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 this week on the show, I'm sharing
Speaker 1: the full story of how I killed my target buck
Speaker 1: in two and the tactics to help me kill this
Speaker 1: deer during the late season on a small property. All right,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light, and today I'm here with my buddy
Speaker 1: and partner crime, Mr Tony Peterson for one of my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of podcast episodes. Uh, this is this is Tony,
Speaker 1: the kind of episode we call the show boat and
Speaker 1: gloat episode where I get to talk about every episode. No, man,
Speaker 1: have you ever listened to me to a podcast? My
Speaker 1: stories are I missed, I screwed it up, I did
Speaker 1: this thing, I did that thing. So these are few
Speaker 1: and far between. I gotta milk them when I get it. Tony, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make you look like a freaking hero, buddy.
Speaker 1: That's that's going forward today. We've got a good story, folks,
Speaker 1: we gotta we've got a success story. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you the story of how I killed my number
Speaker 1: one target buck, the three year story. Um, I haven't talked,
Speaker 1: you know, specifics about it as much over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, at least about the specific buck. I've
Speaker 1: kind of vaguely mentioned my number one target buck here
Speaker 1: and there, um, but I've been kind of saving the
Speaker 1: details until hopefully, you know, we have this kind of
Speaker 1: story where I could break it all down. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the plan. I want to walk you guys through
Speaker 1: a year by year. Um. You know my encounters of
Speaker 1: this dear, how I tried to on him, how it
Speaker 1: all came together here recently, and and this is kind
Speaker 1: of not just a story podcast, but I'm hoping it
Speaker 1: can be kind of two things on top of that.
Speaker 1: It can be a how to deer hunt small properties
Speaker 1: podcast and it can be a how to kill a
Speaker 1: deer during the post rout or late season podcast, because
Speaker 1: there's some tactics on both sides there that I think
Speaker 1: we can unpack and explore a little bit. Um. So, Tony,
Speaker 1: my hope for you, my friend, is to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, guide me along or press me on certain
Speaker 1: questions or certain things so we can make this as
Speaker 1: valuable as possible to people, not just me like rambling,
Speaker 1: but actually helps some folks. So, uh, that's that's your role, alright, buddy,
Speaker 1: let's go not So this is the buck I called Jr.
Speaker 1: And why I call this dear junior because three years
Speaker 1: ago I was hunting a different buck in this general
Speaker 1: area and I would this buck are called tram and
Speaker 1: every once in a while, I'd see a deer with
Speaker 1: really tall G two is in the tight tall rack
Speaker 1: moving through the woods, and they, oh, that's him, And
Speaker 1: then I pulled my binoes and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: its oh no, it's it's not it's a it's many me.
Speaker 1: It's this other buck that looks similar frame wise, you know,
Speaker 1: at first glance from a long ways away, and then
Speaker 1: you quickly realize, oh no, it's a younger buck. So
Speaker 1: I just started referring to this buck as junior because
Speaker 1: it was kind of like trains junior um. And so that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a practical thing for me when I
Speaker 1: hunt these different small properties here in Michigan, especially that
Speaker 1: I've hunted for years, I see many of the same
Speaker 1: bucks year after year, and it's just easier for me
Speaker 1: to throw a tag on him. So I when I
Speaker 1: say tag a man name so that I, you know,
Speaker 1: can talk about him to my friends, to you, to
Speaker 1: folks and have it all makes sense. So this buck
Speaker 1: I started calling junior in twenty twenty, and I guessed
Speaker 1: him to be probably a three year old, you know,
Speaker 1: based on how I see these, dear girl year after year.
Speaker 1: He looked like that third class of deer. What do
Speaker 1: you think he scored? Then? Ah? Not much like one
Speaker 1: ten Maybe something like that. We should talk about for
Speaker 1: a second though, because that's a really common sort of
Speaker 1: antler class to be at three years old. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: we we talked about this. You know, Midwestern bucks there
Speaker 1: one forties at three and a half, and there's more
Speaker 1: of them that are than one. Yeah, definitely, I've that's
Speaker 1: I would say, like seventy of the three year olds
Speaker 1: that I hunt in Michigan at least, so that I
Speaker 1: see in Michigan are in that ballpark like one ten,
Speaker 1: one one twenty, you know, like a one twenties usually
Speaker 1: a good three year old around here. Um, I've I've
Speaker 1: bumped into a handful of like genetic freaks like that.
Speaker 1: I would say, Oh, like that's a three year old
Speaker 1: in Iowa kind of buck. But those have been very
Speaker 1: very rare. Um. So this is a deer that you
Speaker 1: know that year when I saw him, he was in
Speaker 1: that like you know, if you're looking at like the
Speaker 1: herr or like the pool of bucks in your area.
Speaker 1: You know, on most of these different Michigan spots I hunt,
Speaker 1: you know, in a good year nowadays, they'll be like
Speaker 1: one buck that's four or five, um, and then they'll
Speaker 1: be like a couple of three year olds and then
Speaker 1: a bunch of year and a half and two and
Speaker 1: a half year olds, and so in he was like
Speaker 1: in that second ranked down there was like the one
Speaker 1: buck that was I think trand would have been five
Speaker 1: and a half that year, and then there was this
Speaker 1: buck and one other three year old that year. So
Speaker 1: this was like in that kind of category of Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep tab zoning. Now I've noticed you, I've
Speaker 1: see you around. You're recognizable. Now I'm gonna start paying
Speaker 1: attention a little bit, so you know, I've saved all
Speaker 1: the pictures I got him. Over the course of the season,
Speaker 1: saw m a lot had some cool like close encounters
Speaker 1: with him. Um that you are just fun when you
Speaker 1: know it's a deer that like Okay, this is a
Speaker 1: deer that next year, you know it was a four
Speaker 1: year old, I'll probably be chasing him. So I really
Speaker 1: like to I really milk those encounters, Like I just
Speaker 1: get jacked when I see an up and comer buck
Speaker 1: that I'm hoping some they I'll be hunting. Um. So
Speaker 1: I had him a couple of times and then Range,
Speaker 1: you know, took note of where those spots were when
Speaker 1: he was doing it. Um all, you know, looking forward
Speaker 1: to the future. Um, hey, can we talk about that
Speaker 1: for a second. So when you when you talk about
Speaker 1: that and say, you know, I see this book, and
Speaker 1: you're maybe in a little bit different position there than
Speaker 1: some of the people listening, because you you're thinking there's
Speaker 1: a good chance this dear could be here next year.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at this deer and what he's doing,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I'm paying attention to this because this
Speaker 1: if this dude doesn't get whacked, I'm gonna be hunting
Speaker 1: him next year. And what he tells me today I
Speaker 1: can use next season. And I think people look at
Speaker 1: that and go, well, okay, if you have a spot
Speaker 1: where you're gonna be able to pass them up and
Speaker 1: they're gonna come back. But those sightings of dear that
Speaker 1: age class or two and a half year olds or
Speaker 1: even even you know scrappers and does when you when
Speaker 1: you get the chance to really observe them, especially individual
Speaker 1: deer doing things, it's like such a lesson on what
Speaker 1: all dear might do. That's that's a really the key point,
Speaker 1: because even even if he got killed that next year,
Speaker 1: I still think I could learn things from what he
Speaker 1: was doing that could apply to the next three and
Speaker 1: a half or four and a half year old buck
Speaker 1: that shows up in that area. You know, um So
Speaker 1: I do. And this is something like we've talked about
Speaker 1: for years, but I'm always trying to ask why, Like
Speaker 1: if I see a nice buck doing something, I always
Speaker 1: been trying to think, Okay, why did he do that?
Speaker 1: Why did he go from point A to point B?
Speaker 1: Why did he follow this edge or this low spot
Speaker 1: or that divd um So, every one of those encounters
Speaker 1: or observations is going into the memory bank, and and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to use that to build up this you know,
Speaker 1: this this pool of information that someday I might pull
Speaker 1: from um and so that that year, you know, I
Speaker 1: was I was hunting this one buck but this deer
Speaker 1: and one other where two like I really paid close
Speaker 1: attention to, Like every time I saw him, I tried
Speaker 1: to get my cell phone out and film them just
Speaker 1: so I could remember where they were and what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And I took pictures. I you know, started studying their
Speaker 1: camera pictures even at the end of that season, knowing like,
Speaker 1: all right, man, next year, I'm gonna be after Junior
Speaker 1: and Rook is what I was hoping for. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a few of these little Michigan
Speaker 1: spots that I think one thing to what you just
Speaker 1: brought up is this idea like, well, you know, you're
Speaker 1: the only way you can hunt the same Bucky year
Speaker 1: after years, if you've got some huge MAGA property. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Like I've got several small properties
Speaker 1: that hunt here in Michigan that are small. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're I hunted this buck Jr. This was like thirty
Speaker 1: five to forty acres. This is not big. Like every
Speaker 1: single picture and encounter and observation to have with this
Speaker 1: deer was within like about a thirty acre area. That's it. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think it's not always going to be like
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some thirty acre properties that can have
Speaker 1: a deer like this make it, and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some thirty acre properties that can't um because you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's more pressure or there's not a safe place.
Speaker 1: Like in this area, this buck found a whole. There's
Speaker 1: like two really good little sanctuary safe spots in this
Speaker 1: area that bucks can get to and survived. There's a
Speaker 1: swamp that this guy lived in. There's another really cool, brushy,
Speaker 1: nasty kind of betting zone. It just seems to sucking
Speaker 1: bucks when the pressure hits up hard. And so I've
Speaker 1: learned over the years, like on this particular piece where
Speaker 1: this buck was, there's like a fifty chance, Like if
Speaker 1: I see a good three year old, or if there's
Speaker 1: a four year old, there's a good nice buck, there's
Speaker 1: like a fifty percent chance he might make it to
Speaker 1: the next year. If I don't shoot him, i'd say
Speaker 1: give or take. That's about what I've found. Um. So
Speaker 1: so because of that, I've gotten to the point where
Speaker 1: now I'm I'm pretty comfortable passing you know, nice three
Speaker 1: and half year old bucks that you know, eight nine
Speaker 1: years ago, those are deer I would shoot um. But
Speaker 1: now I know there's a chance. There's zero percent chance
Speaker 1: if I shoot him. Um, if I don't shoot them, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's a chance. And and I really enjoy you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've done a whole lot of different kinds of
Speaker 1: deer hunting. Done a lot of the public land, wild
Speaker 1: western adventure kind of stuff. I've I've hunted some big
Speaker 1: properties by permission. I've haunded a small opertis by permission.
Speaker 1: I've done leases. Uh. My family has a four d
Speaker 1: acre farm up in or property up in northern Michigan
Speaker 1: that's private that we own. I've hunted that, I've kind
Speaker 1: of got to dip my toes in the water, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of things. Um, you know, last season with
Speaker 1: Deer Country, I hunted like wildly different things, Oliver, And
Speaker 1: I still think that my very favorite is just like
Speaker 1: hunting a spot where you get to see these dear
Speaker 1: year after year and just like studying them, learning them,
Speaker 1: Like you know me, I'm an analytical dude. I just
Speaker 1: love like studying these critters, like I think deer fascinating.
Speaker 1: I love studying them, thinking about what they might do,
Speaker 1: why they might do it, predicting Okay, well they did
Speaker 1: this that year, they did this last week? What might
Speaker 1: they do next week or tomorrow? Um. I love just
Speaker 1: seeing them. I love observing deer. Like one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about this area is just like getting out
Speaker 1: and glassing a glass a ton um because I just
Speaker 1: love watching deer and it's it's cool that there's spots
Speaker 1: I can glass and watch deer, but then also helped
Speaker 1: my future hunts. Um. So so you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the foundation of this this hunting story, I
Speaker 1: guess is that kind of context. Well, And I think
Speaker 1: there's something worth touching on there because you know, I
Speaker 1: went from it kind of my deer hunting career I have.
Speaker 1: I started out with some big properties, like permission based properties,
Speaker 1: and you know, living in the suburbs here, my opportunities
Speaker 1: have just shrunk. Like you know, I went from maybe
Speaker 1: having permission on a farm that's you know, three acres
Speaker 1: or five acres, to properties like you're talking about. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've learned is when I
Speaker 1: went into those small properties, I felt like it was
Speaker 1: just a roll of the dice, like maybe they'll come through,
Speaker 1: maybe they won't. But it never felt like you have,
Speaker 1: Like I never felt right away like I had dear
Speaker 1: to work. Like I was like, Okay, this is the
Speaker 1: guy who lives here, that buck or whatever. And as
Speaker 1: I have hunted these more and more and and really
Speaker 1: run cameras on them and tried to be super careful,
Speaker 1: you realize that, like, yeah, you're at a disadvantage if
Speaker 1: you only have thirty acres and somebody else has a thousand.
Speaker 1: But you can make a lot happen out of just
Speaker 1: a thirty acre property if you figure it out there
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot going on there, even if that's
Speaker 1: one of a deer's you know, overall home range. Like man,
Speaker 1: if you figure out what they like to do and
Speaker 1: when they like to do it, and you can be
Speaker 1: real kind of surgical about when you go in, you
Speaker 1: can make a lot happen out of not much acreage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really, It's so true, Like surgical is the right word.
