker 4: get toned and had seventy pounds on your group in.
Speaker 4: I don't have to do that anymore or my bolls on.
Speaker 4: I shoot kind of instinctive through a pin. I can
Speaker 4: pick up the boat anytime of year and just shoot
Speaker 4: and group enough to shoot these deer at twenty yards.
Speaker 4: I found myself in a hunt in Illinois, or I
Speaker 4: literally and I shot, and I only shoot an arrow.
Speaker 4: Usually when I'm onto something good, I'll start shooting an arrow,
Speaker 4: even out of a tree when I leave, or at
Speaker 4: least one arrow to make sure everything's on. And I
Speaker 4: checked even the evening before I think I shot, and
Speaker 4: I pulled my ball up, and the morning I busted
Speaker 4: my pin off somehow on a step on the way
Speaker 4: up or whatever, and then I went to shoot and
Speaker 4: I couldn't find a pin on there and I end
Speaker 4: up pitting this animal in the neck and shit. And
Speaker 4: I was just fricking irate that I would let because
Speaker 4: I did everything. I was supposed to do right, and
Speaker 4: fate screwed me out of what are the chances.
Speaker 3: In one sit you broke that sit on there? Well,
Speaker 3: this year, because of my issues with fatigue and all that,
Speaker 3: my fiber optics were rip out of my sight, and
Speaker 3: because I don't shoot every day anymore, I didn't even
Speaker 3: know the fire broctor was out of here.
Speaker 4: I went to try and find that too, and I
Speaker 4: couldn't blurry vision. Getting older, I need a lens probably
Speaker 4: on them damn things. And it was horrible. I could
Speaker 4: tell you a couple of stories about old age I had.
Speaker 4: I went through a season literally probably legally blind one year,
Speaker 4: and I still filmed and got good footage and killed.
Speaker 4: I had the worst cataracts. I was telling my wife.
Speaker 4: She says, here fullish, you know, she says, blow me off.
Speaker 4: And I went into a doctor and said, he said,
Speaker 4: you got the worst cataract I've ever fixt seen.
Speaker 3: So I went. I literally shot out a deer.
Speaker 4: And I hate to tell about all these inconsistency of
Speaker 4: hitting one low set up on this deer, went up
Speaker 4: on a hundreds of yards away and set up on
Speaker 4: the same deer, And a rainstorm came in and I
Speaker 4: was up there vision shitty, haven't binociers out, and I
Speaker 4: see a huge buck come up and he's off all
Speaker 4: his rain and stuff, and man, I'm gonna get some
Speaker 4: good voters of this thing.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 4: I was trying to look into bnocker as you know
Speaker 4: what he was, what kind of times, and I just
Speaker 4: never dawned on me it was that the deer that
Speaker 4: I was after.
Speaker 3: Literally, I got on video.
Speaker 4: I let that deer come through, walk five yards under
Speaker 4: my stand and head out, and I could not tell
Speaker 4: it was even the same deer that I was after.
Speaker 4: It just because we have a lot of there's a
Speaker 4: lot of decent big deer here. I went and showed
Speaker 4: Cody that freaking video and we put it on a
Speaker 4: laptop now because I was looking on my little phone,
Speaker 4: and he said, you're you're freaking with me right now,
Speaker 4: aren't you?
Speaker 3: Just? What do you mean freaking with you? He said
Speaker 3: that that was the buck that you were after. Im freaking.
Speaker 4: So he blows the damn thing up, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: son of a freaking bitch. I mean, I can't win
Speaker 4: the ba Loson. So I went pad surgery the next year.
Speaker 4: Here's another good story. These guys talk about it. I'd
Speaker 4: mentioned this before too, and I'm getting old, so I
Speaker 4: mentioned stories multiple times, but they're complaining about not having
Speaker 4: their new tree stand for opening day. This guy did
Speaker 4: surgery on one of my eyes and then I had waited,
Speaker 4: so opening day I was literally I only had one
Speaker 4: eye to use and going out of hunting. So finally
Speaker 4: got them both fixed and and all that. But that
Speaker 4: same year, I videoed the deer that I was after
Speaker 4: got out on him because he was not a big
Speaker 4: amensa brack.
Speaker 3: There was another deer that were around. I wassiming that
Speaker 3: we're decent.
Speaker 4: Literally I could have had him at fifteen yards and
Speaker 4: I probably could have shot him, and I thought he
Speaker 4: was just a smaller small buck.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was literally out there freaking blind.
