Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by my buddy Tony Peterson to
Speaker 2: discuss new ideas for better off season deer scouting, our
Speaker 2: latest shed hunting exploits, and my very first mountain lion hunt.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative, in
Speaker 2: which a portion of every sale of First Light Spectr
Speaker 2: Camlo Pattern is given back to the National Deer Association
Speaker 2: to help them with things like their Public Lands initiative
Speaker 2: for their field, the Fork Initiative, all the great education
Speaker 2: work they do. I'm a big fan of it, glad
Speaker 2: to see the First Light is supporting it. And today
Speaker 2: I'm also hate to say this, but I am a
Speaker 2: fan of my guest. Today. I'm a partner in crime. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of hard for the ego to
Speaker 2: admit it, but I do enjoy catching up with you, buddy, well,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, man. I want to do a couple
Speaker 2: of things today. It is February, kind of mid February
Speaker 2: as we're chatting today, and so it's that time of
Speaker 2: year that I think a lot of us are thinking
Speaker 2: two things. We're thinking scouting and we're thinking shed on it.
Speaker 2: So I want to kind of take a break here
Speaker 2: during what was Habitat Month. I've been doing a series
Speaker 2: of Habitat related podcasts, but I wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: that we don't skip all the way through February without
Speaker 2: talking about these two things. So we're gonna hit pause
Speaker 2: on Habitat and we're going to talk about your latest
Speaker 2: scouting exploits. A couple of things on my end related
Speaker 2: to that. I want to talk shed hunting a little bit.
Speaker 2: I've heard you know, you've got a mixed set of
Speaker 2: opinions on shadhuting. It seems like you're writing about it,
Speaker 2: you're talking about sometimes, but then other times like as
Speaker 2: shed hunting sucks. So I want to see where you're
Speaker 2: at on that lately. I've got some exciting shad hunting
Speaker 2: news that we should talk about. And then I actually
Speaker 2: also just got back from a mountain lion hunt that
Speaker 2: might be worth talking about just a little bit, because
Speaker 2: that's pretty exciting. So those are my main topics that
Speaker 2: I thought we could touch on. But Tony, what is
Speaker 2: what is new in your world? Is there anything lighten
Speaker 2: me up right now? You know, any good sci fi books?
Speaker 3: You know? The thing that's crazy for me right now
Speaker 3: we're talking about this off air just a little bit,
Speaker 3: is we don't have any snow. Yeah, I'm sitting here
Speaker 3: in minute in central Minnesota. We have no snow. And
Speaker 3: you know, I was out shed hunting with my daughter
Speaker 3: this past weekend and we had to be pretty careful
Speaker 3: about the ice we crossed, you know, even you know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't anything major. But normally that is just such
Speaker 3: not a consideration right now. I mean, normally we're worried
Speaker 3: about too much snow covering up the antlers and being
Speaker 3: kind of a pain to hike through. And it is
Speaker 3: just weird right now. But I'll tell you, you know,
Speaker 3: I know not everybody who's listening to this is in
Speaker 3: this situation, but it's like the opportunity for shed hunting.
Speaker 3: Like it's perfect shed hunting conditions, It's perfect winter scouting conditions.
Speaker 3: And I'm I'm getting my stuff ready. I'm heading out
Speaker 3: this weekend to go over to Wisconsin where they don't
Speaker 3: have any snow either, to cut some trails and just
Speaker 3: get some work done that normally I look at and
Speaker 3: I go, I'm just I'm just waiting until sometime in
Speaker 3: late March even or April sometimes to make that a possibility.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like it's just wild. I'm sitting
Speaker 3: here going I'm getting stuff done, Like the opportunity is
Speaker 3: just crazy. To be able to do this, I should say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the only downside I can well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe there are other downsides, but the one downside I
Speaker 2: see to it is that I'm curious if you've seen this.
Speaker 2: When we have mild winters, the shed hunting is different
Speaker 2: than when we have hard winters, because it seems like
Speaker 2: when we have a hard winter with a lot of snow,
Speaker 2: it really hurts up the deer and you get a
Speaker 2: lot of the deer concentrated into smaller areas where they
Speaker 2: have that really good thermal cover, where they have that
Speaker 2: really good food source for the late season, and those
Speaker 2: are the times, those are the years where it seems
Speaker 2: like we find a bunch of sheds like what I
Speaker 2: take my annual trip to Iowa and the big winter years,
Speaker 2: like you're finding them all in certain places, but these
Speaker 2: years they're just spread out all over the place. There's
Speaker 2: much less of a rhyme and reason to it. And
Speaker 2: we struggle on years like this. Have you ever seen
Speaker 2: anything like that?
Speaker 3: For sure? And this year I think is going to be.
Speaker 3: I haven't the only antlers I've seen while shed hunting
Speaker 3: so far this year. We're still attached to deer. We
Speaker 3: haven't found one yet, and we are finding on some
Speaker 3: of the oak flats and like an incredible amount of
Speaker 3: hard mass still left from last season. Yeah, which is
Speaker 3: just you know, I mean it poortends good things for
Speaker 3: the deer getting through the winner and the turkeys too.
Speaker 3: The turkeys are all over them. But every time that happens,
Speaker 3: or when I get into that situation, I'm like, they're
Speaker 3: going to be so spread out because it's usually not
Speaker 3: something that happens when there's two feet of snow, you know,
Speaker 3: And so yeah, it's a different it's a different vibe
Speaker 3: out there, but I'll still take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So is there any like what's the ripple effects
Speaker 2: of something like this when you have a mild winner,
Speaker 2: and last year was like an extreme winner for a
Speaker 2: lot of folks, and then this year we've got the
Speaker 2: mild winner. You've got better mass, you've got less snow,
Speaker 2: you've got more spread out deer populations. You would think
Speaker 2: that all of this would lead to healthy fawn drop
Speaker 2: in the spring, right, I mean, I don't think there's
Speaker 2: a downside to this weather, specifically deer, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: the only thing I can think about is like mild
Speaker 2: winters equal more ticks making it through the winter, which
Speaker 2: leads to problems for moose. I know, But is there
Speaker 2: any other like trickle down effect that you can think
Speaker 2: of of this kind of more I was gonna say unique,
Speaker 2: it's becoming less unique, but.
Speaker 3: I think the only thing that and I'm not smart
Speaker 3: enough to actually know this, but I think the one
Speaker 3: thing that you would see would be hot spots of
Speaker 3: drought from it, just just because start it feels like
Speaker 3: you're starting out pretty low moisture wise, and I know
Speaker 3: some some areas are getting just hammered with snow so
Speaker 3: they're not experiencing it, but it's not it doesn't feel
Speaker 3: like an equal distribution, and so I don't know if
Speaker 3: there will be something, you know, I mean, if this,
Speaker 3: if this means that it's going to be a lot
Speaker 3: drier in the spring and that will have some effects.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the other one for sure is ticks. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've got a buddy who is out shed hunting just
Speaker 3: recently and he has he has a couple of Golden
Speaker 3: retrievers and he's like, I'm finding deer ticks on my
Speaker 3: golden retrievers in February.
Speaker 2: Yikes.
Speaker 3: Which is you know, I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 3: like interviewed a TIC specialist. I did one time for
Speaker 3: my Old Dog podcast, and it was like pure nightmare fuel,
Speaker 3: Like the direction we're going with ticks and because not
Speaker 3: only just you know, resident like native ticks that we have,
Speaker 3: but also invasives like the Lone Star tick and some
Speaker 3: of that stuff, or not the Lone Star there's a
Speaker 3: different one I can't remember. Anyway, that future where the
Speaker 3: winners get more mild, I think that's going to be
Speaker 3: a rough one with tick borne diseases eventually. Man.
Speaker 2: There we were just talking about how Steve was with
Speaker 2: Rogan and Cam Haynes the other day on a podcast,
Speaker 2: and then there were also some social media videos that
Speaker 2: came out of that. Did you see the one where
Speaker 2: Steve got convinced to throw a dead pig over his neck,
Speaker 2: over his shoulders and carry it out, you know, the
Speaker 2: way Cam always does. Yeah, I I just thought it
Speaker 2: just crawling? How that thing all over you is the
Speaker 2: first thing I thought.
Speaker 3: Dude, I don't. I mean, it's probably it's probably not
Speaker 3: as bad right now. I've shot a few pigs down
Speaker 3: there on axis hunts in like May and June, and
Speaker 3: you will walk up to them and it looks like
Speaker 3: their skin is crawling. And so yeah, that's what I
Speaker 3: thought of too. I mean, you if you throw a
Speaker 3: turkey over your shoulder and carry it out in you know,
Speaker 3: late late April or in May, I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of times you get a couple of ticks on
Speaker 3: you from that. And when I saw him doing that,
Speaker 3: I was like, gross, dude, Like you don't need to
Speaker 3: What do you got left to prove? Like you don't
Speaker 3: need to do that?
Speaker 2: No, thank you, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not interested
Speaker 2: in ticks like that. So so back to the shed thing.
Speaker 2: Where do you personally stand on shed hunting these days?
Speaker 2: I've seen you talk about it a lot and then
Speaker 2: I've seen you talk about I don't do it anymore,
Speaker 2: but you just went with your dog.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't know where you've heard me say that,
Speaker 3: because I've I still shed hunt. I like shed hunting.
Speaker 2: I just I feel like I feel like I've either
Speaker 2: heard or read something from me in the past saying like,
Speaker 2: you don't do it any much anymore, it's not that important.
