Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and today in the show, Tony Peterson and
Speaker 1: I are breaking down five hard earned white tail lessons
Speaker 1: but the two of us were recently reminded of and
Speaker 1: that we believe can help you become more successful this season.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
Speaker 1: to you by First Light. And I'm back. I'm back
Speaker 1: from whatever thing Tony has been saying I've been doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's been, uh, filming a fantasy
Speaker 1: movie with Spencer, or collecting seashells or god knows what,
Speaker 1: but I'm back from it. And hunting season has kicked
Speaker 1: off for me and my partner in crime, Tony. So
Speaker 1: today we are back together and we're here to discuss
Speaker 1: what we learned from our first hunts of the year.
Speaker 1: We've had some highs, we've had some lows, and we've
Speaker 1: had a whole bunch of what i'd call learning opportunities
Speaker 1: in between. And I think Tony, I think you'd agree
Speaker 1: that there's been some hard earned lessons here. Early on
Speaker 1: like right out the gate that we can you know,
Speaker 1: as an individuals, but then I think also for everybody
Speaker 1: else listening, I think we can all learn from some
Speaker 1: of these things and take it through the rest of
Speaker 1: the Deer season. So we're gonna talk through our first
Speaker 1: couple hunts of the year. You know, that would be
Speaker 1: my early season hunt in Idaho with further and your
Speaker 1: hunt Tony in Wisconsin, or your hunts I should say,
Speaker 1: with your daughters. Um, And then what I want to
Speaker 1: do is as we use these stories, as we talk
Speaker 1: through these stories, we're gonna highlight and break down maybe
Speaker 1: four five, six major lessons that we can taking these
Speaker 1: that we can take from these hunts, and then you know,
Speaker 1: used throughout the rest of the year. So that's that's
Speaker 1: my game plan, Tony. Uh, good plan, bad plan? Are
Speaker 1: you indifferent? Are you already bored? What do you think? No?
Speaker 1: I think it's a good plan, man. I Uh. I'm
Speaker 1: just continually amazed at how often I bump into something
Speaker 1: out there that just teaches me a valuable lesson. And
Speaker 1: I think you and I have both gone through some
Speaker 1: stuff already this season. That's that's worth sharing in this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh. It's it's both depressing and encouraging that we
Speaker 1: can You know, I've been hunting since I was three
Speaker 1: or four. You've been hunting for gosh knows how long,
Speaker 1: and we're still learning stuff or being reminded of stuff,
Speaker 1: or bumping up against something and saying, damn it, what
Speaker 1: do we do now? You just never stop learning. So
Speaker 1: that's that's a good thing. I think. Oh I do.
Speaker 1: I do too. I mean, I think you know. There's
Speaker 1: one one reminder you get when you're when you create
Speaker 1: content in this space, you know, doing the job that
Speaker 1: you and I do. It's like you hit March and
Speaker 1: you're like, I don't know what to talk about. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to write about. And then you hit
Speaker 1: September and you're like, I have a million different ideas
Speaker 1: I want to cover because you're out there living it
Speaker 1: and there's so many of those things that happened to
Speaker 1: you were like, man, you're just just such a valuable
Speaker 1: lessons and in that encounter or that experience or that
Speaker 1: blood trail or whatever, it's just this is this is
Speaker 1: a wild time year. I'm excited for this Mark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Hey, real quick, I just remember before we
Speaker 1: get into these hunts. I do have to make a
Speaker 1: couple of plugs. Uh, first off season eleven of meat Eater,
Speaker 1: the newest season, the brand new season of meat Eater
Speaker 1: is going to be Oh gosh, I'm gonna get real
Speaker 1: trouble here if I get the date wrong. So I
Speaker 1: better get this date right. Um. The new season is
Speaker 1: going to be launching, uh on October twenty six. Yes,
Speaker 1: October twenty six, the new season will be launching. But
Speaker 1: here's the kicker. This is different than before. The new
Speaker 1: season is only going to be available on the meat
Speaker 1: Eater website. It's gonna be free. You don't need a
Speaker 1: new account for anything, Like, you don't have to pay
Speaker 1: for anything. You just need to be signed into the
Speaker 1: Mediator website and then you can watch that new season
Speaker 1: for free October. And in the weeks leading up to that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be putting season seven, season eight, season nine,
Speaker 1: and season ten all on the website to watch. Two.
Speaker 1: So that's plug number one. If you want to see
Speaker 1: some cool new Mediator stuff that's coming your way, to
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com to miss anything on that one, Tony,
Speaker 1: you're you're on the same emails as a mean they
Speaker 1: get that right. I think you nailed it, buddy. Okay,
Speaker 1: plug number two and this one I know pretty well
Speaker 1: because I've been so involved in it. Uh my show
Speaker 1: Deer Country, my brand new whitetail show Deer Country. We
Speaker 1: now have three. No, by the time you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: there will have been four episodes up on the meat
Speaker 1: Eater YouTube channel. So you've heard me mention the Washington
Speaker 1: d C. Hunt. You've heard me mentioned the Arkansas back
Speaker 1: country hunt. You last week hopefully saw me chase white
Speaker 1: tails with a handheld decoy and the great planes. And
Speaker 1: this week's episode, I went up to Maine to learn
Speaker 1: how to track deer in the snow, um and learning
Speaker 1: under the tutelage of how blood just like a legend
Speaker 1: in that world. Uh, really really interesting hunt Like. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of great learning opportunities in that one. So
Speaker 1: highly recommend you check that stuff out. Tony. Pretend I'm
Speaker 1: not here. You don't need to, you don't need to
Speaker 1: butter me up, you don't need to fluff me. Can
Speaker 1: you give us your review so far off Dear Country?
Speaker 1: Or what should people expect or be looking for if
Speaker 1: they haven't watched it yet? I think they should check
Speaker 1: check it out because it is not like any other
Speaker 1: You're Hunting show out there, And I truly mean that that.
Speaker 1: The concept is great and it's just a different thing
Speaker 1: than the industry has been delivering for a long long time.
Speaker 1: So they should check it on. On that recommendation alone,
Speaker 1: there you go, I think, I think that's accurate, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth watching. Like you said, it's different.
Speaker 1: It's not a bunch of big trophy bucks delivered on
Speaker 1: a platter. It's all about new places, new styles of hunting,
Speaker 1: and learning and uh that's what we try to hear
Speaker 1: on the podcast too, So I'm proud of it. Well,
Speaker 1: and the good thing about it too is you're right.
Speaker 1: It does highlight the reality of so many different hunting
Speaker 1: situations based around white tails, and we tend to get
Speaker 1: so myopic and almost like xenophobic over our own white
Speaker 1: tail hunting, and we forget that there's this huge world
Speaker 1: out there of people hunting all these different styles and
Speaker 1: all these different places. And it's kind of nice to
Speaker 1: be reminded of that because if you consume a lot
Speaker 1: of hunting media, you you tend to see hunts that
Speaker 1: occur in the same places in the same style because
Speaker 1: you know, usually they're filmed or whatever, and it's like
Speaker 1: you kind of got to go to some of these
Speaker 1: places to get an easy hunt on film, and that's
Speaker 1: what happens over and over again. And this is I
Speaker 1: would not say that, this is that. I would say
Speaker 1: this is a different thing. Yeah, we don't need any
Speaker 1: more hunts over a food plot in Iowa, do we Noh? Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So speaking of that, then let's let's continue talking about
Speaker 1: some different kind of stuff because the hunts that you
Speaker 1: and I are talking about today are not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that gets shown on TV either. Um, so
Speaker 1: you want to kick it off, you you had a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting stuff happened in your first couple of hunts.
Speaker 1: Can you can you fill me in on what happened
Speaker 1: and what you learn from it? Should we start with
Speaker 1: a good story? Yeah? Yeah, good story first, because because
Speaker 1: I know we're gonna we're gonna break bad here eventually
Speaker 1: on this one. Uh yeah, you know. Was we go
Speaker 1: over to Wisconsin a lot, and my my little girls
Speaker 1: started hunting last year because there's no minimum major limit
Speaker 1: over there, and you know, they were nine last year,
Speaker 1: and my one daughter killed the dough and my other
Speaker 1: daughter killed a dough in a little buck, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, my plan this year was to get him
Speaker 1: over there every weekend I could that I was gonna
Speaker 1: be home, and my one daughter, who hadn't killed a buck,
Speaker 1: she was up first. And so we had gone over
Speaker 1: in the summer and put up some blinds and some
Speaker 1: cameras and caught some trout and kind of made a
Speaker 1: made a couple of weekends out of it. And when
Speaker 1: we went over there the friday before the opener, it
Speaker 1: was hot, like I don't I don't know if you
Speaker 1: dealt with this level of heat out and Idaho on
Speaker 1: your hunts, but it was it was like humid hot,
Speaker 1: which is the worst you know when you're when you
Speaker 1: go out in the morning and you're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: you know, opening day of deer season, but it's like
Speaker 1: sixty five degrees with like a hundred percent humidity. It
Speaker 1: just feels it feels weird, you know, like is it
Speaker 1: not not what you typically expect. But I knew from
Speaker 1: running cameras, I knew we had a decent chance of
Speaker 1: of running into a door or a buck. And she
Speaker 1: was she was hunting anything that didn't have funds or
Speaker 1: anything that didn't have spots, and we sat, you know,
Speaker 1: opening day, we sat you know, basically four hours in
Speaker 1: the morning, four hours in the evening, never saw a deer,
Speaker 1: which is really typical up there where we're hunting. And
Speaker 1: then the following morning we got in super early because
Speaker 1: I think, I keep thinking it's more more important to
Speaker 1: let let our spots settle down, especially when I take
Speaker 1: these girls out, because we have to go into a blind.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like we're super mobile, so the
Speaker 1: spot the blind is in, I need to preserve that
Speaker 1: movement around there as much as possible. And so they
Speaker 1: get they get kind of pisted about it, but I've
Speaker 1: been making them get up earlier and earlier and earlier,
Speaker 1: and we get in there way before first light. And
Speaker 1: you know, the second morning of the season, we did
Speaker 1: that and just randomly looked up and here's this bike
Speaker 1: buck walking in from like twenty yards out. And my
Speaker 1: daughter that was with me is like really good at
Speaker 1: rushing her shots, like you never know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: And so our our deal is, you know, like I
Speaker 1: want you to aim at them and then you tell
Speaker 1: me when you're ready. Then I'm going to take the
Speaker 1: safety off because there uses a crossbow and then you
Speaker 1: you choose your shot. So I'm kind of eyeball in
Speaker 1: the situation until they square up up in their broadside
Speaker 1: or quartering away, and you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a little team effort that way, because if I didn't
Speaker 1: do that, especially with this daughter, she'd probably shoot the
Speaker 1: moment he stuck his nose. Always like to just get
Speaker 1: it over. And so this buck walks into like twelve
Speaker 1: yards and poses up up and I take that safety
Speaker 1: off and I'm I'm like, I'm thinking, you know, she's
Speaker 1: gonna take a little time or whatever. And I popped
Speaker 1: that safety off, and that crossbow goes off like point
Speaker 1: one seconds later, and all I hear is that bolt
Speaker 1: slam into a tree and I just go, honey, you
Speaker 1: you have to take your time and aim. And she's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: the crosshairs were right on its chest. It was perfect,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't think so I thought she
Speaker 1: missed completely. So we have this little argument in the
Speaker 1: blind because she's like, I think we could go get
Speaker 1: him right now. And when he ran off, you know,
Speaker 1: I lost sight of him right away. But it's sounded
Speaker 1: like he fell over. So I was like, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: I am wrong, Maybe she zipped it right through him.
