Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and today in the show, I am joined
Speaker 1: by legendary big woods tracker Hall Blood to recap my
Speaker 1: recent hunt in Maine and the lessons I learned about
Speaker 1: tracking deer in the snow. All right, welcome to the
Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light,
Speaker 1: and today's episode is one that I have been wanting
Speaker 1: to share for a long time. This has been a
Speaker 1: story I've hoped I would get to experience and hoped
Speaker 1: I get to share someday. For years now, I've talked
Speaker 1: about going up to Maine or somewhere in the Northeast
Speaker 1: and trying to track down deer in the snow. Right,
Speaker 1: This whole idea of finding a big track and walking
Speaker 1: it down over miles and miles of big woods terrain,
Speaker 1: this is just it just seemed like one of the
Speaker 1: coolest ways to hunt ever. I think for two or
Speaker 1: three years I've been saying, Hey, this year, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it, and then it fell through, and then the
Speaker 1: next year I'm like, Okay, this is the year I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it, and then it fell through. Well, finally
Speaker 1: it actually happened. I did it. I've had this experience,
Speaker 1: and today I want to share that story with you,
Speaker 1: as well as everything I learned about how to do
Speaker 1: it and help me do it is hell Blood. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've been listening to the podcast this fall, you
Speaker 1: probably have an idea of what I've been doing and
Speaker 1: why I went and visited with somebody like hell Blood.
Speaker 1: But let me give you the real quick recap. My
Speaker 1: season this year has been mostly devoted to traveling across
Speaker 1: the country to hunt in brand new places in brand
Speaker 1: new ways, and I've been meeting with a local expert
Speaker 1: in each place to figure out what it is they do.
Speaker 1: So in this case, I met up with Hail Blood
Speaker 1: in Maine, and I wanted Hale to show me how
Speaker 1: he tracks deer down in the snow. So we met up,
Speaker 1: spent a day together. I've followed in his footsteps, asking
Speaker 1: him a thousand questions, basically doing a podcast in person
Speaker 1: while we're out there doing the thing. So I got
Speaker 1: to see exactly how he tries to track down deer
Speaker 1: in the snow. And then after that day together, I
Speaker 1: was going to head out on my own and try
Speaker 1: to see if I could put it into action, getting
Speaker 1: pig these ideas and pull off this kind of hunt myself.
Speaker 1: So that's what I tried to do. Back towards the
Speaker 1: third third week of November, I think it was. That's
Speaker 1: when I did it. And Man, without giving away too much,
Speaker 1: I will tell you this, it was a hell of
Speaker 1: an experience. I mean learned a ton, I got to
Speaker 1: spend some really fun days in beautiful country and Uh.
Speaker 1: In short, I'm definitely going to be using these new
Speaker 1: tactics in the future. So we've got Hail here on
Speaker 1: the show. In just a couple of minutes. Hale is
Speaker 1: gonna help us walk through everything we did, share a
Speaker 1: lot of insight and strategies and tactics that anyone listening
Speaker 1: to this will be able to use and put into
Speaker 1: action in your own neck of the woods. If you
Speaker 1: have big woods train like this, if you have snow
Speaker 1: like this, I think you'll be able to learn a lot.
Speaker 1: I've also got my two cameramen who were following me around, uh,
Speaker 1: capturing all of this for our new show. So we've
Speaker 1: got Dylan Lens and Jimmy Michaels, who will be able
Speaker 1: to add some different perspectives, some look, you know, some context,
Speaker 1: some color, and fact check me on anything if I
Speaker 1: miss something. So that's the game plan. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoy this one. I certainly did. Let's get into
Speaker 1: my chat with Hail Blood, one of the absolute legends
Speaker 1: in the Big Woods deer track and world, a registered
Speaker 1: main guide and one of the best out there. You
Speaker 1: can also learn more about him. We'll make sure to
Speaker 1: talk abouts at the end, but I want to say
Speaker 1: at the beginning to he's the host of the Big
Speaker 1: Woods Bucks podcast YouTube series. He's got classes, he uh books,
Speaker 1: guided hunts, he does it all. So if you like
Speaker 1: what you're here today, there's definitely more out there. So now,
Speaker 1: for real, without further ado, my chat with Hail, Dylan
Speaker 1: and Jimmy all right now with me on the line
Speaker 1: to discuss this, uh, this pretty epic trip. We've got
Speaker 1: Hell Blood, Dylan Lens and Jimmy Michael's or Jimmer as
Speaker 1: we like to call him. And uh, rather than rather
Speaker 1: than doing like the four people kind of beating around
Speaker 1: the bush and saying hey, it's good to be here,
Speaker 1: and people talking over each other, I'm just gonna skip
Speaker 1: that part and I want to jump just right into
Speaker 1: the really good stuff because there's a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about on this X. You know, this expedition of sorts
Speaker 1: um As, as you three already know, and as people
Speaker 1: listening her just a little bit about as they introduced
Speaker 1: this whole idea, you know, the gist of what we're
Speaker 1: hoping to do on this trip was to come and
Speaker 1: meet up with you, Hal, spend a day, learn about
Speaker 1: what you do and how you do it when it
Speaker 1: comes to track and do here, and then you know,
Speaker 1: take everything I learned from that day and then go
Speaker 1: out on my own for three more days and try
Speaker 1: to pull it off myself. That was the hope and
Speaker 1: the dream, showing up in Maine, praying for snow and
Speaker 1: hoping we could do this thing. Um Now, where I
Speaker 1: want to start, Hal, is what you were thinking about
Speaker 1: leading into the trip, because we kind of told you, hey,
Speaker 1: this is our dream, this is our idea, this is
Speaker 1: what we'd like to do, you know, would you help
Speaker 1: us out? And you were so kind as to agree.
Speaker 1: But when you looked at the forecast coming up as
Speaker 1: we were about to get there, when you were out
Speaker 1: there hunting yourself in those days leading up to it,
Speaker 1: how were you feeling about things? What were you thinking
Speaker 1: about our chances and how we were actually going to
Speaker 1: pull this off when maybe conditions and are it seemingly
Speaker 1: they're a little a little less than ideal, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot less than ideal. That's really just I was
Speaker 1: actually even before that week, I was thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: when you talked about, you know, the limited time you had.
Speaker 1: That makes it tough anyways, because I tell people to
Speaker 1: be Fanny yourself. Coming up here a week is a
Speaker 1: good start because most people, you know, they get a
Speaker 1: week maybe to go on a huddle whatever. But in
Speaker 1: reality up in this country, you know it yourself, take
Speaker 1: two weeks straight ahead. They have you know, a decent
Speaker 1: chance of you know, killing a buck, or even a
Speaker 1: decent chance of having a few days with a good conditions,
Speaker 1: because that's the reality. I mean, you can have you
Speaker 1: can have snow, but that doesn't mean it's good tracking snow.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know you've seen some of that. You know,
Speaker 1: we had a little snow, but it wasn't there wasn't
Speaker 1: no way is near ideal. So and those are the
Speaker 1: days that's you know, it's higher a lot higher to
Speaker 1: the killer Buck on days like that. So that was
Speaker 1: my first thought was, really, it isn't much time to
Speaker 1: try to you know, really have a good chance at it.
Speaker 1: But when we had to try it anyway, so and
Speaker 1: then when I saw the conditions, I mean we had
Speaker 1: basically we had pretty pretty dismal conditions the whole season
Speaker 1: until the end of Thanksgiving week we finally got a
Speaker 1: nice shot of snow kind of everywhere and it made
Speaker 1: a Muslo the season week a pretty good week. But
Speaker 1: going into that week there was only snow and like
Speaker 1: some of the higher elevations along the borders and you know,
Speaker 1: places like that. So I had to go try to
Speaker 1: find a place to take you because what happens when
Speaker 1: we get those type of conditions with limited snow, it
Speaker 1: kind of crowds people to those places. In other words,
Speaker 1: if if you've got two or three mountains it's got
Speaker 1: snow half way up them, well they're going to have
Speaker 1: ten times a hunting pressure because people come up here
Speaker 1: they want to get on snow, so they all run
Speaker 1: to them mountains. So I don't like to hunt those
Speaker 1: places like that, you know, when there's other people around,
Speaker 1: So I went and looked for a place we could
Speaker 1: go where I felt we probably wouldn't have anybody else around,
Speaker 1: and we didn't, and I took a chance on a place.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it get some of that early snow, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But fortunately it it had some, which
Speaker 1: made it at least we could follow tracks. I can
Speaker 1: say that way we could follow tracks. Now you talked
Speaker 1: about how even though we were able to find some snow,
Speaker 1: you still didn't feel like it was ideal for this
Speaker 1: kind of hunt, Like, what's the absolute ideal situation? What
Speaker 1: do you if you could paint the perfect scenario when
Speaker 1: it came to the conditions, what would that have been. Well,
Speaker 1: really nice conditions are when you get several inches of
Speaker 1: snow anyways that that covers the ground enough to make
Speaker 1: it quiet. So if you get it depends if it's
Speaker 1: wet snow, damp snow, and dry fluffy snow. You know
Speaker 1: it takes more of the dry snow to do that
Speaker 1: than the damp snow because underneath you, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got all kinds of sticks in the woods, and this
Speaker 1: because obviously the snow covers the stick so you can't
Speaker 1: see him. So you're gonna be stepping on a lot
Speaker 1: of them. So you need enough snow to kind of
Speaker 1: mufflo sounds. And you know, if it's wet snow, a
Speaker 1: couple inches will help because of the sticks are damp
Speaker 1: and they don't make as much noise. But dry snow
Speaker 1: it's more like four to six inches. You know. If
Speaker 1: you get four to six inches, it really quiets the
Speaker 1: woods down. Uh, if it's hanging in the trees, it
Speaker 1: muffles the sound. The sound doesn't carry through the woods
Speaker 1: like it would on a you know days when there's
Speaker 1: no snow on the limbs, clear crisp days. And so
Speaker 1: that's kind of it. You gotta, you gotta. It's gotta
Speaker 1: be quiet because you know, one of them ada can
Speaker 1: hear you for a hundred yards if not, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's just trying to get near one. It's difficult,
Speaker 1: you know. And the other part that makes it ideal,
Speaker 1: especially if you have ma original snow, you know, just
Speaker 1: a little snow or it's it's uh more noisy as
Speaker 1: something is wind. So I I call if we get
Speaker 1: a couple inches of snow and we've got a nice
Speaker 1: wind with the trees a sway and a little and
Speaker 1: there's leaves are rattling around, you know, with the dead
Speaker 1: leaves on the trees, and I call those those are
Speaker 1: the buck killing days right there, because that is taken
Speaker 1: away the advantage that that a buck has, you know,
Speaker 1: because obviously they can hear better than us, they can smell,
Speaker 1: and they can not that they see great if you
Speaker 1: don't move, but they pick up movement probably quicker than
Speaker 1: what you do. So the wind takes care of all
Speaker 1: of that because if the trees are moving and the
Speaker 1: leaves are shaken, that puts some movement in the woods,
Speaker 1: so they don't pick up on your movement as quick
Speaker 1: it uh. The wind and the things rattling around helps
Speaker 1: cover your noise and it also makes it so your
Speaker 1: sense not gonna get anywhere, you know, if it's if
Speaker 1: it's a windy day, you your scent don't probably get
Speaker 1: ten feet from you, you know. So that's ideal conditions.
Speaker 1: That's how you have to paint it out for an
Speaker 1: ideal day, like I said, a buck killing day. And
Speaker 1: quite frankly, we don't get very many of those days
Speaker 1: in a season, even in the season when there's when
Speaker 1: there is snow, you don't have those ideal conditions at often, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we never really had quite that set of
Speaker 1: conditions in the four days. We had another thing though,
Speaker 1: that I imagine you thought was not ideal. But what
Speaker 1: did you think when we showed up for day one
Speaker 1: and you realize there was gonna be four of us
Speaker 1: trying to do this altogether? So you me and two cameramen?
Speaker 1: What did you think about that as far as our chances?
Speaker 1: I thought we're just gonna be taking a walk in
Speaker 1: the woods. Yeah, yeah, definitely not ideal on that front. Um.
Speaker 1: So speaking of the camera and uh, Jimmer Dylan, when
Speaker 1: you we showed up in Maine and you got to
Speaker 1: see the area we're gonna be hiking around in, Uh,
Speaker 1: what what were you thinking about this hunt? What were
Speaker 1: your thoughts? Kind of preliminarily, Jimmy, if you want to
Speaker 1: start about our chances, about what you thought about what
Speaker 1: we're getting ourselves into. What was your take? Well, growing
Speaker 1: up in the Midwest, I was very used to more posting,
Speaker 1: waiting for the deer to come to us. Um, this
Speaker 1: is this was brand new, having to stalk a deer
Speaker 1: basically looking for the tracks and then going after it.
Speaker 1: I honestly didn't know what to expect. I was somewhat
Speaker 1: familiar with the terrain and Maine, but not not exactly
Speaker 1: where we were going. What about you dealing? You know,
Speaker 1: it was it was beautiful showing up there and you know,
Speaker 1: hoping we would get more snow, but you know, having
Speaker 1: to work with the conditions we had made it for obviously,
Speaker 1: but just you know, the idea was stalking a white
Speaker 1: tail and then adding a camera person or two camera people,
Speaker 1: you know, just made it seem like a colossal feat
Speaker 1: um coming into it, you know, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever done a spot and stock
Speaker 1: white tail hunt, you know, to try and film it.
