Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the white Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, we are kicking off a new series in
Speaker 2: which we are exploring the habits, mindsets, methods and routines
Speaker 2: of the best deer hunters in the world. And to
Speaker 2: kick things off, we've got John Eberhart. All right, welcome
Speaker 2: back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light and their Camel for Conservation Initiative. And
Speaker 2: I'm back. I don't know what kind of crazy things
Speaker 2: Tony said that I was up to over the last
Speaker 2: few weeks while he was manning the ship, but none
Speaker 2: of it was true. I have been out west. He
Speaker 2: probably said I was doing a little fishing, and that's true,
Speaker 2: doing a little camping, that's all true, but also chomping
Speaker 2: at the bit to get back into some white tail things.
Speaker 2: Got some good bucks showing up on camera already. I'm
Speaker 2: excited to talk about those things. But today the main story,
Speaker 2: the big picture here is that we're kicking off a
Speaker 2: new series, and this is a series that I'm excited
Speaker 2: about because it is different. It's different than what we've
Speaker 2: done in the past. It's different than I think, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty much what anybody else is trying to do with
Speaker 2: their podcast, because I'm not asking our guests over this
Speaker 2: next month really about, you know, their hunting tactics. I'm
Speaker 2: not looking to understand their perspectives on patterning deer or
Speaker 2: deer behavior, or understanding dear habitat or different spots to
Speaker 2: set up your tree stands, or how to shoot your bone,
Speaker 2: none of that stuff. What I'm interested in is is
Speaker 2: one or two levels deeper than that. What I want
Speaker 2: to achieve with this series is to get a look
Speaker 2: under the trunk, behind the curtains, behind the scenes, inside
Speaker 2: the minds of the best of the best deer hunters.
Speaker 2: How do they think about deer hunting problems and struggles
Speaker 2: and challenges. How do they make their decisions? What are
Speaker 2: the routines and the habits and the little things and
Speaker 2: their mindsets that lead to their success? Like these are
Speaker 2: the building blocks of success. That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: get at here. So I put together a series of
Speaker 2: twenty questions that I think will help us get a
Speaker 2: glimpse of that behind the scenes machinations in these guys' minds.
Speaker 2: These are questions, like I mentioned, we're going to try
Speaker 2: to help understand how they set their goals, how they
Speaker 2: define success, how they think about failure, how they get
Speaker 2: better at things, who they look up to, who they
Speaker 2: observe and see as successful, and what do they find
Speaker 2: success to look like in those people. All of these
Speaker 2: things I think will help us have a better underlying
Speaker 2: understanding of what the tools of what the mental models
Speaker 2: necessary are necessary to have success as a deer hunter.
Speaker 2: So this is different, different level of thinking, different several
Speaker 2: layers beneath the surface that I think will give us
Speaker 2: all a better idea of how we can become better
Speaker 2: deer hunters ourselves. And my first guest, the guest to
Speaker 2: kick this series off this week is John Eberhart. If
Speaker 2: you've listened this podcast, you likely know him. He's the
Speaker 2: author of many books. He is a long standing outdoor
Speaker 2: writer and one of the most successful DIY white tail
Speaker 2: ball hunters in the country. He comes from Michigan. I've
Speaker 2: learned a lot from him personally. I know many of
Speaker 2: you have too, and so he was the guy who
Speaker 2: I thought would be a great person to kick this
Speaker 2: whole thing off. And what you're going to see is
Speaker 2: that this series of twenty questions will be the same
Speaker 2: series of twenty questions I ask to every single one
Speaker 2: of the guests we have in the upcoming week. So
Speaker 2: we're going to get to hear all of these different,
Speaker 2: very very good deer hunters answer the very same questions,
Speaker 2: and we'll see what's you know, what they have in common.
Speaker 2: We'll see how they approach these things differently. And I
Speaker 2: think it's going to be very insightful and interesting to
Speaker 2: be able to compare and contrast all these different folks
Speaker 2: who all have tremendous success but maybe approach it in
Speaker 2: different ways. Or maybe what we're going to find is
Speaker 2: that while their tactics are different, maybe their mindsets and
Speaker 2: their habits and routines and philosophies, maybe those are more
Speaker 2: consistent than we realize. It's going to be interesting to
Speaker 2: find out. I'm very excited about it. And we're going
Speaker 2: to kick off the conversation with John here very quickly,
Speaker 2: but real fast. We want to give you a heads
Speaker 2: up on something that is going to be coming up
Speaker 2: in a matter of days if you're listening to this
Speaker 2: in early July. Next week, we have a new educational
Speaker 2: white tail video series launching that Tony Peterson and I
Speaker 2: are hosting called Whitetail Edu. And these are a series
Speaker 2: of kind of foundational, relatively beginner whitetail how to pieces.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing that if you've been
Speaker 2: hunting a long time, these will be good refreshers. If
Speaker 2: you are relatively new, or if you have a new
Speaker 2: friend or a new family member, someone who's getting into
Speaker 2: this stuff but hasn't been doing it for twenty five years,
Speaker 2: these will be great videos to send to them to
Speaker 2: help level them up. Because what we found is that
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 2: and we end up speaking over them. We end up
Speaker 2: talking about details, little nuanced things that they just don't
Speaker 2: quite understand yet, and then they miss out on a
Speaker 2: lot of the really good stuff we cover here in
Speaker 2: the podcast. What we want to do is establish a
Speaker 2: resource that will get you fully up to speed on
Speaker 2: the very most important core foundational elements of deer hunting,
Speaker 2: things like understanding where, why, and when deer feed, what
Speaker 2: they feed on how to determine that things like really
Speaker 2: diving deep into understanding tracks, not just the surface level,
Speaker 2: but what can you read into those tracks and how
Speaker 2: can that apply to future deer hunting efforts. Same thing
Speaker 2: with scrapes and rubs and understanding maps and how deer
Speaker 2: use habitat all, that kind of stuff. We're going to
Speaker 2: try to establish a really good baseline for all of
Speaker 2: those topics for folks. So the place that you can
Speaker 2: go to see these videos when they come out is
Speaker 2: a new channel for met Eator. It's called meat Eater Clips.
Speaker 2: That's what you need to do right now is hit
Speaker 2: pause on this podcast, go to YouTube and search for
Speaker 2: meat Eater Clips that clips, subscribe to that channel. Then
Speaker 2: when the new videos drop, you will be the first
Speaker 2: to know it and you'll see them right there. You
Speaker 2: can give them a watch or pass them along to
Speaker 2: your friends who are still getting into this and still
Speaker 2: learning whatever it is. We'd love it if you check
Speaker 2: them out, share them around. Hopefully this can help a
Speaker 2: lot of folks and better build people to be able
Speaker 2: to listen to these in depth, know more advanced conversations
Speaker 2: and get the absolute most out of it. So again,
Speaker 2: that's white Tail. First one comes out, I believe July tenth,
Speaker 2: and then it should be I think every week from
Speaker 2: there on for a while. And again that's on the
Speaker 2: Meat Eater Clips channel. So that is my one heads
Speaker 2: up for the day. Without further ado, let's kick off
Speaker 2: the mindsets of the Whitetail Masters series today with John Eberhart.
Speaker 2: All right here with me on the line again is
Speaker 2: mister John Eberhart. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: John. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you offering this gig
Speaker 3: before me so that it was great to do a
Speaker 3: podcast with you. You always ask me questions that usually
Speaker 3: other people don't ask, which is nice.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I do try, and I think we're going
Speaker 2: to do that again today. But you brought up something
Speaker 2: just before we started recording which is really interesting, which
Speaker 2: was I've made you a guinea pig several times now,
Speaker 2: I guess because when I started the what would You Do? Series,
Speaker 2: and that was like four years ago, you were the
Speaker 2: first one for that, and I had forgotten that you
Speaker 2: were first, and now I'm making you go first on
Speaker 2: this too. So the pressures on though, because it went
Speaker 2: so well with the What would You Do? Series that
Speaker 2: We've continued it for years, so now John, we need
Speaker 2: we need to make that happen again with this one.
Speaker 2: But you know, the guy was telling you before we started.
Speaker 2: What I'm hoping to get at with this series and
Speaker 2: with our chat here today John, is to kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, get a look underneath the hood. It's like
Speaker 2: popping the hood on a muscle car and seeing what's
Speaker 2: going on behind the scenes, the habits, the routines, the mindset,
Speaker 2: the philosophy, those kinds of things like what's going on
Speaker 2: in here as you were out there deer hunting making
Speaker 2: decisions or preparing in the off season. So we're probably
Speaker 2: not going to talk about, you know, what's better a
Speaker 2: rubb or a scrape or a how big of a
Speaker 2: track you're looking for? Not that kind of stuff. It's
Speaker 2: it's going to be a different kind of angle we're
Speaker 2: going to take today exactly. So, So, John, I guess
Speaker 2: the first thing I want to look at with you
Speaker 2: is a simple thing. How do you define deer hunting success?
Speaker 3: Well, that would totally depend on how many years experience
Speaker 3: you have, what type of property you're hunting, and what
Speaker 3: your goals are. You know, there's guys that hunt public
Speaker 3: land that are just out there to enjoy nature and
Speaker 3: maybe kill a door or subordinate buck for the freezer,
Speaker 3: and that may be success to them personally for me
Speaker 3: for success, I my goal for success is to kill
Speaker 3: mature bucks in pressured areas. I don't look up to
Speaker 3: anybody like TV guys. I shouldn't say any most TV
Speaker 3: guys I do not look up to as as serious
Speaker 3: deer hunters because they're hunting in ultra managed properties almost
Speaker 3: as do like settings, fantasy land stuff, and it doesn't
Speaker 3: take much skill set to do that. So so to
Speaker 3: me killing three and a half year old in older
Speaker 3: bucks in heavily pressured areas against tons of competition, and
Speaker 3: probably at least half of my competition on the public
Speaker 3: lands and free permission properties that I'm hunting, which is
Speaker 3: exclusively all I hunt, you know, at least half of
Speaker 3: the people are targeting just deer, So that's a different
Speaker 3: type of pressure. Anytime you're hunting ultra managed property where
Speaker 3: nobody's shooting at anything until it's four and a half
Speaker 3: years old, you know, you can have several hunters on
Speaker 3: the property, but that's not hunting pressure, because you know,
Speaker 3: once the deer hits to kill kill engagement criteria. You know,
Speaker 3: they move a lot during daylight hours, they move out
Speaker 3: into short crowd fields. They'll walk into your little shell
Speaker 3: corn in the weeds in front of your twenty feet
Speaker 3: in front of your box blind that sticks out like
Speaker 3: a sore thumb, and you shoot them. So you know,
Speaker 3: to me, that's that's not deer hunting, or at least
Speaker 3: that's not a skilled deer hunter. So a mock. Personally,
Speaker 3: on my end, it's being able to hunt against heavy
Speaker 3: competition and target three and a half year old and
Speaker 3: older bucks because in a lot of areas I hunt
Speaker 3: four and a half year old bucks just do not exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the flip side, then how would you
Speaker 2: define deer hunting failure?
Speaker 3: A failure to me would be a buck comes in
Speaker 3: and I have an opportunity, but I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to get a closer shot, so I don't take the
Speaker 3: first good opportunity, and then I don't get the opportunity
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to get because something else happened.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's with the hot dough and she turns and leaves,
Speaker 3: or maybe he comes in and then all of a
Speaker 3: sudden he turns ninety degrees and goes a different direction
Speaker 3: where he did offer me a shot and I passed
Speaker 3: on a thirty yard shot because I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to get a fifteen yard shot and I didn't take it.
Speaker 3: That'd be about the only time I look at failure
Speaker 3: because being in the woods. To me, being in nature,
Speaker 3: there can't be failure in deer hunting. You know, I've
Speaker 3: went three years in a row in Michigan without seeing
Speaker 3: a buck that I would shoot, or without having a
Speaker 3: buck on camera that I would personally shoot. Do I
Speaker 3: consider those three seasons it's failures? Absolutely not. I was
Speaker 3: out there, I had the best bucks in the area
Speaker 3: walk by me that I did not shoot. So how
Speaker 3: can you look at that as failure? You can. You
Speaker 3: can only fail when you don't when you don't take
Speaker 3: advantage of something that's there, or you don't get the opportunity.
Speaker 3: It's something that you know is there. You don't get
Speaker 3: that opportunity, then you may have failed in you know,
Speaker 3: your location or your seasonal timing, your daily timing not
Speaker 3: being there it's the right time of season or right
Speaker 3: time of day you did your sequence is wrong. Maybe
Speaker 3: used a tactic it didn't work, but Overall, I really
Speaker 3: never look at deer hunting as a failure. I just
Speaker 3: enjoy being out there in nature. Got I'm seventy three
Speaker 3: years old, and I just have a passion for it.
Speaker 3: So unless I unless I do what I said early
Speaker 3: as far as missing an opportunity because I passed on
Speaker 3: what I know, I could have taken the thirty yard
Speaker 3: shime and killed it waiting for a fifteen yards hid
Speaker 3: and then I don't end up getting that shot. And
Speaker 3: that's happened to me several times. And those are things
Speaker 3: I've never ever gotten.