Speaker 4: And with the amount of years that I went with
Speaker 4: the camera, I know I can literally video with my
Speaker 4: eyes closed knock because I can point the camera had
Speaker 4: a spot and just blow it back out and I
Speaker 4: got I'm getting great video footage, but it'd be nice
Speaker 4: to know what the hell you're seeing. So these are
Speaker 4: all things you're gonna deal with and later on in
Speaker 4: your life, and it's it's frustrating because if you hunt
Speaker 4: at the level I do, it's man, you don't want
Speaker 4: to run out of gas. You don't want to have
Speaker 4: issues like that. God forbid I ever have to start
Speaker 4: wearing glasses out in the woods. Again, biggest handicap many
Speaker 4: hundred whatever have is they have glasses in the woods.
Speaker 4: These deer spots you from a mile away with that
Speaker 4: lens on. So right, hang on to hang on to
Speaker 4: that for a bit. But no, it's a it's a
Speaker 4: whole whole new game. I don't know how you know.
Speaker 4: I'll long run it, but I'm gonna run it to
Speaker 4: the end. They're probably gonna find me that in the
Speaker 4: ones that'll have bowled my hand still, So.
Speaker 3: Have you got to go? That's not a bad way
Speaker 3: to go. Oh no, that'd be the wuld be ultimate
Speaker 3: way to go.
Speaker 1: Actually, a lot of these different challenges you've mentioned, it
Speaker 1: seems like your approach to dealing with it, your approach
Speaker 1: to getting better or handling it, is to push through,
Speaker 1: to just keep working harder, to keep doing things right.
Speaker 4: So we started with the equipment, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: if you want to go, go your trade of thought
Speaker 4: and I'll go back to that. So what I'm doing
Speaker 4: different for for that sure.
Speaker 1: So so my next question was going to be and
Speaker 1: and maybe this will tie into what you're mentioning there,
Speaker 1: But hard work is a thing that I've heard you
Speaker 1: kind of bring up, maybe not those exact words, but
Speaker 1: you've talked about it in different ways, and many many,
Speaker 1: many other deer hunters will always point back to that way.
Speaker 3: You gotta work hard, you gotta work hard.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about what that actually means to you,
Speaker 1: like how you would define hard work, what that what
Speaker 1: that actually looks like for you, because people hear it
Speaker 1: and don't necessarily know what it means.
Speaker 3: So when I say it's hard work, it ain't easy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I've already found had guys friends that want to shoot
Speaker 4: their first pop young and I had deer lined up
Speaker 4: that I could have went and killed. I know where
Speaker 4: they were at, and I told them where the goal set,
Speaker 4: and you'll shoot the deer's coming out there every evening
Speaker 4: on a bean field. There goal sit there, You'll you'll
Speaker 4: kill it, damn deer. And he's like, well, is there
Speaker 4: anything any closer or anything? You know, it was a
Speaker 4: long walk back in from a weird way that it
Speaker 4: took some work to get in there and la the guy.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't want to do that that type
Speaker 3: of work.
Speaker 4: But these younger guys nowadays, I'm not going to mention
Speaker 4: any names that I've seen them and to follow him.
Speaker 4: They think that it usually go out there and just
Speaker 4: run all over hellm and put these miles on.
Speaker 3: That that's going to.
Speaker 4: End up killing you a big deer. If you're just
Speaker 4: running around there and not absorbing anything or learning anything
Speaker 4: from it. You're just running around like an idiot and
Speaker 4: putting miles on. And everybody's made those mistakes. I did
Speaker 4: that years ago, open the Big Woods. I'd go so
Speaker 4: far deep in thinking I'm getting away way back in
Speaker 4: the middle of note, This'll be this, gonna be paradise back.
Speaker 3: And then I went so far back in two miles
Speaker 3: back that I came out some guys backyard and shit
Speaker 3: on highways that you know, this is area with no highways.
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, all the big deer are up right
Speaker 3: where I went in, you know, so read the sign
Speaker 3: and believe what you see and go at it.
Speaker 4: And there's amount of hard work and do the control
Speaker 4: deal that I do. Do that roundwork. When I get
Speaker 4: boots on the ground. I'd do a new property of
Speaker 4: a perimeter check. It's a muff for me to do
Speaker 4: a complete perimeter check of a property. I need to
Speaker 4: get that in my head, a schematic of what's coming
Speaker 4: and going out with the trails here and there, and
Speaker 4: then I can go in and everything that I see
Speaker 4: inside that makes sense in the middle of it. If
Speaker 4: I go in the middle of it first, nothing that
Speaker 4: was out there, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 4: It's all just random here, random there. You know, try
Speaker 4: and read your compass or whatever the hell it deals.
Speaker 4: So these guys that you know that pick the spots
Speaker 4: with the maps and all that. Now and this, you
Speaker 4: can't see what I see on a map. And you
Speaker 4: could pick good spots here from a map on here,
Speaker 4: a good funnels, and you'd be there and half the
Speaker 4: season they're ice cold and not a deer movement through it,
Speaker 4: but they're excellent spots on a certain time.
Speaker 3: You've got to be in real time.