Speaker 1: You know, usually if you're doing it for Mule or
Speaker 1: something like that, you have a lot of terrain to
Speaker 1: play with where you know, you can hide your sound
Speaker 1: and your your site a lot better. So just coming
Speaker 1: into it just seemed like a daunting task. But it
Speaker 1: was pretty exciting to be there and you're right now,
Speaker 1: and it was just beautiful, you know, especially that first day,
Speaker 1: Like we showed up at night the first night and
Speaker 1: where you know, I don't think there's any snow down
Speaker 1: at camp, but we were hoping, and how you told
Speaker 1: us that there was a chance that you know, there
Speaker 1: should still be snow up to this other area where
Speaker 1: you had been walking around the previous couple of days.
Speaker 1: And we showed up there that first morning and it
Speaker 1: started get the light out and we could see that yes,
Speaker 1: in fact, there was some snow and you can see
Speaker 1: the rolling hills and the big timber and I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was everything as advertised. It was. It
Speaker 1: was what you dream of when you think of going
Speaker 1: up into the woods of Maine. Uh, just as a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful first day. Um. But one thing you know that
Speaker 1: was interested in me, how was the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you chose to drive right to a place and start hiking. Um,
Speaker 1: and start hiking before he found any tracks. I've talked
Speaker 1: to some people in the past that prefer driving around
Speaker 1: until they find tracks crossing the road and then go
Speaker 1: from there. Can you talk about your preference between you know,
Speaker 1: driving back roads so you find a track versus hiking
Speaker 1: to find a track, and what the pros and cons
Speaker 1: of would be either approached. Yeah. I mean what I
Speaker 1: tell people is is for every for every buck track
Speaker 1: you see across the road, there's ten more that didn't
Speaker 1: cross the road. So your roads are picking up a
Speaker 1: track in the woods. Uh, basically we ten times better, right,
Speaker 1: So that's why I do that. I mean just riding
Speaker 1: around randomly and and for one thing you gotta remember
Speaker 1: is you got a hundred other people doing the same
Speaker 1: thing on most of the roads as people. That's that's
Speaker 1: all they do do. So your odds are getting the
Speaker 1: track anyway, unless you some of these guys, it's like
Speaker 1: a it's like off to the races in the morning.
Speaker 1: You know, it's who who gets say the earliest in
Speaker 1: driving around. Some guys at four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: a good two hours or more before daylight looking for
Speaker 1: a track, and you know then if they find one,
Speaker 1: they camp out on it, I guess. But I just
Speaker 1: that makes a long day trying to do that. And
Speaker 1: you know, even if you do find one, So I
Speaker 1: just I just never do that. It's I can. I
Speaker 1: can almost always find it a good big track that
Speaker 1: I want to be on in the woods. I really
Speaker 1: rarely find one of those good big ones from the road.
Speaker 1: It's just a it's an absolute bonus if I do.
Speaker 1: And if I do, it's just usually because I found
Speaker 1: one on the way to where I was gonna go anyway.
Speaker 1: So I just my plan in the morning is is
Speaker 1: to get where I want to be at daylight and
Speaker 1: head in the woods. So I'll be driving. I mean,
Speaker 1: I might drive twenty minutes from my house, I might
Speaker 1: drive an hour, but I just plan on being there
Speaker 1: at daylight, and I'll check the tracks on the way.
Speaker 1: If I see a track in the road, I'll get
Speaker 1: out and size it up. And it's like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a bonus if I find one from
Speaker 1: the road, uh, that I want to take, you know,
Speaker 1: A big, big enough one that I want to take. So, um,
Speaker 1: the only advantage I can see of driving and finding
Speaker 1: the track driving, there's no advantage because your your odds
Speaker 1: are a lot less to even finding one. But the
Speaker 1: one thing is if you do, you're fresh when you
Speaker 1: get on it, you know, because I might walk half
Speaker 1: the day sometimes finding a track, Well, I've put on
Speaker 1: by six seven miles already, so you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: that fresh when I get on at the start with,
Speaker 1: you know, And so it makes it, it makes it.
Speaker 1: H I hired a job to try to catch up
Speaker 1: to that buck, you know. So, but that's the only
Speaker 1: advantage I could see is that you'd be fresh when
Speaker 1: you get on it, and maybe it's you could be fresh,
Speaker 1: but you might not be in shape because I think
Speaker 1: the guys that go ride the trucks all day long
Speaker 1: looking for tracks, they don't get any exercise, so they're
Speaker 1: not ready for the task anyway. You know, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was definitely shocking for me. I definitely thought
Speaker 1: we were going to be spending a lot more time
Speaker 1: driving roads in the truck. And then you know, for
Speaker 1: day one, I think we put on what eight nine miles? Yes,
Speaker 1: I think nine three quarter miles that we got to
Speaker 1: my expectation. Yeah, yeah, so hell. One of the things
Speaker 1: I was curious about when I started taking off on
Speaker 1: my own and was interested in when you started on
Speaker 1: that first day with us, was just how you plan
Speaker 1: the route you're gonna take. So you're going in blind
Speaker 1: to a place we haven't found a track yet. You
Speaker 1: you picked a destination where you want to park your
Speaker 1: truck and then you said, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a hike and hope we cross the track. How do
Speaker 1: you plan a route? How do you think through where
Speaker 1: you should go walking around to hopefully pick up a track? Um?
Speaker 1: I always planned my My routes around like a big circle.
Speaker 1: Whether I'm still hunting a track, no matter what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: I make a big circle for the day. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't say I'm gonna circle here for an hour
Speaker 1: and try something else. Once in a while, I'll go
Speaker 1: in and I'll say I'll spend a half a day
Speaker 1: in this spot, because that's the size it is. You know,
Speaker 1: where I think I can find a track, but it's
Speaker 1: usually an all day thing. I'll start out for the
Speaker 1: day and I'll just walk a huge circle, which might
Speaker 1: be a ten mile circle, and it usually consists of
Speaker 1: either side of a mountain, uh all the way around
Speaker 1: a mountain, or maybe it's not a mountain, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just ridges. But I just kind of I just kind
Speaker 1: of want to circle a big area where I think
Speaker 1: a buck might be coming and going from to get
Speaker 1: to the dos because during the idea season in November,
Speaker 1: that's basically what they're up to is checking on them does.
Speaker 1: Whether it's just before the rout when we start, or
Speaker 1: during the rout, it's gonna their travel patterns that are
Speaker 1: affected by where the does are located. So that's what
Speaker 1: I do. I just make a big circle for the day, okay,
Speaker 1: And I remember that first that first spot we started,
Speaker 1: we kind of walked up old logging road I think
Speaker 1: was gonna take us up towards this ridge. And then,
Speaker 1: like you said, you mentioned that we'll just kind of
Speaker 1: walk a big loop up around this area. But it
Speaker 1: didn't take too terribly long and we started walking and
Speaker 1: within less than a hundred yards we saw some fawn tracks,
Speaker 1: and then then there was a bigger track, but a
Speaker 1: pretty old one, and then I don't know, within a
Speaker 1: half hour of walking, I think maybe we came upon
Speaker 1: a track that you know, you thought, um was interesting.
Speaker 1: But there was one thing that I was curious about
Speaker 1: before we got to that point, and it was the
Speaker 1: fact that we were cruising and we're hiking through the
Speaker 1: woods fast, we were making noise um, and I remember
Speaker 1: asking you, Hail, you know, do we need to be
Speaker 1: more quiet? Do we do you want us to be?
Speaker 1: You know, should we be in stealth mode or or
Speaker 1: do we just just ram through the woods like this
Speaker 1: not caring? And you gave me your perspective there, but
Speaker 1: could you tell us now, you know, what's your take
Speaker 1: on when you're searching for a track, do you worry
Speaker 1: about making noise or do you just cover ground? No,
Speaker 1: I just cover ground. If you're if you're worried about
Speaker 1: making noise, you can't cover as much ground. So I
Speaker 1: just I'm not worried about making noise until I think
Speaker 1: I'm near a deer anyway, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: space between the deer up in this country, so I
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Yeah. So then we did find
Speaker 1: that track. Then we were going fast, we're making a racket.
Speaker 1: We found a track and you took a look at
Speaker 1: You kind of walked off the side of the trail,
Speaker 1: looked at a couple of tracks, and you said, I
Speaker 1: think this one's good enough. Um. That moment, this part
Speaker 1: of the hunt was one that I was most interested in,
Speaker 1: maybe of all, which is like the analysis of a track. Um,
Speaker 1: when you were can at that track? Can you walk
Speaker 1: me through? I guess this is this is an interesting
Speaker 1: What do you look at first? Do you look at size?
Speaker 1: Do you try to determinely is this a big enough
Speaker 1: deer first? Or do you look at is this a
Speaker 1: fresh enough track? First? What's the first thing you study
Speaker 1: before you then advanced to the next question. Well, it's
Speaker 1: probably a combination. I mean, it depends if if it's
Speaker 1: a new snow, like if it's just the snow has
Speaker 1: only been made that day or the day before and
Speaker 1: the night it is. To me it is a fresh track,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna I'm gonna size it up. But um,
Speaker 1: basically it's gotta be you know, I like the Even
Speaker 1: if it's a big track, I'm gonna look at it
Speaker 1: and maybe think about how old it has to be
Speaker 1: for him not gonna take it, which is usually two
Speaker 1: days old. If it's it's made two nights before, I
Speaker 1: won't take it. I call a fresh track a track
Speaker 1: that's made in the night the previous eight So I'm
Speaker 1: obviously I'm looking in the morning, and if it was
Speaker 1: made sometime in the night, whether it's four hours old
Speaker 1: or twelve hours old, to me, it's still a fresh track.
Speaker 1: And most of the time I can catch that buck
Speaker 1: that day most most of the time, So to me,
Speaker 1: it's a freck crack. And then I I, uh, I
Speaker 1: looked for the size, and I'm I'm more particular than
Speaker 1: most people. So if the people that are listening, don't,
Speaker 1: I don't think, don't don't try to go by my
Speaker 1: expectation of the size of a track, because you'll get
Speaker 1: discouraged because obviously the big old tracks made by the
Speaker 1: big old bucks, and they're the smartest ones to try
Speaker 1: to to try to kill. And that's not the way
Speaker 1: to begin, you know, You've got to begin on, you know,
Speaker 1: a younger buck maybe, uh, you know, to get some
Speaker 1: experience with it. But I look for tracks here and
Speaker 1: and I idea of the northern Borealis and they have
Speaker 1: the biggest, the biggest feet than any of the other
Speaker 1: white tail species, so you know we do have they
Speaker 1: have big, big feet on them. So I'm looking for
Speaker 1: a tract. It's I call them a three by three
Speaker 1: three inches wide by three inches long. But theydn't have
Speaker 1: a square like that. They usually if they're three inches wide,
Speaker 1: they usually at least three and a half long, some
Speaker 1: of them four. I have seen him four and a half.
Speaker 1: So that's the tracks I'm looking for. And they've gotta
Speaker 1: be toes got me around me. You took out of
Speaker 1: your pocket, you just grabbed I think it was like
Speaker 1: the lip bomb, you know, can or you just threw
Speaker 1: that in the track real quick enough the air you
Speaker 1: know here, you know, us new to this area was
Speaker 1: looking at tracks, you know, a foreign language, and you
Speaker 1: basically just read them like, yep, this is a big deal,
Speaker 1: let's follow it. Yeah. Well, I've seen thousands of them,
Speaker 1: you know, and I've studied thousands of them. I followed
Speaker 1: thousands of them, so it's pretty easy to see right off.
Speaker 1: So it's like I said, it's it's the size in
Speaker 1: the shape. A lot of the shape is like I
Speaker 1: said that, I want to see that the toes around it,
Speaker 1: because those are the old bucks, the pointed told bucks
Speaker 1: on old usually unless it's a huge buck that maybe
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, I've seen the ones that then well,
Speaker 1: I guess people might call them swamp box, but they
Speaker 1: list live in areas where it's not rugged putting, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not rocks and stuff in the ridges and ledges
Speaker 1: that where their feet. They may have a little more
Speaker 1: pointed toe, but generally those toes are going to be
Speaker 1: arounded off by the time they get you know, five,
Speaker 1: six seventy years old. They're gonna they're gonna be around
Speaker 1: and then the other thing that happens with them where
Speaker 1: their feet is the toes won't won't go together anymore.
Speaker 1: In other words, the print won't be like a hot
Speaker 1: shaped print. There's gonna be a space in between the
Speaker 1: two toes, and the bigger that spaces is usually an
Speaker 1: indication of the older box. And I've seen that space
Speaker 1: between them just in a normal walk, the almost an inch.
Speaker 1: Those are huge bucks, you know. And it's it's because
Speaker 1: their feet uh wearing out, that sprung out, the tendons
Speaker 1: are stretched or whatever it is, and they just don't
Speaker 1: go back together. So I those are ones I call
Speaker 1: square toad box because when you look in the print,
Speaker 1: the print itself looks square instead of pointed because them
Speaker 1: two them two toes are sticking straight ahead. And that's
Speaker 1: the back feet, which when you look at a track
Speaker 1: of a buckets just walking a normal walk, you're looking
Speaker 1: at the rear. The clear print you see is the
Speaker 1: back foot because they, like any of those animals like that,
Speaker 1: they they step for step back foot into their front
Speaker 1: feet when they walk, so you're not getting a clear
Speaker 1: a clear picture of the front foot, which is bigger.