Speaker 3: I don't do it as much as I used to
Speaker 3: just because of our schedule and and I don't have
Speaker 3: as many spots as I used to. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a little bit of a heavier lift for me. But
Speaker 3: I probably what I said or wrote was something to
Speaker 3: the effect of it used to be like a pretty
Speaker 3: core component of my dear strategy. Like I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time shed hunting places that I'm going to hunt,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of important to me to get
Speaker 3: out there and really cover ground and try to find
Speaker 3: some antlers. I'm kind of more in a stage now
Speaker 3: where I'm like, I just enjoy it and honestly, what's
Speaker 3: crazy about it? In fact, I wrote about it. I
Speaker 3: think it I think it dropped today for foundations. But
Speaker 3: we've been shed hunting some public land up here in
Speaker 3: the cities, and the way that you know, not having
Speaker 3: any snow this year, so the way that we're kind
Speaker 3: a covering ground. It's like it's like sometimes you're out
Speaker 3: there and you have this epiphany, right like you're like,
Speaker 3: I've I've been through the woods a billion times and
Speaker 3: something will occur to me like this is so important
Speaker 3: and seeing the woods the way we're seeing it right now,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at edges, like soft edges in the woods,
Speaker 3: you know, the difference between a meadow and or you know,
Speaker 3: a patch of dogwood and hardwoods or something like that.
Speaker 3: And I'm just like it's almost like you can stand
Speaker 3: in a deer bed now or like an area where
Speaker 3: they might bed and look around you and see the
Speaker 3: rubs because of like everything's just like a little brighter
Speaker 3: out there right now, and really read deer travel and
Speaker 3: deer movement and you know, like almost call your shots
Speaker 3: on scrape lines and rub lines and it's so cool
Speaker 3: and so in some ways, you know, people go shed
Speaker 3: hunting and they're like, Okay, my focus is to find antlers, right,
Speaker 3: Like that's that's why you're there. But sometimes when you're
Speaker 3: doing this stuff and you just stop and think about it, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's a rub there, big deal, Right, Well, there's an
Speaker 3: rub there, and there's another rub there, and then I
Speaker 3: can look up in the hill and I can see
Speaker 3: that pine trees tore up. It's just it's even if
Speaker 3: you're not in some place that you can hunt, the
Speaker 3: lessons are like real important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you I sometimes try to force it's hard
Speaker 2: to do this, it's it's not even realistic to really
Speaker 2: do this, but I sometimes try to force myself to
Speaker 2: either do one or the other thing, because I know
Speaker 2: if I go out into the woods and if I'm
Speaker 2: trying to scout and shed hunt at the same time,
Speaker 2: I inevitably miss you know, I miss stuff because you can't,
Speaker 2: like you can't go out there shed hunting and then
Speaker 2: constantly be looking around for sign and then like you're
Speaker 2: gonna miss stuff, and the same vice versa. If you're
Speaker 2: out there scouting but then you're also trying to look
Speaker 2: for sheds, you're not paying attention to everything that you
Speaker 2: should be paying attention to when scouting. So sometimes I
Speaker 2: try to tell myself, Okay, just focus on the one thing,
Speaker 2: Like today is a scouting day, and that's all you're doing,
Speaker 2: maybe you get lucky and vice versa. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, it's very hard to like turn off your
Speaker 2: eyes to everything, so you're gonna always do a lot
Speaker 2: with it both. But I had a similar situation happened
Speaker 2: to me when I was out shed hunting yesterday and
Speaker 2: I was I was trying to shed hunt. My main
Speaker 2: focus was shed hunting, but I ended up, you know,
Speaker 2: seeing something that caught my eye that made it a
Speaker 2: very valuable scouting session. And what this was was, you know,
Speaker 2: I've been in this area a million times before, scouted
Speaker 2: it many times before, but I caught a little feature that,
Speaker 2: for some reason on this particularly day popped out differently
Speaker 2: than it has in the past. And I think it
Speaker 2: was because it was very wet on this particular day
Speaker 2: or this time of year here. And so what used
Speaker 2: to be usually just a big grassy field that's got
Speaker 2: tall grass and it seems like relatively flat and you
Speaker 2: know it's just a big open grassy field, Well right
Speaker 2: now it's very wet, and so you can actually see
Speaker 2: two sides of this grassy field were filled with water
Speaker 2: more than they usually are. And we're lower and so
Speaker 2: this little not very high, but there's like a high
Speaker 2: piece that connect that goes right across the middle of
Speaker 2: this grassy field that's maybe a foot taller than everything else,
Speaker 2: And so right now it stands out like a land
Speaker 2: bridge that almost all the other times you never really
Speaker 2: notice it. But right now I'm like, whoa, this is
Speaker 2: the place that they're always going to want to cross
Speaker 2: this big grassy field. If they're going to go across
Speaker 2: this grassy field to connect from one side of the
Speaker 2: brush to another, to cross from one bedding air to
Speaker 2: the other, this is probably the place that they always
Speaker 2: do it. And I've always I've had some assumptions about
Speaker 2: how they move around, but I don't think I ever
Speaker 2: saw so clearly as if somebody drew a line across
Speaker 2: the map, like from A to B, here's the spot
Speaker 2: within the spot. If you're gonna hunt somewhere on this edge,
Speaker 2: that is the place to be, because there's this little
Speaker 2: little bit of high ground that I bet you they run.
Speaker 2: And I follow that high ground to where it hits
Speaker 2: the timber, and bam, that just happens to be a
Speaker 2: place that I marked last year when I bumpd a
Speaker 2: buck from a bed there. It's like, oh, interesting, this
Speaker 2: little point that he was betted on is also connected
Speaker 2: to this slightly higher ground that crosses the grassy breast
Speaker 2: you feel, and also has like six big old rubs
Speaker 2: scattered all around it that I'd seen in the past,
Speaker 2: But now like the dots are connecting better and like
Speaker 2: the picture is coming into better focus. And so I
Speaker 2: think that just reminded me of what I think is
Speaker 2: a pretty good thing to write down and try to
Speaker 2: remind yourself of. You can never scout the same place
Speaker 2: too much, Like I think it's always worth even a
Speaker 2: place you've hunted for years, it's worth coming back and
Speaker 2: hitting it again, and like trying to look at with
Speaker 2: new eyes. Like whenever I'm walking this list, I'm always
Speaker 2: trying to zoom out or zoom in, look at it differently,
Speaker 2: focus on something differently, Take what you learn last year
Speaker 2: and apply it now as you're looking again. It just
Speaker 2: seems like every time I do that, I keep on
Speaker 2: learning something new, as long as I'm not just like
Speaker 2: blindly walking just to walk. If I'm like looking with
Speaker 2: intense these repeat scouting trips every single year, keep on
Speaker 2: adding some real value, you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: think you can ever do it too much, as long
Speaker 2: as you go into it like Okay, what can I
Speaker 2: learn different this time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, and you know what happens there too, is
Speaker 3: if you have like a private place you hunt a
Speaker 3: lot at least Grandma's land whatever, it's so easy to
Speaker 3: sort of condition yourself to think that the things don't change,
Speaker 3: like deer movement doesn't change, you know. I mean we
Speaker 3: were clued into you know, crop rotation and mast whatever,
Speaker 3: but it's so easy to sort of default back to
Speaker 3: like the big movement, you know, the rough movement whatever,
Speaker 3: it's kind of consistent from year to year to year
Speaker 3: to year, and it's just doesn't work that way. And
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, there are there are ways to
Speaker 3: you know, cheat the system, right, Like if you have
Speaker 3: like just a banging you know, terrain trap, some kind
Speaker 3: of funnel or something, you might kill a buck on
Speaker 3: there ten years in a row. Like I'm not saying
Speaker 3: you can't, but this kind of stuff that you're talking
Speaker 3: about sometimes some of that stuff either just pops out
Speaker 3: to you when you're scouting, or sometimes it's like a
Speaker 3: realization that you've been thinking, Okay, the deer always do
Speaker 3: this year to year to year on grandma's farm, So
Speaker 3: I don't need to go look at that, like, I
Speaker 3: don't need to walk through that acre. When I can,
Speaker 3: I can walk the easy path. And there's so much
Speaker 3: out there that we miss, like you're talking about. It's
Speaker 3: just it's so easy to overlook and just just breeze
Speaker 3: past things like that, and it's when you find them,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, like what else? What else are you missing?
Speaker 2: And it's seeming like those little things, like when you
Speaker 2: are learning a brand new property, it's the big picture
Speaker 2: stuff that matters the most, right just to get you
Speaker 2: in the ballgame. So you're scouting for what's this big
Speaker 2: feature and how's this big feature? But when you know
Speaker 2: a place really well, now, it's about the tiny tweaks.
Speaker 2: It's the what's the fifteen yard move that I can
Speaker 2: make that would take my shots from a forty yard
Speaker 2: shot to a twenty five yard shot, Or it's the
Speaker 2: you know, man, I've hunted this area a thousand times.
Speaker 2: It's always been pretty good, but I tend to get
Speaker 2: winded more often than I want. Or what's like the
Speaker 2: little shift I can make or what's the tendency that man?
Speaker 2: They they actually when they come through here they pass
Speaker 2: on this side of the downtree six times out of ten,
Speaker 2: So really I should tweak my setup five yards this
Speaker 2: way or whatever. I think, like that's the stuff that
Speaker 2: can really really help you when you're at that point.
Speaker 2: But it only it only happens when you keep on
Speaker 2: trying to polish that gemstone. I guess you just keep
Speaker 2: on keeping all with it.
Speaker 3: It's just it's time in the woods, man. I mean,
Speaker 3: I had I had something like that happened to me.
