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Speaker 1: Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of North
Speaker 1: American wilderness, the bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation.
Speaker 1: Wh will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet. Chasing Battery. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast. On this episode, I'm actually
Speaker 1: in the blind hunting on the worth day of a
Speaker 1: six day hunt, and my father in law, Steve Shultz,
Speaker 1: is with me. Steve killed a deer on the first
Speaker 1: day and he he talked He shares about his decision
Speaker 1: to shoot that deer and also his regret that he
Speaker 1: had taken the book so early in the hunt, and
Speaker 1: we talked about what he had learned from this and
Speaker 1: how to judge big Canadian white tails. We're the bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine podcast. But man, everybody that's hunting bear, including me,
Speaker 1: we're hunting all kind of other critters. And I before
Speaker 1: I was a bear hunter, I was a white tail hunter.
Speaker 1: I love white tail hunting, and we know that most
Speaker 1: of you do as well, and so we're gonna bringing
Speaker 1: you some white tail content throughout this fall. Hey, check
Speaker 1: out the podcast before this, which was our our recording
Speaker 1: of Tom Ainsworth, the Outfitter, super neat Guy seventy years old.
Speaker 1: And then the next podcast, which will be releasing a
Speaker 1: few days, I'll talk about the end of my hunt
Speaker 1: and what happened with me. Welcome to the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine Podcast. It is November the onet and we are
Speaker 1: in Manitoba. We're in not really central Manitoba. We're about
Speaker 1: a third of the way up in western Manitoba, about
Speaker 1: sixty miles forty miles from the Saskatchewan border, and as
Speaker 1: we know it, about sixty miles from where Milo Hanson
Speaker 1: killer World Record typical white tail in we are. We're
Speaker 1: sitting in a blind right now. It's two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the afternoon. We're in what Tom calls the shack. We're
Speaker 1: in kind of a building and We're sitting on the
Speaker 1: edge of a cut soybean field and we're hunting. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna bring this podcast to you throughout this hunt,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about a few specific things, but
Speaker 1: we're also going to try to just we're gonna set
Speaker 1: the context and we're gonna just talk about how we're
Speaker 1: hunting up here and what we're doing. But it is
Speaker 1: first of all, let me just say, I've got my
Speaker 1: father in law, Steve Schultz, in the blind with me
Speaker 1: right now and he's filming for me. He's also letting
Speaker 1: me borrow his muzzleloader, and I'm gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why I'm shooting that muzzleloader. But to begin with,
Speaker 1: let me set the context for why we're hunting here.
Speaker 1: This is the fourth day of a sixth day hunt,
Speaker 1: and we have Steve killed a deer and he's going
Speaker 1: to talk about that. James Lawrence, our other buddy that's here,
Speaker 1: killed a deer on the second day, and James killed
Speaker 1: his buck on the field that we're sitting in right now.
Speaker 1: This field is a cut soybean field. That was it.
Speaker 1: They insured the crop and they made an insure claim
Speaker 1: on these soybeans because of elk. So up here in
Speaker 1: Manitoba they've got elk, moose, white tail, and they've got
Speaker 1: all kinds of critters. The elk destroyed the soybeans in
Speaker 1: this field. I don't know how big this field is, Steve,
Speaker 1: how big is this field? Oh, this thing probably is
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of I would say close to
Speaker 1: it's big. It's big. It's a it's six yards to
Speaker 1: the very edge that the furthest place, we can see
Speaker 1: a six hundred yards and then we've got a three
Speaker 1: thirty yards shot one direction. It's big. And so they
Speaker 1: because they made an insurance claim on this field, they
Speaker 1: harvested it at a time when when the combine came through,
Speaker 1: the beans shattered, as they say. And so there's a
Speaker 1: ton of beans on the ground right now in this field,
Speaker 1: and the deer hitting it pretty hard. James aren't sitting
Speaker 1: here the other night, and he didn't see, you know,
Speaker 1: forty deer in this field. It's more like he probably
Speaker 1: saw less than ten. But he saw two mature bucks
Speaker 1: and he took one of them. And old James, he says,
Speaker 1: he didn't even look at the other one. He's just
Speaker 1: the one gave him a shot and he was like,
Speaker 1: that's the one I want. So he didn't even look
Speaker 1: at the other one. So now and it he didn't
Speaker 1: have much time to make a decision, and this deer
Speaker 1: popped out and he was he was like, that's the
Speaker 1: one I want to take home, and so he shot it.
Speaker 1: And so there's a mystery buck over here. We don't
Speaker 1: know how big it is, so we're hoping that it's
Speaker 1: a it's a shooter deer. So we are here in
Speaker 1: the blind and right now it's half rain, half snow
Speaker 1: where we've got a weather change that's coming on and
Speaker 1: there's project to be between one and three inches of
Speaker 1: snow tonight. It's been warm first day we got here.
Speaker 1: How warm was it, Steve? Do you remember it was
Speaker 1: probably uh, probably forty forty one, I think something like that.