Speaker 1: The front feet are bigger than the back feet on
Speaker 1: any of the day you look at them. The moose
Speaker 1: of the same way, you take the feet and compare
Speaker 1: them in the front feet are much bigger, so the
Speaker 1: back foot is smaller. So when you're looking at that,
Speaker 1: you always keep that in mind that you're looking at
Speaker 1: the smaller the feet anyway, and when you see that
Speaker 1: that is really big. And then you get a look
Speaker 1: at the front foot, like he stops to feed or
Speaker 1: turn or do something. When he sticks a front foot
Speaker 1: out there, you're gonna see how much bigger those feet are.
Speaker 1: You know. Now, what about for someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: do this for the first time, like I was, how
Speaker 1: would you go about identifying the track of a beginner buck,
Speaker 1: let's call it a younger buck. What what does that
Speaker 1: contract look like? And how do you differentiate that from
Speaker 1: a dough? Well, for a new person, it's going to
Speaker 1: be hard to differentiate from a dough because like a
Speaker 1: yelling buck, he doesn't really his new clause pronounced as
Speaker 1: much yet. So I just tell people, when you're new
Speaker 1: at it, if the track is by itself and it's
Speaker 1: as long as it's not a tiny track like those
Speaker 1: on tracks we saw, but if it's a if it's
Speaker 1: a regular sized deer track and it's by itself, just
Speaker 1: follow it because what you're doing is your practice in
Speaker 1: any ways, and if you get a look at it
Speaker 1: and it's a dough, at least you've accomplished pie of
Speaker 1: what you set out to do. You tracked a deer
Speaker 1: and saw it right, so you're getting some practice. Um.
Speaker 1: It might be a yielding bucket, might be a spike, horn, crotch,
Speaker 1: or a little six point or whatever it is. If
Speaker 1: you if you're a new person, if he caught up
Speaker 1: to one of those and could shoot it, it's a
Speaker 1: big accomplishment. You know, You've you've done something that the
Speaker 1: hunters can't do. I wouldn't do. We haven't done, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's how you get started. When you do like
Speaker 1: I said, you don't start out trying to take the
Speaker 1: biggest track in the wood. I mean, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: don't take it if you find it, but but don't
Speaker 1: walk around and whatever all day long just looking for
Speaker 1: the great, biggest track. And sometimes the mother other tracks
Speaker 1: take you to a big track. So if you're on
Speaker 1: a average size track, you might come across the bigger
Speaker 1: one and you can always switch off onto that one,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, it's our day unfold,
Speaker 1: you know, as you go along throughout a day, strange
Speaker 1: things happen the day unfolds, and you never know what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. When you following a buck, you know, you
Speaker 1: just you don't know where he's gonna take you. You
Speaker 1: don't know what he's gonna do. But at least he's
Speaker 1: showing you all that stuff. That's a that's the fun
Speaker 1: part about track and as you I call it, you
Speaker 1: live in the life of that buck. You're getting to
Speaker 1: see exactly what that buck did. It's written in the
Speaker 1: snow for you. Where he went, what he did, if
Speaker 1: he checked, does he said, if he laid down you
Speaker 1: you get to figure out all the things about what
Speaker 1: he did and trying to figure out why you did him.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that was one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: was just seeing that story written in the snow and
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like pulling a curtain back and
Speaker 1: you get to see behind the scenes of what these
Speaker 1: deer actually do. That was that was fascinating the whole week.
Speaker 1: Getting to walk in the footprints of a deer and
Speaker 1: see see that world was was really cool. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the things though, that I found the toughest to
Speaker 1: figure out was was understanding how fresh was fresh enough,
Speaker 1: Like when I eventually went off on my own. That
Speaker 1: was something that kept coming back to. I look at
Speaker 1: a track of like, man, was this last night? Was
Speaker 1: this yesterday? Like that different? I could tell what was
Speaker 1: like really old, and I could tell it was really fresh.
Speaker 1: But there was this middle ground where I would be
Speaker 1: back and forth him and Han on it. And and
Speaker 1: you had talked about when we crossed that first track,
Speaker 1: you said you want a crispy track. Uh, can you
Speaker 1: can you describe again for us what that means, like
Speaker 1: what a crispy track looks like in your eyes, and
Speaker 1: then walk us through anything else that helps you determine
Speaker 1: that the track is fresh enough to go on. Because
Speaker 1: this is easier said than done, I think, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the highest part. Aging a track is the highest prid
Speaker 1: of tracking. Whether you're trying to age one that's made
Speaker 1: last night of the night before, or you might be
Speaker 1: trying to age one that's fifteen minutes old instead of
Speaker 1: two hours old. You know, that's that's the hardest part
Speaker 1: of track. And then that's that's just takes experience. I
Speaker 1: can tell you what it looks like to me, but
Speaker 1: and guarantee it ain't gonna look like that to you.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, because you have to you
Speaker 1: have the first we see enough of them to get
Speaker 1: that information into you, INDI your brain. But a crispy
Speaker 1: track to me, well, first of all, the track changes tracking,
Speaker 1: the snow changes immediately after it's made. It's either it's
Speaker 1: doing two things. It's either let's either melting if it's
Speaker 1: above thirty two, or it's freezing if it's blow thirty two.
Speaker 1: And if it's right at thirty two, that's the only
Speaker 1: time that it stays the same for a long time.
Speaker 1: So either side of that, the track is changing. And
Speaker 1: usually once the snow is on the ground, it's most
Speaker 1: of the time it's freezing. You know, it's below that
Speaker 1: thirty two degree mark. Snow is not mounting or whatever.
Speaker 1: And when you first they the track is first made,
Speaker 1: it's h They'll be dust, you know, there'll be snow
Speaker 1: kicked the pushed up in front of it, you know,
Speaker 1: as they dragged your feet along or whatever. This snow say,
Speaker 1: it's powdery snow and it's fluffed out in the front,
Speaker 1: and that looks That's why I call it's crispy, because
Speaker 1: it looks like it just happened, looks like you just
Speaker 1: throw some sugar on the floor or something, you know,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't changed yet, you know, it hasn't had
Speaker 1: time to. When I say freezing, it's really uh, it's evaporating.
Speaker 1: Like if you if you put a if you have
Speaker 1: one of you know, all the freezes now we're like
Speaker 1: frost frey. You know, if you've got your ice boxes,
Speaker 1: you in your refrigerator, it's if you leave your ice
Speaker 1: cubes in the ice tray so long, what happens to them?
Speaker 1: They just they disappear. I don't think if you left
Speaker 1: them in there for a long time, because they evaporated away. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing happens in the snow when it's
Speaker 1: actually happens quicker and snow than it does in solid ice.
Speaker 1: So it'll start to round out like the edge where
Speaker 1: it steps through the snow. When it's fresh, that edge
Speaker 1: will be real shop like real shop edge. And then
Speaker 1: it's gonna start withering, blending in melt, freezing and and
Speaker 1: just rounding over kind And it's subtle. It's not like
Speaker 1: you're gonna see it immediately. It's really subtle. And then
Speaker 1: it's a different length of time if it's twenty degrees
Speaker 1: or from if it's zero degrees. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: you've got to have a slide and rule or something
Speaker 1: and calculate that out. But you have to do it
Speaker 1: in your mind, and it's through experience, and that's the
Speaker 1: only way you can do it, is gain that experience.
Speaker 1: So in the beginning, I guess you're gonna asked quite
Speaker 1: a bit. So, yeah, the other way. The other way
Speaker 1: you can tell a little bit closer, as if if
Speaker 1: it steps in the wet ground, even if it's frozen
Speaker 1: and the snows powder and it's frozen ground, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of in this would see, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: wet ground in the wood. So a little trickles and
Speaker 1: they stepped into water wet ground. You'll see how much
Speaker 1: the ice is made in the track. It might be
Speaker 1: water in the track. How frozen is it? Is it
Speaker 1: half an inch thick? Is it? Uh, sixteenth of an
Speaker 1: inch thick? You know? And then guessed by the temperature,
Speaker 1: hold it might be. You know, it's just a guess. Anyways,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, you just trying to think about it.
Speaker 1: But um, well that's just the thing you have to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like you said, it it seems like just reps
Speaker 1: seems to be the most important thing because I when
Speaker 1: I was starting I I've realized real quickly that I
Speaker 1: had never paid this much attention to a track, just
Speaker 1: to a snowy track before. So I just didn't have
Speaker 1: a set of I didn't have a context to compare
Speaker 1: one too. So I was looking at a track and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, man, this this certainly seems fresh compared to
Speaker 1: the other things we've seen today. But I don't have
Speaker 1: a whole catalog of tracks I can look back through
Speaker 1: over years and think to myself, Okay, I saw this
Speaker 1: one and confirmed it was a deer that was there
Speaker 1: that day, and I saw this kind of track and
Speaker 1: this ended up being a deal. It was right in
Speaker 1: front of me, and I didn't have that experience based
Speaker 1: to look back on UM. So to your point, just
Speaker 1: guessing it was guessing and hoping UM and then walking
Speaker 1: it down and seeing if I was writing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The worst thing that can happen is, uh, you were
Speaker 1: wrong and it was two days old, but it took
Speaker 1: you to a fresher one off, or you were right
Speaker 1: and you went two dadds and you jumped at you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's it's at least you're getting
Speaker 1: started somewhere right now. When we found that track, you
Speaker 1: determine that it was big enough and it was fresh
Speaker 1: enough to to go on um, and then we started cruising.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things you told me was
Speaker 1: you don't want to be an Elmer Fudd. Can you
Speaker 1: can you expand on that? Can you talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about how fast you go once you
Speaker 1: get on a track, and and how you determine when
Speaker 1: you should be going fast versus when you should slow down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So with usually when you get on a track, you
Speaker 1: very rarely get on one that's like fresh, like within
Speaker 1: an hour, you know what I mean. I mean that's
Speaker 1: if you do, it's like hitting the lottery kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, right, I just go along and read the tracks. See,
Speaker 1: I'm immediately when I get on that buck, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what he's up to. So if he's
Speaker 1: just walking along steady, I gotta walk along steady, and
Speaker 1: I gotta walk fast because you can't walk as fast
Speaker 1: as a buck can walk. So if you ain't walking fast,
Speaker 1: you're still losing ground. So you've got to try to
Speaker 1: gain ground. And usually the way you gain ground is
Speaker 1: when he stops to do something, whether he stops to feed,
Speaker 1: he stops to check on some does make a scrape,
Speaker 1: rob lay down, whatever he did to stop. That's the
Speaker 1: only time you really gaining any time on a buck.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not gaining time other than that. So
Speaker 1: you gotta move along or you'll never catch up anyway,
Speaker 1: unless he happened to lay down. You got lucky that way.
Speaker 1: But you've gotta you've gotta plan you you gotta plan
Speaker 1: on gaining on the buck so you can get to
Speaker 1: where he is and hunt him, you know, and if
Speaker 1: that means jumping him out of his bed, you know,
Speaker 1: bumped him because he was moving too fast, so be it.
Speaker 1: At least now you know you're right behind him and
Speaker 1: you can you can hunt now if you Elma Fund.
Speaker 1: You know, that's kind of just a cartoon, but you
Speaker 1: always saw Alma Fund. He'd be he'd have both hands
Speaker 1: on his gun and he'd be going along very very quiet.
Speaker 1: And if you do that in the beginning, when you
Speaker 1: first dawn one that's made sometimes in the night might
Speaker 1: be two, three, four or five eight hours old, you're
Speaker 1: probably never gonna even get anyway near that buck because
Speaker 1: that buck could be five miles from you when you
Speaker 1: get started, so you've got to make up that that ground.
Speaker 1: Now that brings to mind the next thing, which is
Speaker 1: your cruising, your cruising, your cruising. And that's what we did.
Speaker 1: We did a whole bunch of hiking and we followed
Speaker 1: this track. It took us up a big ridge, It
Speaker 1: spun around, it was on some does that seemed like
Speaker 1: it start going back down the ridge. It made kind
Speaker 1: of a wide loop, dropped down back towards where we
Speaker 1: actually had started hiking originally, and you you were wondering, man,
Speaker 1: is he gonna circle back right over our tracks? And
Speaker 1: then he turned again and he started going up a ridge,
Speaker 1: up to the top of a knob of sorts. And
Speaker 1: at this point you said, all right, this buck is
Speaker 1: doing a textbook thing. We need to slow down. Can
Speaker 1: you describe hell kind of what that was that made
Speaker 1: you want to slow down? And what are the what
Speaker 1: are all the things or what are the different things
Speaker 1: that would make you say, okay, it's time to shift
Speaker 1: into a new gear. Let's drop it down, let's creep now.
Speaker 1: We need to be in sneaky mode. What makes you
Speaker 1: shift into that part of the hunt well, that's if
Speaker 1: I think he's laying down. Usually and as the main
Speaker 1: indication if he's laying down is usually that he said,
Speaker 1: because usually they're gonna feed before they take the time
Speaker 1: to lay down. So that's the number one indication, which
Speaker 1: that bucket done a little bit of it, not a lot,
Speaker 1: which is it's not unusual for bucking not to feed
Speaker 1: a lot during the rot. And this was when you came.
Speaker 1: It was, uh, you know, probably right during the biggest
Speaker 1: part of the rout, when it was really getting going.