Speaker 3: I guess probably about three years ago. I was squirrel
Speaker 3: hunting with a buddy of mine on a farm that
Speaker 3: I've hunted since I was fifteen years old. I mean
Speaker 3: I've been I've been everywhere in there, you know, a
Speaker 3: million times. And I had run a camera. I had
Speaker 3: left a camera on this ridgetop kind of this splayed
Speaker 3: out ridgetop where they bet a lot. It's sort of
Speaker 3: just like a travel hub. They can come in from
Speaker 3: a bunch of different directions and you know, throughout the
Speaker 3: pre rud, the rut, the travel was just chaotic, like
Speaker 3: you know, a buck go this way, a buck you know,
Speaker 3: way off, and frame buck comes through this way, like
Speaker 3: no real rhyme or reason to the travel and I
Speaker 3: remember just looking at it going like that was like
Speaker 3: a it was like a circus in there, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously it's condensed because you're looking at the
Speaker 3: trail camera photos from lots of time, but I kind
Speaker 3: of had forgotten about it. And then I went squirrel
Speaker 3: hunting with my buddy and it was there's snow on
Speaker 3: the ground whatever, and there's this ravine right below that knob,
Speaker 3: and I've hunted on the bottom of it where they
Speaker 3: go around where it flattens out, and I've hunted the
Speaker 3: top of it where it pinches up on the edge
Speaker 3: of the of a field and it forces them around.
Speaker 3: I mean, for sure, dozens of times in my life,
Speaker 3: maybe you know, maybe more right. And because I was
Speaker 3: squirrel hunting and not really paying attention to the deer thing,
Speaker 3: we cut down right in the middle of that ravine
Speaker 3: and there was just a nice trail going through one
Speaker 3: little spot like you're talking about, where there was like
Speaker 3: a like somebody made a land bridge there. And I
Speaker 3: have walked around that over and under so many times
Speaker 3: in my life hunting everything, not just deer, not just scouting,
Speaker 3: and even with that trail camera up there and looking
Speaker 3: at the evidence that there were deer coming up, Like
Speaker 3: it clicked as soon as I saw it. I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Like I totally missed this huge crossing
Speaker 3: right here. And so I came back there and hunted,
Speaker 3: walked in there during the rut November first second whatever,
Speaker 3: and hung a stand there. There was only one really
Speaker 3: decent tree to set up, so it wasn't a great
Speaker 3: set up there, but it was okay. And I mean
Speaker 3: I got up into that stand or saddle or whatever
Speaker 3: I was doing, I don't remember, and the first thing
Speaker 3: I did is I looked up on the hill and
Speaker 3: there was a little buck coming down and he crossed
Speaker 3: right through there, you know. I mean, just like just
Speaker 3: I didn't kill one on there, but I had a
Speaker 3: couple deer come through there. And it's one of those
Speaker 3: things you're talking about where it's like it's so easy
Speaker 3: to convince yourself that you've got it figured out, and
Speaker 3: you probably don't.
Speaker 2: Other than returning and like continuing to get that time
Speaker 2: in the woods, Like what have you done in recent
Speaker 2: years that's helped you better see this stuff or makes
Speaker 2: sense of this stuff? Like you talk about scouting all
Speaker 2: the time, but in the last five years, What have
Speaker 2: you found has made your scouting more effective?
Speaker 3: Just find an excuse to get out there. And so,
Speaker 3: like that was a squirrel hunt, right, I'm carrying my
Speaker 3: seventeen around my buddy. We're shooting a few squirrels, Like,
Speaker 3: clearly not a shed hunt, not a winter scouting mission.
Speaker 3: I'm probably gonna head down or head over to western
Speaker 3: Minnesota here before February's out and go rabbit hunt some
Speaker 3: of that stuff that I muzzleloader hunted for white tails
Speaker 3: this year on that public land because it'll be fun.
Speaker 3: It's just fun to hunt rabbits, and it's gonna take
Speaker 3: me into that area that I want to just learn more.
Speaker 3: And it's hard. It's hard for me to justify a
Speaker 3: three and a half four hour drive, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: for a day or a day and a half of scouting,
Speaker 3: I could do it. But it's so much easier for
Speaker 3: me to think I'm gonna meet up with a buddy
Speaker 3: of mine, We're gonna go push a few rabbits around,
Speaker 3: which will get us into the stuff the deer bed in.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And it's just any reason, any any way that you
Speaker 3: can find to get out there, because I think I
Speaker 3: think we paint this message or like we we portray
Speaker 3: this message that you have to be so singularly focused, right,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of a lot of the voices in
Speaker 3: the industry for a long time have pushed that, like
Speaker 3: you know, I mean it's sort of like a Cameron
Speaker 3: Haynes thing, right, Like his message is sort of one
Speaker 3: lane and you should do this right, And we've done
Speaker 3: that with white tail scouting. But I don't think a
Speaker 3: lot of people have it in them to just go
Speaker 3: and go, you know, like a lot of people aren't
Speaker 3: worried like Ani may they're not gonna do it. But
Speaker 3: if you can find a reason to be there, or
Speaker 3: find a reason to go someplace new and just just
Speaker 3: spend time out there, I think that's what we're missing
Speaker 3: with a lot of white tel hunters because and I
Speaker 3: know this happens to you all the time. It's like
Speaker 3: once the season starts, you get all these messages of
Speaker 3: like here's my farm, I saw him one time, or
Speaker 3: I can't like I never see mature bucks or whatever,
Speaker 3: and it's like, this is not the time to remedy that.
Speaker 3: Like the time to do it was eight months ago,
Speaker 3: so you didn't come into the season and going, well,
Speaker 3: Now I gotta rattle or buy this decoy or something,
Speaker 3: try to make something happen instead of putting myself right
Speaker 3: where I should have been. So it's it's it's a
Speaker 3: hard thing to get across, but it's important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you make a good point though, Like in this
Speaker 2: this is like a rule that applies to like any
Speaker 2: kind of good habit. Like there's a book I read
Speaker 2: called Atomic Habits. You ever read that? One very good
Speaker 2: book by James Clear. I should have pulled it off
Speaker 2: the shelf and had it with me right now. But
Speaker 2: there's a couple different kind of frame, a framework of
Speaker 2: guidelines that will help you either break a bad habit
Speaker 2: or add a new one. And if we want to
Speaker 2: look at scouting as a good habit to ensure the
Speaker 2: things you need to do, I'm probably gonna forget some
Speaker 2: of this, but one of the big ones is you should.
Speaker 2: You got to make it convenient, you need to make
Speaker 2: it fun. And I think in this case, like scouting
Speaker 2: is a thing that should be a good habit, right,
Speaker 2: it should be a habit for us, But there's always
Speaker 2: excuses not to do it right. We don't have enough time,
Speaker 2: Maybe people don't know it's not as enjoyable as watching
Speaker 2: the Super Bowl, and it's maybe not as fun as
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know whatever going to a game
Speaker 2: or drinking beer at the house or whatever your thing is.
Speaker 2: So I think you gotta find ways to your point. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: a scouting trip slash rabbit trip slash hand with your
Speaker 2: buddy may not be quite as effective as a one
Speaker 2: just me focused on scouting walking for two days straight, right,
Speaker 2: But you probably won't do that. So the better version
Speaker 2: is find a way to make it fun, find a
Speaker 2: way to make it fit your schedule, and getting out
Speaker 2: there doing the thing to a degree is better than
Speaker 2: not entirely. So I think that's a really it's a
Speaker 2: really good idea, Like, find ways to make this part
Speaker 2: of your life, find ways to make it fun and
Speaker 2: and then yet you're going to get value out of it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do this is so much that
Speaker 2: we talk about. There's like the perfect way to do
Speaker 2: something in the deer hunting world. There's like the way
Speaker 2: that the super most hardcore person does it, and that's,
Speaker 2: you know, something we can aspire to. But most of
Speaker 2: us will look at that and be like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't have time for that or I that doesn't really
Speaker 2: sound that much fun. If you can find the thing
Speaker 2: that is fun, that is that can work into your schedule,
Speaker 2: that you can consistently do, you'll make progress. And making
Speaker 2: progress that happens year after year after year, that you
Speaker 2: can keep with, that you can stick to. That adds up.
Speaker 2: I'm betting a lot of people see a thing and like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's more than I could ever pull off,
Speaker 2: and then they never do anything because of that. It
Speaker 2: becomes intimidating just getting the ball rolling? Can you can
Speaker 2: make a pretty big smoll ball if you start with
Speaker 2: something tiny and keep it going down the hill.
Speaker 3: You know, well, right, and there there's something too that
Speaker 3: I want to say on that, because you make a
Speaker 3: good point. One thing that I see a lot of
Speaker 3: people do, and this is this isn't just like scouting
Speaker 3: or deer hunting. This is you know, at the gym,
Speaker 3: whatever is, they rely too heavily on other people to
Speaker 3: be a part of it. And so you know how
Speaker 3: it is like you're training for a marathon and you're
Speaker 3: running or whatever, like you know, you like running with
Speaker 3: people great or you like getting together with that running
Speaker 3: group grade or whatever, but really it's on you. And
Speaker 3: so you see, you know, like just as an example,
Speaker 3: it's it's the new year, right, so you go to
Speaker 3: the gym, a lot of new faces, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them are people who go with somebody. So some
Speaker 3: some gym regular will talk one of their buddies and like, dude,
Speaker 3: you got to come. And so they're there together lifting
Speaker 3: every time you see them. But what happens when that
Speaker 3: one person can't go? Do you have your built an excuse?