Speaker 2: This happened to So then maybe maybe this leads maybe
Speaker 2: that'll be the answer to this next question. But I'm
Speaker 2: curious if you think back, if you look back on
Speaker 2: past either failures or just mistakes, can you think of
Speaker 2: any particular failure or mistake that sets you up for
Speaker 2: later hunting success, like a favorite failure that changed something
Speaker 2: for you, that taught you a lesson or changed how
Speaker 2: you proach things. Can you can you think of a
Speaker 2: specific example like that that you could describe absolutely.
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy five, it was late October pre run, I
Speaker 3: think it was October thirtieth, and I was hunting in
Speaker 3: a draw. This is in Michigan. I was hunting in
Speaker 3: a draw. There was there was cutover saplings up a
Speaker 3: little hill to the west, and there was also cutover
Speaker 3: saplings to the east. And I'm in a little kind
Speaker 3: of a lane of weeds between these two cutovers, and
Speaker 3: there's I'm in a white oak kind of where it
Speaker 3: dumps out into into some open timber. And I had
Speaker 3: a big bug, biggest buck at the time that I
Speaker 3: ever had an opportunity to shoot. And he came down
Speaker 3: to thirty five yards. He came down that little draw
Speaker 3: in weeds, and he stopped. And it was a bluebird afternoon, sunny, sunny,
Speaker 3: sunny afternoon, and I'd had twelve other doze and ponds,
Speaker 3: and one other subordinate buck go by me within twelve
Speaker 3: yards and feet actually on acorns under my tree, and
Speaker 3: then moved on. And so he was coming through the
Speaker 3: same route, so he was on their trail. And at
Speaker 3: thirty five yards he stopped and he gave me a
Speaker 3: broadside shot. And at the time I shot leagues a
Speaker 3: lot back then, and at thirty five yards, I have
Speaker 3: the thirty thirty five yards ten and I could have
Speaker 3: shot that deer with no problem stand a dead broadside,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, you know he's on he's following
Speaker 3: all these deer where they went into the timber. So
Speaker 3: I just well, I'm gonna wait till he comes within
Speaker 3: twelve yards fifteen yards, And all of a sudden, he
Speaker 3: just took off and ran up the side of the
Speaker 3: hill to the west. And when he started running up
Speaker 3: the hill, in the saplings, you know, these saplings were
Speaker 3: probably tempoly tall, there was a dough and I had
Speaker 3: not seen that dough. But when he started running up
Speaker 3: that hill, I saw that doe spook from him, and
Speaker 3: so you know, obviously in the evenings the thermal drafts
Speaker 3: from the hills are going down, so he winded her
Speaker 3: and took off after her, and I didn't get an opportunity.
Speaker 3: I never saw that buck again, and that probably is
Speaker 3: why I mentioned what I said, what I think is
Speaker 3: a failure that's happened to me two times. But I've
Speaker 3: never ever forgotten that. And as you well know, you
Speaker 3: you remember your mistakes far more than you remember your success.
Speaker 2: They sting, They sting so much more. Yes, And I've
Speaker 2: even thought, like the the low that I feel when
Speaker 2: I've really messed something up is much lower from baseline
Speaker 2: than the high I feel when I do succeed. And
Speaker 2: so by that I mean like if I were to
Speaker 2: hit and wounded deer and not find it, that is
Speaker 2: way more significant of like an impact on me than
Speaker 2: if I smoke a deer and find it thirty minutes later,
Speaker 2: you know. So that leads me though, to a follow
Speaker 2: up to your question. It seems like the takeaway the
Speaker 2: lesson from that experience was, as you described it in
Speaker 2: a minute ago, take advantage of that first opportunity because
Speaker 2: they can be fleeting, which is.
Speaker 3: Very true during any semblance to the rug bases. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when anything happened.
Speaker 2: But have you ever had the opposite happen where you
Speaker 2: wished that you had waited to let a situation play
Speaker 2: out because you did take the first opportunity and maybe
Speaker 2: rushed it or it didn't end up being optimal, and
Speaker 2: then that led to, you know, something bad happening, and
Speaker 2: then you thought, oh, geez, if I had just been
Speaker 2: more patient, he would have came into twenty five or
Speaker 2: twenty Has that ever happened to.
Speaker 3: I've made miss I've made mistakes where I remember I
Speaker 3: had a bought ap and this was in Kansas. I
Speaker 3: had about one hundred and eighty inch buck and some
Speaker 3: really tall was actually this help. You know out in
Speaker 3: Kansas should get a lot of hot growing wild and
Speaker 3: it was in really tall hemp, and he was coming
Speaker 3: right towards me, and there was a dough in front
Speaker 3: of him that I did not see because the hemp
Speaker 3: was so tall. All I could see from him was
Speaker 3: his head and his rack sticking up above them. And
Speaker 3: he was following her, so she was obviously on her
Speaker 3: own way that was going to come right by me
Speaker 3: as well. So I was watching him, and I was
Speaker 3: moving around in my saddle to get a shot opportunity
Speaker 3: when he came, because I knew exactly what route they
Speaker 3: were on. He was on, and when I made that move,
Speaker 3: the dough, the doe had already stopped. She was standing there.
Speaker 3: I didn't see her, and she picked me. When I
Speaker 3: made a move. He wasn't looking, he was looking at
Speaker 3: the dough. She spooked and he went with me. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that answered your question, but.
Speaker 2: Certainly a scenario we don't want to have happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and another another time, Yeah, that was that would
Speaker 3: have been the second biggest buck I've ever shot at
Speaker 3: the other eight hundred and eighty andj right killed. And
Speaker 3: another time in Michigan, this was probably my worst my
Speaker 3: worst case scenario ever. Nineteen ninety seven, late October pre run.
Speaker 3: I was hunting a pinch point between two betting areas
Speaker 3: and I was hunting for a specific buck. I knew
Speaker 3: he was there, and he was probably of one fifty ish,
Speaker 3: which is monster for Michigan. And at about that straight
Speaker 3: up noon, here he's coming out of one betting area.
Speaker 3: You know, he was gonna sent check for those in
Speaker 3: one others betting area and take the pinch point of
Speaker 3: security cover to the next bedding area. And he came
Speaker 3: through ten yards again. It was straight up twelve o'clock
Speaker 3: and when it was on all day said probably twelve yards,
Speaker 3: I mean a perfect it was a chip shot. He
Speaker 3: was on my wall mentally, this year is dead. He
Speaker 3: threw my bow dead broadside twelve yards. Man stopped him.
Speaker 3: I shot right over his back. I didn't think there
Speaker 3: was any way in God's green earth I could miss
Speaker 3: a bear. And that's probably the last year I can
Speaker 3: ever remember physically totally missing. And that that gave me
Speaker 3: thought that don't ever take shots for granted, you know,
Speaker 3: don't just draw back, and because he's so close, it's
Speaker 3: like shooting in an elf, you know, you just you
Speaker 3: pull your pin down. And as soon as my pin
Speaker 3: got some someone so in the Bibles, you know, I
Speaker 3: just let it go. And I must have jerked a
Speaker 3: little and shot over his back. I just didn't take
Speaker 3: my time and follow through with my form.
Speaker 2: Easy to do in those moments, that's for sure. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I want to I want to step away from
Speaker 2: you for a quick second and ask you to think
Speaker 2: of a different whitetail hunter that you know, who you
Speaker 2: do look up to, someone you think is truly elite.
Speaker 2: Can you think of someone you think is a truly
Speaker 2: really really excellent deer hunter and describe to me what
Speaker 2: it is that makes him or her so successful? So
Speaker 2: who would that person be, if you're willing, if you
Speaker 2: want to share the name, or if not, describe to
Speaker 2: me what makes this person so special, what's their their
Speaker 2: secret sauce, what's behind the curtain for them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's only been one hunter I've ever looked up to,
Speaker 3: one bow hunter. That's Miles Keller. I mean, he's past
Speaker 3: his crime now. I don't even know if he's still bond.
Speaker 3: But Miles Keller was killing big bucks back in the
Speaker 3: eighties and early nineties before all this TV junk, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, and he wasn't a writer, but he got interviewed.
Speaker 3: There was quite a few articles where they interviewed Miles Keller.
Speaker 3: He was extremely detail oriented, which I think I am
Speaker 3: as well. He was very detail oriented. He targeted specific bucks,
Speaker 3: you know, and he had a cool job. He drove
Speaker 3: around in the countryside. I can't remember what his job was,
Speaker 3: but he got to see deer, and back in the
Speaker 3: eighties it was a lot easier to get hunting permission.
Speaker 3: So when he would see a monster buck, he would
Speaker 3: go and if he could get hunting permission, he would
Speaker 3: target that deer. And typically that deer was in he
Speaker 3: was in trouble when Miles Keller targeted him, because he
Speaker 3: had a pretty high success rate. And Miles Keller always,
Speaker 3: you know, he used to wear shower caps over his
Speaker 3: hair because he knew, you know, a high percentage of
Speaker 3: his order. This is before sunt lot was coming out
Speaker 3: of his hair follicles, so he shaved clean and he
Speaker 3: put a shower head band over his head so he
Speaker 3: wouldn't have as much older he Even though I'm not
Speaker 3: a believer in the sprays you know, the sodium bite
Speaker 3: carbonate and water sprays. I think they have very minimal effect.
Speaker 3: But he used that. He used anything that he thought
Speaker 3: would give him an edge, and he was just an
Speaker 3: extremely successful hunter on regular properties. Okay, So I guess
Speaker 3: Miles Keller would be the only only person I've ever looked.
Speaker 3: I've hunted with a lot of high profile ball hunters.
Speaker 3: I've never been impressed by.
Speaker 2: Him, so to say that, no, that's okay. So with
Speaker 2: Miles you mentioned a few things there, but is there
Speaker 2: is there any one thing that stood out from what
Speaker 2: you read about him, or observed with him, or learned
Speaker 2: about him that you think was was really his key
Speaker 2: to that success.
Speaker 3: Yes, he knew not to win shrewed into a deer's
Speaker 3: area anymore than needed to be. So he hunted very smart.
Speaker 3: He keyed on rut FaZe hunts. He knew that's when
Speaker 3: they were more vulnerable. As far as moving during daylight hours,
Speaker 3: he knew the seasonal and daily timing of locations. He
Speaker 3: knew he was hunting in a food location like in
Speaker 3: a white oak or a lost apple tree or whatever
Speaker 3: the nut tree may be chestnuts. He knew it was
Speaker 3: an evening location because so he wouldn't spook here with
Speaker 3: his you know, feeding there with a morning entry. So
Speaker 3: he put a lot of things in place that really
Speaker 3: if you read any of the media time no media
Speaker 3: people were talking about that he had knowledge of deer
Speaker 3: behavior beyond the normal ball hunter. And you know, I
Speaker 3: feel like I try to follow in that stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: seasonal timing, daily timing. Is this a morning location, is
Speaker 3: this an evening location? Is this a mid day location?
Speaker 3: You know, like that those pinch points between the two
Speaker 3: betting areas, that's a mid day location, both to two
Speaker 3: big bucks. I've had opportunities at there. We're in the
Speaker 3: middle of the day, so you know, knowing seasonal and
Speaker 3: daily timing, and you know what locations are for what
Speaker 3: time of season. You know, Miles knew that, and I
Speaker 3: used to read his interviews. I don't read much media
Speaker 3: and I rarely watch TV, so yeah, those were those
Speaker 3: were the things that really stood out with Miles over
Speaker 3: anybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that because, like you said,
Speaker 2: you followed in those footsteps, right, and then, as I've
Speaker 2: told you in the past. You know, your book Precision
Speaker 2: Bow Hunting was really like the awakening for me to
Speaker 2: that those timing issues with with timing of day, timing
Speaker 2: of season, and shifting everything because of that, which made
Speaker 2: a huge, huge difference in my hunting life, which which
Speaker 2: is a perfect segue to the next thing.
Speaker 4: I'm curious about.
Speaker 2: What single, if there was a single change or choice
Speaker 2: that you've made over the course of your deer hunting
Speaker 2: journey that has made the most meaningful impact for you,
Speaker 2: taking you from an average deer hunter or a good
Speaker 2: deer hunter to a great wall I think what you
Speaker 2: just described maybe was one of the biggest shifts for
Speaker 2: me once I realized that I needed to really look
Speaker 2: at the season not as just like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: three months of deer hunting season, but this is a
Speaker 2: one week window, and this is a seven day window,
Speaker 2: and this is a two week window, and this kind
Speaker 2: of thing will only work for this time of year.
Speaker 2: These specific locations are only right for this time of year.
Speaker 2: I didn't grasp that until I was twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: when I read your book, so that would probably be
Speaker 2: my answer to this question. But what for you, what
Speaker 2: change or what choice did you make that took you
Speaker 2: from here to here.
Speaker 3: I've had three choices in my deer hunting career that
Speaker 3: have made of boom boom boom. First one was postseason scouting.
Speaker 3: Post season scouting was never written about. I didn't know
Speaker 3: anything about it, never heard anybody ever mentioned postseason scouting.