Speaker 1: It may have even been in the high forties. But
Speaker 1: that first day, because remember I hunted in like a
Speaker 1: single layer. I was wearing my first light. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: what was it, Choma something? Yeah, and your Andrew swimming
Speaker 1: trunks were on. Yeah, I had my swimming trunks on.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was warm for Canada. Uh. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the weather is changing it's about thirty three degrees. So Steve,
Speaker 1: last year, this is our second year to hunt with
Speaker 1: Tom ains Worth Grandview Outfitting. A little history on Tom.
Speaker 1: Tom was a long time bear hunting magazine outfitter, I
Speaker 1: mean long time bear hunting outfitter. He sold his bare
Speaker 1: business to Todd Wogelmuth of Baldy Mountain Outfitters. So now
Speaker 1: what used to be Tom's bear hunting outfit is now
Speaker 1: Baldy Mountain Outfitters run by a younger fella, good guy
Speaker 1: named named Todd Waldmuth. But Tom kept his deer tags.
Speaker 1: So Tom's an outfitter. I think Tom has, like I
Speaker 1: don't want to say how many tags he has, I
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, a select number of deer tags
Speaker 1: that he can sell. And so last year we came
Speaker 1: up here, you and I and now Steve. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, Steve, Steve is not just my father in law.
Speaker 1: Steve and I have been I mean close for the
Speaker 1: last well since we met each other eighteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and we've hunted all over, We've served together on our um.
Speaker 1: Steve's the senior leader of our church, and so we've
Speaker 1: we've anyway, we've got a lot of history together. But
Speaker 1: we have a rich history in hunting together and Arkhan's
Speaker 1: saw I mean when Steve's killed a ton of deer
Speaker 1: there in northwest Arkansas. We live about as the crow
Speaker 1: flies a mile and a half apart, and so we've
Speaker 1: done a lot of hunting together half and so last year.
Speaker 1: So give a little history of your hunting, Steve, that
Speaker 1: will lead us up to come into Manitoba last year. Well,
Speaker 1: my I started my hunting background really was up in
Speaker 1: upstate New York. I was moved there when I was
Speaker 1: a small My family did when I was a small boy,
Speaker 1: and uh, I went through high school there and one
Speaker 1: year of college in upstate New York. That's where I
Speaker 1: really got the itch for a white tail deer. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, that was the big game animal
Speaker 1: for New York State. And uh I had I had
Speaker 1: nobody in my family that really hunted my brotherhood a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I didn't. I was the main hunter
Speaker 1: of the family. Um in the springtime, when everybody else
Speaker 1: was playing either tennis or track or baseball, I was.
Speaker 1: I was out fishing or my dad wasn't a hunter.
Speaker 1: And uh, but I got the bug one time when
Speaker 1: I shot a groundhog, and when I did that, it
Speaker 1: was like I felt like I found something I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: So growing up there, I always had this quest for
Speaker 1: white tail. Didn't know anything at that time. I'm sixty
Speaker 1: six years old now. At that time, back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, there was two magazines primarily maybe three that
Speaker 1: would deal dealt with anything to do with hunting outdoor
Speaker 1: life of course and field and Stream, and then there
Speaker 1: was another one called for fishing Game, the Glory Days
Speaker 1: of Print magazine. It was the Glory Days. There's a
Speaker 1: company called Herders. Some of the old timers remember coming
Speaker 1: name Herders that you could even buy at that time.
Speaker 1: You could buy handguns and rifles right directly from him
Speaker 1: and ship to ship them to your door shipping right.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start doing that with Bare Hunting magazine. There
Speaker 1: you go. I recommend you do that. And uh so
Speaker 1: those were the early years, and that sparked something to me.
Speaker 1: Although I didn't have a mentor, and I really learned
Speaker 1: a lot at that time just by trial and air,
Speaker 1: and I'd have to say most of it was there,
Speaker 1: and a whole lot of trials to go along with it.
Speaker 1: But then I moved to Florida when I was twenty
Speaker 1: one years old and worked worked in Florida and was
Speaker 1: there for a number of years, over twenty years I did.
Speaker 1: That's where I really started to learn how to to
Speaker 1: white tail hunt. But of course you're not going to
Speaker 1: find the white tail near the size of Florida that
Speaker 1: you do here in Manitoba or even in Arkansas for
Speaker 1: that matter. And but I did have some guys that
Speaker 1: hunted with learned a lot from him and killed quite
Speaker 1: a few deer down there and UH. And then of
Speaker 1: course through the years, I just started hunting different places.
Speaker 1: I traveled a lot, so I think I white tail
Speaker 1: hunted somewhere around sixteen or seventeen different states and UH.
Speaker 1: And I just would hunt here and there, and when
Speaker 1: I traveled internet slee I hunted some in Australia. UM.