Speaker 4: The most important thing to me is to be in
Speaker 4: the game when the game's happening, not a day late
Speaker 4: and a dollar short, as my mom used to say.
Speaker 4: And there's guys that can do that and there's guys
Speaker 4: that not They can't read the signer, they don't even
Speaker 4: realize what they're looking for.
Speaker 3: So that's gonna have to be something you learn to
Speaker 3: be able to pick. You know.
Speaker 4: I used to always argue about that well buck, big
Speaker 4: buck spot, big bucks betting areas where that big buck
Speaker 4: is betting, it could be anywhere. There's no defined area
Speaker 4: to where it's at. I found him in the craziest
Speaker 4: fricking places you'd never even think to look, and that's
Speaker 4: where they're betting. So that's that big buck bettings. Now,
Speaker 4: maybe next year he dies and it's not maybe another
Speaker 4: deer moves in. It is so, but some of these
Speaker 4: haunts that I find on leases and all that, on
Speaker 4: the lay of the lands, the same, if the winds
Speaker 4: right and the same, those deer are.
Speaker 3: Going to be there every year.
Speaker 4: Is the biggest spot that you have to go look at.
Speaker 4: But it might not be the caliber you want. So
Speaker 4: it's still a good spot. Still could be hunting every year.
Speaker 4: But now you talk about scrapes and rubs. You know
Speaker 4: how many scrapes are on this property. If I burned
Speaker 4: the day just to sit one to see what the
Speaker 4: buck was coming in That's why I put cameras on always.
Speaker 4: I need to know that that scrape has a deer
Speaker 4: I'm after on it. Now it's a whole other game
Speaker 4: now that scrape is important to me. So there's a lot.
Speaker 4: And I enjoy scouting and reading, so that's the big
Speaker 4: thing about it. I love poking around and was that
Speaker 4: is my even when I trapped, you know, I'd run
Speaker 4: a trap line up the middle of the river and stuff,
Speaker 4: and I just enjoyed being out claustrophobic so in the outdoors.
Speaker 3: And the more time spent out there, the better I feel.
Speaker 1: You mentioned hunting something like one hundred days a year.
Speaker 1: Was that including days that you're just scouting to or
Speaker 1: is there additional scouting.
Speaker 3: Day every day that I hunt?
Speaker 4: I mean I scout, so I don't do so when
Speaker 4: I used to years ago, hunting a lot of that public,
Speaker 4: I would hunt so hard and so often I'd almost
Speaker 4: be like a marathon runner.
Speaker 3: I need a cool down period. So what I would
Speaker 3: do after the season, and like you know, back then
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 4: December or whatever, it was snowy cold in Wisconsin, I'd
Speaker 4: have a cool out period and then what I would
Speaker 4: do is I would literally get headphones on some John
Speaker 4: Denver playing in my ears, and I would go to
Speaker 4: these square mile uh public grounds or some some big areas,
Speaker 4: and I would go in.
Speaker 3: And just just you know, now you're not hunting.
Speaker 4: You can go anywhere you want, look anywhere you want,
Speaker 4: and you're not concerned about having a set up here
Speaker 4: and there. You're just dissecting that area to learn that
Speaker 4: lay that land better. And that's how it would cool down.
Speaker 4: And I would enjoy doing that, and I would trap
Speaker 4: some coyotes and stuff, I mean, foxes back in the
Speaker 4: day afterwards, just to be able to gear back down.
Speaker 4: Now in the winter, now you got to go indoors
Speaker 4: every day and all that ship and to work. It
Speaker 4: was it was horrible for guys kind of likes to
Speaker 4: be out there. So even now, I just can't stand
Speaker 4: the office work. I'd rather be out on a tractor
Speaker 4: just getting dirty and and sweating up a storm and
Speaker 4: enjoying the enjoying with life life has to offering.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm right there with you, But yeah, it's what
Speaker 1: about thinking back on it another part of the Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to go.
Speaker 4: Back to equipment with I guess I'm so rough on
Speaker 4: that stuff that I need to pay a little more
Speaker 4: attention to that. I got a good friend who was
Speaker 4: going to bull shop for years. He looked at my
Speaker 4: my strings on my bowls and just just warn worn
Speaker 4: and shit and nicked up and all that. And I
Speaker 4: don't care about that. I can pick that ball up
Speaker 4: and shoot and hit what I need to hit. And
Speaker 4: like the pin last year I went, I drove out
Speaker 4: and I heard some shit rattling and it was my
Speaker 4: pin rattle or my sight rattle loose on my ball.
Speaker 3: I'm like shit, and I'm halfway out there. I got
Speaker 3: a run back.
Speaker 4: I could see kind of where it was at, so
Speaker 4: I had to tighten it back up and take a shot,
Speaker 4: make sure it was on, and then go back out.