Speaker 3: When I started doing it in the mid seventies, you know,
Speaker 3: I was I was just doing pre season scouting and
Speaker 3: location preparation like every other gowner. That's all it was
Speaker 3: ever talked about in the media pre season. So you know,
Speaker 3: one season, I was like, I filled my tags early
Speaker 3: and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go
Speaker 3: out here in December. You know, gun season's over and
Speaker 3: there wasn't any snow on the ground, and I'm gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm gonna scout early. And when I started
Speaker 3: doing that, I was looking at the property because in
Speaker 3: Michigan and in the heavily pressured areas that I hunt,
Speaker 3: everything revolves around security cover. And when you go out
Speaker 3: there and you preseason and scout, everything looks like it's
Speaker 3: got adequate security cover per deer to move through because
Speaker 3: everything's got folageiants. Everything looks dense, so it gives you
Speaker 3: a false sense of what security cover is once the
Speaker 3: foliage is down during the rut phases, and that's when
Speaker 3: bucks start being vulnerable, moving more during daylight, you know,
Speaker 3: in pursuit of dose. So during postseason scouting, I can
Speaker 3: still see all the scrapes. I can tell the fresh
Speaker 3: licking branches because you can see the white of the
Speaker 3: meat of the tree. The runways are still there from
Speaker 3: the rut phases, very visible. You can totally go in
Speaker 3: and rape bedding areas as far as scouting them without
Speaker 3: concern busting deer either, because they're going to be back
Speaker 3: in there. You know, when you're scouting, you know whether
Speaker 3: it be January, February, March, you know, even even into
Speaker 3: April before greenup. You can just molest everything, prep your locations,
Speaker 3: do all your scouting, mark your public land locations on ONYX,
Speaker 3: and you know, have all that stuff set where you
Speaker 3: don't really have to do anything during pre season, so
Speaker 3: you're not making any intrusions and changing any visuals by
Speaker 3: making shooting lanes or or entry and exit routes. You're
Speaker 3: not leaving any human odor. You know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to worry about sick control when you're scouting in postseason,
Speaker 3: and nobody ever talked about that. So that was the
Speaker 3: first thing that was a huge, huge That's big. Second
Speaker 3: thing was in nineteen eighty one when I bought my
Speaker 3: first saddle. I bought a treestling cost thirty nine dollars
Speaker 3: ninety five cents so and I'm still hunting from that
Speaker 3: same exact treesling. I've modified it a lot, but it's
Speaker 3: the same one I've used since nineteen eighty one. That
Speaker 3: made a huge uptick in my kills as well, because
Speaker 3: it gave me more tree options. It gave me three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty degrees shooting mobility around the tree. I
Speaker 3: didn't have to worry about leaving stands on public land
Speaker 3: because the saddle is always with me. You know, there's
Speaker 3: just a gazillion advantage of the saddle over at tree
Speaker 3: stand once you get used to it. Third thing was
Speaker 3: was as big as postseason scouting because the saddle made
Speaker 3: a difference, but it wasn't a major game change, but
Speaker 3: it made a difference in the locations that I could
Speaker 3: hunt and take advantage of the three sixty and not
Speaker 3: worry about that. The third thing was hands down cent
Speaker 3: lock when I bought my first cell a suit in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six. It took me almost a year to
Speaker 3: learn how to because sell lock very does a very
Speaker 3: poor job at conveying how to properly care for store
Speaker 3: and use their clothing. You know, they make nice clothing.
Speaker 3: It's not overly expensive, but they do a very poor job,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, of conveying how to properly use it
Speaker 3: in conjunction with other sent free things like your backpack
Speaker 3: or washing your aids on your sticks, or whatever the
Speaker 3: case may be. So to give you an example, what
Speaker 3: a difference that made from nineteen sixty five when I
Speaker 3: started bow hunting until through nineteen ninety six, Because in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six when I bought that suit, I really
Speaker 3: didn't have a grasp on how to properly care for it,
Speaker 3: and what did you in conjunction with You know, I
Speaker 3: took my backpack out in the tree with me, which
Speaker 3: I got into every day with my bare hands. So
Speaker 3: it was a huge human CENTERI So it didn't matter
Speaker 3: how well I took care of my body, I still
Speaker 3: got the backpack here to scoop from. So in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, from nineteen sixty five, through nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: which is a I think thirty two seasons. I took
Speaker 3: ten record book bucks in those how many years? Thirty
Speaker 3: two seasons, I took ten record book blucks. From nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven through twenty twenty three, I've taken forty five
Speaker 3: record book blucks. It's different, so the stats are pretty
Speaker 3: much there. I went from yeah, ten and thirty two
Speaker 3: seasons to twenty or forty five bucks in twenty seven seasons.
Speaker 2: And hopefully you were learning some things along that line
Speaker 2: along that period too.
Speaker 3: But I was obviously when I started in the sixties,
Speaker 3: I was pretty novice and green because I have family
Speaker 3: members that hunted. But by the mid seventies, I was
Speaker 3: killing pretty much the best bucks in the area. I
Speaker 3: was pretty decent in the mid seventies.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's very insightful, and I love hearing about these Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it really is. And it's interesting to hear about these
Speaker 2: major inflection points you had, you know, decades ago, seventies, eighties, nineties.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about changes that might have happened recently. Can
Speaker 2: you think of anything in the last five years, so
Speaker 2: from from sixty eight years old to seventy three years old.
Speaker 2: Can you think of any new belief, behavior, habit, something
Speaker 2: like that that you've picked up in the last five
Speaker 2: years that has significantly improved your hunting or hunting enjoyment.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that stands out absolutely?
Speaker 3: As you well know in an avid hunter yourself, you
Speaker 3: know you key on in Michigan, you key on the
Speaker 3: first three or four days if you're in a heavily
Speaker 3: pressure if you're on public land, free permission properties, more
Speaker 3: than likely any mature bucks that you want to killer
Speaker 3: or nocturnam before season opens because the other hunters on
Speaker 3: the property did things wrong during preseason so they but
Speaker 3: still you key on those first five days of season.
Speaker 3: You always got special five days, and then you got
Speaker 3: the lull. You've got that October lull when handy mature
Speaker 3: buck you want to kill is typically going to be
Speaker 3: vetted all day or they're going to move into their
Speaker 3: betting area before daylight. They may move a little in
Speaker 3: their betting area during the day, but they're in heavy
Speaker 3: security cover. So you've got that lull period and then
Speaker 3: you get into pre run and that's when you start
Speaker 3: spending most of your time on stand again. So during
Speaker 3: that lull, i wasn't hunting much. And one thing I
Speaker 3: have learned over the last four years is I'm hunting
Speaker 3: a lot during the lull now, but i'm hunting, I'm sparring,
Speaker 3: I'm doing spiring sequence. It's a long standing or six
Speaker 3: four of the last bucks I've shot six book bucks
Speaker 3: in the last three seasons, four in Michigan, two in Kansas,
Speaker 3: and full of the four bucks I shot in Michigan
Speaker 3: in the last three years that made book. Three of
Speaker 3: them I rattled out of either standing corn or in
Speaker 3: a betting area during the lull because when you do sparring,
Speaker 3: not rattling sequences, not aggressive rattling sequences, because during the
Speaker 3: law bucks are still they're sparring for pecking order. They're
Speaker 3: just you know, you may see a ten point sparring
Speaker 3: with a four point. Okay, you never see them fight
Speaker 3: for breeding right now, but they're sparring for pecking order
Speaker 3: in the four areas and so doing spiring sequences. Bucks
Speaker 3: tend to bed a majority of the mature bucks bed
Speaker 3: in the standing corn because it's for the most premium
Speaker 3: security cover. You can have nobody walks in the cornfield
Speaker 3: and then you can eat in it, so you got
Speaker 3: dose betting in it, you can feed in it, and
Speaker 3: it's the most superre your betting area you can have.
Speaker 3: And most people are afraid of corn. Well, I can't
Speaker 3: hunt this. You know this is going to suck until
Speaker 3: the corn gets harvested. Well take advantage of it because
Speaker 3: you can hunt the edge of the corn. You can
Speaker 3: spire bucks out of the corn, and you're not molesting
Speaker 3: your rot face hunting locations so that you're going to
Speaker 3: hunt in the timber once the corn has been harvested,
Speaker 3: so you're not ruining anything in the timber or betting
Speaker 3: areas outside of the corn, you know for pre rud
Speaker 3: hunting once the corn is down, but you can still
Speaker 3: rattle or spar bucks out of the standing corn or
Speaker 3: in betting areas. So to give you the betting area scenario,
Speaker 3: two years ago, I was scouting some public land and
Speaker 3: there was in the postseason and there was a betting
Speaker 3: area at one of them that I it was a
Speaker 3: decent betting area, but I had better betting areas to
Speaker 3: hunt in my rotation. But it was a good betting area,
Speaker 3: So I said, what the hell, you know, as is
Speaker 3: the lull, I'm not going to hunt this betting area
Speaker 3: during the rut phases on this piece of public land.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to go in there on a morning hunt,
Speaker 3: get in my tree two hours for daylight, for the
Speaker 3: bucks transition into the betting area, and if there is
Speaker 3: a big mature book, if there is a decent mature
Speaker 3: buck in that betting area, you know, about seven forty five,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do a rattle of sparring sequence and
Speaker 3: see if I can bring in because once they're in
Speaker 3: their betting areas, they're much more apt to respond to something.
Speaker 3: And it's a social thing, you know, it's it's also
Speaker 3: sparring as a social activity. It's not a battle. And
Speaker 3: at seven forty five I did a sparing sequence and
Speaker 3: I did another one five minutes later at seven fifty
Speaker 3: and the buck came in and I shot, so two
Speaker 3: of them. I rattled the bucks out of standing corn
Speaker 3: and the other one I sparred in in a betting
Speaker 3: area interior of the betting area of a betting area.
Speaker 3: Was not planning out on injuring the rough. So I've
Speaker 3: learned three of the four bucks I've shot in the
Speaker 3: last three years in Michigan to make book. We're during
Speaker 3: the law and that's a time I try to avoid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big change. So when you're doing when
Speaker 2: you're doing this edge of standing corn during the rut
Speaker 2: or sorry, during the lull, with this idea of hey,
Speaker 2: I'll probably do a little bit of sparring when you're
Speaker 2: choosing a location like that. One thing I would be
Speaker 2: thinking about if I'm specifically targeting the corn is where
Speaker 2: I think my mature buck might be betted. Corn can
Speaker 2: oftentimes look like a blank sheet of paper, like it
Speaker 2: could be hard to find a specific concentration zone as
Speaker 2: compared to when you're looking at a forest and you
Speaker 2: can see, oh, there's this one area that's you know,
Speaker 2: very very thick, or a different habitat topic. I know
Speaker 2: there's probably something better there. But when you go about
Speaker 2: trying to choose how you want to sit alongside of
Speaker 2: a cornfield where there's not as much diversity, how do
Speaker 2: you choose your hunt location for that type of hunt?
Speaker 3: Excellent question. I'm not glad you asked what you want
Speaker 3: to do because deer, especially mature bucks, they're always going
Speaker 3: to gravitate to security cover. So when you walk the
Speaker 3: perimeter or the standing corn, typically you've already scouted the
Speaker 3: property during postseason and you know now you know it's
Speaker 3: in standing corn, so you know what the perimeter or
Speaker 3: the cornfield is. What you want to do is you
Speaker 3: want to go to the standing corn wherever it butts
Speaker 3: up to other security cover. You follow what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: because I'm mature bucks much more likely to come out
Speaker 3: of a out of a standing cornfield if he's going
Speaker 3: from security cover or the corn to security cover of
Speaker 3: the location off corn. So a lot of times when
Speaker 3: I'm scouting postseason scouting and I'm walking the edge of
Speaker 3: a perimeter of a crop field. You know you can
Speaker 3: even do this on public There's a lot of public
Speaker 3: land butts up the private corn. Okay, so you can
Speaker 3: walk the edge. And if you see, let's say a
Speaker 3: scrape area during postseason on the edge of a standing
Speaker 3: or on the edge of a crop field and it
Speaker 3: obviously the cropfield wasn't last year, Odds are is going
Speaker 3: to be corn this year? Well, if that scrape area
Speaker 3: has any semblance of security cover around it, that's going
Speaker 3: to be the number one spot I'm going to want
Speaker 3: to be because odds are that's that scrape area because
Speaker 3: dos and bucks are going to be traveling in and
Speaker 3: out of the standing corn, that scrape area will probably
Speaker 3: be active again, you know, when it's in standing corn.
Speaker 3: So if there's any tree there, that's going to be
Speaker 3: the number one spot I would key on. But if
Speaker 3: there were no scrape areas around the standing corn, I
Speaker 3: would key on wherever the best security cover is that
Speaker 3: butts up to the standing corn to make him feel
Speaker 3: more comfortable committing to come out of the corn. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: if you're just rattling along standing corn and let's say
Speaker 3: it butts up to a weed field or a wide
Speaker 3: open area, odds are he's not going to commit to
Speaker 3: coming physically coming out of the corn. He'll probably still
Speaker 3: come in, but he'll probably stop, you know, five to
Speaker 3: ten fifteen rows from the edge, and if he gets
Speaker 3: close enough to the edge and he can't see a visual,
Speaker 3: he's not going to commit to come out and give
Speaker 3: you a shot. Now, if it's on property you have
Speaker 3: permission to hunt. You can actually make like a B
Speaker 3: a B lane in the standing corn, maybe twenty five
Speaker 3: yards out, make of four three or four foot wide
Speaker 3: B lane. That way, if you see a buck coming
Speaker 3: through the corn, if the rollers are running parallel, to
Speaker 3: the edge. You could maybe see a buck coming through
Speaker 3: the first one and shoot him when he goes through
Speaker 3: the second b Yeah, get ready for it. But man,
Speaker 3: two years ago, I raddled sixteen bucks out of standing
Speaker 3: corn by the fifteenth October.