Speaker 1: Hunted Africa six or seven times, UM, but most of
Speaker 1: that was with friends. I didn't pay an outfitter. I
Speaker 1: knew people over there. I've been to Africa many many
Speaker 1: times where I didn't hunt and UH. But the quest,
Speaker 1: and leading up to this trip in Manitoba, the quest
Speaker 1: has always been for a larger deer. UM. I've shot
Speaker 1: a lot of one in thirty one forty class, dear,
Speaker 1: but I've never broken the one park and uh, to me,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the holy grail to step up to
Speaker 1: another level of deer. Yeah. And so we we planned
Speaker 1: to hunt last year and we hunted here and it
Speaker 1: was a It was a great hunt. And white tail
Speaker 1: has been even though you, I mean, Steve's taken lots
Speaker 1: of African game, He's taken lots of stuff out West,
Speaker 1: the little Deer and ante Lope and od Dad and Texas,
Speaker 1: just lots of different things. White Tails, you're number one time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: still the number one bear hunted with me in Quebec
Speaker 1: and British Columbia, in Arkansas and Arkansas. Yeah, white Tail
Speaker 1: to me are still one of the most particularly the
Speaker 1: particularly those that make it past the four to five
Speaker 1: year range are the most crafty, most most skilled animals
Speaker 1: of evasive invading human beings that I've seen. So when
Speaker 1: people in Africa asked me would you like to come
Speaker 1: back and shoot something, I say not really, I mean
Speaker 1: my dream would be to continue to own Yeah. Honed
Speaker 1: it down to one thing, white tail and particularly trying
Speaker 1: to find a large white tail. So and I still shoot.
Speaker 1: I mean, um, I've already taken one white tail in
Speaker 1: Arkansas this year that, uh I was I was very
Speaker 1: pleased with. But coming up to Manitoba is like stepping
Speaker 1: stepping the game up to a whole another level. Here,
Speaker 1: animals are just so much as we know, so much
Speaker 1: larger and and the potential for a hundred fifty two
Speaker 1: inch of years is increased, increase considerably considerate. But as
Speaker 1: we know, the big ones don't grow on trees and
Speaker 1: they don't come easy either. So so last year I
Speaker 1: came and uh we had a good, good trip. I
Speaker 1: was put on a particular of falfa field and I
Speaker 1: think it was the second morning of the hunt. I
Speaker 1: heard some bucks rattling in the corner of the field,
Speaker 1: and probably about two dred yards from me. It was
Speaker 1: not light enough to really see. Let me stop, you
Speaker 1: right there, you you uh you described those horn solets,
Speaker 1: so you can imagine let me even stop, let me
Speaker 1: even go back further than that. Coming to Manitoba, for
Speaker 1: both of us, it's like something we never really thought
Speaker 1: would happen. I mean, my upbringing into the white tail
Speaker 1: world was in the nineties. I mean, I was a
Speaker 1: twelve year old kid reading North American white tail. You know,
Speaker 1: my dad was a white tail hunter in Canada. Was
Speaker 1: like the place to go in the world for big
Speaker 1: white tails. And and now years later, really it's the Midwest.
Speaker 1: It's our Kansas, northern Missouri. I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: shifted to some degree in terms of where a lot
Speaker 1: of the really big deer coming from Kentucky, Wisconsin. But
Speaker 1: but still this is an iconic place to white tails.
Speaker 1: So me and you coming up here was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: we were like five and fist bumping, a dream come true.
Speaker 1: It really was, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: last year a matter of fact, we were so excited
Speaker 1: we drove straight through up here. We drove straight through
Speaker 1: from northwest Arkansas. And so that brings us to what
Speaker 1: the story you were about to tell about the second
Speaker 1: day in the blind, sitting over the south fi Ful field,
Speaker 1: and you described to me it was in the dark,
Speaker 1: so we're waiting for it to get light, and you
Speaker 1: hear just like horns crashing. That was different. It was different.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're in north I'm used to having, you know,
Speaker 1: hearing bucks rattling in the woods and normally talking a
Speaker 1: hundred probably hundred bucks where they the sound is more
Speaker 1: of like a clack clack clack. But I heard these.
Speaker 1: I could hear these, dear. I couldn't see him yet,
Speaker 1: but I could hear him, and it sounded like someone
Speaker 1: taking two by four's and and and bumping them together.
Speaker 1: It was more of a deeper residence in the horn,
Speaker 1: and I realized, there's something with some something volumes circumference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more like a boying boy rather than a clack
Speaker 1: clack clack. Well, that broked my interest until the sun
Speaker 1: came up and I was able to before they walked
Speaker 1: off the field and went over a hill, I was
Speaker 1: able to get a glimpse of both of them. And
Speaker 1: one was a big on Eastern count he was a
Speaker 1: big eight pointer and on the other one he was
Speaker 1: this Eastern counting bear Honey Magazine podcast We go with
Speaker 1: four point he was he was an eight, and the
Speaker 1: other one was at ten. And the tin had rich, dark,
Speaker 1: dark brown chocolate horns. Oh, just something you do a
Speaker 1: dream about. And the eight was no slouch because he
Speaker 1: was wider than the tin. But the tin had mass.
Speaker 1: He had good time length. Uh, he had good beam
Speaker 1: length on his main beams. And I watched him for
Speaker 1: a little while before they got out of range. I
Speaker 1: was using her I was using a muzzleloader, but I
Speaker 1: didn't I probably had a maximum two hundred yard range
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable with at that time with that particular rifle,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have a shot early in the morning.