Speaker 1: So that bucket fed a little bit here, and there
Speaker 1: was following does around checking on them, you know, didn't
Speaker 1: get hooked up with one. And then when he he
Speaker 1: went down and then he kind of went along this
Speaker 1: hodwood ridge and abruptly turned and went right up right
Speaker 1: up a steep bridge. And that's usually what they do
Speaker 1: when they're gonna lay down, so they can look down
Speaker 1: to where they've been, you know, on their backtrack. That's
Speaker 1: just classic is most of them bucks are always going
Speaker 1: to be looking back where they came from, the something
Speaker 1: following them, and up up here in this woods it's
Speaker 1: they've been addition through being chased by coyotes, so that's
Speaker 1: a that's their only real natural predator. I mean, the
Speaker 1: bears will eat the fawns and stuff there, but they're
Speaker 1: not chasing them around in the woods, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a buck or anything. So they learned to watch for
Speaker 1: kyo coming behind them with something, so they're always watching back.
Speaker 1: So when they when they do that, usually quite often,
Speaker 1: when they do it, it's already too late. By the
Speaker 1: time you get to where they turned and went up
Speaker 1: the ridge, they've already seen here and they're gone. But
Speaker 1: not always. Sometimes they'll get up over the crest where
Speaker 1: they can't see over, and maybe they feed a little
Speaker 1: there and lay down and you might happen to catch
Speaker 1: them or whatever. But that's why we slowed down. I thought,
Speaker 1: probably he was gonna be up there. And again it
Speaker 1: was in one of them places that wasn't much else
Speaker 1: we could do about it, but just kind of ease
Speaker 1: up there and see. So we eased up slow lee
Speaker 1: up over that pressed to that ridge, and he hadn't
Speaker 1: laid down. He was headed for another knob, a green knob,
Speaker 1: and then I thought he was probably in there, and
Speaker 1: so he's over there, and and he didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: We actually we had already crossed his tracks, and I
Speaker 1: didn't pick up on it because it come out of
Speaker 1: that little green growth where there wasn't much snow. If
Speaker 1: you remember, there was I don't know, it wasn't even
Speaker 1: an inch of snow. I don't think it just about Bailey.
Speaker 1: The leaves was sticking up through it still, So he
Speaker 1: just he made a funny loop, just kind of circled around.
Speaker 1: He must have thought there was a dough in that
Speaker 1: spot and he made that loop and there wasn't. So
Speaker 1: then he just kept going. Remember from then on, he
Speaker 1: just kind of got on us straight away mission, you know,
Speaker 1: And he kept going along the edge of some water
Speaker 1: for ways and then finally made his way into you
Speaker 1: another thick kind of cedar pine patch with some kind
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was, and we lost snow
Speaker 1: in there. Uh what do you can you talk about
Speaker 1: what you do in that kind of situation. You know,
Speaker 1: in this case, we just decided to pull the plug
Speaker 1: because we've been going a long ways and and we
Speaker 1: lost the track in there. But you there were a
Speaker 1: couple of other places where we had lost the track,
Speaker 1: and you did some different things to try to pick
Speaker 1: it up again. Where you tracked it in the mud.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk about the different ways you try
Speaker 1: to pick up a track again when you lose it
Speaker 1: in a spot like that. Yeah, Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's it was so maginal snow if you remember under
Speaker 1: the green trees, that was barely any anyway, because you know,
Speaker 1: it catches up in the limbs. In the hydewoods, it
Speaker 1: gets down to the ground, but in the green in
Speaker 1: the green trees, it switched up. Here is spruce and
Speaker 1: fir and cedar and stuff. But but sometimes you get
Speaker 1: in these big patches that there's no snow underneath, and
Speaker 1: you just have to circle around. He had to come
Speaker 1: out of there, so you just you circle and pick
Speaker 1: up the track instead of trying to stare at the
Speaker 1: ground and see if you can see the track in
Speaker 1: the leaves of the needles or something. It's easier to
Speaker 1: walk or straight through the way you can see some
Speaker 1: snow and then and then pick it up there. But
Speaker 1: I knew when he headed down into that corner where
Speaker 1: it was all a big, big expanse of that green growth.
Speaker 1: I knew when he got down in there, we were
Speaker 1: going to probably have trouble because there's in there there
Speaker 1: was nothing to go by. It was a huge that
Speaker 1: piece of woods. There was probably a half a mile wide,
Speaker 1: probably at least a half a mile by a half
Speaker 1: a mile, and he headed into there and there's no
Speaker 1: way to see. You can't even the ground in on
Speaker 1: beneath the those soft wood trees, cornifer trees, you can't.
Speaker 1: They don't even make a track. It's all just those
Speaker 1: needles from the hundred years worth, the needles stacked up
Speaker 1: like it's it's just hid. It's not like leaves punched
Speaker 1: up where you can see believes curled up in the hydewoods.
Speaker 1: It's not like that. So once you get in there,
Speaker 1: I said, we ain't gonna there's no way to try
Speaker 1: to figure out even where he's going in here. And
Speaker 1: it's the other part of it is so thick in there.
Speaker 1: If you remember, you couldn't see twenty feet most places.
Speaker 1: You ain't gonna You're not gonna get him anyway. The
Speaker 1: only thing you can do, I mean, I don't give
Speaker 1: up on a buck that goes into that stuff. There's
Speaker 1: there's snow where I can see where he went. I'll
Speaker 1: just try to I'll just jump him and push him
Speaker 1: out of there, and try to get him somewhere else
Speaker 1: where I can get a look at him. But uh,
Speaker 1: there just was no snow to do that. So we
Speaker 1: we turned and went on, figuring maybe he just went
Speaker 1: in and searched around and came back out again. So
Speaker 1: we just stayed in the Hodwoods and ran the Hodwood
Speaker 1: ridge above that green patch, you know, hoping to find
Speaker 1: his track or another track. You know, Dylan, did you
Speaker 1: have a question? So one thing that I'm yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just curious how you know, when you're closing in and
Speaker 1: you think that you're you know, actually you know, have
Speaker 1: a change of spotting this year, what are you imagine
Speaker 1: doing typically? Are you expecting to find him in his bed?
Speaker 1: Are you looking for him up and feating? Are you
Speaker 1: just looking for antlers through the brush? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: just curious to get in your head here and you know,
Speaker 1: imagine what you're expecting. Well, I guess it depends what
Speaker 1: the buck is doing. If if if I know he's
Speaker 1: up on his feet, like I've already jumped him, or
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes you'll come to a bed and he just
Speaker 1: got up on his own and he's he's off again.
Speaker 1: I'm usually in them that case, I'm expecting to see
Speaker 1: him on his feet, beating, doing something. And if I
Speaker 1: expect that he's laying down, I play it a little
Speaker 1: different because you've got to usually play it slower. If
Speaker 1: I think if he just fed around a bunch and
Speaker 1: went in on this knoll or something like that, I'll
Speaker 1: go very very slow, and I'll just I might just
Speaker 1: take a step, look all around, take one more step,
Speaker 1: scour around behind and around all the blowdowns, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for an antler or an ear patrick brown
Speaker 1: or anything. If he's laying down, if he's done. Are
Speaker 1: you who with them? Are you catching these deer? Are
Speaker 1: you catching them unexpected? You know? Are they ever you know,
Speaker 1: just doing their own thing? Are they typically onto you
Speaker 1: as you're closing the distance? Do they know something's after him? Um? Depends.
Speaker 1: Every situation is different. Depends how much you how many
Speaker 1: times you've jumped him. If you jumped him a few
Speaker 1: times and they know something's behind him and they're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking all the time, and you just got to
Speaker 1: try to catch them, uh in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time and see him first, or maybe I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't care. If he's standing, they have broadside chewing
Speaker 1: his on a piece of stick or something. I'm not
Speaker 1: looking for that. I'm just looking to get a chance
Speaker 1: a shot. Whether it's he just took off and he's running,
Speaker 1: I don't doesn't make any difference to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to get that shot, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean obviously if he's stand in the air or something
Speaker 1: or laying down, it's gonna be an easier shot. But um,
Speaker 1: when you get used to this type of hunt and
Speaker 1: a running shot is not a big deal to take,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, can you expand on that a little bit? Hell,
Speaker 1: just you know how you prepare yourself to take these
Speaker 1: shots that seem like almost almost always there quick. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a very short window of opportunity when you
Speaker 1: get into I think you called it your death creep,
Speaker 1: when you really think you're getting in close to one
Speaker 1: and you're slipping in real careful, how how ready are you?
Speaker 1: Do you have your are you holding the gun at
Speaker 1: the ready? Are you you know? What are the specifics
Speaker 1: you're doing and what has helped you to improve your
Speaker 1: chances of being able to pull off a shot in
Speaker 1: such a little tight and narrow of time and sometimes
Speaker 1: tight space too. Well, A lot of that is just
Speaker 1: practice and experience. And uh, my practice, quite frankly was
Speaker 1: when I was I started rabbit hunting with my grandfather
Speaker 1: had beagles, and uh I started that when I was
Speaker 1: ten years old and shot thousands of rabbits running and
Speaker 1: they run like a deer kind of you know, they
Speaker 1: just they're they're bounding, you know, dogs are chasing them,
Speaker 1: and you just get experience doing that with you your swing,
Speaker 1: you follow through, you're looking for the openings, and that's experience.
Speaker 1: So but that's I mean, I I was fortunate to
Speaker 1: to grow up in that manner where I had that
Speaker 1: experience already going into it. Most people probably don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of an experience. So but yeah, I go
Speaker 1: into it if I'm if I think one's laying there
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna get a look at it, or I
Speaker 1: think he's right here, handy, my guns in both hands,
Speaker 1: ready to go and U I Usually my rule of
Speaker 1: thumb is like if I can if I can see
Speaker 1: him for two jumps, I'm probably going to get a shot,
Speaker 1: unless it's just too thick, you know. Usually that if
Speaker 1: I I should say I get two jumps where I
Speaker 1: see him for two jumps. So if I see him
Speaker 1: make a jump, I can get my gun in action
Speaker 1: in one jump, and then I can usually get my
Speaker 1: shot off by the time he's made that second jump.
Speaker 1: So yes, that's quick. Yeah, so, but it's practice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was That was definitely one of the things that
Speaker 1: was most concerning for me, as as I don't have
Speaker 1: that experience of running shots. I was kind of raised,
Speaker 1: Um my grandpa viewed that is something that I should
Speaker 1: not do. So I was like, beat with a stick
Speaker 1: if I ever considered that basically metaphorically. Um So, coming
Speaker 1: to this, I was thinking, Man, how am I ever
Speaker 1: going to get a shot in this situation? That seemed
Speaker 1: like that was gonna be the real, real crux, Like
Speaker 1: that was gonna be something to be particularly challenging if
Speaker 1: I ever made it to that point. But there's one
Speaker 1: other thing that we haven't touched on yet that was
Speaker 1: pretty important, it seemed like, which is, let's say you
Speaker 1: go into this death creep, you move into where you
Speaker 1: think he's betted, and you do bump him, but you
Speaker 1: can't get the shot, and he goes running off before
Speaker 1: you see him or before you can get a shot off,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. That buck runs off, Uh you
Speaker 1: told us that this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: you do that a lot of people don't that you
Speaker 1: think is particularly important, which is you take a sandwich break.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about your infamous sandwich breaks? Why you
Speaker 1: do that, Why that's important? Um, what you're doing with
Speaker 1: that whole thing. Yeah, So a long time ago, I
Speaker 1: learned through experience that was just chasing bucks around all
Speaker 1: day because I jump them and give you know, keep
Speaker 1: right after him, and they're always looking back, and you'll
Speaker 1: come to a place where the tracks standing there turned
Speaker 1: around looking back at you in the tracks running again.
Speaker 1: So I just thought that I had to outsmile him.
Speaker 1: I had to be a different thing to do. I
Speaker 1: could see that they were waiting, so and nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten they do, but one out of ten doesn't.
Speaker 1: But I always play the odds. Anyways, So I found
Speaker 1: that when I go right after him, i'd go maybe
Speaker 1: only a hundred yards, maybe three yards whatever it was
Speaker 1: at distance, and there would be tracks right where the
Speaker 1: buck was standing there, turned around facing back where he
Speaker 1: came from, kind of like treading around, kind of waiting.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, that's what they do. They're waiting
Speaker 1: to see if something's coming. After him, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna come after him. So I tried fifteen minutes and
Speaker 1: that didn't seem to work. So once I started waiting
Speaker 1: a half an hour, it seemed to work pretty well.
Speaker 1: And then that's one thing I wrote my first book.
Speaker 1: I had more people comment on that, more experienced hunters
Speaker 1: that have killed lots of box track and stuff that
Speaker 1: they never thought of it. And and I had a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of people comment to me that
Speaker 1: that that's why they killed the first buck tracking was
Speaker 1: because they waited. Because what happens is that buck, usually
Speaker 1: unless you out now, was in their face and and
Speaker 1: really frightened them. That buck probably only heard a stick snap,
Speaker 1: maybe caught a little movement through the through the woods,
Speaker 1: through the limbs of something. He doesn't know what that is.
Speaker 1: He's just gonna get out. He's not gonna stay there.
Speaker 1: He's gonna get out of the way and see what happens.
Speaker 1: And he might only go a hundred yards and wait,
Speaker 1: two hundred, five hundred, doesn't matter. He's gonna get off
Speaker 1: where he feels comfortable, and then he's gonna wait and
Speaker 1: see if anything's following. Now, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: if a coyotes following him. Usually that's gonna be immediately,
Speaker 1: you know, when they get chased by a kyot, they
Speaker 1: get you know, the coyote is gonna be running after him.