Speaker 2: Yea in Michigan, in Michigan, between the.
Speaker 3: First and and I didn't even start doing it until
Speaker 3: the fifth of October. So in a ten day period,
Speaker 3: I rattled in sixteen bucks. Now only one of them
Speaker 3: was a shooter. The others were all subordinate, but I
Speaker 3: shot him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a heck of a number right there.
Speaker 3: Last year I only rapped six Last year, I spared
Speaker 3: in six the year before that sixteenth. So the changes
Speaker 3: from here to year depending on where the deer are
Speaker 3: in the corner.
Speaker 2: All Right, you're pulling me onto a tangent here, But
Speaker 2: I ask a couple more tangents or a couple more
Speaker 2: follow ups on this. With your sparring, your lull sparring sequences,
Speaker 2: how many times would you do that in a sit?
Speaker 2: Is that like a once a sit sparring thing you'll do?
Speaker 2: And I have an assumption of what a what a
Speaker 2: sparring sequence might sound like, But I'm curious I guess
Speaker 2: I want to know for sure. Can you just describe
Speaker 2: how long would this sparring sequence be. I'm assuming it's
Speaker 2: very subtle tickling and stuff like that, but please some
Speaker 2: details on the sparring sequence and how often you would
Speaker 2: do that and when in a sit would you do that? Okay?
Speaker 3: Typically, so it's worked best on morning ons because in
Speaker 3: the morning it's dead quiet. Typically, so when you do
Speaker 3: a soft sparring sequence, a deer that's out in the
Speaker 3: corn two hundred yards can hear it. Okay, So that
Speaker 3: in the morning, because it's so dead quiet, they can
Speaker 3: hear your noise. It's a lot farther, so asparing sequence
Speaker 3: is going to be. And I use a rattle bag.
Speaker 3: I do not use antlers. I've been using the same
Speaker 3: night nail rattle bag for over thirty years. I've had
Speaker 3: to replace the fabric, but the sticks are still the same.
Speaker 2: Bag.
Speaker 3: I'll separate the sticks in the bag and then I'll
Speaker 3: make just one quick little clang, you know, jire the
Speaker 3: sticks together, and then I just gently roll them together
Speaker 3: for maybe ten seconds, eight to ten seconds, and then
Speaker 3: I'll stop, and then maybe ten seconds later I'll do
Speaker 3: that again. I won't make the initial flash, but I'll
Speaker 3: just roll the sticks together and you know, make like
Speaker 3: two bucks are pushing on each other and meshing their horns.
Speaker 3: It's nothing like what you hear on TV in the
Speaker 3: rattle sequence. There's nothing aggressive about this. But you do
Speaker 3: that about you do a spar, you do quiet, You
Speaker 3: do a spar, you do quiet, you do spa, you
Speaker 3: do a quiet. It may take a minute to do
Speaker 3: a full sequence, and then I'll do them five minutes apart.
Speaker 3: So on a morning hunt, i'll do it between seven
Speaker 3: forty five, depends on where I'm at first. If I'm
Speaker 3: on the edge of a standing corn, I'll probably do
Speaker 3: it about seven point thirty. If i'd me in a
Speaker 3: physical betting area, like I was on that public land
Speaker 3: betting area, I'll do it about seven forty five because
Speaker 3: I know the bucks are still going to be up
Speaker 3: and moving around, and they're in a betting area. They
Speaker 3: don't have any issues coming back and forth by you.
Speaker 3: I'll do it five minutes apart and then I'm done.
Speaker 3: So whether it be morning or evening, I only do
Speaker 3: two sequences. In evening, I'm going to do them about
Speaker 3: forty five minutes before dark. The first one and then
Speaker 3: another one five minutes later. I always do them in succession,
Speaker 3: and I always do the first sequence lighter than the
Speaker 3: second sequence because the first sequence, let's say there's a
Speaker 3: buck betted fifty yards from you. If you make the
Speaker 3: first sequence, it's too loud, he may not commit. Because
Speaker 3: spiring sequences are very quiet, low key. You've heard them before,
Speaker 3: I'm sure. So you want to do the first one
Speaker 3: a little bit lower key, to a little bit lower
Speaker 3: volume to possibly bring something in that's close, and then
Speaker 3: the second one you want to raise the volume a
Speaker 3: little bit to possibly catch the attention of something farther
Speaker 3: out in the field. And it's kind of interesting because
Speaker 3: when you do a sequence for a minute, you know
Speaker 3: where you're doing probably three or four physical sparing sequences.
Speaker 3: The rattling noises bucks have like an internal GPS.
Speaker 2: They know exactly crazy.
Speaker 3: I rattled in an ELK on my my second elkhon
Speaker 3: on federal land in Colorado out of saddle. I was
Speaker 3: off in the tree. I rattled in a five by
Speaker 3: five that I shot with my night white tail rattleman. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was that was That's pretty much I'll made me
Speaker 3: do that. But I just what the hell, you know too,
Speaker 3: and I just did. I did an aggressive sequence to
Speaker 3: call that alka. Yeah, I think I was the first
Speaker 3: guy probably ever to shoot an elk out of the
Speaker 3: saddle and definitely the first guy to rattle in and
Speaker 3: elk with a white tail rattle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a heck of a story.
Speaker 2: Interesting, interesting stuff. So let's uh, let's let's shift a
Speaker 2: little bit to habits. I'm curious about a couple of
Speaker 2: things when it comes to your habits. Is there any
Speaker 2: unusual habit that other people find absurd when they hear
Speaker 2: about you doing this, but that you strongly believe helps
Speaker 2: you as a hunter. So a habit that other folks
Speaker 2: think is nuts that you stand by because it truly
Speaker 2: does help you.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, Selloc's probably my number one habit because I
Speaker 3: get a lot of mocking on social media because people
Speaker 3: have no concept what they're talking about when they talk
Speaker 3: about side control. The know nothing about activated carbon. But
Speaker 3: as far as what you're talking about morning on morning hunts,
Speaker 3: I'm always in my tree an hour and a half
Speaker 3: before daylight, and most people think that's crazy. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of interesting because ninety five percent of the time
Speaker 3: you get in your tree an hour and a half
Speaker 3: four daylight. It's not going to make any damn difference.
Speaker 3: But the five percent of the time, you know, the
Speaker 3: one out of twenty times a buck goes into a
Speaker 3: betting area forty five minutes or half an hour before
Speaker 3: daylight and then you make your entry. You know, twenty
Speaker 3: minutes before daylight, you're not gonna get a shot at
Speaker 3: that deor you're not even going to know you spooked
Speaker 3: him when you walk into that bedding area during the rough.
Speaker 3: So being on stand early is a habit that a
Speaker 3: lot of people. Man, you're getting a treat that early. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's it's something I've just been used to and
Speaker 3: I've I've always done it since the mid seventies. And
Speaker 3: probably what got me to do that was again in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies seventies seven. I remember I was going
Speaker 3: in and I was hunting where there was a cedar
Speaker 3: swamp and then there was a small ridge up up
Speaker 3: to an oak flat white oak, white and red oak
Speaker 3: both And this is in Michigan. Obviously I didn't hun
Speaker 3: out of stay killed in ninety seven, but I went
Speaker 3: I was going in on a morning hunt and I
Speaker 3: was going in about a half hour before daylight, and
Speaker 3: I'm walking I'm gonna I'm gonna hunt one another trees
Speaker 3: along the edge of the cedar swamp, catching deer coming
Speaker 3: out of the oak ridge down into the cedars the
Speaker 3: bed for the day. And as I'm walking down the
Speaker 3: edge of these cedars, I spooked the deer. And when
Speaker 3: I got up to where the deer spooked, I mean,
Speaker 3: the tarsloder was just the stench was strong, and I know,
Speaker 3: you know exactly what I'm going to do. There was
Speaker 3: a buck bedded here, and I really didn't think a
Speaker 3: lot about it, but I walked by it and I
Speaker 3: got in my tree and all I'm thinking, blah blah.
Speaker 3: So the next time I went in there, three days later,
Speaker 3: I didn't shoot anything. That day, I spoke the same
Speaker 3: deer in the same exact spot at the same exact
Speaker 3: time with my half hour before daylight entry. And then
Speaker 3: it clicked, he is staged there, and he probably came
Speaker 3: in there, betted there an hour before daylight to intercept
Speaker 3: all the dough activity coming off the soak ridge. So
Speaker 3: that's when I started getting in my trees an hour
Speaker 3: and a half before daylight. And I've had a lot
Speaker 3: of guys email me that read my books that read that,
Speaker 3: and they said, boy, what a difference that made to them.
Speaker 3: The guys that shot bucks that were moving, they basically
Speaker 3: transitioned into the bedding area or to the edge of
Speaker 3: a bedding area where they were physically at but then
Speaker 3: they felt comfortable. The bucks felt comfortable. They were either
Speaker 3: going to stage there for those coming through, or they
Speaker 3: started feeding on acorns under the tree, and then they
Speaker 3: stayed there and fed because they're next to or within
Speaker 3: security cover. They felt comfortable and they could hear anything coming,
Speaker 3: any danger, and they kept feeding until you know, five
Speaker 3: or ten minutes after daylight, and then they shot up. Yep,
Speaker 3: And if they would have went in with a half
Speaker 3: hour before daylight entry, they would have spooked him in
Speaker 3: never mom.
Speaker 2: It mm hmm. Yeah. That's another eber heart ism that
Speaker 2: I picked up that's helped me a lot too.
Speaker 3: Well. And it's kind of it's kind of sad because
Speaker 3: so many times you do it and it doesn't pay
Speaker 3: you any dividends. But the time it.
Speaker 2: Does, Hey, but you get a really nice tree set
Speaker 2: on that. If nothing else, which I do enjoy.
Speaker 3: I always go to sleep for an hour.
Speaker 2: Before Okay, so this your answer to this next question
Speaker 2: might be the same as what we just is what
Speaker 2: you just described, but just in case it's not. So,
Speaker 2: what you just told me was your most unusual habit
Speaker 2: that's important but people think is absurd. More simply, what
Speaker 2: would you say is your most important habit of anything
Speaker 2: related to deer hunting or maybe even life that maybe
Speaker 2: in some way does trans translate to hunting. What's your
Speaker 2: single most important habit?
Speaker 3: Uh, never be a fit upfraid of failure. So if
Speaker 3: you don't try things out and fail, you're never going
Speaker 3: to learn and progress and go forward. But my habit,
Speaker 3: say that question one more time about my most important habit?
Speaker 2: So what would you what would you point a finger
Speaker 2: at as your most important habit that thing that you
Speaker 2: always do, this thing that's part of your life, either
Speaker 2: every single day of your life or just during hunting season.
Speaker 2: So regardless of what people think, whether they think it's
Speaker 2: smart or stupid, just what's that number one habit that
Speaker 2: you think translates for you knowing?
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a habit that knowing the
Speaker 3: daily and seasonal timing for every hunting locations became a
Speaker 3: habit once that's a learned process. And once you've learned
Speaker 3: the seasonal and daily timing of every location you have
Speaker 3: prop because I have this year, I've got fift over
Speaker 3: fifty trees strapped right now for ball, probably only a
Speaker 3: dozen of them, but I've got that many right but
Speaker 3: knowing the daily and seasonal timing of when to hunt
Speaker 3: them and how to hunt them. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if you call it a habit.
Speaker 2: You've made a habit of preparing in that way in
Speaker 2: which you know and have all that set. So that's
Speaker 2: a fair thing to describe, I'd say, yeah, flip side
Speaker 2: of that, then what is the mistake that you keep making?
Speaker 2: There must be something. There must be some mistake that
Speaker 2: you know, I got to get better at this or
Speaker 2: I continue to struggle with this and that continues to
Speaker 2: be a hump that you are still working on getting over.
Speaker 2: Is there anything you can put a finger at as well?
Speaker 3: Is that for? You don't know if it's terms of
Speaker 3: a mistake. But the home bo I'm having right now
Speaker 3: is shooting. I mean I can still I'm down to
Speaker 3: a forty pound bow, which you know, getting old sucks.
Speaker 3: It's just part of life. And I literally cannot draw
Speaker 3: a forty five pound bow anymore because my shoulders are
Speaker 3: so bad. So it's not a mistake. But I'm struggling
Speaker 3: because I definitely never want to go to a cross
Speaker 3: bow unless I absolutely have to. In most states now
Speaker 3: you can't unt with a bowl under forty pounds, so
Speaker 3: I'm right on that edge. I mean, I've I've killed
Speaker 3: every deer i've shota with a forty pound bow and
Speaker 3: had a clean pass through because I'm shooting lighter arrows
Speaker 3: and fixed blade small cut fixed blade heads. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: consider that a mistake though. That's just part of life. Sure,
Speaker 3: mistake or mistake do I consistently make I have a
Speaker 3: harder time getting up out of bed to hunt hunt
Speaker 3: in the mornings. I mean, as you get older, you
Speaker 3: just I just I still have the passion and the desire.