Speaker 1: You have to be surgical on the small pieces. And
Speaker 1: you also have to get lucky, like you said, I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes you've got a thirty acre piece where they're at,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's the third acre piece that there just
Speaker 1: aren't at um. I mean, like my Ohio story is
Speaker 1: a perfect example, because I have a thirty acre piece
Speaker 1: in Ohio that, Um, you know, I had really high
Speaker 1: hopes for this year, and I've hunted it now like
Speaker 1: eight days, almost all day, eight days, and I've seen
Speaker 1: a spike in a doll over the course of that
Speaker 1: entire period, and um, you know, a few camera pictures
Speaker 1: of good bucks, but like very very very little activity
Speaker 1: compared to what I expected there to be. And you're
Speaker 1: sitting out there hunting and you're like, well, I have
Speaker 1: no other options, Like I don't have I can't go
Speaker 1: check out this other draw, I can't go to that
Speaker 1: other point, I can't go explore some other bedding. Are
Speaker 1: Like I've got one corridor and one betting here and
Speaker 1: that's it. So you know, you can you win some,
Speaker 1: you lose some on small properties. So in the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, have got a bunch of places like that, Um,
Speaker 1: if you can manage it or have some public that
Speaker 1: you can fill in your time with or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm fortunate with with the particular place where
Speaker 1: this book is that it's you know, there's a small property,
Speaker 1: but it hunts kind of nicely because the way it
Speaker 1: lays out, I kind of have access to two different
Speaker 1: betting areas, and historically there's been a decent buck that
Speaker 1: lives in each one of those kind of cores. Um
Speaker 1: And so at least that's that's kind of figured that
Speaker 1: out over the years. And um, as long as I'm
Speaker 1: like really careful about when iever go in there after
Speaker 1: a deer and the one of those two regions, they
Speaker 1: they feel safe there as long as I'm not messing
Speaker 1: it up, and um or I get unlucky and someone
Speaker 1: else shoots something and goes in there. Whatever. So that's
Speaker 1: that's why this spot has has been productive, and that's
Speaker 1: why this deer lived there. It's um you know, he
Speaker 1: was a three year old here. He roamed a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot. I saw him quite a few times in
Speaker 1: daylight when I was hunting for the other buck. Um.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, he had some close calls with them.
Speaker 1: Kept tabs and I can't tell you that that year
Speaker 1: I noticed like a really big obvious pattern as far
Speaker 1: as what he did, other than the fact that he
Speaker 1: was a homebody, like he lived on this property or
Speaker 1: right next to it, and he was he was kind
Speaker 1: of everywhere. The next year, one last year, he and
Speaker 1: one other deer that I called Rookie. That year where
Speaker 1: the bucks that I thought I was gonna be after
Speaker 1: I saw them when I went out doing some scouting
Speaker 1: I think in January, so I knew they both made
Speaker 1: it through the season. I was really excited about that, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, said high hopes to see what the
Speaker 1: might turn into. I got pictures of both of them.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of summer glass and I never
Speaker 1: saw either one of them when glassing, but I did
Speaker 1: get pictures of both of them in late August. And
Speaker 1: to the kind of thing I mentioned earlier about like
Speaker 1: how maybe fifty and make it through fifty, don't um?
Speaker 1: You know, part with that season, Rookie disappeared. He was
Speaker 1: wiped off the face of the earth. He got killed
Speaker 1: by someone or something and he was out. So so
Speaker 1: Junior became the only deer I was after last year. Um.
Speaker 1: But he was tough to to figure out because Rookie
Speaker 1: was around all of October, and he was he was
Speaker 1: more visible. I saw him a couple of times. I
Speaker 1: got pictures of them here and there. Um, Junior was
Speaker 1: kind of a ghost. I was. I was struggling to
Speaker 1: see him. He was not as movie. He was not
Speaker 1: as visible as he had been the year before. Which
Speaker 1: you know from three to four that's to be expected. Um,
Speaker 1: but he really took it to another level. I figured, Um,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of confused. I wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: was going on. I was hunting near these betting areas
Speaker 1: that usually like as we moved into October, usually get
Speaker 1: to late October, and if there's bucks that are getting
Speaker 1: ready to check out those hot doors, they're gonna check
Speaker 1: a couple of these spots. Um. And it nothing wasn't getting,
Speaker 1: wasn't getting a whole lot until I started checking some cameras.
Speaker 1: I had some like standard cell not sell camera, standard
Speaker 1: trail cameras that had been back in the back of
Speaker 1: the property that I hadn't gone to at all. Um,
Speaker 1: because I've been seeing getting some intel on rookie sort
Speaker 1: towards the front of this area like betting area A.
Speaker 1: So I've been hunting a couple of times up there
Speaker 1: in the early season, kind of mid to late October,
Speaker 1: if I'm remembering right. I had a gap between my
Speaker 1: travel so as you know, last year, I was traveling
Speaker 1: all over for deer country, so I had one window
Speaker 1: where I could hunt this Michigan stuff in late October
Speaker 1: before more travel. So I remember going back like October
Speaker 1: twenty third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh something somewhere in that window,
Speaker 1: and for the first time I decided to slip into
Speaker 1: the back of this this farm and check some cameras there,
Speaker 1: and that kind of opened my eyes to what was
Speaker 1: going on. There was two different cameras back there, and
Speaker 1: Junior was on them a bunch, and I realized, like, okay,
Speaker 1: he has shifted his you know, behavior, from being like
Speaker 1: an all over this property to just betting are b
Speaker 1: kind of deer. So it kind of seemed like Rookie
Speaker 1: had taken ownership as a four year old of this
Speaker 1: one betting area in the front core area and the
Speaker 1: stuff that's arounded that. And now it was seeming like
Speaker 1: Junior was taken up shop in the bottom spot around
Speaker 1: this big swamp, and you know, all of a sudden
Speaker 1: saying okay, well here he is. He was. He was
Speaker 1: here in daylight at the end of September, he was
Speaker 1: here in daylight the first week of October. Um, he
Speaker 1: was here in daylight two days ago October or something
Speaker 1: like that. And now I think, okay, I'm in the game.
Speaker 1: This steer still around, he's huntable, and he's he's in
Speaker 1: this little corner. So I had like a five day
Speaker 1: window before I had to leave for one week in
Speaker 1: November and toss some hunts at it. And I want
Speaker 1: to kind of speak to the overall hunt strategy for
Speaker 1: this property, like generically before I really knew what Junior
Speaker 1: was doing. Um, I do not hunt this area very
Speaker 1: often at all because of the whole small, small property thing,
Speaker 1: and there is a lot of hunting pressure in the area.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, I've I've got this little sanctuaries,
Speaker 1: two little betting areas that act as sanctuaries that I
Speaker 1: have access to. There's a neighboring property that's about eight
Speaker 1: acres that doesn't allow hunting at least I don't think
Speaker 1: they do. Um, And so like those things act as
Speaker 1: a small sanctuary surrounded by lots and lots of pressure
Speaker 1: around me. But I've always thought, you know, I can
Speaker 1: very like that's a benefit for me, but I could
Speaker 1: very quickly erase that benefit if I'm not careful. So
Speaker 1: so surgical is the right way to describe what I
Speaker 1: try to do. I try to, you know, only hunt
Speaker 1: this spot or these spots when I've got you know,
Speaker 1: a good win when I've had a good access or
Speaker 1: exit opportunity, I don't hunt more. And these are things
Speaker 1: I know that you will think you hate, But like,
Speaker 1: I don't hunt mornings in October out there because it's
Speaker 1: really hard to get into and out of because there's
Speaker 1: there's big open fields close to the road. I just
Speaker 1: can't get in without having to cross some kind of
Speaker 1: open field. So I don't hunt those mornings. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that for a second though, because you know,
Speaker 1: from my perspective, I'm what you're doing is the right
Speaker 1: move on a property like that, Like if you if
Speaker 1: you have the chance to save it, you know somebody
Speaker 1: else isn't going to go in there. You're not doing
Speaker 1: yourself any favors by being the one who puts stupid
Speaker 1: pressure on them, you know. And and there's a difference,
Speaker 1: right because I I look at most of my stuff
Speaker 1: and I go, I just got to be the first
Speaker 1: one in there, Like if that's October tenth or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's a morning, because that's fleeting because I don't
Speaker 1: know who's going to mess it up if you have
Speaker 1: a chance to save it, and pay real close attention
Speaker 1: to your access and like and and go in when
Speaker 1: the like all of the odds are in your favor
Speaker 1: as far as they can be, that's the move. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it's just so situational. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the key is It's it's circumstanced specific and and
Speaker 1: so in this place, like I know, like it can
Speaker 1: hold deer, It can hold a good buck or two
Speaker 1: as long as you don't blow it. But like you
Speaker 1: can blow it very quickly. And you know, one thing
Speaker 1: I've learned over the years, something I've changed the last
Speaker 1: few years is I've I've taken that even further when
Speaker 1: it comes to like my evening exits. So I won't
Speaker 1: even hunt this property now if the if the crops
Speaker 1: are cut, I won't hunt this property unless I have
Speaker 1: somebody who can drive out and clear the fields for me.
Speaker 1: So if if my wife's available or some other friend
Speaker 1: or family member I can call in a favor on um.
Speaker 1: If if no one is available to do that, and
Speaker 1: if the crops are down and deer feeding in it,
Speaker 1: I just won't hunt. I just won't do those evening
Speaker 1: hunts in a spot that I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: blow out the field because I know it just won't work.
Speaker 1: I'd rather, I'd rather miss a good condition and day
Speaker 1: and not blow out the field and then hunt you
Speaker 1: know two days later when I do have that exit strategy,
Speaker 1: because like that exit strategy has been like the game
Speaker 1: changer for this this little section here. If I can
Speaker 1: get someone to drive out on a you know, drive
Speaker 1: the truck out through the field or drive a side
Speaker 1: by side or an a TV or whatever is available, um,
Speaker 1: that gets me away with murder. As far as like
Speaker 1: being able to hunt in these places you know several
Speaker 1: times without deer catching on to my exit in the evenings. Um,
Speaker 1: So that that's been a that's been a big one
Speaker 1: for me. I've I've been able to get away a
Speaker 1: lot more because a lot of this property is is field. Like,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of field edge. There's small small timber fingers,
Speaker 1: and there's one big chunk. There's the swamp, but that's
Speaker 1: like this betting mecha that I pretty much never go into.
Speaker 1: That that's like a sanctuary. So my huntable stuff is
Speaker 1: all edge and some finger and some grassy stuff. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's tough from an access perspective if you
Speaker 1: don't have someone who can help you out in that
Speaker 1: kind of way. This year, I did get an e bike,
Speaker 1: and I've used at a couple of times when I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a ride, and I think that still got
Speaker 1: me away with a little bit more. Um. But man,
Speaker 1: human being walking out across the cut field, or even
Speaker 1: walking down a two track that's back in the timber
Speaker 1: a little bit from the field, you know, walking around
Speaker 1: exiting in the evening is just gonna do quick damage
Speaker 1: to a tiny place like this. And I I was
Speaker 1: burned by that a whole lot of years in the
Speaker 1: early years when I was hunting this area and around there.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, being again more surgical
Speaker 1: and sacrificing some days. So I might not get as
Speaker 1: much quantity, but I'm getting more quality because of that,
Speaker 1: And um, you know what I think about that, Like
Speaker 1: I honestly think that, you know, I'll use an example here.
Speaker 1: Everybody likes to think everybody else is super greedy, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's like really easy to overlook
Speaker 1: your own greed and be like, oh, those billionaires, they
Speaker 1: should pay more taxes, they should donate more money. But
Speaker 1: we never think like, h are you like, are you
Speaker 1: paying extra taxes? Are you don't even a ton of
Speaker 1: money to chair, like it's really easy to sort of
Speaker 1: look past your own greed and you're like, we're real
Speaker 1: biased towards ourselves, right, And we talk constantly about hunting pressure,
Speaker 1: like I mean, it's it's to me, like that's the
Speaker 1: number one enemy to your success always. I don't think
Speaker 1: we I don't think most hunters give their own hunting
Speaker 1: pressure enough credit for putting deer down. Like I think
Speaker 1: we know when we burn a spot, we know when
Speaker 1: we're kind of being lazy, But I don't think we understand,
Speaker 1: you know, because we're always like, well, it's the other people,
Speaker 1: to other hunters, and yeah, like that happens, you know
Speaker 1: you're in public land or whatever. Sure, but the amount
Speaker 1: of pressure we put on them and how quickly, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're in a state with a lot of hunters,
Speaker 1: how quickly those deer react to that is incredible. And
Speaker 1: I just I think, like it's so easy to not
Speaker 1: give your own presence enough credit for putting them down,
Speaker 1: But it's so important to pay attention to that, and
Speaker 1: and you know, be honest with yourself about it, like
Speaker 1: you willing to look in the mirror and confront the
Speaker 1: ugly thing in the face and be like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that was that's probably me. This is probably
Speaker 1: something I caused. It's like you said, it's it's much
Speaker 1: easier to pass the blame off on the neighbor or
Speaker 1: bad luck or whatever. Um So, yeah, I was to
Speaker 1: blame for many years of disappearing bucks, probably in this
Speaker 1: area because I was wanting to hunt a lot, and
Speaker 1: I just learned, like, I can hunt a lot, but
Speaker 1: I can't hunt this place a lot. I've got to
Speaker 1: hunt other places. Um. I've got to keep this, you know,
Speaker 1: relatively careful, real light, um and so and so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was kind of forced to hunt this property
Speaker 1: late or light last year because of my travel. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I had like a few swings that took a few
Speaker 1: hunts in that early early October window. I think a
Speaker 1: hunt of the first three days and um you like
Speaker 1: I said, I saw that buck rookieos after um. And
Speaker 1: then I came back in late October and I think
Speaker 1: I had like four or five days or something, three
Speaker 1: four days something like that. And that was gonna be
Speaker 1: like the extent of my rut hunting because I was
Speaker 1: gone for two weeks traveling November October one in November,
Speaker 1: so I knew, like, basically, this is my rut hunt
Speaker 1: is this last week of October. So I, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of went hard for that period because that was
Speaker 1: my window and I knew that, you know, Junior had
Speaker 1: been super active last year. Of course in late October,
Speaker 1: and when I checked those cameras, I realized, Okay, he's
Speaker 1: in this back area by the swamp. He's like refocus
Speaker 1: his attention here, So I'm gonna I'm gonna hit it
Speaker 1: and see if I can't catch him slipping up a
Speaker 1: little bit. So it was standing corn at that point though,
Speaker 1: on the agg fields, so I could hunt kind of
Speaker 1: the edge of the standing corn and the swamp and
Speaker 1: then the edge of the standing corn and this like
Speaker 1: finger of timber that kind of extends out from that
Speaker 1: swamp and connects it to another block. And so I
Speaker 1: did a couple of evening hunts like that. I think
Speaker 1: I did a couple of morning hunts on the edge
Speaker 1: of that betting area as well. But the more of
Speaker 1: that stories like never saw him, never, you know, saw
Speaker 1: a whisker of him, and uh, you know, he he
Speaker 1: was just still ghosting. Other than a few of those
Speaker 1: daylight pictures. Like I said, like October six, and then
Speaker 1: like the day or two before I showed up to
Speaker 1: hunt in late October, he was daylight and that was
Speaker 1: that was it. Um. Now I take off hunting across
Speaker 1: the country, YadA, YadA, YadA. And I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: when this happened. I think it happened after my rutcation.