Speaker 4: I'm hunting a little better equipment now, dovetails on there
Speaker 4: where it could be tightened up. I step on my
Speaker 4: bow when I'm getting on a tree a lot of times,
Speaker 4: and you know, just because I'm just such thick crap,
Speaker 4: and half the time the bowl might be halfway down,
Speaker 4: stuck in a limb to get down out of some
Speaker 4: of these trees.
Speaker 3: So it's I'm really rough on my equipment.
Speaker 4: Uh, And I need to really start paying more attention
Speaker 4: to making sure that that that's the final seal of
Speaker 4: the deal, which to me was like the least important,
Speaker 4: which should probably be one of even more important. If
Speaker 4: I was a shooter that guys were nowadays or some
Speaker 4: of these other guys were to do it, you would
Speaker 4: have no idea of the shit that I'd have on
Speaker 4: the wall if I had that talent to be able
Speaker 4: to shoot out to forty consistently and real good, I
Speaker 4: mean world class shit after world class ship. But I'm
Speaker 4: here a kid limited Back in the day, We're shoot
Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty five feet per second with a
Speaker 4: six inch arc at twenty yards, and you know, it
Speaker 4: was like and they're not very good of a shot
Speaker 4: and untuned bowl.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna I'm gonna start doing that.
Speaker 4: I think I'm gonna shoot a little bit more every
Speaker 4: not that I'm gonna enjoy it, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: have to force myself to be more consistent. But here's
Speaker 4: what happens to and what happened in the past on
Speaker 4: a bail or even when a recurve, I'm not that
Speaker 4: accurate of a shot. But when it comes time to
Speaker 4: shoot an animal, and there's the scariest part about it.
Speaker 4: After I shoot, I can't even remember putting a pin
Speaker 4: on an animal, which is a scoop man that I did.
Speaker 4: I brick a name, but I get it on there.
Speaker 4: And it's because I take instinctive takes over. I look
Speaker 4: at the spot and I just let her rip. I
Speaker 4: can shoot animals moving, jogging very you know. Occasionally I'll stop,
Speaker 4: but I really don't need to. And after this year,
Speaker 4: I think maybe I might have to start revisiting some
Speaker 4: of that. Some of that stuff get a little more
Speaker 4: consistent with. I went to a peep a few times
Speaker 4: and went away from it.
Speaker 3: What are people do for you?
Speaker 4: Then that goes to a mechanical and non instinctive and
Speaker 4: it will it will check you. But a lot of
Speaker 4: times I don't have that lousy extra second to check
Speaker 4: that ring in. I need to get her up, get
Speaker 4: her ripping it's happening, is coming through, and get that
Speaker 4: arrow off.
Speaker 3: So I had to struggle that way.
Speaker 4: But I'm gonna make sure that that maybe the strings
Speaker 4: are waxed and they're all not cut through, or you know,
Speaker 4: go back to what I used to do.
Speaker 3: Shoot at these an arrow.
Speaker 4: A lot of times I have on my quiver and
Speaker 4: when I get down in the morning, I just pick
Speaker 4: a leaf and and shoot hit the leaf. You know,
Speaker 4: you're on you know, and before you go out and
Speaker 4: you got a bail, just fling an arrow into it.
Speaker 4: Know everything's because that's the biggest thing. It's not gonna
Speaker 4: be your shooting ability. It's going to be your your
Speaker 4: equipment got knocked off a pan of sight or or
Speaker 4: something like that. So yeah, so preparedness. I think you
Speaker 4: want to trade some guys that are good hunters. All
Speaker 4: of these guys are anal son of a bitches about
Speaker 4: their equipment, being efficient using it and having your shit
Speaker 4: together way more than even like I am with some
Speaker 4: of the stuff with with the bowls and all that.
Speaker 4: So I think that's another big thing. That's uh, you know,
Speaker 4: a guy could uh could key on you. But a
Speaker 4: lot of guys have that ability and not the other
Speaker 4: soul lesser the two.
Speaker 1: You know. So here's another one that that you hear
Speaker 1: it get brought up a lot, and that's mental toughness.
Speaker 1: How how would you say mental toughness factors into your success.
Speaker 3: If at all? And how would you define mental toughness?
Speaker 4: Like, what does that look like for you, you're looking
Speaker 4: at the mentally toughest son of a bit you've ever
Speaker 4: seen in your life right here.
Speaker 3: So last year, i'll make a public right now.
Speaker 4: I came to the point where I know somebody was
Speaker 4: a really good hunter who went through a season that
Speaker 4: went the hell that gave up on it. Literally it
Speaker 4: was too much and gave up in a season. I
Speaker 4: got to that point like six times last year, and
Speaker 4: I pushed the accelerator pedal. I literally woke up at
Speaker 4: two different times hanging in my safety harness. I passed
Speaker 4: out cold and was hanging from my tree and my
Speaker 4: harness and crawled back up on the freaking stand.