Speaker 1: So if that buck stands there fifteen twenty minutes, half
Speaker 1: hour or whatever and nothing comes along, he just relaxes again.
Speaker 1: He's not afraid. He just he's kind of really basically
Speaker 1: forgot about that experience. There's something bothered him, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna go about his business. Sometimes they lay right back down. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes if it's later, like it's late morning, early afternoon,
Speaker 1: they won't lay down again. They'll just stop going about
Speaker 1: their business because they've rested enough. They might start checking,
Speaker 1: does might stop feeding. But whatever he's doing, he's just
Speaker 1: start doing it again. That's the best time to kill
Speaker 1: the buck. The first time, laying in his bed is
Speaker 1: not the best time, because he's looking back. He's hard
Speaker 1: to you know, he's that it's the hardest time to
Speaker 1: get him. Those are the times. The only time you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna get him that way is on one of
Speaker 1: those about killing days where you've got some wind and
Speaker 1: maybe as snow and there's just some action going on
Speaker 1: with he's blind and usually them kind of days, they
Speaker 1: don't want to run off as much because they feel
Speaker 1: vulnerable anyways because of the wind. So that second time
Speaker 1: I've killed more box after I've jumped them then then
Speaker 1: killed like when I jumped him, we'll kill them laying
Speaker 1: in their beds and beginning to something. So that's why
Speaker 1: I do it. The only exceptions I have to that
Speaker 1: is I only do it once if it's the first time,
Speaker 1: and I make an exception if he's if he's with
Speaker 1: the dough, if he's laying with the dough. When they
Speaker 1: take off, I just ease right along after him because
Speaker 1: he's going to be distracted with her. He's probably sometimes
Speaker 1: they get split up and he's gonna try to get
Speaker 1: back with her or something. Uh, So I'll go right
Speaker 1: after them because he ain't thinking about looking back as
Speaker 1: much she might be. But he's not interesting. That's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I encounter something like that, and I guess I didn't
Speaker 1: think of that aspect of things. But but yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll wait to dive into that until it's start
Speaker 1: dive into that particular hunt a couple of days later. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess from that point, if we jumped back into
Speaker 1: our day one, we we didn't bump one. We tracked
Speaker 1: one forever and then we walked and walked and walked
Speaker 1: after we lost that first track to try to find
Speaker 1: another one, and we never did find another one worth
Speaker 1: going on. Um, we just cruised for a long time
Speaker 1: and like Dylan said, we ended up covering almost ten miles. Um.
Speaker 1: I want to get Jimmer. I want to get Jimmer's
Speaker 1: perspective on that part of things. Just talk to me,
Speaker 1: Jimmer about your thoughts on how Hell hikes to the woods,
Speaker 1: how fast he goes, how far he goes? Like what
Speaker 1: what did you learn about what it takes to walk
Speaker 1: a buck like this down? After now spending a day
Speaker 1: falling around one of the best in the business. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: Even if I wasn't carrying a camera and a backpack
Speaker 1: full of camera gear, I still don't think I would
Speaker 1: have been able to keep up with Hell. That was
Speaker 1: That was That was impressive and inspirational. Um, he knows
Speaker 1: what he's looking for. Is it's funny hearing hearing you
Speaker 1: talk right now, how it's like getting the the cliff
Speaker 1: notes to a really big book. The big book is
Speaker 1: the is the actual hunt. You have to read the book,
Speaker 1: you have to go do the hunt. The cliff notes
Speaker 1: are all the things that you're telling us right now.
Speaker 1: And I think, like Mark was saying, he'll talk about
Speaker 1: here in a second, but everything you're saying we ran into.
Speaker 1: Um even the looking at the prints, the what direction
Speaker 1: are they going? And they are they betting down? Did
Speaker 1: we spook them? I mean, it's just from a camera
Speaker 1: guy's perspective, trying to tell the story visually. Seeing all
Speaker 1: those things come together was was truly fascinating. Having experienced
Speaker 1: the first day with you and then we went off
Speaker 1: on our own for the next three days, but boy,
Speaker 1: covered that ground. That was I'm glad I had a
Speaker 1: couple of my own hunts prior in the month prior,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was maybe in halfway decent shape,
Speaker 1: but still um kutous to your hell yeah yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll give you kudos as well. Hew. You you can
Speaker 1: put the pedal to the meadow and you can walk
Speaker 1: a long ways. I consider myself one of the best
Speaker 1: long distance hiker and walkers in the mountains that I
Speaker 1: know and that I hang out with, and I think
Speaker 1: most of my camera crew can attest that I can.
Speaker 1: I can get after it pretty good. But you were,
Speaker 1: you were cruising, and I was thinking to myself, I
Speaker 1: hope I can get around half as well as you do, um,
Speaker 1: when I have as much experience as you do. Because
Speaker 1: you don't seem to have slowed down one bit. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing from what you were doing when you were thirty,
Speaker 1: it's my guess that was a good pace out there
Speaker 1: in the mountains. Well, in my mind, I'm still thirty.
Speaker 1: That's my problem. Sometimes like one like that, and in
Speaker 1: the end of the day you're walking out, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I pay for it a little bit, But yes, I
Speaker 1: I still I'm I'm thankful that I'm still able to
Speaker 1: go like I can at my age. And I can
Speaker 1: tell you know, like I need my rest at night.
Speaker 1: I gotta rest my legs and stuff. But hey, I'll
Speaker 1: be sixty five year in in May. So uh, I
Speaker 1: think I'm doing pretty good for that being that age,
Speaker 1: I'd say so. So we we we ended that day
Speaker 1: having covered a bunch of ground, but never did pick
Speaker 1: up another track. And the plan was the next day,
Speaker 1: I was going to go back out there on my own,
Speaker 1: UM and bring Dylan and Jim or with me and
Speaker 1: see if I couldn't get on another one. Now what
Speaker 1: I want to do is this Hell, I kind of
Speaker 1: want to walk you through what happened over the next
Speaker 1: three days, at least the highlights the most important parts,
Speaker 1: and then kind of picked your brain on you know,
Speaker 1: did I make the right decision here? Did I make
Speaker 1: a mistake there? Would you have done something differently? I mean,
Speaker 1: as I described some of these things, feel free to
Speaker 1: jump through jump in hell if you think I did
Speaker 1: something wrong, or if you want to, you know, share
Speaker 1: something you might have thought differently in any of this. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm really curious. It would have been really neat if
Speaker 1: somehow I could have had you just follow me around
Speaker 1: the next three days and like critique me as I went,
Speaker 1: or be or maybe not even tell me in the moment,
Speaker 1: but just be taking notes, and then at the end
Speaker 1: of the day I'd come back and we sit down
Speaker 1: and you would walk me through all the things I
Speaker 1: screwed up. That would have been the best. But this
Speaker 1: will have to do as a as the closest way
Speaker 1: to learn from from what I did right or wrong. Um, So,
Speaker 1: Dylan and Jimmer in fact, check me here if there's
Speaker 1: anything I forget to mention if there's anything I should
Speaker 1: have expanded on, if there's anything different, feel free to
Speaker 1: jump through here or jump in here. As I described
Speaker 1: at least the main points. So day two. Day two
Speaker 1: starts off, we start at the same beginning point, and
Speaker 1: right away one of the first things I was I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about was what's the route I want to take? Like,
Speaker 1: how do I how do I want to go through
Speaker 1: this huge expanse of open land that we have available
Speaker 1: in front of us. UM. And my initial thought was, Okay,
Speaker 1: I remember yesterday we had walked a lot of different country.
Speaker 1: But the very most dear sign just tracks, you know,
Speaker 1: seemed to be up towards the top of these ridges
Speaker 1: where there seemed to be some old cuts in more
Speaker 1: hard woods. Um. That just seemed to be more diverse
Speaker 1: terrain and it seemed to be a lot more tracks.
Speaker 1: So I thought, let's head up to the tops of
Speaker 1: these ridges where that most sign was, and then I'll
Speaker 1: take a wide swing to the west which would take
Speaker 1: us into the new country, while most of the hiking
Speaker 1: we did the day previous had been to the east. UM.
Speaker 1: So that was my strategy was basically get up high
Speaker 1: where most of the sign was the day before, and
Speaker 1: then get into a new section of it and we
Speaker 1: started hiking, just cruising, covering country, and pretty quickly, within
Speaker 1: like a half hour, um, we came across a track
Speaker 1: that was like a maybe track and this was one
Speaker 1: that looked at it and I was thinking two things.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be and maybe on both fronts. It
Speaker 1: seemed like this could be fresh this This is probably
Speaker 1: an overnight track, I thought, But I just didn't know
Speaker 1: is this a big track? Like is this a buck track?
Speaker 1: Is this is just like a good dough track. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking that you can see do clause, but it's
Speaker 1: not big big And I kind of waffled on it
Speaker 1: and thought, you know, is it big enough? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is it super duper duper fresh? Not that fresh, but
Speaker 1: it's probably you know, it was new from when we
Speaker 1: came through their last so it happened at least um
Speaker 1: because this was still along the trail that we'd walked
Speaker 1: the first day, so I knew it was at least
Speaker 1: from the night at some point, and ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: I decided, nah, let's not walk on this first one.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't knock my socks off. Let's keep going.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll find something better. And what did we do, Jammer?
Speaker 1: From there? I mean we hiked I think four miles
Speaker 1: or something or we had a bunch um and didn't
Speaker 1: come across a single other new track after that and that, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like we put a bunch of
Speaker 1: miles on after that. Yeah, and weird, you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, we went in the same spot the day
Speaker 1: before with how, but we were definitely covering brand new
Speaker 1: ground um and that yeah, and that first track, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just didn't feel it and moved on from there.
Speaker 1: And yeah, from there, I think we burned a lot
Speaker 1: of footage of you just walking. That's covering ground, a
Speaker 1: lot of walking footage, a lot of mark walking, and
Speaker 1: a lot of looking in the snow. You know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny, is we got back one of these nights.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was day two or what
Speaker 1: day it was, but we got back to our little
Speaker 1: cabin and uh, we have a producer out there with us.
Speaker 1: It's guy Andreas we all know and love. And Andreas
Speaker 1: would be waiting at camp all day for us, and
Speaker 1: then when we get home he'd be asking us, did
Speaker 1: you talk about this? Did you see this. Did we
Speaker 1: get coverage of this, Did we make sure to get
Speaker 1: footage of Mark doing this and this? Blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: just kind of making sure we checked all the boxes
Speaker 1: that we want to check. And I remember one night
Speaker 1: he's like, do you guys feel like you have enough
Speaker 1: footage of Mark walking? Do we have good walking mark footage?
Speaker 1: And I think everybody just laughed, just laughed. Mark many, many,
Speaker 1: many hours of Mark walking. Um. But I'd say I'd
Speaker 1: say the highlight of day two was four hours later
Speaker 1: or four miles later, was one of the two I
Speaker 1: remember seeing four on my track. I was tracking all
Speaker 1: this on ONYX. We ended up coming across a track
Speaker 1: that seemed fresh ish enough. And at this point we've
Speaker 1: been walking half the day, hadn't come across anything else
Speaker 1: we want to track. Now I see you when I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: this is probably a buck and this is probably somewhat fresh.
Speaker 1: We should start tracking this one. And so we end
Speaker 1: up tracking this this this deer, and it like looped
Speaker 1: around a couple of times and went here and there
Speaker 1: and everywhere. And remember thinking, man, this is fun, Like
Speaker 1: I'm finally on a track on my own, I'm actually
Speaker 1: tracking one I'm doing the thing. Um, this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You know. The previous day I was following you, Hale,
Speaker 1: and you were making the decisions, and you were analyzing
Speaker 1: the tracks and finding it when we lost it, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't have to really work in that way.
Speaker 1: But now was actually doing all the work, doing all
Speaker 1: the thinking, picking it up when I get lost in
Speaker 1: other tracks, kind of sorting through the the puzzle when
Speaker 1: you see all these different things come together and you're
Speaker 1: trying to read the story of what actually happened here
Speaker 1: and where did he go? And I'm thinking, this is great.
Speaker 1: We're gonna walk down this buck and we're gonna do
Speaker 1: the thing. And then it starts circling back to the
Speaker 1: west and it keeps going more and more in the
Speaker 1: direction that we started, and I think it was maybe
Speaker 1: like twenty minutes thirty minutes before we got back to
Speaker 1: the trail, and I'm thinking, oh, this deer is going
Speaker 1: right back to where we started. And I started getting
Speaker 1: this little whisper in the back of my mind saying,
Speaker 1: what if this is the same track that you saw
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the day. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes later, this deer ended up being the original
Speaker 1: track we saw at the very beginning of the day,
Speaker 1: and now I've followed his track all the way back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. I wasted two thirds of the day
Speaker 1: and now I'm right back to where I started first
Speaker 1: and realized that this is the buck I passed up on,
Speaker 1: you know, eight hours earlier or whatever it was. Um, hell,
Speaker 1: what do you think about that? Because eventually end up
Speaker 1: when following that track for a while, and then I
Speaker 1: lost it somewhere and then that was our day, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of upset at myself that I passed
Speaker 1: on that one and now wasted the whole day, spent
Speaker 1: all this time. What do you think about how I
Speaker 1: approached that? Is that something that's ever happened to you? Um?
