Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you, shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Is there anyone here? Raise your hand?
Speaker 1: If I haven't told you about a my buddy's brother
Speaker 1: who was carrying the d Iraq on his backpack, I
Speaker 1: haven't told you about this? No? No, okay, raise your hand.
Speaker 1: If I haven't told you about this man eating tiger
Speaker 1: and uh, this man eating tiger in India. I told
Speaker 1: you guys all about it. Can you can we act
Speaker 1: like I didn't tell you? Okay? My buddy's brother, he
Speaker 1: doesn't want me to say who it is, but it's
Speaker 1: a guy that's been on this podcast, and I've met
Speaker 1: his brother. I fished purchased his brother. Um kills of
Speaker 1: Columbia blacktail in Washington State, and I haven't spoke with
Speaker 1: him directly about it, but he kills a blacktail in
Speaker 1: Washington State and he affixes the rack, the skull and
Speaker 1: antlers to his backpack. And this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that you hear about it being a no no,
Speaker 1: like it will even tie orange flagging or tie a
Speaker 1: game vest or whatever around antlers when you're doing it,
Speaker 1: but you're always like, man, what are the chances that
Speaker 1: that would happen? That being, what are the chances that
Speaker 1: someone would mistake it for a live animal? Well, he
Speaker 1: got shot at so it was such a close call
Speaker 1: that the guy shot a hole through his backpack? Whoa
Speaker 1: dude too close? The game warden hauled. This dude often
Speaker 1: handcuffs as he should. Jeez shot a hole through his
Speaker 1: backpack with a high powered rifle thinking not only thinking
Speaker 1: that it was a live buck, but also that he
Speaker 1: was aiming at its lungs, or he didn't get that
Speaker 1: far into the thinking horrifying. What does anybody else have
Speaker 1: a story like themselves or someone they know closely that's
Speaker 1: happened to you, like when someone shot at a sound
Speaker 1: or I know people that got shot in Pennsylvania turkey hunting. Really,
Speaker 1: I know there's three guys standing together talking after working
Speaker 1: a bird and all three of them got hit. What
Speaker 1: what did the person think he was shooting at a turkey?
Speaker 1: I guess mistook three mugs for a turkey and knew
Speaker 1: it was a gobbler, not him. That's what. I don't
Speaker 1: know what he was thinking, but that's what I don't
Speaker 1: get it. I don't. I don't think there's a mistaking.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a there's movement. I'm gonna shoot and
Speaker 1: figure out it out later. Is it that? Or is
Speaker 1: it like buck fever sort of thing where you're just
Speaker 1: like so keyed in, Like anytime you see like a
Speaker 1: rack or movement and you're like, oh, I gotta shoot
Speaker 1: because that's what I'm out here for. That's just too
Speaker 1: In this case, you've got a rack that's pointed the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. What's moving to? If it's on a backpack
Speaker 1: walking away Buck of lifetime man inverted? It was an
Speaker 1: inverted buck. It's just still blows my mind that stuff happened. Disgusting.
Speaker 1: What are they thinking? There's more lury details about this individual,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to give him away. Not lury
Speaker 1: details about the victim, but lurd details about the perpetrator.
Speaker 1: He had some other things going on. Mm hmm. What
Speaker 1: does the victim say, I've only I'm friends with the
Speaker 1: victim's brother, and I've fished with the victim, the near victim. No,
Speaker 1: the victim. I fished with the victim, but I'm not
Speaker 1: tight with him. Um okay, the man eating tiger. This
Speaker 1: is kind of amazing. Man. If a bear, if if
Speaker 1: a grizzly here scratches someone else, that's a dead bear. Quick.
Speaker 1: This tiger in India killed thirteen people before they were
Speaker 1: able to kill the tiger whittled away at thirteen people,
Speaker 1: and they finally they got it to expose itself and
Speaker 1: lured it in use an obsession clone no people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: old obsession had like an extract, had some kind of
Speaker 1: like civic extract or something in it, and they find
Speaker 1: that it works really good as a tiger lure. Obsession obsession.
Speaker 1: Tell me you know more about this and we can
Speaker 1: take this one one step far. I was just reading
Speaker 1: about this. I've heard that tigers have like a vengeance
Speaker 1: for people. They will remember people scent, they'll remember like
Speaker 1: they'll have it out and they'll do you speak up Orange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys gotta get you guys gotta get trying to
Speaker 1: share the mike, but we're doing the two finger things.
Speaker 1: But you're selling a dude yelling at up at a seminar. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get real uncomfortably close to Chris and tell
Speaker 1: you that I believe that what I've heard is that
Speaker 1: tiger's hold vengeance against people. I think that comes from
Speaker 1: one book called Tiger. The Tiger. Yeah, but John valent Yeah,
Speaker 1: who wrote one of the really you know what, you
Speaker 1: want to read a real book, read his book The
Speaker 1: Golden Spruce. That's it right in some bit right there. Man,
Speaker 1: he's good. But there's certain books that come out. It's
Speaker 1: like Malcolm Gladwell writes a book, then for the next
Speaker 1: six months you gotta have people tell you. They tell
Speaker 1: you stuff that they read there and act like that
Speaker 1: they didn't read it there. But you know what, Actually
Speaker 1: the way to think about that is and you learn
Speaker 1: later like where it's all coming from. But since that
Speaker 1: book came out, I've had fifty people tell me that
Speaker 1: about tigers. Not to take away from because he's a
Speaker 1: hell of a writer. Was his name again, John Villante?
Speaker 1: I think yeah, we've emailed the a I L. L Anti, dude.
Speaker 1: The Golden Spruce is about a giant golden spruce and
Speaker 1: the man who sawed it down and why he sawed
Speaker 1: it down and he did not saw it down for
Speaker 1: the reasons you think he would have saught it down.
Speaker 1: It's about an act of like eco terrorism. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: It's a goodass book. Uh, in Florida. Guy, you know
Speaker 1: about this seven sevent ft python. Dude just got a
Speaker 1: one twenty pound seventeen ft five inch long python. He
Speaker 1: paid for it too. You didn't he didn't bite him
Speaker 1: several times when he was wrastling with it. Bait him
Speaker 1: up a little bit awesome. I can't even wrap my
Speaker 1: head around on a snake that big. He can wrap
Speaker 1: his head around. You, God, I can't wrap my head around.
Speaker 1: Why you would want to catch it? I catch it
Speaker 1: after I shot its head off. The bounties on them,
Speaker 1: I guess not alive. I don't know why he wanted
Speaker 1: to catch it live. Just a lot cooler to roll
Speaker 1: in with the snake that's alive. It makes more of
Speaker 1: a statement man, to have a hy pound of live snake.
Speaker 1: Just giant pythons. Man, kind of getting sick of those pythons.
Speaker 1: Imagine the tree stands you were sitting in. You'd go
Speaker 1: from the top of that tree stands to the bottom.
Speaker 1: That is that's so scary in way as much as
Speaker 1: ridge founder, it's just about what are they eating? Just anything,
Speaker 1: small mammals. They've eliminated a size class of mammals in
Speaker 1: the everglades. That's what our buddy Robert Abernathey who worked
Speaker 1: on some Python projects and whatnot. He's a he's a biologist.
Speaker 1: A couple of interesting things he's telling us about is
Speaker 1: they have like eliminated like everything, like grinners, raccoons, like
Speaker 1: a whole size class of like mid sized mammal. They
Speaker 1: just wipe them out anybody. They're working on this stuff
Speaker 1: to try to test how far north pythons can go
Speaker 1: and that they can't penetrate the frost line. So like
Speaker 1: if you live in you know, yeah, man, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna They're not gonna be up in the Carolinas. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna be up in Alabama. Our squirrel populations, in
Speaker 1: our cottental populations would be in danger. There's no safe
Speaker 1: place to be a grinner anymore. Chase, we chased after
Speaker 1: grinner last night, didn't we We did? We didn't come
Speaker 1: up and gave us a slip. Does everybody know what
Speaker 1: a grinner is? That's a possum, that's a dug During
Speaker 1: calls them grinners. Speaking of getting mauled up. Now, this
Speaker 1: is something we don't know. We just tried to fact
Speaker 1: check it, but it seems like there's something here that
Speaker 1: where we got in a we got in a mix
Speaker 1: up with a with a brown bear on a fog
Speaker 1: neck about a year ago. And I guess some I
Speaker 1: just got mauled up pretty good. We've been hearing all
Speaker 1: kinds of rumors from one dude. One of these rumors,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's sure or not, is he
Speaker 1: was sporting a stone glacier backpack and that his backpack
Speaker 1: got mauled About that, seth, you believe it? He tried
Speaker 1: to fact check it in. Yeah, we tried you what
Speaker 1: do you feel safe adding here he was a hiker? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know what that means. We don't know. We
Speaker 1: don't know if he's scouting type hiker or an ari
Speaker 1: I type. What if he was what he was hiking
Speaker 1: around hunting? Yeah, I just wait to say that. I
Speaker 1: don't know either way. We love him the same Ron
Speaker 1: Bam wrote in all worked up about Remember the other
Speaker 1: day we were talking about dogs and like, and I
Speaker 1: was talking about the cake theory. Okay, that got a
Speaker 1: lot of people, I've noticed to a lot of letters
Speaker 1: came in about the cake theory. Um, they're saying that
Speaker 1: A that was a bad analogy. One guy didn't. He
Speaker 1: was talking about when he smells shrimp scampy that he
Speaker 1: smells all that. He said, I smell the butter and
Speaker 1: the shrimp, but it's just easier to say scampy. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, whatever, Okay, well let's give this guy a
Speaker 1: haul of pass. You got something to add well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, sure shrimp scampy. You can smell butter and shrimp.
Speaker 1: All good on you and you don't have a broken nose.
Speaker 1: Ron Dame Rolds. We're talking about what does like what
Speaker 1: is a dog? But this isn't why Ron wrote in
Speaker 1: though round was over right in conversation about the what
Speaker 1: hunting dog like? What dogs smell? Like? How is it
Speaker 1: different than what we smell? Um? We got team about
Speaker 1: like different uh climactic not climax climactic. Uh climatic climactic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. You know what I'm talking about climate that
Speaker 1: the different situation sations can influence a dog. And so Ron,
Speaker 1: who you might know from the Hunting Dog Podcast, which
Speaker 1: is all about all things that hunting dogs. Um, he's
Speaker 1: been judging pointing dogs for the North American Versatile Hunting
Speaker 1: Dog Association for twenty years and he's hung out with
Speaker 1: a guy who's spent twenty years running dogs from Michigan
Speaker 1: to Montana to Arizona. And here's what these guys think.
Speaker 1: He says. For for tracking ability on a dog, he
Speaker 1: says humility, humidity, humility levels. Humidity levels are a major factor.
Speaker 1: He thinks when you get below ten percent humidity, it
Speaker 1: becomes tough for a dog to detect game. And you
Speaker 1: get much higher than sixty and it starts to have
Speaker 1: a negative effect. He says that wind speed is also
Speaker 1: a crippler. Anything over say, fifteen miles per hour in
Speaker 1: the scent just gets too deluded and spread out too
Speaker 1: thin too quickly. He says, you get wins in the
Speaker 1: twenty just dirty range. It becomes very hard for dogs
Speaker 1: to sort it out. He's talking about primarily bird dogs
Speaker 1: becomes very hard from to sort it out. He says,
Speaker 1: bara metric pressure matters too, but it matters for a
Speaker 1: weird reason. If a front is coming in, birds just
Speaker 1: sit tight and they don't feed, so you don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of bird feet water all over the place
Speaker 1: leaving odor. So you could you could have this front
Speaker 1: coming in and think that somehow it's affecting your dog
Speaker 1: his ability to smell birds. What's going on is birds
Speaker 1: just aren't out leading are out leaving scent. M Most
Speaker 1: birds walk to their food source. When they're feeding, they're
Speaker 1: leaving smell. When they're leaving smell, your dog can find it.
Speaker 1: And he talks about when. When he talks about when
Speaker 1: you're judging a dog or buying a dog, there's a
Speaker 1: scorecard category called use of nose, and he says this
Speaker 1: should not be confused with quality of ohs. A dog
Speaker 1: has to have a desire to find game. He can't
Speaker 1: just like to just run around looking for it. You
Speaker 1: can have, he says. He he winds it. He says,
Speaker 1: it's a lot like people needing to stay at the
Speaker 1: task at hand. He says, compared to hunters that get
Speaker 1: tired or uncomfortable, saying the rain and their desire to
Speaker 1: continue starts to slip a bit. They get distracted thinking
Speaker 1: about things like hoping the weather gets better, instead of
Speaker 1: pushing through it and blocking out those thoughts. Dogs are
Speaker 1: very much the same way. The nose that is tied
Speaker 1: or matched to its level of desire will produce the
Speaker 1: best results. Some skills can be taught, but desire will
Speaker 1: always win. The day. Just think about that Ron Bam
Speaker 1: Hunting Dog podcast. Another dude, real quick road in saying like, um,
Speaker 1: we get this a lot too, saying like, hey, does
Speaker 1: does copper ammal work? And the thing about it? Go ahead, Jannie,
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything to add. You just piqued my
Speaker 1: interesting up up not just listening. You perked up. Here.
Speaker 1: Here's the way I would put it more. I think
Speaker 1: the copper ammal is having a high rate of adoption
Speaker 1: because of efficacy, like so many loaders use it. You're honest.
Speaker 1: I agree, like serious shooters switching for no other reason
Speaker 1: than efficacy. I feel like the effic accuracy accurately. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm rolling that in. I think for a while
Speaker 1: what happened with in fact check me on this. You're
Speaker 1: honest because you follow the stuff perhaps tighter than I do.
Speaker 1: I think for a while, and people first started using
Speaker 1: monolithic or copper bullets, it was they were using because
Speaker 1: they were very accurate, but they had there was like
Speaker 1: early on performance issues because there's a lot to get
Speaker 1: right where the thing has to expand but not break apart.
Speaker 1: And I think it took some years to get it developed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seemed like there was early critiques of uh, when
Speaker 1: the bullets didn't hit bone, it hit some mass that
Speaker 1: they would The term was used pencil through animals, like
Speaker 1: taking an arrow with a field tip and just pushing
Speaker 1: it through the lungs and not getting the upset and
Speaker 1: the damage that you're looking for out of a bullet.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that was coincidence or if
Speaker 1: they did make better technology. I know that Federal with
Speaker 1: their new you know, trophy copper line, I know that
Speaker 1: they have made like a deeper cavity up front that's
Speaker 1: supposed to help, you know, initiate that expansion and make
Speaker 1: that those pedals come out more, you know, so you
Speaker 1: can get the get the damage. Yeah, if people try
Speaker 1: different tricks, like even like cutting them to try to
Speaker 1: get them to pedal and break into four pieces. But
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, man, I have We've been shooting a
Speaker 1: bunch of the Federal trophy copper and it comes out
Speaker 1: looking like uh, it comes out looking like if you
Speaker 1: had a magazine picture of like the perfectly expanded bullet
Speaker 1: mm hmm, like opens right up, turns into nice slug.
Speaker 1: I mean they advertise up the weight retention, so like
Speaker 1: good penetration and it doesn't bust all up and they
Speaker 1: put like a tip there's like a like a cavity
Speaker 1: in there, but then it's got a polymer tip on
Speaker 1: it that helps it expanding. The other problem with it
Speaker 1: would be that, like, here's the thing to think about
Speaker 1: when when you're talking about this stuff is when people
Speaker 1: talk about a long range bullet, you might hear it
Speaker 1: and think like, oh, that means it's like accurate long range.
Speaker 1: It's probably true, probably has like a like a good
Speaker 1: like a high ballistic or what's that word, ballistic coefficiency.
Speaker 1: But the other thing when we talk about long range
Speaker 1: bullet would be that it will still mushroom. It will
Speaker 1: still expand at a low velocity. So if it's coming
Speaker 1: out of your if it's coming out of your muzzle,
Speaker 1: let's say three feet per second, if it were to
Speaker 1: hit something at that speed, if it's a poorly constructed
Speaker 1: bullet and it hits something at that speed, he might
Speaker 1: rough to do a bunch of pieces. But then it
Speaker 1: slows down and it loses half of its velocity and
Speaker 1: hits something and it doesn't happen. There's not enough there's
Speaker 1: not enough force there to cause it to expand. So
Speaker 1: if you see a long range bullet, what that will
Speaker 1: mean is that can still expand. One of the things
Speaker 1: that means is it can still expand at low velocities.
Speaker 1: And I think that these are all things that have
Speaker 1: taken a while to get sorted out, which I feel
Speaker 1: like now they've just got that sorted out. Where you
Speaker 1: have like solid copper stuff that has a polymer tip
Speaker 1: and a boattail design and has you know, a good
Speaker 1: downrange velocity, like it's still cooking and still opens up, right.
Speaker 1: I just don't think you can really right now. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's really any from an efficacy standpoint. I
Speaker 1: just don't see there's any argument that there's any argument
Speaker 1: against it. No, was did this guy have a specific question?
Speaker 1: You're just saying he's always hearing about it, but he
Speaker 1: hears different things about whether it works or not. This
Speaker 1: dude just rote into that. I've yet to have a bad,
Speaker 1: uh experience with him. I had a bad experience with
Speaker 1: a different kind long time ago, and it was still
Speaker 1: in its infancy. This is like seven years ago, not
Speaker 1: in its infancy, but it was I was using like
Speaker 1: an unproven manufacturers offerings and had a penciling incident at
Speaker 1: a long range four hundred plus yards. Good Mark Kenyon. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: tell me about sitting in the tree. Uh, tell me
Speaker 1: what happens in your mind when you're sitting, when you're
Speaker 1: doing twelve hours sits. We're just we're just finishing up
Speaker 1: a white tail deer hunt, a white tailed deer bowl hunt,
Speaker 1: peak rut and marksman sitting all damn day. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: the last three days, at least all day, twelve hour days.
Speaker 1: It's a long haul. I mean, me and Lauren we're talking.
Speaker 1: When we got out of the tree every day. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't think after just sitting for twelve hours that you'd
Speaker 1: be physically exhausted. But when you get out of there,
Speaker 1: I mean you are worn down. Well, you're in the
Speaker 1: saddle today. I was in the saddle the two days
Speaker 1: before that, I was in the stand. He was in
Speaker 1: the saddle every day. Um. But yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you're look can a lot, you're searching a lot. But
Speaker 1: then there there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of periods of time where there's nothing going on. And
Speaker 1: the biggest thing for me on all day sits is
Speaker 1: it is it's of course partly physical, but I think
Speaker 1: the mental side is the bigger part of it. Being
Speaker 1: able to stay mentally engaged as much as you possibly
Speaker 1: can over the course that whole day, and knowing knowing
Speaker 1: that even though things have been dead for two hours,
Speaker 1: that at any time it could all change. So I've
Speaker 1: had my fair share of mistakes over the years where
Speaker 1: I lost focused in the middle of an all days sitting.
Speaker 1: It cost me. I told you guys a story last
Speaker 1: year about holy Field, and does eleven o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and I've lost focus. And then there is at twenty
Speaker 1: yards um sending text messages. I was reading a book
Speaker 1: on my phone. Reading the book on your phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're sitting for twelve hours. Everyone. You need a little
Speaker 1: something to kind of buy the time. And so I
Speaker 1: would like, look at I look at the phone for
Speaker 1: twenty seconds, Scan all around me. Look at the phone
Speaker 1: for twenty seconds, scan all around I got, you're reading
Speaker 1: high cous What were you reading? I was reading, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a book called the Name of the Wind. For
Speaker 1: a second, I thought, I've never heard of a book
Speaker 1: called high cous. Dear, I'd read that book by high
Speaker 1: Country Cus. Is that Duncan go christop No Duncan's Bill
Speaker 1: Duncan Gil Chris's best book. His best book has an
Speaker 1: unfortunate title of Hunt High. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people read that. A lot of people read that,
Speaker 1: and they get to think in one thing he saw
Speaker 1: about unting the high country, not hunting high go on
Speaker 1: sitting all day, man, I think nothing of going out,
Speaker 1: Like if we're you know, regular spot star hunting anything, Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I leave knowing them. No way I'm coming back.
Speaker 1: Why would I come back, Because let's take a big
Speaker 1: old nap out where I am. I'll eat my lunch
Speaker 1: for I am. There you go. But sitting in the
Speaker 1: damn tree, it wears on you. The same scene for
Speaker 1: twelve hours, the same trail, the same trees, the same creek.
Speaker 1: It's all there. You don't get to do anything. It
Speaker 1: definitely gets worse, the tighter to the space and the
Speaker 1: shorter like if you if you yeah, where you can
Speaker 1: glass every five minutes? Yeah, I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of toughen it out, having snacks, having water,
Speaker 1: and then yes, I think that is better to be
Speaker 1: in the tree and be slightly distratched on occasion by
Speaker 1: your phone or a book or something that than not
Speaker 1: being in the tree at all. Yeah, give me the
Speaker 1: main argument, Like people can picture what it is, but
Speaker 1: tell me why you sit all damn day. So the
Speaker 1: reason why you sit all day during the rut is
Speaker 1: because bucks specifically get up some number of them on
Speaker 1: a relatively consistent basis in our cruising for os from
Speaker 1: let's say ten or eleven till one or two in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, especially older, dear, Now you're not going to
Speaker 1: see the same number of deer as you might in
Speaker 1: the typical um early morning or late evening hours, right, dear,
Speaker 1: a crepuscular, so they are most active at first light
Speaker 1: and last light, so that no matter what, you're the
Speaker 1: most activity then. But there's a disproportionate amount of activity,
Speaker 1: especially for mature bucks, middle of the day during the rut.
Speaker 1: So people, you better tuck into crepuscular. They're a little
Speaker 1: bit Yeah. Yeah, So crepuscular just describes an animal that's
Speaker 1: most active at that dawn or dusk time period. So dear,
Speaker 1: many many mammals, right are most active the first hour
Speaker 1: or two, last hour or two. But for the small
Speaker 1: time period, these bucks know where does will be in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day, right they're bedded down, so
Speaker 1: they have a great opportunity that time period to go
Speaker 1: from dough bedding area to dope sitting air into dope
Speaker 1: betting air to find females that are ready to breed.
Speaker 1: So if you're willing to tough it out, it's a
Speaker 1: great time to get those bucks on their feet. And
Speaker 1: we saw it. You think he's going around to betting
Speaker 1: areas just to sniff all the dos out and see
Speaker 1: who's who's That's exactly what they're doing. I want to say,
Speaker 1: who's ripe? Yes, that's not the right word. Hot hot
Speaker 1: hot dough. Ripe doesn't sound quite ripe, sounds like something
Speaker 1: my wife would be like, Really, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: too misera um, I feel like she would say, because
Speaker 1: there's gonna be another word for that ready hot dough. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And because they're normally like the big coming to our
Speaker 1: breeding cycle. You guys knew that, yes, yes, uh, because
Speaker 1: they're normally so paranoid. Yeah, this time you're the throw
Speaker 1: caution to the wind to a degree, you know, for love,
Speaker 1: and I think we can all relate. I think we
Speaker 1: definitely witnessed it several times. There was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: your closest call came into eleven. You called it out
Speaker 1: before that. He said, this is my favorite hour, eleven o'clock,
Speaker 1: and here comes the one that was the closest, right buck.
Speaker 1: But there were several other opportunities during that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Two of our last three days of doing the all
Speaker 1: day six we saw potential shooters in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day, um. And and lots of other bucks, younger bucks. Um.
Speaker 1: And I've seen at least every year now for a
Speaker 1: good number of years, I've had at least one mature
Speaker 1: buck encounter mid day. Um. And the thing is, if
Speaker 1: you talk to guys who take this really seriously. I've
Speaker 1: got a buddy who always always hunts all day and
Speaker 1: he consistently killed mature bucks. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the number of mature bucks that he's killed, I think
Speaker 1: he's taken seventeen or eighteen or nineteen of them during
Speaker 1: the middle of the day. Um. You look at the
Speaker 1: number of hours compared to hours hunted across the ward
Speaker 1: by other guys, Right, there's many more hours spent in
Speaker 1: the tree evening or morning, but there's a significant percentage
Speaker 1: killed midday by the fewer people that are actually hunting
Speaker 1: that time period. Yeah, like no one's there, but they're
Speaker 1: getting them. But they're getting them. Um, but it's tough.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not necessarily fun now, Lauren, when
Speaker 1: you're up filming Mark Kenyon being in a tree all day,
Speaker 1: what's your perception of what's going on? Are you like, dude,
Speaker 1: this job sucks or do you feel like you're hunting?
Speaker 1: I think any time you're out there, you're kind of
Speaker 1: feeling like you're hunting. You're part of the hunt. You know.
Speaker 1: It definitely isn't the greatest deal sitting in a tree
Speaker 1: stand all day, especially a sling or a saddle or
Speaker 1: you know, it's not comfortable, so but you're definitely engaged
Speaker 1: looking for that one bucker, any deer, any movement the
Speaker 1: whole time. So it's kind of just like an assist,
Speaker 1: you know. That's how I feel about it. Are you
Speaker 1: periodically filming or do you let hours go by and
Speaker 1: not film anything? Well? I think that hours went by
Speaker 1: without filming for sure. Uh. You know, you're stuck in
Speaker 1: one place, so shot options become pretty limited. You get
Speaker 1: as creative as you can, but you know in retrospect,
Speaker 1: you're always like, oh, I should have done more, I
Speaker 1: should have done this or that. But you know, you
Speaker 1: can only shoot the same angle, same depth, same focal
Speaker 1: length so many times, so you're and too. We had
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities on on does and fawns and
Speaker 1: not moving and lots of getting pinned down. Uh. So
Speaker 1: there's only so much dough footage you're going to shoot,
Speaker 1: so only so much of the interaction. Oh, I got
Speaker 1: a close up of the fawn eating. You know, I
Speaker 1: think I've got twelve of those, So do I need
Speaker 1: any more. I'm gonna stop filming that. We're going to
Speaker 1: not move, like what? How does I think At one
Speaker 1: point we were discussing, did he say what the are
Speaker 1: you doing? But then when we reviewed the footage and
Speaker 1: he he didn't say that, he said, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: What was I doing? I think I moved or you
Speaker 1: can't move like that? Yeah, you know, Ridge Poder were
Speaker 1: like an old We're like an old couple. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: like an old abusive husband. He was pretty gentle. He
Speaker 1: didn't really yell at me, but I get it. I
Speaker 1: think it's definitely, uh gets intense enough where you don't
Speaker 1: want to screw anything up, especially if you're on a
Speaker 1: you know, pretty high end hunt where you know you're
Speaker 1: the camera guy. If you messed this guy's hunt up,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear about it, you know, And uh, that's
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to do is mess up
Speaker 1: somebody's hunt. So you're definitely part of the hunt. You're
Speaker 1: a hunter at that point because you're looking for the shot.
Speaker 1: I feel I felt bad a couple times. I think
Speaker 1: I apologized to once and I was like, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I think I get a little bossy up in the tree.
Speaker 1: I have like hunting turettes, were like, I can't help myself.
Speaker 1: I have to say, don't move, stop moving, Why are
Speaker 1: you moving? You can't move like that. A couple of
Speaker 1: times I'm like, oh, that you're six o'clock. We had
Speaker 1: our system down for sure, And and that happens real quick.
Speaker 1: The first day was brutal. The wind was blowing, it
Speaker 1: was twenty five degrees. We're both shivering, you know. At
Speaker 1: one point your teeth are chattering. You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: are we ever gonna be done with this? Uh? But
Speaker 1: then time goes on and dope pins you down or
Speaker 1: whatever happens I think we had you know, we got
Speaker 1: lucky because there were a lot of deer and a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on the whole time, so it
Speaker 1: kind of kept us busy in that respect. And then
Speaker 1: after three days, the third day flew by twelve hours.
Speaker 1: Was no big deal. What time of the day when
Speaker 1: you're doing a twelve hour mega sit? Got his twelve
Speaker 1: hours too, it's almost maybe longer than twelve bars. Well,
Speaker 1: we got in it getting the stand around six twelve bars,
Speaker 1: get out just after six. At what time of the
Speaker 1: day do you hit where you're like, oh, we made
Speaker 1: it three Yeah, I mean there's that point where ten
Speaker 1: o'clock rolls around You're like, oh god, it's a double shift. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was the first day we did I think
Speaker 1: it was we sat and then we went to this
Speaker 1: new spot and there was bucks chasing does all over
Speaker 1: the place. It was like it was a good morning,
Speaker 1: and it was probably around ten o'clock and I look
Speaker 1: at Laura. I'm like, I've got good news and bad
Speaker 1: news for it. Which do you want? And then he guessed.
Speaker 1: He's like, is the bad news that we're sitting all day? Yep,
Speaker 1: we're sitting all day with a good news because the love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was sons of deer. We counted yesterday. I think
Speaker 1: we saw thirty five that last count after that keeps
Speaker 1: you busy, and there was enough to do up there.
Speaker 1: Though it is totally uncomfortable. I mean, your feet go
Speaker 1: numb and I don't know. It's not not the greatest deal,
Speaker 1: but this is my first time ever bow hunting for
Speaker 1: white tails or any kind of deer um bow hunting
Speaker 1: on like a private managed property, where do you have
Speaker 1: a chance to grow old and to like be there.
Speaker 1: Knowing that you could see one of these bucks come by.
Speaker 1: It's four years old, keeps you, keeps you wanting to
Speaker 1: sit there because these are things you just read about.
Speaker 1: No them to be like that they actually might show up.
Speaker 1: You think it's gonna be easy, but it's not easy.
Speaker 1: It's still not easy. There's still too many things that
Speaker 1: could go wrong. But like no one they're out there
Speaker 1: is makes it intriguing. Man, no one they could roll
Speaker 1: around the corner. How many opportunities did you have mark
Speaker 1: on two and a half year olds? Oh, we could
Speaker 1: have killed a lot two and a half year olds,
Speaker 1: a good handful of them, lots of year and a
Speaker 1: half olds, a couple three year olds, one three year old,
Speaker 1: maybe two three ye olds. I can't remember, dude. That's
Speaker 1: where you're screwed up. Man Like, like, explain to people
Speaker 1: what you talk about. You talk about a mature buck
Speaker 1: because you always use the word mature buck. You don't
Speaker 1: put like a number to it. Yeah, so I I
Speaker 1: would typically call four or older mature. Some people will
Speaker 1: say three year older. In Michigan, the three year old
Speaker 1: is if it's everything's relative, right in Michigan, a three
Speaker 1: year old in most places is the most the most
Speaker 1: mature buck you might have around. But you don't mean
Speaker 1: sexually mature, because they're sexually sexually mature at one and
Speaker 1: a half correct? Correct? So what do is mature? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, why not to say big as bucks in
Speaker 1: the eye of beholder, Right, it's in the eye behold.
Speaker 1: It's all relative. But when you get to four or five,
Speaker 1: four plus, you were at that top percentile of age
Speaker 1: and most populations and in any state really, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think people would look at year and a half
Speaker 1: old bucks being like your I don't know, like a
Speaker 1: ten year old, like a young child. The way they act,
Speaker 1: the way they think, the way they operate. You get
Speaker 1: to a two year old, you've got like a young
Speaker 1: teenage type deer. You know, you got your fifteen year
Speaker 1: old boy running around being crazy. You get two three
Speaker 1: year old that's like your college kid. That's dude out
Speaker 1: of the bar. Yeah, he's like they're hitting the bars.
Speaker 1: But they're there. They can be like the big boy
Speaker 1: in town in some places, like they can walk around
Speaker 1: their chest out. They were pretty good and strong, but
Speaker 1: they still don't quite have it. But when you reach four,
Speaker 1: that's like you're I think a four year old is
Speaker 1: like a thirty one year old. He's in the PC
Speaker 1: of everything. Um wow, okay, so yeah, four or five, six,
Speaker 1: you're getting to they've they've they've achieved whatever whatever. Bodies
Speaker 1: structurally skeletally mature. That's what I've missed. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: Yet they have a weird way. They look different. When
Speaker 1: they get that will for sure everything about them. You
Speaker 1: see them from hundreds of yards away, and you know
Speaker 1: what you're looking at. Definitely where they carry their head,
Speaker 1: the neck, the chest, it's all. It's it's almost a
Speaker 1: different animal. And just how deliberate they almost look like
Speaker 1: in their head they're gone they seem like old men,
Speaker 1: is what they seemed like a day. How old are you,
Speaker 1: Steve Man? So I'd say a four year old plus
Speaker 1: kind of like a forty four year old person. Damn it,
Speaker 1: halfway to eighty eight man. But here's the deal. Let's
Speaker 1: say he snapped both of his antlers off. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: shoot him even though he's four and a half. You know,
Speaker 1: I had an interesting scenario like that two years ago
Speaker 1: with not to bring up the same deer again every
Speaker 1: time I ever talked to you, but holy Field broke
Speaker 1: off part of his main beam. I like hearing about
Speaker 1: this deer and I thought him to be four years
Speaker 1: old that year, and he snapped out half his antler,
Speaker 1: and I was faced with this question. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: it's the buck OFT been hunting forever at that point,
Speaker 1: I've been two years. He's mature. But he lost half
Speaker 1: his antler. What would a lot of people are asking
Speaker 1: what here gonna do? What are gonna do? And I said,
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna shoot him. But if he had knocked
Speaker 1: off both of his antlers, in my thought, it would
Speaker 1: be if I were to take that deer, I want
Speaker 1: to take that deer, like as I knew him, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense at all, So come on, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But come one part of it, part of that how
Speaker 1: do I describe it? Mental masturbation? You kill it, you
Speaker 1: kill a deer, and you take it, and you take
Speaker 1: the meat, you consume the meat, but then you also
Speaker 1: have some kind of a mento to remember that animal body.
Speaker 1: So that antler, his antlers, the mountain. That would be
Speaker 1: an important part of that hunt for me to be
Speaker 1: able look at that, remember that, see that, and it
Speaker 1: would just feel it just be a just be a
Speaker 1: bummer to kill him and not be able to see
Speaker 1: him in all his glory again. And why I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to kill something and then feel like a bummer
Speaker 1: about it afterwards. Let me put it this, let me
Speaker 1: do this to you. Let's say you found it. Let's
Speaker 1: say you had him because you found where he snapped
Speaker 1: him off. I guess in that case then yeah, because
Speaker 1: you could you could just the tax dumers could could
Speaker 1: fix it. Um. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Now
Speaker 1: holy Field was the uh you think that buck's dead?
Speaker 1: I think so I found a shed in February thinking
Speaker 1: still like found Zandler. So that mean as he made
Speaker 1: it into the winter. Figured he'd be back this year,
Speaker 1: but have gotten zero pictures, zero sightings. None of the
Speaker 1: neighbors I talked to have seen him or gotten pictures.
Speaker 1: So what do you think he's where? Where do you
Speaker 1: where do you think he's dead from? Well, we found
Speaker 1: I found his shed early, So I found it at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of February, late January. So as an
Speaker 1: early drop, lots of times early antler drop is indicative
Speaker 1: of health issues, nutrition, something like that. So my theory
Speaker 1: is that maybe he got shot by someone in gun
Speaker 1: Seas he had injured in some way, So he had
Speaker 1: an injury, dropped his antler early, and he's to come
Speaker 1: to die off over the winter, wouldn't kill or something
Speaker 1: like that. I was bear hunting one time at May
Speaker 1: and saw a bull elk still packing his antlers around?
Speaker 1: Is that pretty unusually? Honest? I've seen quite a few.
Speaker 1: I had some of my best elk. I don't do
Speaker 1: a lot of it, but elk shed picking days um
Speaker 1: late in May. We on my birthday still dropping. Well
Speaker 1: just you know when you go there and they're all
Speaker 1: on top of the grass, nothing's going over him, They're
Speaker 1: all just brown laying there. You know like it just
Speaker 1: recently happened. I'm with you, m to what degree if
Speaker 1: you like to, if you're if you're a guy that
Speaker 1: wants to kill mature white tail box, I mean one,
Speaker 1: they got to be there, absolutely in many places. That's
Speaker 1: the biggest thing keeping to them killing them is that
Speaker 1: they're not there. Yeah, they didn't exist when I was
Speaker 1: a kid and I grew up ninety miles from here,
Speaker 1: they really did. I mean, I don't want you think
Speaker 1: that's to find him a point out. Okay, We hunted
Speaker 1: uh public land north of us a little bit, and
Speaker 1: we hunted some large farms. We hunted some large farms
Speaker 1: very near our house, within an eight mile All the
Speaker 1: honey we did, unless we went out to Baldwin so
Speaker 1: on public land, all the honey we deal was an
Speaker 1: eight mile radius less than eight mile radius of our house. Okay,
Speaker 1: and unt some large farms, two farms, and my people,
Speaker 1: my my father knew from church families. My father knew
Speaker 1: from church and let us hunt out there where these
Speaker 1: were like three and four acre dairy operations where they
Speaker 1: were running dairy and they were growing corn and raised
Speaker 1: alfalfa to feed cows. And they had river bottoms, thickets
Speaker 1: like the whole picture, okay, And these two farms were
Speaker 1: virtually up against one another over the entirety of over
Speaker 1: the entire I ready of my until I moved to Montana.
Speaker 1: I and my old man's one shot and shot with
Speaker 1: his bow. One time of all those years of everyone
Speaker 1: hunting in the farmers kids hunting and us hunting, and
Speaker 1: everyone hunting and then surrounding, only one time that a
Speaker 1: buck that I now recognized to have been the three
Speaker 1: and a half ye old buck ever come off anywhere.
Speaker 1: I never laid eyes on one, dead or alive. I
Speaker 1: do not think you could read. I do not think
Speaker 1: they could reach three and a half years of age
Speaker 1: unless they lived in some deep, dark swamp hole that
Speaker 1: nobody went to. Ever, the one my dad killed, you
Speaker 1: killed on the edge of a pine plantation, small little
Speaker 1: thing called the pines. We ain't mark. You think years
Speaker 1: ago Michigan had any big box or are they just
Speaker 1: not around? I think that Steve's right for them to
Speaker 1: like to to a degree, there were definitely fewer of them.
Speaker 1: There were there were mature bucks around, but there are
Speaker 1: few and far between. And then number two, I do
Speaker 1: also think that years ago people weren't as tuned into
Speaker 1: how to kill mature bucks too, So it's much people
Speaker 1: are much more savvy now and the things you need
Speaker 1: to be doing to see and kill mature bucks. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was kind of head out of the most people
Speaker 1: head out in the woods next to a tree trunk
Speaker 1: or something like that, or get up and sit on
Speaker 1: a tree branch and shoot something over a carrot pile,
Speaker 1: because you weren't running cameras either, so you didn't know
Speaker 1: if you didn't know. If you knew one was out there,
Speaker 1: then you'd like change everything to go get them, but
Speaker 1: you didn't know they were out there. The one my
Speaker 1: old man killed, he didn't know what exists until it
Speaker 1: walked under the tree, right. Yeah, But I do think
Speaker 1: culture has changed so much that allows a lot more
Speaker 1: dear to to reach that age. So probably the biggest
Speaker 1: thing is just that the number of mature bucks around,
Speaker 1: it's just higher now. I remember being in high school
Speaker 1: and one of the farms we hunted on and one
Speaker 1: of the kids, Tim, who was still a big time
Speaker 1: hunter to day and and does a really good job.
Speaker 1: He's got a small property now but does a very
Speaker 1: good job with wildlife. Habitat on his place. He was
Speaker 1: the first guy. And I was in high school and
Speaker 1: I heard Tim's are a lot had passed on multiple bucks,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking like, something must be wrong with
Speaker 1: that dude's head. But he was a revolute he was
Speaker 1: like a pioneer man. He was a revolutionary at the time.
Speaker 1: It's like passing on bucks you crazy. And he had
Speaker 1: gotten good enough where he could do it. We used
Speaker 1: to think a big buck a big buck was just
Speaker 1: a year and a half old buck. To put more
Speaker 1: times on. My brother Danny shot with his bowl one time.
Speaker 1: He shot an eight point and got it stuffed. It's
Speaker 1: still hanging in my mom's house. It's a year and
Speaker 1: a half old buck. In our head. It was a giant.
Speaker 1: I remember he shot it and put a hole right
Speaker 1: through its heart. It took three steps and fell over
Speaker 1: it on itself, and he got a mount it and
Speaker 1: we you wouldn't believe we went through the drag dead
Speaker 1: deer ahole because the last you'd ever do was cut
Speaker 1: a buck off in the woods because you want to
Speaker 1: go show everybody. And it was like Danny killed the
Speaker 1: eight point. Danny killed eight point. But there was no
Speaker 1: perception it's just the same thing. It's just the same
Speaker 1: year and a half old buck. We thought that the points, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly on those points. I think that puts it in perspective.
Speaker 1: I didn't growing up. I was taught that like Spiker
Speaker 1: far Horn was one year old, and then if he's
Speaker 1: the six point, he's probably two years old at eight
Speaker 1: points three, and Ted it's probably four years old, no
Speaker 1: matter the size. You know, in our family, we didn't
Speaker 1: even talk about age at all. It was just the points.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, he's a spike, he's a six point.
Speaker 1: Never once did say it was probably three or five.
Speaker 1: It was the same much. My first buck was an
Speaker 1: eight pointer and I got it mounted and I thought
Speaker 1: it was the biggest damn buck ever. But it's well
Speaker 1: under a hundred inches. When when I shot a thing,
Speaker 1: I was like and disbelieve A thought it was a
Speaker 1: giant because someone getting an eight point got everyone's attention.
Speaker 1: But now you look at him, you're like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like a he just a year and a half old.
Speaker 1: So point being, I don't think that they were around
Speaker 1: and then culture changed. I think that a couple of
Speaker 1: things that led to it. In a handful of places
Speaker 1: like information about what it required to grow a big box.
Speaker 1: And I think kind of a changing people. This is
Speaker 1: like some old man ship here, but but a lot
Speaker 1: has changed around the way people handle permissions and stuff
Speaker 1: on their properties. And I think that at the like
Speaker 1: when I was coming into the world, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of properties around us, farms and stuff around us
Speaker 1: where the farmer wasn't even exactly clear on who was
Speaker 1: hunting there. People just hunt, you know, if someone gave
Speaker 1: you permission years ago, you just kept going on until
Speaker 1: they told you not to go any more. And so
Speaker 1: I think that there was more. I think that later,
Speaker 1: when people started to recognize the value of dear more,
Speaker 1: they started to kind of like wanting to know who
Speaker 1: was out there, and it just it wasn't like such
Speaker 1: a free for all, you know, I had I would
Speaker 1: have hunting permission on farms where every person that asked
Speaker 1: had hunting permission. No rhyme reads to it. I just
Speaker 1: like that kind of stuff has just come to an end.
Speaker 1: It's tough to come by. I was sitting next to
Speaker 1: the the there, and I I was sitting at dinner
Speaker 1: with you have met or heard of Shane Mahoney. Everyone
Speaker 1: here so he's kind of a preeminent expert on the
Speaker 1: North American model wildlife conservation. He's kind of like a
Speaker 1: conservationist philosopher type figure. So how you describe me like that?
Speaker 1: He saw him about just the way it's become hard
Speaker 1: for new hunters. The way it's become hard for young
Speaker 1: hunters is those days are kind of done when you
Speaker 1: could just wander around hunting on people's land, on neighbor's land,
Speaker 1: and you know the farms where everyone can just kind
Speaker 1: of go where you take your twenty two and ride
Speaker 1: out on your bike and go. And he said, there's
Speaker 1: all these programs now they're like meant to sort of
Speaker 1: like recreate that, because that you're not going to recreate it,
Speaker 1: and and and if there's an upside to this, the
Speaker 1: upside of this is I think there's a lot more
Speaker 1: big bucks running around now as people like exercise more
Speaker 1: control over their stuff. And I don't know what good
Speaker 1: big bucks really are. Besides they look cool, they represent something.
Speaker 1: They represent an ecosystem, well at least a species of
Speaker 1: population that is in balance in a natural state. If
Speaker 1: you looked at the deer herd in Michigan in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy or something like that or whenever you get are
Speaker 1: hunting around or whatever this was. Um it looks like, um,
Speaker 1: that was a very askew deer herd. Heavy heavy on
Speaker 1: the dos, very light on any type of mature bucks.
Speaker 1: Just tons and tons of year natural bucks. That's not
Speaker 1: a natural herd of deer as as it would be
Speaker 1: in you know, several hundred years ago when it wasn't
Speaker 1: as impacted by what we're doing. But now you are
Speaker 1: finding some places where you have a more natural herd,
Speaker 1: which is which is beneficial, not just for hunters I'd
Speaker 1: like to see big bucks, but having a relatively balanced
Speaker 1: age structure that's good for the whole herd. And what
Speaker 1: way is that good for the herd? So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you have more mature bucks and you have a
Speaker 1: balanced kind of structure of the different ages and things
Speaker 1: and balanced with the does, you're gonna have a more
Speaker 1: tight rut. If you have a tight rut, if you
Speaker 1: have a well timed rut happens consistently in a small window,
Speaker 1: you gonna have a better fawn dropping, tight fawn drop,
Speaker 1: a well placed fawn drop that is conducive for the
Speaker 1: females and the fawns to be most healthy grown up
Speaker 1: the next year. So if you get um, let me
Speaker 1: describe the opposite scenario. If you have a scenario where
Speaker 1: you've got lots and lots of does, not many mature bucks,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of year and affle bucks, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get does coming into heat and bread at all different
Speaker 1: times of the year in the fall, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: say a very spread out trickle run does and getting
Speaker 1: bread in mid October all the way to mid December,
Speaker 1: scattered all around. So you've got fawns dropping in March,
Speaker 1: you got fawns dropping and may not March. You got
Speaker 1: them dropping in late April, mid May, early in June.
Speaker 1: You want to have a tight drop if you have
Speaker 1: fawns dropping all the same time, less coyote predation. If
Speaker 1: you have them dropping at the right time that's not
Speaker 1: too early that they're freezing and not having nutrition available,
Speaker 1: but not so late that they're getting a late start
Speaker 1: on being able to go in the winter. Small exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: So that that I mean, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different things on those lines that lay a couple of
Speaker 1: things in here. Real quick. No, you're not rambling at all.
Speaker 1: But I remember in those in that era, it was
Speaker 1: common to hear that you had bucked to dough ratios
Speaker 1: of twenty or thirty does to every buck. And I
Speaker 1: remember when I learned that they were born basically one
Speaker 1: to one ratio. It's kind of shocking to see that
Speaker 1: that level of of harvest on the bucks. But it's
Speaker 1: a thing that like, and I've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I talked about it here, but
Speaker 1: when we had like largely kind of eliminated deer really
Speaker 1: knocked deer back bad. You know, even coming up into
Speaker 1: the into the nineteen thirties nineteen forties, just weren't that
Speaker 1: any deer around. Um, people became very like like it was,
Speaker 1: it became culturally taboo to shoot. Does I remember, like
Speaker 1: in this era we're talking about when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of old timers that would like
Speaker 1: disparage someone who shot a dough And because you wanted
Speaker 1: to get a deer, you just shot the box and
Speaker 1: you shot every damn buck anyone ever laid eyes on
Speaker 1: got shot, and you'd wind up with these situations where
Speaker 1: you had, like I said, twenty to thirty dolls for
Speaker 1: every book and the box were all most books were
Speaker 1: not living in to see their second December. Even relatively recently,
Speaker 1: that was still the case in a lot of states. So,
Speaker 1: for example, in Michigan, and I'm gonna get the numbers
Speaker 1: not quite right, um, but some number of years ago,
Speaker 1: maybe it's ten years ago, give a take the percentage
Speaker 1: of the buck harvest in Michigan. If I remember right,
Speaker 1: someone's gonna email you and say I'm wrong, but it's
Speaker 1: somewhere in this ball park, something like se of all
Speaker 1: the bucks, maybe more of all the bucks killed in
Speaker 1: Michigan were year and a half olds. Now it has
Speaker 1: dropped down to so significantly improved, but still one of
Speaker 1: the highest in the country, something like fifty five percent
Speaker 1: or fifty some percent now, I think is the number
Speaker 1: of the bucks killed in Michigan annually are year and
Speaker 1: a half old, um, And that's still like the top
Speaker 1: five in the country. But now across the entire country
Speaker 1: several years ago, for the first time, an age class
Speaker 1: different than year and a half olds is a higher
Speaker 1: percentage of the buck harvests than year and a halfl
Speaker 1: So yeah, so now bucks over three comprise overt of
Speaker 1: the harvest. If you look at across the country, and
Speaker 1: this has changed over the last fifteen and twenty years,
Speaker 1: has just been dropping down. So why don't why don't
Speaker 1: guys that are big into white tail management? Why don't
Speaker 1: they let I know, the answer to this is Poe
Speaker 1: using it. Why don't if you want balanced age structure,
Speaker 1: why don't they let the once they hit four? Why
Speaker 1: don't they become hands off? Why be like, oh, we
Speaker 1: want to make older box, we wanna make older bucks,
Speaker 1: but then systematically kill off every buck that gets to
Speaker 1: be that same threshold age. Why is there not a
Speaker 1: movement to or or like a management strategy be like
Speaker 1: to get to be like post trophy and say like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, man, if he hits four and a half,
Speaker 1: what one in a hundred bucks or whatever it is
Speaker 1: will be four in half. So as big as they're
Speaker 1: gonna get, then we let those go because we're gonna
Speaker 1: create five year old, six year old, seven year old.
Speaker 1: But instead they get that big and people just get
Speaker 1: so lusty for him they want them dead. So it
Speaker 1: makes it hard to argue that you're really trying to
Speaker 1: have these like age classes in places it seems like
Speaker 1: you're just walking What you're really trying to do is
Speaker 1: have big box because you want to shoot big bucks,
Speaker 1: and and you're trying to like act like there's some
Speaker 1: biology or or a college or conservation at work when
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, how convenient, I think. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's gonna argue the fact that anyone who
Speaker 1: is managing deer also wants to hunt deer. They want
Speaker 1: to take some deer. So yes, so there's gonna each
Speaker 1: person is going to set a different goal that is
Speaker 1: going to hopefully achieve something beneficial for the her, but
Speaker 1: also they've got to have a goal as far as
Speaker 1: what they want to try to hunt in harvest. And
Speaker 1: if you start saying that, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: wait for six or seven or eight or nine year
Speaker 1: old bucks, you're simply never gonna shoot you bucks then,
Speaker 1: because it's really really hard to get bucks over four,
Speaker 1: let alone over five um. Even on big managed properties.
Speaker 1: It's just not an easy thing to do because even
Speaker 1: if you have a large property, these deers still go
Speaker 1: all over the place. UM. So it's no guaranteed thing
Speaker 1: that if you pass on a four year old he's
Speaker 1: gonna make to five um. Whether you're on a hunt
Speaker 1: ac or property or a thousand maker property that's not
Speaker 1: a guarantee, So that just kind of wants up being
Speaker 1: about as old. Like, there's so fewer five or year
Speaker 1: olds and four year olds even yeahs, I don't know
Speaker 1: of anyone. Even the folks that take management to the
Speaker 1: highest level have great, big properties. Um, they can control
Speaker 1: a lot of acreage. I don't know anyone that really
Speaker 1: looks at targeting anything over five. Five is kind of
Speaker 1: like that. If it's over five, it is fully mature,
Speaker 1: it has has kind of reached the pinnacle as far
Speaker 1: as body size, antler size. It's it's it's it's um
Speaker 1: expressed whatever genetic potential there. It is. What he's gonna
Speaker 1: be is what he's gonna be, and that's a fully
Speaker 1: mature deer that's gonna do everything that the mature dear
Speaker 1: is gonna do. And if you can get them older
Speaker 1: than that, great, but that's hard to ask for. UM,
Speaker 1: So five year olds or what most people kind of
Speaker 1: set as that top end. During this week, tell me
Speaker 1: about the or I can start the encounters you had
Speaker 1: with with um, the closest encounters you had with mature
Speaker 1: bucks and what what went wrong? Yeah, well I had one.
Speaker 1: I had one encounter on the ture buck for sure,
Speaker 1: mature buck? Do you wanna tell my story? Do you
Speaker 1: want to start with yours? You go ahead? No, dude,
Speaker 1: whatever you decide, Mark, you should go first. Okay, they
Speaker 1: had it began and ended so fast like they do.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm perched up in a really shitty tree powder.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm gonna talk about the one that
Speaker 1: you screwed up, because I don't think he was four
Speaker 1: and a half. I think he was like three and
Speaker 1: a half or something like that. What do you think
Speaker 1: he was? Mark? So I that's not the deer I saw.
Speaker 1: The deer I saw? Was that the one that you
Speaker 1: screwed up? The big one? The other one that's a
Speaker 1: mature buck. I didn't see the big, big one, but
Speaker 1: I'm talking with the other one. But did you screw
Speaker 1: that up? No? I screwed up? Well, I in that
Speaker 1: I'm a person that has an order to him, not
Speaker 1: an unusual order. In fact, my wife comments, I'm not
Speaker 1: a smell uh in fact, not a smelly person. But uh, okay,
Speaker 1: can we talk about the one you screwed up? Sure? Man,
Speaker 1: it's a story. So first of all, I'd like to
Speaker 1: preface the story by saying that this is never in
Speaker 1: the history of mediator ever happened to me before, as
Speaker 1: far as i'm you're embarrassed about it, but you don't
Speaker 1: need terrible. So Lauren was talking about the pressure of
Speaker 1: like being a camera dude on a hunt like that.
Speaker 1: To me, that interaction that happened is worse than any
Speaker 1: like anything either one of the hunters could have done. No,
Speaker 1: you gotta tell it now, Okay, if killing uh killing
Speaker 1: the mature buck mark? What percentage harder does it become
Speaker 1: when you have a camera person? It is harder. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's half as likely something significant. Sure, it's
Speaker 1: twice as hard, a little less, twice less, twice hard,
Speaker 1: but there's is a lot, there's already a lot that
Speaker 1: can go wrong, and you're just making it's it's not
Speaker 1: quantifiable because there's twice as much older, there's twice as
Speaker 1: much movement, there's twice as many weird there's twice as
Speaker 1: many weird blobs up in the tree, there's twice as
Speaker 1: much sound, and and I found that that, Um, the
Speaker 1: best camera guys. I don't know why this is, but
Speaker 1: the best camera guys don't have this is this is
Speaker 1: not a fair statement. We have some phenomenal camera guys
Speaker 1: who don't have a strong hunting background, which is a plus,
Speaker 1: but they tend to not know how to read a critter.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to read a critter, and they
Speaker 1: don't know when. Is this fair? Probably No, it's totally fair.
Speaker 1: I think I've I've been learning how to a lot
Speaker 1: better taking its temperature. I take a critter's temperature now,
Speaker 1: I feel maybe not to the extent of pro but
Speaker 1: I'm close. I think when is it appropriate to move? Yes,
Speaker 1: taking his temperature? A deer standing there, uh, who's kind
Speaker 1: of like waving his nose through the air and kind
Speaker 1: of almost wanting to like stop his front hoof don't move,
Speaker 1: then that's yeah. Okay, so yeah, you're taking this temperature
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is not an appropriate time for
Speaker 1: movement because this deer is like I don't like something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I don't like, but I don't
Speaker 1: like it a deer, this guy his nose of the
Speaker 1: arts of another dear Time to move man still slowly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you get it. Yeah, that's good. A turkey who's
Speaker 1: got his fan up and his fan is between its
Speaker 1: head and you you can do it. That's time to move. Um.
Speaker 1: So we're sitting there and and we're in a weird
Speaker 1: setup where we're actually differ. Thinks I'm gonna tree stand
Speaker 1: up in a shitty tree, and Chris is in like
Speaker 1: a little outhouse. What do you call us? That's like
Speaker 1: a box. Chris is up a little miniature plastic bad
Speaker 1: box blind. It was less than the desirable filming location.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't That wasn't the problem. The problem was
Speaker 1: about ten am. I get a text from Chris. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at Chris. Can hear me? So? So we were
Speaker 1: I were him because we're filming. So I have a
Speaker 1: mic and I can whisper to Chris. I can be
Speaker 1: like six o'clock do or whatever. But he can't communicate
Speaker 1: to me. Um. We have one thing where there's a
Speaker 1: stick that he can hang out of his blind and
Speaker 1: that conveys a certain message to me. What What did
Speaker 1: that convey? That conveys? Because this is the problem we have.
Speaker 1: That conveys I see it, dear, that you don't see.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you that this stick does not come
Speaker 1: into play very often, but it did one time. But
Speaker 1: one time the stick came into play. Yeah it's damn Yeah.
Speaker 1: We met Pounders mom and uh and this pounder and
Speaker 1: miss Founder and she was telling us about a great
Speaker 1: cook Pounder so and she made a bunch of cookies.
Speaker 1: So around ten I get a text, Is that what happened? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you needed to go down because you had left
Speaker 1: your camera battery at the base of the blind. So
Speaker 1: I had my backpack. But then I had like a
Speaker 1: little go bag that I had made, and I was
Speaker 1: stoked on it because I was gonna have it all
Speaker 1: like folded in and silent, and if I needed to
Speaker 1: like quickly change a battery, I would just reach into
Speaker 1: this bag. No zippers, no velcrow, nothing, grabbed the battery.
Speaker 1: Still noisy ass bag. Yeah, well until it's until it's
Speaker 1: in its right zone, then it's then it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not the greatest bag, But I was stoked on the idea.
Speaker 1: But then I stupidly forgot to put the battery in
Speaker 1: that bag and left it in my bag at the
Speaker 1: bottom of this ladder. And you didn't have a pea
Speaker 1: bottle and I didn't have a pea bottle, and you
Speaker 1: can't really sneak her up out over the window ledge
Speaker 1: a little too high, and you could have sneaked her
Speaker 1: out the door, but you had to get a battery anyway.
Speaker 1: So he says, is it okay if I climbed down?
Speaker 1: It's ten am? Is it okay if I climbed down
Speaker 1: and get me a battery and take a leak. I
Speaker 1: see you at the door open, I see him come down.
Speaker 1: I see him turn away from me, presumably, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: sneaked her out. And I looked past you and down
Speaker 1: the hill, and I'm not kiddey man. We've been sitting
Speaker 1: there all morning. And he hits the ground, starts taking
Speaker 1: a whiz, and in the direction he's whizzing, I just like,
Speaker 1: here's a buck, and he's coming, and he's close, he's coming.
Speaker 1: It was like you ever have a dream where like
Speaker 1: like when you wake up from the dream, you and
Speaker 1: you realize that it was the dream, you're like so
Speaker 1: relieved that it wasn't real life. Yes, that's what it was,
Speaker 1: except it was real life. Oh that was like the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. And I'm saying to you, like I do,
Speaker 1: I'm like Chris, Chris. Then I realized he can't hear.
Speaker 1: He had to unhook. So you eventually turned around and
Speaker 1: I give you a frantic like down on the ground,
Speaker 1: and I see him good out of his phone, like
Speaker 1: he's gonna fil him with his phone and aim it.
Speaker 1: It's my only instinct. And it's a nice buck. It's
Speaker 1: a nice like I'm like very interested in shooting his buck.
Speaker 1: And this buck comes up and I think he's gonna
Speaker 1: come right up the edge you're on and when be
Speaker 1: perfect And I'm like, he's gonna pass and buy ten
Speaker 1: ft away about it, like he probably not gonna he's
Speaker 1: probably not gonna see because you're hunker down in tall grass.
Speaker 1: But then he cuts and comes in and picks up
Speaker 1: your smell. And here's the difference between like an older
Speaker 1: buck and a not older buck. When he hits that smell,
Speaker 1: it's he turned like like you watch deer hits smell
Speaker 1: all the time, and a lot of your hits smell.
Speaker 1: They hit human odor and they get this like oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, and they wave their nose in the air
Speaker 1: and they're like they're gonna run. Maybe not. They stop
Speaker 1: their footy, they take three bounds and stop again and
Speaker 1: and blow and whatever they do. They and then they
Speaker 1: drift off raising all kind of fanfare and tail in
Speaker 1: the air and all piste off and letting everybody know.
Speaker 1: And you know, but it took him like a full
Speaker 1: minute to like come to the conclusion this is what
Speaker 1: they want to do. This buck hits that like that
Speaker 1: wall of scent, and he he doesn't like his attitude
Speaker 1: doesn't change really, but he just stops, turns around and
Speaker 1: lowers his profile. M hm, like he sees like slink
Speaker 1: into the earth more and just go back the same direction.
Speaker 1: Very often that you describe that wall of scent. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's they hit a wall. They literally you
Speaker 1: can physically see it as if they smash their head
Speaker 1: into it and then bam, it's all different after that.
Speaker 1: And he's like not he doesn't desire to draw any
Speaker 1: attention to himself. No pause. It's like that's how they get,
Speaker 1: that's how they live. Like that's the difference in the
Speaker 1: buck that dies in a buck that lives. It's like
Speaker 1: you bump a big meal to your buck, you know,
Speaker 1: like muled your famous for like you bump amulder buck
Speaker 1: and they run and they're gonna vanish. They're gonna get
Speaker 1: where He's not gonna be able to he's gonna vanish
Speaker 1: over the edge, but he stops and looks back. Like
Speaker 1: the big ones when you bust a group of them.
Speaker 1: He doesn't go the way the dolls go. He goes
Speaker 1: a different way, and he ever stops, he doesn't stop
Speaker 1: and do that. What was that? And this buck man?
Speaker 1: It was kind of magical to watch him just be
Speaker 1: like not killing me today, sons of bites and just
Speaker 1: slunk out. Now the other one go ahead. I was
Speaker 1: just gonna ask, this wasn't the short time one, or
Speaker 1: was the short time one he had? He had one
Speaker 1: of his sides, one of his sides had noticeably shorter
Speaker 1: times than the other side. Now, the one that was
Speaker 1: my not the one that was not I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it was my fault, but the one that
Speaker 1: was not Chris's fault. All day were watching deer that
Speaker 1: are like following a certain line of traffic. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're coming into our zone and they're like coming along
Speaker 1: the same edge and some break some go straight, and
Speaker 1: some break left and come up past us, eat some
Speaker 1: dry leaves or laying on top of the snow. They're
Speaker 1: like that little spot m hm. He just watched deer
Speaker 1: They're like doing this all daylong. And there's one spot
Speaker 1: I can't see really clearly, and it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a ridgeline that comes up to where we are, and
Speaker 1: late in the morning, like you're saying, late in the morning,
Speaker 1: here comes one and I look and he's already it's
Speaker 1: too it's happening too fast, already coming against the flow
Speaker 1: of traffic. Walking the ridge just has that dead on,
Speaker 1: like paranoid look to him, but traveling like with a
Speaker 1: sense of purpose. And it's a ten, it's a nice ten.
Speaker 1: And he comes up and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: like he's gonna pass ten yards way, He's gonna pass
Speaker 1: sen yards away. I get my bow. He's behind some brush.
Speaker 1: I'm not even only have a chance to start pulling
Speaker 1: back and hits the wall of scent and not even
Speaker 1: I mean, he's so close to me and I've been
Speaker 1: there for hours, and the winds like not the kind
Speaker 1: of wind that flushes everything away, but just to kind
Speaker 1: of wind it's like very steady in the direction and
Speaker 1: you've pooled up I don't know how much stink at
Speaker 1: ten yards away, and he hits it and just gone vanished.
Speaker 1: Was that one of the bigger white tail bucks you've
Speaker 1: seen while honey at least yeah, right, yeah, probably a
Speaker 1: pretty nice one, super nice one. It was the kind
Speaker 1: of buck, and I was glad. I was kind of
Speaker 1: like reviewing in my mind. I was kind of glad
Speaker 1: and have time to dwell on how nice he was.
Speaker 1: But I finally I could do everything better when I
Speaker 1: have time. If I have time. Um, you see something,
Speaker 1: you get excited. When you have time, the excitement goes
Speaker 1: down and you start remembering the important things. This would
Speaker 1: have been one of those great shots to screw up,
Speaker 1: because um, it would have happened too fast. Do you
Speaker 1: think is there anything like if you I always trying
Speaker 1: to do this at least any kind of mature bucking
Speaker 1: counter that doesn't end the way I wanted to try?
Speaker 1: Self analyzed little bit when you look back in that,
Speaker 1: Is there anything you would have done differently? Is there
Speaker 1: any other Yeah? I would be after all this time
Speaker 1: we've and spending in trees and and just having things
Speaker 1: like that happened and then not work out. I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: it's hard to do it. But the balance of shooting
Speaker 1: lanes and cover, Yeah, because here you have here here
Speaker 1: I'm in a tree where of the stuff around me,
Speaker 1: there's no possible way to take a shot. You're also
Speaker 1: not that high in that tree either. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: low stand. It's a horrible tree. Yeah, that from that
Speaker 1: angle you got plenty of cover. You can't it's impossible
Speaker 1: to shoot the years own. You cannot shoot now. Though,
Speaker 1: if we assume that we're stuck with that stand where
Speaker 1: it is, if the back had been trimmed out, you
Speaker 1: know how much worse we would have been, like hung
Speaker 1: out to dry them. That's the thing, because if you
Speaker 1: could like I actually was sitting there tonight thinking about um,
Speaker 1: I was actually sitting there to night thinking about this
Speaker 1: problem and the cover you and I think if I
Speaker 1: hunted up, if I hunted up a spot where I
Speaker 1: was really like putting in multiple years in hunting there,
Speaker 1: I would I would probably like my contribution to white
Speaker 1: tail hunting would be that I would become very detail
Speaker 1: focused around selecting spots not just for their location, not
Speaker 1: just to take advantage of pinch points and travel routes,
Speaker 1: but I would put a lot of energy into places
Speaker 1: that had good cover and and so that if I
Speaker 1: looked around me, if I like spun in the degree circle,
Speaker 1: I'd be going to like cover shooting lane, cover shooting lane,
Speaker 1: cover shooting lane, even if I had to have someone
Speaker 1: come out, if I had to like take my woman
Speaker 1: out and give her a pulse, give her a pulse,
Speaker 1: all with a thirty foot handle. I'm sorry I have
Speaker 1: to interrupt, but I don't think you're bringing up anything
Speaker 1: new here. I think that you're explaining what most people
Speaker 1: go out there and try to achieve, not when you
Speaker 1: doing not when you're running around making snap decisions about stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you do. We used to when I when
Speaker 1: I was younger, my old man put a ton of
Speaker 1: focus on it. Not covered, but shooting lanes. If you
Speaker 1: have the preset stands that you're putting up the four
Speaker 1: season and stuff, Yeah, absolutely, but not like we're doing
Speaker 1: the running gun hanging hunt. And I think I think
Speaker 1: the issue here, right, both your situation and my situation,
Speaker 1: we ran to the same problem. Um, But I think
Speaker 1: I think what we have here is we've got a
Speaker 1: property that we are trying to get stands up this summer,
Speaker 1: and a lot of stands up across a bunch of places,
Speaker 1: and they're simply wasn't time to get every single one
Speaker 1: perfect right guy, and nobody haunted it. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: were the first ones. Right. Um, So I think what
Speaker 1: we have this year, now we're getting us first run
Speaker 1: through like all the stands we've we've hung all the
Speaker 1: spots that got trimmed out. I think now this next
Speaker 1: spring and summer, we're gonna know, Okay, this one we
Speaker 1: gotta fix a, B and C, this one, we gotta
Speaker 1: trim out this, this and this and and we'll have
Speaker 1: time to go back to a lot of these other
Speaker 1: stands that we just barely had time to get up
Speaker 1: this year. Now it's now we can try to get
Speaker 1: things a little bit more fine tuned. You don't have
Speaker 1: a back background as an arburst, is there? Right? So
Speaker 1: this is especially sensitive subject, right, I can I can
Speaker 1: feel that you stewed on it. I have stuped on
Speaker 1: it as well because it it hurt me too. But
Speaker 1: that's something okay, talking about getting screwed by big bucks,
Speaker 1: getting screwed by big Bucks, the anatomy of getting screwed
Speaker 1: by a big Buck. Well this that same day that
Speaker 1: you had your big giant Buck come by and be
Speaker 1: stuck behind brush, I get this text message from you
Speaker 1: saying I had a giant at ten yards couldn't get
Speaker 1: a shot because of brush. I told you I could
Speaker 1: have jumped on him. Yeah, yeah, I should have jumped
Speaker 1: on him. Why wasn't that your your change? You would
Speaker 1: have made um. So that morning, like I said, me
Speaker 1: and Lauren had um, we've been seeing handle, not even
Speaker 1: hand a good number of bucks running through, chasing does
Speaker 1: around a lot of activity. So I gave him the
Speaker 1: good news bad news speech, told him we're gonna sit
Speaker 1: all day and um, as you alluded to. Around eleven o'clock,
Speaker 1: I turned around, Hey, Lauren, this is the beginning of
Speaker 1: what I think is the best stretch of the day
Speaker 1: oftentimes for like that one solo mature buck to come through,
Speaker 1: just notorious eleven to one, big bucks, big old mature
Speaker 1: bucks are gonna come cruising through checking these doe betting ears.
Speaker 1: And the spot we were in was a really cool
Speaker 1: little bench on a ridge, and there's great betting behind us,
Speaker 1: great betting sort of in front of us a little
Speaker 1: ways and then around the corner of this ridge. It
Speaker 1: just seemed like a spot that a mature buck with
Speaker 1: cruise midday. So we even said a bet. We're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm betting, Like, let's put money, Like, I have one
Speaker 1: dollar bill in my wallet. I bet you that we
Speaker 1: will see a mature but a deer. I think we
Speaker 1: just said a deer. I bet like eleven thirty five
Speaker 1: we see the first deer between eleven and one. You
Speaker 1: walk around with a one dollar bill in your wallet. Yes,
Speaker 1: in this situation, I have been have a one dollar billon.
Speaker 1: Was it? Um? I lost? You did loose and then
Speaker 1: later we double or nothing to that one again? Um?
Speaker 1: But it actually I wasn't quite right because we saw
Speaker 1: the dough at eleven thirty. The buck we saw one
Speaker 1: hour later. So twelve thirty rolls around. We've seen a
Speaker 1: few doughs coming through. Midday twelve thirty, I am looking
Speaker 1: off to my right, kind of doing my skin, and
Speaker 1: I noticed a dark shape moving along the side of
Speaker 1: this ridge. And there's snow over everything. It's snowed overnight,
Speaker 1: so you can see these bodies or lists right away.
Speaker 1: Pull my bannocks, get eyes on him. And at first
Speaker 1: I saw the buck and I'm like, Lauren Buck coming
Speaker 1: in whatever six o'clock or whatever it was, and um,
Speaker 1: he gets turned around and I'm like, usually the first
Speaker 1: thing to say if it's a buck or dough and
Speaker 1: then right away there's used a quick snap judgment like
Speaker 1: little buck or shooter or something like that, just so
Speaker 1: he knows like yeah. And first I was like buck,
Speaker 1: big buck. And then I'm wasna looking at him again,
Speaker 1: and and I'm trying to look at his body and
Speaker 1: trying to like see what's coming my way. And for
Speaker 1: the first time this trip, I was like, I think
Speaker 1: that's a shooter. Um. I just remember noticing obviously bigger body.
Speaker 1: And then when you looked up as antlers, I saw heaviness.
Speaker 1: There was a heaviness to it. And I remember looking
Speaker 1: at the main beam and seeing like something funky going on,
Speaker 1: another thing of indicative, like you're not gonna see a
Speaker 1: year and a half old or two and a half
Speaker 1: year a buck. That's gonna be some kind of unique
Speaker 1: funkiness to the rack. Um, So he's coming down the ridge,
Speaker 1: and earlier, maybe ten minutes before that sounds rout right,
Speaker 1: maybe five minutes before, we had seen a couple of
Speaker 1: deer running or moving across the opposite ridge, and so
Speaker 1: I grunted a couple of times just on the off
Speaker 1: chance that one was a buck. We occasionally do like
Speaker 1: a hail Mary grunt. So I grunted. Now this about
Speaker 1: comes in. We didn't know if he was coming in
Speaker 1: just because he was cruising, or if he was coming
Speaker 1: into the ground. But make your grunt noise. Well, I
Speaker 1: usually as a grunt tube. Just guys, zuck, you can
Speaker 1: probably do it all right, all right, all right, do
Speaker 1: your turkey call with no turkey call. Check this out.
Speaker 1: This guy with no turkey calling his mouth. Do the
Speaker 1: p Yeah, that's where he makes his magic. Good. That's good, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's real good. So there you are, Matt nice. Just
Speaker 1: buck we got on camera. Yeah, well, well you're you're
Speaker 1: stealing my thunder. So the next thing I know, um,
Speaker 1: he is coming up. He comes over the rise at
Speaker 1: this point like full blown. This is absolutely buck, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna shoot. I grabbed my bow. I turned into position.
Speaker 1: He's worked his way across and at this point in
Speaker 1: an encounter with the mature buck, I'm usually holding my
Speaker 1: bow and then I'm gonna grab my release and have
Speaker 1: it clipped on and ready to go. So I go
Speaker 1: to clip on my release and I don't have a
Speaker 1: release on my hand because you were changing your clothes.
Speaker 1: Because just a minute like minutes something before I had
Speaker 1: added another layer put a vest on. So I took
Speaker 1: everything off, put the vest on, and I take off
Speaker 1: my release. Well, I put my release in my pocket
Speaker 1: and forgot to put my release on. Downfall of a
Speaker 1: twelve hour sit. Yeah, I kind of want to put
Speaker 1: a layer on, take a layer off. Whatever. So this
Speaker 1: is the most terrified I've probably ever been in my
Speaker 1: entire hunting life. When I've got this great, big mature
Speaker 1: about coming in and I don't have a release on,
Speaker 1: and I said a bad word on camera. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I blanked up. I said that. He's walking in and
Speaker 1: I'm like scrambling trying to get my release. I found
Speaker 1: it and I'm trying to get it in my hand
Speaker 1: and he's just slowly walking across. Fortunately, the area he's
Speaker 1: walking across is all limbs, like there's zero zero Could
Speaker 1: you drawn back? Uh No, because he was so far
Speaker 1: from being from being able to be in a shotline
Speaker 1: that I'd be holding back for three minutes. So I
Speaker 1: remember getting the release on and my hands started to
Speaker 1: shake while I was trying to get it on so
Speaker 1: badly I could not get the strap through the buckle
Speaker 1: like I was sitting there like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: bux that was shaking from the release, from freaking out
Speaker 1: about trying to get the release, that's what threw me.
Speaker 1: Um Like. I was like, I gotta get this thing on,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't. And I'm just imagining he's standing right
Speaker 1: in the open and I can't shoot him right now.
Speaker 1: He wasn't, but in my mind I was sticking as it.
Speaker 1: But finally I remember telling myself, don't think about going fast,
Speaker 1: just just pull it through. Just so, I like slowed
Speaker 1: it down and I got the release on, and I
Speaker 1: looked back up and he's still behind all these tree limbs,
Speaker 1: slowly working his way. I'm okay, he's right there, he's
Speaker 1: moving in. He's like thirty yards, he's twenty five yards.
Speaker 1: Question about the release? Do you ever practice fingers so
Speaker 1: that just in case you release, said falling into the snow,
Speaker 1: you just had to let him walk. You couldn't shoot fingers.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I would shoot fingers. Can
Speaker 1: you shoot a short limb bow with fingers? Fingers? Why,
Speaker 1: there's a certain there's a minimum actle to actually you
Speaker 1: have to have so you don't get like a real
Speaker 1: bad pinch from the bow stream and my grip is
Speaker 1: so strong I can just grab the loop. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: pinchinger and thumb. That's very impressive. I do train that.
Speaker 1: Put it in your teeth. Thank you. Mark. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no release snow go, no release snow go. But in
Speaker 1: this case, I was able to get the release on time,
Speaker 1: and it was a huge relief. He's still there. I
Speaker 1: clicked on, like, all right, that's great. But then I'm
Speaker 1: looking at him and there's just no shoot there's no
Speaker 1: holes I can get a shot, I can't thread it
Speaker 1: through anywhere. I'm looking at him like trying to see,
Speaker 1: and he's just knew me, knew him his way along,
Speaker 1: kind of just and sniffing around, walking along just perfect.
Speaker 1: I was twenty yards broadside Lawrence, felling him gray, and
Speaker 1: he's a beautiful buck. And then I look, okay, no
Speaker 1: shooting lands, no shootlings. I'm seeing, Okay, he's gotta walk
Speaker 1: another ten yards or so, and then there's there's no
Speaker 1: reason for a buck to be lingering around that long
Speaker 1: without hitting the shooting lane. But he's moving anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I agree there should have been a shooting land
Speaker 1: here there, just there just wasn't Um, there's shooting lanes
Speaker 1: in the other three directions. This was just the one
Speaker 1: spot that we didn't get yet. And but he's moving,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't do you any good slowly moving, And
Speaker 1: unfortunately he slowly moved in the direction that our wind
Speaker 1: was blowing, the one direction we didn't want him to go,
Speaker 1: and there was no openings before he hit that wind.
Speaker 1: So just like you described, he's walking along and he
Speaker 1: hits the wall, and as soon as he hits the wall,
Speaker 1: it's like someone spanked him. Like he just jumped and
Speaker 1: bounced off. It's different than your buck the slank away.
Speaker 1: He hit it and immediately jumped, ran off ten fifteen yards,
Speaker 1: stopped really yeah, looked back one time and then slunk
Speaker 1: a laugh, And then after that I just melted down
Speaker 1: because then I realized that was the big brow buck.
Speaker 1: The big brow buck was the buck that I got
Speaker 1: on camera in September August, the biggest deer we've seen
Speaker 1: in the farm, really really really cool deer. He has
Speaker 1: um he was the obviously most mature buck that we
Speaker 1: had seen yet huge body. Um. I remember, we we
Speaker 1: got the picture like that's a no brainer. That's the
Speaker 1: only real one we got that wasn't them, and then
Speaker 1: he has this really unique like at least twelve inch
Speaker 1: brow time, just huge brow time. Um, so really really
Speaker 1: really cool buck. And he was the one. I was like, Man,
Speaker 1: if there's any deer I could happen to get a
Speaker 1: chance that, he was the one. I would really like
Speaker 1: to get a chance that. And there was a twenty
Speaker 1: yards and I couldn't shoot him, and he bounces off
Speaker 1: and and that was it. So I was, you know,
Speaker 1: he had that these moments, especially in Michigan. An opportunity
Speaker 1: to mature buck is so so so rare. An opportunity
Speaker 1: to mature buck like that in Michigan is is infinitely
Speaker 1: more rare. Um to have that right there in your
Speaker 1: hands after hours, so many hours, miss is you know,
Speaker 1: I've been going aft for quite a long time here
Speaker 1: in Michigan for I don't know if that was like
Speaker 1: the tenth day in arrow or something like that, that
Speaker 1: I've been hunting um in the rut and um. To
Speaker 1: have it right there and not have to come together
Speaker 1: it was a little frustrating, even like it doesn't even
Speaker 1: need to be big huge giants, man, because I had
Speaker 1: like a like I loosed an arrow I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like a eight point, you know, like a little
Speaker 1: like a two and a half year old type eight
Speaker 1: point buck. But this trip like like a screw up
Speaker 1: for me. And it's like all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: there he is, out of nowhere, no sound, nothing like.
Speaker 1: There he is, and he's gonna be gone in no time.
Speaker 1: And I have a great shooting window. And he stopped,
Speaker 1: and I go to drawback, so I'm ready when he
Speaker 1: hits the shooting window, and if I need to, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say something to stop him. Even though you said
Speaker 1: that with these bocks don't do that. We did have
Speaker 1: a phone call before this night. We talked about it
Speaker 1: right how they jumped the string, marks saying, there's so
Speaker 1: like they're too high strung and too nervous all the time,
Speaker 1: and when you stop him with a with a grunt,
Speaker 1: they stense up so bad that when they hear the string,
Speaker 1: they're gonna bolt. They're gonna jump the string. So you
Speaker 1: don't like to alert them if you don't have to. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I go to drawback and not go to a drawback
Speaker 1: so that I'm ready for the lane when it's a
Speaker 1: nice big shooting lane. But he stopped shy the lane,
Speaker 1: and as I'm looking, I realized, oh wow, there's actually
Speaker 1: like most of his rib cage is actually open. And
Speaker 1: I become so fixated on the fact that like, what
Speaker 1: are the chances and and can you do this? And
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you can and should you ensure it's open?
Speaker 1: And I'm like running this in my head and and
Speaker 1: as I'm like, as my brain is sending the signal
Speaker 1: to to hit the release, he steps but I still
Speaker 1: like hit the release, and I and and like reviewing
Speaker 1: my head, I almost had the desire like reach back
Speaker 1: and grab my arrow, but he stepped in lunge, like
Speaker 1: stepped or was already like stepping, like he's scared. He
Speaker 1: saw me pull back and like freaked them lifted up
Speaker 1: and stepped, and then his step as the as I'm
Speaker 1: releasing the movement, his step turns into a leap and
Speaker 1: it was gone for the arrow. It's amazing how quick
Speaker 1: they can drop. Dude, this is one of those old
Speaker 1: crazy ones. This is the teenager. So how did you
Speaker 1: feel after that missed opportunity? Like, how do you take that? Well?
Speaker 1: At first I felt pretty sick because I'm afraid I
Speaker 1: hit it. Yeah, but we have, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the luxuries we have. We had two luxuries, one a
Speaker 1: camera so you can review, and to snow. So I
Speaker 1: waited a while and got down and followed his tracks
Speaker 1: for long ways not to drop of blood, and then
Speaker 1: I catch up to him chasing a dough. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then went back. We watched the footage a ton of
Speaker 1: times more and you it's not there. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: find the air because I went into snowy high grass.
Speaker 1: But like I said, I tracked. I tracked him for
Speaker 1: over a hundred yards. How based off the film, how
Speaker 1: much do you think he dropped? He doesn't drop. He
Speaker 1: goes forward because he was already going forward. But you
Speaker 1: don't think he went down. I know exactly what Tom about,
Speaker 1: but no, he doesn't seem to go down. He seems
Speaker 1: to go forward. He was already getting He was already
Speaker 1: getting going. And I even like, as my arrows leaving,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm saying, like what do you oh? Chris?
Speaker 1: And I reviewed it too, I would say for sure
Speaker 1: that he did the classic ductor ductor strange. You felt
Speaker 1: he went down more than forward, Yeah, because when they
Speaker 1: before they can go forward to to make that they
Speaker 1: bring up, they have to load their legs and the
Speaker 1: what looks like a duck is when they load their
Speaker 1: legs and they're loading their lowering to basically get their
Speaker 1: legs into us to a compressed spring so they can
Speaker 1: then push off rather than you guys sit here having
Speaker 1: like knowing glances. Ah, we're talking about this. He was
Speaker 1: already stepping forward. No, he was. He was walking. So
Speaker 1: he was walking forward as you released. When he heard
Speaker 1: your string, your bow go off, he did what's called
Speaker 1: ducking the string where he crunches his legs underneath him,
Speaker 1: his body drops and then he and then he goes forward. Okay,
Speaker 1: where were we remarked, Um, we're just talking about how
Speaker 1: we both had our opportunity to slip through our fingers
Speaker 1: like that. I can be frustrating, super frustrating man. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I spun the camera over to Mark. After that buck
Speaker 1: hit the wall and ran off. It was a day.
Speaker 1: It's twenty five degrees and he's shaken like a leaf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I asked, I was like, are you cold or
Speaker 1: what's going on? Like? No, man, that buck tore me up.
Speaker 1: It was he was shaken in his boots like full
Speaker 1: of emotion. Obviously big, big opportunity slipped through his fingers.
Speaker 1: But I was upset and excited and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, you know, it was that would have I mean, well,
Speaker 1: it was the best buck on this property. And if
Speaker 1: we're talking, I've I've killed mature box in Michigan, but
Speaker 1: that for sure would have been the biggest buck I've
Speaker 1: ever would have gotten a shot at in Michigan. So
Speaker 1: it was it's a really big deal for the state. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was an opportunity that I would have loved
Speaker 1: to have seen it go a different way. So I
Speaker 1: was just I don't know, It's just it's something when
Speaker 1: it's so close for some reason, it just slips through
Speaker 1: your fingers. It hurts just a little bit more like
Speaker 1: and I knew and I knew it too in my head,
Speaker 1: think that was my opportunity. Like you're you're, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a chance, but especially here in this state, you get
Speaker 1: maybe one opportunity mature buck, even if you hunt really
Speaker 1: smart in most places. These most places I hunt, I
Speaker 1: don't hunt. This is an abnormally good property for me, um,
Speaker 1: But most years you've got that one chance. And if
Speaker 1: that one chance doesn't go the way that you want
Speaker 1: to you're kind of s ol so I was like,
Speaker 1: that was it? And you were so so close twenty
Speaker 1: yards Uh. Two observations. One was Ridge pounders. But it's interesting,
Speaker 1: is it? You know you're up here in the right knocks.
Speaker 1: There's so much dear movie. You're having all these like
Speaker 1: adrenaline moments, and Ridge was noticing. And then and once
Speaker 1: you brought this up, I realized it's true adrenaline moments. Uh.
Speaker 1: Make it that you get cold on the come down? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you feel your body temperature drop in the minutes after
Speaker 1: adrenaline rushes. Yeah, which if you'd asked me prior, if
Speaker 1: you without thinking about it, if you'd asked me, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm guessing that it makes you feel hotter
Speaker 1: now when I like when it's real cold and you're
Speaker 1: camping and you gotta go take a growler. My brother
Speaker 1: used just call it taking the heater because he'd always
Speaker 1: mysteriously come away feeling warmer, like just the activity or something.
Speaker 1: You know. He'd be like cold relief. Yeah, and he'd
Speaker 1: go dig a hole and come back and be like, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm warmed up. I don't know why. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense if I got warmed up. But having a bucking
Speaker 1: counter or just a deer encounter, even just like something
Speaker 1: exciting happened. Five minutes later, you realize you got cold.
Speaker 1: I'd be shivering. I'd be fine before a big buck
Speaker 1: would come in close, and then as soon as he
Speaker 1: walks away, then I'd start shivering. I'm like, wait, what,
Speaker 1: but it's nothing's changed, feel a chill. As the adrenaline
Speaker 1: goes away, it leaves you feeling a chill. Uh. My
Speaker 1: other observations this and this is harder articulate, harder to articulate. Uh.
Speaker 1: I spent a great many years lusting for and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out and crack the code on how to
Speaker 1: get how to just like locate big mule deer, you know,
Speaker 1: and it took a long time to start. A lot
Speaker 1: of it was location, but also just strategy, um like
Speaker 1: how to figure it out? For for years, we just
Speaker 1: walk hunted, walked likely territory, thinking you'd kick him up,
Speaker 1: like they're just like how we went about it, just
Speaker 1: like you'd kick him up, right. And over time I
Speaker 1: learned like, uh that not just that you need to
Speaker 1: sit and observe, like where are you sitting observing? When
Speaker 1: you sitting observe and what you're actually looking for and
Speaker 1: all that, and it's you know, gradually like finding nicer ones.
Speaker 1: But the the years of frustration around it made me
Speaker 1: want to learn it more and more and more. A
Speaker 1: weird thing. I think it's because I have a long
Speaker 1: background of what we thought we were serious deer hunters,
Speaker 1: but we didn't do the stuff that you do, but
Speaker 1: we felt like we were serious deer hunters from the time,
Speaker 1: you know, for a good decade I did that between
Speaker 1: becoming old enough to legally hunt and then moving away
Speaker 1: from the Midwest. Um, like that's what we did and
Speaker 1: thought we were, you know, into it. But um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like I totally respect him, but I just don't,
Speaker 1: like I'm not getting where I feel the lust form. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: And I don't know why I think they're so hard,
Speaker 1: but I just don't feel the lust. I think you
Speaker 1: just haven't. This is too much of you were dropped
Speaker 1: into a thing. You're just kind of along for the
Speaker 1: ride here right now. I think that, at least for me,
Speaker 1: what gives me this like insatiabill craving to keep learning
Speaker 1: about these animals and hunt them and try to figure
Speaker 1: them out. Is the chess match element of it, the
Speaker 1: the just the constant tinkering and rethinking and observing and
Speaker 1: adjusting and learning more. And that's something that in this situation,
Speaker 1: you know, you showed up to new property, we're kind
Speaker 1: of saying, well, try this, try this, try this. I
Speaker 1: think that if you had to move back to Michigan
Speaker 1: for a year or something like that, and you had
Speaker 1: to dive in and fare all the stuff out, you
Speaker 1: start get lost. I think you get lusty when you
Speaker 1: start dating to that start putting that puzzles together for yourself.
Speaker 1: That's when things start getting really really interesting. And this
Speaker 1: is an interesting scenario here because um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: learning it too, and and and you're learning it and
Speaker 1: and guy, you're learning it into a degree. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of the first year this property is being
Speaker 1: hunted in this kind of way, so's lots of new elements.
Speaker 1: Were kind of figuring things out as we go. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like we it a lot just this week. UM,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff I already know I wanted to
Speaker 1: do differently next time around. Um, but all those mistakes
Speaker 1: that in the moment are like a painful mistake or
Speaker 1: something that just reinvigorates and re excites me for well,
Speaker 1: I want to do this differently, and I wanna do
Speaker 1: this differently. I try that differently, and I think already
Speaker 1: I I'm I was telling you the other night, Like
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my bed at night for half hour
Speaker 1: to an hour look at maps and thinking about how
Speaker 1: we shouldn't move to camera there, we should move a
Speaker 1: stand there, and we should get it back in there,
Speaker 1: because I think that these mature white tailed deer um,
Speaker 1: they don't live in the most rugged, rough country. They
Speaker 1: don't get the biggest antlers of any ungulate. They don't um.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna put as much meat in the freezer
Speaker 1: as a moose. They're not gonna take you to a
Speaker 1: mountain peak like a mountain goat. But I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a more savvy, weary, tricky smart critter out there
Speaker 1: than a mature whitetail buck. Like they deal with a
Speaker 1: whole lot of humans, and these deer that make it
Speaker 1: to that age are just survivors. And to consistently get
Speaker 1: on them and to learn them and be in a
Speaker 1: position to sometimes get a shot at you like that
Speaker 1: requires a lot of mind power, Like thinking and that
Speaker 1: just gets me. I see it get you. I love
Speaker 1: it that it gets you. And and and I'm not
Speaker 1: like down on it, just like it just uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did you have a good time? Phenomenal time?
Speaker 1: I feel really bad a lot of stuff. You feel bad.
Speaker 1: I feel really bad that like you just didn't you
Speaker 1: didn't get a shot of him. I mean you did
Speaker 1: get a shot of one, but I just felt like
Speaker 1: I let you down. Who cares? I had a phenomenal time,
Speaker 1: a great time, um, and I loved every second of it.
Speaker 1: But I don't like, uh yeah, man, I'm just I
Speaker 1: just like this meal deer and stuff like that. This
Speaker 1: is I get that, you know, I love it. I
Speaker 1: would do it all the time. But I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's I think for me that i've that that a
Speaker 1: thing that like some kind of strength that I have
Speaker 1: in hunting is just um like can just go and
Speaker 1: go and go. And sometimes it's a hindrance, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's the strength. It's like going, going going. I'd like
Speaker 1: to sit and just watch and watch and watch and
Speaker 1: and like be out and and I and I think
Speaker 1: that I struggle. I think that I I struggle a
Speaker 1: little bit with them. The stationary, the very stationary aspect,
Speaker 1: because even if you're sitting there glass and from me
Speaker 1: older your glass and for cousi or whatever you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you're in one spot, there's there's like this kinetic
Speaker 1: energy that builds because you know that all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there's gonna be your chance and you're gonna go,
Speaker 1: even if you wait all day. You might wait all day,
Speaker 1: but there's still this idea that like, go time, now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go. And to be strapped into that tree
Speaker 1: watching things and it would never work to go after him.
Speaker 1: They're just not gonna put up with that. But watching
Speaker 1: things and feeling that and it's going the wrong direction,
Speaker 1: and you're like, you don't have that that, you don't
Speaker 1: have that um, that autonomy, or you don't have that
Speaker 1: a lack of control. You can't make it move the agents,
Speaker 1: you don't have the agency to and it like, really,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like I'd have to get
Speaker 1: better at it, you know, I'd have to get better
Speaker 1: at it. I used to not have the ability, like
Speaker 1: what I was sawing about earlier, trying to learn how
Speaker 1: to kill Multier. I didn't have the ability at the time.
Speaker 1: If you just said, oh, the key to kill muliteer
Speaker 1: is sitting and observing, I wouldn't have had it in me.
Speaker 1: I developed it. I would have to develop the ability
Speaker 1: to sitting these damn trees. I think I wind up
Speaker 1: cursing the tree. I don't wind up loving the tree.
Speaker 1: I get that. It's like, it's like I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm chained to it. You know that if you had
Speaker 1: sat in that same tree that you sat when you
Speaker 1: had those two encounters described, you would have had another
Speaker 1: nice big buck in front of this morning. You know
Speaker 1: why he was there because he weren't there because I
Speaker 1: wasn't there exactly. That's the funny thing like hunting this
Speaker 1: stuff now, Like you'd be like, oh, a big buck
Speaker 1: passed by that tree. Stand like the big buck pass
Speaker 1: that tree stancause you're not in it. It's not like
Speaker 1: he would have been. It's not like you would have
Speaker 1: been there anyway. Yeah, it can be frustrating. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do feel like the interesting thing about a Western style
Speaker 1: hunt is that a lot of the actual hunting is
Speaker 1: the hunt is happening right then, right The decisions you're
Speaker 1: making that are going to impact that hunt are happening
Speaker 1: right now. It's like do I go up that ridge
Speaker 1: or that ridge, or do we make the stock now
Speaker 1: or do we wait? Many times, the actions that dictate
Speaker 1: the success or failure of a white tail hunt are
Speaker 1: not the actions taken right now as that deers in
Speaker 1: front of you. It's the actions you took two months
Speaker 1: ago or four months ago, when you made the decision
Speaker 1: to put a stand here, when you thought through all
Speaker 1: the things, all the assumptions you have about a deer,
Speaker 1: you think through all the behaviors that are gonna happen. No, No,
Speaker 1: not November eight, all that stuff that's leading to what
Speaker 1: you're seeing on November eight. The reason that happens because
Speaker 1: the decisions made on August first, and what limbs to cut,
Speaker 1: what limbs not to cut, which trails coming through here?
Speaker 1: Why did I want to access the tree stand from
Speaker 1: this way and exit that way? Um? So, so much
Speaker 1: of the hunt actually takes place many many, many weeks beforehand,
Speaker 1: because the hunt really is in setting up the ambush location.
Speaker 1: We have. The decisions we can make now in the moment,
Speaker 1: are do we hunt A or B or C or
Speaker 1: do it which place? For the what we have today?
Speaker 1: And then how you actually conduct yourself in the tree.
Speaker 1: But a big piece of the hunt you missed out on. UM,
Speaker 1: So that can I can. I would imagine that maybe
Speaker 1: that might um change your experience a little bit too. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: A reason I like to hunt turkey so much is
Speaker 1: because it's so responsive, physically responsive. Yeah, he does this,
Speaker 1: you do that, he does this, micro movements little, it's
Speaker 1: just like I like it. Speaking of turkeys, we called
Speaker 1: in a lot of deer this week. They were very responsive,
Speaker 1: called lunch your tonight. Well he did, called in a
Speaker 1: bunch of doughs. They didn't want to leave. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you shoot it, doll? Yeah, I just didn't. Man. We
Speaker 1: had a lot of opportunities to shoot at doughs, a
Speaker 1: lot of them. I don't know why. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I wanted the same thing, just because we were kind
Speaker 1: of like hunting bucks. And I'm not hurting for meat.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting pretty good. Actually, if I was meat, Christis,
Speaker 1: it would have been a whole different situation. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: would have solved that problem quick. All right, man, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming out and chasing white tails. I'll come to
Speaker 1: it again. I hope it. I hope it goes a
Speaker 1: little different. I had a great time. Man, I don't
Speaker 1: care if I got one. I honestly don't care. Good
Speaker 1: if you could like probe into my brain and see
Speaker 1: if I'm telling the truth or not, I'd be telling
Speaker 1: the truth, all right. I really don't give a ship
Speaker 1: all right, good? Yeah, thanks for sharing. It was fun
Speaker 1: to listen to you all week, learn and learn a
Speaker 1: lot from you. Well. Thank you to the two Guy
Speaker 1: and Matt for allowing us to to hunt this location
Speaker 1: and sure what you guys to come back. It was
Speaker 1: a good time. Do that turkey prayer again. We heard
Speaker 1: that a whole bunch. They didn't. We found her. We
Speaker 1: had turkeys up close. And that's the thing I remember
Speaker 1: that you don't realize how much noise they make. They're
Speaker 1: all making noise all the time. When you get that
Speaker 1: close to them, they're cool man getting in their winter flaw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're ten from him, and they didn't care about us
Speaker 1: all making noise. We were moving. I was like filming
Speaker 1: them moving. They were like, I don't care, bro, we're
Speaker 1: eating corn. I think of you have said something to him.
Speaker 1: They had to move, yeah, And I was like, eight turks,
Speaker 1: you guys need to get a Turkey tag next year.
Speaker 1: Put in from oh Man today, I was really regretting
Speaker 1: I have more, Lauren, you got any final thoughts? Man?
Speaker 1: Just thanks for having me along. I learned a lot
Speaker 1: from Mark. Sitting in tree stands forty eight hours. It's
Speaker 1: a good time. I was definitely a part of the hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just here to take pictures, not just here chasing dollars.
Speaker 1: He lost dollars actually, yeah lost? Oh yes, that cut
Speaker 1: into the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: sitting in the tree that long is not anyone's favorite thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it maybe it's Mark's favorite thing. I admire it.
Speaker 1: I admire it. Man, sitting in a tree like that
Speaker 1: for that long, it's tough. I think it comes with
Speaker 1: age to the ability to not necessarily the ability, but
Speaker 1: just the just the downright appreciation of it. It only
Speaker 1: comes with age of sitting there for a long time
Speaker 1: just smelling the roses. It only comes with with a
Speaker 1: long you know you're never gonna meet at five year old.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, I disagree, you do, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I disagree to alright, eighteen whatever the cut off data
Speaker 1: cut off ages. Yeah, there's there is an age. I
Speaker 1: just think, if you tore up with it enough, you'll
Speaker 1: sit all that. If you love it enough, you'll do it.
Speaker 1: So there's like, so you'll sit all day, but will
Speaker 1: you enjoy it? That is different? Probably. I think that
Speaker 1: even even the thirty one year old me, sometimes it's like, God,
Speaker 1: why aren't they moving? Why isn't this happening? Exactly? And
Speaker 1: I just think for me at forty now of it
Speaker 1: just in the last few years sort of been like,
Speaker 1: you know what, what else? What the else? Is actually better?
Speaker 1: Yeah than just sitting here and why and waiting for
Speaker 1: the next woodpecker to come by or the next chickadee
Speaker 1: to come by or whatever. Yeah, it is a rare
Speaker 1: opportunity to just slow down and embrace Oh it's not
Speaker 1: existing thing. Yeah, it's easy to get caught up in
Speaker 1: everything else. My brother hunts by himself. He's a few
Speaker 1: years older me, so I don't know what the age part.
Speaker 1: He hunts by himself, and he hunts by himself in
Speaker 1: the mountains, bow hunting for elk. And he said that
Speaker 1: every day it's part of his day to talk himself
Speaker 1: out of going home mhm. Because he hates it, hates
Speaker 1: it and has every day talk himself out of quitn
Speaker 1: What is he hating the grind of it? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: get that, but he likes in the elks so much.
Speaker 1: In the end, it's worth it. But he says, every
Speaker 1: day I gotta just be like, you can't just don't
Speaker 1: let yourself. You can't go home. I don't give in.
Speaker 1: Don't let yourself go home. I have moments like that
Speaker 1: every day, doing these all day sets too. It's so
Speaker 1: much of of hunting. The rut in particular is like
Speaker 1: is mental. It's mental toughness. So every year leading is
Speaker 1: the point I have like a little self pep talk.
Speaker 1: It is all about mentally being in it. Are you
Speaker 1: gonna grind it out? Are you going to simply make
Speaker 1: the decision that no matter what goes wrong, no matter
Speaker 1: how tired you are every morning, every morning you wake
Speaker 1: up at four or four or thirty or whatever, He's like, jeez,
Speaker 1: all I wanna do is hit snooze and keep sleeping.
Speaker 1: But are you going to dedicate yourself to say no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give into that. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: out there, You're gonna do what you know you need
Speaker 1: to do. You're in a tough adout you're in a
Speaker 1: you know, it's just every single year when I look
Speaker 1: at the rut, we kind of call the white tail
Speaker 1: Worls kind of the rut marathon, because there's like two
Speaker 1: to three weeks where everyone who really loves of stuff,
Speaker 1: he's using all the vacation time or whatever. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in the tree all day for two weeks straight or whatever.
Speaker 1: And that definitely wears on you mentally and physically, and um,
Speaker 1: and there's something to be said about coming out of that,
Speaker 1: and you can look back and it is it's not
Speaker 1: like climbing a mountain physically, it's not that kind of
Speaker 1: physical challenge, but it's a mental challenge. And that I
Speaker 1: was telling Lauren today, like, as long as I come
Speaker 1: out of Hunt like this, knowing that I gave it
Speaker 1: everything I could, Like I didn't leave anything on the field,
Speaker 1: or I left it on the field, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not in any way sports sports, sport ball, analogy forest you, Um,
Speaker 1: you don't cut any corners. If if as long as
Speaker 1: I can know that in my head, I can drive
Speaker 1: home tonight or tomorrow morning feel okay about the song.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that gives people
Speaker 1: discipline in all aspects. This isn't just hunting advice. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've starting to think gives
Speaker 1: people discipline is it comes as much from it comes
Speaker 1: as much from self hatred and self loathing as it
Speaker 1: does any kind of of for something in particular, because
Speaker 1: what you wounded, what you oftentimes wind up getting driven by,
Speaker 1: is hatred for the version of yourself that would quit.
Speaker 1: So it's not that you love the woodpeckers and chicken
Speaker 1: ea so much, and you do. I'm sure everyone does,
Speaker 1: or you know, anyone that gets into this game does,
Speaker 1: but it winds up being that you are like, I
Speaker 1: recognize that the smart thing to do would be be
Speaker 1: able to sit here all day or stay out overnight
Speaker 1: right now, or like sit up on this hill and
Speaker 1: keep glassing, or you name it, take one more cast right,
Speaker 1: go over the next hill and do one more shot gobble.
Speaker 1: You're like, I recognize that that's the way to be
Speaker 1: successful at this thing that I care about, And I
Speaker 1: hate myself for wanting to do otherwise other than what
Speaker 1: I recognized to be the best thing. And you're motivated
Speaker 1: by You're you're motivated by that as much as you
Speaker 1: are by uh, the positive end of things. I hear
Speaker 1: this from a lot of people. I have it, and
Speaker 1: my brother has it. Yeah, even like writing a book,
Speaker 1: you know, like I I hate the guy inside of
Speaker 1: me that wouldn't finish this. To Yanny's point earlier about
Speaker 1: how this might change with age, have you seen that
Speaker 1: change with age? Do you feel that way less than
Speaker 1: you used to or is it still just just as much.
Speaker 1: It's only different now because I recognize it more. I
Speaker 1: used to just be like driven to do some things,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really think about it very much, you know,
Speaker 1: Like here, here's here's an example. Uh, when I was
Speaker 1: brought up. My mother still lives in the house I
Speaker 1: was brought up in, and my room was on the
Speaker 1: second floor of a house and that overlook the lake,
Speaker 1: and there was these large oaks still are large um
Speaker 1: oaks in the backyard between my bedroom window in the lake.
Speaker 1: And I knew my mornings that we were supposed to
Speaker 1: go bolt wake up and go bowl hunting early in
Speaker 1: the morning. Um, I knew that it feels super rain
Speaker 1: and rainy and super wendy. We probably wouldn't go. And
Speaker 1: I would wake up and I would look out and
Speaker 1: would hope to see tons of rain and the limbs
Speaker 1: just going nuts because it meant we didn't have to go,
Speaker 1: And how guilty I would feel for hoping to see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the guilt, ship man. The self loathing and
Speaker 1: the guilt is a powerful, powerful force in life for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And Quentin hunting or quit and fishing
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. There. Day I took my daughter,
Speaker 1: my five year old daughter, We're all duck hunt and
Speaker 1: she's crying. She's laying inner waiters on the bank of
Speaker 1: a pond, crying. And there was a real part of
Speaker 1: me that like that. There's a real part of me
Speaker 1: that wanted to push against that very heavily. And I
Speaker 1: let her, made her do that for quite a while,
Speaker 1: because in the end, when she's my age, I think
Speaker 1: that's just gonna do her a lot more. That's gonna
Speaker 1: do a lot more for her than the other than
Speaker 1: anything else you could have done. Not I don't want
Speaker 1: to be sound statistic, and it probably does no I
Speaker 1: understand her getting She's definitely gonna love duck hunt. You
Speaker 1: know what, I spent most of my childhood cryings. My
Speaker 1: feet were cold, man, Not most of it but not
Speaker 1: just I don't want exaggerate. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: days crying because I was cold to no one caring. No, man,
Speaker 1: I wonder about that too those days too, huh. But
Speaker 1: I look back on it now and I go, why
Speaker 1: did I become a hunter? Because I was yelled at
Speaker 1: for my nose running and sniffling my nose and I
Speaker 1: was cold. I was yelled at for this, that and
Speaker 1: the other, and it was just something inside of me
Speaker 1: that just like, like, no matter how much that was shitty,
Speaker 1: there was some other part, the chicken eas and the
Speaker 1: woodpeckers that I loved, and it kept me out there.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I've heard just as many stories
Speaker 1: now because I pay attention to it about raising kids
Speaker 1: in the outdoors and the kids are like fuck that.
Speaker 1: I just got pushed and pushed and pushed, and I'm
Speaker 1: not really into hunting. I think you got to weed
Speaker 1: them out. Those are the ones that gotta be weeded out.
Speaker 1: Maybe Rich you got any final thoughts? Um, Yeah, I do. Well,
Speaker 1: it's more of a question. I had a bunch and
Speaker 1: then I kind of got that was a good little comment. Man.
Speaker 1: I got kind of caught up in it. Um, One
Speaker 1: of the questions that I had earlier was like, do
Speaker 1: you think I don't know if mastery is the white word,
Speaker 1: but when you mark when you were saying that, like
Speaker 1: you got all these ideas about like what to do
Speaker 1: next and the next hunt, and you're like a really
Speaker 1: good white tail hunter, do you, like, do you feel
Speaker 1: like you'll ever get to a point where you like
Speaker 1: are mastering this kind of hunting? And I like that
Speaker 1: can't that's not like, you know, there's there's so many
Speaker 1: variables when it comes to animals that it's like that's
Speaker 1: not really like a fair word. But do you think
Speaker 1: you'll get to the point where you just like have
Speaker 1: it just like you'll know where something's gonna be when?
Speaker 1: Or I think that anyone who is really really good
Speaker 1: at white tail hunting will always believe that they have
Speaker 1: not yet mastered it, because I think that's a good answer, dude.
Speaker 1: I think that the I think you're constantly learning it
Speaker 1: isn't always evolving. I keep saying chess match, but it is.
Speaker 1: There's so many new lessons learned I get every single year.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly people achieve levels of consistent quote unquote
Speaker 1: success that are on a different level than a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Um, but there's always more and that's the
Speaker 1: fun of it. That's why I think that we keep
Speaker 1: coming back to your in your near out never it's
Speaker 1: never the same. I love that. Yeah, you're nineteen. More
Speaker 1: things you wanted to bring up? No, uh no, oh,
Speaker 1: the age thing about sitting in a tree, I would
Speaker 1: say that I did have a thought today or past
Speaker 1: couple of days that if the pressure of filming and
Speaker 1: not screwing up a hunt because of the filming presence,
Speaker 1: Like if if I was just sitting in a tree
Speaker 1: for twelve hours, I think I'd be into it, Like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be bombed distressed. You'd like it, I'd like it.
Speaker 1: Hold you, will you take me up on the hunt invitation?
Speaker 1: Which at your place? Yeah? Definitely, dude, definitely. All right.
Speaker 1: I have a new freezer that I don't have anything
Speaker 1: that's empty. Alright, I have a whole fridge that has
Speaker 1: nothing in it. Then you gotta make a trip up
Speaker 1: to Michigan. I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's do it, Seth.
Speaker 1: Have you said anything yet? Yeah? Early, okay? Um, I
Speaker 1: shot my first bucket twelve o'clock noon, and I just
Speaker 1: remember not wanting to be there. And I was twelve
Speaker 1: years old, but now what time? And you have been
Speaker 1: up there since, David, Yes, since it was it was
Speaker 1: an all day sit. So you were sitting till noon
Speaker 1: at twelve years of age because my dad was like,
Speaker 1: you're sitting all day and and that was the last,
Speaker 1: very last day of the rifle season and you were
Speaker 1: a hunter trapper. Yeah, I could. I love sitting all
Speaker 1: day now seven. Yeah, so you got it's a little
Speaker 1: a little tough to do, like first week of the season.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I don't see. So you you
Speaker 1: came from school hard knockers. Yeah, you like it. I
Speaker 1: love it. You're glad now, I'm glad. Now I'd do
Speaker 1: the same with my kids if I ever do that.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what you wind up struggling with, man,
Speaker 1: because there was so much stuff that I hate it
Speaker 1: about my dad. And the older I get, the more
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I kind of see now where he
Speaker 1: was coming from, A kind of see where he's coming from.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things he had is he
Speaker 1: was not interested in being friends with his kids. And
Speaker 1: I used to be just baffled by that. And now
Speaker 1: I'm like, I kind of see what you're getting at.
Speaker 1: It's kind of see because he's dead anyway. Yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna die. I think you're doing to be good
Speaker 1: friends of me, couple be friends with your friends. That's yeah, Mark,
Speaker 1: any concluders, Um, you know, I'm lacking any kind of
Speaker 1: terribly poignant concluder today except for I'm really glad you
Speaker 1: guys got to come up here and do this when
Speaker 1: it was fun to get to share my passion with
Speaker 1: you guys a little bit um and you know, teach
Speaker 1: you guys about sund control, which I appreciate the effort,
Speaker 1: but it was it was subpar. Still, I saw you
Speaker 1: saw some major I saw some major infractions. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: he's okay, can we bring this up next time we
Speaker 1: talk major infractions? You pay for him, and you pay
Speaker 1: for him, and Mark is Mark has a lot of
Speaker 1: things he does, and Mark admits I don't know, uh
Speaker 1: what they all work. But if I do all of
Speaker 1: them and it makes a ten percent chance, I'll just
Speaker 1: keep doing them all. Yeah, that's that's a big enough Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's enough help. I was skeptical at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the week. Now after seeing all these deer hit that wall.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I get it, dude. Then we had I
Speaker 1: was going to okay. So we had a number of
Speaker 1: different incidents where we got winded, even though I was
Speaker 1: doing a lot of things that I try to do.
Speaker 1: But it was definitely a compromise scent control regimen, just
Speaker 1: it wasn't perfect given all the different things going on.
Speaker 1: Twice as much smell, twice as much smell. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: just a really smelly guy. I think that was it.
Speaker 1: Lauren might be a smelly guy wears very loud jackets.
Speaker 1: Uh no, but you're not gonna get away with with
Speaker 1: your sent all the time. But just last week I
Speaker 1: had a five and a half year buck go down
Speaker 1: wind of me and not hit a wall at all.
Speaker 1: So sometimes taking all of these precautions does help. Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but I'm willing to
Speaker 1: do it all the time to get those few times
Speaker 1: where it does. I'm all for it, dude. Nothing you're doing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you're doing about saying control that. That was
Speaker 1: like something I hadn't heard of or I mean it's
Speaker 1: all like pretty much industry not industry standard, but like
Speaker 1: you don't have like what you don't have weird like
Speaker 1: magical things you think. No, I mean you have things
Speaker 1: that like are like very practical things you don't have, Like, um,
Speaker 1: I find that if I, you know, eat celery three
Speaker 1: days before and then do a cleanse, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just good stuff. Like it's very similar to what fur
Speaker 1: trappers would do fox trappers. I was surprised, though, no
Speaker 1: sense of any sort you're saying like a cover cent
Speaker 1: or yeah or attract incent. No. It's illegal though now
Speaker 1: in Michigan to use any kind of natural um yearine
Speaker 1: based center or anything. So that's I never used them before.
Speaker 1: But really you can't buy what you can. You can
Speaker 1: you can, and I think still can't use it because
Speaker 1: of chronic wasting disease. Really can I get my concluding thought?
Speaker 1: My concluding thought is if one wanted to go find
Speaker 1: all kinds of um awesome merchandise, mediator podcast stuff, soon
Speaker 1: to be wired to hunt merchandise, all kinds of T shirts, Um,
Speaker 1: your blout shirt. We got some amazing other new stuff
Speaker 1: coming out, and then a uh and if you've been
Speaker 1: watching the new episodes of the show on Netflix and
Speaker 1: you see like cool ship there first light apparel. We
Speaker 1: have all this stuff for sale. Um, go to the
Speaker 1: meater dot com and going to the store and check
Speaker 1: it out. That's my first concluder. Second concluded was I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty good deep fried turkey, very good
Speaker 1: deep fried turkey, deep fried turkey nuggets. Where's that turkey from?
Speaker 1: He's wild turkey There two rests, two lobes like that man,
Speaker 1: two lobes. Deep fried turkey chunks, hard to beat, sweet
Speaker 1: sweet chili sauce, birthday Birthday dinner A hundred and seventy.
Speaker 1: That's why you can make that turkey calls huhdy halfa
Speaker 1: to ninety six halfway. That's a rough way to position
Speaker 1: oldest guy in the room. That's it. Does that turkey
Speaker 1: purer again? I've got my hair. Just give me one
Speaker 1: more turkey purer. I love that ship. Thanks for asking,
Speaker 1: so you never get to me, big, big room of people. UM.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, if you wanted to become better white
Speaker 1: tele deer hunter, you should go check out Wired to
Speaker 1: Hunt because anything anything you ever want to know about
Speaker 1: white tales and more, it's all there. That's why I
Speaker 1: wanted to bring I meant to bring that up. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you brought that up because Mark talks about this
Speaker 1: ship all the time. Yes, and all that stuff now
Speaker 1: is actually on the meat either dot com website though, Yanni.
Speaker 1: So you go to the media dot com and you're
Speaker 1: see all my new content with the word Hunt podcast
Speaker 1: is available and where you find pod The word on
Speaker 1: podcast is available anywhere you find podcasts. My video series
Speaker 1: is on the website and on our YouTube channel. Regular
Speaker 1: blog posts and the Wired Hunt merchandise is not soon
Speaker 1: to be available on the store. It is actually on
Speaker 1: the store as of right now. It is. So you
Speaker 1: got Wired Hun hats, word on t shirts and there'll
Speaker 1: be some new things come down the coome. I don't
Speaker 1: have one of those. It's where you've never given me one.
Speaker 1: I didn't Well, I don't know you'd be like, I
Speaker 1: feel like you should present one to me. What the hell? Mark,
Speaker 1: what on word to Hunt podcast? What would you say? Like,
Speaker 1: what percent of the time you guys talking about like
Speaker 1: white tail stuff? Oh, nineties seven percent? Three? Like one
Speaker 1: one episode of a year, I'll go on an elkhon
Speaker 1: or something one episode a year. We'll talk turkeys, um
Speaker 1: no merrill, marrit soul advice. Well, there's little bits of
Speaker 1: marital advice and family advice sprinkled within each episode. Usually
Speaker 1: give me a piece of marital advice. Oh gosh, I'll
Speaker 1: only been married. Uh uh advice to every one. Know
Speaker 1: you're I got married chosen thirteen, so just over five years.
Speaker 1: Give me, yeah, my best piece of marriage rate. All right,
Speaker 1: and I stole this from someone else, but it is
Speaker 1: uh piece before justice. You still have, Randy Newberg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I told you I stole it from someone. But that's
Speaker 1: the best advice I avergant. I stole my piece from
Speaker 1: be honest, what's that. It's a good one. My best
Speaker 1: piece of merril advice. Okay, when you're fighting with the
Speaker 1: mrs or the early mister, Okay, let's say you're in
Speaker 1: the fight. Let's say you're like you're fighting over give
Speaker 1: me something. People fight about whether you how to load
Speaker 1: the dishwasher. Who fights about that, Steve? Yeah, well, not
Speaker 1: how to load it, but whether it should be loaded
Speaker 1: at all. There's a book about marriage. It's called marriage.
Speaker 1: It's it's got a name. It's like it's about it's
Speaker 1: a plemt because it's like it's about marriage. It's marriage
Speaker 1: worth it. And there's a line in the book where
Speaker 1: the author says, marriage is an institution that makes it
Speaker 1: so you cannot load the dishwasher in the way that
Speaker 1: makes the most sense to you. The cynical right. However, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you're fighting about, uh, the dishwasher. Here's another
Speaker 1: example of the color of the paint that you're gonna
Speaker 1: put in the newly remold bathroom. Yeah, fighting about the
Speaker 1: color paint in the bathroom because you got you've always
Speaker 1: pictured in your head and it's just gonna like that white.
Speaker 1: Everybody paints your bathroom white. And maybe it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a fight, but it's like a heated discussion, and it's
Speaker 1: getting towards being a fight just because someone might be tired,
Speaker 1: someone else might be thinking about hunting. You are you
Speaker 1: feeling to get the paint and you're kind of sitting
Speaker 1: there like, I think it should be white? And because
Speaker 1: of managing your relationship, do you want to give the
Speaker 1: advice because you're the one who gave it to me? No,
Speaker 1: I I just know I just want to co host
Speaker 1: this place. He's the color comments. So you're like it
Speaker 1: should be white, you know, because that's what I that's
Speaker 1: what I got in my head is white and and um,
Speaker 1: your partner is so I was thinking to be blue,
Speaker 1: and then pretty soon you're like you're in it and
Speaker 1: you're fighting about it. Your honestest thing is you then
Speaker 1: need to say your break to fight for a second,
Speaker 1: and you rate on a one to ten, not how
Speaker 1: much you care to win, but you rate on one
Speaker 1: to ten how much the issue actually matters to you?
Speaker 1: And is this a verbal like you say to each other, Hey,
Speaker 1: time out, how much does this actually matter to you?
Speaker 1: Your wife? Yeah, and you say how much matter to you?
Speaker 1: You'd be like, you know, so you just throw the
Speaker 1: number out before you even asked. You just say that's
Speaker 1: to be my wife right now. We've been using this
Speaker 1: a great effect, and I don't need to say. I'll
Speaker 1: just say like this is this is a seven for
Speaker 1: me man, And she's like, this is a seven for you.
Speaker 1: This is like a three for me. That means you win,
Speaker 1: and you wind up because I wind up being in
Speaker 1: these I wind up being in these fights with my
Speaker 1: wife about things that once I stop and think about it,
Speaker 1: it's I'm fighting about things that are twos and threes
Speaker 1: because you just get so wrapped up and like that,
Speaker 1: you get so wrapped up just like winning battles very
Speaker 1: interesting and I have in their day, like there's this
Speaker 1: there's this rug that doesn't oh it doesn't Like every
Speaker 1: kid that runs through the house gets laid up by
Speaker 1: this trip and on this ruck this like skidder across
Speaker 1: the floor and smashed into the wall. And one day
Speaker 1: like roll the rug up. My wife's like into the ruck,
Speaker 1: like I got rugs gone, and she wants the ruck back,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, this is like a way I'm
Speaker 1: going inspired to say, this is the seven or eight.
Speaker 1: This is a seven or eight on me. And she's like,
Speaker 1: it's like a one. I'm annoyed that you took my rug,
Speaker 1: But really, when I think about it, I really don't.
Speaker 1: It's a one. I don't know why I'm arguing with you, Bob.
Speaker 1: If you hate the rock, you hate the rug. Cool. Wow,
Speaker 1: that seems like a life good marriage advice. Man, it's
Speaker 1: quite simple. I like that a lot. Noted. It's gonna
Speaker 1: get me another five more years of marriage? Can I
Speaker 1: give you one more? Um, When there's like a large
Speaker 1: decision that that needs to be made, and the decision
Speaker 1: is made of a big great bundling of interests, say
Speaker 1: buying a house. I have found my wife and I
Speaker 1: have found that it works really good. If I say,
Speaker 1: here's the parts of this that I care about. I
Speaker 1: care about this element of this, and I care about
Speaker 1: this element of this. You run the project. Everything that
Speaker 1: I'm not mentioning right now is you. But do not
Speaker 1: screw me on these two things. And then you run
Speaker 1: and go and assigning ownership of something and in clarifying like,
Speaker 1: but you own it. But here's the deal. And this
Speaker 1: is an instance where the other person wants as much
Speaker 1: ownership as possible. M hmm, yeah, and you don't want
Speaker 1: to relinquish it because you don't want to get screwed
Speaker 1: on a couple of points. Clarify the points, and then
Speaker 1: give the person autonomy to go do what they needed
Speaker 1: to do. It's a big old vacation. Vacation vacage would
Speaker 1: be like, listen, man, I want to be able to spearfish.
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all. That's all I need to have.
Speaker 1: That's like relatively good access to some spear fishing. Other
Speaker 1: than that, I'm out Google Walt Disney World slash to
Speaker 1: the two come together. That's good stuff. Yeah, guy, you've
Speaker 1: been married a long time twenty three years, give me
Speaker 1: a hot marriage advice. Shut up and listen. Married to
Speaker 1: the best woman on the planet, and she's put up
Speaker 1: with a lot for me, but a lover to death.
Speaker 1: I'm sure she trade me in, but I wouldn't trade
Speaker 1: her for nothing. And uh, yes, marriage just work. It's
Speaker 1: hard work. It's hard work. But when you truly work
Speaker 1: at it. You know. We have kids, but we love
Speaker 1: our kids to death. But uh, we're really growing to
Speaker 1: love each other too. No, women are awesome, awesome, you
Speaker 1: know my sorry, I don't mean to jump on the
Speaker 1: rest of your advice. That's just it. When before my
Speaker 1: wife and I got married, she had I can't remember,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a bridle shower or something like that.
Speaker 1: And um, everyone was asked to write down there like
Speaker 1: their best piece of advice, what marriage advice or something
Speaker 1: on a note and you put the notes in the thing.
Speaker 1: And then after we got married, she got to open
Speaker 1: up the box and read everybody's marital advice. And I
Speaker 1: think I either saw some er she showed me some
Speaker 1: of them, and she showed me what her grandma had
Speaker 1: wrote to her. And at the time when her grandmar
Speaker 1: wrote was it was very simple. It was just two words,
Speaker 1: three words um, And I thought, oh, like that was
Speaker 1: like the laziest answer, and at the that's all I thought,
Speaker 1: But it was like I was just like a really
Speaker 1: lazy answer. And then my wife though, took that that
Speaker 1: little post and note and she put it on the
Speaker 1: picture of her grandma Grandpa and it's still in her bathroom,
Speaker 1: like studying on the counter. And now years later, I
Speaker 1: see it, like every time I happened to be in there,
Speaker 1: I see it, and I think about it a little
Speaker 1: bit more each time. And now when I look at
Speaker 1: and I think about it, and I think about maybe
Speaker 1: what she meant by this three words, it's very poignant
Speaker 1: and it's it just simply her very best marital advice
Speaker 1: was simply giant box, No that would be good though.
Speaker 1: It was simply love each other. Yeah, just love each
Speaker 1: other and all that goes into that. So I see that,
Speaker 1: Nollie every day, and it just it's kind of like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about that with all the different decisions
Speaker 1: you make, that is kind of the key, like just
Speaker 1: to remind yourself too. You know what, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what I did. This is marriage advice. You know what
Speaker 1: I did. When my kids are born, for all three
Speaker 1: of them, as I UH wrote them a big long
Speaker 1: letter that explains our lives, where I think they were conceived,
Speaker 1: what the circumstances, what our lives look like, what are
Speaker 1: my sort of apprehensions about them coming into the world,
Speaker 1: what are my hopes and fears for them, what's going
Speaker 1: on in general, what their parents were like. And then
Speaker 1: I uh put my own address on them. And then
Speaker 1: on the day they were born, I dropped him so
Speaker 1: they would get postmarked, and then I took him in
Speaker 1: back and sealed them in my pro I think, bad,
Speaker 1: you sealed them, and I'll give them to him when
Speaker 1: they get married. Probably that's cool. That's amazing, big long letters.
Speaker 1: I I I almost would dread seeing what's in the
Speaker 1: letter from eight years ago. Well, that's how I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that. Do you regret anything that you wrote
Speaker 1: in these letters? Or I don't want to know because
Speaker 1: I don't want to chicken out and not give it
Speaker 1: to him because they're very telling. It would be a
Speaker 1: lot better if I was dead. They're very telling, interesting
Speaker 1: like I would want. It would be smart to read
Speaker 1: it by yourself. Where did you get this idea? This
Speaker 1: just came to you or no, I don't think I
Speaker 1: made it up. Man, I can't remember, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I made it up. I feel like if I
Speaker 1: made it up, I'd be pretty proud of having made
Speaker 1: it up. And I remember making it up. It's good.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you've never chicken it out about it.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna, man, I got a lot of difference
Speaker 1: between you and you eight years ago. It was so different. No,
Speaker 1: because they're really like they're really really telling of what
Speaker 1: who and what were eight years ago? Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: stuff like around uh we we had two kids and
Speaker 1: that was all we wanted at the time, and we
Speaker 1: had a third and telling someone that story. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell him that story when he's eight, Like what was
Speaker 1: going on in our lives? What led us to the decision?
Speaker 1: I don't know, just telling stuff. Thank your kids will
Speaker 1: be smart enough to read it in the voice of
Speaker 1: you as a late thirty year as the late thirty
Speaker 1: year old, and not the sixty year old you'll be
Speaker 1: when they read it. Yeah, I hope. So it feels
Speaker 1: a good letter. They're pretty good letters. I don't doubt it.
Speaker 1: Put a lot of effort in writing them name letters.
Speaker 1: Is that it? That's it? Man, I got one more guy,
Speaker 1: thanks man for making a fantastic hunting spot. Man. I
Speaker 1: got to see a lot of deer uh activity and
Speaker 1: and what am I trying to say? Things that they
Speaker 1: do behavior behavior that in all my years in white
Speaker 1: til hunt and I had never seen, yep, all kinds
Speaker 1: of deer peeing on their tarsal glands and scrapes. I
Speaker 1: didn't see you rubs happening, but no, yeah, I saw scrapes,
Speaker 1: no rubs, the licking branch seeing multiple times you guys
Speaker 1: heard a fight, you know. I got to see a
Speaker 1: buck come up and rub its orbital gland on the
Speaker 1: licking branch, work a scrape piste down his leg. A
Speaker 1: couple of minutes later, maybe more than a couple minutes later,
Speaker 1: another buck came, didn't do his orbital gland, but worked
Speaker 1: a scrape piste down his leg, and I got two
Speaker 1: cup minutes later watch a doe coming camp out on
Speaker 1: that spot. Nice. That's seeing some dear type ship going on. Man. Grunting,
Speaker 1: I bet you I heard maybe twenty grunts this week, fighting, grunting,
Speaker 1: chasing squirrels every which one. Normally when you see, I
Speaker 1: don't care if it is November ten. In Michigan, when
Speaker 1: you see a deer running, you're like, oh, goddamn, no no,
Speaker 1: but here you're like, oh, it must be a buck coming,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's running from other It's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's really cool, like the just the wildlife habitat work
Speaker 1: here and watching it like bloom and take shape. Man,
Speaker 1: we're just getting started, and I mean, it's been a
Speaker 1: pleasure having you all here, and I would like to
Speaker 1: know any and all. Thanks you guys. Think we might
Speaker 1: be able to do to make things a better experience.
Speaker 1: Cut more shooting lanes, Yeah that's yeah. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you get it killed, but you're kind of focused on
Speaker 1: getting it alive. Yeah, don't don't worry. I'll be I'll
Speaker 1: be trim and lanes here soon. Alright, everybody, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to