Speaker 1: All right, everybody right up top here before anything happens.
Speaker 1: I owe everyone listening a huge thank you. A couple
Speaker 1: episodes ago, we released an episode called Begging and Pleading
Speaker 1: re Ducts. In that episode announced the release of our
Speaker 1: latest book title, The Meat Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills
Speaker 1: and Survival, in which I had gone on the pot,
Speaker 1: in which the podcast episode that is, I had implored
Speaker 1: you to make the purchase not only for your own benefit,
Speaker 1: but because I have a lifelong dream of having one
Speaker 1: of my titles hit the New York Times bestseller list,
Speaker 1: and you guys knocked it out of the park. The
Speaker 1: mea Eater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival debut as
Speaker 1: number four on the New York Times Bestseller List. So
Speaker 1: thank you to everyone who went out and bought a book.
Speaker 1: It's still for sale, it's still a good book, but
Speaker 1: you did it. Thank you. This is Me Eater Podcast
Speaker 1: coming in you shirtless, severely bog bitten, in my case,
Speaker 1: underwear listening podcast. You Can't Predict Anything presented by on X.
Speaker 1: Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.
Speaker 1: Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store.
Speaker 1: Nor where you stand with on X. All right, we're joined.
Speaker 1: I hate to say this, people, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but we're joined remotely. It's like the COVID deah COVID.
Speaker 1: We're joined remotely by Clay Newcomb Newcombe h and Mark
Speaker 1: back Forty, Kenyon Houdy Clay. How you doing, man, I'm
Speaker 1: doing good, doing very good. Mark? Are you well? Arrested
Speaker 1: right now? Finally, for the first time about a month,
Speaker 1: I do feel arrested. It's been a been a busy
Speaker 1: spell here. So the last two days I got to
Speaker 1: sleep in and that like, uh, you being like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a like a white tailed rut
Speaker 1: fanatical kind of guy. Um, there's there's still raging around though,
Speaker 1: So why are you resting now? Yeah, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of just I'm not completely resting. I'm gonna start hunting
Speaker 1: again tomorrow. But I needed to take a couple of
Speaker 1: days because the last thirty I've hunted of the last
Speaker 1: thirty days, so starting October that was when it all
Speaker 1: got crazy. So I got to see my wife and
Speaker 1: kids a little bit, get a little sleep, and then uh,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, I'll get back after it. I need
Speaker 1: a good job like a job like you got, Mark,
Speaker 1: I'm work. I'm still getting the regular working too. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: it's just after dark. It's amazing what one day of
Speaker 1: sleeping in will do for you after you've been pounding
Speaker 1: the daylight hunting. I've got an equation. I think one
Speaker 1: morning of sleeping in makes up for ten days of hunting.
Speaker 1: It's amazing what one little break can do. Yeah, I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. You come back pretty reagged and recovered pretty quick,
Speaker 1: and it almost makes you think like you could build
Speaker 1: a system out of it, and it's worth it. I have.
Speaker 1: I used to think that I would feel really guilty
Speaker 1: if I wasn't hunting every single possible moment I could,
Speaker 1: But I think that you get that eventual point of
Speaker 1: diminishing returns where you you go ten days straight and
Speaker 1: you've just lost focus and you've lost some edge. If
Speaker 1: you get that one morning, it's totally worth sacrificing four
Speaker 1: hours of hunting to get the much you know, much
Speaker 1: more effective seven more days after that. I think, Uh.
Speaker 1: The thing that messes with me about it is all there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really compelling research um that sleeping
Speaker 1: is real, real good for you. And that there's possible links.
Speaker 1: And I usually hate when people say there's possible links
Speaker 1: between you know this and that. But um, early onset
Speaker 1: dimension stuff man from not sleeping enough. M hm, like
Speaker 1: you need to do it. And I used to not
Speaker 1: do it much, and when I did, I was mostly
Speaker 1: kind of like sleeping, like like a lot of times
Speaker 1: they kind of hung over and whatnot. Now I try
Speaker 1: to really prioritize, uh, getting enough sleep. Do you know
Speaker 1: what your magic number is? A lot of people kind
Speaker 1: of feel like they find that sweets about how much
Speaker 1: they need every night. Yeah, but I'm embarrassed to say
Speaker 1: eight hours. Dude, you don't need about that eight hours.
Speaker 1: Did you guys catch this news this news item ott
Speaker 1: of Wyoming? In Wyoming, they have are you Are you
Speaker 1: guys similar with the one shot the one shot Antelope Hunt? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that. I'm an alumni, an alum of the
Speaker 1: one shot so for eighty years in Lander, Wyoming, the
Speaker 1: governor of So for eighty years in a row. I
Speaker 1: think it's been like what sixteen governors or something have
Speaker 1: been involved in this. Uh. They host this antelop punt
Speaker 1: and you have these like it's very uh. In describing it.
Speaker 1: It can sound a little compromised, but it's like this.
Speaker 1: You have these teams, right, and the governor hosts it.
Speaker 1: It raises money for some habitat improvement work. UM. The
Speaker 1: governor hostet and all these groups come out and you
Speaker 1: make these little teams, and the teams go out to
Speaker 1: hunt antelope and even get special game commission analope tags. Right,
Speaker 1: the teams come out to hunt antelope and uh, you
Speaker 1: gotta you can only shoot once. Okay, if you shoot
Speaker 1: more than once, you can't, You're you're disqualified. So everybody
Speaker 1: has to shoot one time and get an antelope. And
Speaker 1: so if you're group of three people can go out
Speaker 1: and fire three shots one eat, one shot for each
Speaker 1: of you and get an antelope any basically throughout the
Speaker 1: whole day. There's like a timing element to it. But
Speaker 1: basically if you can accomplish that and all three people
Speaker 1: get one with one shot, you have a very good
Speaker 1: chance of of winning. And they do it in conjunction
Speaker 1: with UM a local tribe, and there's all these like
Speaker 1: banquets and everything. I did this a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago where I was invited by UH so, I was
Speaker 1: invited by Colorado's governor, and I went with a former
Speaker 1: Special Forces soldier who's on our team. He said he
Speaker 1: likes to get ringers. M So it's me a Special
Speaker 1: Forces guy and him and we went out and did
Speaker 1: this thing. Now, at that time, there was starting to
Speaker 1: be a lot of like heat, a lot of heat
Speaker 1: on the one shot Annelope Hunt Club because it was
Speaker 1: dudes only, bros only, and had been dudes only for
Speaker 1: eighty years. And like usually I do all kinds of
Speaker 1: things with just guys that just happens to be just guys,
Speaker 1: but I usually would shy away from anything meant to
Speaker 1: be just guys. Like the minute someone says it's just guys,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it gives me a creepy feeling.
Speaker 1: Like anything like just for men or like a men's
Speaker 1: club or a men's group, I'm like, home, why you mean?
Speaker 1: Like if I wanted to bring my super good buddy
Speaker 1: who's a woman, she can't come. It's against the rule.
Speaker 1: It just strikes me as so weird, right, I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that was still the case. Well, with a lot of
Speaker 1: old stuff that's been going on a long time, Like
Speaker 1: I honestly, honestly didn't put too much thought into it
Speaker 1: because there's so much like culturally, there's so many old
Speaker 1: institutions that are dudes only that it's almost like it's
Speaker 1: not like it's stand it's beginning to stand out. But
Speaker 1: for a long time it didn't like stand out because
Speaker 1: my old man, uh like growing up mild man belonged
Speaker 1: to well, he's big at he liked to go to
Speaker 1: drink at the VFW after you ice fished, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't men only, but at that time it was men only.
Speaker 1: And then he belonged to a thing called the Wise Men,
Speaker 1: like a philanthropic group that raised money for the y,
Speaker 1: and you had to be a dude to be a
Speaker 1: wise man. And then his church group was for dudes only,
Speaker 1: like his particular group within the church was a dude
Speaker 1: only group. Like if a woman wanted to go, they
Speaker 1: would like not let her go. So it was very
Speaker 1: it's like very to me, right or wrong, very normal, appearing,
Speaker 1: normal feeling to have like these gender exclusive things. I
Speaker 1: didn't pay much attention to it, but when I went,
Speaker 1: I was just the buzz. There's buzz around two issues.
Speaker 1: There's buzz around that these people that participated got these
Speaker 1: dedicated tags which chapped the asses of a lot of
Speaker 1: people around town who are like, I have to draw
Speaker 1: the permit, but like if people go to this, they
Speaker 1: like get permits, and that that was irritating to something
Speaker 1: And was this like a unit that was tough to
Speaker 1: draw otherwise and it would have been but a good unit,
Speaker 1: a good union, and it would have been invitation only
Speaker 1: sum you have to apply. But I was there like
Speaker 1: I was invited. So the governor of Wyoming always has
Speaker 1: a team. The governor Colorado always has a team. This
Speaker 1: has always been like the thing. The new governor of
Speaker 1: Colorado apparently the first guy and forever like the new
Speaker 1: governor of Colorado his uh I gathered that his husband
Speaker 1: is um big anti hunter. Yeah, so this dude isn't
Speaker 1: going and he broke the whole tradition of it being
Speaker 1: like the governor of Wyoming and the governor of Colorado
Speaker 1: hunting together. I was there like like I had met
Speaker 1: Wyoming's This gets a little complicated. I was at a concert.
Speaker 1: I was at an event one time where Wyoming's governor
Speaker 1: Matt Mead in Colorado, those governor John Hick and Looper
Speaker 1: who are who are friendly and there on the other
Speaker 1: sides of the political spectrum, but they're friendly in respect,
Speaker 1: you know, respectful to one another. I met them both, like,
Speaker 1: we had a cocktail one time at of an event
Speaker 1: where they were being honored for their collaborative work around
Speaker 1: sage grouse habitat Okay. So they were being honored as
Speaker 1: this like Democrat and Republican who set their differences aside
Speaker 1: and came together around sage grouse work and habitat work.
Speaker 1: So I shot the ship with both of them, and
Speaker 1: afterward I was invited to go down and do this deal.