Speaker 1: What do you think when you hear that? Funny? You
Speaker 1: should say that? Because when you get out of that
Speaker 1: day was a bunch was a law of practice, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you've got you've got your practice in and uh,
Speaker 1: you learned that that can happen and it can happen anybody,
Speaker 1: because it happened to me. I do that not I
Speaker 1: don't shouldn't say quite often, but it happened to me
Speaker 1: again one of the days actually It was the first
Speaker 1: day a muzzle old the season this year when we
Speaker 1: had the good snow, I was lucky enough. I had
Speaker 1: my cameraman with me and and I I cut a
Speaker 1: track from the road where I've never cut a track before.
Speaker 1: I never never really seen a buck track crossing there.
Speaker 1: And Uh it came out in the road and UH
Speaker 1: walked down the side of the road dragging his feet
Speaker 1: and I could see us another mark in the road,
Speaker 1: and I go, what the heck is going on? I
Speaker 1: had to look at it when there was a stick
Speaker 1: laying there. Well, when he come out of the woods,
Speaker 1: he must have come up through some brush and he
Speaker 1: snapped the stick off and his aunt was about four
Speaker 1: ft long, and he dragged it with his aunt was
Speaker 1: down the road about fifty yards for it dropped out
Speaker 1: of his aunt was so now I'm thinking he must
Speaker 1: have a pretty decent rack to do that. And it
Speaker 1: was one of them square toad ones. But anyways, we
Speaker 1: jumped right on it. So we got right on at
Speaker 1: it pretty much daylight. And when it when it went
Speaker 1: in the woods, it came to us. Well. First, when
Speaker 1: I first got in there, there was another track coming
Speaker 1: back almost back on itself. There, and I just in
Speaker 1: my mind, I just discounted it as being the same one,
Speaker 1: just just because of the way it came back. And
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I can't think about why I did,
Speaker 1: but there was a reason that I didn't even I
Speaker 1: think that it could be the same one. But but
Speaker 1: I went a little bit further and I came to
Speaker 1: a kind of an open bowl there and I and
Speaker 1: another track came across, and I looked at that one,
Speaker 1: and I go, because if you if a track is
Speaker 1: crossing another track, you stopped before it crosses, and you
Speaker 1: sometimes you can see where they where a cross pass
Speaker 1: the two tracks, which one is fresher by, which which
Speaker 1: way the snow was dragged into one track of the other.
Speaker 1: And it didn't drag any snow win so I couldn't tell,
Speaker 1: But I just took a hunch the way it went up.
Speaker 1: It went up and I could visualize that it looped
Speaker 1: around and it was exactly the same size track, And
Speaker 1: I said, that's the same buck. I'm pretty sure I'm
Speaker 1: making a loop. But in any event, it's getting out
Speaker 1: of this little spot. So I took it and it
Speaker 1: went back across the road about a quarter of a
Speaker 1: mile above where at parked truck, and it got into
Speaker 1: completely different piece of woods that went up through some
Speaker 1: new cots, wandered around, followed the dough and it headed
Speaker 1: up on this mountain. So in my mind, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be up on that mountain somewhere. So he
Speaker 1: kept on it and kept on it, kept on it,
Speaker 1: and it went up all on the off the end
Speaker 1: of this mountain, and it still headed and kind of
Speaker 1: a westerly direction, and then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: got to where there was some more deer in it.
Speaker 1: It kind of turned back towards the logging road, and
Speaker 1: the next thing you know, it crossed the logging road
Speaker 1: and there was a bunch of other deer tracks there
Speaker 1: and it crossed. So I crossed it and it and
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm probably I'm about a mile. He crosses
Speaker 1: the road about a mile from the truck, and now
Speaker 1: he's headed back over in the country he was headed
Speaker 1: in the first place. So he goes over on these
Speaker 1: knobs and heast I can you know what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's checking all these green knobs the does and there
Speaker 1: was I crossed paths with another smaller buck track in
Speaker 1: the handsome does. And he kept going, and that's what
Speaker 1: he was doing. He was searching, searching, searching. Then then
Speaker 1: he starts to swing back east. And I stopped thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, could this possibly be the same buck? I
Speaker 1: was thinking it might be where I crossed paths with
Speaker 1: it in that little hidewood bowl. I said, could this
Speaker 1: be the same buck there? And I go, I can't
Speaker 1: believe it would be, So I stayed on it next, singing, oh,
Speaker 1: I crossed this old we call it a winter road,
Speaker 1: like a grassy road. And he got down and see
Speaker 1: these beaver bogs doing the same thing, just doing his thing.
Speaker 1: But he's all he's headed east, but he's he's a
Speaker 1: half a mile back in there, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden he swings back south and now he's making a circle,
Speaker 1: and not like I'm kind of saying to myself, I
Speaker 1: can't believe it is, but there's a good chance this
Speaker 1: is the same buck. And he was. He started chasing
Speaker 1: the doll around in one place and make a long
Speaker 1: story short. Four hours later, just like you said, I'm
Speaker 1: right back in I wasn't in that highwood bowl. I
Speaker 1: was back where I discounted that first track. I hadn't
Speaker 1: been in the woods fifty yards when this other track
Speaker 1: come back across that. I completely discounted that one to one.
Speaker 1: When I made a decision in the bowl. It was
Speaker 1: the right decision, but I just I didn't discount that
Speaker 1: first one where I did discount it. Well, he had
Speaker 1: crossed the road like not even fifty yards from where
Speaker 1: he came out, dragging the stick he'd gone up in,
Speaker 1: he'd come out and made, went back in, made that
Speaker 1: little loop, went made the whole great big loop, and
Speaker 1: was back across the road again. And it was eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock when I got back there, from seven to eleven,
Speaker 1: and he went across the stream and upon these other bluffs,
Speaker 1: and I said to myself, well that's a good place.
Speaker 1: He's probably gonna be over there anyway. Well, the time
Speaker 1: we got across the stream and get over in there,
Speaker 1: there was moose tracks and deer tracks all over his
Speaker 1: tracks because it had been half the day and the
Speaker 1: moose were feeding all through there. And all I could
Speaker 1: do was I kept circling successively bigger circles to try
Speaker 1: to find his track because it would be completely obliterated
Speaker 1: with other tracks between, mostly moose. But there was some
Speaker 1: deer in there too, stomping around. And I finally picked
Speaker 1: up a track I thought was his, and I didn't
Speaker 1: go very fire on. It was fresh and I see it,
Speaker 1: I see it go, but I couldn't see the head.
Speaker 1: And then I could see where it had been in
Speaker 1: their feeding and stuff, and it didn't look like I
Speaker 1: decided it wasn't the same one. It was another one
Speaker 1: pretty much the same size track, because this one I
Speaker 1: was on, he dragged that stick out there and he
Speaker 1: didn't go through any narrow openings with his antles. He'd
Speaker 1: walk around narrow stuff, and this other one I jumped
Speaker 1: was he was just come through some thick stuff, feeding
Speaker 1: and stuff. I go, that ain't the same buck. And
Speaker 1: I made another big circle over half a mile circle
Speaker 1: and couldn't get his track coming out. Now it's three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon and I'm like, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: done for the day. So same thing. It was like,
Speaker 1: you can't call it a wasted day because you learned
Speaker 1: some things, you know what I mean? You saw some things,
Speaker 1: you learned from things, but it does happen, so you
Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong. But it's actually quite calm, and
Speaker 1: that they make them big oracles and end up back again. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you're right about the practice thing. I definitely felt like
Speaker 1: even while I was doing it and thinking to myself, like,
Speaker 1: after we lost it, picked it up again, when it
Speaker 1: looped back through, I thought, well, at least this is practice.
Speaker 1: Probably will never catch up with this deer, but just
Speaker 1: doing the thing, interpreting the tracks, following them, getting through
Speaker 1: tough spots where it disappears or gets confused. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could definitely see how this is a skill that
Speaker 1: takes a while to develop, and and doing it that
Speaker 1: day felt really good, um, even though we never you know,
Speaker 1: even came close to anything, Um, but it did set
Speaker 1: me up a lot better for the next day. On
Speaker 1: day three, UM had been talking to another guy in
Speaker 1: camp and he'd mentioned he was going to go to
Speaker 1: a new area this day and said we were welcome
Speaker 1: to fill him to drive up to this zone and
Speaker 1: he could kind of, you know, drive us into a
Speaker 1: general direction where he thought that would be a good
Speaker 1: idea for us to explore, and then he would keep
Speaker 1: drying and driving and go find an area he would walk.
Speaker 1: So we end up driving up to this general area.
Speaker 1: We get down a logging road. There had been a
Speaker 1: little fresh coating of snow overnight, and so there's actually
Speaker 1: some snow on the road. And sure enough he stops.
Speaker 1: The truck hops out and we look at this track
Speaker 1: and there's a buck track and a dough track crossing
Speaker 1: the road seemingly, you know, relatively fresh. Had to be fresh,
Speaker 1: since that snow had just come overnight. And we talked
Speaker 1: about it and decide, hey, you know what, not a big,
Speaker 1: big track, but a buck um, let's do it. So
Speaker 1: he kept going to find a different place, and then
Speaker 1: me and Jimmer, we're gonna get on the track because
Speaker 1: this day I decided to bring just one cameraman because
Speaker 1: it seemed pretty impossible to pull it off with two.
Speaker 1: So Dylan, what, you just stayed back at camp and
Speaker 1: slept in and eight pizza and just relaxed all days
Speaker 1: and there, right, Yeah, I was. But but me and
Speaker 1: me and Jimmy we're gonna get after it. So we
Speaker 1: parked the truck. We both were so excited about having
Speaker 1: a fresh buck track that we both needed to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom at the same time. So we're like, all right,
Speaker 1: you go on that side of the road. I go
Speaker 1: on the side of the road. Let's take care of that,
Speaker 1: and then let let's follow this track. So it gets
Speaker 1: light and we get on the track and and really
Speaker 1: it looked really fresh. I mean it was like fresh,
Speaker 1: powdery snow, and the track was crispy. I mean it
Speaker 1: looked it had to be the freshest we'd seen since
Speaker 1: we got there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Hale, when
Speaker 1: you said it looks like someone through sugar down, it
Speaker 1: was that kind of thing. Um. And so you know,
Speaker 1: right away we started walking down and and within fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes of walking, I already started thinking do I need
Speaker 1: to be slowing down? Do I need to Could this
Speaker 1: deer be right up here? Um? And we we tracked
Speaker 1: it down through an area had been cut a decent bit,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like they were on a tear. They
Speaker 1: were kind of milling around and then they'd walk straight
Speaker 1: for ways and then they kind of spin around the mill.
Speaker 1: And there was a different deer that kind of popped
Speaker 1: in and out a couple of different times. Um. But
Speaker 1: we came up over this ridge and we're there was
Speaker 1: a valley down below, and then another ridge that came
Speaker 1: up the other side, and I remember thinking I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be shocked if this buck is within view of this Um,
Speaker 1: I don't really know, but it just seems like he
Speaker 1: could be. I could be within side of this buck. Already.
Speaker 1: It just seemed like we weren't very far behind it
Speaker 1: all based on what we're seeing. I mean, the tracks
Speaker 1: weren't frozen. Um, you know, you're seeing the light tufts
Speaker 1: of snow that it kicked up when he drags his
Speaker 1: toe and all that kind of stuff. And sure enough
Speaker 1: we you know, I basically slowed down a decent bit.
Speaker 1: Now I was just kind of ready, um and go
Speaker 1: down the ridge, dropped down in the valley, follow the
Speaker 1: tracks up the other side of the ridge, and then
Speaker 1: sure enough, there's a bed on that opposite ridge. Now
Speaker 1: there wasn't two beds, there was just one bed. And
Speaker 1: I could see the one bed, and then I could
Speaker 1: see what looked like a couple jumping, you know, sets
Speaker 1: where they like. The tracks showed that he jumped out
Speaker 1: of the bed, jumped again, jumped again. Um, And so
Speaker 1: I saw that and thought, okay, we probably bumped this buck.
Speaker 1: And so we decided to sit down and do our
Speaker 1: sandwich break thing. Now, this hell is a question I
Speaker 1: have for you. I never did see the dough bed
Speaker 1: so I could see dough tracks, and I saw the
Speaker 1: buck tracks, and I saw a single bed um, and
Speaker 1: then I assumed that we had bumped him and did
Speaker 1: the sandwich break. But then later in the day I
Speaker 1: started thinking, did I not bump that buck? Was that
Speaker 1: buck actually did? He lay down for a second, and
Speaker 1: then the dough kept going, and then he just jumped
Speaker 1: up to go follow the dope and they kept on
Speaker 1: going their merry way. They didn't run a long ways
Speaker 1: after after that jumping. I remember seeing the jumping tracks,
Speaker 1: and then there was a little bit of running for
Speaker 1: maybe like I don't know, fifty yards, maybe a hundred yards,
Speaker 1: Jim does that something about right? Maybe? And then they
Speaker 1: were back to just like walking along. What are you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What do you think about that? Hell? Should I have
Speaker 1: taken the break like I did? Or should I have
Speaker 1: kept pushing in that case? I don't know. I wasn't
Speaker 1: there fair enough. I think more than likely if you saw,
Speaker 1: if the two sets of tracks were running from there,
Speaker 1: that that one of them just got laid down. The
Speaker 1: other one hadn't laid down yet. Maybe it was feeding
Speaker 1: or whatever it was doing, and you just happened to
Speaker 1: come along at that minute, you know, before they both
Speaker 1: got laid down. That's what I'm thinking went on there,
Speaker 1: And in which case taking the break was the right move?