Speaker 1: And so we gave him a half hour and got
Speaker 1: up and as soon as we got out there, I
Speaker 1: could see blood all over the brush, and so I
Speaker 1: let her start blood trailing and he only made it
Speaker 1: maybe maybe fifty yards, and she had hit him perfect.
Speaker 1: But it was like in my in my head with her,
Speaker 1: and if you met her, you'd be like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: get I get his concern a little bit because she's
Speaker 1: real squirrely, but she's just perfect, just lay stems. So
Speaker 1: that was that was a lot better than the second
Speaker 1: week and when I brought my second daughter over, which
Speaker 1: we can talk later, but it really was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a good lesson on two fronts, right, Like
Speaker 1: I always preach about hot weather, cold weather, windy, rainy
Speaker 1: would ever go, especially in the early season, because those
Speaker 1: deer used to that and it was not nice deer
Speaker 1: hunting weather. And the other thing was, you know, you
Speaker 1: we're putting in enough time in these spots and and
Speaker 1: trying to preserve the movement so much that I feel
Speaker 1: like it's just paying off in you know, not like
Speaker 1: tons of deer sightings because we'd never have them there
Speaker 1: but good encounters and it just it just worked out
Speaker 1: for us. So so tell me a little bit more
Speaker 1: about you know, this is something you teased up before
Speaker 1: we start recording. You were talking about how the amount
Speaker 1: of time you let something settle matters on a hunt
Speaker 1: like this, even and you you kind of I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting mentioning the fact that this warm weather,
Speaker 1: cold weather, whatever, you know, get out there. But I
Speaker 1: think one thing that I have been guilty of sometimes
Speaker 1: is that when the weather is not that good, if
Speaker 1: it's like really warm or lousy, like a day you're
Speaker 1: talking about, I'll go in late. I'll be like, they're
Speaker 1: not going to move to the last half hour or
Speaker 1: something like that. So like those of the days are
Speaker 1: tempted to get in late or you know, whatever might be.
Speaker 1: If it's raining and nasty, you might be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get in there an hour before dark,
Speaker 1: you know, or before daylight in the morning. I'll get
Speaker 1: out there right at daylight and just go out because
Speaker 1: I don't want to get silk and wet um. But
Speaker 1: I know you're someone who sometimes advised, you know, putting
Speaker 1: in that time regardless. Yeah, I mean I think I
Speaker 1: think it's so important man, And I learned this, you know,
Speaker 1: at least I should say. This is sort of drilled
Speaker 1: home in my head when I go on these hunts
Speaker 1: where you know, you're hunt in public land somewhere and
Speaker 1: you don't have anything else to do, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: am I I'm better off being in a tree if
Speaker 1: the if the wind is gonna work for me, then
Speaker 1: being back at camp and you know, you start killing
Speaker 1: deer at off times. And you know, when I when
Speaker 1: I elk hunted earlier in September, I was primarily sitting water,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking about that, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know when a bull is gonna get thirsty and
Speaker 1: come in, but I know if I'm back at camp
Speaker 1: taking a nap, it's gonna suck if that's when he
Speaker 1: comes in. And so it's like, I'd rather just be
Speaker 1: out there as much as possible. And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: it's different. I can go sit all day and I
Speaker 1: can you know, not go too crazy. When I've got
Speaker 1: ten year olds with me, there's a different consideration. But
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get them to learn that lesson to that,
Speaker 1: like you know, yeah, you might be tired at nine
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, but why not just sit till
Speaker 1: ten just in case, let's figure out a way to
Speaker 1: make it happen. And the more that we do that
Speaker 1: or you know, I know they don't like getting up early,
Speaker 1: but man, I'd rather get in there pretty early. Not
Speaker 1: as early as you did on the back forty when
Speaker 1: we filmed together. That was ridiculous, but like somewhat some
Speaker 1: happy medium there in between where you're not pushing it,
Speaker 1: Like you're like, I feel really good about us getting
Speaker 1: in super quiet, and that's that's the other thing, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about getting in the morning or getting
Speaker 1: out a little bit later in the afternoon, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're like, man, you know, I'm kind of pushing
Speaker 1: it here. You're gonna go faster, and you're gonna make
Speaker 1: more noise, and you're gonna notice fewer things, right, Like
Speaker 1: you're not going to notice the signs the same way
Speaker 1: you might run into one walking in, or you're just
Speaker 1: you're just not in the zone quite as well as
Speaker 1: what's just make mistakes to Like, if you're rushing, you're
Speaker 1: more prone to all sorts of mistakes. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you forget stuff, you step on sticks. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's not a good state to be in when you
Speaker 1: want to go out there and really not have your
Speaker 1: presence be known by everything. Yeah. Yeah, so true. So
Speaker 1: if we're if we're tying a bow on something here
Speaker 1: that you know we should think about for the rest
Speaker 1: of the year, it's always give yourself some extra time
Speaker 1: and don't assume the worst. Always assume you know what
Speaker 1: this might work out. I'm going to give myself proper time.
Speaker 1: Don't give into that temptation to say it's not going
Speaker 1: that great, I'll go I'll sleep in for half hour more.
Speaker 1: It's not that great, I'll lay in the couch for
Speaker 1: half an hour more. The half hours always more valuable
Speaker 1: in the field, whether even if it's just because it
Speaker 1: gives you a better state of mind. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's so true and something that's hard to stick with,
Speaker 1: especially as you go throughout the year and you get
Speaker 1: more and more exhausted. It's easy to start, you know,
Speaker 1: giving into that. Yeah, And I mean, you just feel
Speaker 1: better about yourself, even even if you go out and blank.
Speaker 1: If you're like I'm hunting until ten o'clock, in the
Speaker 1: morning because I feel like there's my chance. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, if you if you're like I'm
Speaker 1: going for a six mile run after we do this,
Speaker 1: I don't like I could feel okay about myself if
Speaker 1: I quit after three I'm like, well, it's still ran
Speaker 1: three miles. But that's not what I'm there for. You know, like,
Speaker 1: you feel better if you just get it done and
Speaker 1: go do go do the work you need, and that's
Speaker 1: that's part of being successful as a deer hunters. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna this, this is my plan and I'm going
Speaker 1: to see it through until something tells me I really
Speaker 1: should you know, abandon it and do something else? Yeah? Yeah, true.
Speaker 1: Well what happened next? What was the what was the
Speaker 1: next weekend? You want to get into that one? I
Speaker 1: think so so. Uh like a good dad, I pulled
Speaker 1: my daughter out of school early so we could drive
Speaker 1: over and sit, and then I took her out of
Speaker 1: school the next day. Uh, so we could make a
Speaker 1: long weekend out of it. Because you know how it is,
Speaker 1: once you get into October, you're you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff going on for work in the in the field,
Speaker 1: and not necessarily enough time to take the kids out,
Speaker 1: and so I said, let's make a long weekend of
Speaker 1: it and go see what we can do. And we
Speaker 1: got over there, man, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: the first night we had to do on a fun
Speaker 1: come in close like eight maybe eight ft from the blind,
Speaker 1: and they winded us right before they came out. But
Speaker 1: it was a really cool encounter because it was a
Speaker 1: beautiful night, and you know, by then the weather had
Speaker 1: gotten really good, like it was, you know, sixties and
Speaker 1: kind of overcast, and you know, in the morning it
Speaker 1: was maybe like fort and so it was it was
Speaker 1: gonna happen. And then you know, the next day of
Speaker 1: rain starting, the rain started move in. We still we still,
Speaker 1: we saw some deer got really close to shooting a
Speaker 1: dough and just didn't didn't quite step out where we
Speaker 1: needed it too. But up there, you know, if you
Speaker 1: have deer encounters every day, I feel really good about it.
Speaker 1: So then we went into the third morning and it
Speaker 1: was pouring rain. We got up and there was just
Speaker 1: it was coming down. But I told my daughter, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get wet going through the woods, but we
Speaker 1: get into the blind will be pretty dry. And it
Speaker 1: was supposed to end at like eight thirty nine o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, and I was like, we need to
Speaker 1: get out there and just be there for a while.
Speaker 1: And we get out there, you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: those mornings it takes four ever to get light out
Speaker 1: because it's overcast and rainy and you're in the woods.
Speaker 1: And finally got light out nothing and she was pretty tired,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just randomly, maybe forty five minutes
Speaker 1: into shooting light I looked up and there's a little
Speaker 1: five pointer coming in and he he either winded us
Speaker 1: a little bit or he saw uce because and I
Speaker 1: I think he saw us because the the light was
Speaker 1: so low and so even it was just not great
Speaker 1: scenario to be in a blind, like they're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to see him there pretty well. But you know,
Speaker 1: he's a little buck and he wasn't that smart, so
Speaker 1: he started get a little wiggy, and she got on
Speaker 1: the crossbow and he kind of started to trot a
Speaker 1: little bit, and I just murped at him, and he
Speaker 1: stopped twenty yards quartered away, and I took her safety off,
Speaker 1: and a couple of seconds later, she shot, and I
Speaker 1: heard that that bolt zipped through him and he bounced
Speaker 1: off there, and I was like, man, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that just happened. And I asked her and she said
Speaker 1: it felt really good, you know, like I think I
Speaker 1: hit him really well. And so I thought, man, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have another blood trail and be back in town
Speaker 1: eating pancakes. And we gave him, you know, some time,
Speaker 1: and got out there because I really needed I was
Speaker 1: really fighting the urge to go right away because of
Speaker 1: the rain, but the light just was like not great
Speaker 1: like he was. It was light enough to see anything,
Speaker 1: but looking for like backs of blood on the wet
Speaker 1: ground while it was raining. I was like, let's just
Speaker 1: let's give it time. We don't we don't need to
Speaker 1: rush it. So we got out there and started looking
Speaker 1: and there's blood everywhere, and I'm like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: pretty good. But then we hit that point of the
Speaker 1: blood trail where it was like a hundred yards and
Speaker 1: I just told her. I was like, honey, I don't
Speaker 1: think I don't think this is going to break the
Speaker 1: way we think it's going to now, because this is
Speaker 1: not making me feel great. And then you know, he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: do we push it or do we go back? But
Speaker 1: the rain was heavy enough and we had a good
Speaker 1: enough blood trail where I was like, I was really conflicted,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I don't really know what to
Speaker 1: do here, Like I don't want to push it, but
Speaker 1: I know this blood is going to wash away, and
Speaker 1: then I'm mad at myself for even hunting in it,
Speaker 1: you know, because then you're like, if we lose this
Speaker 1: deer because of these decisions, I'm like, this that really sucks.