Speaker 3: I had two torn rotator cuffs.
Speaker 4: I literally could not even get my backpack on without
Speaker 4: laying on the ground and getting into my stand from
Speaker 4: a tree.
Speaker 3: I literally passed out on the way in one morning.
Speaker 4: And up at in the dark, sat down next to
Speaker 4: the tree, lost my balance, sat down and woke up
Speaker 4: that sun up. I thought I was freaking freaking dead,
Speaker 4: and got back up and went up that freaking hill
Speaker 4: and got in that tree that I was supposed to
Speaker 4: be in early that day because I went in early
Speaker 4: because that buck was going through there. So as far
Speaker 4: as mental tough then you're gonna you're gonna kill me
Speaker 4: and drag me out of it. Was that's I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna get beat there because I'm gonna just push on.
Speaker 4: And I was that way probably in the left the
Speaker 4: next two you know, he get in a fight with me,
Speaker 4: I'm not losing, You're you're you're gonna kill me, or
Speaker 4: you're losing. I just will not give up. I've never
Speaker 4: been that that guy. I don't know where I got
Speaker 4: that from. My uh, I might have been my mother.
Speaker 4: To tell you the truth book, I just and there's
Speaker 4: some guys out in their mental toughness, but you can
Speaker 4: do this is what I just went through with that
Speaker 4: buck last year. That deer was one of the one
Speaker 4: of the biggest typicals. I got on the wall that
Speaker 4: that crushes people, crucifies them, and it did early on
Speaker 4: for me. And I learned that lesson so many years
Speaker 4: is because it's happened numerous times, so you.
Speaker 3: Learn to get through it. You almost have to.
Speaker 4: You build that that shield up. But I think that's
Speaker 4: the ship that gets you coming back for more.
Speaker 3: Man that.
Speaker 4: If everything's the same humdrum ship and it's in these
Speaker 4: deer would just roll over and you kill them. What
Speaker 4: what excitement isn't that in that deer?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's it's a big part of the game physical,
Speaker 4: you know, Elk hunting maybe so much if you're most
Speaker 4: guys are a couple of weeks a year hunting. The
Speaker 4: other guys that hunt really serious, like a lot of
Speaker 4: guys on these pages that really are, you know, they're
Speaker 4: all year hunters like I was. That's gonna some physical
Speaker 4: shit's going to come in there, But most these younger
Speaker 4: guys are probably in the in the shape to handle it,
Speaker 4: you know. But I would think more more of that
Speaker 4: mental toughness to to deal with the amount of failure
Speaker 4: you're going to deal. Here's another thing I always said,
Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever failed in anything in my life.
Speaker 3: If anything I set my mind out to do, I achieve.
Speaker 3: I get beat up.
Speaker 4: I might get knocked down a million times, and I
Speaker 4: end up getting up and winning the game. Whatever it
Speaker 4: is I've been at. This is one area I cannot
Speaker 4: win at. I get my ass kicked every freaking year.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if I like it or what,
Speaker 4: but it's it's the challenge and it stays challenging. The
Speaker 4: sport it's it's the ultimate freaking sport I think is
Speaker 4: to uh to hunt wait till with a bull it's
Speaker 4: just and then to go after caliber and specific animals.
Speaker 4: It's like matching your wits with something that's you know
Speaker 4: better than you are, so come up empty a lot,
Speaker 4: you know, but it's uh, that's that's what drives me,
Speaker 4: keeps me coming back for more.
Speaker 1: So when you have these moments where you pass out
Speaker 1: and have to climb back up into your tree, or
Speaker 1: you fall asleep next to the tree on the ground
Speaker 1: and you wake up and you're like, holy crap, I
Speaker 1: am war the heck out, or you miss that deer
Speaker 1: or whatever, all these things that can happen that go wrong,
Speaker 1: and you you don't quit.
Speaker 3: You never quit.
Speaker 1: You pushed through what's your internal dialogue, like do you
Speaker 1: I don't know if maybe you're not the same way appen.
Speaker 3: I'm a tough situation.
Speaker 4: That stuff has never happened to me before. That was
Speaker 4: this year that that happened, and it probably never happened
Speaker 4: to me again. But my train of thought was this
Speaker 4: was going to be my last probably season in the
Speaker 4: woods and I was going freaking out with a bang man.
Speaker 3: I was going to just hit it hard. I had opportunities.
Speaker 4: I could have came up with my biggest season this year,
Speaker 4: and I wanted to end up on that note.
Speaker 3: And I've failed at that.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I got a couple of kills, but
Speaker 4: not the ones that I wanted, had the opportunities that
Speaker 4: the one I wanted and screwed up.
Speaker 3: And you know, I could blame it on that.