Speaker 3: You know? And I think I think we don't. I
Speaker 3: think this happens more than we think where people are like, Okay,
Speaker 3: he's my hunting buddy. If he can go this weekend,
Speaker 3: we'll go. If not, no big deal, And it's like
Speaker 3: you have to just kind of figure out how to
Speaker 3: do both, right, Like it's great if you have somebody
Speaker 3: who will go winter scout with you, that you hunt
Speaker 3: with or whatever, but this is this stuff is sort
Speaker 3: of on you. And you can see this, you know,
Speaker 3: like that example that I said earlier about people reaching
Speaker 3: out like I don't know what to do. It's like
Speaker 3: it's not on me to help you, like i'd love to,
Speaker 3: but it's on you to figure this stuff out. And
Speaker 3: I think you know, you see this especially on like
Speaker 3: traveling trips where people are like, we're going to hunt
Speaker 3: white tails in North Dakota or wherever together, and it's like,
Speaker 3: I get why you do that with buddies, one hundred
Speaker 3: percent do but you have to be willing to do
Speaker 3: this stuff on your own. Like you have to be
Speaker 3: willing to just go. If I have three hours today
Speaker 3: and it's a Sunday in February and there's nothing going on,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go to the woods. I'm just gonna I'm
Speaker 3: going to do it, and you will change. You will
Speaker 3: change the dynamic of how you learn out there same thing,
Speaker 3: you know, Like just think if you go on a
Speaker 3: you know, a hunting trip somewhere with somebody and you're
Speaker 3: you're trying to figure out public land together, You're you're
Speaker 3: going to have some benefit from their their recon and there,
Speaker 3: but it's going to change how you approach everything. If
Speaker 3: you go by yourself and you're like, I'm camping by myself,
Speaker 3: I'm feeding myself, I'm scouting, I'm glassing, I'm hunting by myself,
Speaker 3: everything changes. And I honestly think those are like those
Speaker 3: are the scenarios that really help you level up because
Speaker 3: a lot of the background noise is gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's some truth that something you said reminded
Speaker 2: me of a little epiphany I had the other day too.
Speaker 2: You know, it's easy just in like the chaos of
Speaker 2: the day too. You know, feel like I'm too busy
Speaker 2: to go outside and do my run, or I'm too
Speaker 2: there's too much going on for me to go outside
Speaker 2: for an hour walk or a quick scouting trip or
Speaker 2: shed hunting exploit, or you know, I'm just not feeling it.
Speaker 2: It's too cold out, it's too whatever. There's there's plenty
Speaker 2: of ways to make excuse. It's for for why you
Speaker 2: just want to hang out tonight and just watch TV
Speaker 2: or or whatever. The thing is, right, But we do
Speaker 2: this thing every day at dinner time, where my wife
Speaker 2: and I and the kids all around the dinner tables,
Speaker 2: you know, beginning at dinner talk about our favorite thing
Speaker 2: of the day, like one thing you're thankful for from
Speaker 2: that day that was your favorite thing. And almost always,
Speaker 2: if I go and do something outside, if I go
Speaker 2: do one of these things like go for a shed hunt,
Speaker 2: go for a walk, go for the run, do some scouting,
Speaker 2: that always makes the list that is always is my
Speaker 2: favorite thing of the day. So even if beforehand, I'm
Speaker 2: like I don't feel like doing it, I don't want
Speaker 2: to go out, it's too cold, or I'm too busy
Speaker 2: or whatever, I'm always, always, always thankful I did it afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: It's like, and if I didn't, if I didn't have
Speaker 2: this like reflective process to go back and look at
Speaker 2: that and think about it, you might forget that. You
Speaker 2: might you might lose sight of that. But I've never
Speaker 2: once regretted taking that hour or two and going to
Speaker 2: the property for a walk, or taking the kids out
Speaker 2: for a shid hunt or doing the thing. It's always
Speaker 2: worth it once you do it. So you just got
Speaker 2: to find a way that remind yourself of that in
Speaker 2: the moment when you're feeling busy or stressed or tired
Speaker 2: or whatever it is ahead of it.
Speaker 3: Do Don't you feel the same way when you go
Speaker 3: for a run?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: Isn't that like the like a prime example of something
Speaker 3: that you dread every time and then you do it
Speaker 3: and you always feel better because of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like you almost need like a sticky notice
Speaker 2: something that just reminds you ahead of time, so like,
Speaker 2: don't be stupid. You know you'll be happy afterwards, like
Speaker 2: something like that. I need that reminder everywhere I walk.
Speaker 3: But it's a conditioning thing though, I mean, it's you
Speaker 3: have to go through it to learn that, like you
Speaker 3: you have to you have to do it a lot
Speaker 3: to go even though you know, everything between my ears
Speaker 3: is like, don't freaking do it. You don't want to
Speaker 3: do it. This is gonna suck. And that happens, Like
Speaker 3: that's that's the other thing, Like what you bring up
Speaker 3: there is a good point that happens with scouting, that
Speaker 3: happens with the deer work. We talk ourselves out of
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff that not only should we
Speaker 3: just do because it'll help us out, but because it
Speaker 3: will actually make us feel better, like getting something accomplished,
Speaker 3: going and find that little crossing like you found, it's
Speaker 3: a huge win. Yeah, you know, and it's it's easy
Speaker 3: to not go do that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, speaking of these little things, you had mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier that you'd been focusing on soft edges while scouting,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to make sure we took some time
Speaker 2: to dive into that a little bit further. Can you
Speaker 2: can you expand a little bit about what you mean
Speaker 2: when we're talking soft edges, what you're looking for, how
Speaker 2: that's going to fit into your scouting plane, because I
Speaker 2: think that's something that probably folks could pay attention to
Speaker 2: a little bit more in their own scouting.
Speaker 3: Man. It's it's something that just it might be because
Speaker 3: I've been spending so much time in the cattails the
Speaker 3: last few years, and it becomes I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: a bad way to put it, but when you wade
Speaker 3: into a cattail slough, a big cattail slow, you find
Speaker 3: these tiny little micro climates or these like little micro
Speaker 3: habitats where you're like, there's always pheasants here, there's always deer,
Speaker 3: there's always rabbits. Like this is it's you can stand
Speaker 3: there and look out. I'm gonna go There's gonna be
Speaker 3: rubs there. There's gonna be rubs there. There's probably gonna
Speaker 3: be a trail going from that point to that point.
Speaker 3: And so the more that I go out and I
Speaker 3: start looking around, I'm like, I'm always thinking about things
Speaker 3: too big, you know, like the cornfield's over there, they're
Speaker 3: going to end up there, right, Like the bluff is
Speaker 3: up there, they're going to start there because they're going
Speaker 3: to bed or whatever. But you know how this is
Speaker 3: when you get out there and you watch deer do
Speaker 3: their thing, they are relating to stuff that we just
Speaker 3: walk right on by. And so often, you know, I
Speaker 3: really saw this when I was muzzler hunting this year,
Speaker 3: where there'd be patches of willows or patches of red
Speaker 3: osier dogwood where you would you would, like kind of
Speaker 3: intuitive intuitively look at those and go, Okay, they're gonna
Speaker 3: walk around that, maybe rub on the outside. If they
Speaker 3: want to bed, they'll wait in there. But what I
Speaker 3: would see the deer do, and you see this out
Speaker 3: west when you watch them a lot too, is they
Speaker 3: would get in there and they would be browsing and
Speaker 3: looking around and paying attention, like they knew where the
Speaker 3: other deer were, but they were essentially invisible to everything else.
Speaker 3: And so they have these little places where it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, I can walk through this grass, the crp
Speaker 3: grass to get to the next point or get into
Speaker 3: the cattails, but they're just stopping off in there, into
Speaker 3: this little patch of dogwood, and they're killing time and
Speaker 3: they're doing their thing, and you watch it and go
Speaker 3: this is like, this is like such a key component
Speaker 3: to their life. It's not just cover they walk past
Speaker 3: and leave rubs and like they know that little island
Speaker 3: to cover, there is something they can hide in. They're
Speaker 3: not gonna like nothing's gonna sneak up on him quickly,
Speaker 3: and they're they're really paying attention to the world around them.
Speaker 3: And so it always makes me think, like we used
Speaker 3: to have this neighbor. He died in a motorcycle accident.
Speaker 3: But when my little girls were little, they they loved
Speaker 3: him and he loved them, and so we would walk
Speaker 3: around the block and he would He was one of
Speaker 3: those guys who would drink a lot of beer in
Speaker 3: his garage, you know, so in the summer you'd walk
Speaker 3: by and you never knew if he was in there
Speaker 3: because the sun's shine and bright and he's sitting in
Speaker 3: the back of his garage. But you'd always be like,
Speaker 3: is Fred gonna like talk to us, like is he
Speaker 3: is he in there? But from him, from inside, he's
Speaker 3: looking out and he sees you playing a day when
Speaker 3: you're on the street looking at just because of the sun.
Speaker 3: Same concept as a hunting blind, right, like a pop
Speaker 3: up blind. And I always think about that with these
Speaker 3: soft edges where I go, Yeah, that nice deciduous forest
Speaker 3: over there that everybody wants to hunt in because it
Speaker 3: looks pretty. But those deer can stand in this brush
Speaker 3: edge here where the meadow meets that you know, old
Speaker 3: growth forest, and they're not invisible, but man, they're a
Speaker 3: lot closer than they would be in other types of habitats.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's like, the more I'm around it,
Speaker 3: and the more I winter scout and find these little
Speaker 3: tiny islands a cover or these little soft edges, I go,
Speaker 3: this is so much more important to them than I
Speaker 3: give it credit for. Am I kind of looking past
Speaker 3: this for something bigger and more obvious?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've noticed also bucks specifically utilizing some
Speaker 2: of those things more often than I used to realize
Speaker 2: in the past, Like an overlooked piece like this place
Speaker 2: I was just talking about earlier today, like this brushy
Speaker 2: field than the past I kind of thought was, you know,
Speaker 2: it's tall grass, but relatively blank inside that tall grass,
Speaker 2: and then there's this little tiny point with a little
Speaker 2: bit of brush on it, and you could so easily
Speaker 2: overlook that, and it's not like deep, deep, deep in
Speaker 2: the cover right, It's not like the deepest, darkest swamp.