Speaker 1: They were they were about two They're about two hundred
Speaker 1: and moving away from when I really got a good
Speaker 1: look at the horns. So anyway, he sat there for
Speaker 1: another hour and and what happened was the big ten
Speaker 1: point and decided to come back the same way he
Speaker 1: went on the field. And I saw him coming back,
Speaker 1: and I arranged and came up with a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty eight yards and put the cross ears, got the
Speaker 1: gun out. They got that gun situated correctly, and I
Speaker 1: knew where I was going to aim, and I had
Speaker 1: the rifle sided in for two hundred as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, and so uh he stopped. He was eighty
Speaker 1: eight yards broadside, and I thought, I'm going to fulfill
Speaker 1: the dream of a lifetime. This is it, this is
Speaker 1: the moment you've been waiting forty something years for. And
Speaker 1: I took the safety off, squeeze that trigger, and all
Speaker 1: I heard was the primer go off. Pop. That's all
Speaker 1: I heard. And for of course, my mind was expecting
Speaker 1: a boom. I was expecting, you know, some recoil and
Speaker 1: for a second there, my mind was like frozen as
Speaker 1: to what in the world happened here? And so that
Speaker 1: so I was to say I was disappointed would be
Speaker 1: an understatement, because there was no way to reload the gun.
Speaker 1: I I mean, it just wasn't gonna happen. It pushed
Speaker 1: your bullet like six or eight inches down the barrel.
Speaker 1: That's corrected, moved my bullet down the barrel, the bullet out,
Speaker 1: couldn't get some powder in, couldn't put more powder in.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was stuck only to watch that buck
Speaker 1: saunter off the field as if I was never there.
Speaker 1: Let's just take a moment of silence right now on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Okay, that's good. This is like an iconic
Speaker 1: story between Steve and I. We don't we don't tell
Speaker 1: it unless reverent ears listen. Yeah, absolutely, hush on the crowd.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling we're bringing a few tears to
Speaker 1: people's eyes, don't you. People are crying right now. They
Speaker 1: probably because they experienced the same thing at one time
Speaker 1: or another. But the issue with the with the issue
Speaker 1: with the with the rifle was the fact that the
Speaker 1: night before the weather had turned cold, and I had
Speaker 1: my rifle loaded. I took the primer ound and I
Speaker 1: put the rifle in the truck, and apparently there was
Speaker 1: enough heat in the truck that created moisture inside the
Speaker 1: chamber because the next day, of course, after having the misfire,
Speaker 1: I tried another primer. It still did not fire. I
Speaker 1: was able then to realize that the bullet was right
Speaker 1: at the end of the barrel. I took the breech
Speaker 1: plug out, pushed everything out, and when I did, the
Speaker 1: powder came out of my hand and it was literally
Speaker 1: soaking bush. And uh, I'm not shooting black podder. I'm
Speaker 1: actually shooting smokeless powder muzzleloader. And uh so I'm shooting
Speaker 1: I MR And uh it just came out wet. So
Speaker 1: I knew what the problem was, so I vowed bringing
Speaker 1: us well. I hunted for four more days last year.
Speaker 1: Um I saw one other buck, but just could not
Speaker 1: get a shot on him. When I was squeezing the trigger,
Speaker 1: he went behind a pine tree and he never came
Speaker 1: back out. And I saw your buck. I was not
Speaker 1: with you when the gun misfired. The next morning, I
Speaker 1: had already killed the du And so the next morning
Speaker 1: I went scouting for Steve, sitting in a blind on
Speaker 1: the other side of the field, and I had the
Speaker 1: the buck that Steve was shooting at, and the eight
Speaker 1: point walked within a hundred yards of me, and they
Speaker 1: were they were all he said, they were. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty plus ten point, just what we were after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big huge body, big big, huge neck on him. And
Speaker 1: of course that added insult to injury. I was because
Speaker 1: Clay had taken the video camera that morning and he
Speaker 1: was actually able to record some footage of that buck
Speaker 1: for me, and it seemed like it was gonna be
Speaker 1: easy after that. I mean, it's like it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of time. We'll get back on him. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and he just he just never he just disappeared. I
Speaker 1: sat there number more nights and mornings and we never
Speaker 1: did see him reappear. And so last year I went
Speaker 1: home with an unfilled tag based on that, and that
Speaker 1: leads U up to this hunt this year. And of
Speaker 1: course Clay took a very nice buck with his bowl
Speaker 1: last year here and uh, and that that spurred me
Speaker 1: even more, and Uh I decided to come back with
Speaker 1: Clay again for a second time, with high hopes, tremendously
Speaker 1: high hopes that I might even see that same buck again,
Speaker 1: but this year we'd even be bigger. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that led us to come in here talk about what
Speaker 1: the caliber of deer that we're hunting here. You know.