Speaker 1: I think I got back from rutcation and like the
Speaker 1: corn was getting taken down like that day I got
Speaker 1: back and I had to leave again for another trip
Speaker 1: in like two days or something. Though, so I knew,
Speaker 1: like I don't have much of a window here to hunt,
Speaker 1: but I can try to learn something. So I always
Speaker 1: like to take advantage of harvest to to kind of
Speaker 1: make moves if I need to, And in this case,
Speaker 1: with a corn coming down, I thought, man, I can
Speaker 1: go move some cameras around and get some cameras. Now
Speaker 1: it's kind of around this place that I think juniors
Speaker 1: live ing and kind of tightened that that throw the
Speaker 1: net around that more focused since he didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be showing up at all on the other piece of
Speaker 1: this property. So as that combines working as the corn
Speaker 1: is coming down, I race out there and I got
Speaker 1: I got some new cell cameras that I hadn't head cells.
Speaker 1: I got some cell cameras and put three of them,
Speaker 1: I think, on the edge of this swamp, and with
Speaker 1: a swamp and corn came together three different spots that
Speaker 1: over the years I've seen bucks just always like to
Speaker 1: come in and out of these little like a little
Speaker 1: inside corner, like in the bend of the swamp as
Speaker 1: one spot. And then there's a low spot across this
Speaker 1: little finger of field, and they always leave the swamp
Speaker 1: in this low spot and they kind of stay hidden
Speaker 1: down there. I think thermals drop into the low spot.
Speaker 1: They can smell anything, and so that's another place there's
Speaker 1: always a good scrape. So I put these cameras on
Speaker 1: those scrapes on the edge of the swamp, bailed out
Speaker 1: of there, let them finish combining, and I took off
Speaker 1: for my next trip. I then get nothing for a while.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting any pictures of them. I remember at
Speaker 1: this point I checked another I've done another round of
Speaker 1: my trail camera checks of the regular cameras um and
Speaker 1: most of these other cameras are all kind of place
Speaker 1: in easy places that I can drive my a TV
Speaker 1: and check. I don't. I don't check any like interior
Speaker 1: trail cameras in this property in season, um unless like
Speaker 1: it's next to or on the way from, like a
Speaker 1: hunting location. Otherwise, like the only time I'll check a
Speaker 1: camera on this property is if I can drive to
Speaker 1: it um or like I just described, the combines are
Speaker 1: going around. So I checked cameras and nothing in November
Speaker 1: at all. I think I had like a November one
Speaker 1: or two picture of him something, but but he kind
Speaker 1: of disappeared. Now I've got these cell cameras out there,
Speaker 1: nothing from him. Nothing from him through the rest of November.
Speaker 1: I leave it alone all through gun season. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gone for a week of that and then I'm
Speaker 1: home for a week. But again I'm leaving it alone. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't like to put a lot of pressure on
Speaker 1: this property during that peak of guns season because there's
Speaker 1: a much pressure all around it. I'd rather the pressure
Speaker 1: be all around me and they kind of hang out
Speaker 1: in this little zone that I have soul access to
Speaker 1: as a sanctuary, and then I can come back in
Speaker 1: there in the later part of the season and hopefully
Speaker 1: there's a buck or two still alive. And they're not
Speaker 1: as pressured in that specific spot. So that's what I
Speaker 1: was gonna do. But I had to go to Alabama
Speaker 1: for one of these hunts I was on last year.
Speaker 1: So the first week in December, I'm hunting in Alabama.
Speaker 1: I now have these cell cameras that are you know,
Speaker 1: sending me pictures, and I remember, you know, I get
Speaker 1: like I have him send like once a day, and
Speaker 1: so you know, whatever the designated time is that day,
Speaker 1: I was gonna get pictures. Remember, I pulled it up.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, sweet, check the cameras for the day.
Speaker 1: And bam, there he is December three, in daylight, like
Speaker 1: three five in the afternoon, right in the edge of
Speaker 1: that swamp, hitting the scrape. Junior was back for the
Speaker 1: first time in a month. Um, right there and um
Speaker 1: so I was very exciting to see he was still alive,
Speaker 1: but also frustrating because I couldn't hunt him. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is like the beginning of the Alabama trip, I think.
Speaker 1: And then like two days later I get another picture
Speaker 1: of him, same spot, daylight again. And then two days
Speaker 1: later he's about a hundred yards away at another spot,
Speaker 1: daylight again, and three days later another I think it's
Speaker 1: like a day later or something. He daylighted again. He
Speaker 1: daylight four times between December third and tent and and
Speaker 1: I'm not home for any of it. So you know
Speaker 1: that's cell cameras are great if you live far away
Speaker 1: from your properties or whatever. But if you are far
Speaker 1: away from your property and you're getting this information and
Speaker 1: you're handcuffed and you have no way to get out
Speaker 1: and start hunting, it can be frustrating but exciting as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was just but even though even though you
Speaker 1: can't get on him at that moment because you've got
Speaker 1: other stuff going on, it's just such a valuable intel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, great, great intel. And um you know, there's
Speaker 1: cell cameras are like a conversation. Like I'm constantly wrestling
Speaker 1: with cell cameras. I'm constantly thinking about like how much
Speaker 1: is too much? How much data? How much is too
Speaker 1: much technology? Like I have this internal debate with myself
Speaker 1: and you know, cell camera uses a touchy topic even
Speaker 1: like within my own mind, I'm trying to like figure
Speaker 1: out what's the way to use this tool in a
Speaker 1: way that helps me but isn't too much. Um, So
Speaker 1: you know, so one thing I do is I set
Speaker 1: so they only get them, you know, on a significant delay. So,
Speaker 1: like I've always felt it could be really icky if
Speaker 1: I'm hunting or if I'm at the house or something
Speaker 1: and then I get a picture like right now that says, oh,
Speaker 1: that dear is an X spot and then I could
Speaker 1: use that real time. That feels like icky for me personally.
Speaker 1: So I have forced myself not to do that by
Speaker 1: putting this twelve or twenty four hour delay on the photos.
Speaker 1: That makes me feel a little better about it. Um
Speaker 1: But even that, like I know, some folks view that
Speaker 1: is too much technology or too much help. Um So,
Speaker 1: so all that said, like as I'm as I put
Speaker 1: those cell cameras out and I'm using them, I'm getting
Speaker 1: these pictures while I'm in an Albama I mean even
Speaker 1: like wrestling with that, Like, man, this is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: That can be you know, a thousand miles away and
Speaker 1: get fresh intel and what's happening here. That especially in
Speaker 1: a small property like this, like every time you go
Speaker 1: in there to check a standard camera, you are hurting
Speaker 1: your chances of seeing that deer in the future, because
Speaker 1: like every step you know you place out there is
Speaker 1: making an impact um, which is why I like now, I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I do not walk out there check cameras.
Speaker 1: I only will drive out there. Um. I try to
Speaker 1: like stay on the A t V when I check
Speaker 1: my cameras or be in the truck and just take
Speaker 1: a step or two out. Like maybe that's more than
Speaker 1: I need to be worried about. But it just seems
Speaker 1: like the room for error is really small when there's like, man,
Speaker 1: if he's in this betting era and if he's not
Speaker 1: in that betting aear, I have no way to hunt him.
Speaker 1: So I can't screw up, you know, the edge of
Speaker 1: that betting here. So that's that's the first week in December.
Speaker 1: I get back home and I remember thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: I gotta try and take a couple of stabs at him.
Speaker 1: And we had a muzzle out our season open still
Speaker 1: for a few days. I can't remember how many more
Speaker 1: days I had after getting back from that trip, but
Speaker 1: I had time. I had some number of days, two, three,
Speaker 1: four days, something like that. Um. And so I remember
Speaker 1: like telling my wife, like, hey, you know that Buckham
Speaker 1: after was showing up, you know last week. If we
Speaker 1: got the right conditions, I gotta try to take a
Speaker 1: stab or two at him with a gun. Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't think that there'd be a strong chance and Bill
Speaker 1: get another take at him with the bow at this
Speaker 1: point in the season. But with a gun, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I can make it work. So I I waited
Speaker 1: for a wind that would cut across the top of
Speaker 1: the swamp, so I don't want to win that's gonna
Speaker 1: blow obviously straight into that swamp. And I can only
Speaker 1: access the swamp from the north, so I need to
Speaker 1: make sure I've got like sutherly Ish wins, but ideally
Speaker 1: like easterly or westerly, because if I have a a
Speaker 1: wind that blows from the swamp straight to the north,
Speaker 1: it blows out a whole another bedding area region on
Speaker 1: the neighbors, and you know, there's always the chance that
Speaker 1: he might be over there. It's not that far away.
Speaker 1: So there's basically a betting to the north and south,
Speaker 1: and I want my wind blowing east to west, right
Speaker 1: in between the two. So I've got that you know,
Speaker 1: relatively safe wind um where I can get close. So
Speaker 1: I had two hunts. There ended be in two days
Speaker 1: where I had a wind that would work, and you know,
Speaker 1: decent temperatures decent conditions. Um. You know, I noticed from
Speaker 1: those pictures of the days he daylighted, three of those
Speaker 1: days he daylighted were like cold, like dropping temperature, cold
Speaker 1: front type days. Um. One of them was actually a
Speaker 1: warm up day. So I thought, well, if I can
Speaker 1: get like half decent tempts in the right wind, I
Speaker 1: gotta try. The first time I tried for him, didn't
Speaker 1: see him at all, didn't see like if I remember right,
Speaker 1: like very little activity. Um. And the was actually, this
Speaker 1: is actually a night where I had to break that
Speaker 1: rule I just told you for whatever reason, I can't
Speaker 1: remember why, um, but I had to slip out by foot.
Speaker 1: And I guess I must have been so desperate for
Speaker 1: him that I you know, I didn't have an exit
Speaker 1: strategy or an exit helper, and I thought, there's a
Speaker 1: little two track where I can walk back through the
Speaker 1: edge of the timber and you know, maybe get away
Speaker 1: with it from the location I hunted that night. So
Speaker 1: I had to be going out on foot, and I
Speaker 1: just remember getting very close to the front of the property,
Speaker 1: like I've I've walked a long ways from where I
Speaker 1: was hunting and from where I would have expected to
Speaker 1: see him, and I'm kind of in a low spot
Speaker 1: in this little finger of timber, and then there's like
Speaker 1: a rise then extends like there's a hill that goes
Speaker 1: up to the edge of the timber and then into
Speaker 1: that cut corn field. And I can see a deer
Speaker 1: silhouetted on that hill in the cut corn maybe yards away,
Speaker 1: And so I just pulled up the binoes. It's it's
Speaker 1: after dark now, and I pulled the binocular zone in
Speaker 1: like the I guess there must have been some moonlight
Speaker 1: or just because of the silhouette, I could see like
Speaker 1: instantly it was him. He was standing there with a
Speaker 1: dough and uh, there he is, like yards away. And
Speaker 1: so now I feel like I'm stuck, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to go walk and continue walking in that direction
Speaker 1: and bump him. I'm pissed at myself for going and
Speaker 1: hunting on this night when I didn't have a good
Speaker 1: way to get out. Um, So I ended up just
Speaker 1: sitting down in the dirt for I don't know, like
Speaker 1: half an hour and just kind of waiting around, twidling
Speaker 1: my thumbs, texting my wife said I was gonna be
Speaker 1: late that night, and just waited until they disappeared and
Speaker 1: I hope that they moved off far enough and um,
Speaker 1: then I circled out as far away as I could get.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a funny story. As I'm walking out,
Speaker 1: I'm getting close to the road, Um, I see a
Speaker 1: deer flag off, like I see a white tail run
Speaker 1: off towards the road. And then there's a car coming
Speaker 1: towards this road. And then I hear and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no, did I
Speaker 1: just spook the buckum after to get hit by a truck?