Speaker 2: It's not the thickest, nastiest, farlest away from the road
Speaker 2: kind of place. It's kind of out there a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it gives a buck a lot of advantages and
Speaker 2: that he's got cover, and then he's got thick security
Speaker 2: cover behind him, he can see in another direction. It's
Speaker 2: in a zone that actually a couple different routes of
Speaker 2: human travel passed within that with not right there, but
Speaker 2: within sight or smell. Like one of my main access
Speaker 2: routes into this property that I hunt goes relatively, it
Speaker 2: goes within sight of that. Probably one of the neighbor's
Speaker 2: main access roads goes within sight of that. So a
Speaker 2: buck can sit in this place, bedded and get a
Speaker 2: very good idea of what's happening around him, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that not being like the hell whole, it's it's
Speaker 2: a it's a small soft edge and point that positions him. Well,
Speaker 2: I think that they use that stuff sometimes more than
Speaker 2: we give them credit for.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, think about this, how often do you
Speaker 3: walk through some kind of grassy spot out there wherever
Speaker 3: and you're not like there's bucks around. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: the same thing. You know, I wrote about this this week,
Speaker 3: Like when I'm out shed hunting and I'm I'm not
Speaker 3: fighting thorns, I typically don't find antlers. Yeah, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Because if you're it's different. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're on a nice private place or something like
Speaker 3: you it's it's a kind of a different scenario. But
Speaker 3: if you're and this this kind of equates to like
Speaker 3: just public land hunting or pressured hunting. If you're not
Speaker 3: somewhere where you're getting like poked a lot by prickly
Speaker 3: ash or you know, raspberry vines or something, you're kind
Speaker 3: of out of the game for where they really want
Speaker 3: to be. And like you said, like that point, you
Speaker 3: see this this amplified if you hunt a state like
Speaker 3: Iowa that has just like dreamy woods, you know, like
Speaker 3: dreamy cover and ice fields and everything where there aren't
Speaker 3: as many patches of gnarly you know, thick type of cover.
Speaker 3: So when you find that, you know who owns it,
Speaker 3: like it's not going to be a scrapper, and some does,
Speaker 3: like they're going to be bedded on that bench on
Speaker 3: the open bluff side or whatever. When you walk in there,
Speaker 3: you know there's going to be somebody big who has
Speaker 3: taken that over because the advance, the survival advantage is
Speaker 3: so real there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So so talk a little bit more about
Speaker 2: how you're spotting this stuff or what what you're looking for. So,
Speaker 2: if you're walking through the woods and you're focusing on
Speaker 2: soft edges, I guess what I'm getting at is here,
Speaker 2: give me some more examples so people know how to
Speaker 2: identify this kind of thing. And and so we've talked
Speaker 2: about the fact that deer will pull up on this
Speaker 2: kind of edge. I think there. I don't think you've
Speaker 2: mentioned it. But there's a lot of travel that happens
Speaker 2: along these soft edges that aren't as stark as here's
Speaker 2: a cornfield, here's a piece of timber. Right, we're talking
Speaker 2: more like this is a mostly hardwood region and this
Speaker 2: is the beginning of hardwood mixed with conifer something like that.
Speaker 2: Can you talk through you know, the kind of thing
Speaker 2: you're looking for and how you're seeing music otherwise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean an easy way to do it, at
Speaker 3: least in my experience. You know, like I'm when I
Speaker 3: winter scout, I'm into rubs, you know, like I like
Speaker 3: seeing scrapes whatever, I like seeing trails, beds. I just
Speaker 3: like rubs, like they they help me. They're easy for
Speaker 3: me to figure out typically, And so you know, if
Speaker 3: you're walking through that oak flat and there's a sapling
Speaker 3: with a rub on it, I'm like, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: like maybe he was munching some acorns and he made
Speaker 3: it like it does. I can look around and go,
Speaker 3: this doesn't feel like it does mean very much good.
Speaker 3: But so often if I'm walking along and I see
Speaker 3: a rub and I stop, and then I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: there's another one, and there's another one. Then I go,
Speaker 3: it's almost always tied to some kind of soft edge,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, because they bedded wherever, you know,
Speaker 3: or fed wherever, and ended up there, and it's just
Speaker 3: a place that they felt more confident standing around in daylight.
Speaker 3: And so if you're walking around you're like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so easy to think of like an
Speaker 3: edge as if you take you know, like where I
Speaker 3: hunt Wisconsin, there's a lot of either forestry industry, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of timber harvests, So you might have
Speaker 3: that clear cut old growth new growth type of edge,
Speaker 3: right hard edge almost or you'll have all those pine trees,
Speaker 3: and then you'll have deciduous and it's like just you
Speaker 3: know you're going to travel that there's gonna be rubs there.
Speaker 3: They might bed there, but when you start getting into
Speaker 3: you know, you just walk through a woods that in
Speaker 3: your head you're like, this is all just like old
Speaker 3: growth deciduous forest. But there's a creek bottom or something,
Speaker 3: and then you look at it and you're like, it's
Speaker 3: just thicker. It's not like you're not looking at it
Speaker 3: like on aero photos and being like there's a hard
Speaker 3: edge there that's easy to follow and easy to understand.
Speaker 3: So often it's something that's this smaller little thing that
Speaker 3: whatever more sunlight gets down there, there's more water, there's
Speaker 3: something that encourages a different type of plant growth. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's just like an abandoned fence line and some vines
Speaker 3: or something. But when you get out there, a lot
Speaker 3: of times for me, I'll kind of find myself being like, man,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of rubs here, and I'll look around
Speaker 3: and like, well, obviously there's like a little island of
Speaker 3: cover here, or this just sort of soft edge that
Speaker 3: mostly just looks like a patch of brush, you know,
Speaker 3: But it's there's a lot going on in some of those,
Speaker 3: especially if you start connecting them. You know, if you're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: well maybe he bedded here and it looks like they're
Speaker 3: walking out there because I can see a bunch of
Speaker 3: rubs going that way. Well what's over the hill, another swamp? Another?
Speaker 3: What is it? And just the more you're out there
Speaker 3: and you see that stuff the morning you start going, okay,
Speaker 3: this could be important somehow, you.
Speaker 2: Know, how you document all this kind of stuff? Has
Speaker 2: that evolved at all? Is this all still up in
Speaker 2: your head? Or are you are you waypointing every single
Speaker 2: one of these things on an app of some kind?
Speaker 2: Like how do you keep track of all it? Because
Speaker 2: you're you know, you're doing this to a scale that's
Speaker 2: probably higher than most folks. How do you keep trying?
Speaker 3: So I'm like the anti Mark Kenya. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: sure I'm way less organized with this than you are.
Speaker 3: A lot of it is just I just try to
Speaker 3: remember it. If it's if I'm if I I'm real
Speaker 3: serious about it, I'm dropping way points because I'll forget it.
Speaker 3: So it depends if it's something that I can go
Speaker 3: into a lot, like if it's close to home. I'm
Speaker 3: not as concerned about dropping a waypoint and leaving notes
Speaker 3: on it. If I make that drive down to Iowa
Speaker 3: to scout or you know, western Minnesota or whatever, that's
Speaker 3: a different thing, because I know I'll forget it, you know,
Speaker 3: and I know I'm packing a lot of scouting into
Speaker 3: one one day, two day type of thing. And so
Speaker 3: the easiest way to do it is just like pull
Speaker 3: up on X and be like waypoint here, and then
Speaker 3: give myself some notes like staging area, hunt, hunt during
Speaker 3: west wind or whatever, and at least there's a prompt there,
Speaker 3: you know, and just to get you like kind of
Speaker 3: going okay, like I have this sort of like this
Speaker 3: isn't going to go away from my brain. And when
Speaker 3: you do that on some of those spots that I like,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the public land I try
Speaker 3: to figure out out a state, it just I can
Speaker 3: pull that up and look at it in a big
Speaker 3: picture thing and go, okay, well I left that waypoint there,
Speaker 3: that waypoint there. There's a pond there I looked at
Speaker 3: and then you can start to just piece it together
Speaker 3: because you can't, I mean, I guess I guess my
Speaker 3: point here is if you have a place in your
Speaker 3: backyard a scout, you can go there a lot, you
Speaker 3: can figure stuff out, and it's just going to sort
Speaker 3: of become something you understand when you're trying to figure
Speaker 3: out something that's not easy to access, or you don't
Speaker 3: get a lot of time out there, you don't have
Speaker 3: as much in field time to do this. You're behind
Speaker 3: on that, so you have to make up for it
Speaker 3: digital scouting, and so it just depends on what the
Speaker 3: scenario is. But that that just even just dropping waypoints
Speaker 3: and looking at how they connect, and you know, thinking
Speaker 3: about it in the off season, it's pretty valuable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that. So so back to what got me
Speaker 2: on that topic of that that land bridge that I discovered.
Speaker 2: We gotta we gotta talk about my big find yesterday
Speaker 2: real quick. We got to shift back to shed hunting
Speaker 2: for a minute because the twenty twenty four story kicked
Speaker 2: into high gear yesterday. So last year, as you know,
Speaker 2: I was after that buck with wide nine, right, but
Speaker 2: I had a number two deer that was in that
Speaker 2: same zone that I was thinking like, man, would I
Speaker 2: shoot this buck? Would I not shoot this buck? And
Speaker 2: it's this deer that I probably mentioned at some point
Speaker 2: in our conversations. My son named him two years ago.
Speaker 2: Son named him bulldozer, and so two years ago, as
Speaker 2: a three year old, he was all over the place,
Speaker 2: passed him a bunch, really wanted to find his sheds
Speaker 2: last year but couldn't. He grew as a four year
Speaker 2: old into like a really nice nine pointer. I was thinking, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, one P thirty somewhere in that ballpark,
Speaker 2: but like a big body, like a huge body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, name come from or came from?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know it was. He was three
Speaker 2: years old when he named him. So at the time,
Speaker 2: my son was three and the buck was three. Both
Speaker 2: of them were three, So I don't know how much
Speaker 2: thought went into.
Speaker 3: It, right, he just likes bulldozers.
Speaker 2: He just likes bulldozers, probably, but he was It was
Speaker 2: a spot on description because he became a bulldozer of
Speaker 2: a deer, just like a hulking body, long, big like
Speaker 2: hump on his back, big chest, like an impressive body deer.
Speaker 2: So I kept looking at that and like, man like,
Speaker 2: if he walks right in front of me, I'd have
Speaker 2: a hard time passing the deer like that kind of body,
Speaker 2: even though it would be nice to see him make
Speaker 2: it to five. But you know, eventually I decided, like, man,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna stick to try and get the wide nine.
Speaker 2: He's the one. But you know, it was interested in
Speaker 2: seeing this deer, hoping to see him, and I never
Speaker 2: saw him like he was just like he was on camera,
Speaker 2: he was around. I guess it's not entirely tru I
Speaker 2: saw him when I was scouting the night before the opener,
Speaker 2: when I was glassing for the wide nine, I saw
Speaker 2: him way down a power line, far away. And then
Speaker 2: on a late season hunt, late like late November I
Speaker 2: think again, when I was still trying to get the
Speaker 2: wide night, I saw him again far off in the distance.
Speaker 2: And then at the very end of the year, I
Speaker 2: was hunting with my son Everett, and we were trying
Speaker 2: to kill a doe together. I can't remember if we
Speaker 2: talked about this. We probably did briefly talk about this
Speaker 2: when we talked about our favorite moments of the year,
Speaker 2: right because this was that hunt when we killed our
Speaker 2: first year together. And then Bulldozer came into like sixty
Speaker 2: five yards or something, So that was our closest call
Speaker 2: last year. Very cool, so I knew he made it
Speaker 2: through the hunting season. He was going to be the
Speaker 2: one that I wanted to see the most this coming year,
Speaker 2: and so my plan was to stay out. I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to go out here at all until I knew
Speaker 2: he dropped his antlers. I wanted to resist the temptation
Speaker 2: and get out there muck things up until I knew
Speaker 2: he dropped. And unfortunately, the area around here doesn't have
Speaker 2: as much food as usually does. The farmer like Chisel
Speaker 2: plowed the cornfields and stuff, so it's like a big
Speaker 2: dirt field for most of the properties I can hunt.
Speaker 2: But I did have two food plots that I play
Speaker 2: in this area that were okay, and in late January
Speaker 2: we had that really was it late January? Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think late January we had like a really good cold
Speaker 2: spell around here was kind of wintery still, and I
Speaker 2: had pictures of him hitting that one of these food
Speaker 2: plots like every day for six days in a row,
Speaker 2: So that gave me some hope that was still in
Speaker 2: the area.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Last week I was in Montana on a mountain lion
Speaker 2: hunt with the Honest and I kept a couple of
Speaker 2: my cameras running. I've turned off most of them, brought
Speaker 2: in most of them, but I kept a few out
Speaker 2: around these food sources just to keep tabs on him.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, five six days ago when I
Speaker 2: was there in Montana, finally got pictures of him, no antlers,
Speaker 2: and you can tell it's him because A he's got
Speaker 2: the big, huge, hulking body, and then be he got
Speaker 2: an I poked out sometime like early in the fall,
Speaker 2: his eye stopped reflecting. You know how you see like
Speaker 2: a black eye in the pictures, and you can see
Speaker 2: kind of like a scar down underneath his eye. So
Speaker 2: he must have been, you know, tussling with one of
Speaker 2: the other big guys in the area. And long story
Speaker 2: short shed. So I got back from Montana a couple
Speaker 2: of days ago. Yesterday was my first chance to get
Speaker 2: out there and walk, and so my plan I had
Speaker 2: like probably a couple hour window. I thought, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna hit the very best stuff tomorrow and then you know,
Speaker 2: the next time I've got a window, I'll do the
Speaker 2: B level stuff. And so my plan was to just
Speaker 2: walk two of the best betting areas that are close
Speaker 2: to that late season food plot they seem to be
Speaker 2: hitting the most. Just scoured it. I hit it as
Speaker 2: hard as I could, I hit the best stuff. I
Speaker 2: focused on these areas that I thought he should be betted,
Speaker 2: probably where he spent a lot of time in the past,
Speaker 2: and covered it all and nothing, And I'm done with
Speaker 2: all the betting, and I'm kind of working my way
Speaker 2: back up towards the road and sitting there walking thinking
Speaker 2: to myself, like, why don't I ever find antlers here?
Speaker 2: Like I know there's bucks in the area, I know
Speaker 2: there's some good deer around. It's so frustrating it just
Speaker 2: so I find so few sheds around here, Like what
Speaker 2: the heck is going on? Where are these things go?
Speaker 2: Like who's getting out here and finding them before I am?
Speaker 2: Or what squirrel is dragging these things into a hole?
Speaker 2: Where is the where are these stupid antlers? And then
Speaker 2: right as I'm saying that, like I almost step on
Speaker 2: an antler right there in front of me, and uh,
Speaker 2: I'm sure shit it was it was bulldozers. I guess
Speaker 2: it's his right side, and uh yeah, I couldn't.
Speaker 3: Did you try to match it up?
Speaker 2: I did try to match it up, and I did
Speaker 2: not succeed. Yet I thought, I thought, I felt very
Speaker 2: Confident'm like, man, if you drop that antler, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm bet and he just kept on going down this trail.
Speaker 2: It was on a trail leaving that Betting area, heading
Speaker 2: towards that food plot, and so I thought, man, I
Speaker 2: bet you he dropped it somewhere, you know, on his
Speaker 2: route continuing or maybe like in this kind of some thick,
Speaker 2: nasty transition stuff through there. It's got to be somewhere
Speaker 2: in there. So I scoured it. I had it hard,
Speaker 2: did not find it, but I'm gonna keep looking, but encouraging,
Speaker 2: super encouraging to find that exciting.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you about that buck. So you see
Speaker 3: that where bucks get their eyes poked out once in
Speaker 3: a while, do you think that buck will it would
Speaker 3: be more hesitant to fight after that, or do you
Speaker 3: think their brain doesn't work that way? I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm just curious because you know, I mean, every once
Speaker 3: in a while you'll see somebody post a video running
Speaker 3: across a blind buck out there. You know that clearly
Speaker 3: just got just just lost his vision, doesn't know where
Speaker 3: to go. Yeah, And I always wonder about that, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're a fighter in the deer woods
Speaker 3: and that happens, like are you are you aware that
Speaker 3: that was the result of fighting, you would think so,
Speaker 3: And then can they put that together and be like, man,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm not gonna push anybody around.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, But the flip side is like the deer
Speaker 2: that that happens to, is that the deer that's like
Speaker 2: genetically predispositioned to be that bullybuck, you know, And so
Speaker 2: is he the buck that man that's his thing, Like
Speaker 2: he's going to beat up other deer and push him
Speaker 2: around like poked out eye or not, like he's going
Speaker 2: to be that guy. I don't know. That's a really
Speaker 2: good question.
Speaker 3: What I'm asking though, is even if that buck is
Speaker 3: a bullybuck, right, Like, even if he's he's gonna fight
Speaker 3: fight on site, right, does he learn Like I mean,
Speaker 3: imagine if you were the toughest guy in town and
Speaker 3: then one day some stranger showed up and you were
Speaker 3: at the bar and he stabbed you in the eye,
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, like you'd be like, I'm
Speaker 3: I might be done with this lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so then it begs the question like if
Speaker 2: that's just assume that's true. If that's true, does that
Speaker 2: mean that buck will be less interested in responding to
Speaker 2: rattling or aggressive calling. Is he all of a sudden
Speaker 2: competition shy and so is that a buck? If I
Speaker 2: snort weeza on this coming fall, is he gonna be like,
Speaker 2: uh uh, I'm not doing that again. Getting the answer
Speaker 2: to that question would be very helpful. I don't exactly
Speaker 2: know how to get the answer.
Speaker 3: Well, and here's another one. So you know, in the
Speaker 3: deer world, or in the turkey world, or probably everywhere
Speaker 3: in nature where a hierarchy exists between dominant and non
Speaker 3: dominant animals, if there's an obvious injury, the other animals
Speaker 3: can see that sense it instantly, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: You see what turkey you see with deer, and I
Speaker 3: wonder if there's a way for the other bucks to
Speaker 3: know that or figure that out. Like this dude isn't
Speaker 3: He's not all there. He never looks at me when
Speaker 3: I'm standing on this side of him, right, So I.
Speaker 2: Don't know enough about eyes to know if he's at
Speaker 2: actually blinded, Like, can you get an injury to the
Speaker 2: eye that what's the thing that reflects? Is it the
Speaker 2: retina that's reflecting? Is that right? I should know this.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about min natomy.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't think it is. I think
Speaker 3: it's something else because it's all about night vision.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so I guess what I'm getting at is
Speaker 2: like I don't know to what degree his eye is injured.
Speaker 2: There is still an eye there. I can see an
Speaker 2: eye there, it just doesn't reflect, so like one's reflecting
Speaker 2: and one's not. So you know, is he actually blind
Speaker 2: in that eye or is it just damaged in some way?
Speaker 2: That's another thing I'm not sure about. I should I
Speaker 2: should look into that further because that would be interesting
Speaker 2: to know. And I wonder, like, you know, how much
Speaker 2: did that change his behavior? He was still around a
Speaker 2: lot on camera, but you know, like I said, he
Speaker 2: was around a lot up until like early fall, which
Speaker 2: is right around when that injury happened, and then like
Speaker 2: he just was not as active, not quite as active
Speaker 2: as the least. So I wonder if that had any
Speaker 2: kind of bearing on on that behavioral chain.
Speaker 3: It's just well, and I mean, I know we're going
Speaker 3: down a geeky rabbit hole here, but imagine I wonder
Speaker 3: if you could follow a buck like that, like a
Speaker 3: GPS collar study or something, see his habits for four
Speaker 3: years gets his eye poked out, can't see on this
Speaker 3: side of his body if he if he leans way
Speaker 3: more heavily into his nose, and how he beds and
Speaker 3: how he travels to compensate for it. Probably Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the final piece of the puzzle is how
Speaker 2: do I adjust my stand setups to make sure I'm
Speaker 2: always on the blind side of him so that when
Speaker 2: he comes in he doesn't see me draw my bow.
Speaker 3: Let's not promote hunting one idea and making it sound easier,
Speaker 3: because there's gonna be assholes out there with BB guns
Speaker 3: trying to shoot their year and a half all bucks
Speaker 3: in one eye.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. We're not in no way condoning
Speaker 2: the creation of one eyed bucks, all right, Let's be
Speaker 2: clear about that. If this buck somehow outsmarts me, though,
Speaker 2: it will be one more feather on the cap of
Speaker 2: incompetency if I can't kill the half blind eer.
Speaker 3: I I think if you were a real hunter who
Speaker 3: cared about ethics and the challenge, you'd wear an eye
Speaker 3: patch all season.
Speaker 2: Would you be more impressed if I pulled it off?
Speaker 3: I think that would be a wonderful experiment for you
Speaker 3: to try. Mark.
Speaker 2: That would be interesting. I'm thirty thirty yards and in
Speaker 2: and one. I only now that's my new thing? Is
Speaker 2: there Is there anything else on the scouting or shed
Speaker 2: hunting front that you think we should cover? To make
Speaker 2: sure folks have got a few things to think about here.
Speaker 3: Just get out there, man, we got to talk about
Speaker 3: lions and mingus. Oh I'm curious to hear this story.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll give you the cliff notes version of this.
Speaker 2: So the plan was that I was going to go
Speaker 2: out there to Montana and join Giannis for Mountain Hunt.
Speaker 2: Working on a new book project, and one of the
Speaker 2: things I'm gonna be exploring is predator dynamics and in
Speaker 2: the future of big carnivores in America, and you know,
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff related to that. So as part
Speaker 2: of that, I want to go on a predator hunt
Speaker 2: and learn about what hunters think about big carnivores and
Speaker 2: predators and living alongside of them and managing them or
Speaker 2: all the different things related to that. So the night
Speaker 2: performs to fly out, Giannis calls me and he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: bad news. Mingus had a fall. He's badly injured. I
Speaker 2: don't think we're gonna be able to do this, and
Speaker 2: I'll let Giannis go into all the details. I'm sure
Speaker 2: he'll tell folks about it on a media podcast or
Speaker 2: something at some point, so I won't steal his thunder.
Speaker 2: But the the cliff notes of that thing is that
Speaker 2: Mingus fell hurt his leg and is out for the
Speaker 2: rest of the lion season. The good news is that
Speaker 2: the injury is not so bad that he won't be
Speaker 2: able to recover, So good news that Mingus is gonna
Speaker 2: be okay. And Giannas was able to still take me
Speaker 2: out with him, but we were gonna have to use
Speaker 2: his buddy's hounds. So we had three full days to
Speaker 2: get out there after. And the first two days were
Speaker 2: just like hiking. We drove roads in the morning looking
Speaker 2: for tracks, crossing a crossing the roads, never found any,
Speaker 2: and so as soon as it was daylight we would
Speaker 2: then just start hiking up mountains, up drainages and just
Speaker 2: walk and walk and walk, and uh, you know, it
Speaker 2: was just like a death march. We did like twelve
Speaker 2: miles a day, twelve and a half miles a day,
Speaker 2: hiking in the snow off trail, just all over the place,
Speaker 2: so beautiful country. Fun. I'm glad I like to hike,
Speaker 2: because we just did a lot of hiking but did
Speaker 2: not find any line tracks, didn't really see any wildlife.
Speaker 2: I went out the second night with our mutual friend
Speaker 2: Garrett and did a wolf hunt with him, went wolf
Speaker 2: hunting with him and got to pick his brand about
Speaker 2: wolves and his thoughts on that and his experiences trying
Speaker 2: to catch up with one ever since they got delisted
Speaker 2: out there, you know, talked about you know, finding balance
Speaker 2: with with critters like that, and how you know a
Speaker 2: lot of hunters are worried about that competition, and we
Speaker 2: talked about, you know, how we might be able to
Speaker 2: live alongside of him. And then uh went to this
Speaker 2: beautiful hyped into another drainage. He turned on like a
Speaker 2: coyote howler and tried to try to call one in
Speaker 2: with that, and again no luck. So those first two days,
Speaker 2: two and a half days, it was just like a
Speaker 2: lot of beautiful country, a lot of walking, no no critters.
Speaker 3: But the last day, hold on a second though, When
Speaker 3: you say no no critters, do you mean like no
Speaker 3: elk tracks, no deer tracks, like pretty pretty empty.
Speaker 2: Uh, there were credit tracks.
Speaker 3: We did see deer truck didn't see just didn't see him.
Speaker 2: And on that wolf trip with Garrett, we did see
Speaker 2: some elk. We went into an area that was an
Speaker 2: elk wintering area and and that was where you'd expect
Speaker 2: the wolves to be. Just didn't pan out, but the
Speaker 2: elk were there. So the last day though, we got
Speaker 2: we got a tip that a buddy of Giannis's friend
Speaker 2: had found a kill site in this zone. And so
Speaker 2: it went to that kill site and started me and Jannis,
Speaker 2: we're gonna start walking circles around it, try to cut
Speaker 2: a track. And then his buddy went and drove a
Speaker 2: snowmobile up a four service road to try to cut
Speaker 2: a track up to the north of it, and sure
Speaker 2: enough he cut a track, came back and got us
Speaker 2: first line track of the trip. And you know, the
Speaker 2: interesting thing that happened from this point was that we
Speaker 2: had to take snowmobiles to get there. And I've never
Speaker 2: wrote on a snowmobile before my life. What, Yeah, we
Speaker 2: don't have snow down where I'm at in Michigan growing up,
Speaker 2: and we just that wasn't the thing our family did
Speaker 2: was go up north to snowmobill, so never use them
Speaker 2: before my life. So I get like the tutorial. The
Speaker 2: tutorial is like, all right, here's the throttle, and don't
Speaker 2: sit down. You have to stand up the whole time
Speaker 2: because we're gonna go around lots of We're riding on
Speaker 2: the side of a mountain on like hiking trails. Essentially,
Speaker 2: these are not like roads or forest service roads. We're
Speaker 2: gonna be going on trails on the sides of mountain,
Speaker 2: up and over into and out of drainages, over mountains,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. So they describe me you
Speaker 2: need to stand up the whole time, and you need
Speaker 2: to switch your legs over to whichever side of the
Speaker 2: snowmobile is uphill so you don't roll down the side
Speaker 2: of the mountain. And I'm like, what, like, while we're driving.
Speaker 3: Are you switching your legs so you can bail or
Speaker 3: because of the weight distribution both.
Speaker 2: The first thing is that you have to switch your
Speaker 2: legs to weight. So basically what they're telling me to
Speaker 2: do is like, when we're on the side of the
Speaker 2: mountain and the trail is leaning downhill, you need to
Speaker 2: put both your legs on the uphill side and hold
Speaker 2: all of your weight to the right or towards the
Speaker 2: uphill side, so you don't roll the snowmobil over and
Speaker 2: fall off the side of the mountain. And so I'm like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, I've never even touched one of these things,
Speaker 2: and now I'm doing like acrobats acrobat moves on the
Speaker 2: side of it, on the side of a mountain, Like
Speaker 2: is this Yeah, I was just I don't know. I
Speaker 2: had no idea. It wasn't getting myself into and but
Speaker 2: at the same time, I'm like, all right, I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna do it, Like, yeah, do it. And so we
Speaker 2: drive this trail to where his friend cut the track.