Speaker 1: Uh what did they when? They just did? They just
Speaker 1: go about their business and see if you if it's
Speaker 1: a buck in the doll. Like I said, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have taken the break necessarily. Uh, dependent on the time.
Speaker 1: To a lot of times, I'm like, well it's nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: I eight o'clock. I'm not going to take a break yet.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep hunting here and see what happens. But
Speaker 1: sometimes I just take it because it's around ten anyway,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean it was early it we
Speaker 1: hadn't been going for more. It was an hour or
Speaker 1: less into the day, and I saw that bump, and
Speaker 1: so I took the break, not having remembered or known
Speaker 1: about the dough with the buck being a different situation,
Speaker 1: so I just thought, Okay, we bumped the deer. We
Speaker 1: gotta sit down, even though we hadn't been going more
Speaker 1: than an hour. Um, So we took the thirty minute
Speaker 1: break and then picked up the track again. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think we had like some running
Speaker 1: tracks for a hundred some yards or something like that,
Speaker 1: give or take um. And then they basically were just
Speaker 1: walking again, and they were walking on a mostly straight line.
Speaker 1: They kind of did a straight shot and then a
Speaker 1: little curve, and we followed them. You know, from that
Speaker 1: they've been on this ridge hill. When they left the bed,
Speaker 1: they went downhill down into a flat like at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the valley, and they walked through a bunch
Speaker 1: of old cuttings, you know, I don't know, a couple
Speaker 1: of year old cut or something, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: piles of slash and tops and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they basically did a long straight shot. They crossed
Speaker 1: back over the road that we drove into and started
Speaker 1: heading towards the mountain, towards a big mountain ridge that
Speaker 1: ran along the north section that we were hunting. And
Speaker 1: then they crossed the creek, went up this ridge, and
Speaker 1: then started going straight up the ridge. They go straight
Speaker 1: up the ridge, we get to what I think is
Speaker 1: like two thirds of the way up or something, and
Speaker 1: then they hooked to the right. They take a hard
Speaker 1: right turn and start side hilling across the ridge. And
Speaker 1: when that happened, I thought to myself, Okay, this seems
Speaker 1: like this seems like the these deer were heading up
Speaker 1: the hill and now they turned, they're gonna look for
Speaker 1: somewhere to bed soon. So I started slowing down. I
Speaker 1: started thinking, I bet you any moment now we're gonna
Speaker 1: come across the bed or we're gonna see these deer run.
Speaker 1: At least we're getting closer to that. But we end
Speaker 1: up following this. Um, We're up following it, sidehiling for
Speaker 1: longer ways than I was expecting, without them like stopping
Speaker 1: and feeding. I was looking. I was. I kept on
Speaker 1: looking for signs of them stopping and feeding. I kept
Speaker 1: looking for signs of them stopping and milling around or
Speaker 1: spinning around or changing direction that might indicate like they're
Speaker 1: getting ready to bed or something. UM. So I would
Speaker 1: say at this point, I was like medium pace. I
Speaker 1: wasn't creeping, but I wasn't cruising either. Um. And what
Speaker 1: they did is they they side hill for ways, and
Speaker 1: they kind of went up a saddle and then turned,
Speaker 1: and then instead of going over the saddle and down
Speaker 1: the other side, they turned up and continued going higher
Speaker 1: up this ridge. UM. And this is when they got
Speaker 1: into some thick green stuff. And as soon as I
Speaker 1: saw their going to thick green stuff, now, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: now they're definitely gonna bed Like this looked like this
Speaker 1: had to be where they're gonna bed. And I remember
Speaker 1: looking at jim Or and saying, Okay, we're gonna slip
Speaker 1: into ultimate death creep mode. They can be anywhere around here. Um,
Speaker 1: I really believe like they're up here. And just at
Speaker 1: that moment, like a little bit of a breeze started blowing,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this is perfect, Like we couldn't have
Speaker 1: asked for better timing for this breeze to start, because
Speaker 1: I've been worried about our sound of course, the whole time,
Speaker 1: and it just seemed ideal. And so I kind of
Speaker 1: was holding the gun at the ready, and we just,
Speaker 1: I mean acted as if there was a buck within
Speaker 1: fifty yards or within a hundred yards. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: taking just the slowest creeps, and I was crawling underneath branches,
Speaker 1: and we were in some really thick stuff where you
Speaker 1: couldn't see it all unless you were down on your
Speaker 1: knees and looking underneath it. And we were crawling through things,
Speaker 1: climbing over dead falls, under dead falls, belly crawling under branches, um,
Speaker 1: going through this stuff that just screamed betting. I mean
Speaker 1: just absolutely every ounce of my being, all my hairs
Speaker 1: were on edge. It was just like, Okay, it's we're
Speaker 1: gonna see this deer or we're gonna spook this deer.
Speaker 1: But it's happening. Um. Now, before we go any further,
Speaker 1: Jim or what did you think about this part of
Speaker 1: it when when we slipped into this new mode? What
Speaker 1: were you thinking about what I was doing? What were
Speaker 1: you thinking about the situation? What were your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're describing it completely accurate. Um. Is it
Speaker 1: healthy to have your adrenaline that high for as long
Speaker 1: as that day? I mean we started the day off
Speaker 1: on such fresh tracks, and I felt like, like you said,
Speaker 1: I felt like we were fifty yards behind these deer
Speaker 1: all day. But this specific moment, I mean I just
Speaker 1: went especially at this time. I try to step when
Speaker 1: you step, but boy, that was that was some thick brush. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it just felt like this was it. Were
Speaker 1: there there there on this nice ridge overlooking as how says,
Speaker 1: looking back from where they came. Uh, it had to
Speaker 1: be that moment. Yeah, And with that kind of situation
Speaker 1: ended up lasting an hour. I think at least at
Speaker 1: least an hour, if not more, because we kept on
Speaker 1: slow moving our way through this stuff, and then we
Speaker 1: come over a little like every little new area, could
Speaker 1: see every little rise, we'd peek over. I kept thinking like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna peek over one of these bits, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna see a beded deer. We're gonna see a back,
Speaker 1: we'll see an ear twitching, We'll see a little patch
Speaker 1: of white tail, we'll see an antler. Time moving the sunlight.
Speaker 1: I just kept stopping and looking and glassing and thinking
Speaker 1: like anywhere here it's gonna be. But we never came
Speaker 1: on them, and they just kept We kept being on
Speaker 1: the tracks and they started doing the thing though that
Speaker 1: again they hooked up to the top. They came up
Speaker 1: this little knob. Now they were milling. They'd stop. You
Speaker 1: can see where they're feeding and nibbling and stuff. They're
Speaker 1: kind of spinning around milling. You can see one of
Speaker 1: the deer would kind of loop around the other and
Speaker 1: up and down and around in this little zone, and
Speaker 1: um it just they kept doing that for quite a ways,
Speaker 1: I mean for at least an hour and I don't
Speaker 1: know how much time that was or how much distance
Speaker 1: that actually was. I would bet it was at least,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a couple hundred yards of that kind
Speaker 1: of behavior that we were like slow creeping through. Don't
Speaker 1: you think something like that? Jim? Yeah. And there was
Speaker 1: a many moments where we just had to pause and
Speaker 1: maybe even backtrack just to keep track of where their
Speaker 1: their prints were going because they were just kind of
Speaker 1: over the place. Yeah, they'd loop and then we'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: did they just come back there we were and then
Speaker 1: come back here and there, and um to to to
Speaker 1: go from there. Basically that was like an hour long
Speaker 1: creep fest thinking we'd find him and and never did
Speaker 1: until we finally went several hundred yards doing that to
Speaker 1: three yards two hundred yards of that something like that,
Speaker 1: and then um, it kind of opened up a little
Speaker 1: bit more and they're still going and it starts opening up.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as thick as it had been. I was thinking, man,
Speaker 1: are they just gonna keep cruising? And probably just as
Speaker 1: I started having that thought, here's a bed, here's a
Speaker 1: big bed, and it's fresh, like very fresh, and I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: we just bumped this buck out of here. Um. And
Speaker 1: so then I'm thinking, well, we've already done a sandwich break.
Speaker 1: Now I just bumped this buck a second time. And
Speaker 1: right as I did that, right as we bumped that deer,
Speaker 1: a snow squall moved through and it starts like dumping
Speaker 1: snow on us. And I remember being unsure of what
Speaker 1: to do next, because I thought, I remember the sandwich
Speaker 1: break rule, But at the same time, this is the
Speaker 1: second time. Does it Does it count on the second
Speaker 1: time or not? I couldn't remember that. And the second
Speaker 1: thing I thought is, Man, if this snow squall keeps
Speaker 1: on going at this rate, well I lose the tracks.
Speaker 1: So I was torn, should I sit? Should I keep going?
Speaker 1: Do I sit for a little while and then keep going? Um?
Speaker 1: What I ended up doing is we ended up stopping,
Speaker 1: and we took a short break, like a fifteen minute break,
Speaker 1: and then we picked it back up. Hell, what do
Speaker 1: you think about that piece of what we were doing there?
Speaker 1: Both my my death creep mode there and then secondly
Speaker 1: my decision when it came to that second bump. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: obviously you knew you had you had an idea he
Speaker 1: might be laying and and he was, So that worked
Speaker 1: for you. He didn't see him, but it worked for
Speaker 1: her anyway. And then, Um I would have used I
Speaker 1: wouldn't because I don't, like I said, I only stopped
Speaker 1: taking break the first time, so I wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: Plus combined with the fact that it was snow squall,
Speaker 1: and I'd use the snow squall as my my buck
Speaker 1: killing time, you know what I mean, it helps your out,
Speaker 1: you know, it blowing around the snow and stuff. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Jimmer, Why don't you tell me do that?
Speaker 1: Just kicking myself right now? Ye could he could? He
Speaker 1: used that nudge. Um, I needed the standard break. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was. It was good at that break because that
Speaker 1: was really I mean that hour or two of creep mode.
Speaker 1: I mean that was that was excruciating. The level of
Speaker 1: attention to detail I was trying to put into our
Speaker 1: movements there. I mean, that was the sneakiest I've ever
Speaker 1: tried to be, probably for as long of a period
Speaker 1: of time, and moving slowly and like thick cover like
Speaker 1: that that I can remember. Um, I really thought like
Speaker 1: this is gonna be our one chance, this is it, um,
Speaker 1: But that didn't happen. So we end up getting back
Speaker 1: on the trail and trying to cover ground again. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing running tracks for a while. We can still
Speaker 1: follow even though it's snowing, And at this point, I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: he knows we're on him. This is the second time
Speaker 1: we bumped him. He's moving and I kept thinking to myself, Man,
Speaker 1: what would Hall do in this situation? I just I
Speaker 1: couldn't remember getting to this point. In our conversations with you, Haley,
Speaker 1: we talked about if you bump a deer once, I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what do you do when you bump
Speaker 1: about twice or three times? Like what's how's this dear?
Speaker 1: Is this deer ever gonna slow down and chill out
Speaker 1: or is he just gonna be really on edge the
Speaker 1: whole time and I'll never be able to catch up
Speaker 1: to him. But I thought to myself, Okay, we bumped
Speaker 1: him twice. I'm just gonna push him at this point
Speaker 1: and and try to try to get lucky. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, I need to cover around, take advantage
Speaker 1: of the snow, and not lose the track. So we
Speaker 1: started moving faster at this point, like right back up
Speaker 1: to full speed probably, and we he went running down.
Speaker 1: If I remember it, he went running side hill on
Speaker 1: the ridge and then start going down the ridge and
Speaker 1: then sidehilling more. And then he turned to go back
Speaker 1: down the hill and then looped slightly. It was like
Speaker 1: it was downhill. And then he started curving to the
Speaker 1: right and then boom, there's another bed and he was
Speaker 1: out of that bed. And you could I mean it was,
Speaker 1: this was as fresh as you could possibly possibly. I
Speaker 1: could still see like hair marks from where his tail
Speaker 1: had been laying in the snow. You could see like
Speaker 1: that level of detail. So now I bumped him three
Speaker 1: times and and now and now I kind of feel like,
Speaker 1: is this a lost cause? Um, this book is just
Speaker 1: running and running, and so we keep going. And I
Speaker 1: just look back at Jim and I just said, man,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna we'll probably never see this book, but
Speaker 1: we're just gonna run them down and we're just gonna
Speaker 1: go and go and go. And I remember saying something
Speaker 1: like this. This reminded me of I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've heard these stories hell, but there's talk of some
Speaker 1: uh like tribes in Africa and different parts of the
Speaker 1: world where they have historically done something called persistence hunting.
Speaker 1: Where they would just run after an antelope or something
Speaker 1: and they would run for hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: and hours, and eventually humans actually have an endurance advantage
Speaker 1: over a lot of animals that can't cool as well
Speaker 1: as we can in the middle of an event like that,
Speaker 1: and they would actually be able to run an animal
Speaker 1: to exhaustion and then you know, be a spirit or
Speaker 1: something like that. I remember thinking, am I gonna try
Speaker 1: to do a persistent persistence hunt on this book and
Speaker 1: just keep going and going and going. And I mean, Jim,
Speaker 1: I remember you. I stopped at one point and you
Speaker 1: looked at me, like, dude, you're just running in the woods,
Speaker 1: and I even it wasn't the were his tracks pretty
Speaker 1: pretty like he was speeding up quite a bit at
Speaker 1: this point, I mean he was. He was basically kept
Speaker 1: on running. And then I was like, well, we needed
Speaker 1: to keep moving, so we were. I was just going
Speaker 1: as quickly as I could through the woods, just on him,
Speaker 1: and we just went and went and went and went,
Speaker 1: and in my head I thought like, we're never going
Speaker 1: to see this deer like he he knows we're behind us.