Speaker 1: And so real quick stepping back one half second, that
Speaker 1: the dilemma is you can follow right now because you
Speaker 1: have the good blood, but there's the risk that the
Speaker 1: hit wasn't as good as you thought. That deer might
Speaker 1: still be alive and you might be pushing that deer
Speaker 1: and then you'll never find it. But on the flip side,
Speaker 1: if you wait, that deer might bet up and die
Speaker 1: and you'll find them up there. But the risk is
Speaker 1: that if you wait, the blood trail might disappear with
Speaker 1: the rain, and then you've nothing to go off of
Speaker 1: and you have a really hard time finding. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the two. You know, possible paths and passable sets
Speaker 1: of outcomes in these kind of rainy situations, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a hard decision. Well it is, and what kind
Speaker 1: of ultimately, you know, put its finger on the scale there.
Speaker 1: For me was the fact that this is like Northwood's thick, nasty.
Speaker 1: This is not like a nice deciduous forest where grid
Speaker 1: searching is going to be like a real good possibility.
Speaker 1: And I knew if we lost that blood trail, it
Speaker 1: was really going to be like a needle in a
Speaker 1: hay stack type of thing, because this is even the
Speaker 1: higher woods they're they're just thick and nasty. They're like
Speaker 1: good grouse cover type of stuff. And I knew the
Speaker 1: direction he was heading. There's an enormous swamp there. You know,
Speaker 1: it's part of cat tails, part alder thickets, part willows,
Speaker 1: just just like rough stuff to to a grid search.
Speaker 1: And so I said, we're gonna go slow, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna stay on this blood and see how it shakes out.
Speaker 1: And you know, you get two hundred yards into it
Speaker 1: and you go, now, I know this is not what
Speaker 1: I thought it was. Right. There's no way she shot
Speaker 1: him through the ribs the way we were hoping. But
Speaker 1: you've got good blood, and so you keep pushing it
Speaker 1: and sneaking along. And it was It was really rough
Speaker 1: because you know, a couple of hundred yards into it
Speaker 1: and you're soaked, and it's like there's you know, every
Speaker 1: every advancement you make on the trail, you're like, well
Speaker 1: this this feels good because we're still on blood, but
Speaker 1: we're going farther and the odds of us running across
Speaker 1: this dear dead, you know. And so what I started thinking,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, but listening to this, they're going, I
Speaker 1: was a muscle hit And that's what I started thinking.
Speaker 1: She hit it too low, or she hit it too
Speaker 1: far forward, and you know, hit a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: muscle right away, and you get a lot of that
Speaker 1: promising bright red blood, and then you start to lose
Speaker 1: it a little bit. And I would say probably, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe between like four hundred and five yards
Speaker 1: into it, I started finding just like clotted up blood
Speaker 1: on stuff that he would brush up against. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is this does not make
Speaker 1: me feel good. And it hadn't stopped raining when I
Speaker 1: was supposed to, and so we got into that swamp
Speaker 1: and I lost it completely, Like I'm like, I got
Speaker 1: no more blood and I was just standing there and
Speaker 1: this happens a lot. I'm just standing there and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at her, and she's soaked and she's cold, and
Speaker 1: it's been hours, and that buck got up and ran
Speaker 1: away through that swamp like he wasn't even hurt. And
Speaker 1: what he went through I was. I stayed. I had
Speaker 1: her stay there, and I went to get on it
Speaker 1: again and and I was like up to my nuts
Speaker 1: and swamp water, I'm like, I can't even go anymore.
Speaker 1: And it was just like he went through there like
Speaker 1: he had no problem. And so we ended up trying
Speaker 1: to get around there and and pick him up again
Speaker 1: and lost it again. And it was just like one
Speaker 1: of those deals where you're like we're blood trailing or
Speaker 1: you know, now we're just like looking for sign on
Speaker 1: a deer that I don't think it's dead. And it
Speaker 1: just was one of those deals where it was like
Speaker 1: just not fun. It went it went from real fun
Speaker 1: to real frustrating and disappointing, and it was a long day.
Speaker 1: How did how did she take it? Like, what did
Speaker 1: you say to your daughter to get through something like that?
Speaker 1: You know, she was really beating up on herself on
Speaker 1: the blood trail, especially, you know, being out there and
Speaker 1: being soaked and just knowing because she was she went
Speaker 1: from you know, like she went on the roller coaster. Man.
Speaker 1: She was she was convinced she smoked it. And then
Speaker 1: when we started a greanell that this wasn't the case,
Speaker 1: I think she started to accept it and she was
Speaker 1: really bummed, like really bummed. But you know, by the
Speaker 1: time we got back and got dried out, you know,
Speaker 1: she was asking me about the deer I've hit loss.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't we have how much time do
Speaker 1: you have? You know, like, if you do this stuff
Speaker 1: long enough, that happens, And you know, I think with
Speaker 1: her especially, I think you'll leave a real mark. And
Speaker 1: I think she'll think long and hard about her shots
Speaker 1: in the future, and I think she'll take better shots
Speaker 1: and it. And it's not like this wasn't a good
Speaker 1: shot to take. I think it just happened fast, and
Speaker 1: I think she rushed it. And she's she's usually really
Speaker 1: solid with that stuff, like she's killed deer in turkeys
Speaker 1: and usually pretty good at it. And I think this
Speaker 1: one she'll go, I'm gonna make sure that I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit that deer right where I want to from
Speaker 1: here on out, And so it was, you know, it
Speaker 1: went okay. So what's the what's the takeaway from this one?
Speaker 1: Is it to do with the shot? Is to do
Speaker 1: with the tracking? Like, is there any major lesson you're
Speaker 1: reminded of or that you can learn that we can
Speaker 1: all think about from this, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think the lesson is, you know, you you can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I hit like this, you need to wait six
Speaker 1: hours or eight hours, or hit like that you need
Speaker 1: to wait this amount of time or this kind of
Speaker 1: blood or this kind of reaction, and all of that
Speaker 1: stuff is okay. But really, what this, you know, the
Speaker 1: post shot recovery boils down to is experience level. And
Speaker 1: when you go through something like this, it just reminds
Speaker 1: you that even you know, even I've been on I
Speaker 1: don't know how many blood shils now, you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: between me and all my buddies and everybody, like you
Speaker 1: still go through those emotions and that those times on
Speaker 1: a blood trail where you're like, I don't know. And
Speaker 1: what I felt the worst about on this one was
Speaker 1: like I felt like I had to push it because
Speaker 1: of the rain, and I'm norm only really cautious about
Speaker 1: blood trails like I'd rather give them way more time
Speaker 1: than not enough. And on this one, I was just like,
Speaker 1: should I even have been hunting in this stuff? You know,
Speaker 1: like should I? Because I know one of the things
Speaker 1: that I can't stand is when I feel rushed on
Speaker 1: a blood trail. And you know, when you walk out
Speaker 1: there and it's pouring rain. Unless you're a total idiot,
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, well, if we shoot one and it
Speaker 1: doesn't go perfectly, we're gonna be rushed on this blood trail.
Speaker 1: So my my biggest regret there was not really factoring
Speaker 1: that in and and deciding whether it was worth it
Speaker 1: to hunt in those conditions or not. So what do
Speaker 1: you stand on that, now, Tony, As far as do
Speaker 1: you hunt when you know there's gonna be a steady
Speaker 1: rain or not? I mean that's something that for a
Speaker 1: long time I thought, oh for sure, because I grew
Speaker 1: up in the school of of a certain person who
Speaker 1: reaches always hunting in the rain, it's great hunting. And
Speaker 1: and so I started hunting all the time in the
Speaker 1: rain and saw a lot of good actions. So I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I'm into it. But then you know,
Speaker 1: the more you have bad things happen. Like what you discussed.
Speaker 1: The more I start to think more and more about, gosh,
Speaker 1: what happens if I do have that blood trail disappear.
Speaker 1: And so I've I've gone back and forth and back
Speaker 1: and forth and back and forth on it myself. Um,
Speaker 1: when I'm in a spot where I'm close to home
Speaker 1: with with a buddy that has a tracking dog, that
Speaker 1: makes me a lot more comfortable because they can do
Speaker 1: very well in the rain. Actually, Um, but I'm curious
Speaker 1: what your take is because I don't I don't have
Speaker 1: a I don't have a conclusive answer for every situation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of up in the air for me, still
Speaker 1: on kind of situation dependent. Yeah, you know, for me,
Speaker 1: I'm the same way. I love hunting in the rain.
Speaker 1: I just you know, the deer moving the rain big time.
Speaker 1: But I'll probably be a little more cautious because this
Speaker 1: was This wasn't like a nice drizzle where they're gonna
Speaker 1: come on the beans and it's gonna be awesome. This
Speaker 1: was like pretty heavy and it was probably too heavy
Speaker 1: to take a ten year old in, you know. Like that.
Speaker 1: That was my lesson there. If it was me, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting out there, I would hunt that situation,
Speaker 1: but I would be I'd be like it's twenty yards
Speaker 1: or in or I'd be really really selective. And this one,
Speaker 1: I don't. You know, I'm hoping this buck shows back
Speaker 1: up on camera. I'm hoping he didn't die. But I
Speaker 1: suspect what she did was just shot a little too
Speaker 1: far forward, and so she probably wasn't off by much.
Speaker 1: It might have been a couple inch difference or something
Speaker 1: like that. But it doesn't matter, you know, Like this
Speaker 1: is this is the outcome that happened from it, and
Speaker 1: so it just does make you think, like, and it
Speaker 1: might be different for me. If I took her to
Speaker 1: my buddy's place in southwestern Wisconsin with nice open woods
Speaker 1: and deciduous forests, that might be a different deal than
Speaker 1: being up in northern Wisconsin where it's just thick and nasty,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you might have the same consideration.