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like super concerned. So I raced
Speaker 1: up to the road and I went down to the
Speaker 1: car and I checked with a guy, like asked if
Speaker 1: he was okay and everything, and all the while I'm
Speaker 1: trying to look off to the side and trying to
Speaker 1: see the deer he hit, and like trying to suddenly
Speaker 1: like get get the information I'm trying to get. You're
Speaker 1: like the biggest asshole, good Samaritan exactly. No. I made
Speaker 1: surely he was okay, the car wasn't too badly damaged
Speaker 1: and all was fine, And I'm like asking him like
Speaker 1: I was trying to talk to him and he was
Speaker 1: being actually weird with me. Um, like I didn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I was like, do you need help? Okay,
Speaker 1: he just kind of like was like shaking his head
Speaker 1: and then um, and then I saw the deer and
Speaker 1: it was a dope um off on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, and he's like, I'm taking the deer. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: well you need you need help, And he's just shaking.
Speaker 1: She keeps shaking his head and it's like a very
Speaker 1: weird encounter. But maybe he was just shook up after
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Who you were, I don't think so Tony,
Speaker 1: definitely not um. But yeah, So that was like a
Speaker 1: scary moment because I thought, for sure I just bumped
Speaker 1: my buck into a truck, but but no. So UM.
Speaker 1: That then led to a few days later, I had
Speaker 1: decent conditions, decent wind again, I slipped back to the
Speaker 1: edge of the swamp um and last light, he actually
Speaker 1: does pop out. But I must have been God. I
Speaker 1: wish I could I what I remember about this encounter.
Speaker 1: I wish I wrote wrote down. I'm doing a hunting
Speaker 1: journal this year where I'm actually writing down the specifics
Speaker 1: of every hunt. Um, not just like I'm writing down
Speaker 1: the conditions. I'm writing down like where I went. I'm
Speaker 1: writing down what I see, but I'm also writing down
Speaker 1: like what I did and the decisions I made and stuff,
Speaker 1: just because like I wish I could remember exactly what
Speaker 1: happened in this night, because what I remember is seeing
Speaker 1: him pop out of the swamp, but he hadn't in
Speaker 1: the He headed in the direction away from me and
Speaker 1: I I can't remember if I had a gun or
Speaker 1: if it was now right other bow season, because I
Speaker 1: was considering getting down and trying to stalk in like
Speaker 1: circle up ahead of him and see if I get
Speaker 1: ahead him and get a shot at him. Um. I
Speaker 1: think maybe it was with a bow. And back in
Speaker 1: the day I never would have considered doing that, but
Speaker 1: after last year, with all the crazy on the ground stuff,
Speaker 1: I must have been feeling kind of wildly because I
Speaker 1: remember thinking like, if he just slows down and starts feeding,
Speaker 1: I might be able to circle and and slip down
Speaker 1: and just do something crazy. Like at this point, I've
Speaker 1: been having a really rough season. I was kind of
Speaker 1: willing to do something crazy to try to salvage some
Speaker 1: kind of success. Um, but he just never slowed down.
Speaker 1: He just like marched and uh and just marched straight
Speaker 1: down the edge of that swamp and away from me.
Speaker 1: And and that was it. And that was he walked
Speaker 1: out of my life. That was sometime mid you know, December,
Speaker 1: and that was it. I didn't get any more pictures
Speaker 1: of him, didn't see him at all, um until the postseason,
Speaker 1: I think what. I was out there doing one of
Speaker 1: my drive bys. I glassed him up one night, I think, um,
Speaker 1: and that confirmed that he he at least made it
Speaker 1: through the year. So that's one and with with that
Speaker 1: season in the rear view mirror, I remember thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: once I kind of you know, I was burned out
Speaker 1: after last year. But once my mind kind of turned
Speaker 1: back to white Tails this summer, I got really excited
Speaker 1: about stuff. I started thinking about this Buck and you know,
Speaker 1: thinking he's probably the guy that's gonna show back up.
Speaker 1: And I think I've got like two windows. I think
Speaker 1: there's gonna be an October window based on what he
Speaker 1: did last year, and I think there's gonna be that
Speaker 1: December window again. Um. You know, there's this this idea
Speaker 1: of like these annual patterns, right that, especially like older Bucks,
Speaker 1: they tend to do certain things at the same time
Speaker 1: of year, year after year. All all other things being equal, Um,
Speaker 1: you can start to see some of these kinds of
Speaker 1: tendencies that repeat year after year. Um. And so I
Speaker 1: was counting on two things. I was counting on his
Speaker 1: core area continuing to stay tight to that swamp. And
Speaker 1: then I was hoping that hay i'l had that early
Speaker 1: October window, may maybe a moment there in late October
Speaker 1: and then like the first ten twelve days of December
Speaker 1: or whatever, like, maybe that'll be a good one. And um,
Speaker 1: so I do some prep work in the summer leading
Speaker 1: up to the year. I trimmed out some new trees
Speaker 1: that I could hunt and did a little scouting the
Speaker 1: edge of that swamp to try to figure out some
Speaker 1: spots I could hunt around that if he was around again, Um,
Speaker 1: I put cameras along along that edge again. Historically, I
Speaker 1: hadn't actually ran as many cameras around that swamp edge
Speaker 1: as I started now that I knew that Junior was
Speaker 1: in there so much. So now I've got those gaps
Speaker 1: covered well again, this time with cell cameras again. And
Speaker 1: m August he shows back up for the first time.
Speaker 1: I get sell pictures of him, and then throughout August
Speaker 1: and September. Um, he was daylighting, he was showing up,
Speaker 1: and you know I was I was excited about that. Um.
Speaker 1: But as I already talked about on a different podcast,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to target this buck on opening night,
Speaker 1: but the wind ended up messing me up and I
Speaker 1: had to pivot to a different location to hunt a
Speaker 1: different deer. Um. I just I just couldn't see a
Speaker 1: way I could pull off the wind hunting that swamp
Speaker 1: edge without him winding me with this like northeast wind
Speaker 1: that would blow right into where where I thought he'd be.
Speaker 1: Like everything he was doing this year in twenty two
Speaker 1: was like straight out of the book from what he did.
Speaker 1: Once I like realized he was in that swamp, he
Speaker 1: was popping on the same places. Um, he was coming
Speaker 1: back in the morning like he lived. This is like,
Speaker 1: at least as best as I could tell from like
Speaker 1: the intel, I was able to get into places I
Speaker 1: had access He was in there more than any other
Speaker 1: place I had access to at least. Um. So I
Speaker 1: couldn't hunt him early in October because that wind ended
Speaker 1: up killing a different buck in a different place. So
Speaker 1: now I kind of pull out and I take some
Speaker 1: time to just I took my son out hunting some
Speaker 1: different places, took out some hunters, did some mentored hunts
Speaker 1: on the back forward. UM shot some shot a doh,
Speaker 1: tried to shoot multiple dos, I got one. UM did
Speaker 1: some of that kind of stuff until we get too
Speaker 1: late October. We get to late October, and now I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, this is that window. I gotta I got
Speaker 1: a daylight picture or two of him last year round
Speaker 1: this window. UM, I have to leave again on October
Speaker 1: to go on one of these roccasions. I've got a
Speaker 1: I've got a chance here. So those last like seven
Speaker 1: eight days of October, I hunted two or three times
Speaker 1: just inside that swamp, UM, hunting near those little low
Speaker 1: spot and inside corners that I mentioned to you already
Speaker 1: from UM, hoping that you know I could catch him
Speaker 1: coming out to feed and or check. Does um you
Speaker 1: know that last week of October? UM, So you know
Speaker 1: I picked those nights when I had the best weather conditions.
Speaker 1: So both of those times I can think of two
Speaker 1: space even nights. I think I hunted two nights in
Speaker 1: the edge of the swamp, and then there was a
Speaker 1: third night that I couldn't hunt in the swamp. But
Speaker 1: I hunted a finger of timber just acrossed um, like
Speaker 1: eighty yards across from it in another spot because of
Speaker 1: the wind. UM. So again I'm hunting this when I've
Speaker 1: got that like a cross that corner cutting wind. And
Speaker 1: then I'm hunting when I had like a combination of
Speaker 1: dropping temperatures and rising barre metric pressure. Um. That just
Speaker 1: seems to be like that's like a post front kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You get a front that comes through, it
Speaker 1: changes the weather up a little bit. And at least
Speaker 1: most of the time I've seen like that to be
Speaker 1: a pretty good trigger for like a little bit more
Speaker 1: you know, daylight movement or a little bit earlier movement
Speaker 1: from the deer coming out to feed in the evenings. UM.
Speaker 1: And so I did it first night. I remember I
Speaker 1: got on this edge of the swamp. It looked like
Speaker 1: awesome and there was ripped up you know, you could
Speaker 1: tell he was in there, slipped in on a very
Speaker 1: It was a cool It was a great day to
Speaker 1: hunt this spot. The trick with hunting his little zone
Speaker 1: here in the swamp is that this is a high
Speaker 1: deer density area and does bed around the edge of
Speaker 1: the swamp in a couple of different places, and there's
Speaker 1: there's a couple of spots that are predictable, but then
Speaker 1: there's like some unpredictable random like a random dough be
Speaker 1: here there for once in a while. So anytime I'm
Speaker 1: going to hunt the edge of it, it's it's risky. Um.
Speaker 1: So I decided I would slip in there. I did
Speaker 1: not have. I have one pre hung stand on the
Speaker 1: edge of that uh swamp, but I didn't have it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a spot I wanted to be based on
Speaker 1: what I was seeing. So I was going in there
Speaker 1: with my saddle and I was going to kind of
Speaker 1: see where the sign was telling me like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: know he historic this come in and out of this
Speaker 1: little corner, and I know the low spots of spot
Speaker 1: where deer come through a lot. But I also want
Speaker 1: to go in there and just kind of read the terrain,
Speaker 1: read the sign and see if there's something that you know,
Speaker 1: is there a big fresh scrape somewhere? Is do what
Speaker 1: can I find like the rub line that he's using
Speaker 1: this year that pops out of the swamp that maybe
Speaker 1: his thirty yards down from where I would have sat. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was my game plan brought my sticks and saddle.
Speaker 1: Very windy day, which is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I picked this day to hunt, because it was windy
Speaker 1: in the early afternoon and then for the last hour
Speaker 1: of daylight it was gonna tail off. Um, and I
Speaker 1: thought like that would be perfect. I'll have the cover
Speaker 1: to get in there and get set up. I can
Speaker 1: kind of poke around just a little bit, find the
Speaker 1: right tree, and then for the last hour of daylight,
Speaker 1: you know, it should be dyna way and um, you know,
Speaker 1: long story short on that. I felt great about it,
Speaker 1: but didn't see him. It's a lot dear, I didn't
Speaker 1: see him. And then I think the following week was
Speaker 1: the next day had similar conditions corner cutting wind, enough
Speaker 1: wind for the setup that I could slip in and
Speaker 1: scout around with my saddle, get set up, and then um,
Speaker 1: you know, be ready for that last hour or two
Speaker 1: when it settled down a little bit. And um, another
Speaker 1: cold late October if you remember, like there were some
Speaker 1: really nice cold days there in late October here in
Speaker 1: the upper Midwest. Um, so I think it was like
Speaker 1: forty or forty one or I don't know, something like that.
Speaker 1: And the time came in on the other edge of
Speaker 1: the swamp and slipped in there a little deeper than
Speaker 1: I usually do. I was kind of feeling like, you know,
Speaker 1: why not be a little more aggressive. I already killed
Speaker 1: one nice Michigan buck. I don't have to kill another one. Um.
Speaker 1: You know I've not. I couldn't figure them out last year.
Speaker 1: Why not swing a little bit harder this year? And
Speaker 1: either it works or I failed spectacularly, but you know
Speaker 1: who cares? So I pushed in deeper into the swamp
Speaker 1: than I usually do, trying to just see, you know,
Speaker 1: see if maybe that would be the ticket to getting
Speaker 1: on him. And I had that wind to to get
Speaker 1: in there, um, and I just like, just you know,
Speaker 1: just I'm just learning, like patients and details and the
Speaker 1: little things just matter a lot. And so it was
Speaker 1: like I did not take a step unless the wind gusted,
Speaker 1: and then it stands still for a minute, and then
Speaker 1: I got a big gust, and I take three steps
Speaker 1: and I stopped and just did that until I was
Speaker 1: able to work my way into the spot found the tree. Um,
Speaker 1: And that night I saw his running buddy. He had
Speaker 1: another nice three year old buck that he'd been you
Speaker 1: know every time I got pictures of him in September
Speaker 1: and October. Um, he was with us three year old
Speaker 1: and I saw him that night, but did not see
Speaker 1: the big guy. And uh, you know, excited to see
Speaker 1: that other one, but the big guy didn't show. And
Speaker 1: now I've got to got to take off for our trip. Um.
Speaker 1: So that takes us to November, take off to Nebraska,
Speaker 1: head to Ohio. UM. I got a picture of Junior
Speaker 1: on November six and seven with a dough and then
Speaker 1: I don't get another picture of him for weeks. The
Speaker 1: rut continues on Um, I come back after the one week?
Speaker 1: What do you hold on a second mark? What do
Speaker 1: you think he's doing when he's bailing like that? Do
Speaker 1: you know where you think he is? I don't know.
Speaker 1: And and he did it last year into it this year.
Speaker 1: And I can't put my finger on him because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of doughs in this area. Like he he
Speaker 1: doesn't need to go anywhere else to find does he
Speaker 1: can find? Does in that his main cores, at least
Speaker 1: the main core that I hunt. Um So, I don't
Speaker 1: get it. I don't know. Um, I haven't had another
Speaker 1: buck that I've hunted this area before that, I you know,
Speaker 1: had had had watched over the years do the same thing. Um,
Speaker 1: So I I don't know, I've got no good answer.