Speaker 1: So here I get one of these tags, and I
Speaker 1: don't do ship to get it. I just get it, okay.
Speaker 1: So you someone could look and say, oh, that's not fair.
Speaker 1: But then the Wyoming Game Commission um they put like
Speaker 1: apparently they put value on this sort of like collaborative
Speaker 1: conservation thing that has been going on for eighty years
Speaker 1: and fuels a lot of economic activity in the area
Speaker 1: and brings different politicians and figures together to in this
Speaker 1: like collaborative mood of doing habitat work. So right, like everything,
Speaker 1: like everything, there's two sides of the story. But the
Speaker 1: women thing was just becoming an issue, and they started
Speaker 1: like somehow they got other commission tags to start, like
Speaker 1: a woman's antalope hunt. So now you've created Now they
Speaker 1: had like two of these things at this point. Now
Speaker 1: this new story just came out that now for the
Speaker 1: first time since nine women will be allowed to compete
Speaker 1: in the twenty one lander one shot antelope hunt. So
Speaker 1: they combined them, they didn't. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: officially combined them or if they got competitive, you know,
Speaker 1: remember like when I don't know if it's like a
Speaker 1: situation where remember how the UM girl Scouts and boy
Speaker 1: Scouts gotten a little piss and match because the boy
Speaker 1: scouts were gonna let girls into the boy Scouts and
Speaker 1: that piste off the girl scouts. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about what went on, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people are applauding this, even even like people who
Speaker 1: are participating the Another body of mine sent this article
Speaker 1: to me, and he had done the one shot UM
Speaker 1: and had a good time there. He was also a governor.
Speaker 1: He was like on a governor team. He had done
Speaker 1: the one shot and thought that this is a step
Speaker 1: in the right direction. So it's like a similar all
Speaker 1: women like you can have all women beyond a team
Speaker 1: or you can have you know, men women groups. And
Speaker 1: the way this thing works is you apply. So when
Speaker 1: I was there, like some there was like I think
Speaker 1: some a group of firefighters right had applied to come
Speaker 1: down and they were accepted into it. And like I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of banquets and elbow robin, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the prize? What do you get if you win this thing? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think that the Governor's I know, between the two governors,
Speaker 1: there's this statue, this little ship and statue of an antelope,
Speaker 1: and it lives at the governor's mansion and it swaps
Speaker 1: back and forth, and there's a lot of spirited uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of spirited you know, rivalry around who
Speaker 1: did it? So when I was on it, it went
Speaker 1: to it flew home with the Colorado governor. M hm,
Speaker 1: so say it again, I says, Colorado is not gonna
Speaker 1: have a team. Then this year I heard that the
Speaker 1: governor of Colorado, hick and Looper always took a lot
Speaker 1: of heat. You know, it could potentially take a lot
Speaker 1: of heat, and took some heat. And after hick and
Speaker 1: Looper had gotten involved in some things that uh, Hicky
Speaker 1: Looper had gotten involved in some gun control measures that
Speaker 1: were very unpopular with hunters and gun owners. And when
Speaker 1: I was there with uh, when I was there with him,
Speaker 1: that was an issue, and I thought it was um
Speaker 1: bold of him to go right, but he went and
Speaker 1: took it and tried to you know, and and like
Speaker 1: that collaborative spirit even though people being on different sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle on such an important issue. Um yeah
Speaker 1: he But yeah, now apparently the Colorado's governor won't go well.
Speaker 1: And just I say that some women tend to better
Speaker 1: long range shooters than men when it comes to like
Speaker 1: sitting on a bench. You know, if you were to
Speaker 1: like train man and a woman the same a lot
Speaker 1: of times, that woman would be a better shot. Have
Speaker 1: you heard that? I mean, I don't know why that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be true, But no, I don't. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've heard that. You've heard that
Speaker 1: wouldn't kind of surprise me. I've heard that from a
Speaker 1: guy that that had a long range shooting school. He
Speaker 1: told me that. Yeah, I wanna Danielle Prewitt, who man her?
Speaker 1: Have you guys made Daniell's Um, have you guys made
Speaker 1: Daniell's Uh, whiskey butter sauce heart recipe just looking at it.
Speaker 1: But I haven't tried to ship man anyhow. She did
Speaker 1: though she did the I think she did the woman's
Speaker 1: one shot aloud. I gonna ask Danielle I should have
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see if Danielle and Karin our producer. I
Speaker 1: feel like they should apply and go down apply for
Speaker 1: the old boys one get a little team going go
Speaker 1: on down there. Yeah, she'd place up. Can you are
Speaker 1: you allowed to ever go back against Eve or is
Speaker 1: it a once in a lifetime opportunity? No? I was allowed. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: yeah you are, and there's all these stipulations to it,
Speaker 1: but you are. Um, and it's it works in various ways.
Speaker 1: But just for scheduling and other reasons, I was not
Speaker 1: able to go um. Someone tried. There was a because
Speaker 1: Hick and Looper, Uh, Hick and Loopers U in Colorado.
Speaker 1: You know, he's kind of a centrist, so he won
Speaker 1: the he went from he turned out as a governor
Speaker 1: in Colorado and just took a sentence. See he's a
Speaker 1: centrist Democrat, right, So he gets a lot of heat
Speaker 1: from the left and he gets a lot of heat
Speaker 1: from the right. Um, someone had done. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hit piece out on Hick
Speaker 1: and Looper for have for um, a hit piece out
Speaker 1: on him for having participated in the one shot. Well
Speaker 1: did he do you know if he killed Nlop with
Speaker 1: one shot? I mean that's the main thing I think. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. No, he did not. He did not.
Speaker 1: And I heard that back the other direction, if you Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had heard people say there was like grumblings, Um,
Speaker 1: I should ask him about this. There was grumblings some
Speaker 1: people either like I don't the guy doesn't do it,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. Think it's like an avid hunter. There's
Speaker 1: grumblings that he throws his shots. Yeah, yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: was going. It's like I went. But so the reason
Speaker 1: but the reason he got to return with the statue,
Speaker 1: with the to bring it back to his I think
Speaker 1: he had had the thing in the first place. It
Speaker 1: was like he has it in his office quite a lot,
Speaker 1: or had it in his office quite a lot. I
Speaker 1: think the reason he got to do it is because,
Speaker 1: like I said, he brought in some ringers, you know,
Speaker 1: And um, so I did. I got mine very I
Speaker 1: got one early in the morning and this former Green beret.
Speaker 1: He got one early in the morning. UM. And then
Speaker 1: Hick and Looper did not get one. UM. But then
Speaker 1: Governor mead the way it worked was like he can't
Speaker 1: fill he can't get all ringers. Like he gets a
Speaker 1: signed there's some weird tradition where he could to sign
Speaker 1: someone like and like like some person who's been involved
Speaker 1: for a long time gets as signed to him. And
Speaker 1: I think he can only get one ringer. You're tracking me.
Speaker 1: It's a strange institution. Oh, listen, listen, you don't. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had quite a good time. I had quite a
Speaker 1: good time. But yeah, and they you know, they're evolving
Speaker 1: with the times. Do you think is that is? This
Speaker 1: is this thing pretty well received by the people in Colorado?
Speaker 1: And I mean because it kind of it does kind
Speaker 1: of make people uncomfortable sometimes these even the governor tags
Speaker 1: and and I understand, Yeah, it's controversial. It's controversial for sure.
Speaker 1: I didn't like. I didn't. I'm guilty of having not
Speaker 1: known what it was until I was until I was invited,
Speaker 1: and I didn't give it. I didn't spend too much
Speaker 1: time on it. Um. When I got invited, I called
Speaker 1: Rourke Denver because Rurk Denver had who's a former Seal
Speaker 1: Rourke Denver had been brought down there by Governor Mead
Speaker 1: as as a ringer on that side, and he got you.
Speaker 1: You were recruited as a ringer though, Is that true? Well?
Speaker 1: Are you are you questioning the lot that? Are you
Speaker 1: saying that that wasn't Are you Are you trying to
Speaker 1: consulting to me? No? No, no, no no no. I
Speaker 1: just I mean, you know, you're like making a little
Speaker 1: dig I mean, I guess I'm just kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, like an NBA draft. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: first round draft picks like that, dude's a ringer. You
Speaker 1: get into the second round and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's good enough to play an NBA, but he's not.
Speaker 1: These references, these NBA references are gonna fall flat on Steve.
Speaker 1: He's not following you. I know, I know, I know
Speaker 1: that's not true because I just watched um the last
Speaker 1: dance M fascinating, dude. I now know everything about basketball.
Speaker 1: I know all about the field they play onsten that
Speaker 1: was a little dig clay and all I can say.
Speaker 1: All I can say is, let's just take a look
Speaker 1: at the facts. At daybreak at daybreak, I got a buck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can I argue with that? The cold gray lighted on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. How far was the shot? How far
Speaker 1: was the shot? Too? Okay, one seventy six? Maybe if
Speaker 1: I remember digging back in the old memory bank. Mm
Speaker 1: hmm what like what dude, Phil, can you cut him off? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Clay is getting little old. It's like wow, man, for
Speaker 1: he like half quarantined. And then I gotta have like,
Speaker 1: all right, so that's a great that's a great shot. Man.
Speaker 1: Too late, buddy, too late? Uh? Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is this is coming from a guy who lives in
Speaker 1: a state you can't see more than fifty yards in
Speaker 1: any direction. Yeah, like a long shot for me is
Speaker 1: like a you know, twenty two yard traditional archery shot.