Speaker 1: You know, if you live in Nebraska, you might hunt
Speaker 1: in the downpour all the time and never worry about
Speaker 1: losing a deer, But if you hunt Louisiana, you might
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, that's a good point. Well, ah, that
Speaker 1: is the toughest of lessons, right there, No doubt about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a pain. And what really sucks
Speaker 1: is that little five point was like the buck we
Speaker 1: were hunting. I was like, that's the guy who's living here,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the one we're gonna kill. And
Speaker 1: now we don't have anything to work with, so I
Speaker 1: gotta wait for somebody else to move in. But you know,
Speaker 1: it is what it is. It's it's a learning experience
Speaker 1: every year, and that one, that one was a lesson
Speaker 1: that she was going to learn eventually and I was
Speaker 1: gonna be reminded of and it just happened to happen
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah. Well, I hope things trend back up
Speaker 1: for you and your daughters here in the coming weeks.
Speaker 1: Do you wanna want to hear about my story and
Speaker 1: lessons learned? I do. I can't wait. All right, So
Speaker 1: Idaho year three. I've done full recaps of the previous
Speaker 1: two years of hunts here on the podcast, so any
Speaker 1: long time listeners should should know what's happened here. But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a really quick cliff notes to
Speaker 1: lead you up to this point. Because when I set
Speaker 1: out for the first hunt, first day of our season,
Speaker 1: I said, all right, this is like day sixteen, and
Speaker 1: our buddy Sam who tagged along for some of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you mean day sixteen? This
Speaker 1: day one. I'm like, no, this is like day sixteen
Speaker 1: because we hunted two different times the previous two years.
Speaker 1: And I feel like now today is like the accumulation
Speaker 1: of all these other hunts leading up to it, Like
Speaker 1: I've been whittling away, whittling away of figuring out, figuring out,
Speaker 1: and finally like I know the spots within the spots,
Speaker 1: I have a plan A, and I have a Plan B,
Speaker 1: and I know where these things are and like I've
Speaker 1: got it nailed finally. Okay, That's how I thought going
Speaker 1: into this. And um so year one, the very quick
Speaker 1: cliff notes like me and my buddy Josh further showed
Speaker 1: up to this brand new piece of public that I
Speaker 1: had just like Blast one night in summer was the
Speaker 1: extent of experience I had out there in Year one.
Speaker 1: We start hunting it and right away like we're seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of deer and like we have some close
Speaker 1: calls with nice bucks. But then very quickly like we're
Speaker 1: seeing people like every night walking past us or walking
Speaker 1: or we're walking past them or we're seeing trucks at
Speaker 1: the trailheads, and like every day there was some kind
Speaker 1: of bump, some kind of running with folks, and like
Speaker 1: very quickly, dear behavior change. I saw a couple of
Speaker 1: really nice bucks, but then had like a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids drive UTVs all around me and like just destroy
Speaker 1: the whole area. So that was year one. It was
Speaker 1: promising in a way because we saw a good deer
Speaker 1: and a bunch of deer, but discouraging because like hunting
Speaker 1: pressure like blew up everything. We thought we might be
Speaker 1: able to make a move on. That was year one.
Speaker 1: Year two we go back in and we said, all right,
Speaker 1: hunting pressure is a problem. We're gonna just get past them,
Speaker 1: like we're gonna get deeper and both like farther in
Speaker 1: from the access points and then also deeper towards the
Speaker 1: deep deep bedding cover that's along this river corridor. And
Speaker 1: we start doing that, and right away we uh start
Speaker 1: you know, seeing dear, we kind of edge in a
Speaker 1: little bit further. Each day we have close calls. Josh
Speaker 1: had several nice close calls with good bucks. Missed a
Speaker 1: buck twice. I had to throw that. I always have
Speaker 1: to throw that in is that why he isn't on
Speaker 1: this podcast. Yeah, he didn't want to relive that again.
Speaker 1: And then I pushed in discover this new betting here
Speaker 1: on these islands and had you know, two different shooter
Speaker 1: bucks within the arrangement behind brush and saw a bunch
Speaker 1: more movement that you know, really gave me a firm
Speaker 1: idea of okay, like we're so close, but we just
Speaker 1: ran out of time. So that was year two. Again
Speaker 1: though we're seeing people like there were folks going in
Speaker 1: two miles with us. I couldn't believe it. There was
Speaker 1: you know, bumped into folks here and there, trail cameras,
Speaker 1: so we knew pressure was still a thing, but we
Speaker 1: were we were in it, like we were getting deep
Speaker 1: enough that we were still in it. So year three
Speaker 1: I've said, okay, I know we have to get into
Speaker 1: where we kind of finally settled on there at the
Speaker 1: end last year. Um, I know it'll be deer moving
Speaker 1: back there. I know their patterns. We just have to
Speaker 1: tweak things. We are so close. So this summer I
Speaker 1: went back in there and did a little more scouting,
Speaker 1: scouting out a few more areas, went further than I've
Speaker 1: gone in the past, kind of the spots that I
Speaker 1: had observed last year from afar, I went and walked
Speaker 1: on foot and so, okay, this is why the deer
Speaker 1: were doing this thing, and okay, this is why they
Speaker 1: were doing that other thing. So, for example, at the
Speaker 1: end of year two, I had been on working this island,
Speaker 1: and you might remember this, Tony, I was texting you.
Speaker 1: I was like, I had these bucks come through heading
Speaker 1: kind of northwest to southeast and the head of that
Speaker 1: way in the evening, and then the morning they came
Speaker 1: up the opposite side of the island, like seventy yards
Speaker 1: across this little opening and went back the other way.
Speaker 1: And then the next day they went back that way again.
Speaker 1: And so I was trying to figure out, like, are
Speaker 1: they gonna come on the north side of the island
Speaker 1: to the south side of the island, and why did
Speaker 1: they always kind of hook down at the end of
Speaker 1: this island. I didn't quite know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: So the summer, when I back in there, I walked
Speaker 1: it all and I found that there's this channel that
Speaker 1: where I've been crossing. It was pretty narrow and relatively
Speaker 1: easy to cross, but if you kept going down to
Speaker 1: the east, that channel went from being like a creek
Speaker 1: to all of a sudden expanding into like a great
Speaker 1: big backwater and basically impassable, like they could if they wanted.
Speaker 1: But none of these deer, we're going to go across
Speaker 1: this like fifty yard sixty yard wide big pond when
Speaker 1: they could just cross here at the beginning of that
Speaker 1: little shallow spot. And what I realized when I got there,
Speaker 1: I saw that, and then all this sign showed like
Speaker 1: oh wow, all of those deer, they're they're going on
Speaker 1: opposite sides of the island, but when they get to
Speaker 1: this point, they're all coming. They're all funneling down to
Speaker 1: this crossing. So I realized, like, all right, I found
Speaker 1: the spot within the spot here. And then I found
Speaker 1: like a similar kind of thing, different specifics, but another
Speaker 1: one of these like spots within the spot on another
Speaker 1: section of the public and another zone I kind of
Speaker 1: explored a little bit. Year one and two, I found
Speaker 1: another one. So I had like three of these spots
Speaker 1: that were fine too, And I thought this summer, so
Speaker 1: coming into the hunt, when I talked to Sam, like man,
Speaker 1: this is day sixteen. I got him dialed. I knew, like,
Speaker 1: all right, I've got this Plan A that is like
Speaker 1: keyed up, and then that that doesn't work, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got this other Plan B that I think is just
Speaker 1: going to be a great opportunity to and if that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, I still know this other spot that I've
Speaker 1: really you know, worked and figuring it out, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna be there. I should at one other point, which
Speaker 1: is that because of all that hunting pressure we experienced
Speaker 1: in year one and year two, that first week, we
Speaker 1: got to thinking that this might be like the opening
Speaker 1: week effect that you've experienced and I have experienced, and
Speaker 1: a lot of folks I think over the last I
Speaker 1: don't know, five plus a or something like that. As
Speaker 1: as kind of this early season opener hunting has gotten
Speaker 1: more and more popular. It seems like everybody's out there
Speaker 1: opening day in these early states, Nebraska, Kentucky, North Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, wherever.
Speaker 1: If you've got that early September thing, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of rare still, right, Not all states are open, so
Speaker 1: everybody floods to these states to hunt those first few days.
Speaker 1: So I thought, how about I just devoid that first
Speaker 1: week of crazy, come back two and a half three
Speaker 1: weeks later and come in like late ish September, when
Speaker 1: maybe all these guys that have been hunting or off
Speaker 1: to other states now or they're off to hunt Elk
Speaker 1: or Mulety or something, and maybe we'll have the woods
Speaker 1: to ourselves now and hopefully, you know, with three weeks
Speaker 1: under their belts, maybe these deer have like they got
Speaker 1: blown up that first week and got really pressured, but
Speaker 1: if it died off the next two two and a
Speaker 1: half weeks, maybe they'd get back to being comfortable again,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'd have this shanger a lot of
Speaker 1: type situation. That was my hope and my theory. So
Speaker 1: we decided to show up on September I don't know,
Speaker 1: or something like that to hunt that like third and
Speaker 1: fourth week of September. So those are my thoughts letting
Speaker 1: into it, Tony and listening to this, does it just
Speaker 1: make you laugh? Are you just sitting Chuck? You're just
Speaker 1: like following I feel like you're just following my thought
Speaker 1: process from like the last couple of years. And I
Speaker 1: know how it shakes out. I know how it chok
Speaker 1: out for you, and I know how it chook out
Speaker 1: for me. And man, there is just a saturation point
Speaker 1: out there with pressure that it takes a while to overcome.
Speaker 1: And I know your thought process seems sound when you're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's been a couple of weeks the opening, the opening
Speaker 1: week for first should have died down and things should
Speaker 1: be back to normal. That has not been my experience
Speaker 1: in some of these early opener states. It's like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a month later, maybe five weeks later, you can
Speaker 1: start getting back on them in a in a natural
Speaker 1: kind of movement pattern. But man, it's it's tough when
Speaker 1: you hunt those states that open early in the in
Speaker 1: the velvet pressure is real, and it's just it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there pushing them around. It
Speaker 1: changes things in a hurry, and it changes them for
Speaker 1: a while. Yeah, And and that's that's what we came
Speaker 1: to see two. Unfortunately, because that first night I went
Speaker 1: to this that location I told you about with the
Speaker 1: island and the backwater and everything, and I felt really
Speaker 1: good about it. And Josh went into this location last
Speaker 1: year that heat hunted and fine tuned and had these
Speaker 1: close calls over the nice Buck. We both went and
Speaker 1: there feeling really good. But I got a couple pieces
Speaker 1: of bad news leading up to it, Like a day
Speaker 1: or two before this, another hunter that I bumped into
Speaker 1: their last year and then exchanged phone numbers texted me
Speaker 1: and said that, man, it doesn't look good in there.