Speaker 3: But sometimes when the alarm clock goes off now and
Speaker 3: it never would have happened ten years ago, I turned
Speaker 3: the alarm clock off and go back to sleep. And
Speaker 3: but I think a lot of that is attributed to
Speaker 3: motion cameras as well, because I've got motion cameras now,
Speaker 3: because they're all sell cameras and I have them. You
Speaker 3: know some at my locations that are fourteen feet off
Speaker 3: the ground so the deer can't see them, and I
Speaker 3: put them in August, so I'm not you know, having
Speaker 3: to intrude into the spot to check an SD card.
Speaker 3: So I guess that would that would probably when there's
Speaker 3: nothing on camera, it's hard to get motivated on a
Speaker 3: morning hunt. Sure, and I've shot, you know, I've several
Speaker 3: three times I've shot bucks that were book bucks that
Speaker 3: I never had on camera. So just because you don't
Speaker 3: have one on camera, the meaning couldn't come through the area,
Speaker 3: just not going in front of the camera.
Speaker 2: That is the risk of those cameras that they can
Speaker 2: provide a false sense of what's out there, and then you, uh,
Speaker 2: I've become too dependent on them and then had that
Speaker 2: exact same thought you just described. We're like, ah, there's
Speaker 2: nothing moving, and then I do go out there once
Speaker 2: and then I see two great bucks, but they're sixty
Speaker 2: seventy yards away, and they could have been in the
Speaker 2: area the whole time and I never would have known it.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, h Yeah, I've shot I've shot good real
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty some inch bucks that I never
Speaker 3: had on camera. They avoided the camera that when they
Speaker 3: would come in to check the scrape area, they would
Speaker 3: do it down wind. They never came into the scrape. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not even in night. That's what surprised me. I never
Speaker 3: even had ninetime pictures all the work than the scrapes.
Speaker 3: But when they'd come when when they came through, which
Speaker 3: was the only time I saw them, they came to
Speaker 3: the down wind side of the scrapes, twenty yards and
Speaker 3: sun checking.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: That was their demise. Yeah, but I did not know
Speaker 3: they were there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes you's got to be out there.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So whether I guess, quite simply, I'll just ask, what
Speaker 2: is your process for getting better at something? Whether it
Speaker 2: be the things you just described that you've struggled with
Speaker 2: what you know, shooting right now, or or just getting
Speaker 2: better and always getting up and getting out there in
Speaker 2: the woods, or if it's something totally different, how does
Speaker 2: John Eberhart get better?
Speaker 3: I just I'd work harder. I find myself not being
Speaker 3: able to work. Like location preparation. You know, scouting is
Speaker 3: no big deal because you're walking. That's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Whether you're wearing waiters or using a canoe or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's no big deal. Location preparation is something that I
Speaker 3: can't do as fast as I used to. I usually
Speaker 3: prep everything myself, So I'm getting I'm getting better over
Speaker 3: the last ten years, i'd say, and being a little
Speaker 3: more detail and oriented when I'm prepping locations, because, as
Speaker 3: you well know, scouting and proper location preparation is ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the game. You know, the kill is just
Speaker 3: the byproduct of all your other hard work. So I
Speaker 3: tend to as I'm getting older, I'm forcing myself to
Speaker 3: work harder because I have to put more hours into
Speaker 3: my work and location preparation because I can't do it
Speaker 3: as well and as fast as I used to. So
Speaker 3: I'm having to work harder if you get the same
Speaker 3: amount of work done.
Speaker 2: Makes sense?
Speaker 3: Makes sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. And it's a perfect segue to another
Speaker 2: question in the list, which is you mentioned working harder,
Speaker 2: and that's something that probably any successful deer hunter will say,
Speaker 2: is you have to work harder, right, But what does
Speaker 2: that actually mean? Can you define what hard work means
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, hard work would be well, location preparation, it's it's labor,
Speaker 3: you know, we're talking labor prepping a tree, you know,
Speaker 3: whether you're using spikes or you know, having to go
Speaker 3: up the tree with sticks and clear out the area
Speaker 3: in the tree, clearing entry and exit routes because a
Speaker 3: lot of times your entry route is different than your
Speaker 3: exit route depending on you know, the location. Hunting, clearing,
Speaker 3: shooting lanes. You know, that's all. That's all work. I
Speaker 3: I never view scouting the physical scouting has worked because
Speaker 3: when I'm scouting, I'm just on foot. I don't take
Speaker 3: my location preparation here. When I'm scouting, I will totally
Speaker 3: go in and scouting area and you know, waypoint, mark
Speaker 3: what air, what trees I may want to hunt, or locations,
Speaker 3: and then I'll come back with my location preparation gear
Speaker 3: to prepare them. If they're on private or you know,
Speaker 3: I'll clean them up a little bit. If they're on public.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll cheat and cut some stuff on public,
Speaker 3: you know, during postseason, so that it's out of the way.
Speaker 3: And I'm not making a pre season entry to change
Speaker 3: any to change anything and cut anything, so I'm leaving
Speaker 3: any order. Sure, So work is just it's just the
Speaker 3: physical labor I'm doing out in the woods. Is what
Speaker 3: I would be buying is work, And I can't stand
Speaker 3: it when I'm like with my kids, like Joe, my
Speaker 3: son who owns saddle Under Nation the Facebook page. I
Speaker 3: shouldn't say this, but it's true. I can't watch other
Speaker 3: people prep stuff because I'm so fussy on how I
Speaker 3: want to do it. If I'm preparing a tree, even
Speaker 3: if you know, like Joe picked up twelve acres and
Speaker 3: we were prepped four locations on it, you know, I
Speaker 3: prepped all the trees even though they're for him, because
Speaker 3: he likes the way I prep them, because all the
Speaker 3: stuffs and everything are perfectly placed where you can move
Speaker 3: around the free and one point doesn't go lower than
Speaker 3: the other. So I do all the prop while he
Speaker 3: may be doing lane you know, shooting, lane clearing, or
Speaker 3: whatever the case may be do. So that's what I
Speaker 3: consider working labor.
Speaker 2: How many days in the off season do you think
Speaker 2: you're out there doing something like that?
Speaker 3: January? It depends on when once the snow melts. I
Speaker 3: never I never scout until the snow melts because any
Speaker 3: sign in the snow is totally misleading because deer will
Speaker 3: change where they bed during season when they start getting
Speaker 3: snow on the ground and hunting season's over. And they're
Speaker 3: not being molested. You know, they'll move down into lower
Speaker 3: ground where they're more protected from the cold winds and
Speaker 3: where they're closer to a preferred heating or in a
Speaker 3: lot of times they'll migrate, you know, like in the
Speaker 3: up up to fifteen miles with cedar swamp. So so
Speaker 3: sign you see in the snow is totally misrepresentation of
Speaker 3: what those deer are doing in the fall. So what
Speaker 3: was the question? You don't you forget the question?
Speaker 2: How many days do you spend in the off season
Speaker 2: doing that kind of thing?
Speaker 3: Okay, once the snow has gone. In the last few years,
Speaker 3: you know, the snow has been gone pretty early, so
Speaker 3: usually by this year, I think in February I was
Speaker 3: scouting and days this year I would say twenty scouting
Speaker 3: new properties, going on, checking out new public lands. You know,
Speaker 3: we did that twelve acres, which took two days. And
Speaker 3: that's the cool thing about postseason. You can rape and
Speaker 3: pillage and yeah, you can spook every year in the county.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter all that. Yeah, so I at least
Speaker 3: twenty days.
Speaker 2: So twenty days of scouting. Does that include.
Speaker 3: Scouting and location or if it's on public cleaning out
Speaker 3: whatever I can and get away with yep.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I want to take a deep breath here.
Speaker 3: Just during postseason. That doesn't like I do some pre
Speaker 3: season speed tours as well, ye, which that's days also okay.
Speaker 2: So I want to take a second and step away
Speaker 2: from this process oriented approach and just briefly talk gear
Speaker 2: to give us a mental moment, and then I'm going
Speaker 2: to throw you right back into the fire. But tell
Speaker 2: me this, what purchase of one hundred dollars or less
Speaker 2: has most positively impacted your hunting success or enjoyment? So
Speaker 2: what's something you bought for a hundred bucks or less
Speaker 2: that has made the most positive impact on your hunting.
Speaker 3: Satell I bought in nineteen eighty one for thirty nine
Speaker 3: ninety tis by far, there's nothing remotely.
Speaker 2: Close under a great point prices.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, let's back up a bit, because they're not
Speaker 3: thirty nine to ninety five anymore anymore. You're talking about
Speaker 3: something currently that would be under one hundred dollars price
Speaker 3: point if I, if I didn't have a rattle bag,
Speaker 3: and I and I, you know, having having something to
Speaker 3: make sparing sequences, I already have it, but that if
Speaker 3: I didn't, that would be something that I would highly
Speaker 3: recommend and invest in, and then learning how to properly
Speaker 3: use it and when to use it and what type
Speaker 3: of locations do you use at. I think I think
Speaker 3: sparring is something that ninety percent hunters are afraid to
Speaker 3: do because they've done rattling and it's spook beer and
Speaker 3: that they don't understand. Sparring works anywhere if you're in
Speaker 3: the right types of security cover, you know where a
Speaker 3: buck can has to come through the security cover to
Speaker 3: commit get buck close enough to commit to seeing what
Speaker 3: made the noise. Obviously, you don't want to spar if
Speaker 3: you're in an area where a buck can see eighty
Speaker 3: yards to the base of your tree, because if he
Speaker 3: comes out, you rattle him out of something, and then
Speaker 3: now he's got to go eighty yards across open and
Speaker 3: vulnerable area to get to where the noises were made.
Speaker 3: He's not going to do that in the daylight. So
Speaker 3: if he can't see a visual, he's not going to
Speaker 3: commit to it. So it's got to be security cover
Speaker 3: butting up close to within your shooting branch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a very key point there to keep
Speaker 2: in mind. For them. Kind of the inverse of that question.
Speaker 2: If you had to give up all of your fancy,
Speaker 2: high quality hunting gear that you've accumulated over the years,
Speaker 2: You've got to give up your your great camo, your
Speaker 2: great bow, your great boots, your great optics, your fancy
Speaker 2: cell cameras, all that stuff, and it had to be
Speaker 2: replaced with entry level products. So all of your hunting
Speaker 2: gear was going to be replaced with like the bare bones,
Speaker 2: entry level Walmart version of all your hunting gear except
Speaker 2: for one thing. You can keep one category of top tier,
Speaker 2: high end stuff, So you could keep your high end bow,
Speaker 2: or your high end camera, or your high whatever. What
Speaker 2: would be that one category that you would want to
Speaker 2: keep the high end. So another way to look at
Speaker 2: this is, if you had to only choose one category
Speaker 2: to spend extra money on, what would that be?
Speaker 3: Lock? Hands it down? Okay, not not even a contest.
Speaker 3: Unt Lock is the biggest game changer there is. And
Speaker 3: if you do, once you learn.
Speaker 2: How to properly use it, Okay, that's easy. That was
Speaker 2: super simple, very easy, And you are consistent. John, You've
Speaker 2: been talking about this for the for years and years
Speaker 2: and years, so no one can say that you are
Speaker 2: chasing anything other than what you consistently believe in on
Speaker 2: that front, which I respect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I still struggle comprehending outcome. Warhunters don't use activated carbon.
Speaker 3: It's not cell Lock. You know, I'm not the cell
Speaker 3: Lock name is irrelevant. Sure somebody else made activated carbon
Speaker 3: line clothing. It would you know if I would be
Speaker 3: on board with them as well. So it's the activated carbon.
Speaker 3: It's not the brand. It's not like they just haven't
Speaker 3: known the patent. I'm using activating carbons, so nobody else
Speaker 3: can use it. So everybody else says it doesn't work,
Speaker 3: and everybody else is followers like Lemmings jumping off the
Speaker 3: cliff with somebody that says it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Fair enough.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, off of gear.
Speaker 2: That was our gear. That was our gear detour. Now
Speaker 2: I want to get back to the hunt, and I
Speaker 2: would love to understand what your decision making process looks
Speaker 2: like before heading out for a hunt. So you know,
Speaker 2: for me, you know, the night before a morning hunt,
Speaker 2: I'm laying in bed thinking through a thousand things, trying
Speaker 2: to side you know, this variable, this variable, this variable,
Speaker 2: and then probably in the morning again I'm checking stuff
Speaker 2: and double checking my thought process all that. What does
Speaker 2: that look like for you?
Speaker 3: Okay, first, I want to say, as far as First
Speaker 3: Light's concerned, I'm a big First Light fan as well.
Speaker 3: Is the farst based garments, thank you, because Marino wool
Speaker 3: is hands down the best base garment you can buy. Period.
Speaker 3: End of discussion. So the question was.
Speaker 2: What decision making process before hunt?