Speaker 1: I just I asked that because I've I've started seeing
Speaker 1: that being able to hunt this place that I have
Speaker 1: in southwestern Wisconsin. Now, you know, last year we had
Speaker 1: this buck that was really cool and he was so consistent.
Speaker 1: He was the first year I saw in the place
Speaker 1: like super consistent. And then he was gone all of
Speaker 1: the rut. He was there in October, and then last
Speaker 1: year in the run and so you're like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: he left to find some does even though there he
Speaker 1: definitely didn't have to. And then this year because the
Speaker 1: biggest deer in the place got killed. Last year, he
Speaker 1: became like the king right like he was living there
Speaker 1: and we didn't have a time. My buddy actually killed
Speaker 1: him right before Halloween. So we don't know for sure
Speaker 1: if he would have left or not. But like on paper,
Speaker 1: you look at that and go, it doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: like why would you make an exodus for two weeks
Speaker 1: or a month here when this property offers you everything
Speaker 1: that you should need. But there's something going on that
Speaker 1: they're finding somewhere else. And I was just wonder, like
Speaker 1: you know it would be so hard to figure out
Speaker 1: unless you had access to these other spots. But why
Speaker 1: like what, why why would it do that? It's it's
Speaker 1: so so And I guess that's why this stuff just
Speaker 1: does it for me because like those questions. I love
Speaker 1: like wondering and trying to figure out those questions, like
Speaker 1: why does he do that? Why? Why is he? You know,
Speaker 1: why does he show up in early December like clockwork?
Speaker 1: Why does he? Why did he? He would have been
Speaker 1: the king of the entire roost, like all the stuff
Speaker 1: I have access to in this area. He would have
Speaker 1: been the best oldest buck. But why is he not
Speaker 1: even trying to take over that other swamp or even
Speaker 1: spending time over there like I've had other years where
Speaker 1: like a big boy will be all over it. Um?
Speaker 1: Why does he want to be just in this little
Speaker 1: southern section? Um? I don't know, but um, but he
Speaker 1: definitely he had something going on elsewhere. Um. And he
Speaker 1: wasn't even I had a neighbor. There's a neighbor who
Speaker 1: has access to a decent sized chunk down in that area,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't getting pictures of him either. He had
Speaker 1: disappeared for him as well. So he you know, he
Speaker 1: traveled somewhere significantly far away. Like it wasn't like he
Speaker 1: just bumped over next door or something. Um, he he
Speaker 1: moved elsewhere, and who knows what he was doing or
Speaker 1: you know, I I have a I have one part
Speaker 1: of an answer to the question. Maybe for this year,
Speaker 1: because as the story progresses, there was one new factor
Speaker 1: added to the story that UM maybe has some influence
Speaker 1: this year. Maybe not UM, but I guess we should
Speaker 1: get to So November passes and UM, November passes, and
Speaker 1: you know, don't get any pictures of him, uh guns season.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, I leave this place alone. UM.
Speaker 1: So I go up to the Northern Michigan family dear camp,
Speaker 1: thing have a great time up there. UM come back
Speaker 1: in late November, and I'm thinking, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: I might, I might try to take a stab at him.
Speaker 1: I'm counting on him showing back up anytime now, late November,
Speaker 1: early December. Like my plan all along was I gotta
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta hope for that annual pattern. UM.
Speaker 1: I actually almost deviated off the plan because, like a
Speaker 1: decent another nice buck started showing up in a totally
Speaker 1: different area, and I actually went after him a couple
Speaker 1: of times with my son. Um, I was telling you,
Speaker 1: I think on via text message. I took my four
Speaker 1: year old out a couple of times to try to
Speaker 1: kill another decent buck that was just in a place
Speaker 1: that might have worked with a kiddo in a blind. Um.
Speaker 1: So we had fun, but that didn't work out. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's late November now, and I'm just like I
Speaker 1: told my wife, I said, all right, when like the
Speaker 1: first week of December hits like December two, three, whatever,
Speaker 1: that window ends up being, that's our muzzleloader season, and
Speaker 1: that's gonna be my last hurrah for buck in Michigan.
Speaker 1: So I said, like, any day the conditions are right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be hunting this buck, Junior. You're sick of
Speaker 1: me talking about him, Um, this is my last chance.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to get him with the muzzleloader. And
Speaker 1: if I don't get him, then then I'll be done.
Speaker 1: I'll just focus on, you know, going on a few
Speaker 1: times for does and it'll be game over. But this
Speaker 1: is like he showed up here last year this time frame,
Speaker 1: I bet he'll do it again. So just just playing on.
Speaker 1: Let's be very flexible with our schedule. So she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: she rolls her eyes at me, YadA YadA. Um. And
Speaker 1: then like November or something, Bam, I get a picture
Speaker 1: of him back for the first time in about a month.
Speaker 1: He shows back up, you know, right on schedule. It's
Speaker 1: a nighttime picture, but he's alive and he's back, so
Speaker 1: super confidence boost. Really, it was like one of those things.
Speaker 1: When I got that pictures, a big grin popped up
Speaker 1: on my face and it's like, all right, man, the
Speaker 1: annual pattern he showed back up. Um, the hunts on. Basically,
Speaker 1: that's what I thought then, and uh, and then it
Speaker 1: was just a matter of figure out when's like the
Speaker 1: best opportunities to to take that strike because again, like
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, the same stuff that has been a
Speaker 1: challenge here in the past is now a challenge in December.
Speaker 1: So he is in the swamp. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: hunt to the edge of the swamp because there's all
Speaker 1: these doughs, especially hard now in the late season because
Speaker 1: there's like no cover, so like slipping in to get
Speaker 1: to the edge of the swamp is very very risky. Um.
Speaker 1: I also know that there's this open cut bean field
Speaker 1: around the swamp this year and so the whole exit
Speaker 1: thing is a challenge. There's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: dear feeding out there. So every time I hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: even with someone driving in to clear the field. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, that adds up if I do that three
Speaker 1: or four or five times. So I just I knew, like,
Speaker 1: all right, I've gotta I've got to pick my moments.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a handful of opportunities to do it,
Speaker 1: and I've got to pick the right ones. Um. And
Speaker 1: so I just planned on not even trying to hunt
Speaker 1: the swamp edge, but hunting this finger of timber that's
Speaker 1: just across from the swamp edge. It would be about
Speaker 1: seventy yards. There's like a finger of this field that
Speaker 1: is in between the timber finger and the swamp. And
Speaker 1: I can hunt that timber edge, this little finger of
Speaker 1: timber safely. I can get into that, Like my access
Speaker 1: in there is bulletproof with like a kind of any
Speaker 1: of any of these winds that cuts the corner, like
Speaker 1: I was talking about, anything easterly or westerly that doesn't
Speaker 1: dump too far down to the south I can get
Speaker 1: away with and I can get there safely. And you know,
Speaker 1: if I have a firearm, I can reach out to
Speaker 1: him at seventy yards or eighty yards and you know,
Speaker 1: still be in the game. So I went a few
Speaker 1: like a week ago, and I looked at all of
Speaker 1: my trail camera pictures again I had of him around
Speaker 1: the swamp, looked at all the daylight photos I you know,
Speaker 1: logged all you know, me, all my weird spreadsheet stuff.
Speaker 1: I like to put all my stuff in there, and
Speaker 1: I like to look out. Okay, what are the dates
Speaker 1: he day lighted, What were the wind directions on the
Speaker 1: days he daylighted, what were the temperatures doing? Um, just
Speaker 1: trying to see, like is there any other thing I'm missing?
Speaker 1: Like I'm just trying to better pick. Like if I
Speaker 1: get three shots at him, I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I picked the best three days, um, because every one
Speaker 1: of those days is gonna hurt me a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: So So that's what I was trying to do leading
Speaker 1: into this window. I had been in Ohio. I did
Speaker 1: it like a three day hunt in Ohio, and I kept,
Speaker 1: you know, watching the forecast, watching the forecast, and I
Speaker 1: decided that the third December was like one of those
Speaker 1: highlight days within that December. You know, sometimes between the
Speaker 1: second and the eleventh was the window I was looking at,
Speaker 1: and as the weather was coming together, the third looked
Speaker 1: like one of those picture perfect things I was talking about.
Speaker 1: It was big coal front. It was gonna drop more
Speaker 1: than twenty degrees in a twelve hour span, actually in
Speaker 1: the morning, so it's gonna be like fifty degrees in
Speaker 1: the morning, and by the time the afternoon arrived it
Speaker 1: was gonna be down to it was gonna be very
Speaker 1: windy overnight and all day, and the wind was gonna
Speaker 1: die down for the last hour and a half. Again,
Speaker 1: it was gonna go from like twenty winds to like twelve,
Speaker 1: So that looks really good. There was gonna be this
Speaker 1: uh rise, big rise and barre metric pressure and a
Speaker 1: reduction in cloud cover kind of happening right at that
Speaker 1: primetime window too, which I don't know about cloud cover
Speaker 1: as much, but just seems like when you get those
Speaker 1: high bear metric like bluebird days that are cold, those
Speaker 1: are just like seem to be like dynamite days for
Speaker 1: dear to be on their feet. Um. So all those
Speaker 1: things lined up for December three, and December was the
Speaker 1: day he showed back up in daylight. Last year. So
Speaker 1: that led me to the hunt. I drove home from Ohio,
Speaker 1: I told my wife, Um, you know, I got a
Speaker 1: hunt December three, and she tells me, well, that's the
Speaker 1: day that my friends from work are coming over for dinner.
Speaker 1: And I was like, uh, well, I gotta hunt. This
Speaker 1: is like the day, this is the day I think
Speaker 1: it will lappen. Um. So we end up asking her
Speaker 1: friends to come late, to come after dark so that
Speaker 1: not only can I hunt in time, but I also
Speaker 1: was able to convince my wife to leave our house
Speaker 1: and be willing and able to drive out and clear
Speaker 1: the field on this property if I needed to before
Speaker 1: a company arrived, because I was like, I can't hunt
Speaker 1: unless it was like, unless you or somebody else can
Speaker 1: come out in clear this field, I can't hunt it because,
Speaker 1: like I know, if I try to walk out, it
Speaker 1: will ruin any other hunts I have. I have to
Speaker 1: build hunt and I need somebody to be able to
Speaker 1: clear this place. And so she's a she's an angel.
Speaker 1: She agreed to both of those things. And Uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: so when you get divorced, hopefully hopefully it'll be at
Speaker 1: the time when like self driving cars are are like
Speaker 1: so advanced. You could just dial up your truck and
Speaker 1: have it drive out there on a little track on it.
Speaker 1: You're like, you'll be able to like show your pin
Speaker 1: on on X and your car is gonna start up
Speaker 1: and drive out there and blow that field. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's one piece of technology I would have to take
Speaker 1: advantage of because because I will when you get divorced,
Speaker 1: when she's finally like oh my god. Yeah, man, when
Speaker 1: I run out of favors, I can call on my
Speaker 1: local friends and the good will of my wife to
Speaker 1: do that for me, I will be in trouble, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, because yeah, this this general area does
Speaker 1: not set up well for solo exits. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: got very lucky in this case, and that I got
Speaker 1: the Yes, I got the green land and those two things. Um.
Speaker 1: So it was like one of those nights where they're
Speaker 1: my very favorite times to go hunting. It's like when
Speaker 1: you've got like the anxious, rumbling, stomach tightness in your
Speaker 1: chest as you're getting ready to hunt, because it just
Speaker 1: feels so right, do you know those days so so
Speaker 1: just just exciting when you when you have like when
Speaker 1: it's not just a hunt, but it's like a well
Speaker 1: planned like strike. I don't know, like when you go
Speaker 1: in there with a lot of confidence. I love that
Speaker 1: feeling versus when you go out there like just when
Speaker 1: I sure hope something works out. Um. I really like
Speaker 1: going in like knowing like it should. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got a great chance because of A and B and
Speaker 1: C and D and you know, it's just like dialed.
Speaker 1: And I felt dialed that night. Um, So I slipped in.
Speaker 1: I slipped into that finger timber. It's like a low
Speaker 1: spot inside this little it's like, you know, only like
Speaker 1: thirty yards forty yard wide finger of timber. I can
Speaker 1: get down this low spot kind of a ditch, and
Speaker 1: I can work that way all the way back to
Speaker 1: be parallel to that swamp. I had a tree stand
Speaker 1: historically been up there. I thought I'll hunt this tree
Speaker 1: stand on my first night because I had a west
Speaker 1: northwest wind which would blow you know, between those two
Speaker 1: betting areas cut the northern part of the swamp. But
Speaker 1: I didn't think he was betting in that little corner. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention this, but in you know, past springs,
Speaker 1: I have gone into the swamp in the winter and
Speaker 1: scouted and I found like big solo beds on some
Speaker 1: humps in that swamp. So I kind of knew the
Speaker 1: little corner there was, there was a portion within the
Speaker 1: swamp where if I had to put my money on
Speaker 1: where he was probably betted when he was in that swamp,
Speaker 1: he was probably in that little corner. So you know,
Speaker 1: I had a general assumption of where it is probably
Speaker 1: safe for my wind to to cut across and where
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be safer to cut across um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, with the west northwest wind, I thought, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll hunt this eastern edge, right, yeah, this eastern edge
Speaker 1: the first night, and if I don't kill him that
Speaker 1: first night, I'll come back in and the next day
Speaker 1: we've got um or like the next good weather day,
Speaker 1: it looked like it was actually gonna shift to like
Speaker 1: a northeast east northeast wind, and so I could then
Speaker 1: hunt further to the west that time and kind of
Speaker 1: cut across the other side of the swamp um and
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be able to work different sections of
Speaker 1: that depending on which you know, which way the wind
Speaker 1: was blowing and which way he ended up moving, if
Speaker 1: if you know, he would do all these things, I
Speaker 1: was hoping he might do. Um. You know, I don't,
Speaker 1: by no means did I think like the annual pattern
Speaker 1: thing was guaranteed to repeat. But I definitely thought it
Speaker 1: was a feather in my cap for like possible confidence,
Speaker 1: like it was it could happen again. And you know
Speaker 1: the fact that I had good conditions and last year
Speaker 1: he had a ten day window of like activity here, um,
Speaker 1: you know, gave me that hope that it was it
Speaker 1: was worth taking a few strikes in there. So with
Speaker 1: those great weather conditions, I figured deer would be on
Speaker 1: their feet pretty early. So I headed in there at
Speaker 1: like two o'clock in the afternoon. UM. Slipped in there
Speaker 1: and got up in the tree, got situated, UM, and
Speaker 1: like I had just gotten all settled in, Like I
Speaker 1: just sat down and like had that first moment where
Speaker 1: it's all set. You take a deep breath. You can't
Speaker 1: take that first like slow gaze around you, you know.