Speaker 1: I've been in there. There's very little sign um and
Speaker 1: there had been like some development on neighboring private lands,
Speaker 1: some new stuff had been built, and he was just like,
Speaker 1: I just don't know what's going on. Doesn't look as good.
Speaker 1: Because I was a little concerning. And then when we
Speaker 1: drove up one of the access points, not the one
Speaker 1: that we're going to use, but one of them had
Speaker 1: three trucks, and so that made me think like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: that doesn't bode well for my theory. Um. But we
Speaker 1: go in, I go to this spot I set up,
Speaker 1: feels great. I was very confident going in. We brought
Speaker 1: e bikes this year so that we could come in
Speaker 1: and out faster and hopefully lower impact on these deer
Speaker 1: when we're rolling by them in the mornings or late
Speaker 1: at night. Um, because it's like a two plus mile
Speaker 1: previously have been a hike, So we were doing like
Speaker 1: two miles in the morning, two miles out midday, two
Speaker 1: miles in the afternoon, two miles out in the evening,
Speaker 1: so we're doing eight mile days. So this year we
Speaker 1: brought quiet cats and that was huge, really really nice
Speaker 1: to have that. Uh So we get in there. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling great. I'm buzzing along on my bike, just like
Speaker 1: thinking about how nice it's gonna be to roll one
Speaker 1: of these bucks out here tonight on my little trailer
Speaker 1: that I've got back in the truck, and YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and uh get in the tree and I see one
Speaker 1: dough for the entire night, one dough previously in this spot.
Speaker 1: You know, you're seeing fifteen twenty plus deer, bunch of bucks.
Speaker 1: One dough on our first hunt. Josh same thing. First
Speaker 1: hunt of his in this general area last year, he
Speaker 1: saw like two shooters a bunch of deer. He saw nothing,
Speaker 1: zero deer. That's day one. I'm gonna fast forward and
Speaker 1: move quickly through some of these events here because day
Speaker 1: two we have very similar situations. I decide based on
Speaker 1: what I saw Day one and based on kind of
Speaker 1: some funky wind stuff that was happening night number one. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing I did have that that made
Speaker 1: me a little bit up in the air was that
Speaker 1: when the wind died, I had like a weird kind
Speaker 1: of like thermal thing with my wind. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be going southwest, and every once in a while
Speaker 1: it would push east, and I think that was what
Speaker 1: I found is in some of these spots along this river,
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen all the time, so it's like you
Speaker 1: don't you don't know it until you're in this situation.
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to figure out why or what
Speaker 1: features of the land causes, but in some areas you'll
Speaker 1: get this effect where the current of the river kind
Speaker 1: of pushes your wind along. It seems to be like
Speaker 1: a very low wind speed um in certain like if
Speaker 1: you're deep enough or close enough to this like canyons wretch,
Speaker 1: it pulls. In other places it will be true to
Speaker 1: the forecast, and in this particular area that particular night,
Speaker 1: it just gave me a handful of times where it
Speaker 1: pulled more from an easterly direction, and that wasn't good
Speaker 1: for the movement I was expecting. So after that first night,
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, it might have been bad wind ish,
Speaker 1: but also like that was not the way it should
Speaker 1: have panned out. I should have still saw more than that.
Speaker 1: Josh still should have been seeing something with a good
Speaker 1: wind he had, So I decided to one second, mark,
Speaker 1: can we can we hit on that point with the
Speaker 1: river quick? Because I think I think something there that's
Speaker 1: worth talking about is you know, probably with that the
Speaker 1: river situation, it's probably the temperature differentiation. Don't we think
Speaker 1: like the water is colder and it's that's probably have
Speaker 1: an effect on the wind there, or do you think
Speaker 1: it was a train thing? Well, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely a combination of those things, right, because there's like
Speaker 1: a big hill above the river. So you've got two
Speaker 1: different things possibly happening. You've got a normal thermal dropping
Speaker 1: off of these hills right in the evening of things
Speaker 1: cooled down, so you have that possible thermal feature, uh,
Speaker 1: And then you do have like you said, the water
Speaker 1: temperature difference that's gonna pull things um. And then you
Speaker 1: also have just like how like how might a south wind?
Speaker 1: So this hill is big hill, like almost a canyon.
Speaker 1: It's like a one I don't know how to describe.
Speaker 1: It's like almost a cliff on the north side of
Speaker 1: this river corridor, but nothing to the south. So if
Speaker 1: you have a pure south wind, it's like coming from
Speaker 1: the south and hitting that cliff and then is that
Speaker 1: cycling back and doing funky things too. Um, so there's
Speaker 1: like three different possible things happening. And over the last
Speaker 1: three years I've seen I've seen the number of different
Speaker 1: funky things, but the most consistent thing that I've realized
Speaker 1: is that if you have a very low wind, more
Speaker 1: often than not, it's gonna suck. It's gonna turn into
Speaker 1: a wind that kind of goes with the current of
Speaker 1: the river which is going from east to west. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we don't it's really hard to
Speaker 1: pin that stuff down, but you know how common it
Speaker 1: is to like encounter that right And you know, we
Speaker 1: we talked about thermals, and we write about thermals, and
Speaker 1: you know, anybody who's ever hunted in the mountains probably
Speaker 1: understands thermals better than somebody who hasn't, because they're so
Speaker 1: extreme typically in the mountains. But even even when you
Speaker 1: do that and you're in a situation like we were
Speaker 1: this year when we were out hunting where it was hot,
Speaker 1: like really hot for out conditions that especially at the
Speaker 1: elevation we were at, and it wasn't getting that cold,
Speaker 1: you didn't get that huge rush of thermals in the
Speaker 1: afternoon coming down. It took a while for it to switch,
Speaker 1: so you had this like because it wasn't such a
Speaker 1: drastic change in temperature. It was more of a like
Speaker 1: a subdued thermal, which like was terrible because you couldn't
Speaker 1: count on it for a long time doing you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, you're supposed to be rushing down the
Speaker 1: mountain here pretty soon, and it's doing all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy stuff. And I see that in the white tailed
Speaker 1: world to where it's like if your temperatures aren't, like
Speaker 1: if it's not really changing throughout the day, sometimes you
Speaker 1: don't get like really reliable thermals. If it's you know,
Speaker 1: only drop in a few degrees is the sunsets, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a thermal, but it's not the same thing
Speaker 1: as if it was really gonna get cold and you know,
Speaker 1: drop ten or fifteen degrees in the next hour and
Speaker 1: a half or something. And that's that's like a spot
Speaker 1: situational type of thing, and it saves a lot of
Speaker 1: freaking deer. Yeah, And it's yes, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: predict to like you can't really peg like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: going to happen this situation or not. It's you have
Speaker 1: to assess quickly and then make a gut decision on
Speaker 1: like is this gonna stick? Like is it gonna is
Speaker 1: this what it's gonna keep doing? And if so, then
Speaker 1: you need to adjust. But then there's always like I
Speaker 1: always worry, like you find like a weird wind thing
Speaker 1: that's going on, and then you're stuck thinking, Okay, do
Speaker 1: I trust that this funky thing that's happening right now
Speaker 1: is going to continue? Or in half hour is it
Speaker 1: going to switch back to the predicted wind? And then
Speaker 1: I'm going to be like s O L because I
Speaker 1: didn't set up for that. That's I don't know the
Speaker 1: right answer, just making a gut decision in the moment
Speaker 1: based on you know, experience in the conditions. I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's it's so it's so tied to so many
Speaker 1: different things, right. It's tied to the temperature and probably
Speaker 1: partially to the seasonality of it, but also, like you said,
Speaker 1: if you have one weird terrain feature around you, like
Speaker 1: I've I've got a spot in North Dakota that I've
Speaker 1: killed some bucks on and it it's like next to
Speaker 1: a huge rock wall, like I don't know how tall
Speaker 1: it is, but if you fell off, you'd be dead
Speaker 1: if you hit the rocks halfway down, Like it's it's tall,
Speaker 1: and it's always kind of a crapshoot when you get
Speaker 1: in there, like, well, how is that going to affect
Speaker 1: the wind? Because depending on which way the wind coming from,
Speaker 1: it might be blowing over you and you might not
Speaker 1: have any wind hardly, or if it's coming the other
Speaker 1: way and it's it's blasting against that rock wall, it's like, man,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't even be here, and it's you know, that's
Speaker 1: only one little small spot there. I bet you if
Speaker 1: you were, you know, five yards away from that, you'd
Speaker 1: have vastly different experience with the same wind. True, I
Speaker 1: think that. I think the takeaway there is just do
Speaker 1: not trust your wind forecast as gospel ever. Yeah, always takeaway, yes, always, always,
Speaker 1: always be monitoring as you're going along, and and be
Speaker 1: willing to adjust and accept your new reality. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a big one right there. Right, So excuse me,
Speaker 1: so back to my next day and kind of a
Speaker 1: big kind of I don't know if this is a
Speaker 1: lesson I learned, but this is like a thing I
Speaker 1: kept reminding myself of on the trip, so like a
Speaker 1: like a maxim or a like don't ever forget this
Speaker 1: mark as I'm talking to myself is like, you have
Speaker 1: to be willing to pivot fast on these kinds of hunts.
Speaker 1: When I only have a way, it's six days. You
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time to ride a dead horse.
Speaker 1: So that first day it was dead. This other hunter
Speaker 1: was telling me how was dead. I had one trail
Speaker 1: camera back there that had been dead leading up to this.
Speaker 1: Josh hunts his honey hole, and that's dead. And even
Speaker 1: though I had been in love with this place leading
Speaker 1: up to the hunt, I just had a lot of
Speaker 1: red alarm bells going off. And I, like the previous
Speaker 1: me would have been like a guy, that place is
Speaker 1: so good, you gotta you gotta go on there more.
Speaker 1: But I decided to pull the plug, and I decided,
Speaker 1: you know what I got, you gotta pivot, Like, there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things here that do not seem
Speaker 1: to be where you want them to. You need to
Speaker 1: find where the deer are. Now. The pressure thing must
Speaker 1: be more than you thought it was gonna be. These
Speaker 1: deer have been impacted more than you were hoping they
Speaker 1: would be. You gotta find him. So day two I
Speaker 1: went past my night my day one location, worked my
Speaker 1: way um into a new area about about a half
Speaker 1: third to a half mile further than my original location.