Speaker 3: Decision making process before I hunt? I actually my closest
Speaker 3: spot to Hunts thirty five minutes from my house, so
Speaker 3: I may have something in mind when I leave my house,
Speaker 3: but I'm thinking all the time i'm driving to where
Speaker 3: I'm going because I don't have any locations, whether it
Speaker 3: be public or private that I don't have multiple, multiple
Speaker 3: locations preps. So I'm always thinking. Even though I've already
Speaker 3: thought I made my mind up, I'm still thinking and
Speaker 3: I may change my mind before I get there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I'm not paying attention to wind direction. Wind direction
Speaker 3: never enters my thought process. I shouldn't say never, because
Speaker 3: a lot of times when I'm sometimes when i'm setting
Speaker 3: up a primary scrape area location, you know, I'll set
Speaker 3: up a tree if it's on the south side or
Speaker 3: southeast side of the of the actual scrape area. I'll
Speaker 3: set it up knowing that big bucks mature bucks sent
Speaker 3: check scrape areas from downwind, So I'll set it up
Speaker 3: where I got a twenty five yard shot to the
Speaker 3: actual scrapes, and then I'll have a shooting line twenty
Speaker 3: five yards down wind to me. So if a butt
Speaker 3: checks at any place from twenty five yards for up
Speaker 3: to fifty yards down wind to the scrapes, I will
Speaker 3: get that shot. So as far as driving going to
Speaker 3: my which location what drives my thought process? Okay? Or
Speaker 3: the acorns still on the ground, if they've been scarfed up,
Speaker 3: apples still on the ground, if it's you know, if
Speaker 3: it's a destination mood location, the time of season obviously,
Speaker 3: if it's if it's pre rut, which is in my opinion,
Speaker 3: the best ten days of the season. If it's during
Speaker 3: pre rut, you know, which of my locations offers the
Speaker 3: best funnel or the best opportunity for a buck moving
Speaker 3: during daylight hours, because all signed in the world is
Speaker 3: meaningless if it's not made during the daylight so, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's not revisited during daytime, so just rain. You know,
Speaker 3: if it's if it's a nice drizzle of rain or
Speaker 3: if it's a bluebird day. You know, if it's if
Speaker 3: it's windy or it's raining, I may go into a
Speaker 3: bedding area for an evening hunt, Whereas if it was
Speaker 3: dry and sunny, I wouldn't because I'd be making too
Speaker 3: much noise. But if it were windy or rainy, I'd
Speaker 3: have the wind the rain to mask my noise. Because
Speaker 3: I love hunting interiors of betting areas. That's my number
Speaker 3: one go to spot after early season, you know, when
Speaker 3: everything's betting defeating, so the time of the season, the weather,
Speaker 3: not the wind, but the weather, and obviously what I
Speaker 3: have on my cameras. You know, if I get if
Speaker 3: I'm getting some consistent moving you know, like every third day,
Speaker 3: I'm getting a buck every third or fourth day, I'm
Speaker 3: getting a buck coming by a specific location. That would
Speaker 3: definitely play into Okay, I need to go with that spot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of a vague answer, but that's all I got.
Speaker 2: That's fine. I'm curious then if there is any kind
Speaker 2: of deer hunting related decision that you struggle to make.
Speaker 2: So is there any decision throughout a deer hunt or
Speaker 2: throughout the hunting season that you somewhat frequently struggle with
Speaker 2: and if so, how do you overcome that struggle.
Speaker 3: I don't really struggle with that. I make my decision
Speaker 3: and I stick with it. You know, There's many times
Speaker 3: I'll get in a tree and I'm thinking to myself, Man,
Speaker 3: I should be over there. Everybody does.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm thinking about, is when I asked this
Speaker 2: questions that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but once once I commit to a location, I
Speaker 3: commit to a location. I I on a few All
Speaker 3: Days sets, I've physically been in a location and seen
Speaker 3: morning activity maybe two hundred yards away, you know, during
Speaker 3: the rough phases. When I do All day sets, usually
Speaker 3: the foliage is down, so I got a big visual
Speaker 3: because the foliage is down, and if I see movements
Speaker 3: farther away, I'll pull my sticks and stuff and move
Speaker 3: for the you know, mid the rest of the midday
Speaker 3: in the evening. But other than that, typically, if I,
Speaker 3: if I'm committed to a location, even if I think
Speaker 3: I should be in this one, I'm going to stay
Speaker 3: where I'm at. Once you commit to something, you should
Speaker 3: stick with it because I think when you get down
Speaker 3: and move, you're just possibly altering your activity. Because I
Speaker 3: mean been in the tree a while. Obviously the deer
Speaker 3: could be starting to move, and you may alter dear
Speaker 3: activity because human human activity affects deer movements more than
Speaker 3: any other factor period human activity. So I don't want
Speaker 3: to molest anything by moving once I'm committed to a spot.
Speaker 2: It's risky. That's for sure. That that very thing bit
Speaker 2: me in the butt last year, So I.
Speaker 3: Uh, you gotta tell me how that happened.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I moved in a spot and I was
Speaker 2: hunting a location tight to a betting area that I
Speaker 2: knew the buck I was after spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in and the wind shifted on me. And I
Speaker 2: do still obsess over the wind myself personally, and so
Speaker 2: when the wind shifted to blowing into that betting area,
Speaker 2: I sat there and say, oh gosh, this isn't good.
Speaker 2: And I was worrying, like part of me is saying,
Speaker 2: you don't want to move because you know you're gonna
Speaker 2: spook deer and he might be coming, and you know,
Speaker 2: when you're climbing down from the tree, he might show
Speaker 2: up and you can blow it all up vice versa.
Speaker 2: He might be going into that bedding area any moment now,
Speaker 2: and get a big whiff of me, and then my
Speaker 2: hunt's done too, and there could be twenty other deer
Speaker 2: that would want to use that betting are and you're
Speaker 2: going to blow out twenty deer or ten deer or
Speaker 2: whatever it is. And so I went back and forth,
Speaker 2: back and forth on that, and then I finally decided,
Speaker 2: you know what, I got to get out of here,
Speaker 2: like it's it was blowing the worst possible place. And
Speaker 2: I take my son control really serious. But I know
Speaker 2: that I'm not. I'm not I'm personally not able to
Speaker 2: make it one hundred percent. So I knew that, you know,
Speaker 2: stuff would win me. So I pulled. I started pulling
Speaker 2: down my set, and as I'm about to about to
Speaker 2: climb out of my platform, I hear snap. I turn
Speaker 2: over my shoulder, and it had been a windy, rainy
Speaker 2: day and the one buck I was after was twenty
Speaker 2: five yards away walking right through my tree through my
Speaker 2: shooting lane.
Speaker 7: Oh no, yeah, last season, yeah, last season.
Speaker 2: And and it gets worse john, because so I was devastated.
Speaker 2: So he walked through my lane. My bow had already
Speaker 2: been like lowered down on the rope, so I was
Speaker 2: able to pull back up without him seeing that, but
Speaker 2: he got into my wind and got just kind of
Speaker 2: wiggy and and eventually gets kind of like slowly trotted
Speaker 2: off before I was able to get a shot.
Speaker 3: Do you think had you not moved down the tree
Speaker 3: part way and had to get back up, that he
Speaker 3: still would have winded you?
Speaker 2: Or if I had, if I had still had my
Speaker 2: bow up there, if I was like, if I'd just
Speaker 2: been hunting, I would have I would have noticed him
Speaker 2: before he got to my wind, and I would have
Speaker 2: had a wonderful shot.
Speaker 3: Got so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it cost me that opportunity. So he runs off
Speaker 2: to that betting air. I pulled on my set and
Speaker 2: I decide, Okay, I blew this sucker up. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go and move to the other side of the property,
Speaker 2: to the far opposite side of this betting area now
Speaker 2: and hope that maybe I can catch him working this
Speaker 2: side of it in the evening. And he did it,
Speaker 2: and I got a shot at him in that that
Speaker 2: that evening and hit him in the shoulder and didn't
Speaker 2: kill him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had had you not moved, he wouldn't have
Speaker 3: come out in that other spoty, But it came out
Speaker 3: where you had.
Speaker 2: Been quite possibly, yes, yes, quite possibly. So I got
Speaker 2: effectively had a shot opportunity in the morning, and then
Speaker 2: my pivot gave me a shot opportunity in the evening
Speaker 2: and I blew both of them. So that was that
Speaker 2: was a what what what I would look back on
Speaker 2: as my worst day in my dear hunting life. Probably
Speaker 2: Now I did end up killing him in uh end
Speaker 2: of November, so I caught back up to him a
Speaker 2: month later. But uh, but that's a that's a story
Speaker 2: for a different days November. That was that was with
Speaker 2: a gun. At that point, he was wounded. I could
Speaker 2: tell he was infected and it was a bad deal
Speaker 2: and I needed to do whatever I could to u.
Speaker 3: Dangering.
Speaker 2: He had like all sorts of pusts and stuff in there.
Speaker 2: It was it wasn't good. So I was able to
Speaker 2: uh to wrap that one up and end it as
Speaker 2: ethically as I possibly could.
Speaker 3: I will I will say this, the biggest buck I
Speaker 3: ever shot, which was one hundred and eighty enter, was
Speaker 3: one that I got down and moved on an all basis.
Speaker 3: I got down and moved at ten o'clock and I
Speaker 3: ended up shooting it.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, sometimes it pans out. Yeah, So along these lines.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, dealing with tough decisions or dealing
Speaker 2: with mistakes like what I just described.
Speaker 3: I think it doesn't make your honey man, if you
Speaker 3: never made a mistake, it would be boring.
Speaker 2: It's very true, very true. So so that's a perfect
Speaker 2: leading to this, which is, how would you define mental
Speaker 2: toughness in the context of deer hunting and how does
Speaker 2: that factor into your deer hunting success if at all?
Speaker 3: Big ten, I think mental toughness I have a complete
Speaker 3: chapter on mental toughness in my new book. Mental toughness
Speaker 3: is not worrying about conditions, weather conditions in clement weather,
Speaker 3: thirty mile an hour, thirty five mile an hour winds,
Speaker 3: you know, rain, as long as it's not up driving
Speaker 3: pouring rain and going hunting regardless. There are so many
Speaker 3: hunters that as soon as there's any type of fall
Speaker 3: weather they give up their hunt. Oh they're not going
Speaker 3: to move tonight, blah blah blah. And I have killed
Speaker 3: deer in weather conditions that were you would never think
Speaker 3: a deer would move in and typical dose and stuff
Speaker 3: don't use you know, they like blueber day. But when
Speaker 3: you're hunting in severe in clement weather. You know, mature
Speaker 3: bocks during the rough phases, they want to breathe and
Speaker 3: they're going to move, they can't go inside. So I
Speaker 3: think mental conditioning, where you don't let anything affect what
Speaker 3: you're going to do concerning hunting plays a big, big
Speaker 3: part in success because when you're hunting pressure areas, opportunities
Speaker 3: are so few, and the more you're out there, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying you have to still hunt smart, but the
Speaker 3: more you're out there at the right times of season
Speaker 3: and the right times of day, no matter the weather
Speaker 3: conditions you're you're going to have higher percentage of getting opportunities.
Speaker 3: I think that has a lot to do with mental toughness.
Speaker 3: Getting up in the mornings is mental toughness. Getting up,
Speaker 3: you know, three hours before daylight to go hunting and
Speaker 3: be in your three an hour and a half or
Speaker 3: daylight every day, even though you know one out of
Speaker 3: twenty hunts is the only time it's going to work
Speaker 3: for you on average. That's mental toughness. Staying in your tree.
Speaker 3: If you're at you know you're in a betting area.
Speaker 3: If you're in an all day sit in a betting area,
Speaker 3: you got to be in tree an hour and a
Speaker 3: half before daylight settled in, and you don't want to
Speaker 3: leave the betting area until at least a half an
Speaker 3: hour after dark. Even though you can't shoot, you want
Speaker 3: to make sure if there was a mature buck in there,
Speaker 3: he's gotten up and moved out of the betting area,
Speaker 3: so that you're not spooking him with your climbing down
Speaker 3: the tree and your exit out of the betting area.
Speaker 3: You know, right at dark, you know when he probably
Speaker 3: hasn't exited the betting area yet. You know those are
Speaker 3: all or you know, if you're on public land and
Speaker 3: you know and it gets heavily pressured public land. Mental
Speaker 3: toughness is knowing that if you find a bunch of
Speaker 3: sign Let's say you find this awesome location and it's
Speaker 3: got some seonone's of security cover, and there's three active
Speaker 3: scrapes here, and there's rubs on all the perimeter brush
Speaker 3: around the scrape area. But yet it's an easy to
Speaker 3: access location for anybody from the parking area or wherever
Speaker 3: the public land parking is on, and is you know,
Speaker 3: mental toughness is knowing that if there's a mature buck
Speaker 3: using that scrape area, it's probably at night you know,
Speaker 3: all the sign in the world is worthless if it's
Speaker 3: not made or visited during daylight hours. So knowing there's
Speaker 3: three other guys bee hunting this section of public land,
Speaker 3: you know, not every day, but on and off the
Speaker 3: and of course of the season, that's just ball hunters.