Speaker 4: Physical letdown for me this year because it was it
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, I can't even explain to you, there's nobody,
Speaker 4: nobody in the right mind. If my wife would have
Speaker 4: known what have been going on, she'd probably would have
Speaker 4: tackled me and not let me out to freaking door
Speaker 4: what was going on. But I was set in my
Speaker 4: head that I'm going out and and in the condition
Speaker 4: I'm on, who runs down to Kentucky and hunts some
Speaker 4: ship like that in that heating and all these different
Speaker 4: states and just every day and not letting up a
Speaker 4: bit because I just wanted to. I wanted to run
Speaker 4: that ship right out of me and figure that and
Speaker 4: and towards the end I think I did. I think
Speaker 4: I started getting h a little better and getting a
Speaker 4: little more. I still ain't getting to sleep I needed,
Speaker 4: But it was the mindset I had, what do you
Speaker 4: want to go in a hospital bed and die or
Speaker 4: would you rather go go out swing? And what your
Speaker 4: what your passionate life was?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And then on top of it, designing like seven new
Speaker 4: freaking products myself.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, it's the neighbors will come by here
Speaker 3: occasional too.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: When I first retired for a retired guy, I got
Speaker 4: I camp every time we come by there. What you're
Speaker 4: up on the ladder, You're moving, You're doing shit. It's like,
Speaker 4: you know what am I supposed to do? Go sit
Speaker 4: in the house and freaking watch TV? I mean, this
Speaker 4: is getting boring, man. I got to get back into
Speaker 4: some some some living, you know. So I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: let the old man in.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hit it. Hired this year, hopefully that dear
Speaker 3: is back.
Speaker 4: We've got more new products again this year, and then
Speaker 4: this is forty I'll start back pedal a little bit
Speaker 4: off this business probably in the next couple of years.
Speaker 4: They got Cody's you know, running the operation there and
Speaker 4: my daughter and we've got some really good people now
Speaker 4: for white tail addictions in place that part of it's
Speaker 4: I'm I'm able to kind of start letting loose a
Speaker 4: little bit, but it was tough to do for perfectionists.
Speaker 3: Nothing's ever good enough, right.
Speaker 4: So in that point and maybe we'll get get to
Speaker 4: do a little bit more with the Way from the
Speaker 4: grand Is. But I'm telling you right now season comes,
Speaker 4: I'm you can bet you can bet your your bottom dollar.
Speaker 4: I will be out there and I will be hitting
Speaker 4: as hard as I can, I guess looking for that
Speaker 4: next next big hit, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I've got a couple final kind of
Speaker 1: rapid fire questions. So so I'll give these to you
Speaker 1: quick and you can give me kind of a quick
Speaker 1: first thought answer on it, and we'll knock these out fast.
Speaker 1: Here for you, what is a purchase you've made of
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars or less that has most positively impacted
Speaker 1: your hunting success?
Speaker 3: So what's been like you? I got to answer to quick.
Speaker 3: I gotta think about this purchase or less.
Speaker 1: So your best one hundred dollars or less purchase for
Speaker 1: hunting gear some kind that either made it more effective
Speaker 1: or made it more enjoyable or something for gear yeah,
Speaker 1: what's one budget gear that actually.
Speaker 4: In the archery industry? Now it's on our hundred bucks.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to think, getting hard to find that. God,
Speaker 4: I'm stumped that that is like an all awakening type.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not supposed to. I'm not supposed to answer
Speaker 1: questions for you, but something just popped in my mind.
Speaker 1: Would it be your face mask? Like, I know that's
Speaker 1: a little thing that has seen make dem I make
Speaker 1: that face mak I sow them up myself. I still
Speaker 1: got and I got the recipe to do it, to
Speaker 1: bring it commercially. But it's like, there's really not a
Speaker 1: lot of money on face mask. And what I'll do
Speaker 1: is everybody starts using them, They'll start killing all kinds
Speaker 1: of ship too. So I figured I just stood on that.
Speaker 1: But so one of my most important things, that's the
Speaker 1: key thing. Optics again, Uh, you know, binocias are very
Speaker 1: very I don't know. I can't understand the guys how
Speaker 1: guys can even hunt without a set of mon ocuras
Speaker 1: on them. But guys do because they want to take
Speaker 1: the extra weight and maybe they got great vision. But
Speaker 1: even when I had great vision, it's it's still an
Speaker 1: important thing. But yeah, you answered it for me, but.
Speaker 4: It didn't cast it doesn't They don't cost the time
Speaker 4: because I just karing old blind up to shoot through
Speaker 4: material and get some you know, I sold too, by
Speaker 4: the way, and very talented in that area, you know.
Speaker 4: So yeah, well that that that you answered that for me,
Speaker 4: because I can't think of anything.