Speaker 1: So I uh, I for the first time in quite
Speaker 1: a while missed a big game animal with a rifle
Speaker 1: this year. And now I'm not saying that all my
Speaker 1: hits are great hits, because that's definitely not true. But
Speaker 1: just to like flat out um to flat out miss
Speaker 1: really shook me up. Man. You know, I thought you
Speaker 1: guys did. Uh. Your description of all the factors that
Speaker 1: went into that miss was pretty compelling, though, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the the length of the hair, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, there were a couple there were two
Speaker 1: factors I think that were causing you to maybe shoot
Speaker 1: a little bit high. That had to do with the
Speaker 1: with the gun itself. And so anyway, I appreciated the
Speaker 1: in depth look into the miss and I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: I didn't really want to bring that up. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're Clay's referring to a previous episode called the Miss
Speaker 1: and the Return. Um, Clay, what is the name of
Speaker 1: the now like super famous bear that that that has
Speaker 1: roamed into your home state there? Yeah, Bruno. It's a
Speaker 1: bear named Bruno. You're familiar with the legacy of Pedals
Speaker 1: the bear, right, yes, Yeah, in New Jersey was missing
Speaker 1: the front leg, would walk on two legs all over
Speaker 1: all over the place. Yeah, he had a real penchant
Speaker 1: free and bird seed. I'm talking about pedals. Clay is
Speaker 1: going to tell us the saga of Bruno the Bear
Speaker 1: in a minute. Here. It was like now and then
Speaker 1: a bear really makes the news, and right now Bruno
Speaker 1: is in the spotlight. But Pedals the bear had some
Speaker 1: sort of deformity um where it would walk around a
Speaker 1: fair bit on its behind legs. Yeah, you know, we
Speaker 1: had a to put a pause on pedals for a minute.
Speaker 1: When we were floating a river up in Alaska this
Speaker 1: year looking for moose. We had a sow grizzly who
Speaker 1: was irritated with us, stand up on her back feet
Speaker 1: and just swinging her pause wildly and agitation, but a
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. Have you ever seen that? I never have? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like shadow boxing, like like shadow like swiping her paws,
Speaker 1: like just all worked up and stood there for a
Speaker 1: remarkably long time. M hmm. And then later kind of
Speaker 1: around the next bend, kind of like half charged of raft,
Speaker 1: all worked up so pebbles and petals would get around
Speaker 1: on his back feet and he got real famous around
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Um, and it was very popular with like
Speaker 1: New Jersey cat ladies and whatnot. So then some dude
Speaker 1: New Jersey had a bear hunting season and some dude
Speaker 1: knowingly or unknowingly, I don't know what, shoots petals and
Speaker 1: New Jersey has this kind of awful practice, had this
Speaker 1: maybe Yeah, the governor New Jersey, if you if you
Speaker 1: live there, like, don't vote for that dude ever. Again.
Speaker 1: The Governor New Jersey sort of ran on an anti
Speaker 1: bear hunting platform, like a plank in his platform was
Speaker 1: to be anti bear hunting. Yeah, just a joke of
Speaker 1: a position, and you know, contradicting his own state phishing
Speaker 1: game agency. So he Uh, they had this unsavory practice
Speaker 1: which is like where you had to go to these
Speaker 1: check stations when you're bear hunting, and they would allow
Speaker 1: like like open to the public, so people could go
Speaker 1: down and like get riled up about. So if a
Speaker 1: hunter goes out legally kills a bear and is trying
Speaker 1: to you know, follow the letter of the law and
Speaker 1: bring the bear into a check station, you gotta go
Speaker 1: in there and deal with hecklers. You know. It would
Speaker 1: be like if if planned parenthood, Like you could come
Speaker 1: into the lobby if you didn't like what they had
Speaker 1: going on in there and standing a lot, Like how
Speaker 1: would that go over with people just asking for trouble?
Speaker 1: So yeah, Pedals everybody had a ship fit. There was
Speaker 1: even a newspaper that ran an obituary on Pedals and um,
Speaker 1: I read that he was assassinated. Wow, you know there's
Speaker 1: there's some new stuff with that. Steve. You probably you
Speaker 1: may have seen it. We we ran an article in
Speaker 1: it about it. But he's so it's the guy's name
Speaker 1: is Phil Murphy, and he is who's the guy named
Speaker 1: Phil Murphy? Phil Murphy? Sorry, yeah, Governor of New Jersey's
Speaker 1: name is Phil Murphy, and he has vowed that in
Speaker 1: one there will be no bear season in New Jersey
Speaker 1: and on state land. Right, that's right, But you can
Speaker 1: still hunt on private land, which quite a bit of
Speaker 1: bear hunting in New Jersey does take place on private lands.
Speaker 1: Hasn't totally shut it down, but you know, obviously all
Speaker 1: the game officials are trying to find ways to manage
Speaker 1: this large population of bears, which is it's a super
Speaker 1: dense population of bears and people. So I mean, it
Speaker 1: just you know, I mean we're preaching to the choir
Speaker 1: talking about it here, but I mean it just makes
Speaker 1: common sense. It just makes rational sense from every single
Speaker 1: perspective that that hunters would manage that bear population. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a sticky situation. Does new do you
Speaker 1: guys know someone could even look real quick, does New
Speaker 1: Jersey have the have have they gotten the right to
Speaker 1: hunting fish? Uh? Constitutional amendment? I don't know that one.
Speaker 1: We'll find that out in a second, So start telling
Speaker 1: us about Bruno the Bear, who's now like the latest
Speaker 1: Internet Darling. Yeah, so it kind of here here's the timeline, Steve,
Speaker 1: and here here is what we believe has happened. Some
Speaker 1: of some of this is like very documentable, some of
Speaker 1: it is speculation. But so Bruno the bear they believe
Speaker 1: came out of northern Wisconsin. And I've talked to multiple
Speaker 1: people about this that are in the know. I've talked
Speaker 1: to the Arkansas bar biologist, Missouri bar biologist, and another
Speaker 1: guy named Darryl Radajack and who's a biologist who's kind
Speaker 1: of covered the whole story of Bruno the Bear. But basically,
Speaker 1: in as I understanding, northern Wisconsin would be where most
Speaker 1: of the bared density, you know, high bared density areas
Speaker 1: are Southern Wisconsin would be like farm ground in in
Speaker 1: southern Wisconsin. They started noticing this bear traveling through urban
Speaker 1: areas and agricultural areas, and it was enough of of
Speaker 1: oddity that people in southern Wisconsin started saying, Hey, there's
Speaker 1: a bear in an odd place. Okay, that bear gained
Speaker 1: some recognition on he's wearing a collar. The bear to
Speaker 1: this day has no tracking collar. The bear he does
Speaker 1: not Okay, the bear. Let me just give you the
Speaker 1: general overview and then we can talk about the details.
Speaker 1: The bear traveled from what they believe northern Wisconsin into
Speaker 1: southern Wisconsin, into Iowa, crossed, swam the Mississippi River into
Speaker 1: Illinois state. In Illinois for some time, swam the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River again. All this is very I mean, people videoed
Speaker 1: him doing this. Came back into Iowa, and then in
Speaker 1: early July ended up in Missouri. Traveled, traveled south in Missouri,
Speaker 1: basically got himself cornered into a very populated area north
Speaker 1: of St. Louis, where the bear would had no way
Speaker 1: out other than the across major interstate highways. The Missouri
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation sends their bear team in. They capture
Speaker 1: the bear, sedate the bear, and take the bear to
Speaker 1: southern Missouri where they have a a population of bears
Speaker 1: and good bear habitat. So they, you know, the Missouri
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation, they handled this bear just like they
Speaker 1: would have any other, you know, nuisance bears. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to take the perspective of the listener here, as a
Speaker 1: listener to this story, what is it without a distinguishing markings.
Speaker 1: I just assumed it had a collar on, because how
Speaker 1: in the hell else would they know? Like, what is
Speaker 1: it doing that? People are like, Oh, there he is,
Speaker 1: that's him. Okay. I asked the exact same question to
Speaker 1: Darryl Raderjack and he said that the bear has an
Speaker 1: uncanny desire to walk down roads, to walk through crop fields,
Speaker 1: and basically to stay extremely visible and to be undeterred
Speaker 1: by humans. Man, I'm serious. There are videos with forty
Speaker 1: fifty people standing relatively close to this bear, like following it,
Speaker 1: and it's a four to five year old male. They think,
Speaker 1: so it's I mean, it's a good sized male. It's
Speaker 1: not a young male, which is odd because usually a
Speaker 1: dispersing male would be a young one. That's what's so
Speaker 1: odd about this is this is an adult male. The
Speaker 1: only time it's been marked was when the Missouri guys
Speaker 1: got it. They put in they put ear tags in
Speaker 1: it that are distinguishable. Okay, Can I can I add?
Speaker 1: Can I add another thing in here too? That, um
Speaker 1: the has to do with this, the Wisconsin component of this.
Speaker 1: Real quick. We've had Dr Carl Malcolm on the show
Speaker 1: many times when Carl is a bear researcher. Came early
Speaker 1: in his career, he was a bear researcher and did
Speaker 1: a lot of work on looking at these bears that
Speaker 1: were coming out of northern Wisconsin um into southern Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and how successful they were. He had this thing about
Speaker 1: this animal he named the Wisconsin supersow that put off,
Speaker 1: put off and raised to one pounds two litters of
Speaker 1: five cubs mhm. In such a mild climate in southern
Speaker 1: Wisconsin that when she went to hibernate, she would just
Speaker 1: lay down under a tree mhm. And if you look
Speaker 1: at bear, I think it's helping with this story. If
Speaker 1: you look at like bear populations and clay, you know
Speaker 1: this way better me you can speak to this for
Speaker 1: people that it's like it's like bear black bear populations
Speaker 1: in the country aren't aren't like intuitive and it's patchy.