Speaker 1: So last year we came and basically by the end
Speaker 1: of day two I had killed a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: two inch buck with my bow and Steve had shot
Speaker 1: at misfired at what we believe was a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty plus buck. Maybe maybe bigger, we don't know those
Speaker 1: big ten points with bodies like that, or he could
Speaker 1: have been one sixty about as easy. So we were like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is the place. This place has got
Speaker 1: some big deer. And you know, Tom tom Ainsworth what
Speaker 1: a guy. Tom seventy years old and he he has
Speaker 1: thousands of acres. That's not an exaggeration that he can
Speaker 1: hunt much of it. He owns big crop land. I
Speaker 1: described on the podcast the last podcast that we did.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is big agg country. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is uh where they're growing canola. Soybeans, oats and
Speaker 1: wheat and flax and the and the deer eat almost
Speaker 1: all of it. Lots of alfalfa too, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's I would say it's similar to Iowa, except
Speaker 1: for the trees are different. There's a lot of spruce
Speaker 1: and a lot of poplar, and other than that, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be similar to like hunting somewhere like Iowa,
Speaker 1: except I'm not sure that these there's not more agriculture
Speaker 1: here than even in the country of Eyewa. I don't know,
Speaker 1: just huge I mean whole sections, you know, six acre
Speaker 1: sections that basically don't have trees, and you know, just
Speaker 1: along the a single tree along the creeks, maybe somebody,
Speaker 1: I mean big agg and so up here, the deer
Speaker 1: densities are not extremely high. That being said, you know,
Speaker 1: you can hunt in the evening and see two or
Speaker 1: three deer, or you know, James has been looking out
Speaker 1: behind Tom's house in South afa Field and seeing thirty
Speaker 1: deer at night. So you're seeing dere just about every
Speaker 1: time you sit, for sure. But so we last year
Speaker 1: like we were both gonna come home with er and
Speaker 1: that was just phenomenal. The weather was great last year,
Speaker 1: or too though high temperature rarely got over thirty two,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it stayed cold the whole time.
Speaker 1: The deer really keyed in on the alfalfa, and they
Speaker 1: just don't seem to be this year. And I'm bo hunting,
Speaker 1: and the reason ut for me to successfully bow hunt
Speaker 1: this property, at least with the knowledge that I have
Speaker 1: right now, I really needed those I needed mature bucks
Speaker 1: to be keying in on two alf alfha fields because
Speaker 1: I felt like I could set up bow stands to
Speaker 1: catch the deer coming off. There just aren't mature deer
Speaker 1: right now on those South Alpha fields. So my bow
Speaker 1: hunting plans were kind of thrown off. And so we're
Speaker 1: doing it. Do two things. I'm gonna tell you how
Speaker 1: I got to where I'm at, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: go back, and I'm gonna Steve's gonna talk about his
Speaker 1: hunt this year. The the so we so so right
Speaker 1: now that the deer weren't keying in on the alf
Speaker 1: alfa too much, and uh, um, well shucks, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to decide where to go from here. Um cut cut.
Speaker 1: Now we're also looking for deer. Steve and I are
Speaker 1: bobbing our heads around looking through these windows looking for deer.
Speaker 1: The windows are fogging up just a little bit in here.
Speaker 1: But but so anyway, we come into this hunt and
Speaker 1: you never know really what to expect that warmer temperatures,
Speaker 1: and then we've struggled this year to see the big deer.
Speaker 1: I mean, we kind of thought like maybe just it
Speaker 1: was gonna be pretty easy to get on a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty inch type of deer, but this year we've
Speaker 1: just not seen them. And Okay, this is where I
Speaker 1: was gonna go. The rut is different here. It's November
Speaker 1: the first back home, it's like prime time rut in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, if I could pick a day
Speaker 1: to hunt, man November one through the seventh, Holy Cow,
Speaker 1: they're responding to calls, bucks are cruising. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: showtime right now. The bucks are still grouped up, they're
Speaker 1: not responding to calls. It's kind of like the rut
Speaker 1: is dead in these northern latitudes. It's seems like the
Speaker 1: rut is so compressed because fond survival has to be
Speaker 1: so precisely timed well, the timing of breeding has to
Speaker 1: be so precisely time for good fond survival that the
Speaker 1: rut is just compressed now. Granted it must be crazy
Speaker 1: about ten days from now, even a week from now.
Speaker 1: I wish we were here ten days from now. Sure,
Speaker 1: yeah we're not. We're not seeing the bucks cruised by
Speaker 1: themselves too much. They're not up during the day running
Speaker 1: around just just eating and and if they're full, they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not getting there, just staying on their beds where
Speaker 1: we just haven't seen them like we did. So the
Speaker 1: big deer here, we're just not seeing them. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're just seeing younger deer really, but we know the
Speaker 1: big ones are here, and uh, it's just one of
Speaker 1: those years. We're probably a week probably a week off
Speaker 1: of probably prime time here that we'll be able to
Speaker 1: make it. But so we're making the best we can
Speaker 1: out of out of what we've been the hand we've
Speaker 1: been dealt. And uh, I was very fortunate on the
Speaker 1: on the first morning that I hunted, I we hunted here,
Speaker 1: got here in the afternoon, early afternoon, got on stand
Speaker 1: the first night, didn't see too much nobody did. I
Speaker 1: was out the next morning. And let me set the
Speaker 1: let me set the stage for this. Tom. Tom puts
Speaker 1: a few trail cameras up for us here. But also
Speaker 1: he's driving these roads around these fields and these woodlots
Speaker 1: and this area, and he has a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: of you know, pretty good idea of what's on the
Speaker 1: what's on some areas of his land. So he normally
Speaker 1: accuses in every time that we come. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: this particular time, he said that the particular field he
Speaker 1: was gonna put me on was the same field that
Speaker 1: I hunted last year where I had the misfire, And
Speaker 1: I was kind of looking forward to, quite honestly, going
Speaker 1: back to that same field and having a little bit
Speaker 1: of revenge. Now let me open the same book would
Speaker 1: be I was hoping, and he would be bigger. Now
Speaker 1: let me say this that in the between last year
Speaker 1: and this year, one of the things I decided to
Speaker 1: do because of the misfire was I decided to have
Speaker 1: my Savage bolt action muzzleloader, uh which Savage no longer makes.