Speaker 1: And I gaze over to my right towards the swamp,
Speaker 1: and I see a flash of movement, and I pulled
Speaker 1: my binoculars and he's there, like within ten minutes of
Speaker 1: me getting situated the tree, he's standing there hundred and
Speaker 1: ten yards away, give or take inside that swamp and
Speaker 1: just standing there and I just like my jaw just dropped.
Speaker 1: It's the first time I've seen him this entire year, right,
Speaker 1: I've gotten pictures of them this year, but never once
Speaker 1: encountered him at this year. I never saw him when
Speaker 1: glass in the summer, never observed him, you know, from
Speaker 1: Afar scouting, never saw any of the other hunts here
Speaker 1: he is too, I don't know to thirty something like
Speaker 1: that broad daylight standing in the middle of the swamp,
Speaker 1: edge of the swamp. Um. So just shock was the
Speaker 1: first thing I'm feeling. Um part starts beating real fast,
Speaker 1: pullt my buyos and I'm looking at him, and you know, now,
Speaker 1: the next thing I think it was, Okay, what's he doing?
Speaker 1: Like is there anywhere I can get a shot here soon?
Speaker 1: Because he's he's already kind of arrange. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: like thick brushing. I'm looking like, is there a gap
Speaker 1: here as the whole there is there's somewhere I could
Speaker 1: actually reposition myself to get a shot. Um, And I
Speaker 1: just I didn't see it. I didn't see any way
Speaker 1: I could get a shot if you know, in the
Speaker 1: near future of where he was. But I thought, Man,
Speaker 1: if he's right here right now, I mean, what's he
Speaker 1: gonna do. Is he just gonna slowly work out here
Speaker 1: like super early? I mean last year, that first daylight
Speaker 1: picture I had of him was three thirty in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: which is super early because it's getting dark at like five,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five thirty five or five forty or
Speaker 1: something like that. So he's out really early. Um, but
Speaker 1: he did that last year, So who knows, Like I
Speaker 1: can't explain that. Um, it's not something he ever does
Speaker 1: any other type of the year. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: big cold front. Uh, he's wore down from the rut.
Speaker 1: Maybe he he knows this is his little sanctuary and
Speaker 1: I'm hardly out there at all in November. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: he's gonna pop out. So I kind of I grabbed
Speaker 1: my guns slowly off the side of the tree and
Speaker 1: kind of get myself positioned, and I'm kind of looking,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I need him to maybe walk like
Speaker 1: fifty yards down until he'd finally be in like a
Speaker 1: spot I might bela um see him and get a shot.
Speaker 1: If he stays in the swamp, or maybe he'll pop
Speaker 1: out into this bean field, this little finger of like
Speaker 1: seventy yards of beans. Um. But he doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: He just stands there for like ten minutes, fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. He's just standing there and he looks around
Speaker 1: and he puts his head down, like licks his back
Speaker 1: legs and they looks around. He kind of rubs up
Speaker 1: on trees, takes a nibble. I'm thinking, man, I guess
Speaker 1: this is what you know mature bucks do, Like they
Speaker 1: just stand and watch and don't move. Um. And then
Speaker 1: he takes a step, and then he takes another step,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, he's kind of walking weird. And then
Speaker 1: he takes another step, and I realized, like he's limping badly,
Speaker 1: Like as he starts trying to move, like I'm saying that,
Speaker 1: he's like struggling to move. And now I'm realizable he's hurt.
Speaker 1: So he got shot or something. And so he maybe
Speaker 1: took like five steps, um, five ten steps something like that,
Speaker 1: and you could see like once he started going, he's
Speaker 1: got a real significant hitch in his steps. Something's wrong
Speaker 1: with his back left leg um, and he beds down,
Speaker 1: so I see I can see him bedded there. He's
Speaker 1: like a hundred twenty yards something like that, and he's
Speaker 1: bedded facing directly at me. I can't see like his eyes,
Speaker 1: like there's like a five inch four inch like sapling
Speaker 1: right between his eyes, But I can tell like for
Speaker 1: those antlers popping on either side of this tree. As
Speaker 1: I'm like shifting around trying to get a better looking
Speaker 1: I can tell like he's basically facing right at me. Um,
Speaker 1: it's now sunny, and I'm thinking, all right, what do
Speaker 1: I do in this scenario? The buck up? And after
Speaker 1: showed up? He's here, he's in sight, he's in range,
Speaker 1: but I can't shoot him because of brush in the way,
Speaker 1: both close to me and close to him, And now
Speaker 1: he's betted. So I'm thinking, all right, can I somehow
Speaker 1: get out of the tree and like stalking on him?
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I gotta take advantage of this
Speaker 1: opportunity now, especially with him being hurt. Who knows like
Speaker 1: how bad this injury is. Who knows if I'll ever
Speaker 1: see him again? Um, I don't know. There's like a
Speaker 1: thousand questions racing through my head now. Um, so I'm
Speaker 1: bouncing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 1: Is there any way I can get out of this
Speaker 1: tree and stalking him, or is that too risky? Should
Speaker 1: I just stay here and wait and hope that he's
Speaker 1: eventually gonna get up and come my way. Uh, twenty
Speaker 1: minutes minutes passes, and I'm debating all this in my head.
Speaker 1: I decided, like, I just don't see any way I
Speaker 1: can get out without him seeing me right now. The
Speaker 1: way he's betted and where my steps coming out of
Speaker 1: this tree are, I'd have to come down on his
Speaker 1: side of the tree, so i'd be in like perfect view.
Speaker 1: Like there's there's branches and stuff in the way, but
Speaker 1: you know, I can see him, he can see me
Speaker 1: if I'm moving down that tree. It would be like
Speaker 1: a very obvious thing. I just couldn't imagine any way
Speaker 1: that would work out. So I decide, all right, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna wait it out. You're gonna be patient, don't
Speaker 1: like act impulsively. Let this play it a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: So twenty minutes passes. Something like that, he stands up
Speaker 1: again and takes a step in my direction, kind of
Speaker 1: angles like he might come out. I reposition, start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe this is gonna happen, getting re excited, takes a
Speaker 1: step kind of nibbles licks his back leg kind of
Speaker 1: push his antlers up against the tree. I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: heart shaken again. And uh then he beds again. So
Speaker 1: he maybe walked like five yards from where he was before,
Speaker 1: beds down again, same kind of situation, still thick stuff.
Speaker 1: I can see him, but you know, no shot. Ah.
Speaker 1: But now where he's better, he's not facing directly at me.
Speaker 1: He's now facing kind of like perpendicular to me. So
Speaker 1: you know by that, I mean like he's if if
Speaker 1: I'm facing due south, like let me describe, I am
Speaker 1: due north of him. Okay, so he's in the swamp
Speaker 1: about twenty yards inside the edge of the swamp. I'm
Speaker 1: due north of him, like a twenty yards and he
Speaker 1: is facing due west. And you know, so one eyeball
Speaker 1: is facing my way. The other eyeball is not facing me. Um,
Speaker 1: but still like you know, visible um. And so now
Speaker 1: I'm back to that same debate, like do I do
Speaker 1: I stay or do I go? Do I stay or
Speaker 1: do I go? And it's now somewhere in the four
Speaker 1: o'clock it's like four o'clock ish somewhere in that ballpark,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, like you're you're running out of
Speaker 1: time to make a move on him. If you want
Speaker 1: to make a move on him, the sooner you do it,
Speaker 1: the better, because every minute you let pass is another
Speaker 1: minute that more dear likely to come out. Right now,
Speaker 1: there's no other deer out. But I know like spe too,
Speaker 1: with the conditions, like there's gonna be a pile of
Speaker 1: deer out feeding here soon. Um. And if there's like
Speaker 1: fifteen deer out feeding there and you try to crawl
Speaker 1: this tree and sneak towards him, like you're gonna blow
Speaker 1: it up and bust him out of here. So if
Speaker 1: you don't go soon, you might never have the chance
Speaker 1: to do it. So part of me was saying, like
Speaker 1: I had to get out of the tree and try
Speaker 1: to make something happen. Another part of me says, you
Speaker 1: could do that and totally blow it up. He'll see you.
Speaker 1: You'll screw it up somehow, and you maybe don't ever,
Speaker 1: maybe you didn't need to do that all. You could
Speaker 1: just wait it out. In ten minutes from he's gonna
Speaker 1: stand up, walk out into the edge of the field
Speaker 1: and give you a clear shot and it'll be the
Speaker 1: best thing ever. Um. So that was that was my debate.
Speaker 1: And the one other thing I had going for me
Speaker 1: was it was windy still. I still had some like
Speaker 1: gusting winds. It wasn't died and down yet, but I
Speaker 1: knew it was going to die down, right because the
Speaker 1: forecast said, like that last hour it was gonna dip,
Speaker 1: you know, get down there to a relatively calm you know,
Speaker 1: ten miles an hour or something like that. So that
Speaker 1: was another reason why, like, if I don't do it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be much harder to do it later. So
Speaker 1: that's where I'm at. It's like four o'clock something like that.
Speaker 1: I've got a little over an hour of daylight left.
Speaker 1: He's better at twenty yards away, kind of quartering, looking,
Speaker 1: you know, perpendicular to me, and I'm in the tree
Speaker 1: trying to make a decision. Tony Peterson, what would you
Speaker 1: do in that situation? Oh? Man, I recently, very very
Speaker 1: recently ran into this situation of watching two bucks dropped
Speaker 1: down into a low spot in a field while I
Speaker 1: was muzzle or hunting, and the clock was ticking, and
Speaker 1: I crawled out there and got busted by the bigger
Speaker 1: buck who had broken in a direction I didn't think of,
Speaker 1: and what so I blew it up and it was
Speaker 1: like a similar thing that you're talking about, where you're like,
Speaker 1: there's a chance if I just wait, they're gonna pop out,
Speaker 1: but there's also, you know, a real chance that it won't.
Speaker 1: So I gotta make something happen. And I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, man, but every time I try to make
Speaker 1: something happen like you're talking about, I feel like I
Speaker 1: screw it up. I feel like my lane is just
Speaker 1: sit and wait for him to come to me. Well,
Speaker 1: even though I don't heed that advice, often is where
Speaker 1: I'm going. So I don't know. I know the smarter
Speaker 1: move would probably be to wait him out, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious to hear where it went. Yeah, so I had
Speaker 1: all the same you know, those things racing through my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking through like you said, many times, it's the
Speaker 1: safer bet to wait it out and let it come
Speaker 1: to you. But on the flip side, you know there
Speaker 1: are even like even the very best deer hunters in
Speaker 1: the very best places only get a handful of like
Speaker 1: close encounters with like a big mature tart a buck,
Speaker 1: Like there's only gonna be so many times where our cross,
Speaker 1: our paths will actually cross. And I'm thinking like this
Speaker 1: might be the only time I see him all year,
Speaker 1: and like I can I can sit around and wait,
Speaker 1: or I can try to capitalize on this. And you know,
Speaker 1: when the first place he was betted, I thought through
Speaker 1: all these things, and I thought like, I just can't
Speaker 1: envision a scenario where I could safely get out of
Speaker 1: here and and reposition and get a shot. But when
Speaker 1: he repositioned the second time, I reassessed it all I thought,
Speaker 1: I do see a possibility, Like I think maybe with
Speaker 1: where he's at, if I go really, really carefully, I
Speaker 1: might be able to get out of the tree without
Speaker 1: him seeing me. And if I can get out of
Speaker 1: the tree without him seeing me, I felt like there
Speaker 1: should be a decent chance that I could use that
Speaker 1: wind to to move and get to a spot I
Speaker 1: can shoot him. So eventually I decided especially I think
Speaker 1: him being injured pushed me over the edge, Like I thought, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the injury is, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on, but um, it just felt like it
Speaker 1: felt like an hour never kind of thing. So I
Speaker 1: slung the gun over my shoulder and waited until a
Speaker 1: big gust of wind and I swung my leg around
Speaker 1: off the tree stamp put on that ladder, and then
Speaker 1: I hung there and I waited for the next big
Speaker 1: gust of wind. I took a step down, and then
Speaker 1: I hung there for a minute, and then I waited
Speaker 1: for the next big gust to win. I took another
Speaker 1: step down, waited for twenty seconds, another big gust of wind,
Speaker 1: took a step. I waited until every time there was
Speaker 1: a big like tree limb shaking gust of wind, I'd
Speaker 1: make a slow move and then I wait. And then
Speaker 1: I did that all the way down to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the tree, and I could confirm at least like
Speaker 1: the last time I could see him was when I
Speaker 1: was about a third of the way down the tree,
Speaker 1: and I could like just be like, okay, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure those are time Still, I don't think he's boldern
Speaker 1: So I got down to the bottom of the tree,
Speaker 1: and I felt confidently. I think I got down without
Speaker 1: him seeing me. Um. So now I'm you know, d
Speaker 1: and twenty yards due north of him, I'm in this
Speaker 1: little thing, your timber. There's like a seventy yard wide
Speaker 1: field between me and him, and then he's like twenty
Speaker 1: thirty yards inside of the swamp. He's facing west wind
Speaker 1: is blowing from the west in his face. So I
Speaker 1: know that if I need if I'm going to be
Speaker 1: able get position to somewhere I could see him and
Speaker 1: get a shot, I need to circle behind him. So
Speaker 1: I've got to get down wind of him and behind
Speaker 1: him visually. So I get on my belly well first,
Speaker 1: when I'm in this finger timber, I'm on my uh fours,
Speaker 1: So I crawl to the edge of the timber, and like,
Speaker 1: I crawl a few steps, get up on my knees,
Speaker 1: trying to glass see if I can see anything, can't
Speaker 1: see anything. Crawl a little bit more, get back on
Speaker 1: my knees, glass, can't see anything. Eventually work my way
Speaker 1: to the edge of the field and there's a very
Speaker 1: slight rise in the field. So like I'm just a
Speaker 1: little low and he's just a little low on his side.