Speaker 1: You know. If you look at like moose, right, you
Speaker 1: look and be like, Okay, there's a bunch of moose
Speaker 1: across the north or whatever. Right with bears, there's like
Speaker 1: they're here and they're there, there's holes in between, and
Speaker 1: it might not make immediate sense to someone right like
Speaker 1: how could you have why do you have bears in
Speaker 1: Arkansas Missouri? But then north there could be holes in
Speaker 1: their distribution to the northeast, south, and west right, So
Speaker 1: if you don't mind speaking to that a little bit. So,
Speaker 1: the the natural range of the black bear in North
Speaker 1: America was would have been from the Atlantic Ocean to
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean, from the boreal forest all the way
Speaker 1: down into Mexico with a small, a sizeable hole in
Speaker 1: the Great Plains. Okay, but all these populations would have
Speaker 1: been connected, you know, pre European settlement. And so now
Speaker 1: just with urban urbanization, fragmentation of wilderness just that has
Speaker 1: happened with civilization. We now just have these pockets of
Speaker 1: really quality bear habitat and it's it's relatively big. I mean,
Speaker 1: there there's surprisingly for such a large carnivore. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of black bears, and black bears are thriving. But
Speaker 1: what it does create is what they'd call in the
Speaker 1: biology world Alipatrick populations, meaning like isolated populations like for instance,
Speaker 1: like the Arkansas, Oklahoma, Southern Missouri bear population they would
Speaker 1: have said was an Alpatrick population. That population is not
Speaker 1: breeding with bears from East Tennessee, that that population is
Speaker 1: not breeding with bears from northern Wisconsin. But That's what's
Speaker 1: so crazy about this is that now we're seeing like
Speaker 1: a connection between these really vastly separated populations of bears.
Speaker 1: And so this bear ends up in Arkansas, I mean
Speaker 1: to to fit to kind of give the whole macro view.
Speaker 1: The bear started in northern Wisconsin and is today in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And the question how many just linear. I think it's
Speaker 1: around a thousand miles. And so here here's the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing, Steve, is that there's with talking to all
Speaker 1: these biologists. I just asked him, like, what do you
Speaker 1: why do you think this bear did this? And there
Speaker 1: was some interesting responses like a bear disperses for two reasons,
Speaker 1: to find new territory because he's being pushed out of
Speaker 1: his territory, or to find mate. To find a mate,
Speaker 1: or to find a food source. And essentially, Darryl said,
Speaker 1: if this bear was looking for a mate, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had to go all the way to Arkansas. He
Speaker 1: could have stopped in southern Missouri. Like he passed through
Speaker 1: lots of like pretty good bear areas, so he clearly
Speaker 1: wasn't looking for mate. He wasn't looking for food because
Speaker 1: he passed through all kinds of great food sources, and
Speaker 1: he's an older male, so he wasn't dispersing just to
Speaker 1: find new territory, or he would have just found new
Speaker 1: territory in southern Wisconsin. The only thing that makes any
Speaker 1: sense from a biological perspective is what they call the
Speaker 1: homing instinct on these bears, which they relocate these bears
Speaker 1: all the time when they get in nuisance trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: so they'll they'll bearrel be getting in trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: digging into somebody's trash can. They'll capture that bear. They'll
Speaker 1: drive it thirty forty miles away, turn it loose, and
Speaker 1: the next day the barrel be there eating out of
Speaker 1: that trash can. Again. There's so many incredible stories up
Speaker 1: to you know, guys taking bears a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles away and that bear ended up back. This bear
Speaker 1: acted like he was coming home. That's that's the only
Speaker 1: like biological driver. The way he was just headed due south.
Speaker 1: There was nothing I'm looking at it now like if
Speaker 1: you remove any zigzagging around, he covered between seven and
Speaker 1: eight hundred miles as the crow flies. Yeah, yeah, hey.
Speaker 1: In in that whole time, Steve, he never got into
Speaker 1: any nuisance trouble, that that that thing walked on roads.
Speaker 1: It chose populated areas rather than like walking in like
Speaker 1: river drainages. So Tomyron means the Arkansas Bear Coordinator. He
Speaker 1: told me that to his knowledge, the bear never got
Speaker 1: a single nuisance call, Like, it didn't go on people's porches.
Speaker 1: It ate natural food. It kept its nose out of
Speaker 1: the out of the you know, out of the bad stuff.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Okay, now here's here's the coolest part. So
Speaker 1: if the bear was coming home, why did he like,
Speaker 1: how did he get up there? And there's a theory.
Speaker 1: And you're gonna like this theory, Steve, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy. There is a theory that this bear got
Speaker 1: trapped in a grain barge on the Mississippi River in
Speaker 1: Arkansas and he was transported up the Mississippi River, got
Speaker 1: out into Wisconsin and has been on a journey back home.
Speaker 1: I love that's well, you know what, there's a story
Speaker 1: you guys grew up reading about Paul Revere, right yeah,
Speaker 1: one by land too, by sea. You know the British
Speaker 1: are coming. Yeah. Later historians really started, uh poke some
Speaker 1: holes into the story of Paul Revere and I don't
Speaker 1: know the details of it, but it seems like there's
Speaker 1: this this idea that it was a little more a
Speaker 1: little more fiction than fact, right, or like an embellished legend,
Speaker 1: and some politicians I can't remember who it was, said
Speaker 1: I love Paul Revere, whether he wrote or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that I like that theory true or not, I'm
Speaker 1: sticking with that ship. That's that's what I'm buying. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm buying. Story. Hey this uh so here, here's
Speaker 1: the the social odd thing about this is that this
Speaker 1: is the first time that something like this has been
Speaker 1: documented on social media. There's a Facebook page with two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty thousand followers that's called keep Bruno Safe.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's the name of Yeah, I Keep
Speaker 1: Bruno Safe. And so Mayron means Arkansas Bear Coordinator Large
Speaker 1: carnivore coordinator received the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission when
Speaker 1: they found that bear was here, received an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of pressure to collar that bear so that he would
Speaker 1: then be protected by law in Arkansas because you cannot
Speaker 1: shoot a collared bear in Arkansas the world. But back
Speaker 1: back up hold on a secondary Bruno is coming from
Speaker 1: a state that has bear seasons. Yes, his journey began
Speaker 1: in a bear season state, right, Yeah, but then he
Speaker 1: spent some time in a couple of states with no
Speaker 1: bear season and got famous. Correct, that's right, people start
Speaker 1: falling in love with him. And then now in his
Speaker 1: southern journey, he has now re entered a bear hunting state,
Speaker 1: that's right. And now people are like, I don't care
Speaker 1: about all the bears that live where he used to live,
Speaker 1: and I didn't care about him when he lived there,
Speaker 1: and I don't care about the bears that live in
Speaker 1: Arkansas normally anyway, I don't want anyone to hurt that
Speaker 1: bear because I know about that one. That's right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so go on, Well, I was proud of the Game
Speaker 1: and Fishes response here is Myron. Myron said that bear
Speaker 1: is no different than any other bear that we have
Speaker 1: in this state, and we're not going to call her him.
Speaker 1: I mean, they just they just said we're not going
Speaker 1: to call her that bear because they don't call her
Speaker 1: male bears. The only reason they call her bears and
Speaker 1: expend resources to do salve studies, den studies and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and so the bear right now, they think they know
Speaker 1: where it's at supposedly a hunter took a photo of
Speaker 1: this bear in a den cavity tree and it is
Speaker 1: just outside of one of the bear zones um in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: But but it's a deer hunter. Yeah, deer hunters. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not it's not even in a bear zone
Speaker 1: right now where the bears out. It is not in
Speaker 1: a ari zone as I understand it. But hey, you'll
Speaker 1: like this, Steve. So all this happened in the summer,
Speaker 1: and then the bear came into Arkansas and September, okay,
Speaker 1: the Arkansas bear season opens in September. My mother, my
Speaker 1: sweet mother, calls me on the phone and says, Clay,
Speaker 1: don't kill Bruno. My mom's like my pr manager, and
Speaker 1: she's like, whatever you do, don't kill Bruno. And I said, okay, mom,
Speaker 1: got it. I won't do it because she doesn't want
Speaker 1: you to take the heat or she doesn't want oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. She she she could foresee you know, me
Speaker 1: killing this famous bear. Which there is a thing though, man,
Speaker 1: where there are dudes out there, like like for there
Speaker 1: are dudes out there who would be like I want
Speaker 1: that bear, And there are dudes out there which would
Speaker 1: imagine most people I hang out with will be like,
Speaker 1: I want anything to do with that bear. That seems
Speaker 1: like trouble. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, here's what happened to
Speaker 1: is that, so they were posting all over social media,
Speaker 1: like these daily updates on this bear, like you could
Speaker 1: have tracked, you could have known where this bear was
Speaker 1: any given day of the year. Some day, like when
Speaker 1: the bear came into Arkansas, somebody got online, a hunter
Speaker 1: and made a comment and said, wow, I've got two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand guides telling me exactly where a bear is,
Speaker 1: you see. And so after that the thing shut down
Speaker 1: on the daily updates exactly where. That's that. That's what
Speaker 1: I heard. That's what that's what. That's what one of
Speaker 1: the biologists told me. I mean, like they kind of
Speaker 1: went quiet. They were like, oh wow, we're giving out
Speaker 1: too much information. There is a there is a bird
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna name. I'm not gonna name the species.
Speaker 1: There is a non native There is a very small
Speaker 1: population of a non native bird that lives in one
Speaker 1: state in America. Um and they live in one specific
Speaker 1: mountain range in one state in America. And you're allowed
Speaker 1: to hunt for this bird non native. It is exceedingly
Speaker 1: difficult to get one. They live in very inhospitable, very
Speaker 1: high elevation, cliffy terrain, and they're hard to find. And
Speaker 1: we took an interest in seen about going and checking
Speaker 1: this whole situation out. And I realized that when birders
Speaker 1: see the bird, they they log it's where they saw it.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that that was not that great
Speaker 1: of an idea to do that over the line. In
Speaker 1: a similar situation, something we've covered in the past is
Speaker 1: in the state of Montana, the state has gotten I
Speaker 1: can't remember in the in what timeline twenty four requests
Speaker 1: for radio collar data off game animals, and they have
Speaker 1: a little choice about to comply what's coming from who hunters?