Speaker 1: Scouted my way into a spot and found a spot
Speaker 1: that was about is deep from like distance between cover
Speaker 1: and like the distance from river to food was um,
Speaker 1: but gave me a little bit of an observation zone.
Speaker 1: So this is the zone I've never been into before.
Speaker 1: I could see, like in a couple of different windows
Speaker 1: out to a good distance. I had a number of
Speaker 1: decent runs that were all kind of converging in this
Speaker 1: um I don't know how to describe it. There's like
Speaker 1: this little pockety open stuff and then it pinches down
Speaker 1: to thick cedars heading towards these crop fields like four
Speaker 1: yards away or something. And I thought, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: a nice observation location. If deer are in this new chunk,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some that passed through here. And all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do on this day was like, I
Speaker 1: just want to know I'm back in the deer. Where
Speaker 1: are these deer? Where have they been pushed to? So
Speaker 1: my theories that they were pushed, you know, another third,
Speaker 1: two a half mile back into this stuff. So now
Speaker 1: we're like two and a half miles from the nearest
Speaker 1: road access long story shore. In this I sat at
Speaker 1: the ground because I didn't find the right tree, decided
Speaker 1: I wanted to be in the right spot. And I
Speaker 1: saw almost nothing. Again, I saw one little tiny buck
Speaker 1: like a year probably a year and a half old,
Speaker 1: maybe the worst two year olds you ever saw. Um,
Speaker 1: but that was it. And so again, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff that should be good. Like in previous years, you
Speaker 1: hunt this kind of place, this far back off the road,
Speaker 1: you'd be seeing a lot of deer. Again, nearly blinked.
Speaker 1: Josh stuck it out kind of near his little honey hoole.
Speaker 1: He tweaked it a little bit, but again blanked or
Speaker 1: saw like one spike or something. So again, now I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, you gotta pivot. You can't ride a dead horse.
Speaker 1: Day three now I'm in real desperate search mode, like
Speaker 1: this is this is not at all like what we're expecting.
Speaker 1: There not any of the places we thought they'd be.
Speaker 1: I haven't been seeing fresh tracks, I've not seen a
Speaker 1: lot of droppings. I've not seen a single rub, nothing
Speaker 1: like no early velot rubs, nothing like that. So Day three,
Speaker 1: I go hard. I go all the way to that
Speaker 1: area that I hunted day two and then decide, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this. There's like there's old two tracks
Speaker 1: and stuff that cut through a lot of this public
Speaker 1: land because ranchers run cattle and stuff, there's some of
Speaker 1: these places certain times of the year. So I decided, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ride my bike as far as I can
Speaker 1: take it, which is about two and a half miles.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get off the bike, lock it up, and
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna walk this two track all the way
Speaker 1: to the river. I'm gonna go all the way. Is
Speaker 1: is far away from the food as I can possibly get.
Speaker 1: And what I've learned is that they're they're bedding along
Speaker 1: this river. So I'm gonna go right to the river
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna work that river up. And I
Speaker 1: had a unique situation here, and this brings me to
Speaker 1: my third I think it's my third major lesson, major takeaway,
Speaker 1: which is do not ignore tracks. And this is something
Speaker 1: like early on my deer hunting career. I didn't give
Speaker 1: him much attention at all. Trail cameras are very sexy,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But the more and more
Speaker 1: I'd spend time in the woods in different places, the
Speaker 1: more I find myself falling back on tracks just like
Speaker 1: they're the thing. They're the thing. And I had a
Speaker 1: perfect situation here because the night prior it rained a bunch,
Speaker 1: and so I knew, okay, that big rain hit. Anything
Speaker 1: I see today is going to be from the last
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen hours. I can I can know with
Speaker 1: one certainty where the deer are right now, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna walk until I find where there are significant numbers
Speaker 1: of deer. And so I pushed. I mean I went
Speaker 1: back into some good stuff. I went way back to
Speaker 1: the river, and I crossed all these different tracks, like
Speaker 1: two tracks, sandy areas where like you could very very
Speaker 1: clear clearly see if there's any deer. I watched this
Speaker 1: two track the whole way I biked out, and there
Speaker 1: was like zero deer for almost three miles, Tony, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were gone, gone, And so I just kept going
Speaker 1: and I kept pushing. I walked into stuff that like
Speaker 1: the last two years, I never would have touched with
Speaker 1: a ten foot poll because I've been so paranoid I
Speaker 1: was gonna spook deer, so paranoid I blow it up.
Speaker 1: But I just had came into this with this idea
Speaker 1: like you're I'm not gonna settle, Like I'm not just
Speaker 1: gonna ride something because it looks good. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: ride something because it should be good. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: until I know there's deer and tracks. We're gonna tell
Speaker 1: me that story. And so I walked and walked and
Speaker 1: walked and worked my way past this whole island that
Speaker 1: last year had been loaded with deer. Nothing. This year
Speaker 1: worked my way aving further. Now I'm three miles back
Speaker 1: and I get to this next island, and this was like,
Speaker 1: this is the farthest point from the access points. Like
Speaker 1: if you came in from the way we were coming,
Speaker 1: you'd be about three point two miles or something. If
Speaker 1: you came in from the farthest other side, the far
Speaker 1: western side, you'd be another three point two miles to
Speaker 1: come from that way. So this is like as as
Speaker 1: deep as you can get from east to west waves
Speaker 1: and this last island, I'm thinking, well, this has got
Speaker 1: to be where they're at. There should be deer, here.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get to. I don't know anyone
Speaker 1: crazy enough from white tail hunting perspective out here that
Speaker 1: would do this. And so there was a channel where
Speaker 1: some parts of the year there was water running through
Speaker 1: it off of the river, but right now it was dry.
Speaker 1: It was covered in rocks on the bottom, but there
Speaker 1: was kind of raised banks on either side. And so
Speaker 1: I walked the not on the island, but the main
Speaker 1: land side where you could see trails and stuff where
Speaker 1: deer head you know, dropped off the bank and got
Speaker 1: into the channel to cross, and you could just perfectly
Speaker 1: see where deer historically had gone down because there's this
Speaker 1: beaten down you know, kind of gullies, little trails where
Speaker 1: they coming off that cut off bank, and you can
Speaker 1: see where there's there's nothing, there's nothing. And then tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks, tracks,
Speaker 1: all right, my first like good fresh set of tracks.
Speaker 1: And based on what the wind was doing, I knew
Speaker 1: like with this kind of river poll with the current,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I gotta get in the west
Speaker 1: side of this island. So I'm gonna scout my way
Speaker 1: all the way down this and check and see if
Speaker 1: this continues to be a thing. Like, are there more
Speaker 1: dear crossing onto this island different spots, And once I
Speaker 1: get all the way to the west side, I'll have
Speaker 1: I'll know what's going on, and I'll be west of
Speaker 1: where this wind is gonna pull. And so I worked
Speaker 1: my way down this channel, and like, here's a crossing
Speaker 1: with a bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a
Speaker 1: bunch of tracks. Here's a crossing with a bunch of tracks.
Speaker 1: I would say a bunch. I'm not saying like dozens
Speaker 1: of deer, but like a few deer per track per crossing,
Speaker 1: a few deer per crossing, which was like monumentally more
Speaker 1: than anywhere else. It's a long story short. I felt
Speaker 1: great about this. I finally thought, all right, like I
Speaker 1: found the deer there in this farthest nastiest part and
Speaker 1: their back bedded on this like willow nasty thicket island
Speaker 1: right in the edge of the river set up, and
Speaker 1: ended up feeling like I was in the game and
Speaker 1: thought I was gonna like make it happen. I had
Speaker 1: a little buck pop out of the island, go across.
Speaker 1: Another little buck popped out of the island, goes across.
Speaker 1: Another little buck pops out of the island goes across.
Speaker 1: I see a couple of dolls come out and do it.
Speaker 1: I actually had some elk pop out, which I was
Speaker 1: not expecting. Oh, and then it last light to an
Speaker 1: unidentified deer cross like as far away from me as
Speaker 1: I can see down the channel they go out. So
Speaker 1: that night I felt pretty good, like I saw deer,
Speaker 1: I saw some year and a half old Bucks, and
Speaker 1: I saw a couple of dolls. That was good. That
Speaker 1: was like as good as it's been. I felt like
Speaker 1: I'm kind of in the game. I just said, Okay,
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, I'm gonna get up on this mountain and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna glass down into this channel, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: confirm where these deer coming in the most, and i'm
Speaker 1: gonna see some bucks. Like I'm gonna dial it in
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna come back in here and kill him
Speaker 1: that next night. So I get out there early the
Speaker 1: next morning, climb this mountain on the other side of
Speaker 1: the river, get up top their glass this thing, and
Speaker 1: I watched this channel for four hours or whatever, and
Speaker 1: I just saw two doors the whole morning come back
Speaker 1: in there, and it just like shattered my my idea
Speaker 1: I was really confident this thing I found, and then
Speaker 1: I watched this whole area and man, like, there's just
Speaker 1: nothing going in there. So now it's day four, and
Speaker 1: again I'm thinking, you're just not in them, like they're
Speaker 1: just they've they've been blown out of town. And we
Speaker 1: were actually driving around at mid day that day and
Speaker 1: right across the road i'm private land where there was
Speaker 1: no hunting allowed. Apparently there was like twenty thirty deer,
Speaker 1: not thirty, maybe twenty deer feeding in an alfalfa field
Speaker 1: at noon, including like a couple of nice shooter bucks.
Speaker 1: So now I'm starting to think, man, did all the
Speaker 1: deer get pushed off the public onto private Like they're
Speaker 1: not even here anymore. So now I'm in kind of
Speaker 1: this this continue with this theme of pivoting and not settling.
Speaker 1: I decide, okay, we really got to rethink things and see,
Speaker 1: like what other opportunities are out there. So midday on
Speaker 1: day four, we went and went to like four totally
Speaker 1: different public land parcels like half an hour away. Like
Speaker 1: we explored every different unit for every different like piece
Speaker 1: of public in our unit, and we went and drove around,
Speaker 1: looked at parking areas trying to see whether the's truck tracks.
Speaker 1: We went and walked a bunch of stuff. We went
Speaker 1: and glassed a bunch of stuff, just to see like
Speaker 1: what's here, what's it looked like? Um, and we ended
Speaker 1: up hunting. We end up splitting up that night. Me,
Speaker 1: Josh and Sam hunted three different areas that night to
Speaker 1: just try to find like, hey, can we find deer anywhere?
Speaker 1: Can we just get into a place that hasn't been
Speaker 1: pillaged and that might have deer? And um, we didn't
Speaker 1: really find him any of those spots. Josh saw like
Speaker 1: ten tree stands and five trail cameras. I had a
Speaker 1: bunch of cameras and tree stands. Sam did see a
Speaker 1: nice buck at last light, but it busted him in
Speaker 1: his location, But that was the only deer he saw. Um.
Speaker 1: And I should also add that day earlier we had
Speaker 1: found like three different dead bucks on the original piece
Speaker 1: of public Maybe this is the day prior, But the
Speaker 1: picture I'm trying to paint here is like what we
Speaker 1: were discovering was that everywhere we'd been had been like
Speaker 1: raped and pillaged. I've I think it'd be conservative to
Speaker 1: say we we saw at least thirty or more tree stands.
Speaker 1: At least twenty or more trail cameras we found the
Speaker 1: three dead deer. One of them had its head cut off.
Speaker 1: One of them was a really nice buck that looked
Speaker 1: like it had been hit in the guts and just
Speaker 1: not recovered. Um, so it was not a pretty picture anywhere. Mark,
Speaker 1: do you think that this is a there's an outfitter
Speaker 1: situation going on there, or do you think this is
Speaker 1: just recreational hunter is just flooding the spot, you know,
Speaker 1: because that's a lot of tree stands. It's a good question,
Speaker 1: and I han't the only I guess. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's two things. One like there's always a lot of
Speaker 1: trucks of these different trail heads. It's different like access points,
Speaker 1: which makes me thinks just like average dudes, and we've
Speaker 1: bumped into average dudes and talked to average dudes. This
Speaker 1: is like it's too close to a population center, and
Speaker 1: I should preface this, like you and I have talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit. But I've been trying to
Speaker 1: make this work, this place work because it's close to
Speaker 1: my cabin out there, and I've wanted, like to have
Speaker 1: a cool white tail spot near my Idaho cabin and
Speaker 1: so like I forced the issue even though it's relatively
Speaker 1: close to a pretty decent population center, and and I
Speaker 1: kept hoping, like, oh, you can find a way to
Speaker 1: make it work. And we're seeing deer, so like you
Speaker 1: kind of could make it work sort of, But what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing is that it's it's maybe just not the
Speaker 1: juice isn't worth the squeeze, because you know, there's just
Speaker 1: so many people. And I will say that when I've
Speaker 1: done my when I did my summer scouting this year,
Speaker 1: and when I did more scouting last summer, I guess
Speaker 1: it would have been when I pushed into like some
Speaker 1: of this, like three miles back in stuff, I found
Speaker 1: a bunch of double sets, So someone was in there
Speaker 1: with two tree stands per tree, Which makes me think
Speaker 1: that someone was going in there and filming hunts, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, why else would you have Like I probably
Speaker 1: found like six seven maybe more tree stands that were
Speaker 1: set up as double's, Like why else would you do that?
Speaker 1: Um So, I don't know what the deal is, but
Speaker 1: it was it was pounded and um to to make
Speaker 1: what's becoming a long story, I guess a little bit shorter.
Speaker 1: Day five is pretty uneventful. We end up hunting in
Speaker 1: the morning and some new spots. We end up hunting
Speaker 1: in the evening. On the west side access point, which
Speaker 1: we hadn't hunted yet, but there've been cars in that.
Speaker 1: They've been cars in that parking lot, so we've been
Speaker 1: avoiding it, but they've been gone the last two or
Speaker 1: three days and we hadn't been able to find anything
Speaker 1: on our side. So I said, all right, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's give that a shot. I'd scouted some sweet looking
Speaker 1: locations over there. Maybe these guys are just hunting close
Speaker 1: up towards the food sources. And if I go deep
Speaker 1: into the riverbed stuff again and get back on these islands,
Speaker 1: maybe they're pushed back in there. UM went deep on that.
Speaker 1: One thing I felt good about this trip was like
Speaker 1: I and this is like one of those lessons or
Speaker 1: one of those like takeaways for me, It is like,
Speaker 1: just don't settle for good enough, don't settle for and
Speaker 1: it looks like it should be good. I decided this year,
Speaker 1: like I'm not just gonna ride something that should be good.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna confirm that it is good. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go until I see that concentration of sign, whether it
Speaker 1: be you know, you know, if it was a rout
Speaker 1: hunted be rutting signer. Right now, I'm looking for the
Speaker 1: fresh tracks or fresh droppings or something. So I kept
Speaker 1: pushing and went deeper than I've ever been on that
Speaker 1: side and got into a location it looked money. It
Speaker 1: was like there was a crossing of the main river,
Speaker 1: and then there was like a flooded ditch that converged
Speaker 1: with that, that had a crossing over that, and I
Speaker 1: could see back into two of these different willow covered islands, um,
Speaker 1: and they all came together right there, and I thought, gosh,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be something that's gonna come through here, and
Speaker 1: all I saw was a dough and a moose. Um.
Speaker 1: So this brings us all to the last evening, which
Speaker 1: is the last kind of interesting thing that happened. So
Speaker 1: everything I just told you is now in the rearver mirror.
Speaker 1: We had our plan a's and Plan b's, and those
Speaker 1: ended up, you know, being devoid of deer. So then
Speaker 1: I kept pushing and exploring new places, and I really
Speaker 1: didn't find anything except for that one island, that three
Speaker 1: point two miles in island where I had the fresh
Speaker 1: tracks going in there, but you know, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see anything but the does and the year and a
Speaker 1: half old. And when I glassed at the next morning,
Speaker 1: I just saw few does. So I kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: lost the confidence in that. And then we went and
Speaker 1: we hammered. We kind of did like a like a
Speaker 1: shotgun approach, and tried to look at all these different
Speaker 1: parcels around there to try to see if there's maybe
Speaker 1: been a hidden gem that nobody else is hitting, but
Speaker 1: all the signs pointed to it just being pillaged across
Speaker 1: the board. So now we're to our last night, and
Speaker 1: I look at like everything I have available to me
Speaker 1: and everything I've learned, and I tried to think back,
Speaker 1: like is there any place that is there any rock
Speaker 1: I've left unturned? Is there anything that seems worth my
Speaker 1: time again? And the only thing I could come back
Speaker 1: to was that island, that three point two miles in
Speaker 1: their island where I found the fresh tracks going in
Speaker 1: and we're I saw less than I expected, but I
Speaker 1: still did see like that was the best movement I saw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I decided, like, all right, I'm gonna give that
Speaker 1: one more try. A little bit of me thought like
Speaker 1: that just seems like it could work if if the
Speaker 1: deer haven't been completely pushed off. The sign you saw
Speaker 1: indicates that it should be decent, even though you didn't
Speaker 1: see a good buck like you were hoping and thought
Speaker 1: you would. And I get in there, I find a
Speaker 1: good spot to set up along the crossings. They're based
Speaker 1: on what the wind was doing. And last three minutes
Speaker 1: of daylight, three or four or five minutes of daylight,
Speaker 1: a buck steps out into the channel about a hundred
Speaker 1: yards down from me, and then a second one and
Speaker 1: they're both nice mature bucks step out in this channel,
Speaker 1: make a scrape, like both of them. Like one makes
Speaker 1: a scrape, one the next one walks up, makes a scrape,
Speaker 1: and then they spar and then it's dark and they
Speaker 1: I see them like in fading light. I see them
Speaker 1: turn and they don't cross the channel. They go right
Speaker 1: back into the island. They didn't even leave this island
Speaker 1: before dark, and that was the end of the hunt.
Speaker 1: Way to leave the next morning. So my take away
Speaker 1: from that, I had two thoughts coming out of that
Speaker 1: experience that night. One part of me said, one part
Speaker 1: of me countered that as a win, like a small win,
Speaker 1: because I had done I had thoroughly explored and tested
Speaker 1: and tried and examined all my options, and finally the
Speaker 1: last night I found a shooter Buck. I found mature
Speaker 1: bucks in this place that just been pillaged. I finally
Speaker 1: found him kind of confirmed, you know, that I was
Speaker 1: on the right track, and if I had more time,
Speaker 1: maybe I could have made a move now that I
Speaker 1: saw him, and maybe would have had a chance. So
Speaker 1: a part of me said, hey, cool, you you worked
Speaker 1: hard and you kind of found him. The other side
Speaker 1: of me said, was I too fast to judge, to
Speaker 1: make a judgment on that spot. So I talked earlier
Speaker 1: about some of my takeaways and lessons were, don't settle,
Speaker 1: pivot fast, you know, exploring the move on. But in
Speaker 1: this case, I checked it out and I made a
Speaker 1: judgment on it after a night in the morning, and
Speaker 1: then I moved on, when in fact, there were two
Speaker 1: mature Bucks there that I didn't know, and now I,
Speaker 1: you know, had skipped the last three days there, that
Speaker 1: I could have spent their fine tuning and maybe seeing
Speaker 1: them and making a move on them, and instead I
Speaker 1: was elsewhere. And now when I finally do see him,
Speaker 1: it's too late. So that's that's how the hunt ended.
Speaker 1: Those were like the things I was thinking about, the
Speaker 1: lessons I learned, or the questions I had, um, what
Speaker 1: what's your analysis of that last day question? And anything
Speaker 1: else that talked about. Man, I think you got you
Speaker 1: got sucked into the conundrum of do I do I
Speaker 1: put my resources into finding a really good spot or
Speaker 1: do I put my resources into figuring a spot so
Speaker 1: I can figuring out a specific spot so I can
Speaker 1: hunt it really well. And it's tough, man, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to overcome that level of pressure.
Speaker 1: But when you keep pushing it like that and you
Speaker 1: find those bucks on that island and you see that behavior,
Speaker 1: you go, Okay, they didn't leave, Like there's there's still
Speaker 1: dear there to work with, but you've got to figure
Speaker 1: out how to how to beat him at that new
Speaker 1: game and they're not giving you much and so it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I consider that a pretty big win. Honestly,
Speaker 1: like to see those deer and at least get to
Speaker 1: that point with them, because you know, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you if you go check out these other spots there
Speaker 1: and you guys kind of divide and conquer and you
Speaker 1: go this is this is the same story everywhere else.
Speaker 1: Then it's time to go back and just figure out
Speaker 1: what you're missing. And I think I think the not
Speaker 1: settling approach to that is really really important because it
Speaker 1: did put you in a position to find those deer,
Speaker 1: even though you didn't kill them. Like I think, I
Speaker 1: think that's a good lesson there. I think it just
Speaker 1: really sucks to learn. Yeah, yeah it was. It was
Speaker 1: a doozy and I learned. Like you said, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there, there's that whole not settling thing. The thing
Speaker 1: I don't have a firm sense of yet is like
Speaker 1: there's this fine line right as you describe there, Like
Speaker 1: there's the don't settle, but then there's also like sometimes
Speaker 1: though you don't want to be too fast to judge,
Speaker 1: and like how do you like, how much time do
Speaker 1: you give a spot? How much you know, how do
Speaker 1: you make that decision? I think that just comes down
Speaker 1: to the experience and gut feel and how much time
Speaker 1: you have in general. Right Like in my case, I
Speaker 1: had six days. I just didn't have much time to
Speaker 1: work with. I think if I had a season to
Speaker 1: work this area, I would have been much more patient
Speaker 1: and willing to give a spot time right, but in
Speaker 1: this case is like I gotta I gotta get eyes
Speaker 1: on something, or like I need some kind of confirming
Speaker 1: sign that I'm in the right zone so then I
Speaker 1: can start fine tuning. But until I have something that
Speaker 1: confirms them in the right zone at least, this is
Speaker 1: my theory. My theory was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: dedicate real time to a spot until I know I'm
Speaker 1: in the zone. And I just wasn't seeing anything that
Speaker 1: made me think like this was a this was a
Speaker 1: spot except for that island. That spot. That island was
Speaker 1: the one where like I thought, gosh, it should be
Speaker 1: but I got I got deflated by that morning where
Speaker 1: I thought like I would see something really great coming in,
Speaker 1: I'd see a bunch of deer, I would see what
Speaker 1: should have been there, what the sign told me should
Speaker 1: be there, And there's just a couple of dolls. And
Speaker 1: that made me think, yah, more the same and maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe I should maybe that was
Speaker 1: a mistake, or maybe hey, that just was the luck
Speaker 1: of the draw. And they didn't. They didn't come through
Speaker 1: that that morning, and they did the next night, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's just hunting. Sometimes they do things
Speaker 1: and they don't repeat them. Sometimes they do something wonky
Speaker 1: one day and they do something differently next And no
Speaker 1: matter what you do, you wouldn't know um on a
Speaker 1: short hunt like that, So it was it was an
Speaker 1: interesting challenge. I did feel decent about that kind of
Speaker 1: small wind there at the end. I was happy with
Speaker 1: the way that I kind of pushed through places and
Speaker 1: explored things, was more aggressive in my scouting, and I
Speaker 1: really think tracks were big thing that I used all
Speaker 1: of these hunts that you know, I've used more and
Speaker 1: more every year, and I think last year, you know,
Speaker 1: on the Deer Country tour, when I went to all
Speaker 1: these different places, like very different styles, very different regions,
Speaker 1: I didn't have trail camera information, I didn't have like history,
Speaker 1: it was all brand new. I kept on finding myself
Speaker 1: falling back on tracks more and more when you're in
Speaker 1: those types of situations and getting more comfortable with interpreting.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, even though I didn't
Speaker 1: kill I think like that was like a really clutch
Speaker 1: part of my small wind um. I think I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the biggest benefits of doing on It's
Speaker 1: like this is you realize what your crutches are at home,
Speaker 1: and you know you I've talked about this a lot.
Speaker 1: When you go on the road and you've got four
Speaker 1: or five, six days to kill one on public land,
Speaker 1: those trail cameras aren't doing you any good. Like, it's
Speaker 1: just it's not to me, it's not worth even bringing
Speaker 1: them along because when you can go out and find
Speaker 1: fresh sign rubs and scrapes and you can see those tracks,
Speaker 1: especially if you're on a riverbo the situation, that's the
Speaker 1: best you can do because you can you can gauge
Speaker 1: how current it is and and how heavy the traffic
Speaker 1: is so important and you're just not gonna get that.
Speaker 1: You don't have enough time to make a trail camera
Speaker 1: work for you that way. Yeah, yeah, that's Um, it's
Speaker 1: an easy trap to get sucked into these days of
Speaker 1: how prevalent cameras are and how short term satisfying cell
Speaker 1: cameras are. Right, Um, but I'm finding more and more
Speaker 1: the same thing that, um, they can they're almost like
Speaker 1: golden handcuffs, Like they seem so great that you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave him behind. But if you get too
Speaker 1: dependent on them, you can get stuck in a marriage
Speaker 1: you don't want to be in. Yeah, so let me
Speaker 1: let me ask you the question that everybody really wants
Speaker 1: to know the answer to. Mark. Uh, how come you're
Speaker 1: going out to Idaho in mid September and you're not
Speaker 1: hunting elk? You're going back to the same pressured public
Speaker 1: land for white tails when you could be out there
Speaker 1: hunting elk. What's going on there? Yeah? Man, me and
Speaker 1: Josh when we were driving home, we said, we asked
Speaker 1: ourselves the same questions. We're like, all right, this is stupid.
Speaker 1: We've been. We've been just like I said, we're trying
Speaker 1: to make this spot work for white tails because I
Speaker 1: want to be at my cabin and get my money's
Speaker 1: worth out of those mortgage payments. And uh, the thing
Speaker 1: is that we've got running elk two yards away from
Speaker 1: the cabin. Like what am I doing? Um? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of two things is gonna happen next year. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you one. We're done with this spot for white tails,
Speaker 1: like I've done. I've given it three years. Every year
Speaker 1: after the hunt, we're like, probably shouldn't do that again,
Speaker 1: and then we get sucked into it. Um we're done. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do one of two options. Either Number one,
Speaker 1: I could try to get some private permission in some
Speaker 1: of these places, Like I still I still love being
Speaker 1: out there in my place. I still want to have
Speaker 1: a white tail spot, So I might explore some private options,
Speaker 1: knock on some doors, talk to some ranchers, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. That's a possibility. Or number two, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say forget the white tails. I can hunt those other places.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna finally get back to elk hunting and uh
Speaker 1: scratch that it so tb D my friend. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want everybody to remember that you said you're done with
Speaker 1: Idaho white tails in that spot, because I'm curious what
Speaker 1: happens next summer when we're bearing down on this season.
Speaker 1: But my my vote would be to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: those white tails, the other guys with seven thousand stands
Speaker 1: in there can have them. I would go chase those
Speaker 1: googling bowls for a couple of days. Yeah, man, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm over it, And I do think you know, in
Speaker 1: all seriousness, there is like a lesson there that should
Speaker 1: be just like keyed in on again, Like you can
Speaker 1: sometimes do almost everything right and do all the things
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do on a public land hunt, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you know that that pressure is just maybe not
Speaker 1: one insurmountable because you know, maybe you could, but is
Speaker 1: it still fun or or could you just explore some
Speaker 1: new areas and find some places it's a little bit
Speaker 1: less pounded, or explore some different opportunities. Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's something to be said for I just
Speaker 1: not dealing with that bullshit. I guess I'm adress say well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I honestly think that, you know, when you
Speaker 1: talk about that, I'm sitting here and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about hunts myself. I've had that are just like that,
Speaker 1: and it happens a lot, and it's probably a pretty
Speaker 1: good thing to talk about in the industry because we've
Speaker 1: been just painting this picture that you know, go on
Speaker 1: public land white Tales, it's gonna be a blast. You'll
Speaker 1: challenge yourself, you'll kill the best trophy of your life.
Speaker 1: But so often when you go, this is more of
Speaker 1: the outcome where you're like, man, there's way more people
Speaker 1: here and wayfeer dear, and this is a real heavy
Speaker 1: lift to get around any decent buck, And you know
Speaker 1: you don't see that part in a YouTube video or
Speaker 1: an Instagram post for the most part, Like it's hard
Speaker 1: to kind of like wrap your head around what that
Speaker 1: kind of hunt really entails until you're in it, and
Speaker 1: it's a vastly different thing, and it's real common. It's
Speaker 1: and like we said earlier, it's really common now that
Speaker 1: this is so popular and people are really you know,
Speaker 1: turned onto the early season hunts and some of these
Speaker 1: destination hunts like this is this is not like an
Speaker 1: unusual outcome or experience, and people should be aware of that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, like there's to your point about how
Speaker 1: popular some of the stuff has gotten. And I've heard
Speaker 1: you talk about this in the past two Like right,
Speaker 1: there's some media these days that show public Land like
Speaker 1: incredible success on public Land all over the place, and
Speaker 1: it makes you think like it's a piece of cake almost,
Speaker 1: But what you forget is that there's like ninety days
Speaker 1: of time being invested and there's like ten guys out
Speaker 1: there all scouting and hunting and doing all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and they still just have like a handful of winds
Speaker 1: along the way. Um, you shouldn't beat yourself up if
Speaker 1: you go out there's a solo person and try to
Speaker 1: pull it off in six or seven days and instead
Speaker 1: have a a tough, a tough week. Um. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to paint any of this is like complaining
Speaker 1: about people being out there right, because I'm like, personally
Speaker 1: it makes things hard. But at the same time, like,
Speaker 1: I'm glad there's other folks that are getting hunting like
Speaker 1: this is this is not an indictment of folks getting
Speaker 1: out there and learning to hunt. Like I'm glad there's
Speaker 1: folks learning hunt. I'm glad people are out there enjoying
Speaker 1: our public lands. Um. All the things are are good things,
Speaker 1: but on an individual basis, it does make for challenges
Speaker 1: sometimes and you just gotta learn how to work around it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I don't know about you, but when
Speaker 1: I deal with something like that, and the thing that
Speaker 1: just like constantly, like that little voice in my head
Speaker 1: always tells me like somebody is figuring it out, you know,
Speaker 1: like somebody's in there getting that right, and you're not.
Speaker 1: And that drives me crazy. Oh. I was almost that
Speaker 1: somebody to those other thirty seven guys out there, and
Speaker 1: you said one more day, tony, Yeah, one more day,
Speaker 1: one more day, and would have been another ship show probably,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna take my small win. I'm gonna run
Speaker 1: with it. I'm gonna say that the season got off
Speaker 1: to an interesting start. Learn some stuff, and uh I'm
Speaker 1: ready for Michigan open. Nice, nice, alright, buddy, I think
Speaker 1: that should be a rap today. Um any other final thoughts? No,
Speaker 1: just get out there and hunt hot weather, cold weather,
Speaker 1: Be careful of your shots in the rain. Don't go
Speaker 1: hana ida ha white tales. That's the takeaway, right, that's
Speaker 1: the big one, and flashing lights on the billboard. All right, man,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me. Thanks all right, and that's a rap.
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in. Just a reminder, Season eleven
Speaker 1: of meat Eater coming to the meat eater dot com
Speaker 1: on October, and my show Deer Country new episodes out
Speaker 1: every Tuesday on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Check it out.
Speaker 1: Like those videos, leave me a comment, subscribe and watch
Speaker 1: Deer Country. I thank you, I appreciate you keep me
Speaker 1: in a job, folks. Thanks a lot, and until next time,
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