Speaker 1: I decided to have it rebarreled for a little bit
Speaker 1: longer range and to have it restocked. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to reach out to yards if I wanted
Speaker 1: to with a muzzleloader, and uh so I came prepared
Speaker 1: this year you were prepared. I I I scraped and
Speaker 1: saved and put the money together and sent the rifle
Speaker 1: away and sent it up to a a guy named
Speaker 1: Luke um and uh Arrowhead Sporting Goods up in Iowa.
Speaker 1: He builds a long range muzzleloader, does an excellent job
Speaker 1: on it with a muzzle break. And so I came.
Speaker 1: I came for revenge. So I'm sitting in the same spot. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's when this year I didn't see a deer
Speaker 1: come out and go over the hill. This time he
Speaker 1: just came over the hill and he was walking almost
Speaker 1: the identical path that the deer had walked before. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing about these deer clay as you know. First
Speaker 1: of all, Tom had already told us that he's there
Speaker 1: was a bus driver with a bus route saying that
Speaker 1: they had been seeing a big, big buck right there.
Speaker 1: And um, so it sounded like, well, he's may be
Speaker 1: pretty patterned of as we know, the school buses going
Speaker 1: every morning, five days a week. So over the hill
Speaker 1: comes this buck and I've probably fifteen minutes after legal
Speaker 1: shooting light. I can make out horns. I could see
Speaker 1: him pretty good, and uh, he's coming, and he's walking
Speaker 1: steady so I immediately get the binoculars on him, and
Speaker 1: I determined, well, he looks like a five by five
Speaker 1: from what I could tell, But I can only see
Speaker 1: one side of him because he's at he's on my
Speaker 1: far left hand side, and he's walking facing kind of
Speaker 1: uh facing to my further to my left, walking bike
Speaker 1: from the front of me to the back of me,
Speaker 1: and so I so I was looking at him and
Speaker 1: and uh, what happened was when he finally got where
Speaker 1: I could see him well enough that I thought, well,
Speaker 1: he could be a shooter. It was I had about
Speaker 1: four seconds to make the decision because he couldn't get
Speaker 1: him to stop. And I'm sure a lot of guys
Speaker 1: have had that happened where you you know, and they
Speaker 1: just keep walking and the that's again, the bucks here
Speaker 1: are not in rut. So he really wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: a dough bleat or I don't anything. So I tried
Speaker 1: a couple of times. He kept walking, and I realized,
Speaker 1: I'm about to run out of real estate because he's
Speaker 1: about to walk off the field and now he here's
Speaker 1: the here's the challenge. I was trying to make a
Speaker 1: split second decision on what appeared to be a five
Speaker 1: by five. And we had been talking all week about
Speaker 1: how these deer their racks look smaller because they're so big,
Speaker 1: so big, and I was, I mean, the whole trip
Speaker 1: up here, we're talking about Judge and deer with James,
Speaker 1: and and you know last year the DFT buck that
Speaker 1: I killed. When I first saw him, I was kind
Speaker 1: of unimpressed with him. I thought he's a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five inch deer and so, but he turned out
Speaker 1: to be one fifties. So it's like, hey, these these
Speaker 1: bodies make the horns look small. So that's in your
Speaker 1: mind as we've been talking about that for a year.
Speaker 1: So you see a four, you see a five point
Speaker 1: side the bucks in the same spot as the one
Speaker 1: last year. Everything's the same, everything's the same. He's been
Speaker 1: talking about sitting in that blind for for twelve months.
Speaker 1: I've been dreaming about sitting in that plane, hanging out
Speaker 1: the window. And here we go, and I I looked
Speaker 1: at him and I thought, well, I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know he's not a one seventy, but I think
Speaker 1: maybe this buck could do one fifty. And I thought
Speaker 1: I'd be satisfied with that. I'm not going to try
Speaker 1: to get two two pigs year and uh and uh.
Speaker 1: So I went ahead and I had two seconds to
Speaker 1: make that decision. I'm thinking in my mind, one of
Speaker 1: the things that Tom's wife said the night before is
Speaker 1: don't shoot any you know, don't pass up anything on
Speaker 1: the first day. You would shoot the last day. And
Speaker 1: you know they that's that's been said a lot. And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, if I was just the
Speaker 1: last day, I definitely would shoot this deer. So I
Speaker 1: went ahead and shot, and uh and uh. I heard
Speaker 1: the bullet. I even saw the bullet hit him. He
Speaker 1: was he was two hundred yards away and broadside but
Speaker 1: walking slowly. Shot And then of course later when we
Speaker 1: went to recover him, he only went about five yards
Speaker 1: and we went to recover him, and uh, the infamous
Speaker 1: ground shrinkage took over, which is something I've been familiar
Speaker 1: with for many years. And you're always hoping or imagining
Speaker 1: your something is bigger than what you actually think it is.