Speaker 2: We stop, all right, I'm excited. We're gonna cut the
Speaker 2: dogs loose and go do the thing. We cut the
Speaker 2: dogs loose, they go tearing off and then they like
Speaker 2: go like we were hoping the line might be close,
Speaker 2: but no, it's like those dogs went over the mountain,
Speaker 2: down a drainage, over another mountain, down another dranche and
Speaker 2: they were gone and we lost track of them of
Speaker 2: their GPS collars. And so now we had to like
Speaker 2: go up to the top of the mountain or to
Speaker 2: the next one to try to get the service again
Speaker 2: and find them. And to make a very long story short,
Speaker 2: over the next hour or two we drove up and
Speaker 2: down around like this is like there's no roads, there's
Speaker 2: nothing plowed. This is like fresh snow on the side
Speaker 2: of a mountain on a hiking trail that we're driving
Speaker 2: our snowmobills around with like hundreds of foot dropped down
Speaker 2: to the side, and I am like so puckered, I
Speaker 2: can't even tell you. I mean, like my hands are
Speaker 2: gripped like white knuckling. I just know I'm gonna roll
Speaker 2: this thing off. Like at one point, I stop on
Speaker 2: the edge of one thing, look back at me on
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'm gonna roll this mfror off the
Speaker 2: side of this mountain. So tell my wife goodbye. Like this,
Speaker 2: there's no way this is gonna work out. And it
Speaker 2: was bad, man. I rolled it. I rolled it twice,
Speaker 2: but both times I rolled it was not so steep
Speaker 2: on the side that I couldn't catch myself in the
Speaker 2: sled before it went down. But it was an adventure.
Speaker 2: To make a long story short, it was an adventure.
Speaker 2: We made it to where the dogs were, We found
Speaker 2: the dogs. They lost the track, but we were able
Speaker 2: to after like an hour of walking around trying to
Speaker 2: cipher what was going on. There was all these deer
Speaker 2: tracks and boot tracks and YadA YadA YadA, we're able
Speaker 2: to find a fresh track coming out of this mess,
Speaker 2: put the dogs back on it, and maybe another hour later,
Speaker 2: more hiking up and down the mountain, another drive of
Speaker 2: the snow and bible down this mountain to another drainage.
Speaker 2: They treat a cat, They jumped it, treat it. And
Speaker 2: we bailed on down there, and I saw my first
Speaker 2: mountain line ever in the wild at least. And she
Speaker 2: was beautiful, big female, just perched in this wide open,
Speaker 2: perfect branch that we could like very clearly sit in
Speaker 2: the side of the mountain and sit next to her
Speaker 2: and watch her. And she just hung out there looking
Speaker 2: at us, and then like kind of took a nap.
Speaker 2: She did not seem to care one bit that we
Speaker 2: were there. And it was just wild seeing a creature
Speaker 2: like that up close, something that's so wild and elusive
Speaker 2: most of the time. To be able to just be
Speaker 2: right there with it.
Speaker 3: It was pretty cool. Sea lions in a very often
Speaker 3: no it was.
Speaker 2: It was a special thing. And then you know they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can like walk right to the base of the
Speaker 2: tree if you want, Like she's not gonna leave like
Speaker 2: she she wants to just hang out there. So I walked,
Speaker 2: you know, to the base of the tree and you
Speaker 2: can't help but like when there's one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: pound one hundred and forty pound lion directly above you
Speaker 2: twenty yards, there's just like like the hair is on
Speaker 2: your neck stand up, like even though I know, like
Speaker 2: I should be safe, Like that was like a feeling.
Speaker 2: That was something that was something.
Speaker 3: That's that's a little undercurrent run and way back through
Speaker 3: your ancestry there.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was. It was. It was really cool
Speaker 2: to have that kind of connection back to the the
Speaker 2: way stuff used to be a little bit.
Speaker 3: So was this a was it an actual hunt? Like
Speaker 3: if it was it was a tom was there somebody
Speaker 3: there that would have shot it?
Speaker 2: So it was a hunt going into it. And then
Speaker 2: as we went along, Giannis ended up making a decision
Speaker 2: that he didn't want to shoot if it was a
Speaker 2: big time. He didn't want to shoot it without his
Speaker 2: dog there. So, you know, we by the time we
Speaker 2: got there, we realized like he probably wouldn't shoot it anyways,
Speaker 2: because he wasn't going to be you know, the moment
Speaker 2: he wanted like he wanted his first line to be
Speaker 2: with his dog. He's been training so but you know,
Speaker 2: kind of going into it, we thought we thought it
Speaker 2: would be but just unforeseen circumstances led it to being
Speaker 2: a tree and free. So it is.
Speaker 3: How did it make you feel about would you want
Speaker 3: to hunt him for yourself?
Speaker 2: I think my old my number one. I have a
Speaker 2: whole new appreciation for hound hunters and like folks who
Speaker 2: do it this way. You know, it was not easy.
Speaker 2: I mean we we death marched for three days. I
Speaker 2: mean a lot of physical activity, hard, hard heard hunt.
Speaker 2: Now I know, like maybe not everyone who hound hunts
Speaker 2: hikes as much as we did. Maybe more guys do
Speaker 2: it by the road. But what I saw and what
Speaker 2: I got to be a part of was a serious
Speaker 2: hunt and like getting to the end like I think
Speaker 2: some I had looked and seeing like oh geez, these
Speaker 2: lions get treated and then you to shoot them. That
Speaker 2: seems so easy. And what I realized is like, that's
Speaker 2: not what the lion hunt is really about. The lion
Speaker 2: hunt is about finding it, following it, catching up to it.
Speaker 2: Like that's a ton of work, that's a ton of
Speaker 2: training that goes in these dogs. It's amazing how much
Speaker 2: these guys knew about lions, like how they're going to
Speaker 2: move through the landscape, and what they've learned over the
Speaker 2: years of following them and studying them, and the passion
Speaker 2: they have for it. So just like a lot of
Speaker 2: appreciation for it. And also seeing at least the folks
Speaker 2: I was around, like, have a real appreciation for the
Speaker 2: animal and respect for the animal, you know, just like
Speaker 2: we have for deer and the other critters that we hunt.
Speaker 2: And so I came out of it, I think with
Speaker 2: a stronger belief that, like, you know, when you can
Speaker 2: hunt an animal and manage an animal, it usually builds
Speaker 2: an advocate of the animal. So it's not like I
Speaker 2: don't In most cases, it seems like managed predator hunting
Speaker 2: can lead to more part predator and carnivore advocates sometimes
Speaker 2: because you're you're getting folks invested in the animal, and
Speaker 2: so I think that it leads to good things for
Speaker 2: the animal just as much as it leads to good
Speaker 2: things for the hunter and so and so this is
Speaker 2: a great illustration of that idea at least, And I
Speaker 2: would definitely, I would definitely like to be online hunts. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm still unsure if I want to shoot one, though
Speaker 2: I do not know if I want to shoot one myself.
Speaker 2: I don't. I wouldn't, you know, criticize anyone for wanting
Speaker 2: to do that themselves. I don't know if I want
Speaker 2: to shoot one. I've eaten line it's very good, so
Speaker 2: I could see myself doing it because I wouldn't eat it.
Speaker 2: But a little bit of me was like, man, that
Speaker 2: is just like an amazing I don't know quite how
Speaker 2: to put words to it, but like, I don't know
Speaker 2: if i'd want to shoot it. That's all wolf. Same question.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, same question.
Speaker 3: I wrote about predators for next week's Foundations, and it's
Speaker 3: just I'm like you, if people want to trap, they
Speaker 3: want to hunt them. I don't care at all. Like
Speaker 3: donuts for donuts, it just does not It's not appealing
Speaker 3: to me, and I can't really describe why. It's just
Speaker 3: not for whatever reason, I think it's I think it's cool,
Speaker 3: you know, like I know how like hardcore Garrett is
Speaker 3: and you're honest and those guys are and I get it.
Speaker 3: It's just for whatever reason, just does not work with me.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not that interesting.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me though, is like, and this is
Speaker 2: maybe me getting I don't know if it's me getting
Speaker 2: soft or or what it is, but this is a
Speaker 2: little wulu. But I almost like see myself in them,
Speaker 2: Like we're both hunters, you know, like I can relate
Speaker 2: in a way. So I'm fascinated with them, but I'm
Speaker 2: more so like I want to see it and I
Speaker 2: want to high five and good luck on your next
Speaker 2: deer hunt.
Speaker 3: So I want to just take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: here and let everybody who's listening to this know that
Speaker 3: Mark Kenyon just compared himself to a mountain lion, and
Speaker 3: he's he's kindred spirits with a mountain lion.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're both deer hunters.
Speaker 3: Man, Hey, listen, you can be as delusional as you want, buddy,
Speaker 3: It's okay.
Speaker 2: You're probably right. But all I can tell you is
Speaker 2: that they are fascinating critters. I'm really glad I got
Speaker 2: to get out there and chase them around a little bit.
Speaker 2: And and yeah, whether or not I want to shoot
Speaker 2: him or not, I I'm glad they're out there. And
Speaker 2: and I hope we can find a way that we
Speaker 2: can live alongside of them better and and manage them,
Speaker 2: but can serve them. And it was it was a
Speaker 2: really eye opening experience that I enjoyed a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, the whole predator thing is is a category
Speaker 3: of hunting that needs the right pr for sure, Like
Speaker 3: because that's a that's an easy one for people to
Speaker 3: draw a line in the sand on, especially people who
Speaker 3: don't really understand predator pray relations. So yeah, anything any
Speaker 3: way to put that in a more positive educational light
Speaker 3: is probably a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. And on that note, man, I've got
Speaker 2: to shut this down because I've got a hard stop
Speaker 2: and appointment to get to. But thanks, thanks for joining me,
Speaker 2: thanks for talking sheds and scouting and all that good stuff,
Speaker 2: and nobuddy, let's do it again soon for sure. And
Speaker 2: with that, I will just say to everyone else listening,
Speaker 2: thank you for being here, thanks for tuning in. Get
Speaker 2: out there, get walking, do your scouting, do your shed hunting,
Speaker 2: and until next time, stay wired.
Speaker 3: Don