Speaker 1: You can just get that information. Apparently they don't. It
Speaker 1: has through through whatever legal structure they work under. It's
Speaker 1: public information because it's a state project. So if the
Speaker 1: state puts a collar on a elk, a bull elk,
Speaker 1: apparently someone can come and say, I would like to
Speaker 1: see the collar data off that elk, and they don't
Speaker 1: have I think they don't have a way in which
Speaker 1: they can say screw you. M hm. That's surprising. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was in Fairbanks one time during moose season, and
Speaker 1: I was talking to a biologist and she was telling
Speaker 1: me she's got collars on a handful of bulls that
Speaker 1: live right around the edges of Fairbanks and she could
Speaker 1: have any minute tell you where those bulls are standing.
Speaker 1: M hm, and doesn't want to do that. And maybe
Speaker 1: they have different rules up there. But it was an
Speaker 1: interesting conundrum. You gotta be pretty like, you gotta be
Speaker 1: pretty pathetic if that's your hunt plan. Hey, this was
Speaker 1: this was public knowledge, so I'm not like divulging a secret.
Speaker 1: I saw it on social media. But our buddy Mike Chamberlain,
Speaker 1: the Turkey dock, he uh you know, he's radio collar
Speaker 1: and all these uh gobblers and places I think in Alabama.
Speaker 1: He at one time gave information to um. Well he
Speaker 1: tells the story on this podcast. Okay, okay, Well there's
Speaker 1: no okay, got it, No need for me to like,
Speaker 1: they couldn't kill it even when they had the information.
Speaker 1: They were studying how he was I can't remember the
Speaker 1: name of that episode, U Mike, guess Mike Chamberlain. They
Speaker 1: were studying how turkeys respond to various stimuli and how
Speaker 1: turkeys respond to hunting pressure. They had his bird no
Speaker 1: one could kill, and he would tell people where it is,
Speaker 1: just to watch what it would do. And then but
Speaker 1: here's they had this one bird no one could get
Speaker 1: and some dude gets in a fight with his wife
Speaker 1: and storms off, gets in his car and drives down.
Speaker 1: And the second he enters the um, the second he
Speaker 1: enters like the game management area, wildlife management area of
Speaker 1: some sort, pull is over like at the entrance gate,
Speaker 1: walks over a hill, sits down against a tree, does
Speaker 1: a hand clock, and kills the turkey. The name of
Speaker 1: that episode was Gobble your ass off. If anyone wants
Speaker 1: to listen to it, Gobble your ass off. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he sent all these stone cold killers after this turkey.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get him. And then some guy gets in
Speaker 1: a fight with his wife and storms off and a
Speaker 1: huff and gets it. I remember you asked, Mike if
Speaker 1: you knew what the fight was about between the husband
Speaker 1: and wife. So, so where does it stand right now
Speaker 1: with Bruno. He's alive, he's alive, he's he's denning in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and uh, he's he's all okay. So that we had hoped,
Speaker 1: I'd hope that they had pulled a hair sample off
Speaker 1: the spar. If they had a hair sample, they could
Speaker 1: tell from d NA where the spare came from. And
Speaker 1: they didn't do it, and I'm it was unclear. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't protocol to pull a hair sample off a
Speaker 1: nuisance spare. And so they don't want to do anything
Speaker 1: out of the They don't want to do anything special. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so, but that would have told us because
Speaker 1: we have all this DNA data here in Arkansas. They
Speaker 1: got it in Wisconsin. But here's the kind of my
Speaker 1: last thought on this, Steve, is that you know, all
Speaker 1: the biologists said, like, this is really unusual, but bears
Speaker 1: are notorious, and large carnivores are notorious, notorious for these
Speaker 1: wild like travels. I mean, there's there's stories of mountain
Speaker 1: lions that started in the Dakota is getting hit by
Speaker 1: a car in Connecticut. Uh, there have been there've been
Speaker 1: gray wolves in northern Missouri. There's there was a linx
Speaker 1: that was seen or killed in Missouri. Like these these
Speaker 1: animals do these big wild migrations. And and the question
Speaker 1: I asked all the biologists was do you think this
Speaker 1: is more normal than we think? And because you know
Speaker 1: how many bears you know, there's eight hundred thousands of
Speaker 1: million bears in North America right now, probably you know,
Speaker 1: probably less than five hundred or radio collared that we
Speaker 1: can actually track, and we never would attract this except
Speaker 1: for social media. If this bear had just been a
Speaker 1: little bit different, we would know nothing about this bear.
Speaker 1: There just be a bear in northern Arkansas that it
Speaker 1: just we just thought was an Arkansas bear, you know,
Speaker 1: like this was just such an the bear. The reason
Speaker 1: the bear we know this is because of how visible
Speaker 1: he was. But maybe this happens more often than not
Speaker 1: and we don't know it. I'd put my money on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think biologically, and in doing quite a bit of
Speaker 1: just looking at research projects and stuff, I think there's
Speaker 1: biology favors the odd bear that does something crazy, because
Speaker 1: you have these populations that pretty much all do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but there's always these outliers. And I think
Speaker 1: over like long long periods of time, sometimes that outlier
Speaker 1: is the one that survives because of maybe some catastrophe
Speaker 1: in the home range. Do you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So like, inside the mechanism of bear populations, there's the
Speaker 1: crazy uncle, wild hair, you know, bear that just leaves
Speaker 1: and does something crazy. Maybe he's not biologically successful, but
Speaker 1: maybe he is, and he is what passes on jeans
Speaker 1: to the next generation when all those back home got
Speaker 1: killed in some catastrophe, you know. So anyway, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a broad view of bar biology. There seems
Speaker 1: to be a reward for doing crazy stuff. Sometimes not
Speaker 1: all the time. I think about that often. Um. An
Speaker 1: interesting example is how we love the fact that and
Speaker 1: celebrate the fact that sam and have fidelity to their
Speaker 1: natal spawning stream. Right, it's kind of amazing that, like
Speaker 1: a salmon could be born in some little stream and
Speaker 1: go out as a little fish to the length of
Speaker 1: your finger length to your pinky spent a few years
Speaker 1: out on the ocean traveling around, probably leave us international
Speaker 1: waters right and come back twenty pounds and go up
Speaker 1: and lay an egg right right where that sun bitches
Speaker 1: was born. But some don't, Some like screw up and
Speaker 1: go to the wrong stream and think about the ramifications
Speaker 1: of that like you always have. If everybody was spot on,
Speaker 1: you would never be able to as climates change and
Speaker 1: habitat changes, and forest fires burn and phill rivers full
Speaker 1: of soot, right, you'd never have the possibility of like
Speaker 1: expanding your range, but here you always have these freak
Speaker 1: outliers probing new spots to see, right, and that's got
Speaker 1: to be how things shift around. Another example, I think
Speaker 1: about the way the Polynesians, seafaring Polynesians were able to
Speaker 1: colonize these insane places, Like to find the Hawaiian Islands,
Speaker 1: people had to have just gone off and died and
Speaker 1: gone off and died. But for whatever reason, people would
Speaker 1: like make a boat and head off towards ship that
Speaker 1: you had no concrete idea, maybe from birds or cloud
Speaker 1: formations or whatever. Maybe you had a suspicion there his land,
Speaker 1: but all of a sudden, bam, like you just found Hawaii. Mhmm.
Speaker 1: Your family is loving so yeah, that ability to strike
Speaker 1: off is um, it's probably richly rewarded, yeah, or it's
Speaker 1: quickly cut off or you or you're just like one
Speaker 1: of the ones that get screwed. How many Polynesians didn't
Speaker 1: make it to Hawaii? I would you know? That's one
Speaker 1: of the questions I would most like to know is
Speaker 1: just probably just the awful heartbreaking stories of people that
Speaker 1: just didn't find land. Man. Mm hmm. Yeah, all right, Mark,
Speaker 1: We think about that whole bear story, Mark, I love it,
Speaker 1: and it's actually I've been following a somewhat similar bear
Speaker 1: story over there in Wyoming and the Teatimes. You know
Speaker 1: about Bear three, that whole thing that's that's a saw
Speaker 1: with four cubs that's been there for twenty four years,
Speaker 1: photographed all the time, and just recently she's been leaving
Speaker 1: the park and going into the suburbs around Jackson, and
Speaker 1: so there's all sorts of news around that worrying that
Speaker 1: she's going to get into trouble and this famous bear
Speaker 1: is gonna have issues. So yeah, she's just struggling with age. Maybe.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a weird thing. From everything I've
Speaker 1: seen and read like she's healthy, she's been happily in
Speaker 1: the park, and then just recently she's she's got into
Speaker 1: some human food sources for the first time. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. Mm hmm, Mark, update, everybody give give people
Speaker 1: a quick crash course in the Back forty project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Back forty is the complete opposite of a
Speaker 1: thousand mile roaming bear, and that instead of large stretches
Speaker 1: of land, we're talking about one tiny postage stamp piece
Speaker 1: of ground in Michigan. The Back forty is a the
Speaker 1: little piece of property that we picked up about a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago, and the idea was to
Speaker 1: try to find a representative piece of private land that
Speaker 1: has been farmed and worked over the years and to
Speaker 1: see if we could take that and transform it into
Speaker 1: a wildlife paradise. Can we bring this thing back to
Speaker 1: life for all sorts of creditors and out of it
Speaker 1: not farm the guts it had been Oh yeah, historically
Speaker 1: it had been yes. So can we take something like
Speaker 1: that that kind of been burned to the ground and
Speaker 1: turn into a wildlife paradise for not just deer which
Speaker 1: sometimes folks like me or tempted to focus on just
Speaker 1: the big bucks. But could we do something that's that's
Speaker 1: that's good for dear good for turkeys and and everything
Speaker 1: else though too, birds and bees and squirrels and and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff and still have the good hunting.
Speaker 1: So that was the the question we set off to
Speaker 1: to try to at least get the beginnings of an
Speaker 1: answer in two years. So yeah, we started last last
Speaker 1: summer and we're wrapping it up this winter. So that's
Speaker 1: that's what we've been doing in the back forty acres. Yes,
Speaker 1: I can get a lot of comments about that. Why
Speaker 1: didn't y'all name at the back because it just sounds
Speaker 1: like like something sexual or something man. But like the
Speaker 1: back forty, it just it feels landish. It feels landish,
Speaker 1: like the back ford is that kind of ubiquitous term
Speaker 1: that people used for for like, yeah, that's my piece,
Speaker 1: you got twenty four bonus acres man. Yeah, yeah, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, shot it out on the
Speaker 1: back forty there whatever. Yeah, So this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be kind of that stand in for everyone's a little
Speaker 1: back forty. People can follow like the we we chronicle.
Speaker 1: We chronicle the back forty story through a series ye
Speaker 1: available on YouTube called Back and Mark does a phenomenal
Speaker 1: job of of bringing viewers along, bringing viewers along on
Speaker 1: the journey of trying to do this. It's a really
Speaker 1: compelling story about like land management, because I mean people
Speaker 1: that like to hunting fish and you know, it's everybody's
Speaker 1: dream that you're gonna buy this little chunk of land
Speaker 1: and have your own you know, this little paradise. Like
Speaker 1: I think about it all the time. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: it's like what goes into that? What are the heartbreaks
Speaker 1: and work that goes into that, and you know, and
Speaker 1: eventually we're gonna hand uh hand off the keys of
Speaker 1: the gate. This isn't something that you know here at
Speaker 1: meat Eat here, We're not gonna like keep it, We're
Speaker 1: gonna give it away. But um, when Mark first started out,
Speaker 1: when I came out there, the first summer, Mark was
Speaker 1: like kind of depressed because you thought like like how
Speaker 1: daunting it was going to be because you couldn't find
Speaker 1: like you couldn't find you like, mature bucks on it.
Speaker 1: But then you got like a sweet buck the first year,
Speaker 1: and in this year it's like even better. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, how much do you think is a freak? Like, like,
Speaker 1: how many so here's the place? How many big bucks
Speaker 1: did you have? Like big like big like mature, Dear,
Speaker 1: how many mature here do you see running around there? Now,
Speaker 1: we've had pictures of relatively consistent pictures of probably eight
Speaker 1: or nine different bucks that are you know, three four
Speaker 1: or older than that? Up from zero we had like
Speaker 1: there was one that was there a lot last year?
Speaker 1: Is that the one shot? The one I shot? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What do you think the age was that, dear? You
Speaker 1: shot Mark? That deer I shot last year was definitely
Speaker 1: four or older. He was fully mature. Yeah, he's yeah,
Speaker 1: crazy looking old buck. Yeah. Uh. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: a freak. Is it a freak that it worked, or
Speaker 1: do you think something happened that. Do you think something
Speaker 1: happened that made it that all of a sudden these
Speaker 1: deers start showing up? You know, I think it's a
Speaker 1: combination of factors. I think. I I'm calm that the
Speaker 1: changes we have made have absolutely helped, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: They've helped. But I don't want to claim that it's
Speaker 1: on me, right, because there could have been these random
Speaker 1: things going on. We only have a two year sample
Speaker 1: size to look at, so it's just not it's not
Speaker 1: enough to draw really really hard conclusions. But you know,
Speaker 1: last year could have been an outlier potentially, right, maybe
Speaker 1: for some reason that I can't put a finger on.
Speaker 1: Last year's just really bad, But the previous five years
Speaker 1: before that maybe had been pretty good, and we just
Speaker 1: happened to start on the worst year or the flip side.
Speaker 1: Maybe last year is normal and this year our stuff helped,
Speaker 1: but then there was some randomness outside of our control
Speaker 1: that helped. You know, it's some combination of that. I
Speaker 1: still believe though, that the things we have done have
Speaker 1: made noticeable positive differences. Um you can't deny that. Just
Speaker 1: the way that we're seeing these deer use the property
Speaker 1: and and all sorts of wildlife use the property. Um,
Speaker 1: so that has been really encouraging. I probably couldn't have
Speaker 1: written it any better if I had control the world
Speaker 1: and I could say, all right, this is how it's
Speaker 1: going to pan out. I probably would have told it
Speaker 1: would be great if year one was pretty tough and
Speaker 1: then we see this wonderful transformation in year two it
Speaker 1: looks dramatically different and deer popping out all over the
Speaker 1: place and we kill a bunch. That's how I would
Speaker 1: have written it, and maybe we got a little lucky
Speaker 1: it turned out kind of close to that. Like, explain
Speaker 1: to people what kind of what are the main things
Speaker 1: that you did? Yeah, so, like here's a chunk of land,
Speaker 1: you want to fix it up? Yeah, walk people through
Speaker 1: like you know, the sort of X, Y and Z
Speaker 1: of how to sort of rehabilitate a chunk of ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of ways to go about something
Speaker 1: like this, but we had the somewhat unique circumstances of
Speaker 1: of just having a couple of years to try to
Speaker 1: do something, So we did have a shorter time frame
Speaker 1: in which we were looking at, how can we identify
Speaker 1: kind of quick turnaround possible projects that can make a
Speaker 1: noticeable difference quickly, um knowing though that they're still right
Speaker 1: the long term gain that that could and should and
Speaker 1: hopefully will be worked on by whomever takes it on next. Um.
Speaker 1: So that said, the way I would look at this,
Speaker 1: and the way we did look at this is try
Speaker 1: to identify, like, what are the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: And on any piece of ground, whether it's public land
Speaker 1: somewhere or your own piece that you're buying, you can
Speaker 1: look and see, like, what are the basic things that
Speaker 1: wildlife need to thrive here? And you know, for for
Speaker 1: most species dear especially right, they need high quality food.
Speaker 1: They need high quality cover so they feel secure and
Speaker 1: they can bed and and live safely. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: you know they need water. And if you look at
Speaker 1: any piece of property and look at how your piece
Speaker 1: fits into the larger picture, you can start to identify, Look,
Speaker 1: what's the missing piece here, what's the where's the water
Speaker 1: seeping out of the bucket and then try to plug
Speaker 1: that whole. That's a great place to start. So in
Speaker 1: the case of the back forty, you know, we had
Speaker 1: essentially the property has a big Uh what am I
Speaker 1: trying to say here? There's two very different habitat types
Speaker 1: in the property. There's these old fields that are old
Speaker 1: farm fields that have now kind of been left for
Speaker 1: two years to grow into whatever was there. So you
Speaker 1: have these old open fields and then you have this
Speaker 1: big swamp and some timber in the middle. And what
Speaker 1: we quickly identified was that deer and critters love that swamp.
Speaker 1: There's tons of security cover. Um, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: places they feel safe. There's natural browsing there. But these
Speaker 1: old fields, which are fifty the farm, left a lot
Speaker 1: to be desired. So fifty of our farm was hardly
Speaker 1: being used by deer, hardly being used by turkeys except
Speaker 1: for you know a little bit of starting around first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, that kind of deal. Uh. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot going on for birds and and all
Speaker 1: these other things because it was mostly just an invasive
Speaker 1: monoculture of something called mayor's tail. See a thirty two
Speaker 1: acres of like a bean pole. Like if you were
Speaker 1: to look at a soybean field after the soybeans dried down.
Speaker 1: Anyone you know that lives in farm country, I think
Speaker 1: you can follow me here. Imagine a bean field that's
Speaker 1: dried down with no leaves and no beans on it,
Speaker 1: just as bean stalks. That's kind of what all these
Speaker 1: fields looked like. There was no reason that birds or
Speaker 1: bugs who want to hang out in there. Deer didn't
Speaker 1: feel safe in there, um, squirrels didn't want to be
Speaker 1: in there. So a lot of what we tried to
Speaker 1: do was transform those old fields. Uh. We did that
Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways, Steve. We did that
Speaker 1: by one trying to improve the cover out there and
Speaker 1: the diversity out there. So I didn't want this great, big,
Speaker 1: dry down bean field of of no food, no cover.
Speaker 1: So we we did a few things. We planted switch grass,
Speaker 1: which is a warm season grass. It provides a lot
Speaker 1: of cover for deer, great polting habitat for turkeys, great
Speaker 1: for all sorts of different game birds. Um, a grassy
Speaker 1: cover provides a year round visible, high cover. Animals are
Speaker 1: gonna feel safe out there. Now. We planted a blend
Speaker 1: of different pollinators, so wild flowers, certain grasses, and forbes
Speaker 1: that our bees are gonna like that, our butterflies are
Speaker 1: gonna like We planted them some milkweed out there, and
Speaker 1: they're great stuff for for butterflies and all these different
Speaker 1: bugs and small birds help pollinate everything else. That's important
Speaker 1: for everything, all the plant life. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: help out there. Uh. Something else we did was plant
Speaker 1: strips of sorghum, which is essentially a tall grass, really
Speaker 1: tall grass that looks kind of like corn. But it
Speaker 1: was just a way too quickly. This this goes back
Speaker 1: to the quick turnaround in our case. I needed to
Speaker 1: quickly find a way to take these big, wide open
Speaker 1: ten acre fields and make them feel much smaller, more compartmentalized. Again,
Speaker 1: most critters don't like to walk out into why don't
Speaker 1: you know, wide open spaces. They'd much rather be feeling
Speaker 1: tight to cover, tight to edge deer and turkeys and
Speaker 1: most of these animals really like to be near edges
Speaker 1: where they can go from a place where they can
Speaker 1: feed to quickly feeling like they're safe again. We didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of that to start, so by planting
Speaker 1: these big strips and half circles of this thick cover,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you had that We planted trees
Speaker 1: is another thing we did, doug Old Doug Durren came
Speaker 1: out to help me out and we put fifty some
Speaker 1: trees in the ground this summer. Um, that's more of
Speaker 1: a long term play. It's gonna be a while till
Speaker 1: those are, you know, as as big and as substantial
Speaker 1: as they could be, of course, but right there were
Speaker 1: again adding these different pockets of structure. Um. So really
Speaker 1: we're just trying to take this big, wide open sameness
Speaker 1: in turn into in a bunch of secure differentness. That's
Speaker 1: what animals want. And so that was a lot of
Speaker 1: what we did with the fields. Um. And you could
Speaker 1: right away see this fall, how much more comfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: in the case a deer season, we're focusing on deer.
Speaker 1: How much more comfortable these deer were coming out and
Speaker 1: moving and feeding in these pockets where they where they
Speaker 1: never would have last year. Um. So that was step one, UM,
Speaker 1: going to keep rolling through them. Yeah. Hey, can I
Speaker 1: say my favorite part of the back forty so far,
Speaker 1: just real quick, because when Doug dur and you were
Speaker 1: planting trees and the new guy came to help you,
Speaker 1: Doug during tells the guy to turn his hat around forward. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, that was a good scene and it
Speaker 1: really um he did it a very surprisingly forceful yet
Speaker 1: loving way. And then the next scribes Doug well the
Speaker 1: very the very next scene the dude has his hat
Speaker 1: on backwards again, told him he couldn't work with his
Speaker 1: hat on backwards, and he fixed it. But then later
Speaker 1: there he used with his hat backwards hard? Do you
Speaker 1: believe I know this is true, so I don't really
Speaker 1: care what you say, But do you believe that dogs
Speaker 1: urine really is especially it's called buck Man juice, that
Speaker 1: it really is especially attractive to dear that there's something
Speaker 1: about dogs urine? You know? I used to I actually
Speaker 1: I'm going to contradict you here, Steve, because I used
Speaker 1: to believe that, and then I had him out last
Speaker 1: October and we had him split some around force and
Speaker 1: it did not help for ship. So really, yeah, because
Speaker 1: he's too far from home, that could be it. Maybe
Speaker 1: the Michigan deers aren't trained up on it like Wisconsin deer.
Speaker 1: Probably food source, different food source was he was eating
Speaker 1: different stuff and everything. So did he leave you the
Speaker 1: bottle of buck Man juice? No? I should ask for
Speaker 1: some you've seen the evidence, all right, the trail camp evidence.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I and you know, I
Speaker 1: can't real if we talked about it here somewhere before.
Speaker 1: But studies have shown that human urine is just as
Speaker 1: effective as an attracting in scrapes as actual deer urine.
Speaker 1: That's proven. We've had a lot of guys right in
Speaker 1: that deer coming inspect their chew spit piles. When they're
Speaker 1: spitting chew off the tree stand. That stresses me out
Speaker 1: that they come in and they like that. Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 1: One of our one of our cameraman does a little
Speaker 1: chewing and I kind of gave him the talking to
Speaker 1: and said, hey, man, I don't think we should be
Speaker 1: chewing in the tree stands spitting this all over the place.
Speaker 1: So if he had, if he's seen this research you
Speaker 1: found her or whatever these stories where he might have
Speaker 1: been able to prove me wrong, it was okay. You
Speaker 1: know the dear biologists, uh well general biologist but does
Speaker 1: does a lot of deer work. Jim Heffelfinger, he used
Speaker 1: to chew Levi Garrett and named his kids Levin Garrett.
Speaker 1: Dear like I have it on good authority that dear
Speaker 1: love Levi Garrett. All right, so continue on. The trees
Speaker 1: came from Doug During. He brought some pines. He brought
Speaker 1: some pines, and yes, that was cool. There's a little
Speaker 1: bit of the dug During legacy on the back forty,
Speaker 1: which you know is a nice is a nice little
Speaker 1: bit of of history to put in the place. There's
Speaker 1: so there's so many little memories and stories now attached
Speaker 1: to this piece of ground that it's nice to have
Speaker 1: Dug add his to that. So, yeah, we we put
Speaker 1: some white pines in. We put some cedars, We put
Speaker 1: some spruce again, different kinds of you know, coniferous trees
Speaker 1: that are going to provide structure and cover out there, right,
Speaker 1: deer gonna eventually bet around, These turkeys are gonna hang
Speaker 1: out around, their birds are gonna nest in them. And
Speaker 1: in the way the trees and the way we looked
Speaker 1: at it was that by playing these pockets the trees
Speaker 1: out in the wide open, you're gonna have kind of
Speaker 1: the effect like you might see in a lake where
Speaker 1: you drop a Christmas tree in the middle of a
Speaker 1: lake or sunk tree and all of a sudden fish
Speaker 1: congregate around it. Large mouth bass love that structure or
Speaker 1: cover inside of a water source. That's the same deal
Speaker 1: with deer. Another what do you guys call croppets clay man, crappy?
Speaker 1: You guys had some stupid word for it. No, man,
Speaker 1: that's when I yeah, I heard that about that. Go on.
Speaker 1: So anyways, Christmas tree out in the lake. Yes, we
Speaker 1: we've planted these pockets of Christmas trees or evergreen trees
Speaker 1: all around these old fields to again give animals a
Speaker 1: reason to come out into these fields, travel around and
Speaker 1: and you know, if you could imagine if you ever
Speaker 1: seen you ever been an urban flying across the country
Speaker 1: and they have the TV screen in the back of
Speaker 1: the um chair in front of you, and you can
Speaker 1: hit that and it will show a map of all
Speaker 1: the different flight paths from the various cities. That's the
Speaker 1: effect we wanted to create on a property like this.
Speaker 1: So instead of having just you know, Detroit, Texas and Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I would rather have you know, eighteen different
Speaker 1: air ports on our property that these deer want to
Speaker 1: travel in between and across from. Super interesting. Man, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting way of looking at it. You make a
Speaker 1: little ship that he needs to go look at exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna see that every year, as these pockets
Speaker 1: mature and the fields mature, you're gonna see that happen
Speaker 1: more and more often. Already this year we've we've seen
Speaker 1: deer hitting visiting those trees and and rubbing on them,
Speaker 1: scrape underneath them, so they're already starting to use it
Speaker 1: in that way. Once those trees fell out, we're gonna
Speaker 1: start to see does bedding in these pockets and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, bucks are need to check these
Speaker 1: pockets for doughs that may be ready to breed. So
Speaker 1: in a few years, it's it's going to be that
Speaker 1: airport effect for sure. This year we just started to
Speaker 1: see a little of it. I like that, I like that,
Speaker 1: look do you cover that? And uh, you cover that?
Speaker 1: And back forty Yeah, we we talked about it. I
Speaker 1: don't think I used that airport analogy in the actual video,
Speaker 1: but I don't necessarily need that exactly analogy. But it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's like when you already go away for
Speaker 1: a week and you come home, you kind of make
Speaker 1: the rounds to see, like who did annoying stuff to
Speaker 1: your stuff while you were gone? Like before I walk
Speaker 1: if it's summertime. Before I even go near my house,
Speaker 1: I go into my garden right and you look and
Speaker 1: you go look, and then eventually, like an hour later,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing if they put the pans back where I
Speaker 1: like the pans, and that my my my tongs are
Speaker 1: in the top drawer next to the stove, you know,
Speaker 1: like I just check everything. I got my little circuit.
Speaker 1: I love that idea with like habitat that a buck
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna go see what's going on with
Speaker 1: the ladies. He's just got a lot of little spots.
Speaker 1: He's got them check out just one little brush patch
Speaker 1: and then he's off on the neighbor's property exactly. Hey, Mark,
Speaker 1: and I can I ask you a question, just an observation.
Speaker 1: So the aerial video, like the drone shots of the
Speaker 1: of the back forty, I was struck by how it's
Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be any real big blocks of
Speaker 1: timber that the sixty four acres was connected to. Did
Speaker 1: I miss some of that or or is that common?
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of like being from the kind
Speaker 1: of whitetail habitat I'm used to, like Central Kansas, seems
Speaker 1: like it would be void of deer, but you know
Speaker 1: they're bedding in grass and there's hardly any trees there,
Speaker 1: so maybe that effect happening on me. But it seems
Speaker 1: like there's not any big timber close to that property,
Speaker 1: so I guess it's all relative when you say big um.
Speaker 1: There are some substantial blocks of timber that our property
Speaker 1: connects into north and south of us Um. So basically
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of a little bit of a watershed,
Speaker 1: and there's that swamp that runs through the middle of
Speaker 1: our property and then farm fields on the east and west,
Speaker 1: and that same pattern follows as you go north or
Speaker 1: south to the neighbors. But they still have those big
Speaker 1: chunks of timber in the middle that kind of coincide
Speaker 1: with that wet with those wet spots, and you see
Speaker 1: that a lot down here in egg Land where if
Speaker 1: it's good dry, relatively flat land, it's going to be farmed.
Speaker 1: But the plot the spots you do still have timber
Speaker 1: and good cover. That's because it couldn't farm it, and
Speaker 1: and so there's a there's a pretty good amount of
Speaker 1: that around here. So that's not a limiting factor though,
Speaker 1: because I mean a lot of with a small property.
Speaker 1: You know, you're always trying to evaluate the properties around
Speaker 1: it because those properties are like for sure going to
Speaker 1: affect your property. So on the back forty you're not
Speaker 1: you feel pretty good about the surrounding habitat. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's relative to a lot of places around here,
Speaker 1: it's really good. We have a lot more cover than
Speaker 1: most people do, um a lot more timber than most
Speaker 1: other places around here do. And that was a big
Speaker 1: part of why I picked this spot. I was really
Speaker 1: careful to think about exactly what you describe the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: because when you have a small piece you you don't
Speaker 1: control everything. You don't don't influence everything. These animals are
Speaker 1: all over the place, so you really want to pick
Speaker 1: a spot within a high quality general area because you're
Speaker 1: gonna be sharing. You know, those wildlife are gonna be
Speaker 1: passing through all your places. So it's great to be
Speaker 1: in the middle of really good stuff. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's what we have. We have a good neighborhood, high quality,
Speaker 1: relatively high quality habitat around us, and we're just able
Speaker 1: to kind of plug a gap in it and make
Speaker 1: it extra good in this in this part of it.
Speaker 1: So talk about the buck you found this year. You um,
Speaker 1: the way you hunt deer where are you hunt them?