Speaker 1: That's like I said, how about how about this? Here's
Speaker 1: a slightly different version of that. If you had to
Speaker 1: give up all of your high end gear, like all
Speaker 1: of the tree stands you've made yourself, all of the
Speaker 1: equipment that you've designed over the years, the bow you
Speaker 1: bought or got, the all your top tier stuff. I
Speaker 1: know you've got a lot of high quality hunting gear,
Speaker 1: but if you had to get rid of all the
Speaker 1: top tier stuff and replace it with bare bones, budget
Speaker 1: friendly stuff.
Speaker 3: So if you had to like go to Walmart and
Speaker 3: just get Walmart Camo, a Walmart bow, a Walmart.
Speaker 1: Everything else, all your stuff was going to be entry
Speaker 1: level except for one category of things, Like you could
Speaker 1: have one high end thing. Would you want a high
Speaker 1: end optic, a high end bow, high end tree stand,
Speaker 1: high end Camo, high end something else.
Speaker 3: What would be the one thing that you might have to.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to say this's gonna and I'm not
Speaker 4: saying it because it's loaded and I have a tree
Speaker 4: stand company. But I've said this before, even when I
Speaker 4: had a wood tree stand back in the day, starting
Speaker 4: that I would rather tick to the woods with just
Speaker 4: my stand and equipment then my bowl. I think for me,
Speaker 4: it was the most important piece of equipment that was
Speaker 4: with a two piece climber back in the day and
Speaker 4: to this day will be the same. I could go
Speaker 4: get a bowl the bowls I shoot, because the arrows
Speaker 4: I shoot, they freaking come in Andy, laugh at what
Speaker 4: the hell is that.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, that's all this is doing. It's
Speaker 3: going to seal the deal.
Speaker 4: I just got to take this arrow out of this
Speaker 4: this bowl that's freaking twenty five years old that I've
Speaker 4: been shooting forever, fifty four pounds and I got to
Speaker 4: hit that target at fifteen yards.
Speaker 3: I can do it.
Speaker 4: I can't go in the woods ever again with a
Speaker 4: noisy tree stand or clinking and clanking around, or having
Speaker 4: to worry about shifting my weight. When the deal is
Speaker 4: sealed and it's in the moment of truth is there,
Speaker 4: I can't could never go back to that. Once I
Speaker 4: got through that, dude, it was and did not have
Speaker 4: to worry about because that's what it was back in
Speaker 4: the day.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm talking decades ago.
Speaker 4: Is that I would get on these big animals and
Speaker 4: stuff and so intimate, and it's like ten fifteen yard
Speaker 4: shots a pressure deer and man your arrow rest or
Speaker 4: some little noise, A scuffed a scuff on material. One
Speaker 4: material is one hundred percent different than the scuff of
Speaker 4: another material. Why does that one light up a deer
Speaker 4: and one knot The squeak of aluminum in a tree
Speaker 4: stand lights up generations of white tail. I don't know
Speaker 4: what it was about them, it's it'll light them up
Speaker 4: and get them heading.
Speaker 3: For the hill.
Speaker 4: So and it's so I would say that a bowl.
Speaker 4: I could go pick up a bowl anywhere. I could
Speaker 4: pick up a recurve and shoot a recurve consistent. I
Speaker 4: could go pick up a thirty pound fiberglass bowl like
Speaker 4: we started out with back in the day, and I
Speaker 4: know I can go out and kill a deer with it.
Speaker 3: So I think I would. I'd want my stand equipment
Speaker 3: to be what I've been hunting out of.
Speaker 4: My could be the older line of stands that don't
Speaker 4: have to be, you know, the newer line of stands.
Speaker 4: But I really liked, you know, the newer stuff that
Speaker 4: we're doing now.
Speaker 3: So no, no, it does. And I can understand, I
Speaker 3: can understand your perspective to a quality stand or way
Speaker 3: to get up there, you know, quietly effectively. That's that's
Speaker 3: so important, all right. Last question, if you had to.
Speaker 1: Distill your approach to deer hunting or or pick your
Speaker 1: single most important piece of deer hunting advice that you
Speaker 1: want to share with the world, and if you had
Speaker 1: to put it on a billboard on the side of
Speaker 1: the road next to like a Cabellas or bass pro shops,
Speaker 1: that everyone's going to drive past this billboard on their way.
Speaker 1: What would that most important message be, that that phrase
Speaker 1: or few words or that one thing you want to.
Speaker 3: Leave with people. That's easy, Hunt like a wolf. And
Speaker 3: that's exactly what I do. Man.
Speaker 4: I put my nose into the wind, quartering it, and
Speaker 4: I'd go after him and hunt like a wolf. Every
Speaker 4: day is different, the game's different. Go get them, Just
Speaker 4: get out there and mix it up.
Speaker 3: Man. Yeah, Yeah, that's a that's a great line.
Speaker 1: That really is I love it, So, Andrea, where can
Speaker 1: folks where can folks go to see the show and
Speaker 1: the content you guys make these days? What should folks
Speaker 1: be looking for from Lone Wolf Custom Gear? Is there
Speaker 1: anything you want to tell people about as far as
Speaker 1: product or content?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this year we got We've got a whole
Speaker 4: new line of sticks coming out. We have a we
Speaker 4: had a new stand come out to Hybrid.
Speaker 3: You can see that.
Speaker 4: You can go on to our YouTube channel and see
Speaker 4: all the White Tail Addictions programs from and you'll want
Speaker 4: to see some of those old original number ones and that.
Speaker 4: But this year we'll have eighteen episodes. Something we've done
Speaker 4: this year different than others we've partnered. You can see
Speaker 4: who the sponsors are. We partnered with some different people.
Speaker 4: A lot of our guys are serious guys and a
Speaker 4: lot of them use a lot of the same They've
Speaker 4: all keyed in or adapted to a lot of these
Speaker 4: sponsors that we've had. It's it's stuff that we've been
Speaker 4: using already. So it's an easy an easy fit. So
Speaker 4: you'll be able to see eighteen episodes of White Toil
Speaker 4: Addictions on there. I have a new broadhead. We'll be
Speaker 4: sending some commercials out with now that's totally different way
Speaker 4: out from what's out there. And aluminum broadhead, believe it
Speaker 4: or not, that's you'll see my kill from this year,
Speaker 4: two hundred and sixty five pound buck and it's at
Speaker 4: fifty four pounds. It's the hardest hitting head you're gonna
Speaker 4: ever see. And when you see the kill, you'll see
Speaker 4: why through both shoulders just about came out the other
Speaker 4: side of the animal and the thing let's out a
Speaker 4: roar like it was hit with a freight train.
Speaker 3: So we also have.
Speaker 4: Those roadshows going. You'll be able to, you know, check
Speaker 4: the schedule on that. That's Cody's and Jake's gig there.
Speaker 4: We're still accept thing and will other applicants for white
Speaker 4: tail addictions. So if somebody wants to get the cell filming,
Speaker 4: we have a new camera, arms, even smaller, lighter, everything
Speaker 4: we got as small as lazy and getting out. I
Speaker 4: apologize we didn't get all these new products out early
Speaker 4: at the ATA show like we do, but from here
Speaker 4: on in we don't do that anymore because that everybody
Speaker 4: copies what we do at the ATA, and because we're
Speaker 4: hunters and we're not prepared there and it takes us
Speaker 4: a long time to get that out the market. Other
Speaker 4: companies are able to take our stuff and get it
Speaker 4: there quicker. So now what we're doing is you're going
Speaker 4: to see it now here in the next month. Some
Speaker 4: of the new stuff, you know, groundbreaking equipment, and it'll
Speaker 4: be we'll have a year on them. And also it's
Speaker 4: it's a kind of a weird, weird world out there.
Speaker 3: But what else was there? I think that's it. We've
Speaker 3: got Lone Wolf custom gear. We're bringing the brand back
Speaker 3: Lone Wolf for another line of stands coming.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of good things coming. I think
Speaker 4: we do have a page mobile Hunters United. You can
Speaker 4: go on there and chat with a lot of similar
Speaker 4: minded guys, a lot of serious hunters. You can talk
Speaker 4: about equipment, talk about hunting. That's that's amazing. I sit
Speaker 4: back and just read a lot of that, and it's
Speaker 4: amazing some of the guys. A lot of guys are
Speaker 4: really attuned to so back in the day when I
Speaker 4: was all equipment to all about equipment and changing up
Speaker 4: gadget guys are like that. Now it's all hunting and
Speaker 4: equipment sold. They're orientated. But and then podcast like your guys.
Speaker 4: You know, we're listening to them all the time, enjoying them.
Speaker 4: It's a whole different world now. We don't sit in
Speaker 4: front of a TV anymore or watch those hunting shows.
Speaker 4: We sit and listen, listen to what's going on out
Speaker 4: there from the guys out there getting it done or
Speaker 4: in the field are attempting to But yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 4: all you guys are doing so and that you.
Speaker 3: Take the time to listen. Joined here now, this is
Speaker 3: this has been great.
Speaker 1: I we got everything we could have hoped out this conversation,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: insights and folks are gonna folks are gonna learn some
Speaker 1: interesting lessons from this one.
Speaker 3: So thank you, Andre. I appreciate you making the time
Speaker 3: for it. Can't wait to see how this season goes
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: All right, and that is a wrap. Thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me today. Hopefully you learn something here as we
Speaker 1: try to dive into the mindset of the White tail
Speaker 1: Master known as mister Andre to Cuisto. I appreciate Andre's time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your time, and until next time, stay wired
Speaker 1: to Hu