Speaker 1: We're hoping for a ground swell. Yeah, exactly, all we
Speaker 1: got was ground shrinkage. Yeah. So, I mean, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, of course, it's enjoyable being up here,
Speaker 1: and I mean and you you know you're gonna this
Speaker 1: is hunting. Nothing is an exact science. Animals will always
Speaker 1: behave differently than you think they will. You're dealing with
Speaker 1: a whole set of factors that are uncontrollable. And for
Speaker 1: me this trip, it was like I was determined I
Speaker 1: was gonna wait until the right buck. But being in
Speaker 1: that same location with a five point dark horn, it
Speaker 1: just looked like it was a replay of the year
Speaker 1: before until I actually found the deer and really I
Speaker 1: realized he was a five by four. Uh you know
Speaker 1: he did wasn't a by five. I couldn't see the
Speaker 1: other side real well. Actually he's Uh, if you were
Speaker 1: to take that beer that that set that rack, put
Speaker 1: some steroids on it, and let us swell up a
Speaker 1: little bit, it would be a very nice rack. He
Speaker 1: had all he had, all the stuff, didn't he He
Speaker 1: just was just a younger deer. You know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: but they're big though. I mean even this deer we
Speaker 1: weighed James Lawrences deer and it weighed tune or fifty pounds,
Speaker 1: And I mean your deer was just not smaller than
Speaker 1: that embodied side. So this was probably a tuner pound deer.
Speaker 1: He's a big, big body deer for sure. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing that kind of messed me up is I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: big deer, that the racks look a little smaller. So
Speaker 1: so you know what I hated for you is that
Speaker 1: it happened on the first day, you know, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: Steve's been just hanging out at camp while we're hunting,
Speaker 1: and I know how much he's been looking forward to
Speaker 1: this hunt. So that's the part that kind of stinks,
Speaker 1: is that he filled his tag early and so I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't just hadn't got the hunt. He's nothing with
Speaker 1: me today. But yeah, that's that's why they call it hunting,
Speaker 1: not shooting. Yeah, I'm I'm glad to be here. So
Speaker 1: the quest continues, that the quest will killing. The good
Speaker 1: thing about this is you don't get to quit now. Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody is always like, if you killed the deer like that,
Speaker 1: I'd quit. Man, If I killed the deer like that
Speaker 1: quote air quotes unquote, I think it would just make
Speaker 1: you want to go more. I probably wouldn't mean too
Speaker 1: but you know, you always you always think, you know,
Speaker 1: get the big one and you're done, particularly the older
Speaker 1: in life. You get You're like, you know, how many
Speaker 1: more years can I keep doing this? I've done it
Speaker 1: for every so many years. But well, you enjoy doing it,
Speaker 1: so I think even if you shot a big one,
Speaker 1: it's something you really thoroughly enjoy. You just keep doing it.
Speaker 1: But it's just fun to be here. I mean, for
Speaker 1: where we're at in Arkansas, coming up here is like
Speaker 1: hunting a different planet. Flat country, farm country. I mean
Speaker 1: we're in the Ozark Mountains. We got we can't see
Speaker 1: more than fifty yards in any direction unless we're setting
Speaker 1: on the edge of a field, a man made field.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's thick, it's mountainous, it's rugged. You know.
Speaker 1: We do have some good deer in northwest Arkansas, and
Speaker 1: the occasional guy will kill d and you know, one
Speaker 1: in a lifetime if he's lucky. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a good deer where we are, but it's not common.
Speaker 1: It's not common, you know, not common at all. Average
Speaker 1: average a good shooter buck that somebody would mount where
Speaker 1: we're from a hundred twenty inches. Most guys go a
Speaker 1: hundred buck. They are like going to the text turmists. Truthfully,
Speaker 1: average guys, it's a tax two dermist Paradise. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a that's that's a funny funny you say that.
Speaker 1: You remember there was a guy there and Winslow that
Speaker 1: had a text Germany shop. Did real good move to Iowa?
Speaker 1: He said, they don't mountain deer like we do in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Everybody in Arkansas mounts all these little deer that they
Speaker 1: kill all the time. He said, Oh man, they don't
Speaker 1: mount one unless it is a hundred and sixty. So
Speaker 1: I think he struggled a little bit. He's got to
Speaker 1: come back to Arkansas to get little ones, take him
Speaker 1: back to Iowa to mount him, and then comes back
Speaker 1: down here. So yeah, yeah, we're a tax service Paradise.
Speaker 1: There's a text service on every corner. Man. I hope
Speaker 1: it stays that way. That's good. Oh so what I mean,
Speaker 1: what would you what did you would you learn? What
Speaker 1: would you do different? How will what we will? It's
Speaker 1: always a hard call. But I think probably the biggest
Speaker 1: thing was I should have passed on the buck because
Speaker 1: it was the first of the first full day of hunting,
Speaker 1: the first morning, and and as tempting as that was,
Speaker 1: I should have just I should have passed on it.
Speaker 1: And this a decision window was too short. The decision
Speaker 1: window was too short that Buck never turned and faced me.
Speaker 1: I never got a good I was neighbor able to
Speaker 1: really fully really you were able to give him about assessment.
Speaker 1: That's when you really needed about assessment. Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: about the buffer bar needed to get to eighty before
Speaker 1: you knew for sure what you're shooting. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: and they always say up here, well you'll know the
Speaker 1: big ones, you know, they'll stand out, And that's true.
Speaker 1: But I was I was willing to just break the
Speaker 1: one fifty is what I was shooting for. I thought
Speaker 1: that would be a good start. Let's go for that.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to try to go for
Speaker 1: a one sixty or one seventy. So that was probably
Speaker 1: the biggest takeaway is it's like, wait a minute, if
Speaker 1: I had to do it again, you know what I
Speaker 1: would have I would have passed for sure. The second
Speaker 1: thing was I would have said, wait about any deer
Speaker 1: that doesn't up here, doesn't give me an opportunity unless
Speaker 1: it really stands out as a very very exceptional good dear, um,
Speaker 1: don't rush to judgment, you know, don't give him the
Speaker 1: opportunity to stand in front of you, or at least
Speaker 1: walk on a long enough way that you can get
Speaker 1: a good look, get both sides of the rack. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what But that's what the deer have been doing
Speaker 1: this year here, uh with James, with you, with me. Uh.
Speaker 1: The deer just aren't coming out and just feeding. There
Speaker 1: seemed to be just when they are, they're moving, but
Speaker 1: they're not moving a lot. But every time we've seen them,
Speaker 1: they seem to be on a steady, steady journey somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so that was the big takeaway from this year,
Speaker 1: and it shows you. I don't care how old you
Speaker 1: get and how many years you've hunted and how many
Speaker 1: how many times you've pulled the trigger, You're always gonna
Speaker 1: learn something new every time you go. Yeah, well, we're
Speaker 1: all subject to make an error and judgment at any
Speaker 1: time and then and come into a totally new place
Speaker 1: with different body sized animals. It really is, it really
Speaker 1: is tricky. But hey, at least you got the chance
Speaker 1: to make that mistake. How many white tail hunters have
Speaker 1: dreamed about coming to Manitoba, Canada and you've had some
Speaker 1: kind of poor poor I don't looks the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but you know, misfire and then and I mean, you
Speaker 1: killed the nice dear. But for where we're at, it
Speaker 1: really wasn't what you came for now, but what you
Speaker 1: came for, and so that's what kind of stinks about it.
Speaker 1: But hopefully we'll get to come back there. You go. Well,
Speaker 1: as they say, there's three parts to a hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the pre hunt where you dream about it for
Speaker 1: eleven months, which we did. We probably like at least
Speaker 1: bi weekly twelve months and they talked about this hunt.
Speaker 1: Then there's actual hunt time, and that's what anywhere from
Speaker 1: two to three maybe five day hunt, six day hunt
Speaker 1: usually maximum. So that's enjoyable. But then then obviously there's
Speaker 1: the post hunt. The post you know, and you do
Speaker 1: one of two things. In the post hunt, you either
Speaker 1: celebrate the great success and chance that you had or
Speaker 1: if you don't do too well, you celebrate the fact
Speaker 1: that you had another learning curve in your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what I've seen you do all these years, when
Speaker 1: something goes wrong or you want to see something different,
Speaker 1: you go you take action, just like last year. I mean, man,
Speaker 1: you didn't wait a week before you were sending that
Speaker 1: muzzle loader off to be redone and ready to real
Speaker 1: I mean, so you didn't just say I had a
Speaker 1: faulty muzzloader. You you took action, okay to amend the situation. Yep, yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: I And uh my thing was, well, I knew, I
Speaker 1: knew the how big these fields were, and I realized, boy,
Speaker 1: this one is big. Steve. I'm using Steve's muzzloader tonight.
Speaker 1: Uh he's let me borrow it. And I may have
Speaker 1: already said this, but I've I pretty much have decided
Speaker 1: that a bow hunt for this year is gonna be
Speaker 1: really low odds. Last year it was good odds for
Speaker 1: a bow kill buck and I did it. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do it again this year, but I just
Speaker 1: I just don't know with the feeding patterns east deer on.
Speaker 1: And that's a good thing about coming during muzzloader season
Speaker 1: in bow hunting is that I can make an adjustment.
Speaker 1: And uh so that's what I'm doing. So I'm we're
Speaker 1: we're looking. Wow, we can see six hundred yards across
Speaker 1: this field. Leaf yet to see a deer. This whole podcast,
Speaker 1: we're talking in the loud voices voices because we're sitting
Speaker 1: in a We're sitting in a shooting blind and it's raining.
Speaker 1: The snow kind of quick. It's just rain, and so
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of noise with the rain, and
Speaker 1: these deer when they come out, they're gonna be long
Speaker 1: waves from us on this hunt. The evening came to
Speaker 1: a close. We saw seven or eight deer. I never
Speaker 1: saw a shooter. Stay tuned for the next podcast where
Speaker 1: I talk about my successful hunt from that very blind
Speaker 1: well not the blind. I got out of the blind
Speaker 1: from that very field two days later.