Speaker 3: You know, they're going to find that and they're going
Speaker 3: to ruin it. They're going to ruin that location for
Speaker 3: daytime hunting. So, you know, mental toughness is knowing that
Speaker 3: when you're hunting public land in a heavily pressured area,
Speaker 3: you've got to go places other people aren't willing to go.
Speaker 3: You've got to don waiters or hit boots, or use
Speaker 3: a canoe or a bolt across the lake or whatever
Speaker 3: the case may be, because that's where the buck. Mature
Speaker 3: bucks are pushed by all the other hunters because they're
Speaker 3: typically too lazy and they're not willing to do the
Speaker 3: work to get back to those places. So the mental
Speaker 3: toughness is knowing you have to do that if you
Speaker 3: want to have any semblance of being consistently successful in
Speaker 3: a pressured area. Yeah, and and most of the time
Speaker 3: you do these things and it doesn't you don't make
Speaker 3: it kill, But you have to do them all, and
Speaker 3: you have to do them consistently for the few opportunities
Speaker 3: you're going to get in a heavily pressured area your body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you're feeling exhausted and frustrated or stumped or
Speaker 2: pissed off at how the hunt's going, or anything like that,
Speaker 2: when that's happening season could be either or could be
Speaker 2: any Could it be any one of those things. When
Speaker 2: you're feeling that, how do you activate mental toughness? Like
Speaker 2: how in that situation? How do you turn it on?
Speaker 2: Or what do you do when you're feeling exhausted, frustrated, stumped, struggling?
Speaker 2: How do you respond?
Speaker 3: I usually don't think about that because it's it's in planet,
Speaker 3: It's ingrained in my DNA. Now, as far as the
Speaker 3: way I hunt, I don't allow myself during a physical
Speaker 3: hunt to get mentally disabled where man, this isn't going
Speaker 3: to work, or I'm hunting in the wrong spot, or
Speaker 3: I didn't do enough work here. Once you're committed to
Speaker 3: what you're doing, you just do it. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's a good answer for that.
Speaker 2: No, I actually think that's I think that's insightful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I never think negative things when I'm deer hunting.
Speaker 3: You know, I may I may sit there and say, God,
Speaker 3: I wish i'd have been over there for this. This
Speaker 3: may suck because this or that, but I still commit
Speaker 3: to it. So I don't let it mentally drain me.
Speaker 3: I just commit to it and I say, well, I'll
Speaker 3: do that on another day.
Speaker 2: No, maybe thirty years ago, though forty years ago might
Speaker 2: have been a different story. Would you say that you
Speaker 2: are where you are now because of the experience of
Speaker 2: going through this and pushing through those roadblocks. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's why you're there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely years ago in the seventies and eighties, Oh,
Speaker 3: I would get very tense and pissed off, and you know,
Speaker 3: being at a location and I didn't think it was
Speaker 3: going to work out. But once I commit, now I
Speaker 3: just I just hunted because anything's possible. I mean, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have a location there if I didn't. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have prepped that location if I didn't think it was
Speaker 3: going to be worth hunting. Now, back in the old days,
Speaker 3: I would, you know, in the late seventies and eighties,
Speaker 3: when I was postseason scouting, i'd prep locations at let's
Speaker 3: say an oak tree or at a lost apple tree
Speaker 3: in September, and then I wouldn't I wouldn't do a
Speaker 3: speed tour because doing a speed tour back then, because
Speaker 3: I wasn't using sut lock, it was an intrusion into
Speaker 3: that spot prior to season. So I wouldn't do a
Speaker 3: speed tour to see if the oak had acorns, or
Speaker 3: the apple tree we're dropping apples, or what's see into
Speaker 3: what's seeing what kind of buck sign is around those
Speaker 3: trees just prior to season. So I wouldn't take those
Speaker 3: pre season speed tours. And then I'd go in and hunt,
Speaker 3: but go into a hunt, maybe a white oak tree,
Speaker 3: and I get to the tree for an evening hunt
Speaker 3: and it's doesn't have any acorns that year, so it's
Speaker 3: totally worthless. So I've just blown a complete hunt. So
Speaker 3: but nowadays, because I mentally prepare for all that, I
Speaker 3: do my pre season speed tours in total clad in
Speaker 3: selt lock where I'm not leaving any odor, and I'm
Speaker 3: checking to see all my early season locations and which
Speaker 3: olks have acorns, which ones don't, you know, and I
Speaker 3: whatever locations are not producing mass or fruit they're discarded
Speaker 3: for that year, you know, and those they're still good locations,
Speaker 3: but they'll be for another year. So you know, back
Speaker 3: in those days, I go in and be frustrated because
Speaker 3: now I'm totally wasted in evening hunt because I'm hunting
Speaker 3: in a with no egghorns and there's no sign here.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense, it does, and that is frustrating.
Speaker 3: That very fest that doesn't happen anymore. That never happens
Speaker 3: nowadays because I'm mentally prepared with my speed tours on
Speaker 3: what does not have food.
Speaker 2: The lessons learned over many years of trying this stuff
Speaker 2: and learning right, Yes, all right, John, If we had
Speaker 2: one of your best hunting buddies, or your son Joe,
Speaker 2: or anyone who knows you well, who is hunted with
Speaker 2: you and has spent time behind the scenes seeing how
Speaker 2: you actually do what you do. If one of these
Speaker 2: people was on the line with us today and I
Speaker 2: asked them to point a finger at your single greatest
Speaker 2: strength as a deer hunter, do you think they would yours?
Speaker 2: So if if your best hunting buddy was asked, what's
Speaker 2: John Eberheart's greatest strength as a deer hunter, what do
Speaker 2: you think they would say work.
Speaker 3: Ethic and mental toughness. It'd be too it'd be too
Speaker 3: cold work ethic. I've scouted locations and prep locations for
Speaker 3: other hunters that are pretty high profile guys in Michigan,
Speaker 3: and they were blown away at how hard I work
Speaker 3: in prep locations. They because they said, I can't do that.
Speaker 3: I just don't have the I just can't do what
Speaker 3: you do in trees and and they don't have the
Speaker 3: mental toughness. I'm sure it would be my mental toughness
Speaker 3: and my work ethic, which I think you'd get that
Speaker 3: same answer from almost any really successful ball Yeah.
Speaker 2: What would they say if I were to ask them,
Speaker 2: is your greatest area of weakness or your greatest area
Speaker 2: with room to improve as a deer hunter?
Speaker 3: They would say I'm a Nazi because my kids call
Speaker 3: me that I'm a deer hunting Nazi because when they
Speaker 3: hunt with me, because we don't hunt together in Michigan.
Speaker 3: We all want our own spots in Michigan. But when
Speaker 3: we go out of state hunting, and they they don't
Speaker 3: like me when I'm out of state because everything is
Speaker 3: to the minute. You know, we're leaving here five minutes
Speaker 3: to five and if you're not ready, I'm leaving without you,
Speaker 3: you know. So they call me the deer hunting Nash,
Speaker 3: So I guess my discipline would be what they would say.
Speaker 2: But it also might be a big part of your
Speaker 2: strength too, right, it probably is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and now they're like that. That's what they
Speaker 3: used to say several years ago. And now I'll put
Speaker 3: my son John, not Joe. But I'd put my son
Speaker 3: John up against an hunter in the country, and Chris
Speaker 3: I would have in his day as well. Joe Joe
Speaker 3: not definitely, not Joe, but John definitely.
Speaker 2: Would we better make sure Joe doesn't hear this one John,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: He would agree with me. I think he would agree
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 7: All right, self awareness, that's good, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So maybe you might have just answered my next
Speaker 2: question here. But what is the most common trait or
Speaker 2: mindset or habit that you see in all the best
Speaker 2: deer hunters? You know? So, if you had to point
Speaker 2: to that one most common trait that all the best
Speaker 2: deer hunters have, is it one of those things you
Speaker 2: just described or is it something different, I'd say work ethic, Yeah.
Speaker 3: The amount of work you only get out of hunting
Speaker 3: what you put into it. And if you want to
Speaker 3: hunt at a serious level and you're hunting heavily pressured
Speaker 3: property against a lot of competition, it requires a lot
Speaker 3: of work because you have to do things different than
Speaker 3: everybody else. You have to be more more assertive, you
Speaker 3: have to do things other hunters are just not willing
Speaker 3: to do so, and that saw it comes down to
Speaker 3: work efforts.
Speaker 2: What is a commonly held piece of hunting dogma or
Speaker 2: something that most folks believe about hunting or that a
Speaker 2: lot of people do as hunters that is actually false
Speaker 2: or that you think is false. So kind of the
Speaker 2: flip side of what I just asked you. So, if
Speaker 2: that's the thing that everyone who's really good always does,
Speaker 2: what's something that a lot of people do that you
Speaker 2: think is actually a mistake or a false.
Speaker 3: Belief they do well, A lot of hunters don't pay
Speaker 3: attention to control. But that's that's another topic. Ah. Buck
Speaker 3: betting areas. I think buck betting areas is a big
Speaker 3: misconception for the most part. You know, there's so many
Speaker 3: people that talk about, well, buck's only betting, you know,
Speaker 3: only bucks betting, betting betting areas, buck betting areas, and
Speaker 3: you know, if you have a small betting area, let's
Speaker 3: say it's cup lakers, you know, and there's a dominant
Speaker 3: or sure buck betting in it during the rush phases,
Speaker 3: obviously those don't want to be in there with their
Speaker 3: fonts because they're going to get blested and bugged all
Speaker 3: the time. But I'll hunted in hundreds of betting areas
Speaker 3: over my career, and I have seen those come in
Speaker 3: in the mornings and bed and they have bucks come
Speaker 3: in and bed, you know, fifty yards from them. And
Speaker 3: in the evenings, I've had bucks get up and move
Speaker 3: and then does get up and move in the same
Speaker 3: betting areas going buy me. So you know people that
Speaker 3: say only bucks betting bed and betting areas and those
Speaker 3: don't that is totally totally yes, I've got hundreds of
Speaker 3: I would maybe not hundreds, but fifty to one hundred
Speaker 3: occasions where I've hunted in betting areas and seeing those
Speaker 3: in bucks in the same betting areas betting down, not
Speaker 3: bucks in there pursuing and you know, searching for those,
Speaker 3: but actually betting down. And obviously the bigger the betting area,
Speaker 3: the more you know, it's just like a cornfield's a
Speaker 3: betting area, and good grief, I've seen multiple bucks and
Speaker 3: betting in cornfields and dose in cornfields on many, many occasions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in just you.
Speaker 3: Know, just marsh grass, swamps and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if betting area is a decent size, there's going to
Speaker 3: be bucks and those betting in it. And I'm not
Speaker 3: a big person that believes in hunting specific buck peds
Speaker 3: because when you're hunting in a heavily pressured area like
Speaker 3: Michigan is public land, free permission properties, there's probably on average,
Speaker 3: i would say one three and a half year old
Speaker 3: or older buck to every forty other deer. I'd say
Speaker 3: that's the ratio on as to doze fauns and the
Speaker 3: sport that bucks. You know, one in two year old
Speaker 3: sport bucks. So when you're hunting a specific buck bed,
Speaker 3: first off, how are you going to find a specific
Speaker 3: but bed? Okay? And but if you did, let's say
Speaker 3: that you did find a specific buckbed and I have
Speaker 3: found them before, but there it's not something I would
Speaker 3: key on on a regular basis looking for buck peds.
Speaker 3: If you typically during season a mature buck, they're pressured,
Speaker 3: they're going to move deeper into the interior, of the
Speaker 3: betting area to bed they want to get deeper in.
Speaker 3: Typically your dose fonds more than the bucks they're going
Speaker 3: to be betting more out on the peripheral edges because
Speaker 3: they're not pressured the same, their security precautions are not
Speaker 3: quite the same as a mature buck that probably has
Speaker 3: been shot at or wounded. So when you are hunting,
Speaker 3: let's say you were hunting a specific buckbed, Obviously, when
Speaker 3: you went in to hunt that buckbed, you know you're
Speaker 3: hunting it where you're going to be upwind of that buckbed.
Speaker 3: But when you're entering into that betting area to get
Speaker 3: near that buckbed, because there's forty to one other deer,
Speaker 3: you're highly more than likely to spook peripheral, doze bedded
Speaker 3: or subordinate bucks before you get close enough to that
Speaker 3: buck sixty to one hundred yards from that buckbed. And
Speaker 3: when you spook these other peripheral deer, they're going to
Speaker 3: run in the direction you're coming in from, So they're
Speaker 3: going to run towards the supposed buck that's betted there.
Speaker 3: So obviously, if that buck here's deer running past him,
Speaker 3: if he stays betted and he does get up to
Speaker 3: move before dark, he's not going to move in the
Speaker 3: direction you're spooped from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: And then second scenario would be, let's say you did
Speaker 3: go in and set up and you were fifty to
Speaker 3: one hundred yards from a buck's bed, it's your buck's bed.
Speaker 3: A buck is typically the last buck in the evening
Speaker 3: to get up and move, So you're going to have
Speaker 3: all these other forty ratio forty to one ratio deer
Speaker 3: in that's betting area get up and move in the
Speaker 3: direction that you're expecting that buck to move when he
Speaker 3: gets up to move to move. So if all these
Speaker 3: other deer are moving in the same direction that that
Speaker 3: buck is, that means they're going to be moving by you.