Speaker 1: And this was my next point in decision where I
Speaker 1: was like Okay, we bumped him three times. I don't
Speaker 1: see any I just couldn't imagine a scenario in which
Speaker 1: we could kill this deer. And I kept wondering, is
Speaker 1: the is the way to go to just keep going
Speaker 1: and going and going and hope to get lucky, and like,
Speaker 1: I'll just happen to come over a hill one time
Speaker 1: a little bit faster than he expects. And I get
Speaker 1: a side of him, like do I need to hope
Speaker 1: for that luck? Or is there some other trick that
Speaker 1: Hale does you know that I don't know about yet
Speaker 1: that would allow me to get on this deer? Um.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about you doing like a loop around
Speaker 1: trick Hall, where sometimes you'll loop around ahead of a buck,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to think, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: scenario that I would do that? How could I loop
Speaker 1: around and try to get ahead of this deers? Do
Speaker 1: I know this area well enough? And I just couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think they're a way to do it in
Speaker 1: a way that would actually be useful without just being
Speaker 1: like a hail marry in the dark. Um. So we
Speaker 1: just walked and walked and walked until finally it was
Speaker 1: almost the end of the day. My question to you,
Speaker 1: Hall is after that third bump, in this indecision I
Speaker 1: had at that moment, how would you have handled that?
Speaker 1: Is there any other trick in your bag of tools
Speaker 1: that you would have pulled out of this point? Or
Speaker 1: is it just walk, keep walking and hope to get luckier?
Speaker 1: Is there something else? Well, there's two kinds of deer
Speaker 1: uh habits that they do once in a while. I
Speaker 1: think it's about I figure it's probably one out of
Speaker 1: ten you'll get these bucks. I call them runners, and
Speaker 1: they will do that from the time you jump on
Speaker 1: the first time. But this one wasn't like that, so
Speaker 1: it's a little different situation. But sometimes you get a runner,
Speaker 1: and that's what he that's how he learned how to
Speaker 1: escape a coyo was he'd run for a mile and
Speaker 1: then just lay down and watch his track again, and
Speaker 1: if you jumped him again, he'd run another mile. Those
Speaker 1: bucks there are nearly impossible to kill on the track
Speaker 1: because they're gonna just they're gonna just they might just
Speaker 1: drop right in the track somewhere. They might run across
Speaker 1: and open him and just drop down and watch, so
Speaker 1: you never get an indication of where they You know
Speaker 1: that they might be laying down. You never get that
Speaker 1: because they just they run and stop and lay down.
Speaker 1: It's almost impossible to kill those bucks like that tracking
Speaker 1: them then. But but you just got this buck frightened
Speaker 1: because you jumped him out of his bed again, and
Speaker 1: you usually by running after him like that, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get him that way usually because they just wait
Speaker 1: when they see movement coming. Now, they're not even gonna
Speaker 1: let you do anything. When they see movement coming, they
Speaker 1: just take off again and keep going. On those, all
Speaker 1: I try to do on those is is um, I
Speaker 1: just try to go. It depends what they're doing when
Speaker 1: they run. If they're running, and they're usually that buck,
Speaker 1: if he runs, slows down, starts walking again, he's gonna
Speaker 1: wait and look again. That's just almost always what they do.
Speaker 1: They're gonna keep They're gonna keep watching because they're alerted
Speaker 1: to something's after him. But all I'm doing is hoping
Speaker 1: that he makes the mistake once and stops where I
Speaker 1: in a place where I can see him first, So
Speaker 1: I don't run after him because I'm more I'm more
Speaker 1: looking a lot more now, not that I'm going. I
Speaker 1: don't like slow down to a creep, but I just
Speaker 1: go along. If he's running, I move along. Once he
Speaker 1: stopped running again, I started going easy again because I
Speaker 1: know he's gonna be there looking somewhere up and I'm
Speaker 1: just hoping I can catch him in the right place.
Speaker 1: And and I guess a good good example that you
Speaker 1: can see of that or anybody can is on that
Speaker 1: my brutus film there on YouTube. Is that's all I
Speaker 1: did with that buck was I finally got his m
Speaker 1: all what he would do. He would run, but he
Speaker 1: didn't run that fire. And then he'd walk. And then
Speaker 1: when he would be like like quick walking, and then
Speaker 1: when he would start dragging his feet, that man he
Speaker 1: was gonna lay down. Took me a little bit to
Speaker 1: figure that out. But every time he dragged his feet,
Speaker 1: he'd be laying there pretty close watch him back. So
Speaker 1: when I finally shot him, he had run down off
Speaker 1: this ridge for quite a ways. He just wanted to
Speaker 1: get out of there because I just shot at him.
Speaker 1: And he crossed the road again, the gravel road, and
Speaker 1: got down into some kind of mixed growth, some green
Speaker 1: and stuff, and then it got into kind of a
Speaker 1: thick thing, and then he started dragging his feet so
Speaker 1: I said, he's gonna be laying here somewhere. So I
Speaker 1: just started going easy and he kind of cleared up
Speaker 1: the end of this. He was in a little skin
Speaker 1: of trail, and then he turned abruptly to the left
Speaker 1: and I didn't step out. I stopped and I just
Speaker 1: kind of peeked through the limbs of the spruce trees there,
Speaker 1: and I could see him laying there looking back, about
Speaker 1: thirty five old yards maybe thirty five yards, and I
Speaker 1: just got my foot swung around and let him have it,
Speaker 1: laying in his bed there. So if i'd have stepped out,
Speaker 1: I was just hurrying too much. He had just jump
Speaker 1: up and took off again, right, So I just I
Speaker 1: guess that's what you call catching him looking. You know,
Speaker 1: he was looking, but I just kind of I anticipated
Speaker 1: that and I saw her him first. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a it's a certain artistry to knowing how
Speaker 1: to handle these different moments, these like inflection points with
Speaker 1: an attract job. It feels like you know, like what
Speaker 1: to do when you catch up, what to do when
Speaker 1: you see these different behaviors, how to handle different conditions.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all these different little variables that I
Speaker 1: suppose just with time and experience, you develop an intuition
Speaker 1: for how to deal it um and you know, having
Speaker 1: not done it before. I guess I can't feel I
Speaker 1: don't feel too bad that I didn't know some of
Speaker 1: these things. But I do feel like every one of
Speaker 1: these experiences you get, we'll certainly change is how you
Speaker 1: approached the next one. I could just see that, even
Speaker 1: day after daily, each day I'd go along and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I better know how to deal with this. I kind
Speaker 1: of get what I'm seeing here. I understand this part.
Speaker 1: You could see that rapid accumulation of information happening real time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing you always got to remember, though,
Speaker 1: is they're all individuals and they don't all do the
Speaker 1: exact same thing. So you've got to try the key on,
Speaker 1: key in on what your buck that day is doing.
Speaker 1: What is a little thing that he might do that's
Speaker 1: different that that clues you to how you can react
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah. I had I had one of my
Speaker 1: books saying this story in about this buck for some reason,
Speaker 1: when he was going to lay down, he would he
Speaker 1: would abruptly turned off his track and take a couple
Speaker 1: of jumps and then then go lay down. So I
Speaker 1: just keyed in on that, and uh, I didn't end
Speaker 1: up shooting that Bucky. I knew he was laying down,
Speaker 1: and I circled this piece of woods that he was
Speaker 1: in and he didn't come out, So I knew he
Speaker 1: was laying there, but I didn't have enough time done
Speaker 1: go back and hunt it. I mean I didn't say
Speaker 1: go back to say it, but I didn't have time
Speaker 1: too well. Knew what it would have taken to get
Speaker 1: him because it was too late. I was three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, I had an hour to I had
Speaker 1: about five miles to get out of there, and I
Speaker 1: had about an hour left the daylight. So there was
Speaker 1: another one of them long walks out in the dock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it seems like you could do this for
Speaker 1: nearly a lifetime and still sometimes be surprised by things
Speaker 1: and find something new. And I think that's what I
Speaker 1: liked about it. Having done it, tried it, um and
Speaker 1: and we're running not time, so I'm gonna really fast
Speaker 1: forward through stuff because I didn't anticipate this taking as
Speaker 1: much time as it has um. But you know, that day,
Speaker 1: it didn't catch up to that buck when the next
Speaker 1: day didn't find a track until the last couple of
Speaker 1: hours followed one never took us anywhere really, and that
Speaker 1: was it, you know, I we did it. We gave
Speaker 1: it a good shot. I had a couple tracks to follow.
Speaker 1: I had one really good one that you know, I
Speaker 1: thought we were we could have pulled it off. So
Speaker 1: that was it was really cool to be on that
Speaker 1: one and to be that in the moment and feeling
Speaker 1: like he could be just ahead of us at any
Speaker 1: moment um. That was. That was absolutely high point. Never
Speaker 1: did see one though, um and that was the trip.
Speaker 1: I remember. One main thing at the end of it
Speaker 1: was that this one left me with like left me
Speaker 1: with like a I don't I don't want to say
Speaker 1: like h that I wanted to scratch, but like a
Speaker 1: like a clawing desire to get back and pull it off.
Speaker 1: Was basically like this one. I didn't want this idea
Speaker 1: of this type of hunting to defeat me. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's what I'm trying to say, but I
Speaker 1: want to figure out some way to do it. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm gonna be back, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be trying this thing again. In one way or another. Um,
Speaker 1: really quick, we just have a couple of minutes for
Speaker 1: I actually have to run too. But Dylan final thoughts
Speaker 1: or impressions. After having gone through all this and seeing
Speaker 1: this yourself real quick, I think I'm in the same
Speaker 1: boat as you in that I really want to see
Speaker 1: success in doing this, you know, whether that's behind the
Speaker 1: camera or you know, someday getting to do it on
Speaker 1: my own. But you know, just that feeling of following
Speaker 1: an animal and feeling like you know it by the end.
Speaker 1: You know, you follow it for so long you feel
Speaker 1: like you know it's happened, and to catch up to
Speaker 1: it and finalize, you know, clothes on it. I think
Speaker 1: it's something that, um, I look forward to trying again
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah, what about you, Jimmer. I thought
Speaker 1: it was fascinating how fast time actually went. I mean,
Speaker 1: from first light to last You're so involved in this mystery,
Speaker 1: like Dylan says, learning the patterns of this dear. You've
Speaker 1: only you've probably got it only this day, this amount
Speaker 1: of light to figure out this person or this dear,
Speaker 1: this personality of this deer. Um, it's just amazing how
Speaker 1: fast the time went, because all of a sudden you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we're we're an hour till sundown and
Speaker 1: we're still it still feels like we're fifty yards from
Speaker 1: this deer. Yeah, that was something. Hell. I just want
Speaker 1: to reiterate again what we said when we were down
Speaker 1: there with you, and I'll say to you every time
Speaker 1: I see again, which is just thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Can't tell you how much we appreciate you
Speaker 1: taking the time to to walk around with us out there,
Speaker 1: to show us what you do to to teach us
Speaker 1: your ways. Um. It was an absolute blast. Um, And
Speaker 1: I guess I want to give you an opportunity here
Speaker 1: for people that want to learn more are from you,
Speaker 1: who wanna participate in your classes or read your books,
Speaker 1: or watch your videos or anything. Where should they go
Speaker 1: to find that stuff and to get more information, Well,
Speaker 1: you can find everything really at bigwoods bucks dot com.
Speaker 1: And uh, they want to watch any of the films
Speaker 1: on YouTube, it's the Big Woods Box YouTube channel. Uh,
Speaker 1: the outfitter part of it, the hunts on the same website,
Speaker 1: Big Woods Boxes, just as an outfitter tab they had
Speaker 1: and that that has the classes on it too. You know,
Speaker 1: I do those in the spring. They're actually all booked
Speaker 1: the next spring. But um, I'm just starting to book
Speaker 1: the hunts for next fall, you know, I'm getting to
Speaker 1: return people booked in then whatever I have for openings,
Speaker 1: I'll fill in with with new people and go from there.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, uh, it's just a different way to
Speaker 1: do things. And like I said, I tell everybody, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a way of hunt. And you either you
Speaker 1: either love the big woods so you hate it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any in between. But I ended
Speaker 1: up loving it when I first started doing it forty
Speaker 1: years ago with forty some old years ago and going
Speaker 1: to hunt somewhere else. Now was you know, like in
Speaker 1: rural farm country. I just can't seem to do it.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I'm starting to understand where you're coming from. Hell,
Speaker 1: And I hope that we can get on and do
Speaker 1: another one of these episodes next year or two years
Speaker 1: from how or whenever it is someday to to talk
Speaker 1: through my first successful track. I am. I'm counting on
Speaker 1: having that conversation with you someday down the road soon.
Speaker 1: Hell sounds good, all right, Dylan, Jimmy, everybody, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining me for this one guys, thank you
Speaker 1: all right, thank you brow or not all right, And
Speaker 1: that is today's episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Thank
Speaker 1: you for tuning in. If you're still hunting, best of
Speaker 1: luck out there, have some fun, eat some venison. Until
Speaker 1: next time, stay wired,