Speaker 1: So I think that kept you know, me from being
Speaker 1: able to see him and him being able to see me.
Speaker 1: So I eventually get to the edge. Keep thinking, like anytime,
Speaker 1: I basically wanted to just see the tips of his
Speaker 1: antlers and just be a confirmed like exactly where he was,
Speaker 1: and then I would like shimmy and continue shimmering and
Speaker 1: it's like just kept checking, kept checking, kept checking, could
Speaker 1: never spot him. So I get to the edge and
Speaker 1: now I'm, you know, more concerned about him seeing me.
Speaker 1: So I belly cross and now I'm just on the belly.
Speaker 1: I just like put my gun out in front of me,
Speaker 1: pull myself forward. Put the gun out in front of me,
Speaker 1: pull myself forward, and I just do that and just
Speaker 1: like sliding along the edge of the leaves um and
Speaker 1: again waiting for wind gus too, because now I'm starting
Speaker 1: to worry, like I'm close enough to him, like if
Speaker 1: I if I'm not careful, he's gonna hear me too.
Speaker 1: So over the course of the next half hour, I think,
Speaker 1: give or take, that's what I do. I'm just belly
Speaker 1: crawling my way around the edge of this timber and
Speaker 1: this finger of cut beans, trying to circle downwind of
Speaker 1: him and down view of him, and trying to circle
Speaker 1: around basically the way this um this is like a
Speaker 1: peninsula of a field, and it's gonna end about a
Speaker 1: hundred yards east of him. It ends, and then like
Speaker 1: the timber line curves back towards him into the swamp.
Speaker 1: So I belly curled all the way to the end
Speaker 1: of that peninsula of the field, staying on the edge
Speaker 1: of it, I start curling back around. So now I
Speaker 1: was heading east. Now I'm heading back west. I'm on
Speaker 1: his side of the field now and every you know,
Speaker 1: five yards or something, I pop up on aneas and
Speaker 1: glass can never see him. At one point I saw
Speaker 1: at one point I heard like shuffling, and I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: he's up and moving. I can't see him. Maybe another
Speaker 1: couple of minutes later, I'm up glass and again I
Speaker 1: see like a flickering white tail in that same generally
Speaker 1: are And then like my heart drops, I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: he saw me, he heard me, or another dear spoot.
Speaker 1: Something happened like the jig's up, Like I just saw
Speaker 1: a white flickering tail, like not necessarily a running away tail,
Speaker 1: but like a flagging tail, like like a like a
Speaker 1: flicking um and it was like moving away. And so
Speaker 1: now my confidence is dropping very quickly. So I heard
Speaker 1: this movement. Now I see this flickering tail, like what,
Speaker 1: you know, what what happened? I can't find him. I
Speaker 1: swear I should be able to see him by now,
Speaker 1: Like where I'm at, I thought for sure i'd be
Speaker 1: able to see his antlers or see something nothing. Um,
Speaker 1: so I almost gave up, like I almost like he's
Speaker 1: not there. He he buggered, he's out of there. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm all the way now on his side, like I
Speaker 1: gotta be getting really close, like I'm within I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifty six seventy yards probably where he should be where
Speaker 1: at least where I left him. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I climbed out of that
Speaker 1: tree because I've been going so slow. So I mean
Speaker 1: it's been half hour, forty minutes, I don't know something
Speaker 1: like that since I made the decision to come out.
Speaker 1: So who knows what could happen in that window? Right,
Speaker 1: And I knew that was on the risks of doing this,
Speaker 1: is that he might just take off some other direction.
Speaker 1: I never know it. And you gotta be bumping up
Speaker 1: on the end of shooting light fairly soon there too, huh.
Speaker 1: So I still so well, not quite not yet because
Speaker 1: when I because it's getting shooting light like five forty
Speaker 1: something or something like that. And I got out of
Speaker 1: that tree like sometime after four if I remember, So,
Speaker 1: if if I remember, I think at this point it's
Speaker 1: like approaching five o'clock is what I think it is,
Speaker 1: So I've got sometime. But what I am worried about
Speaker 1: is other deer, Like there's gonna be other deer. And
Speaker 1: I actually do spot some other deer back in the
Speaker 1: swamp um and I glassed. I'm like, oh no, that's him,
Speaker 1: like way back in the swamp, walking away from me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, god, jeez. But it ended up being some does.
Speaker 1: But I knew, like anytime now, other deer gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta believe there's gonna be some deer coming out here
Speaker 1: to feed, and they're gonna see me on the edge
Speaker 1: um and blow it out and blow the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So confidence is quickly waning. I'm worried about these different things.
Speaker 1: But I remember I kept telling myself, like, you gotta
Speaker 1: act like he's still there, Like the second you give
Speaker 1: up on it and stand up and defeat, he'll be
Speaker 1: right there and run away like you do you. You
Speaker 1: gotta assume he's there all the way until like you're
Speaker 1: standing over top of where he thought he was. You
Speaker 1: gotta act like the game is still on. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's that lesson right there. How many meal deer has
Speaker 1: that saved? When people crawl into a spot when they're
Speaker 1: spotting stocking mule deer and they think they're gone and
Speaker 1: they stand up. Yeah, so I can't speak tommy, I
Speaker 1: can't speak to it from mule deer. But like I've
Speaker 1: I've had this happened with turkeys, I've had it happen
Speaker 1: with white tails. Like I've been burned by making the
Speaker 1: wrong assumption too many times. So so this time I
Speaker 1: remember like actively, like drilling in my head like assume
Speaker 1: he's there, assumings that you gotta just keep operating, like
Speaker 1: stay stealthy, still, slow down, like just do the thing right,
Speaker 1: even though it felt like there's no way this is
Speaker 1: gonna work now. Um So, just after I remember having
Speaker 1: that thought, I remember taking a couple more crawls forward,
Speaker 1: get up on the knees again. I'm like right there now,
Speaker 1: I'm there was there was this big down tree in
Speaker 1: the edge of the woods, and so that was like
Speaker 1: my landmark, Like all right, he's just off of that
Speaker 1: down tree where the root ball is back behind us somewhere.
Speaker 1: And now I'm like, withinn, I can toss a ball
Speaker 1: to that tree ball now the down tree root system.
Speaker 1: So I get up on my knees again, pull my bion.
Speaker 1: I was glassing in there, like, why can't I see
Speaker 1: this buck? And then boom antlers right in my right
Speaker 1: in my glass like walks out right in front of me.
Speaker 1: He'd been further back behind those trees, steps out, walking
Speaker 1: like fast. Um, you know, I don't if he's limping
Speaker 1: consistently step step step, he's like on a mission. Now
Speaker 1: he walks right out. He's like forty five yards away,
Speaker 1: fifty yards away and back. But he's behind one layer
Speaker 1: of trees. So I see him. I'm on my knees
Speaker 1: on the edge of the field, pull up my shooting
Speaker 1: stick and gun. I see one gap in the woods.
Speaker 1: He steps steps, enters the gap. I got map, Matt, Matt,
Speaker 1: he stops, pull the trigger. He drops in his tracks.
Speaker 1: I killed you. How fun was that? It was insane? Man,
Speaker 1: it was insane. It was so much fun. I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. Like, I mean, the emotional roller coaster from
Speaker 1: like two thirty to five o'clock was so insane, up
Speaker 1: and down and all around, and um, I mean it
Speaker 1: was just a wild ride. Um really really nuts, really
Speaker 1: really nuts. And yeah, walked over there and and he
Speaker 1: he was dead. Instantly walked over there kind of in shock,
Speaker 1: and um, you know he was. He was just an
Speaker 1: awesome buck, a big, big, heavy eight pointer that I've
Speaker 1: been watching for three years and finally now he was.
Speaker 1: He was laying there on the ground, and you know
Speaker 1: it was was curious about the injury. And it was
Speaker 1: not a shot. It was something happened to his foot,
Speaker 1: like to his hoof. His hoof was swollen up like
Speaker 1: a grapefruit, and there was like a wound on the
Speaker 1: front of the foot, like an open wound on the
Speaker 1: front of the foot, like almost like I don't even
Speaker 1: know what could do it. It almost looked like what
Speaker 1: the foot of an animal might look like they've been
Speaker 1: stuck in a trap or something. Um. But then also
Speaker 1: in between his toe pads was like an open wound
Speaker 1: inside there, like pussing and open almost down to the bone. UM.
Speaker 1: So something really messed up his foot because he was
Speaker 1: like gimping along real bad with it. And interestingly, I
Speaker 1: went back and looked at the last pictures I had
Speaker 1: of him in November, so I got a picture of
Speaker 1: him November six, and that was the first picture I
Speaker 1: had of him with that wound. So I think I
Speaker 1: had pictures of him and like the first or something
Speaker 1: or like late October, and his foot looked fine. And
Speaker 1: then the November six he had his foot wound and
Speaker 1: I never saw him again until the day I killed him,
Speaker 1: December three. So I don't know if him disappearing all
Speaker 1: of November was because of like the annual pattern thing
Speaker 1: that he did the year before, or if it was
Speaker 1: like maybe he just maybe he did that, but then
Speaker 1: it was slowed down by this injury too. I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but to the date daylight again December three, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and where I saw him was within a hundred yards
Speaker 1: of where I got a picture of him last year
Speaker 1: on December three, that first time. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be coincidence, but very very interesting, um,
Speaker 1: you know that that injury. You know, we we always
Speaker 1: kind of think when we see a deer limp and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you know, either he got shot or
Speaker 1: another buck speared him in the ass or something when
Speaker 1: they were fighting. But you know, you think about the
Speaker 1: environment they live in, and you know, I run bird
Speaker 1: dogs out and that stuff all the time. Like there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of you know, like old Barbower, you know,
Speaker 1: like a roll old barbower on the ground, or a
Speaker 1: fence post or just a stick getting like jammed in
Speaker 1: there wrong, like a lot of times. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like when people think like, oh, you know
Speaker 1: you hunt, whether it's I don't sneak that's so dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's like not as dangerous as climbing in a tree.
Speaker 1: Like the less sexy stuff is a lot of times
Speaker 1: what gets you. And I always wonder about that with them,
Speaker 1: Like they live out there long enough, they're gonna get
Speaker 1: crazy injuries that aren't going to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: super cool that they got shot on the end of
Speaker 1: a drive or got into a fight with a way
Speaker 1: bigger buck. Like sometimes it's probably just stupid stuff like
Speaker 1: when we stub our toe, you know, like on the
Speaker 1: end table in the dark when you're going to bed
Speaker 1: or something. Right, Yeah, and you know that that's an
Speaker 1: interesting point, like I don't know what this injury might
Speaker 1: have done, you know if it went the long haul.
Speaker 1: Um you know, uh, he was he was struggling like
Speaker 1: it was just his foot, but like it looked like
Speaker 1: he was really struggling to move um. And it was
Speaker 1: like definitely badly infected, like pussing and stuff. So who knows,
Speaker 1: Like maybe that's maybe he would have been fine and
Speaker 1: would have been around next year, or maybe that infection
Speaker 1: would have spread or whatever and that might have taken
Speaker 1: him out. He was definitely wore down. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that just because of the rut or if that
Speaker 1: was because of this slowing him down, but he was
Speaker 1: definitely worn down body wise from what he looked like
Speaker 1: in pictures earlier in the year and stuff. Um, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm glad that, you know, glad
Speaker 1: it all came together. You know it was. There was
Speaker 1: some there was some luck there, for sure. There were
Speaker 1: some decisions that worked out there. For sure, there was
Speaker 1: um something that all kind of brought these things together
Speaker 1: to make it work out. Um, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was pretty awesome. So so can I ask you now
Speaker 1: that you're just killing deer with a gun and are
Speaker 1: you going to be more like Expenser here? Am I
Speaker 1: gonna be the only real bow hunter left at Meat Eater?
Speaker 1: Are we gonna are gonna get back to that? Hey?
Speaker 1: Then two for three boat, one of the gun I
Speaker 1: I got, my percentage is still in favor of the
Speaker 1: bow I would say that as I'm looking at a gun,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take the hunt deer in like an hour.
Speaker 1: So I'm just giving you, uh you know, I uh,
Speaker 1: I love of my bow hunting, but I it is
Speaker 1: nice to get out with a gun every once in
Speaker 1: a while, and uh, you know, it opens up possibilities
Speaker 1: like this fun this. I like, I love bow hunting
Speaker 1: because of like the forced challenge and intimacy and everything
Speaker 1: like that, but there is something really cool about the
Speaker 1: new challenge and possibilities a gun hunt opens up, Like
Speaker 1: I like this kind of gun hunt. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I was shooting a deer like three yards. It
Speaker 1: was like I still had to like stalk in on
Speaker 1: this deer and I killed him like forty five. But
Speaker 1: I never probably would have even considered trying to pull
Speaker 1: that out with a bow. Um, but I knew with
Speaker 1: like the gun and the conditions, like I might be
Speaker 1: able to sneak in and get there at sixty or
Speaker 1: seventy or something like that. And I mean it was
Speaker 1: just it was just fun. It was just really fun.
Speaker 1: And um, I have a whole Foundations episode coming up
Speaker 1: ah this week, I think on that very topic of
Speaker 1: like it's great to be a purist and just be
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm only hunt with a bow or I
Speaker 1: only do this or that. But when you when you
Speaker 1: are probably merely a bow hunter or primarily whatever weapon
Speaker 1: choice you have, and you switch it up, hey, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's super fun, but be you learn because
Speaker 1: you hunt differently, Like you're not just gonna default to
Speaker 1: what you know you have to do because of a
Speaker 1: specific weapon. And I think it makes you better for sure.
Speaker 1: I think there's a loud truth to that. And um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I uh, I will appreciate this buck no
Speaker 1: less than any other bucket kill with a bow, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. So um so so three big takeaways for me, Tonium.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's anything that you heard here
Speaker 1: in the story, but for me, like if I'm trying
Speaker 1: to spell out what led to this success, I think
Speaker 1: the things we've already touched on, but I just want
Speaker 1: to kind of put a bow on him here. One
Speaker 1: was you know, being pretty darn tactical as far as
Speaker 1: when I go in here and hunt, right. I took
Speaker 1: a strike in early October. Um, I took a couple
Speaker 1: of strikes and lay in October, and I left it
Speaker 1: alone pretty much entire ELI until December. Uh. The reason
Speaker 1: I did that with confidence is because I was leaning
Speaker 1: on this like annual pattern. I was gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: take my trail camera data, take my observations in the
Speaker 1: past year, and pair that with this historical trend that
Speaker 1: I was hoping would happen again, and not you know,
Speaker 1: add any more pressure to this place than I had to,
Speaker 1: because I know, like handful of hunts in the wrong
Speaker 1: days and the wrong ways, and I might never see him.
Speaker 1: So I was you know, being careful and strategic with
Speaker 1: the timing. I was watching the annual pattern. And then
Speaker 1: the third thing I did that I think one I
Speaker 1: think there's a downside to the increasing use of cell
Speaker 1: cameras now is that it can be really easy to
Speaker 1: become dependent on them because they are a great tool.
Speaker 1: They can give you, you you know, much faster intel out
Speaker 1: there than we used to have. UM, And so there
Speaker 1: is a tendency to wait for a picture before you
Speaker 1: go hunted deer. So there might be like, well, you
Speaker 1: know he's not there. Um, I'm not gonna hunt unless
Speaker 1: I get like that daylight picture of him or whatever.
Speaker 1: And like maybe that that that can be a good
Speaker 1: way proudly to kill deer sometimes. But like camera, you
Speaker 1: can't depend on cameras. Like cameras only give you this
Speaker 1: tiny little window of what's going on out there. So
Speaker 1: even though cell cameras are a great tool, they only
Speaker 1: give you a glimpse at a very narrow sliver of
Speaker 1: what's going on in the woods. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: look at that as gospel truth of what's happening in
Speaker 1: the woods where you hunt, you are missing out on
Speaker 1: You're missing the boat, like you're missing what's happening out there. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're great, but they're not only that, but
Speaker 1: you're missing some of the deer that are walking by
Speaker 1: it right exactly, like right by I mean it's not
Speaker 1: only is it just giving you a little tiny slice
Speaker 1: of what's going on out there, which can be super valuable.
Speaker 1: But even in that slice, you know it's not yep, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so I remember, um in a conversation with Mark
Speaker 1: Jury this year, he said something that's stuck with me
Speaker 1: and that I was telling myself leading into this hunt.
Speaker 1: He said, Yeah, cell cameras are great, but sometimes you've
Speaker 1: got to be the camera. You gotta remember that you
Speaker 1: have to be the camera we can't just always depend
Speaker 1: on the cameras. You've got to be it. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I kept telling myself leading into this December window.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, like, all right, I believe he's gonna
Speaker 1: come back. Um, And I could either wait until he
Speaker 1: shows up in daylight and a camera and then use
Speaker 1: that as my trigger to go, or I can choose
Speaker 1: when I think those best days are and trying to
Speaker 1: predict when he'll first show up, and I decided, like,
Speaker 1: I gotta be the camera. I'm going to make my
Speaker 1: own decision based on the conditions and what I know
Speaker 1: from the past, and I'm gonna be there before he's
Speaker 1: there and kill him and not wait and wait and
Speaker 1: wait for him to show up on camera. And maybe
Speaker 1: he's been all around it leading up to that. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I had no daylight pictures
Speaker 1: of him for more than a month leading up to this,
Speaker 1: So if I had waited, I would have never known
Speaker 1: he was right there, never would have had a shot.
Speaker 1: So I think that was another thing that that helped
Speaker 1: this all come together. Um. And you know, the history
Speaker 1: I had watching this deer that year prior that all
Speaker 1: helped me know the right place to be. That all
Speaker 1: helped me kind of narrow down this this little core area.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, less than thirty acres I
Speaker 1: was hunting here that he was in, and like the
Speaker 1: swamp is like less than ten acres or something that
Speaker 1: I'm hunting around the edge of. So it's, uh, it
Speaker 1: just kind of got tighter and tighter and tighter until
Speaker 1: I knew, like, Okay, this is the spot, and I
Speaker 1: can hunt other places out here, but I'm just not
Speaker 1: probably not gonna see him there. If if if I'm really
Speaker 1: going for him, it's it's gotta be like here here here, um.
Speaker 1: And that slowly came together over the two years. So
Speaker 1: those those are the things that stand out to me
Speaker 1: as far as you know, what led to some success here.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, a lot of that
Speaker 1: can be applied to any small property, Like the timing
Speaker 1: they're leaving it alone unless it's just right, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at annual patterns to help you be smart about
Speaker 1: those hunts. Being the camera. That's another thing I think
Speaker 1: that also applies to the general late season, right. I
Speaker 1: waited till the late season because of that annual pattern,
Speaker 1: but also you know, I let it be a sanctuary
Speaker 1: during gun season. So I think that's a great thing
Speaker 1: if you have a small property with a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure around it, if you can kind of let your
Speaker 1: place be a sanctuary for a few weeks there when
Speaker 1: everybody else is out, you could have great late season
Speaker 1: hunting because of that. UM, I was hunting the edge
Speaker 1: of the best betting next to the most attractive food
Speaker 1: that I had access to. That's a great late season tactic. UM.
Speaker 1: And I waited until the right conditions twenty degree cold, front,
Speaker 1: high beara metric pressure. All that kind of led to
Speaker 1: the night that you know deer would be on their
Speaker 1: feet a little bit earlier. So those are those are
Speaker 1: the things that I think I take away from this. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know, is there anything else to you, Tony
Speaker 1: or questions? Do you have anything? No. I think it's
Speaker 1: just a good lesson on, you know, playing the playing
Speaker 1: the long game on a small property in the right way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you did a good job. Man.
Speaker 1: I think it's cool to just kind of like really
Speaker 1: put the brakes on you have to, because I just don't.
Speaker 1: I think it's so easy to not do that, but
Speaker 1: it's so important when you're dealing with a small property.
Speaker 1: And and when you're dealing with deer that are just
Speaker 1: generally in an area where they get hunted hard, where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hunting pressure, like you just have
Speaker 1: to be so aware of what you're putting on them too.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think it's cool man. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think one thing that should just be mentioned. Um,
Speaker 1: and we we talked about this, We've we've had some
Speaker 1: conversation in the past. But you know, I've been pretty
Speaker 1: tactical and careful with how many times I hunt this piece.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean I haven't been able to hunt
Speaker 1: a lot still, Right, I just go other places. So
Speaker 1: I've hunted public land in different places. I've got two
Speaker 1: other I was hunt a ton, hunt of a ton,
Speaker 1: just all sorts of different spots. Right. I want to
Speaker 1: hunt late November, so I went to Ohio. I wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt mid November during gun season, so I went
Speaker 1: to northern Michigan. I wanted to hunt the core of
Speaker 1: the ruts, so I went to this place in that place. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's plenty of ways to still have
Speaker 1: a great fun hunting season full of hunts without messing up,
Speaker 1: you know, a little piece of private maybe that you
Speaker 1: do have access to that could you know, be a
Speaker 1: window of opportunity like this if you played it, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of short and sweet on what you do. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to make it sound like if you
Speaker 1: want to kill deer on small properties that you can
Speaker 1: never hunt them, that you can never hunt. Um, you
Speaker 1: can hunt, but just got to be a strategic about
Speaker 1: when you make those strikes. If you're trying to kill
Speaker 1: like an old deer like that, and then just spread
Speaker 1: your hunt out over other places. Go have some fun
Speaker 1: public land, Go go do some crazy stuff in other places.
Speaker 1: Get new permission. Um, this certainly doesn't need to limit
Speaker 1: your experience. Options are your friend. That is the truth.
Speaker 1: That is the truth. So that's a story, man, it
Speaker 1: was a fun one. I love it, buddy, well Tony.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on here to to
Speaker 1: hear me out and ask the good questions and help
Speaker 1: me talk through this one. What's uh? What's this muzzleload
Speaker 1: story with you? You gonna you're gonna get one down
Speaker 1: here soon. I don't know, maybe if I can get
Speaker 1: out there. I actually I'm kind of just doing the
Speaker 1: muzzleloader thing because I enjoy it, and I haven't picked
Speaker 1: up a gun in like eight years to hunt deer,
Speaker 1: and so I'm just having fun with it. But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm kind of you know, you talk about a thirty
Speaker 1: acre property that might have some late season potential, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the properties I own over in Wisconsin. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm picking up some bucks, you know, in a little
Speaker 1: corner of that property that made it through the Wisconsin
Speaker 1: gun season. And there it's basically a pretty nice eight pointer.
Speaker 1: For there, he's probably like a hundred hundred and five
Speaker 1: inch deer and then there's a spike, but for there,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good. And my daughter has a buck tag left.
Speaker 1: And so I'm kind of like, I'm gonna get through
Speaker 1: this muzzleloader season here, which by the time this drops
Speaker 1: will be over, and then I'm gonna go start working
Speaker 1: on those deer for her because I think the season's over.
Speaker 1: There is open through part of January, so there's a
Speaker 1: chance to maybe try to get on these deer and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, do some kind of over Christmas break type
Speaker 1: of hunt and get her a chance at a buck
Speaker 1: when it should you know, theoretically, it'll be really tough,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, how it is after a gun
Speaker 1: season blows through there and it's late season and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But still I'm I'm as excited for that
Speaker 1: as I kind of have been for anything this season.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be at least really fun
Speaker 1: to try nice. Well that's a man just having like
Speaker 1: that hope for something fun in the late scenes, Like
Speaker 1: basically all I ever asked for for the late seasons,
Speaker 1: Like just something to get me excited and still be
Speaker 1: out there. That's that's a pretty good thing to have.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, it's it's everything. And you know, I show
Speaker 1: because I have I have a cell camera over there,
Speaker 1: and I show my little girls those pictures, and of
Speaker 1: course you know she wants to shoot that that bigger box.
Speaker 1: But like in my head, there's a spike that moved
Speaker 1: in there that he might score ten to twelve inches.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, uh, but I'm like that deer has
Speaker 1: no idea he's he's going to be the one who's
Speaker 1: probably going to be in trouble because I think he
Speaker 1: just moved in there and he's living there, and you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have any standards. I mean, if it's a
Speaker 1: legal buck, she's gonna shoot it. So I'm like, I
Speaker 1: want to work on that bigger one, but I'm like
Speaker 1: that backup Buck is probably in real trouble. He's gonna
Speaker 1: get it, I hope, I hope. So I would love
Speaker 1: to see either one of them come in and have
Speaker 1: her have a cool hunt in the snow. You know
Speaker 1: that would be so cool. Well, I'm gonna wish my
Speaker 1: wish you luck and cross my fingers and toes for yes. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Thanks Buddy, all right, Thanks Tony ye, all right, and
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it for us today. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you found along with this story. It was
Speaker 1: a fun one to share. I certainly am thankfultle Ill
Speaker 1: came together like this, and uh, just looking forward to
Speaker 1: more fun hunts in the future. Getting to know these deer.
Speaker 1: I just absolutely love studying them, trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what they do, getting to know him, watching them grow
Speaker 1: over the years. Uh, it's it's super fun for a
Speaker 1: white tail and nerd like me, and hopefully for for
Speaker 1: those of you out there is as well. So with
Speaker 1: all that said, let's wrap this up. Thank you, good
Speaker 1: luck out there if you're still hunting, and until next time,
Speaker 1: stay wired to h.