Speaker 3: And if you don't have a control regiment that works,
Speaker 3: once they're on the down wind side, they're going to
Speaker 3: blow or spook, and obviously then that buck's not going
Speaker 3: to get up later and move in that same direction either.
Speaker 3: So that whole buck betting thing, it sounds cool and
Speaker 3: it gets a lot of it gets a lot of press,
Speaker 3: but you've got to be hunting in some semblance of
Speaker 3: a managed area where you've got quite a few mature
Speaker 3: bucks in it for that to even remotely work in
Speaker 3: a pressured area where you've got, you know, such a
Speaker 3: high ratio of other deer to the few mature bucks
Speaker 3: that exist. The odds of hunting a buck betting area successfully,
Speaker 3: a buck bed successfully is very very low, extremely well.
Speaker 3: And everything I do is based on percentages. What are
Speaker 3: my best percentage ods? And that's right at the bottom
Speaker 3: of the percentage jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, much, Yes, it does. And it's not an easy
Speaker 2: thing to pull off, that's for sure, and much easier
Speaker 2: said than done. Okay, last question, John, You've made it through, uh,
Speaker 2: through this series of questions. Yeah, last question for this one.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: If you were forced to distill your approach to deer
Speaker 2: hunting success into one single idea, or if you had
Speaker 2: one message that you wanted to leave the deer hunting
Speaker 2: public with, and you had to put that single idea
Speaker 2: on a billboard on the side of the highway that
Speaker 2: every deer hunter would see as they drive to work
Speaker 2: in the morning. What would that one message be, that
Speaker 2: one phrase, one liner, one idea that you would put
Speaker 2: on that billboard that everyone could see.
Speaker 3: What would you choose the one term?
Speaker 2: It could be a term, a phrase, a sentence of
Speaker 2: you know something that either would be like your most
Speaker 2: important advice or that important reminder, or the distillation of
Speaker 2: of what you do, or if you had to leave
Speaker 2: folks with one parting.
Speaker 3: Thought, well, I could be you know, un art would
Speaker 3: be the first the first two words I could think of,
Speaker 3: because a lot of people hunt a lot, but they
Speaker 3: don't hunt smart. You know, when you learn how to
Speaker 3: hunt smart, you typically start hunting less. But the times
Speaker 3: you do hunt, you're hunting smart and you're capitalizing. You're
Speaker 3: you've got a higher percentage rate of success because you
Speaker 3: are hunting smart and you're not ruining your locations before
Speaker 3: they're ready. You know, every location to me has a
Speaker 3: ready time, you know, like mass trees, fruit trees, you
Speaker 3: know their early season time. Rock based locations, they're a
Speaker 3: rock based time. You don't go anywhere near them until
Speaker 3: that time of season because you're molesting. You're altering the
Speaker 3: dough activity at them, and all bucket activity during the
Speaker 3: ruck phases revolves around door activity. So if you're altering
Speaker 3: door activity to a rough phase location prior to the rut, obviously,
Speaker 3: if those dose quit coming in there during day light hours,
Speaker 3: the buck when you start pursuing does he ain't gonna
Speaker 3: come in there in the daylight either, So hunting smart
Speaker 3: would be the simplest two words. But I mean just
Speaker 3: saying hunting smart, there's a lot of different directions you
Speaker 3: could take those two words. I mean, what does that mean.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 3: This is a whole lot of area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good billboard. I'll take that
Speaker 2: reminder every day. John, You've got an exciting new project
Speaker 2: coming out into the world here pretty soon before we
Speaker 2: wrap this up, can you can you fill us in
Speaker 2: on what we can expect here in the coming months? ISHU.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm hoping in August. Launch on August. Ready, I
Speaker 3: wrote a book in conjunction with Greg Godfrey, and I
Speaker 3: wrote the majority of it, and it was so long.
Speaker 3: I've been working on this since January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: so I've got probably three to four thousand hours in it.
Speaker 3: And it's a book. It's a new book. And when
Speaker 3: I send it to the book designer, he laughed and
Speaker 3: he said, John, if I put this on a six
Speaker 3: by nine book, which is what your other three books
Speaker 3: are all six by nine, And if I put it
Speaker 3: in an eleven fonts, which is kind of a small
Speaker 3: font He said. It's going to take nine hundred.
Speaker 4: Pages, so.
Speaker 2: That is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's broken down into three volumes. So the
Speaker 3: name of the book is going to be Ultimate Guide
Speaker 3: to DIY Bucks, which DIY means do it Yourself. It's
Speaker 3: gonna have twenty seven chapters. It's gonna have. It's gonna
Speaker 3: cover travel, hunting, health and conditioning, pre rud, peak rud,
Speaker 3: post rud, late season, early season, staging areas, chapter on
Speaker 3: hunting standing corn, the reality is of hunting pressure. It's
Speaker 3: going to cover train features. You know, he'll country, egg slash,
Speaker 3: rural swamp areas, hunting in pine plantations down south because
Speaker 3: Greg Wi Greg's from Georgia, Florida and Georgia. It's gonna
Speaker 3: cover pretty much every aspect, thermals, how to hunt, swirling winds,
Speaker 3: thermals in the evenings going down, thermals in the mornings
Speaker 3: going up. It's going to cover side control in detail
Speaker 3: like nobody's ever seen it before. It's gonna talk about,
Speaker 3: you know, ticks and mosquitoes. Activated carbon actually absorbs all
Speaker 3: your you know, lactic acid odor and your ammonia odor.
Speaker 3: You dispel and your carbon dioxide so you don't have
Speaker 3: issues with ticks and mosquitos. It's gonna cover everything there
Speaker 3: is to do with bull hunting. It's gonna have a
Speaker 3: chapter on saddle hunting and everything you need to know
Speaker 3: about saddle hunting. But it's not a book for just
Speaker 3: saddle hunters, you know. It's gonna be for any anybody
Speaker 3: that hunts white tails in America. And it's going to
Speaker 3: be three volumes, and I'm going to actually do an audio,
Speaker 3: so it's going to be in paper, it's going to
Speaker 3: be in an ebook, and it's also going to be
Speaker 3: an audio. The audiobook will come out later. I expect
Speaker 3: the ebook in the paper books to be available sometime
Speaker 3: in August. That's our plan. And Tethered is going to
Speaker 3: be the fulfillment center, so all orders will end up
Speaker 3: going through them. And for your subscribers, Mark, they might
Speaker 3: be happy to know you have participated in this book.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Mark has I think two short kill stories. There's seventy
Speaker 3: four kill stories in this book. They're all three to
Speaker 3: five paragraphs along, so they're very abbreviated, and all the
Speaker 3: kill stories fit in whatever chapter that they can lend
Speaker 3: credibility to that chapter which you just read, So there
Speaker 3: will be photos of the bucks as well as a
Speaker 3: three to five paragraph story. Andy May has several kill stories.
Speaker 3: Garrett Praul from DIY, Sportsman, Greg Godfrey and Ernie Power,
Speaker 3: the two owners of Feathered, also have kill stories. And
Speaker 3: I have about fifty five kill stories in it, I think.
Speaker 3: So it's going to have a lot of photos or
Speaker 3: they are going to have a lot of photos. We're
Speaker 3: probably going to be in the twenty seven to thirty
Speaker 3: dollars price range per volume. And and I'm really excited
Speaker 3: about it because I think this is going to be
Speaker 3: a basically this is going to cover everything there's about.
Speaker 2: Going So how how does how does this differ from
Speaker 2: the previous books you've written on this topic? So if I,
Speaker 2: like me, I own all of your books, I've read
Speaker 2: all of your books multiple times in what what should
Speaker 2: I expect this different or above and beyond from those
Speaker 2: previous editions.
Speaker 3: It's going to have more detail to give you an
Speaker 3: idea all of those other three books I've wrote, we're
Speaker 3: in the two hundred from twenty to two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty page are you Each one of these volumes is
Speaker 3: going to be over three it's going to be three
Speaker 3: hundred fifty page. Yeah, so you're going to have basically
Speaker 3: one thousand pages versus any of those other books which
Speaker 3: were two hundred twenty to two hundred and fifty, much
Speaker 3: more detail. It's going to cover more ground, it's going
Speaker 3: to cover more different types of train features. It's going
Speaker 3: to have more information than the other ones had. They're
Speaker 3: definitely different than the other ones, far far more detail oriented.
Speaker 2: And what has been about ten years since your last book? So,
Speaker 2: so ten years of evolution for you as one hundred.
Speaker 3: Two brok fourteen years, fourteen.
Speaker 2: Years okay, yeah, so lots of lots of new things there,
Speaker 2: I'm sure too.
Speaker 3: I'm very very excited about it me too. I've worked
Speaker 3: on this for so many months. I didn't even put
Speaker 3: my boat. I live on a lake and I didn't
Speaker 3: even put my boats in the water because I didn't
Speaker 3: want them distracting me from writing. That's and I love.
Speaker 2: The fish, so dedication.
Speaker 3: Then it's I'll be glad when this is done and
Speaker 3: it's put to bed, and it's you just order it
Speaker 3: and it's done.
Speaker 2: So well, keep us, keep us posted. I'll be very
Speaker 2: excited when it comes out in August, We'll definitely tell everyone.
Speaker 2: I'm wired to hunt all about it. Anything else you
Speaker 2: want folks to know about anywhere that folks, I guess
Speaker 2: remind us of where people can go to connect with you,
Speaker 2: to see your content, to buy previous books. What's the
Speaker 2: best place to do that online?
Speaker 3: Well, my website. You can buy my books on my website.
Speaker 3: But I'll be honest with you that there's no reason
Speaker 3: to buy any of my previous books if you're going
Speaker 3: to buy this one. I mean, I think you'd be
Speaker 3: unless you wanted something for this year. If these aren't
Speaker 3: available in August and you wanted some for this year,
Speaker 3: you may want to. You know, I think eber Art Outdoors,
Speaker 3: not eber Art Outdoors, but Booning White Tails of Eberway
Speaker 3: would be the most current and updated book that's available
Speaker 3: at the moment. But you're not going to need that
Speaker 3: if you end up getting these other three. The downside
Speaker 3: is these other three books, you know, you have to
Speaker 3: kind of have all books. They have it all fit together.
Speaker 3: I did not want to do three volumes. It just
Speaker 3: happened that they were going to be too long to
Speaker 3: put into a single book.
Speaker 2: And can you imagine getting a book like six inches tall, though.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want it because they wouldn't want to read it.
Speaker 3: Kind of cool. On the on the spine of the
Speaker 3: three books, I'm going to have a really cool photo
Speaker 3: where when three books are stacked next to each other
Speaker 3: on the shelf, it will form a photo of big
Speaker 3: a big book. But if you just had one or two,
Speaker 3: you're missing something very cool. It doesn't form the actual
Speaker 3: picture picture.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll be impatiently awaiting the uh this this three
Speaker 2: volume set. Congratulations on getting that done. That is no
Speaker 2: small achievement. I'm sure that was a tremendous amount of work.
Speaker 2: So so thank you for dedicating yourself to that. I
Speaker 2: know there's gonna be a lot of us that will
Speaker 2: benefit from it. And I've said it every time we've talked,
Speaker 2: but I'll just say it again. Thank you for the
Speaker 2: impact you made on me. John uh Oh, you welcome.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know if i'd be here today
Speaker 2: if it weren't for those books I've read of yours
Speaker 2: and subsequent lessons I've learned from you. So so thank
Speaker 2: you for that. Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 3: More importantly, Mark, thank you, and may you know you
Speaker 3: may thank me for this as well, but we'd both
Speaker 3: like to educate hunters. You know. To me, I love
Speaker 3: educating hunters to make them better hunters put so much
Speaker 3: time and effort into hunting and spending so much money
Speaker 3: on it. And to me getting a kill story from
Speaker 3: somebody emailing me a kill story, it's so gratifying. Well,
Speaker 3: I did this and it worked, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: just think it's awesome. Man. You you're doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: You're trying to educate hunters to be better, and what's
Speaker 3: your successful ball honor? Because you put so much time
Speaker 3: into it, it just gives your self gratification. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just awesome. So thank you as well for your format.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been a lot of fun. This has been
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. I'm excited to see the rest
Speaker 2: of this series and hear the rest of folks. And
Speaker 2: as you did last time, you kicked it off really
Speaker 2: really well. John, So thank you, thank.
Speaker 3: You very much. Those were definitely unique questions. Thank you,
Speaker 3: Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2: All right, and that is a wrap. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us. Hope you enjoyed that one as much as
Speaker 2: I did. We've got some great guests coming up. I
Speaker 2: will tease a couple here. Some of our future episodes
Speaker 2: in the Mindsets of white Tail Masters series will include
Speaker 2: episodes with Ben Rising, Andre Toquisto, I think we've got
Speaker 2: Dan Enfhalt coming up, and a number of others. I
Speaker 2: think you guys are really gonna enjoy these can't wait
Speaker 2: to share with you. One last reminder, go subscribe to
Speaker 2: the Meat Eater Clips YouTube channel so you can check
Speaker 2: out our new white Tail Edu video series. And with that,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you go. I appreciate you, hope you're
Speaker 2: having an awesome summer, and until next time, stay Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt.