Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Mark kenyans episode number two fifty two, and
Speaker 1: today in the show, I'm joined by Josh Further Hilliard
Speaker 1: and my father to discuss the history of our family
Speaker 1: deer camp and some of our favorite stories from along
Speaker 1: the way. All right, we are back in the log
Speaker 1: cabin with the wood burning stove and the propane lights,
Speaker 1: and almost exactly one year or go, we're here, me
Speaker 1: and Further talking about deer camp. And that was a
Speaker 1: good chat, right, Josh, it was a good chat. It
Speaker 1: was a good chat, but it was it was an
Speaker 1: incomplete chat because it was it was just you and me,
Speaker 1: and we're missing a very important part of any deer camp.
Speaker 1: Do you know what that is? Further, I think I've
Speaker 1: got a pretty good idea. Yeah, it's the senior citizen regroup.
Speaker 1: It's the senior member of the camp. We do have
Speaker 1: a senior member of the camp, one of the senior
Speaker 1: members of our camp. We don't have them all here today,
Speaker 1: but we do have special guest, first time appearance on
Speaker 1: the podcast many time appearance in My Life David Kenyon,
Speaker 1: my dad. Welcome to the show. Dad, Thanks Mark, glad
Speaker 1: to be here. And I gotta say, um, this is interesting, right.
Speaker 1: I haven't had the father's son dynamic on the show yet,
Speaker 1: So I just gotta tell you. You can't go you
Speaker 1: can't get too much into like proud dad mode like
Speaker 1: you do sometimes. What am I going to talk about, Yetta,
Speaker 1: try to stay unbiased, um, otherwise people are going to
Speaker 1: turn this off real quick. I'm sure you can throw
Speaker 1: a few things in there that will help. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You can share the other side of things. UM.
Speaker 1: But no, I'm really excited because you know, so much
Speaker 1: of what makes this place special where we're at right
Speaker 1: now is the history. And that is something that I
Speaker 1: want to talk about today because last time, when we
Speaker 1: talk Deer Camp, me and further, we're kind of just
Speaker 1: talking about the recent history, talking about our hunts up
Speaker 1: here just recently, what was going on. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: so much about this place that steeped in the past
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite things growing up. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember this, if it's annoyed you
Speaker 1: at all, it probably annoyed some people. UM, but I
Speaker 1: just remember every time we were driving up to camp,
Speaker 1: whoever I was sitting with in the backseat. Sometimes it's Terry,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was maybe you or Uncle Steve or Uncle
Speaker 1: Bill or whoever might be. I was always asking him
Speaker 1: to tell stories, like tell me about the first time
Speaker 1: you got a dear, tell me about this one time
Speaker 1: up at camp, or tell me about this year what
Speaker 1: happened this time. I just loved all the stories at
Speaker 1: the old days, um, and I still love the stories
Speaker 1: the old days. So I'm hoping you can share some
Speaker 1: of those stories of the old days. Um. So is
Speaker 1: that something you're up for it? Yeah? Um, well good.
Speaker 1: We're sitting here, we're drinking cold beverages. We got the
Speaker 1: fire going. We just had um my wife's famous venice
Speaker 1: and chili, and Josh made some great dear heart, so
Speaker 1: we are borderline food coma. Yeah, So hopefully we can
Speaker 1: stay awake for this one, um, because I think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's always fun to talk about this stuff. But
Speaker 1: I guess before we get into those good old stories,
Speaker 1: we should at least talk about what's happened here so far. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was kind of a quick trip up
Speaker 1: here to camp kind of two Jewish days too quick days.
Speaker 1: Um and dad, you and me, we have not seen
Speaker 1: it a deer at all. Right, Um, so we don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot to share. But first you've been,
Speaker 1: you've been kind of the star of the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen ten deer you guys, zero which is pretty
Speaker 1: good for up here. He walk us through your runs.
Speaker 1: What's happened so far? Yeah, well I got up here,
Speaker 1: what a night A night before you guys. Um, I
Speaker 1: got up Sunday night and uh not in time to hunt.
Speaker 1: But my first hunt was Monday morning, and um, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember what all even happened that morning. I
Speaker 1: guess I saw. I saw four deer that morning. I
Speaker 1: saw like a little four corn, a spike, a button buck,
Speaker 1: and a dough. Um throughout the morning, just kind of slow,
Speaker 1: slow morning, even though seeing those deers all kind of
Speaker 1: um in a short time period where they came through, Um,
Speaker 1: that was fun. I sat, I sat where Mark usually sits.
Speaker 1: I've snaked his spot since he wasn't here yet. He
Speaker 1: couldn't say no, so he didn't set one of the
Speaker 1: food plots that he usually sits, so that was fun
Speaker 1: to sit somewhere. I hadn't I hadn't said. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: the one time I let you hunt there, you hunt there,
Speaker 1: and then all the subsequent hunts has been dirt. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen a single deer, So you've you found some
Speaker 1: way to really disturb the walk. I walked through the
Speaker 1: whole food plot. I didn't wash my clothes. I could
Speaker 1: dump in the middle of the field exactly. You turned
Speaker 1: that star whole real quick for you. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: do any of that. I snuck in there and snuck out. Um.
Speaker 1: But um, yes, that was That was a good first morning. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just don't We don't see a ton
Speaker 1: of deer up here. So seeing four and once it
Speaker 1: is pretty good and a good day. Two antlerd bucks
Speaker 1: is is a in one set is a good day. Um.
Speaker 1: It's worth pointing out that from the time I can
Speaker 1: remember coming hunting up here, so if I have my
Speaker 1: memory serves right, probably from the time I was like
Speaker 1: six or seven is when I can start remembering hunts.
Speaker 1: You know that I was up here dead right. I
Speaker 1: was up here at six seven, eight years. You were
Speaker 1: up here much earlier than year. But that I can remember, well,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what you can remember. I remember
Speaker 1: about three years old at the bottom of the block. Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So so I can remember though around like seven or
Speaker 1: eight years old, because I remember I was seven at
Speaker 1: ninety five, I remember that was the year that GP
Speaker 1: killed a big one and Terry kills a big one.
Speaker 1: So I remember that year, and I remember the year
Speaker 1: before that, which is and Steve killed that night's eight
Speaker 1: point So maybe six years old is when I can
Speaker 1: remember those hunts. So from six all the way until
Speaker 1: um until like I was like eighteen or nineteen, so
Speaker 1: let's let's call it that whole time period, um, ten
Speaker 1: twelve years or whatever. Um. I can remember seeing one, two, two,
Speaker 1: I think two antler bucks. All those years of you
Speaker 1: and me hunting together. I think we only got two
Speaker 1: or three antlered bucks in a ten or twelve year period.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't totally shocked man. It was probably the
Speaker 1: two that you and I saw when you wanted to
Speaker 1: pull the gun away and shoot him yourself. That was
Speaker 1: That was one of the stories, and we'll tell that one.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that story soon. Um. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean so in general, we have not seen the last
Speaker 1: couple of years have been a little bit better. Um,
Speaker 1: so this trip being indicative of that. Even though you
Speaker 1: and me dead didn't see anything, Josh, you saw a
Speaker 1: lot of bucks relative too. But you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: always that way. So back when Grandpa and I and
Speaker 1: Uncle Steve and the rest of us came up here,
Speaker 1: back in the late sixties and seventies and eighties, Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of deer up here, I thought.
Speaker 1: So the uh, the the area that we used to
Speaker 1: hunt in a mile or so from where our camp
Speaker 1: is now for your out what we call the oil road. UM.
Speaker 1: At that time, it was just a two track. And
Speaker 1: then the oil well companies came in. They widened the road,
Speaker 1: they did a lot of clear cutting, they put in
Speaker 1: the oil wells themselves. Suddenly, over the course of the
Speaker 1: next two or three years, we had all this undergrowth
Speaker 1: that grew up in the deer. And then a number
Speaker 1: of people came in from the outside, from the oil,
Speaker 1: from the drilling companies and hunted. So now we had
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure than we never had before. And
Speaker 1: there were probably five years, maybe ten years where we
Speaker 1: were seeing lats of deer and it was it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It was pretty fun. And then, um then
Speaker 1: for whatever reason in the late nineties and early two thousands,
Speaker 1: things slowed down again. Yeah yeah, um so I want
Speaker 1: to get back to all that. But I guess let's
Speaker 1: look finish your story, Josh, and I want to jump
Speaker 1: back to where you were just at their dead uh,
Speaker 1: because yeah, so in the past they had been better,
Speaker 1: and then there was a basically once I showed up,
Speaker 1: things started going down to the two. Once I started coming,
Speaker 1: things really slowed down. And then maybe we've been on
Speaker 1: a little bit enough to take the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Um So, Josh, you saw a little Bucks. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: couple of little Bucks that morning, Monday morning, Monday afternoon,
Speaker 1: you guys got here. Um when I see I saw
Speaker 1: five doze Monday afternoon, and it felt like it was
Speaker 1: gonna be a really good night for me to I
Speaker 1: was thinking, to me, great, and then I start hearing
Speaker 1: all this blowing behind me a couple hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, for about thirty things turned into a bit
Speaker 1: of a cluster. Yeah. They never they never got down
Speaker 1: wind to me. I don't think they smelled me. But
Speaker 1: I was sitting on the ground, this this spot, it's
Speaker 1: not really conducive for a tree stand or saddle sitting
Speaker 1: on a pipeline trying to look down this pipeline. It's
Speaker 1: on the edge of this big hemlock stand. Hemlocks are
Speaker 1: like an evergreen tree, right, so they got a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of branches, a lot of low hanging
Speaker 1: branches hanging over this pipeline, and so really are the
Speaker 1: best bet is to sit in the ground there for
Speaker 1: for visibility and shooting lanes, and then you can kind
Speaker 1: of see into the hemlocks too, because there's there's zero
Speaker 1: understory in there because it's there's no sunlight in the
Speaker 1: floor in there. Um. So sitting on the ground and
Speaker 1: that lead dough, she she knew something was up. She
Speaker 1: never smelled me, but I think she she knew something
Speaker 1: wasn't right. Um, And she started blowing, and then one
Speaker 1: of the other doughs started blowing. They didn't really run off,
Speaker 1: They just kind of bounced off to about forty yards
Speaker 1: and just looking at me, and you know, bobbing their
Speaker 1: heads and stomping their feet and blowing. And that one
Speaker 1: on the worst when they just sit there and every
Speaker 1: time they make that noise, like a little part of
Speaker 1: my heart dies, and I think to myself, just leave,
Speaker 1: just if you're soap set, just leave. I was seriously,
Speaker 1: I was seriously ready to just stand up and start
Speaker 1: waving my arms just to get him to run away,
Speaker 1: because I mean it was just it was getting ridiculous. Um,
Speaker 1: I wonder about that if sometimes that might be the
Speaker 1: better way to go about it, right, just get him
Speaker 1: out of here, Yeah, just go. And um, so they
Speaker 1: just kind of hung around from it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten minutes maybe, Yeah, it was like thirty Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you could hear him the whole time, you, um,
Speaker 1: because we weren't. We were sitting maybe a couple. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just it just turned into a cluster and
Speaker 1: I ended up seeing one more dough I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty minutes before shooting light was over. And um
Speaker 1: that was that was that. Um but that was I
Speaker 1: mean seeing five dolls in a night again, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good night. Um. So, I mean that
Speaker 1: was a good day. I saw she's nine deer just
Speaker 1: in that one day. And then um, we pulled trail cameras,
Speaker 1: pulled trail cameras. We looked at some pictures last night,
Speaker 1: and fortunately two of the three cameras didn't take pictures.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what happened. If if
Speaker 1: I it appears that the cards were not formatted so
Speaker 1: that the cards were full keeping, because when you look
Speaker 1: at the pictures, it's a bunch of old pictures of mine,
Speaker 1: So it would seem that I put the card and there,
Speaker 1: turned it on and didn't reform at the cards. But
Speaker 1: I just cannot see myself doing it. It's I do
Speaker 1: this so many times, and that's like, I don't even
Speaker 1: turn on the camera without first format. It's it's just
Speaker 1: it's as much of a process as it is to
Speaker 1: pull on your pants for going on the bathroom. Um,
Speaker 1: hey man, it happens. Interesting analogy. I've made that mistake.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I can good dump for me. And it's
Speaker 1: been going back and forth like this the whole time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I don't know what happened, but something happened
Speaker 1: which kept our two best cameras. There are two best
Speaker 1: spots that traditionally the past few years we've been getting
Speaker 1: good bucks on camera. Those didn't take any pictures from
Speaker 1: mid October through mid November, which is that the one
Speaker 1: time period during the year we usually get good bucks.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of devastated last night. I was
Speaker 1: really upset about it. There's a there's a couple of
Speaker 1: decent bucks on on the one camera that we had,
Speaker 1: but a lot of critters, just you know, bears, I
Speaker 1: mean dozens dozens of bears, a couple of coyotes, a
Speaker 1: couple of bob cats, um, and some bucks, mostly young bucks.
Speaker 1: There was one buck maybe that could have been three
Speaker 1: year old. A couple of small eight pointers, a little
Speaker 1: six that kind of stuff that are maybe one or
Speaker 1: two year old. Um. It was good to see bucks.
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, to the earlier point in
Speaker 1: the past, we didn't see any antler bucks, so it's
Speaker 1: nice to know there are antler bucks running around. Um.
Speaker 1: And I gotta believe if we had the food plot
Speaker 1: cameras running bets, you at least one nice buck with
Speaker 1: a show up. Well, there was one nice buck on
Speaker 1: that one camera, like a you know, maybe a three
Speaker 1: year old tight kind of tight and tall look at
Speaker 1: a pointer. Um. So that was good to see, I guess.
Speaker 1: And then that takes us to this morning, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this morning I think I saw that tall and
Speaker 1: tight eight pointer that was on the trail cameras. I
Speaker 1: saw one deer this morning, and it was the first
Speaker 1: deer that has made me pick up my gun since
Speaker 1: I've been coming up here for what seven years? This
Speaker 1: is seven I think this is a seven seven something
Speaker 1: like that. And as the first time I picked up
Speaker 1: my gun and I was looking through my scope and
Speaker 1: ready to pull the trigger. Um, it's not happening. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting and I was sitting in the same spot
Speaker 1: us at the day before that, the evening before, and
Speaker 1: because it works so well with those doughs, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: worked worked really well those Yeah. I was just I
Speaker 1: was just hoping that they wouldn't come back through there.
Speaker 1: They're they're just spooked and wouldn't come back through. And
Speaker 1: it was a slow morning, there's really nothing going on.
Speaker 1: And then jeez, what was that maybe nine fifteen is
Speaker 1: nine thirty maybe, Yeah, sometime around then, I just caught
Speaker 1: a flash of something working through the hemlocks and um,
Speaker 1: moving quick. It's just is one of those like moments
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, that's a buck, like you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a dough It was is cruising. It was
Speaker 1: just walking like a buck. Um are kind of cruising
Speaker 1: like a buck. And I got my binoculars up and
Speaker 1: as you was going through the hemlocks and all the
Speaker 1: the trees everything, I could just make out his antlers, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a nice that's pretty nice. That's a nice book.
Speaker 1: And um, he got to the edge, he got to
Speaker 1: the edge of the hemlocks. I didn't have a shot yet.
Speaker 1: I needed him to take a couple of steps out
Speaker 1: into this pipeline, and instead of doing that, he had
Speaker 1: stopped at the edge of the hemlocks. And then he
Speaker 1: started working due west of me, right straight away from me,
Speaker 1: right down this pipeline, and uh just walked walked away.
Speaker 1: Tried grunting at him a couple of times, and he
Speaker 1: did not care. He just zanas was on a mission
Speaker 1: or something. This was a buck that you were like,
Speaker 1: definitely shoes, Yeah, yeah, especially for up here. I was
Speaker 1: like that, that's a shooter for up here. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought he was probably judgment judging his body coming
Speaker 1: through the woods, Like he looked like he's probably three
Speaker 1: and a half. Um looked like he had a had
Speaker 1: some some good antlers on him. Um, I thought, for sure,
Speaker 1: he's a shooter for up here. So pretty excited he
Speaker 1: would have been. You know, we're looking at a wall
Speaker 1: of racks here, um, and the top rows is all
Speaker 1: the bigger racks that have been shot up here. And
Speaker 1: he definitely would have been a top row bucke, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. I feel like, even though our top
Speaker 1: row is not terribly impressive across the board, there are some, um,
Speaker 1: but if you get a shot at something that would
Speaker 1: be a top row buck these days, it's it's hard
Speaker 1: not to pull trigger on that. Yeah, just an editorial
Speaker 1: comment there. This used to be that top row used
Speaker 1: to be full of big racks, bigger racks than what
Speaker 1: we're there. Um. Back in the late nineties, we had
Speaker 1: a break in and they took many of our bigger racks.
Speaker 1: So now we're kind of kind of refilling it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: well we almost had one to put up there today.
Speaker 1: That would have been nice. Yeah. So they walked away
Speaker 1: and that was it. And that was that basically into
Speaker 1: the morning. And I was in your your guys boat tonight.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a deer this afternoon, So yeah, no
Speaker 1: no such luck for us, I see I did I did?
Speaker 1: I remember thinking yesterday and this morning I hadn't seen
Speaker 1: any here, but I did see two of the does
Speaker 1: that spooked from you. They came running sort of by me,
Speaker 1: and I saw him back behind me. But otherwise nothing.
Speaker 1: I did have a fresh set of bear tracks that
Speaker 1: came past me this morning. They had not been there
Speaker 1: in the evening before. And then we end up getting
Speaker 1: pictures of him. I think we went and checked the
Speaker 1: camera again today because you thought that buck maybe walked
Speaker 1: past it. Yeah, pulled that card tonight because I thought
Speaker 1: that buck he did walk. I know he did. I
Speaker 1: know he probably did. Um, But I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to that camera because now it's like interesting batteries
Speaker 1: are did? I know I probably did well he was
Speaker 1: he was heading in that direction unless he unless he
Speaker 1: cut in um to the swamp on the other side
Speaker 1: of the clear cut before he passed that camera. Um.
Speaker 1: But but my guess as he was working down the
Speaker 1: edge of that swamp, you know. So we got the picture,
Speaker 1: didn't get the picture of the buck because the batteries,
Speaker 1: but got the little bear on camera. It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Lots and lots of bears, a lot of bears. And
Speaker 1: then well I talked about us in podcast Aret, I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about with you guys. But I did see
Speaker 1: that bear last time I was up here, a bear,
Speaker 1: which is really cool to see. Um, how would you
Speaker 1: have reacted, Dad, if you were sitting out here in
Speaker 1: a bear came walking up on the Uh. Probably can't
Speaker 1: say what I would do. I feel like you're a
Speaker 1: little bit more on edge about the bears than I am. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, oh yeah yeah. I think you know I
Speaker 1: won't go in the woods without a weapon. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that most of the time, you know, especially here,
Speaker 1: the black bear are probably more afraid of us than
Speaker 1: where them. But do I really want to take that
Speaker 1: chance and be the one time when you know I
Speaker 1: have a piste off bear. I get that, I get that. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we've certainly have seen a lot more bear
Speaker 1: evidence and bear themselves, and we've had some sightings. Our
Speaker 1: neighbor next to us a couple of years got a
Speaker 1: picture of a bear that he claimed was and that
Speaker 1: DNR apparently confirmed it was a seven eight hundred pound bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, very large black bear. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that can't be right in retrospect, because I
Speaker 1: remember seeing numbers of like world record bears. But but
Speaker 1: all that to say, is we're just gonna get an
Speaker 1: email from someone's gonna say there's no way those it
Speaker 1: was a big dear yea. Um, but yeah we did
Speaker 1: see Also speaking of big bears though, the sixth largest
Speaker 1: black bear killed in the state or something that was
Speaker 1: recently killed not too far from here, so certainly, um,
Speaker 1: history would indicate some big bears around here for mission
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, and we've had a number of cougar
Speaker 1: sightings as well, and you know animals that have been
Speaker 1: killed by by them as well. So yeah, we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife. There are some critters. So that's
Speaker 1: been our deer camp as far as deer sightings, animal sightings. Josh,
Speaker 1: you let us down, good thing I'm here. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's almost worse when it's right that close, so close,
Speaker 1: and then you just couldn't make it happen. It's like
Speaker 1: your teasing. Thus that's the story of my my season. Close.
Speaker 1: But no, cigar, do you have like three different We
Speaker 1: won't get too much into it now, but I've had
Speaker 1: three different like shooter bucks just not offering your shot.
Speaker 1: Can you give us like the thirty second cliff notes,
Speaker 1: h thirty second cliff notes? Um A couple of days
Speaker 1: before a gun season, last time hunting one of the
Speaker 1: properties I have access to in Jackson. Um. Just a
Speaker 1: really nice buck was about seventy yards out and coming in,
Speaker 1: and he had another trail and went went a different direction.
Speaker 1: And I was debating on the tree stand where I
Speaker 1: was sitting in a tree stand about or setting a
Speaker 1: stand about thirty or forty yards further towards where he
Speaker 1: came from. And if I would have set to stand there,
Speaker 1: I probably would have killed him. That night, got a
Speaker 1: text message from the other guy that hunts that property
Speaker 1: on opening day guns season, he killed that buck, really
Speaker 1: nice eight pointer. That was a bummer. UM happy for him? Um,
Speaker 1: opening day a guns HEAs really yeah, why not? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I don't mean that's that's the it's
Speaker 1: a it's a buck that I had no history with.
Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, it's a it's a property
Speaker 1: that of access with with Corey and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I have no history with that buck. And hey, someone
Speaker 1: someone shoots a good deer. I'm happy for him. I
Speaker 1: don't get too worked up about that kind of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: Opening day I was hunting with Dustin and uh, nice
Speaker 1: like a nice ten point came just sprinting out into
Speaker 1: the into this bean field, and he's coming out right
Speaker 1: across and I looked at the holy color a nice
Speaker 1: buck out and where this thing come from? And he
Speaker 1: was probably like a hunter and yards out and I
Speaker 1: grabbed my gun. I was getting ready, and I think
Speaker 1: what happens is he caught Dustin's scent and then he
Speaker 1: stopped on a dime and right back the way he
Speaker 1: came from. And so that that could have happened if
Speaker 1: you would have gaven me another I don't know, fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds to get settled in on him, probably would have
Speaker 1: had a shot at him. I probably blame Dustin, I should,
Speaker 1: but no, no, and then tonight, I mean this morning.
Speaker 1: So I mean that's three opportunities that at good Michigan
Speaker 1: deer that just wasn't quite able. You could even add
Speaker 1: that North Dakota close call yet that came out just
Speaker 1: a little bit of arrange that seems just like a
Speaker 1: wholenother season. Yes see a little long time ago now,
Speaker 1: but yes, I mean she's four different, four different opportunities
Speaker 1: this year that just haven't been quite right. So that
Speaker 1: is yep, deer hunt, deer hunting good good news is
Speaker 1: still got I don't know, a little over a month
Speaker 1: left and maybe something will maybe something will come together
Speaker 1: for me. So you never. So that's our that's our
Speaker 1: sad story, I guess, the the slow couple of days
Speaker 1: and the tragedy of Josh Hilliard's two thousand eighteen deer
Speaker 1: hunting season. But the good news is that we are
Speaker 1: enjoying one of the best parts of the deer hunting
Speaker 1: season right now, which is deer camp. And even without
Speaker 1: seeing many deer, it's still one of the absolute best
Speaker 1: times of the year, isn't it. Sure as sure as
Speaker 1: I mean, dad, My dad is not a big drinker,
Speaker 1: but he's having a beer for lunch. He's having a
Speaker 1: beer podcast. Sorry, he had one o' duels and uh.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite things we always do is
Speaker 1: we always stop at the grocery store in the way
Speaker 1: up here, right and it is the only guilt free
Speaker 1: grocery shopping trip of the year where anything that looks
Speaker 1: good you just throw it in there, no questions asked.
Speaker 1: So we've just been hammering food. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: we had chili, and we had the deer heart, and
Speaker 1: we had how many cookies and cheetos and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: a diet food, yes, exactly, sugar free stuff. So so
Speaker 1: that's whe're at today. But we do we gotta go
Speaker 1: back to what you're talking about. Dad, Go take us
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. You don't need to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, any specifics as far as location stuff, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But but walk us through what's the story of Um,
Speaker 1: you know how we ended up here, right, You started
Speaker 1: hunting with your dad, your brother, and you started hunting
Speaker 1: with your dad a long time ago. Um, where did
Speaker 1: that start? And then how did you guys eventually get
Speaker 1: to this point? You know? We uh, we used to
Speaker 1: hunt further down state, um, in an area that you know,
Speaker 1: my dad knew about because of some friends and and
Speaker 1: his brother that had hunted there for a long time.
Speaker 1: And um, you know we'd go there every year. And
Speaker 1: this is back when I was six, seven, eight years old,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know we'd go there and had a
Speaker 1: Hunting was so different back then, right, you didn't have
Speaker 1: tree stands, he didn't do all the things we do today.
Speaker 1: We'd basically find a tree, literally, find a big tree.
Speaker 1: I'd sat on one side, he'd sat on the other,
Speaker 1: and you know, the funniest things. We still saw a
Speaker 1: lot of deer, and we killed a lot of deer.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, sometimes I wonder what's really changed.
Speaker 1: But at that time, we hunted, uh public land, and
Speaker 1: in that part of the state, it was really heavily hunted.
Speaker 1: There was a large deer population, so we saw a
Speaker 1: lot of deer, but she saw almost as many hunters,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was just kind of it just
Speaker 1: you know, it got a little old after a while.
Speaker 1: So one point, I think my uncle um had come
Speaker 1: up in this part of the state and had been
Speaker 1: hunting up here and told my dad about it and
Speaker 1: told me about this, you know, big chunk of public
Speaker 1: land and um so and it wasn't real heavily hunted
Speaker 1: and real thick. And so back in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: we started coming up here instead of going to the
Speaker 1: other place, and uh almost immediately started getting deer. And
Speaker 1: you know, we we've never had you know, we're now
Speaker 1: talking about Boone crock in one fifties or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but still big deer from Michigan and a lot of deer,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, this time, I'm eight years old,
Speaker 1: ten years old, and uh, my brother who's eleven months
Speaker 1: younger than. We would always compete for who's going to
Speaker 1: go up with dad to go hunting, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: and so my dad would take one of us up
Speaker 1: one weekend and then the other up the following weekend
Speaker 1: and always had a great time. And back in those days,
Speaker 1: we were in an old pop up trailer. You know,
Speaker 1: night's like tonight when it's you know, twenty five degrees
Speaker 1: or twenty degrees and you'll be sleeping in a pop
Speaker 1: up trailer with just a little caressing heater to keep
Speaker 1: it warm, and we're little kids, and we're just freezing
Speaker 1: our butts off. You know, remember in those kind of
Speaker 1: scenarios in the moment, did you enjoy it? Where was
Speaker 1: the situation? In the moment you and Steve were just like,
Speaker 1: this is horrible. We're freezing a little you know, it's both.
Speaker 1: To be perfectly honest, there there were a lot because
Speaker 1: we also had a little tent set up, a nice
Speaker 1: fishing shanny set up behind the trailer, which is where
Speaker 1: we did our dude, you know, and uh that's where
Speaker 1: they did the dude continue. So you know, I mean
Speaker 1: an eight year old kid having to winder out there
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, and of course it
Speaker 1: had to be away from the trailer. Wasn't right next
Speaker 1: the trailers was ways away, and um, that wasn't so great. Um,
Speaker 1: but in in this little carrossing heat didn't really keep
Speaker 1: that that canvas you know, tent or the pop up
Speaker 1: that we eventually had, very warm at all. So we
Speaker 1: froze our butts off all the time. But you know,
Speaker 1: there was nothing like going in the woods and sitting
Speaker 1: down and what we called the potholes, which we were
Speaker 1: these you know, uh, hardwood stand with really kind of
Speaker 1: rolling little bumpy hills and stuff that you said, and
Speaker 1: that would ran along the swamp and you see, you know,
Speaker 1: and Grandpa would like, I said, be on one side,
Speaker 1: and I'd be on the other, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: freezing my butts off, and you know he wrap us
Speaker 1: up and and what you know. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: Clothing has come so far. All we had back then
Speaker 1: was you know, a flannel shirt and a red sweatshirt
Speaker 1: and you know, my mom would would hand knit scarfs
Speaker 1: and hats and gloves for us and that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and those were great, but they did do a whole
Speaker 1: lot to keep you a warm. I mean you froze
Speaker 1: every once in a while, you know. And my dad
Speaker 1: was my dad was really hardcore. So we'd get up
Speaker 1: in the morning, you know, three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: We'd have our two three cups of coffee, you would,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. My dad fed
Speaker 1: me coffee is pretty early. Uncle Steve not so much,
Speaker 1: but I like it. And uh, and we'd be out
Speaker 1: in the woods, you know, or before it got light,
Speaker 1: and uh we'd find our you know spot by the
Speaker 1: one of the trees and um, and Grandpa also build
Speaker 1: his own blinds. We'd build ground blinds and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we'd be out there early in the morning. And Grandpa,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean good good hunting technique. Keep you know,
Speaker 1: you'd had to be really quiet, and you had to
Speaker 1: be really still, and you always had to be looking.
Speaker 1: And he'd always encourage us and said, Dave, Dave, look
Speaker 1: at that. Look do you see that there? And you
Speaker 1: know there'd be something moving through the woods. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to your question, mark, Um, there
Speaker 1: were lots of things about hunting for an eight year
Speaker 1: old that that you know, weren't all that much fun. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's kind of like that old adage
Speaker 1: of if I can remember it, you know, um, incredible
Speaker 1: periods of boredom accentuated by moments of glory and delight.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the we deer hunting was for me.
Speaker 1: But but you know, there's some of the best memories
Speaker 1: of my life and being there with Grandpa and then
Speaker 1: just like us, we're telling stories all night, we're playing cars.
Speaker 1: We always you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we'd usually go in, um, if we've made dinner at camp,
Speaker 1: we would, but sometimes we go into town and have
Speaker 1: a burger or something, come back to camp and play poker,
Speaker 1: you know. And so our eight ten year old boys
Speaker 1: and grandpa, you know, we played like everybody else, and
Speaker 1: he teach us the rules of the game. We had
Speaker 1: a few other adults there with you two. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: typically have four or five of us typically be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and you know, we just have great stories,
Speaker 1: always talking about stories of the camp and stories from
Speaker 1: people's past and stories from the hunt. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, Mark, I think you know,
Speaker 1: the um ent of of the joy of being here
Speaker 1: is is the camaraderie and and where we are in
Speaker 1: this beautiful cabin and and being in God's creation and outdoors,
Speaker 1: you know, and UM being able to relate that and
Speaker 1: share that with each other, that that's what it's all about,
Speaker 1: and and doing that, I think in the context of
Speaker 1: really trying to um find just that right opportunity to
Speaker 1: kill the big deer. And Uh, but you know Grandpa
Speaker 1: was also and taught me, and I think we taught
Speaker 1: you that. You know, there's a there's a tension and
Speaker 1: a real respect that we have to have for for
Speaker 1: our prey and for the deer that we hunt, and
Speaker 1: for you know, nature that we're part of. And as
Speaker 1: much as we we want to get that big deer
Speaker 1: and and put venison on the table, there's also you know,
Speaker 1: we love that animal and we love the privilege that
Speaker 1: we have for being able to partake in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely something that it was always really hammered home
Speaker 1: for me growing up between you and GP Grandpa, UM,
Speaker 1: just that the seriousness of what we were doing. It
Speaker 1: was never something you would do carelessly. It was never
Speaker 1: something that was frivolous in any way. UM. Taking animal's life,
Speaker 1: as you said, was something to to to respect and
Speaker 1: to do with as much care as possible. Um, something
Speaker 1: that I never got to experience, or at least never
Speaker 1: um I could remember, was was what Grandpa was like
Speaker 1: in the moment, you know, um, after having shot a
Speaker 1: deer and walking up on or something that. Do you
Speaker 1: remember any experiences? You know? What was what was he
Speaker 1: like in that moment, because as a kid, I can
Speaker 1: remember him just being so serious, and you know it
Speaker 1: was it was just very very serious. Whether him um
Speaker 1: really expressed like joy or anything or something like that.
Speaker 1: You never saw Grandpa's ace thirty seconds after he shot
Speaker 1: a deer. I've never seen that. What was that like?
Speaker 1: And what was tell me about? Tell us? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so I'll tell you one story. I can tell you
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of different stories, and these are
Speaker 1: all when I was ten years old, twelve years old,
Speaker 1: you know, young, and typically Grandpa would have wed set
Speaker 1: with him. We'd we'd go during hunting Susan either myself
Speaker 1: from my brother Steve would be out with with Dad
Speaker 1: and we had a like you mentioned, Mark, we had
Speaker 1: a group of my dad's friends that we also went
Speaker 1: hunting with and they were great so that I would
Speaker 1: hunt with one of them and Steve would hunt with
Speaker 1: the other, and again we just usually sometimes we'd have
Speaker 1: a blind that we make it, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times we just walked through the roods, find a place
Speaker 1: where we see runs coming through, where the evidence looked positive,
Speaker 1: and we'd sit and uh uh and yeah, Grandpa was
Speaker 1: real serious about his hunting. But you know, I can
Speaker 1: think of one time in particular, and it was just
Speaker 1: on the other side. This is before we got the cabin,
Speaker 1: but in the same area as I was kind of
Speaker 1: um walking through my story, I didn't get that fire.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um, so overall the oil road, we were
Speaker 1: back and back off the maybe a couple hundred yards
Speaker 1: to three hundred yards from the road, back in a swamp,
Speaker 1: and we've been there all day, all morning with the
Speaker 1: I remember, um that morning as the snow started to
Speaker 1: fall in really big flakes, you know, the half inch
Speaker 1: inch size flakes, just just floating down through the sky
Speaker 1: and covering everything. And you know how you kind of
Speaker 1: get that uh um, that hush that falls over the landscape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just really kind of surreal almost, And um.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, and I did as much sleeping
Speaker 1: out in the woods because I did look something. So
Speaker 1: I'm having a good nap, you know. And and suddenly
Speaker 1: Grandpa reaches over real quietly and just bumps my shoulder
Speaker 1: and says, Dave, David, Dave, Oh my god, I see something.
Speaker 1: And so I wake up, you know, And of course
Speaker 1: I had to be really careful not to make any
Speaker 1: noise or anything like that any points. And I see
Speaker 1: this deer just kind of just spunking his way through
Speaker 1: the pines and working his way towards it, his head
Speaker 1: down and um, he's coming closer and closer, and Grandpa
Speaker 1: brings up his rifle and puts it on his shoulder,
Speaker 1: and you know, and he he says, watch, pulls the trigger
Speaker 1: and this darned deer. It turns out that this deer
Speaker 1: had really a typical set of antlers, and one of
Speaker 1: the antlers is about ten inches long, a perfect spike
Speaker 1: pointing straightforward, and it ran right at us at a
Speaker 1: full run, and just just ten yards fifteen yards maybe
Speaker 1: ten yards, and when it was really close, um, Grandpa
Speaker 1: shot again, and the the deer just veered off to
Speaker 1: the right, literally a few yards from us. And so
Speaker 1: there was a combination of the really cool experience and
Speaker 1: getting the deer and kind of feeling like we just
Speaker 1: missed being scared. So yeah, another story real quickly, and
Speaker 1: I leg it continued. You never never told us about
Speaker 1: how Grandpa expressed himself after what's crabby and said, Dave,
Speaker 1: we got it, we got it, and jumped up and
Speaker 1: down and this big smile across his face. And like
Speaker 1: you said, Grandpa was a pretty serious guy. And those
Speaker 1: were the times when we got our deer um or
Speaker 1: when we went fishing, and when we were when we
Speaker 1: were doing outdoor um hunting or fishing activities. Those are
Speaker 1: the times when I really saw the real Grandpa, because
Speaker 1: that's when he could be really relaxed and really enjoy
Speaker 1: himself and really seemed like that was when he was
Speaker 1: the happiest. And I saw that that day. Okay, so
Speaker 1: your next door well, so real quickly. Um, kind of
Speaker 1: going back to the you know, the my brother and I, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't remember how old I was again, maybe ten
Speaker 1: twelve years old, and Grandpa had gone up with Uncle Steve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the two first story. So this is back
Speaker 1: on the oil road on the other side of the railroad.
Speaker 1: And um, again late November had been snowing. Um, I
Speaker 1: think Grandpa had to go to some um Academy you
Speaker 1: had to go to in Massachusetts, so wasn't able to
Speaker 1: be there for open opening day. So we went up
Speaker 1: the weekend after Thanksgiving and uh that weekend, or maybe
Speaker 1: it was the middle weekend, I guess, because Uncle Steve
Speaker 1: went with him, and so they went up again and
Speaker 1: we had the campers stay at the camper. They went
Speaker 1: out into the pines and UH came home that night
Speaker 1: with the biggest deer I've ever seen, and Uncle Steve
Speaker 1: is all excited, big big eight point um you know,
Speaker 1: by today's standards, probably three and a half maybe a
Speaker 1: four year old dere. I mean, there's a big deer
Speaker 1: for for up here. Uncle Steve is so excited and
Speaker 1: he's jumping all around and he's bragg and you don't
Speaker 1: like you what about Yeah, I got to deer. Look
Speaker 1: at this wood and he's walking up this time. We've
Speaker 1: got movies of I'm, you know, walking in from the
Speaker 1: bottom of the deer because we hung our We always
Speaker 1: hung our deer in the garage and then typically we'd
Speaker 1: come back around a few days later and we'd skinned
Speaker 1: them and we'd bowne them on ourselves and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But you know, and I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: little older than Steve, so of course, not only am
Speaker 1: I jealous, but I'm kind of thinking, hey, I'm the oldest.
Speaker 1: I should have gone first, you know what gives? So
Speaker 1: Grandpa felt bad, so, you know, and I keep saying
Speaker 1: to him, Hey, Dad, you know, let's go up. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go hunting, right, We're gonna get our own eight
Speaker 1: point right, And he's thinking to himself, how can I
Speaker 1: do that? There's no way I can, you know, top this. Well,
Speaker 1: so the following weekend we went back up and again I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, continue to hound him, and I'm continuing to say, man,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. This is great, Dad, We're gonna get
Speaker 1: another big deer, right, And he's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of thing like, sure, Dave, we're gonna do our best.
Speaker 1: He was definitely. So we get back up and we
Speaker 1: went back almost to the same spot. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know why we went to the same area, but it
Speaker 1: was along a little bit of a field and swamp
Speaker 1: on one side, and um um hardwood and the pines
Speaker 1: kind of a um, you know, kind of a half
Speaker 1: square square kind of a configuration. We're walking down the
Speaker 1: edge of the swamp and suddenly I hear Grandpa said, Dave, Dave,
Speaker 1: get down. We were walking, okay, so I didn't really
Speaker 1: expect to see much on the way a deer at
Speaker 1: that point, and uh so I went down, and you know,
Speaker 1: he brings up his right and was, Dave, it's a deer.
Speaker 1: Looks just like the one I shot last week. It
Speaker 1: must be his brother, you know. So I'm excited, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think Dad was just a Grandpa was just shaking.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could just tell he was. He was
Speaker 1: really excited, but also kind of it's the surreal thing,
Speaker 1: like how can this happen twice in a week? You know?
Speaker 1: But he you know, again, he put the beat on
Speaker 1: and pulled the trigger, and we ended up bringing home
Speaker 1: too big a points or the second a point for
Speaker 1: two um in a week time, and hung it up
Speaker 1: right next to the second and the thing that it
Speaker 1: literally looked like the other deer's brother, about the same size,
Speaker 1: about the same size rack, almost the same configuration. Um,
Speaker 1: two beautiful deer. And I got the opportunity to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I told you to my brother. It did. It was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Um. Speaking of always hanging your dear in
Speaker 1: the grabs, Grandma always listen tell a story about how
Speaker 1: um she used to be appalled by that all time,
Speaker 1: like the smell of it made her sick. And then
Speaker 1: the smell of cooking venison. She cooked venison your whole
Speaker 1: lives made a lot of ves. But she always talks
Speaker 1: now about how she can't stand the smell of it
Speaker 1: and how when she was pregnant, and I guess she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, you know, she had three kids, and she
Speaker 1: always talked about how whenever she was pregnant, it would
Speaker 1: make her cry. She cried because the smell was so horrible.
Speaker 1: Is that is that right? You know that was to
Speaker 1: have happened before before I can remember, because I don't
Speaker 1: remember that. I mean Grandma was a great cook, and
Speaker 1: Graham would make venison chop suey and venison barbecue and venison.
Speaker 1: I mean, she just came up with all these great
Speaker 1: ways to make venison. And like you said, we had
Speaker 1: venison for almost every meal, many many meals. And the
Speaker 1: meals we didn't have venison, we'd have you know, lake
Speaker 1: trout or coho or whatever, because we we ate a
Speaker 1: lot of game. And Grandma got really good at cooking
Speaker 1: all of that. Um Now, I think there's something to
Speaker 1: be said that you tend to like your your mom's
Speaker 1: cooking better than whether whether it's good or not. But
Speaker 1: I think in Granma's case, it really was good and
Speaker 1: it was good, and uh I loved it. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I keep nagat her because I wanted
Speaker 1: her to make chop suey again, Venison Chop suey. She
Speaker 1: hasn't made that in thirty years, and uh I really
Speaker 1: miss that. You gotta you gotta give her some venicine.
Speaker 1: The way things are going, I'm manna have to give
Speaker 1: her some of your venis. Yeah. Um, hopefully changed as soon. Um,
Speaker 1: So continue with the original line of the story though.
Speaker 1: So you guys had started, you start hunting this northern
Speaker 1: public land. You had some great experiences. One of the
Speaker 1: stories you didn't mention that was one you guys are
Speaker 1: always sleeping in the pop up camper and how your
Speaker 1: brother one time? You know, there's the beds on either
Speaker 1: side the camper right the stick out and then it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's kind of canvas walls that we were
Speaker 1: very loosely attached and crap if I'm wrong, But didn't
Speaker 1: he roll one day far enough over the edge of
Speaker 1: the bed and the canvas walled unattached, and he rolled
Speaker 1: right out of the camper. Yeah, yeah he did. Now
Speaker 1: that one actually happened up in Canada when we're up
Speaker 1: on a fishing trip in Canada. But yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: may have happened a couple of times. But when I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of happened up in Canada, and yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: all looking around for Steve where Steve returns off Steve's house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of stories. But yeah, going back
Speaker 1: to how we found this place. We uh, we'd always
Speaker 1: come up there every year we come up and it's
Speaker 1: just like just like you guys do, right, we were
Speaker 1: We would come up in June and July and August
Speaker 1: and scout and you know, dream about the season and
Speaker 1: talk about our plans and talk about all the things
Speaker 1: we're gonna do, and you know, we're gonna try this,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna try this technique, and we're gonna go
Speaker 1: over here and so and so forth. But we you know,
Speaker 1: we were always hunting public land and um and the
Speaker 1: land was was much more heavily hunted back then than
Speaker 1: it is today, and especially when I mentioned the oil
Speaker 1: wells and the drillers that came in and split things out,
Speaker 1: and um really really improved the habitat for the deer
Speaker 1: in many respects. But but again, one time we you were,
Speaker 1: we have a stream that runs right through the middle
Speaker 1: of this property, this area of state land that we
Speaker 1: were hunting, and we followed that stream one time through
Speaker 1: um some lowlands in the swamp and a big swamp
Speaker 1: when I say swamping, a lot of down trees, big
Speaker 1: down trees, big um uh spruces and and conifers and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. UM very difficult train to get through,
Speaker 1: especially as a kid. Okay, so this is back in
Speaker 1: and you know, the early sixties or late sixties, early seventies.
Speaker 1: But we'd still kind of make our way through. And
Speaker 1: I remember one time it would be an hour maybe
Speaker 1: two hours of trou during our way through. And we
Speaker 1: came across this little opening, came through the opening after
Speaker 1: we got across the stream, and we saw this cabin
Speaker 1: and we're looking at this cabin and it was just
Speaker 1: all by itself in the middle of nowhere. There was
Speaker 1: nothing around it. Um. And at that time we didn't
Speaker 1: even see the road or the little two track. They
Speaker 1: went to it and we kind of walked around and said, boy,
Speaker 1: this is really cool once you love to have that,
Speaker 1: and uh uh you know, kind of joked about a
Speaker 1: little bit. It was obviously somebody else's and we didn't
Speaker 1: want to bother it all, so we just went back
Speaker 1: in the woods and hunted. Well. Um ten years later,
Speaker 1: my dad ended up retiring early and um, you know,
Speaker 1: he was looking to get some property up here and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and he happened to be looking
Speaker 1: in the classified and saw that this that there was
Speaker 1: a cabin that was for sale a place where the
Speaker 1: sale very close to the public land that we used
Speaker 1: to hunt. So we came up and checked it out
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be the same cabin that
Speaker 1: we saw as we walked through that one time, and
Speaker 1: uh I was on a little bit of disrepair. Um
Speaker 1: the owners, the current owners of it had had it
Speaker 1: it was originally built. As a matter of fact, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of interesting uh history to this land,
Speaker 1: the property that we have. So we have forty acres
Speaker 1: that's kind of embedded in eight thousand acres of state land,
Speaker 1: and but this area used to be um cattle farmed
Speaker 1: back in the eighteenth century. And uh, one of the
Speaker 1: things that my dad has as a deed, the history
Speaker 1: of all the deeds as was turned from generation to
Speaker 1: generation and the one of the deeds was signed by
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln back in eighteen sixty four or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's a little bit kind of interesting history
Speaker 1: to it. But any rate, um uh the uh we
Speaker 1: ended up the current owner of the property, his wife
Speaker 1: was ill. He was looking to sell it. My dad
Speaker 1: made an offer and it ended up being a really
Speaker 1: good thing on both sides. He wanted to sell it
Speaker 1: for a good price. My dad was was really eager
Speaker 1: to get the property. And um, we did a lot
Speaker 1: of work to it because it was in pretty bad
Speaker 1: disrepair at the time. But you know, as you've probably
Speaker 1: described in the past, Mark, you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a sixteen by twenty four uh log cabin,
Speaker 1: naughty pine interior, really really simple propane lights. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's nothing fancy at all but big fieldstone fireplace
Speaker 1: in the middle. Um. But for us, it's it's just
Speaker 1: got so many memories and so we've hunted and that
Speaker 1: was when we at the cabin and Uh, I did
Speaker 1: a lot of work to it, put in a shed,
Speaker 1: did some other things, and we funded her ever since.
Speaker 1: Before moving on, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our partners at White Tailed Properties this week. With white
Speaker 1: Tail Properties, we are drawn by Ben Harsheine, a land
Speaker 1: specialist out of Iowa, and Ben is going to be
Speaker 1: talking to us about buying a property with the intentions
Speaker 1: of hunting white tails as well as having cattle. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, you can only get so far
Speaker 1: if you want to have great hunting and and have cattle.
Speaker 1: Um In my area, I really don't have uh too
Speaker 1: many cattle operations in my area of expertise, but what
Speaker 1: I've seen, and I've hunted some some cattle ground here,
Speaker 1: I think the most important part would be to separate
Speaker 1: where your pastures are and where the cows are are
Speaker 1: are mainly going to spend most of their time versus
Speaker 1: where you want to hunt. If you can, if you
Speaker 1: can have timber that's actually fenced off from that pasture, uh,
Speaker 1: that's going to allow the timber to to get nice
Speaker 1: and thick and and and separate those two environments between
Speaker 1: the white tails and in the cattle. A lot of
Speaker 1: guys will say that that, uh, you know, cows don't
Speaker 1: affect big gear and in you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: a really case by case, but I do know that
Speaker 1: whenever cattle or pastured in the timber that keeps the
Speaker 1: undergrowth and the first uh, you know, say three or
Speaker 1: four feet of of important growth for a white tail,
Speaker 1: that keeps that trimmed down. So most timber that's pastured,
Speaker 1: uh is not ideal white tail habitat. So if somebody
Speaker 1: is really looking to buy a farm and they want
Speaker 1: to run cows, I would try to find something you
Speaker 1: know and and have good hunting. I would try to
Speaker 1: find something where those two are separated with good fencing.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn more and to see the
Speaker 1: properties that Ben currently has listed for sale, visit white
Speaker 1: Tail properties dot com. Backslash hardshine. That's h A R
Speaker 1: s h y n E. So do you do you
Speaker 1: remember then? And this is what I can't remember. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember your first gun of your first deer.
Speaker 1: Did that happen at ken Raven or that happened pre
Speaker 1: ken Raven and ken Rovns what we call our camp? Right? Sorry? Um?
Speaker 1: So can you walk us through that store. So that
Speaker 1: was black on the public land then right it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was over off the oil world again. And
Speaker 1: I was sixteen years old, I guess I had. I
Speaker 1: had bought my first gun, which was UM over and
Speaker 1: under four twenty two, which I was really proud of, right,
Speaker 1: really cool gun. And I used to, like I said,
Speaker 1: I used to hunt with Grandpa until I turned fourteen,
Speaker 1: and then it started hunting on my own. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: either because Grandpa wanted to make sure that you know,
Speaker 1: he was fair down all the all the kids or
Speaker 1: or whatever. But um, my sister Sue would come went
Speaker 1: hunt with me for a lot of that time. And
Speaker 1: so Sue is seven years younger than me, and uh,
Speaker 1: and she's a real trooper, right, she would she get
Speaker 1: bundled up, and you know, all the scarfs and the
Speaker 1: sweatshirts and the you know, the cheap Walmart boots and
Speaker 1: all the other things that you know, frankly was really
Speaker 1: hard to get clothing and and that sort of thing
Speaker 1: for for adults, much less kids. At that time it
Speaker 1: was really warm, but for kids it was really tough.
Speaker 1: You just had to kind of find snowsuits and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and and bundle them up as best
Speaker 1: you could. So Susie was bust bundled up, and and
Speaker 1: so was I. But anyway, so I can remember one
Speaker 1: time we're out hunting. Can I put the time out
Speaker 1: of here? Yeah? So why did you get stuck taking
Speaker 1: your little sister off? Well that's what I've been trying
Speaker 1: to figure out. Your dad. So your dad just eventually
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pawn her off. Now, ye did Steve ever
Speaker 1: have to take her? You know, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think either I was the nice one, never figured
Speaker 1: that out. She probably would say that I wasn't. But
Speaker 1: any right, Um, so, like I said, was sixteen, had
Speaker 1: my over and under four two and my Yeah, so
Speaker 1: Susie would have been Yeah, she would have been nine
Speaker 1: at that time. And um, so she's hunting with me
Speaker 1: and we're going off the Royal Road back by the
Speaker 1: river the stream that runs through that that area of
Speaker 1: the of the property. Real. Um it was I think
Speaker 1: it was opening morning, or either opening morning or maybe
Speaker 1: the day after one of those really beautiful, um early
Speaker 1: mid November days. Um, really cold and crisp. The you know,
Speaker 1: you could see for a long way. I was sitting
Speaker 1: in on a kind of a mound underneath a clump
Speaker 1: of pine trees, big pine trees, looking off over the
Speaker 1: stream to my um my front to the left, and
Speaker 1: then behind us was the swamp. And um, I remember
Speaker 1: it really clearly because we're there, Susie's next to me,
Speaker 1: kind of behind me, and Susie Susie was a real trooper,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't a really good sitter, Okay, So part
Speaker 1: of why Susie would probably say that I wasn't a
Speaker 1: really good hunter with her, it was I constantly was
Speaker 1: telling her to be quiet, sometimes using stronger language, and
Speaker 1: then she get mad at me, and I get mad
Speaker 1: at her, and so and so forth. Well, anyways, so
Speaker 1: we're sitting there and um, Grandpa had dropped us off
Speaker 1: maybe an hour hour and a half before, and we've
Speaker 1: been sitting there a long time. And it's again real cool,
Speaker 1: crisp November morning, and you could hear the one of
Speaker 1: those mornings when you could hear the deer because the
Speaker 1: leaves were so crispy and and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And lo and behold, about nine o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: I remember it as as if it was yesterday. Um,
Speaker 1: I hear this crashing out to my right, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I immediately bring up my rifle. I had
Speaker 1: a nice scope and my my rifle. My brought it
Speaker 1: up and and pointed in the direction of the crashing
Speaker 1: because I really couldn't see because it was behind the
Speaker 1: brush and that sort of thing, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of could tell there were multiple deer back there.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I started seeing flashes and white, you know, the
Speaker 1: els and that sort of thing coming through. So I
Speaker 1: just brought my gun over to a to an opening,
Speaker 1: and the whole time I'm saying to Susie, Susie, be
Speaker 1: really quiet, I see there's some deer going through. And okay, right, Dave,
Speaker 1: sure there's still coming through. So I, you know, put
Speaker 1: my put my scope in looking through this opening, and
Speaker 1: literally in in a second or so, this nice big
Speaker 1: five point steps right into the to the opening, and
Speaker 1: it was just, you know, one of those things that
Speaker 1: just brought the cross stairs on his shoulder, pulled the trigger,
Speaker 1: he ran. The funny part is Susie immediately stood up
Speaker 1: and started beating me, so you killed Look reston, I
Speaker 1: didn't shoot a fall, so she So what I think
Speaker 1: happened is there was a group of deer and she
Speaker 1: thought I was shooting at one of the other deer.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was shooting another. But you know, he
Speaker 1: ran fifty yards and Grandpa came over and we um,
Speaker 1: you know, we were really big and and letting the
Speaker 1: deer set and lay and and bleed out and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So when you know, took up and
Speaker 1: run again. So you know, a few minutes later we
Speaker 1: walked over and there it was a nice big deer,
Speaker 1: and uh and so and I of course, by that
Speaker 1: time Susie realized what had happened, and we're celebrating and
Speaker 1: you know, really cool thing and gosh, I got a
Speaker 1: chance to shoot a deer with my brother kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So the last time I think Susie wanting she didn't
Speaker 1: she didn't stick with it. No, she didn't know. But
Speaker 1: she was a real trooper. I mean, just the fact
Speaker 1: that she was out there with us, and you know,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of guys. So it was five or
Speaker 1: six guys and a you know, on a trailer and um,
Speaker 1: you know, nine year old little girl was was out
Speaker 1: there with us and and putting up with all the
Speaker 1: all the guy stuff and the poker and the cold
Speaker 1: night with a kerosene heater and you know, the outdoor
Speaker 1: to latrine and all this other stuff. She did really well.
Speaker 1: So you guys got the cabin years later. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: did stuff change afterally it? Did things change? Do you
Speaker 1: feel like, did the did the camp changed, did the
Speaker 1: culture change, did the hunting change? What was different after
Speaker 1: that point? Yeah? I think it changed a lot for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons. I mean, you know, up until
Speaker 1: that point, we're a little like, uh, you know, like wanderers.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we had our areas where we'd like
Speaker 1: to hunt, and we kind of scouted them and we
Speaker 1: knew them, but they really weren't our own and and
Speaker 1: any given time you could go to someplace that was
Speaker 1: your favorite hunting spot and there'd be somebody else sitting there, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's how hunting is, especially on public land.
Speaker 1: And um. But once we had our own property, and
Speaker 1: like I said, we have forty acres that's adjacent to
Speaker 1: and kind of embedded in eight thousand acres of public lands,
Speaker 1: and that public land you can't get to that public
Speaker 1: land except going through the private property. So it's really
Speaker 1: pretty pretty private and um uh, so it was really
Speaker 1: nice to be able to you know, build permanent blinds
Speaker 1: since this before the time of you know, tree blinds
Speaker 1: and stuff tree stands, but you know, to be able
Speaker 1: to scout and and have some confidence that you can
Speaker 1: hunt the area is that you're scouting, and that you're
Speaker 1: you know, you can start being more strategic about your honey,
Speaker 1: you could tire, you know, start doing those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So I think it changed a lot. And then of
Speaker 1: course having a cabin to stay in every night and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with a nice big fireplace and stove and
Speaker 1: all the other things made a world of difference as
Speaker 1: far as the comfort and and you know, having a
Speaker 1: deer camp, having a place to call our own, as
Speaker 1: modest as it is, and it is very modest, Um,
Speaker 1: it was really nice. Yeah. Did you guys have a
Speaker 1: buck poll? Yeah? Did you guys make a temporary buck pole? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did, And we have a buck pole that we
Speaker 1: we've made, um less temporary, more permanent. Um. We you know,
Speaker 1: there are many times we'd have two three four deer
Speaker 1: hanging from that buck pole, as you know. Um. And
Speaker 1: one of the stories that I remember is you had
Speaker 1: to be so so I gotta go back and mark.
Speaker 1: So we had the cabin obviously when Mark started coming
Speaker 1: up here, and um uh so Mark was born in
Speaker 1: eighty seven, Mark started coming up here and probably ninety
Speaker 1: so about three years old. Um, those first couple of years,
Speaker 1: and Mark was just I mean he just um adored
Speaker 1: my dad, right, and he looked up to him and
Speaker 1: hopefully me to some extent. But my dad was really
Speaker 1: kind of the patriarch of the family and the patriarch
Speaker 1: of hunting camp, right, And he was the one who
Speaker 1: told all the stories about you know, uh um uh
Speaker 1: you know the hunting up up here, the things we
Speaker 1: used to do, that, all the things we saw on
Speaker 1: all the hunting trips up here. And then Katie remember
Speaker 1: ka team Mark. I'll let you tell that story. Well, Katie,
Speaker 1: it's I don't think we Maybe I don't think we
Speaker 1: told the story last year, did J I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't know this one, so, Katie, UM, which stands
Speaker 1: for Ken Rove until I don't know where GP, I
Speaker 1: don't know what. But you know what's funny is I,
Speaker 1: as I sit back and try to think about why
Speaker 1: I am the way I am in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I do think that g P was the storyteller of
Speaker 1: the family, right, He was always a storyteller. I think
Speaker 1: that probably wrapped up on me. And one of the
Speaker 1: stories he always used to tell me was about Katie.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what her name was originally, um,
Speaker 1: but it was this young girl who went out hunting
Speaker 1: with her dad right here. She went on hunting out here,
Speaker 1: a little local and her and her dad went out
Speaker 1: hunting on an opening day and they went out sitting
Speaker 1: and it was one of those nights where it's like
Speaker 1: really cold and snowy and everything, but you could tell
Speaker 1: there was a front blowing in. You're sitting there and
Speaker 1: there's a there's a snoise and this deer comes walking
Speaker 1: out and Dad shoots, the shoots the buck, gets the deer,
Speaker 1: and the the deer runs off though, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Katie's dad says, well, hey, you stay right here. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go get the buck. You just stay here, don't
Speaker 1: leave this log. And when he leaves that log and
Speaker 1: leaves Katie and her name is I don't know, Karen,
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll call her Karen says on the log. Dad
Speaker 1: goes look for the buck, but it ran off at
Speaker 1: a distance. Well, as soon as he leaves, that front
Speaker 1: pushes through to start snowing, and it's snowing and snowing
Speaker 1: and snowing. And the dad never does find that buck,
Speaker 1: but he tries to come back to find Karen. He
Speaker 1: can't find Karen either, and he walks all over the place,
Speaker 1: can't find Karen, goes back to town, gets the locals.
Speaker 1: The locals come out and they walk and walk and walk,
Speaker 1: and they can never find Karen. Again. Well, Karen had
Speaker 1: been lost out there in the woods, and she didn't
Speaker 1: wondered what happened to dad, and she starts walking around
Speaker 1: and trying to find him, and she's lost in the snow,
Speaker 1: and she ends up getting really cold and scared. Obviously
Speaker 1: she's like seven years old or something, and um, she
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm kind of paraphrasing and embellishing a
Speaker 1: little bit as I remember the story. Um, but as
Speaker 1: I remember the story going in one way or another,
Speaker 1: I can't remember if she got cold and she snuggled
Speaker 1: up into a hole or what happened. But but one
Speaker 1: way or another, this little baby girl got hum found
Speaker 1: by a pack of coyotes, and the pack of coyotes
Speaker 1: adopted her and took care of her and a little
Speaker 1: Karen grew up with the coyotes and became the wolf
Speaker 1: Laby of the woods out here. But she never forgot Ken.
Speaker 1: She never forgot Ken Rovan, and so she she then
Speaker 1: became Ken Rovan Tilly What when When Mark was young,
Speaker 1: he used to say, you know, Mark, be really careful
Speaker 1: because sometimes in the middle of the night, if you
Speaker 1: look out one of the windows, you'll see Ken. You'll
Speaker 1: see Katie looking up with her hands up on the window,
Speaker 1: looking in, trying to find out, trying to get in
Speaker 1: to get the worm, you know, the warmth by the fireplace.
Speaker 1: So Katie at this point, by the time I was
Speaker 1: seven or years old, Katie was an old lady that
Speaker 1: ran around with long gray hair. And so yeah, I would.
Speaker 1: I would sit here. These used to be a used
Speaker 1: to be a couch, my favorite couch until my dad
Speaker 1: took it through it away the other year, which I
Speaker 1: will still not forgive before. Now it's a lousy cot um.
Speaker 1: But this big window right across the way. I would
Speaker 1: always sleep here, and that window was right in front
Speaker 1: of me, and every night I'd be afraid to look
Speaker 1: out that one day because I just knew that Katie
Speaker 1: would be staring in at me. And one time I
Speaker 1: was sitting here by myself for some reason. All you
Speaker 1: guys were gone and I wasn't here by myself, and
Speaker 1: it was just about dark, maybe for summer, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't gun hunting one night, but everybody else did and
Speaker 1: I stayed in here, so it was like last light.
Speaker 1: And it's that edge of daylight in the evening where
Speaker 1: a dark shape can morph into anything, you know, Like
Speaker 1: you see that sometimes when you're sitting out there in
Speaker 1: the morning and it's just about daylight. But at this point,
Speaker 1: is that a deer coming and then it finally becomes daylight?
Speaker 1: He rose as the bush or it's you know, something
Speaker 1: that's obviously not. I dear, what was that time of night?
Speaker 1: And I swore, I mean, I swore Katie was sitting
Speaker 1: here at the edge of the pines, about seven yards away,
Speaker 1: standing in the corner, just kind of almost like a coyote,
Speaker 1: sitting on his haunches, that's what she was doing. And
Speaker 1: you can see this long gray hair and looking right
Speaker 1: at me, and I just put remember running back to
Speaker 1: the couch and burying my head in the couch and
Speaker 1: not wanting to move till you guys got back. You know,
Speaker 1: I was eighteen years old, and you know, it was
Speaker 1: bad night. I think I figured something out. I think
Speaker 1: I now know why, Um, your aunt Sue never came
Speaker 1: back up hunting stories. Maybe yeah, all right, I ask
Speaker 1: a question. Yeah, I feel like I should know this,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I probably did know this at
Speaker 1: one time. But Kelly asked me, where does Ken Rovan
Speaker 1: come from? Where's the name of the camp come from? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I couldn't answer. I I can't remember dead. Wow.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say for sure, But I think
Speaker 1: I know why for sure? Do you know? Yeah? Why
Speaker 1: don't you say? Well, okay, what the story I know?
Speaker 1: And you correct me if I'm wrong. But the story
Speaker 1: I know is that there is a fishing lodge off
Speaker 1: of a river around here. I think it's Pire Marquette
Speaker 1: or some other river. And um, he had flowed to
Speaker 1: the river and fished by it, knew of this lodge
Speaker 1: and seen it, and it was called Grandpa Grandpa, and
Speaker 1: the lodge is called dun Robin. And when they bought
Speaker 1: this place, he thought, you know, you gotta have a
Speaker 1: name for this place. And that kind of popped in
Speaker 1: his head and he liked that name Done Robins, so
Speaker 1: he's like, well, why don't just take Kenyan and Don
Speaker 1: Rovan and put him together, and he called Ken Roan.
Speaker 1: That's the story I know as well. Okay, and for
Speaker 1: your your listeners. So we have coming into our our camp.
Speaker 1: We have this big um you know, western ranch style
Speaker 1: entryway that used to have this big I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe six seven ft wide by a foot or two
Speaker 1: deep um sign hanging from it with a big wooden
Speaker 1: letters spelling Ken Rovan. So it made a real kind
Speaker 1: of a unique kind of setting as you came in,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're ways off any road, We're half
Speaker 1: a mile off in many roads, and just a little
Speaker 1: tiny two track with nobody else around us. So it's
Speaker 1: really kind of a kind of cool. Yeah. Um, so,
Speaker 1: where the heck we're before that? Oh so, so we
Speaker 1: talked about Katie talked about how we got the name.
Speaker 1: But okay, yeah, yeah, So what I was curious about
Speaker 1: you were starting to talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: I started coming up here, and that was something that
Speaker 1: I'm always curious to hear a little bit more about.
Speaker 1: So you said it was about three when I started
Speaker 1: coming up here. Yeah, Yeah, So those first few years. UM.
Speaker 1: So we had built a blind out north of our
Speaker 1: property out maybe three yards on the edge of the
Speaker 1: swamp and um, and we built it was a ground blind,
Speaker 1: but it's a really nice blinds was you know, it
Speaker 1: was pretty well built up and um with walls that
Speaker 1: you know, he provided some cover and then a top
Speaker 1: grant was really big into top, so we always had
Speaker 1: top covered, which was kind of nice. A little bit
Speaker 1: like I feel like we need to paint this picture
Speaker 1: a little bit better than because today when people think
Speaker 1: ground blinds, yeah, ground blends are much different than a
Speaker 1: canyon ground ground blends now or like fiberglass manufacture buildings.
Speaker 1: The ground blinds of the Canyon household were um usually
Speaker 1: maybe now he did. He would put a few like
Speaker 1: four by four posts in the ground and then sometimes
Speaker 1: there'd be like a strip of metal across the top
Speaker 1: or like somegated plastic on the top. And then he'd
Speaker 1: like to use like astro turf carpeting. They would go
Speaker 1: around the wall, so your walls would be astro pain
Speaker 1: And then for some reason then he would take gutter
Speaker 1: mesh the metal gutter fencing or whatever it is, and
Speaker 1: you put that all over the top and bottom of
Speaker 1: the window openings, um, which you couldn't see through. You
Speaker 1: couldn't see through. There's a little gap obviously for you
Speaker 1: shoot through. But I think I think he wanted to
Speaker 1: add that. They're my assumptions that it was somewhat see
Speaker 1: through for you, but it would break up your outline
Speaker 1: for the deer yet. Um. And then sometimes he put
Speaker 1: like a chain link curtain almost for the dentry way,
Speaker 1: like that's what's on his blind Those were fireplace fireplace screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, So that is the type of ground
Speaker 1: blind that we're talking and those are those are the
Speaker 1: top end ground blinds. We had, we lower end ground blinds,
Speaker 1: but these are the top end ground blinds. Had the
Speaker 1: astro turf carpet. So we had a top and ground
Speaker 1: online that we had built and it was as a
Speaker 1: two fer, so we intentionally built it so we can
Speaker 1: put two chairs on there and that sort of thing
Speaker 1: with the intention of sometimes Grandpa would hunt with you know,
Speaker 1: either my sister if my sister came up, or or
Speaker 1: some of the young cousins and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And this is after your sister, Yeah, this is after
Speaker 1: the sister. Yeah. But anyway, but this is big enough
Speaker 1: for for you. And so the first memory I have
Speaker 1: of Mark, um, you know, hunting with me is is
Speaker 1: getting into this blind. He's about three years old. We
Speaker 1: got him all bundled up, and you know, clothing proved
Speaker 1: a little bit then, so we had some better clothing
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and some boots. We bought
Speaker 1: surrells from Meyer or whatever. And um, we brought a
Speaker 1: bag of toys, you know, to kind of keep Mark entertained.
Speaker 1: And I remember that it's really happening. For the first
Speaker 1: season or two that you know, got in there, he's
Speaker 1: really excited to get out in the woods. And he's
Speaker 1: sitting next to me and he's asking me questions, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know, what do I do now? And where are
Speaker 1: we looking? And so forth, and well about you know,
Speaker 1: we talked. And but within about in half an hour
Speaker 1: or so, Marks on the bottom of the ground in
Speaker 1: front the you know, in the blind, planning with the
Speaker 1: toys and planning airplane. You know, that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: really funny. Is that's what Josh still does. But I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you that changed, so you know, and and
Speaker 1: and Mark just always loved being parted deer Camp and
Speaker 1: I can't really can't forget. Um it was about that age,
Speaker 1: maybe four, and we had a particularly successful year. We
Speaker 1: had three deer hanging on them on the buck pole
Speaker 1: and um, three yeah, three deer. Yeah, one or two
Speaker 1: of them were pretty good sized, pretty good size box
Speaker 1: and uh, you know Mark, I've got you've got movies
Speaker 1: of this of Mark walking out in his you know,
Speaker 1: flame orange sweatshirt and bundled up. You know, he looks
Speaker 1: like a little like a Michelin man and dressed in orange.
Speaker 1: He's walking underneath the deer, you know, when he's pointing
Speaker 1: up with them, when he's looking up and you know,
Speaker 1: you can just tell when we'd all be inside the cabin,
Speaker 1: you know, playing poker, and that's sort of Mark. We
Speaker 1: Mark would disappear and we'd go outside. Where's Mark. We'd
Speaker 1: go out with a flashlight in China, and here's Mark
Speaker 1: standing under the deer, you know, looking up at the deer,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can just imagine he's thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot me one of them. So but you know,
Speaker 1: the real seminal moment for me, the time when I
Speaker 1: knew that it was all over for me, was about
Speaker 1: maybe five years later, Mark was maybe nine years old,
Speaker 1: maybe ten, and we're actually back in the same same place,
Speaker 1: same blind and um uh it was another cold mooring. Uh.
Speaker 1: Mark and I were hunting together. You know, Mark's a
Speaker 1: little bigger, um, little little outerer. Um. So at this
Speaker 1: particular time, we're in the woods, um, and we're hunting,
Speaker 1: and we're out there and and you know, for whatever reason, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Mark had gotten pretty aggressive. And at that
Speaker 1: point he said that he's been reading. He thinks he
Speaker 1: knows everything there is to know about deer hunting, you know.
Speaker 1: And so he's telling me about you know, Dad, you
Speaker 1: have to make sure you do this, and you make
Speaker 1: sure you do that. And he's eight years old or
Speaker 1: nine years old. Okay, by the way, something's never changed.
Speaker 1: But I'll never forget. So so you know, um, I
Speaker 1: I have a vision challenge, so for me, it's sometimes
Speaker 1: hard to see things distance, right. So I'm there and
Speaker 1: we're hunting, and and Mark suddenly Mark kind of you
Speaker 1: know Jazzine the sciences. Dad, Dad, there's a deer coming
Speaker 1: right through there. And so and of course I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I still think I'm a father. So I said, Okay, Mark,
Speaker 1: you don't be really quiet, and Dad, I'm quiet. Okay.
Speaker 1: So so I'm waiting and I'm waiting and Mark's Daddy's
Speaker 1: He's getting closer. Daddy, He's right behind it. It's a buck,
Speaker 1: wasn't dear it was? It was a big buck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was the first buck that we had ever seen
Speaker 1: together with hunting right right, And and I, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I just didn't see it right. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: brought my rifle up and I was pointing in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction because I didn't see the deer and it
Speaker 1: wasn't making any noise. And Mark's just finally, after about
Speaker 1: ten minutes of this sneaking well whatever it probably it
Speaker 1: felt like ten minutes, it felt like I felt like longer.
Speaker 1: So finally you could just see the virtual Mark puts
Speaker 1: his hands on his hips and says, okay, yeah, just
Speaker 1: give me the gun. And I did. I mean I did.
Speaker 1: I was like, I remember being like, Dad, just give
Speaker 1: me the gun. Just give me the gun. Dad, just
Speaker 1: give me the gun. Um. And he wouldn't give me
Speaker 1: the gun. Um. You were eight years old, and I
Speaker 1: remember coming back to camp, and as my older self
Speaker 1: now looking back on it, I feel really bad about it. Actually, Um,
Speaker 1: I imagine you probably felt bad about the situation, and
Speaker 1: then you have your little snot nose punk eight year
Speaker 1: old son come back to camp and tell everyone I
Speaker 1: always saw this buck. Couldn't you couldn't see it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't see the buck, telling the bucks right there, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to go. He wouldn't give me the gun.
Speaker 1: Couldn't see it. So if I were you, I would't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been surprised. You could have knocked me
Speaker 1: over the head and I probably deserved it. Um. But
Speaker 1: I do remember that. I remember, I can I can
Speaker 1: see exactly where that buck walked through in my mind's
Speaker 1: eye right now. Well, but there's another another seminal moment.
Speaker 1: So there's there's these things, you know, just like you
Speaker 1: have kind of milestones in your life, which that you
Speaker 1: think about it, the whole world changed when you got
Speaker 1: to that milestone. So that that event with the with
Speaker 1: the g dad, just give me the gun, I'll shoot
Speaker 1: that was one of those. But there was another one,
Speaker 1: and it was actually a little bit before that, maybe
Speaker 1: sex maybe seven. So always at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: I would lead the way as we went into the woods.
Speaker 1: I would forge the trail and I'd find my way
Speaker 1: through the brush and back to the blind and Mark
Speaker 1: would diligently and dutifully follow me. Well, something happened around
Speaker 1: seven years old. He decided he wanted to lead, and suddenly,
Speaker 1: instead of me saying Mark and I gotta be really quiet,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure look for dear Mark was saying,
Speaker 1: Dad too loud, very quiet, look for dear Dad. I
Speaker 1: know it's all over. I don't remember when I remember,
Speaker 1: but I do remember at some point after the gun
Speaker 1: give me the gun incident. It was sometime after that
Speaker 1: incident when I I don't even know. I don't remember
Speaker 1: when it was that I remember, but at some point
Speaker 1: it definitely the role shifted in my mind where it
Speaker 1: went from you telling me what to do to me
Speaker 1: telling you what to do. And it definitely was before
Speaker 1: it probably should have. So Dad coughs so loud, he
Speaker 1: sniffles so loud, he moves so loud, he moves too much.
Speaker 1: Somethings haven't changed, oh man. But but yeah, a few,
Speaker 1: a few of the moments that stand out to me.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember to give me a gun incident, and
Speaker 1: then you talked about that when I was standing out
Speaker 1: there looking at the buck pole. I the year I
Speaker 1: remember was the year that I've I've told this story
Speaker 1: many times in the podcast. Everybody probably knows the store,
Speaker 1: but it was it was the year that GP shot
Speaker 1: his big seven point the biggest, the biggest buckets on
Speaker 1: the wall right now. And that's the year I remember
Speaker 1: walking out and recovering that buck in the snow, and
Speaker 1: then there's the two big bucks on the buck pole,
Speaker 1: and I remember that you're looking at those just for days,
Speaker 1: just going out there and standard looking. Um. But um,
Speaker 1: you know the other thing I say, Mark, just just
Speaker 1: another thought. You know, you were always a really important
Speaker 1: part of deer camp for us. So you know, I
Speaker 1: guess one of the one of the call outside make
Speaker 1: to all the listeners is, you know, bring your kids
Speaker 1: with you. It is such a such an important thing
Speaker 1: to have your kids to be part of the experience.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think for you, um, for us. You know,
Speaker 1: this group of men, multi generational group, you know, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven of us, UM, some of us you know, as
Speaker 1: old as seven years old probably at that point, and
Speaker 1: then there was you and UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: just that it brought freshness and the spirit and the
Speaker 1: joy of hunting. Because you're passing it onto the next generation.
Speaker 1: And you see, you see the excitement and the um, um,
Speaker 1: just the fascination that a young person has as they're
Speaker 1: they're going out in the woods and they're shooting their
Speaker 1: first year and they're experiencing all these things. I just
Speaker 1: can't say how important it is enough. Yeah, we did
Speaker 1: a podcast couple months ago, me and two of my friends, UM,
Speaker 1: talking about introducing your kids to the outdoors and trying
Speaker 1: to you know, help create a new hunter. And all
Speaker 1: of us were speaking, um, far ahead of our turns
Speaker 1: because I had only been a dad for like five
Speaker 1: months at that point, and one friend had only been
Speaker 1: a dad for like five or six years. Another guy
Speaker 1: been a dad for ten years. UM, So they hadn't
Speaker 1: they hadn't had a successful end result. Yet you raised
Speaker 1: a son who really got into hunting so much so
Speaker 1: that his whole life basically revolves around it now. So
Speaker 1: you really won that one. You figured that out. So
Speaker 1: what do you think you did right when it came
Speaker 1: to raising a young kid to become a hunter that
Speaker 1: maybe you could pass on to folks that would hope
Speaker 1: to do this same. Do you remember the what I
Speaker 1: used to say feed the habit, feed to have you
Speaker 1: have it. What did that mean? Well, you you were debt,
Speaker 1: you had you had a tough love um way of
Speaker 1: raising me in a lot of ways, and it was
Speaker 1: really important to you, um that I had to worked
Speaker 1: for just about everything, all right. You weren't going to
Speaker 1: give me a car, you weren't gonna give me this,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. It was like. So nothing, very few
Speaker 1: things were given to me easily. But one thing that
Speaker 1: I was spoiled on was hunting or fishing gear because
Speaker 1: he said it was one thing that you wanted to
Speaker 1: feed the habit. That was something that you thought was
Speaker 1: really positive, that you thought was productive for me to
Speaker 1: be to be spending my time doing. So that was
Speaker 1: one area where you would, um, if I showed an
Speaker 1: interest and really wanted to get involved with something, you
Speaker 1: would definitely make sure that that could happen, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think the other thing we try to do
Speaker 1: is we always try to buy um decent gear because
Speaker 1: I think one of the one of the things that
Speaker 1: I remember going back to my childhood, um, you know,
Speaker 1: trumping through the woods with clothing that was just terrible
Speaker 1: clothing to be on the woods with, right, I mean
Speaker 1: I got cold as almost as soon as I walked
Speaker 1: out of the camper, I was called, um, you know
Speaker 1: it boots that your feet constantly frozen, UM field field
Speaker 1: glasses that were you know, Kmart specials. I mean, just
Speaker 1: you know, I think you don't have to go out
Speaker 1: and buy the best equipment, but I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot to be said. We all, as hunter and hunters
Speaker 1: and fishermen were always looking at the greatest gear and
Speaker 1: the gear that we ourselves can go out and use
Speaker 1: to to do our our hobby. But don't forget your kids.
Speaker 1: And and again you don't have to buy the best equipment,
Speaker 1: but don't buy the cheapest. Give them given gear that
Speaker 1: that they're going to get excited about and it's going
Speaker 1: to allow them to have that kind of experience. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what we tried to do with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I definitely. Oh though, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: I remember having to buy my own first real seven
Speaker 1: like camouflage gear, and I bought it myself. I remember,
Speaker 1: I'm sick of wearing this lousy hand me down orange
Speaker 1: jacket or something. I remember exceptions. Remember when I started
Speaker 1: working at Gander Mountain is when I really up to
Speaker 1: my hunting quality gear. I took it to a new
Speaker 1: level there. Well, and you know when I stay buying
Speaker 1: good gear. I mean some of that came later and
Speaker 1: largely because of my discount probably discount. Absolutely that was great.
Speaker 1: That was one of the worst days of my life
Speaker 1: when you quit. I think I have helped makeup for
Speaker 1: since a little bit. Um but uh, funny um. Another
Speaker 1: story that just popped in my head that now we're
Speaker 1: really fast forward in that clock. But now I don't
Speaker 1: know I'm a teenager or something like this, And I
Speaker 1: can't remember I've told this story to many people. I
Speaker 1: don't remember how I told the podcast. But one of
Speaker 1: my favorite Ken Rovan stories that involved you actual remember
Speaker 1: if I told this story? Do you know the story
Speaker 1: of men? Tell? It's the walk, the night Walk story.
Speaker 1: I don't think I know that night Walk story. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think you'll know when to tell him. Um. So,
Speaker 1: And this this is has to do with my grandpa.
Speaker 1: And we talked a lot about previous about how he's
Speaker 1: a pretty serious individual, like he was not, at least
Speaker 1: at least around me. I never knew Grandpa's like a jokester. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, you know, he could have a
Speaker 1: good time, but he was not traditionally that type. So
Speaker 1: we're all in here in the cabin late at night
Speaker 1: after hunting and sitting around the fire, just like we're
Speaker 1: doing right now. And my dad and my uncle I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hot in here, right The fires really
Speaker 1: really warmed it up in here, beautiful night outside, the
Speaker 1: stars were out. One of the two of you said,
Speaker 1: you don't want to go for a walk down the road,
Speaker 1: down the two track. So Bill and Dave go and
Speaker 1: they're gonna go for rock down the two track, all
Speaker 1: the rest of us staying here sitting around talking. Ten
Speaker 1: fift minutes goes by, we're chit chatting. GP goes out
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. We're still sitting around here and you know,
Speaker 1: telling stories and restoking the fire and everything. And another
Speaker 1: five minutes goes by, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: her boom bum bum bum boom, and footsteps come running
Speaker 1: up the deck and the door flies open, and my
Speaker 1: dad and Bill running here, and my dad's bent over,
Speaker 1: hands on his knees. You guys wouldn't believe it. What
Speaker 1: in the world has happened? And then Bill and Dad
Speaker 1: go on to say that they're walking down the road
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they hear, well, what did
Speaker 1: you hear? Tell us, what did you hear? Heard this
Speaker 1: blood curdling screech just where I don't think you hears screech.
Speaker 1: I thought you heard the crashing and like the growling
Speaker 1: was both. It was both. It was the screech and
Speaker 1: then the growling and then crashing after that. Well, how
Speaker 1: do you explain the screech? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just Grandpa making a noise. Like well, because
Speaker 1: when you guys came running in here, you thought that
Speaker 1: there was a oh yeah, oh yeah, we did. So
Speaker 1: you described this bear having been like crunching through the woods,
Speaker 1: making a bunch of noise and coming towards you. And
Speaker 1: then you and Bill come and running all the way
Speaker 1: down the road, all the back to Cam freaking out.
Speaker 1: Maybe his Bill that screamed yeah, not like but but
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. We looked at each other and we
Speaker 1: we had flashlights, but they were both I think the
Speaker 1: batteries were prolo because we didn't really have much light.
Speaker 1: And it's just one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: it was already kind of a it was a beautiful night,
Speaker 1: but it was also kind of a creepy night. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, that was the time
Speaker 1: when we had the coyotes and large quantities around us,
Speaker 1: so we had, you know, um um groups of coyotes
Speaker 1: that that seemed like they were just a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. So I mean, just this the atmosphere
Speaker 1: was really kind of spooky and just kind of you know, so,
Speaker 1: you know, Uncle Bill, it's pretty hard to scare Uncle Bill. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a he's a pretty uh, pretty big
Speaker 1: burly and not big, but it's certainly a strong and
Speaker 1: powerful wrestler type, and not much would scare him. But
Speaker 1: we both we heard that, and we don't remember what
Speaker 1: we were talking about. We must have been talking about
Speaker 1: something that kind of set us up for it, because
Speaker 1: I remember hearing that. We looked at each other wide eyed,
Speaker 1: you know, saucerers for eyes, and we just and Uncle
Speaker 1: Bill and I just did a dead heat back to
Speaker 1: the cabin. Did you ever think that obviously couldn't have
Speaker 1: been a bear, because we know that Bill is faster
Speaker 1: than you, so you would have been eating probably if
Speaker 1: it had been a bear. Alright, you only need to
Speaker 1: out run on persons. I just need to out run
Speaker 1: the slowes guy. So Bill won the race back to
Speaker 1: camp and you come running in here and you tell us,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, there's a bear or something out there, like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's crazy. And then a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: later we hear steps on the deck again, and then
Speaker 1: we realized, oh jeez, Grandpa hadn't come back from the
Speaker 1: bathroom yet. And he opens the door and he looks
Speaker 1: and here at us, and then he just starts laughing,
Speaker 1: didn't he starts That's the first time time in my
Speaker 1: life I can remember Grandpa doing a practical joke. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know which was worse, just the shock
Speaker 1: of what had happened or knowing that his grandpa that
Speaker 1: did it. That's the Grandpa snuck out into the woods,
Speaker 1: works his way around you guys. And then yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so unlike him and so hilarious. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was very funny. We got a lot of good laughs
Speaker 1: out of that one. Um, are there any other moments
Speaker 1: up here that stand out? You know, you talked about
Speaker 1: different seminal moments with me or or with him or
Speaker 1: with anyone else, and any others that stand up for.
Speaker 1: So this is maybe one an example that of one
Speaker 1: that stands out for. Relatively recently, we've joked about this.
Speaker 1: This happened was last year or the year before. Um so,
Speaker 1: you know, having had a deer up here in a while. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it was two years ago. I guess it was.
Speaker 1: So I have a blind I called the trench line,
Speaker 1: which is down from the cabin hundred yards or so,
Speaker 1: and um it's it's a you know for us old guys,
Speaker 1: it's an easy walk. We'll we'll we'll say the dad
Speaker 1: is very particular about his entry and exit routes. Well
Speaker 1: we'll spend it that way for your dad. You're really
Speaker 1: good at entry and exit. So a smooth, quiet hundred yards.
Speaker 1: So so let's say it's a beautiful, beautiful evening. Um uh,
Speaker 1: Mark and Josh went out to south. It was just yeah.
Speaker 1: So so it was about three o'clock. Mark and I
Speaker 1: finished up what we were doing, had dinner or lunch
Speaker 1: brother and Mark takes off and goes south, goes to
Speaker 1: a tree stand over the food pot and U uh,
Speaker 1: So I decide I'm gonna go out and hunt the
Speaker 1: trench bline at night and I've I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of deer at the trench bline. It's been a pretty
Speaker 1: good place for deer. Despite the easy access and etcida.
Speaker 1: It's been a good line. So I get over there.
Speaker 1: It's about maybe, you know, four o'clock or so quarter
Speaker 1: to three, because of course I don't go in quite
Speaker 1: as early as Mark does. So I get out there
Speaker 1: and it was first five or quarter No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not that bad. But I get out there and I
Speaker 1: noticed that, you know, now, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a kind of similar kind of blind of what Mark
Speaker 1: was describing before. So it's a Grandpa blind. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's got the corduinated top, and the four by four
Speaker 1: is on the corners, and the AstroTurf a on the side,
Speaker 1: and you know, etcetera. And it used to have the
Speaker 1: cutter and cutter together, but I've torel that down. But
Speaker 1: are you right? Um? And so I get there and
Speaker 1: I noticed that that some of the carpeting had fallen
Speaker 1: down on the side. So you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: look at my watch and it's quarter to four. And
Speaker 1: I said, why, you know, I got some I got
Speaker 1: plenty of time. Of course, Mark would tell you that
Speaker 1: Dad's not quite the hard core hunter that he is
Speaker 1: not just not quite just not quite quite yeah, just
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I go, you know, I'm close
Speaker 1: to the cabin. So I go back to the cabin.
Speaker 1: I get the staple gun. Can you imagine what I
Speaker 1: would have done if I'd been there and seeing this.
Speaker 1: That's why I did it. After your left. Mark will
Speaker 1: never know, you know, you know things have really changed
Speaker 1: when you gauge everything you do by what Mark would do.
Speaker 1: So I sneaked back out to the blind. You didn't sneak,
Speaker 1: and I staple up the carpet. I'm surprised Mark didn't
Speaker 1: hear that from here. Probably I could have. I was
Speaker 1: I was busy class I was in the climber so
Speaker 1: I was climbing up at this moment. I was climbing
Speaker 1: up in my climbing trees stand. And you didn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear. But yeah, that's because I was making
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of noise. So you know, so I
Speaker 1: made the very discretionary wise move. She started not bring
Speaker 1: the staple gun back to the cabin. I should put
Speaker 1: around of the chair and I sat down and you
Speaker 1: get settled and bring my rifle up. You know, I
Speaker 1: kind of starts scanning with my glasses and you know,
Speaker 1: looking for deer, and suddenly here's some crashing off to
Speaker 1: my right, and look over and here's a beautiful turned
Speaker 1: out to be a five point nice, beautiful deer, you know,
Speaker 1: sneaking his way through towards from the right towards my
Speaker 1: center and literally just one of those things that was
Speaker 1: really close to me. Frankly, I didn't. I thought he'd
Speaker 1: see me and take off. Mind you, this is five
Speaker 1: minutes after I stapled the carpet. And what I love though,
Speaker 1: is that you had the audacity too. You see the
Speaker 1: buck he's walking in and then you know us that
Speaker 1: one of the one of the Caster turf car class.
Speaker 1: It was still flapping. See grabbed the staple then really
Speaker 1: fixed that. I didn't do that, but anyway, so I
Speaker 1: brought the scope up and put the crossars on his
Speaker 1: shoulders and pulled the trigger and um, deer runs off
Speaker 1: and um and I text mark the story, you pull
Speaker 1: the trigger, you shoot this deer. I had just gotten
Speaker 1: and settled in my climbing tree stand. It's like three
Speaker 1: thirty or something like that. I had just gotten settled
Speaker 1: and I'm just sitting down. I think I just pulled
Speaker 1: up my gun. And then I was like, boom, jump
Speaker 1: out of my pants. I mean, so close to me,
Speaker 1: so loud, and it's three thirty in the afternoon. It
Speaker 1: came from right where you're sitting. And the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was, oh my god, my dad fell and
Speaker 1: the gun went off and he shot himself or something like,
Speaker 1: there's no way he shot a deer at first of all,
Speaker 1: my dad, second of all, and he's a hundred yards
Speaker 1: from the cabin. Yeah, like, there's no way this could
Speaker 1: be a good thing. So immediately I was I panicked.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, something really bad just happened.
Speaker 1: And I was about to climb down, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give him one No, I was either going
Speaker 1: to give you one minute and call you, or maybe
Speaker 1: I called you immediately. I think I called you immediately,
Speaker 1: and if he was an answer, I'm I'm running over there,
Speaker 1: like we un fair, what's going on? But I was scared.
Speaker 1: I wasn't excited. I was like scared, and I call
Speaker 1: you and then then we picked up, like what just happened?
Speaker 1: Good shot a bull? It blew my mind absolutely blew
Speaker 1: my mind. I couldn't believe it was crazy, blew your mind.
Speaker 1: And you had no idea about the staple. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't even know about the staple incident yet. If I
Speaker 1: had known him, that color me surprised. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was pretty wild. But yeah, we went over there and waited,
Speaker 1: waited an hour, and then tracked him right to where
Speaker 1: he's at. And that was a cool moment. That was
Speaker 1: the first I mean as the first moment like that
Speaker 1: we got to share together, um a long time, in
Speaker 1: a long time, and I guess we had we killed
Speaker 1: the buck with me a few years before that back
Speaker 1: in southern Michigan. Um, but that was the first one
Speaker 1: up here, So that was that was really cool. Um,
Speaker 1: that was a good one, Ash. Do you have any
Speaker 1: of some further stories, Do you any further stories you
Speaker 1: need to share, or any questions about any other questions
Speaker 1: about the history of this place stories? I mean, my
Speaker 1: my one story from up here as when I'd rather
Speaker 1: not share, I think you spendenty of times. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: not one of my finer moments. But that's really the
Speaker 1: only dumb thing I've thinking I've done up here, And
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. For me, I was gonna say, you
Speaker 1: mean you you calendar your events by how many dumb things?
Speaker 1: I try to focus really hard when I'm here, so
Speaker 1: I don't do anything stupid. I'm just really glad I'm
Speaker 1: not alone. Yeah. Do you guys like when I'm not around?
Speaker 1: Do you just like commiserate about what an asshole I have? Something?
Speaker 1: Is that basically what you guys talk about? That Mark
Speaker 1: who brought him along? Oh? Man? Oh, well, let's is uh.
Speaker 1: It is always always good to be up here, and
Speaker 1: I love I mean, I could keep asking you to
Speaker 1: just tell story after store. I just love hearing all
Speaker 1: the old stories. And I was like that when I
Speaker 1: was seven years old, and I'm still like that now
Speaker 1: at thirty one, and hopefully at forty seven, I'll still
Speaker 1: be the same way. Well, he as a as a
Speaker 1: dad and a new grand father. My excitement is being
Speaker 1: able to share that all over again with your son, Everett. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am very very excited. I was already thinking about
Speaker 1: that tonight. I told you earlier today that thinking about
Speaker 1: um kind of taking Grandpa's old ground blend. He had
Speaker 1: a spot that he he used to hunt and hear the most,
Speaker 1: and that's I hunt around that area. Now it's kind
Speaker 1: of become my little zone that I hunt a lot.
Speaker 1: We've been working on these food plots around there, and
Speaker 1: I killed my first buck kind of oven near there,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of inherited that spot. And um,
Speaker 1: his old ground blend, though we haven't really done anything
Speaker 1: with since grand passed, and it's kind of fallen under
Speaker 1: disrepair and the bears have kind of tore it up.
Speaker 1: And so the foundation, like the poles are still there
Speaker 1: and the roofs still there, but all the carpeting has
Speaker 1: fallen down, and the gut arest I was fallen down,
Speaker 1: and the little fireplace screens still there. Um, but I was,
Speaker 1: I was standing out in front of it. And actually, interestingly,
Speaker 1: it's weird. You know I told the start a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, and you had told me this well
Speaker 1: mid October, mean further are here we're hunting. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: this tree stand overlooking this field, a little food plot.
Speaker 1: Now you can see the ground blind. And as I
Speaker 1: was sitting there, I was thinking about Grandpa and thinking
Speaker 1: about all these memories, and thinking about the first set
Speaker 1: I ever had out here, which had been in that
Speaker 1: ground blind. In that first moment I remember seeing dear
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about all these things, and then this
Speaker 1: black bear shows up undernathing. First time I've ever seen
Speaker 1: the bear appear. Really cool moment, and you know, I
Speaker 1: did a video about it and things like that, and
Speaker 1: then you Dad texted me a couple of days later
Speaker 1: or a week or so later, and you said, what
Speaker 1: was the date of that? And I said it was
Speaker 1: October fift and you said, well, that was exactly six
Speaker 1: years to the day of his passing, right, it was
Speaker 1: a six year anniversary was passing. So that was that
Speaker 1: was like, oh wow, Like that was like such a
Speaker 1: kind of a wild thing to have happened that day
Speaker 1: as I was thinking about him and all that stuff
Speaker 1: right there. And interestingly, today, um, I am back out
Speaker 1: there again, and I go out there to hunt, and
Speaker 1: I'm walking across the plot in the morning and I
Speaker 1: noticed fresh bear tracks walking across the plot and I
Speaker 1: follow us fresh bear tracks and they literally walk two
Speaker 1: steps away from the ground. One they walk right to
Speaker 1: the blind and just divert right around it by two steps,
Speaker 1: walked right by Grandpa's blind. And so it's almost like
Speaker 1: the bear walked me to the blind. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I should hunt there to night. And
Speaker 1: so I sat there tonight thinking about more, and I
Speaker 1: told you Dad that, you know what, I think I
Speaker 1: should fix it back up again, and that should be
Speaker 1: the first place that ever hunts when he comes up
Speaker 1: here with me, kind of full circle, the first place
Speaker 1: that's at and now I can take my son to
Speaker 1: sit there again. Um, And it's it's kind of like this,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what it is, spirit animal
Speaker 1: or whatever. The bear kind of led me to it
Speaker 1: again after that cool earlier. I don't know, it's all
Speaker 1: kind of strange coincidence or something, but kind of cool.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get that fixed up again. And I can't wait to
Speaker 1: take my son up here and to introduce him to
Speaker 1: all these things and these stories and you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about how Grandpa buying large was
Speaker 1: a pretty serious guy. But you know where Grandpa was
Speaker 1: the happiest, where he really was himself and really enjoyed
Speaker 1: things the most was when he was out in the
Speaker 1: woods or in a boat with you, fishing or hunting.
Speaker 1: He was always it's it's you know, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of stories about Grandpa and some you know, he was
Speaker 1: a tough guy sometimes, but I will always remember those
Speaker 1: moments that he just was, you know, taking me to
Speaker 1: do all these things with him and you and him
Speaker 1: and me, going places and hunting and fishing. I mean
Speaker 1: that those are like the the foundational experiences of my life. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you ever think you'd be doing this? No? No,
Speaker 1: but it's it's you know, all those things made me
Speaker 1: who I am today, which had made it just led
Speaker 1: me to have the opportunities I've had. Have you ever
Speaker 1: told the story about sitting in your your dorm slash
Speaker 1: apartment near Columbia University in Manhattan and interning at Fleishman
Speaker 1: Hillard and Board and out of your tears and decided
Speaker 1: to start up Wire to Hunt. Yes, I have. I
Speaker 1: had told this story. So people are probably sick of
Speaker 1: this story. I won't regale that one again. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's been a lot of interesting things that
Speaker 1: led to let us here now, which is pretty cool,
Speaker 1: and it all started here. It's a little Kevin with
Speaker 1: that's largely just about the dang same as it was
Speaker 1: when I was here at three years old. I mean,
Speaker 1: the same pictures on the wall, the same deer on
Speaker 1: the wall. There's still no electricity, there's still no running water,
Speaker 1: there's still no running toilet. The woman folks still don't
Speaker 1: want to come up here. First thing that happens when
Speaker 1: I get home is your mother says strip. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's not for any good reasons. I'm sorry this
Speaker 1: is it's not because they're trying to make kidnap before.
Speaker 1: If we're going down that road, Mark and I could
Speaker 1: keep this podcast going if we want to tell the
Speaker 1: embarrassing Yeah, there's there's all sorts of embarrassing stories that
Speaker 1: we won't tell about you, Dad, Um, but we will
Speaker 1: say that that the cabin does have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a unique odor to it. Supposedly that all of
Speaker 1: our wives claim that when we come back, we have
Speaker 1: a smell of ken robin to us. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: Mom always makes you take all your clothes is off
Speaker 1: in the garage, and then my wife now does the
Speaker 1: same thing. I had to keep all my stuff in
Speaker 1: the mud room. It's a mixture of the fire and
Speaker 1: those middle of the night buck grunts that go on.
Speaker 1: You know what's the worst, Josh is when you're laying
Speaker 1: on the couch and then the and then the elder
Speaker 1: statesman of the cabin comes walking by and then happens
Speaker 1: to pause for a moment right in front of your face,
Speaker 1: and then there's a buck grunt mysteriously and then like
Speaker 1: you feel the hair on the side of your head
Speaker 1: to kind of shifts to one of the song It's
Speaker 1: a bad night. You know. I'm really glad this podcast
Speaker 1: is not nationally citicated those old buck grunts. I would
Speaker 1: have rather gone cold than have the fire get stoked
Speaker 1: that night. Yeah, that was one of those nights that
Speaker 1: the fire wasn't then port I'm on that note. I
Speaker 1: think we will. I think we'll wrap it up unless
Speaker 1: uh any final thoughts. First, just thank you guys for
Speaker 1: allowing me to come up and inviting me to come
Speaker 1: up every year. This is one of the favorite my
Speaker 1: ever times of the year is getting to come up
Speaker 1: here and hang out for a couple of days. It's
Speaker 1: never long enough, but it's always a great time when
Speaker 1: we get up here, and and uh man, it's just uh,
Speaker 1: I can't thank you guys enough for your part of
Speaker 1: the including me in this. It's this is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, So thank you and uh Dad, any final thoughts. Well,
Speaker 1: just thanks for the opportunity. It's nice to listen and
Speaker 1: here all your podcasts and here you're all the questions
Speaker 1: that your audience asks and to have a little opportunity
Speaker 1: to just play a little part of that's cool. It
Speaker 1: is cool. It's uh, it's fun to have you on
Speaker 1: the show. It's a it's fun to also be able
Speaker 1: to be here and do all the things. And I
Speaker 1: suppose on the topic of thanks, I should thank you
Speaker 1: father for having done such a great job introducing me
Speaker 1: to hunting and fishing in the outdoors and all these
Speaker 1: things that have become the foundational element of my life.
Speaker 1: So thanks to that. Thank you Grandpa, Thank you Ken Rovin,
Speaker 1: and uh, thank you everyone for listening to us share
Speaker 1: these stories, dear camp, and with that we'll shut this
Speaker 1: one down. So thank you for joining us, especially on
Speaker 1: this holiday week. I hope you had a great time
Speaker 1: with friends and family over the Thanksgiving break and maybe
Speaker 1: you get to hit the tree stand or the ground
Speaker 1: blind as well. So I will just give you a
Speaker 1: couple quick reminders. Number One, the wired hunting merchandise. We've
Speaker 1: got hats and t shirts. Those are available again over
Speaker 1: at the Meat eater dot com. If you go to
Speaker 1: our shop, you'll find all that stuff in there. Speaking
Speaker 1: things in this shop, Steve Vanilla's new cookbook is available
Speaker 1: that Steve and j Honest and the whole team worked on.
Speaker 1: It's the new Hunting and Fishing cookbook, full of recipes
Speaker 1: for everything from deer, elk, alligator, squirrels, salmon, all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's it's really an incredible book. Would highly
Speaker 1: recommend you check it out. Last I saw it was
Speaker 1: number four of all books on Amazon, which is pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: So heading over to Amazon or Barnes Noble or wherever
Speaker 1: you pick up books and check that out. And with
Speaker 1: that last plug out of the way, I will let
Speaker 1: you all go enjoy the rest of your holidays. Best
Speaker 1: of luck in the woods, and until next time, stayed
Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt. M. H.