Speaker 1: Which is kind of like a little bit different than
Speaker 1: wilderness type hunting is you often are very specific in
Speaker 1: particular where you're not hunting like deer, you're hunting a
Speaker 1: deer yep. And that's usually out of necessity now because
Speaker 1: well sessy, because you got you gotta you'll have a
Speaker 1: bunch of deer round, but you got one on your mind,
Speaker 1: and you tailor your activities for that one. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but usually that's because I'm hunting in this case one
Speaker 1: small property. In the other places that hunt in Michigan,
Speaker 1: they're also pretty small properties, and I usually only have
Speaker 1: like one mature buck. So he ends up being the
Speaker 1: one deer I really want to take because he's the
Speaker 1: only one that meets that age criteria. That for me
Speaker 1: is what I want with you. So you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have like you're not you don't have ten to
Speaker 1: choose from. Yeah, So it was a little different on
Speaker 1: the back forty this year and that we had a
Speaker 1: bunch of relatively mature deer. So we had, like I said,
Speaker 1: eight or nine different bucks that are probably three and
Speaker 1: a half or older and your name. You always like
Speaker 1: to name them all. We have a buck we named
Speaker 1: here at my house called old Limpy. Olymp We got
Speaker 1: and uh, old Limpy last year had a bad front
Speaker 1: leg and oh, Olympi this year has a bad back leg.
Speaker 1: But no, no, my kids, it's Olympian. It's just Olympi.
Speaker 1: The limp moved, the limp moved, but it's him. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've got an old one eye. We got a one
Speaker 1: eyed buck out there. Um, he's a buck that was
Speaker 1: around last year too. He's the only one that for
Speaker 1: sure I can identify from last year to this year.
Speaker 1: So that was cool to see a hold over. Um
Speaker 1: there was a little droppy, just a little he's got
Speaker 1: a little drop time And when I first saw him,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, he's got a little drop he time.
Speaker 1: And so that just nat his name stuck. Um there
Speaker 1: was Usually these names are just kind of just labying,
Speaker 1: a labeling, a characteristic. So there's the sticker eight. There's
Speaker 1: a tight eight point. It has some stickers off of
Speaker 1: his base on one side. Um, there's a heavy eight,
Speaker 1: just a really heavy solid eight point. Sometimes you're very clever,
Speaker 1: right like last year. Last year there was a buck
Speaker 1: called the wide eight and guess what that buck looked like. Man,
Speaker 1: it's it's I used to I used to do the
Speaker 1: whole naming thing. It used to be a thing like
Speaker 1: I think when I when I was getting into hunting
Speaker 1: to this degree, I saw these other people doing it
Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, that's like, that's the cool
Speaker 1: thing to do. And I started doing it from that perspective,
Speaker 1: and that kind of faded for me, and now it's
Speaker 1: simply just it's a practical thing to do. Because I
Speaker 1: see these deer over and over and over, and I
Speaker 1: have to talk about these deer over and over and over.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult. It would be very difficult for me
Speaker 1: to be on a podcast and say I saw that
Speaker 1: one eight pointer that's on the six acre property has
Speaker 1: got a patch on his neck. Man, G four, that's
Speaker 1: not quite this tall. So some keep it pretty simple. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's the stick or eate the good Uh
Speaker 1: oh god, I need to ask you why you can't
Speaker 1: get that one tron buck. But don't don't bring that up.
Speaker 1: What other names? Uh? Yes, I'm trying to think. What
Speaker 1: haven't I covered yet? There was a heavy eight, there
Speaker 1: was the sticker, ay there was droppy, there was all
Speaker 1: one eye, there was there's a funky side of buck
Speaker 1: that Tony Peterson, one of our mediator contributors, he was
Speaker 1: out there with me the summer and we're looking at
Speaker 1: trail camera pictures and there was a buck that has
Speaker 1: one really nice four point side and then the other
Speaker 1: side is that really funky, strange couple of forks and
Speaker 1: daggers coming off. So if you look at him from
Speaker 1: one side, he's real straight and normal. But if you
Speaker 1: were to get to know him a little bit more,
Speaker 1: you see he's very strange and a little bit unique.
Speaker 1: And so Tony thought that was it would be fitting
Speaker 1: to call him Spencer, after our mutual friend Spencer. So
Speaker 1: so there's Spencer, um, and I'm to thin who I'm
Speaker 1: forgetting here? Those are Those are the bucks I can
Speaker 1: remember off the top of my head. And when you
Speaker 1: but when you're hunting and you know, you know, you
Speaker 1: had a crew with you, so you're filming the hunt
Speaker 1: when you're hunting, and you can see the hunt on
Speaker 1: the back because it's like a cool, successful hunt. But
Speaker 1: were you tailoring it? Were you like trying to generalize it,
Speaker 1: or are you tailoring your activities for one of these
Speaker 1: or for all of these m HM. So in some
Speaker 1: places it would be for one of these. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was kind of for any one of these. We
Speaker 1: had to see which one of these deer or which
Speaker 1: which of these deer would spend the most time during
Speaker 1: hunting season, during the period we would actually hunting there.
Speaker 1: So as you know, coming into the season, I saw
Speaker 1: all these deer were there. I was looking at pictures
Speaker 1: of all these different deer using the property, and we
Speaker 1: can only hunt certain windows, right because that's when we're
Speaker 1: gonna be there hunting it and filming and everything like that.
Speaker 1: So it was a little bit of a waiting game
Speaker 1: and saying, Okay, these bucks are there right now, which
Speaker 1: of these bucks will be around here when we can
Speaker 1: start hunting them, and what can I learn about that?
Speaker 1: And so as the season started progressing, you would see
Speaker 1: there was you know, this buck is spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time in this corner, and these two bucks are
Speaker 1: hanging out in this bottom section, and so you start
Speaker 1: to have a little bit of a pattern related to
Speaker 1: one or two of these bucks. But once we started hunting,
Speaker 1: you had to kind of given the fact is so small,
Speaker 1: you simply don't have a lot of options. There's a
Speaker 1: few good spots that are probably gonna be where it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, it's not like you're like driving off
Speaker 1: to this end of the place. It's just like you
Speaker 1: can walk it off. Mark, how many truck cameras do
Speaker 1: you have up on that six acres? You know, I
Speaker 1: think we had ten. It's like a convenience store. It's
Speaker 1: it seems to me like on a property that small,
Speaker 1: it would be hard to I mean, to answer or
Speaker 1: to add to the question Steve's asking. It's like on
Speaker 1: that sixty acres. So there wasn't like a section that
Speaker 1: you were like, Okay, that buck is always there, that
Speaker 1: buck is always there. It was there you were hunting
Speaker 1: travel areas that any one of those bucks could come through.
Speaker 1: Now at any given time, it might have been a
Speaker 1: trend for one of those bucks to be showing up there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly right. And so you know what happened
Speaker 1: is that eventually, um, as we started hunting, I noticed
Speaker 1: that that droptime buck was our most frequent visitor to
Speaker 1: the southern half of the farm. That's where he was
Speaker 1: spending a lot more time based on pictures and sightings
Speaker 1: of any deer that we saw. I saw him the most,
Speaker 1: and he was spending a lot of time down there,
Speaker 1: so he became the deer I thought was most likely
Speaker 1: that we'd have a chance at um. And I saw
Speaker 1: him the first time we hunted the farm all year,
Speaker 1: I saw him come out down there. And then the
Speaker 1: first night of my rut hunt out there in early November,
Speaker 1: I saw him and almost got a shot. Had him
Speaker 1: come in chasing a dough and in those fields, one
Speaker 1: of our little food plots there, and he came running
Speaker 1: around and several times stopped at about fifty five yards.
Speaker 1: I just didn't want I wasnt gonna take that kind
Speaker 1: of shot. And uh so after that, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: this buck, the draftime buck, is hanging out in and
Speaker 1: around this betting area. We call it the honey hole.
Speaker 1: He's in here a lot. And if I spend enough
Speaker 1: time around this betting area and make sure that the
Speaker 1: wind's right so I'm not spooking dear. If I if
Speaker 1: I'm in this area with the right winds for enough
Speaker 1: days during the rut, He's gonna come through and and
Speaker 1: I'll be in the game at least so to oversimplify things.
Speaker 1: That was was my strategy when I actually started hunting,
Speaker 1: which was during the rut um, and you know, and
Speaker 1: eventually it kind of came together. I don't know, if
Speaker 1: we want to get into that pan out. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: two days after that encounter with him, this was in
Speaker 1: November nine, I think or eight um ninth I guess,
Speaker 1: I went and sat in that honey hole spot. So
Speaker 1: this is this patch of native prairie that we found
Speaker 1: last year. It's really unique. It's rare. There are not
Speaker 1: many spots that native prairie ecosystems still exists in southern Michigan.
Speaker 1: You recognize it right off and knew that it was
Speaker 1: gonna be like a producer. Yeah. That was what sold
Speaker 1: me on the farm. When I walked at the very
Speaker 1: first time. That was I walked it from a clockwise
Speaker 1: in a clockwise direction. So I started up in the
Speaker 1: panhandle at kind of eleven o'clock and then walked the
Speaker 1: outside edge all the way down to about eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: Eight or nine o'clock is when you get to the
Speaker 1: honey hole. And when I got there, I said, oh,
Speaker 1: this this has something special going on here with the
Speaker 1: grasses and the cedars just tremendous betting habitat for all
Speaker 1: all types of animals, but deer especially. UM. So this
Speaker 1: is actually the spot the first tree I prepped to
Speaker 1: hunt last summer ended up being the tree we killed
Speaker 1: that buck from this year. And we did a prescribed
Speaker 1: fire in there this summer to improve it in that
Speaker 1: starting summer in the spring, so we actually went in
Speaker 1: there and lit the place on fire, which is a
Speaker 1: cool thing. I'd never done that before. Um, It's amazing
Speaker 1: the power that fire has to naturally revive and restore
Speaker 1: an ecosystem. Basically, it burns all the extra detritus and
Speaker 1: and leaf cover and and dead material on top of
Speaker 1: the soil and and opens it all up for new growth,
Speaker 1: adds new nutrients to the soil. Um. Right, that that's
Speaker 1: what happens out on public lands out west when a
Speaker 1: fire comes through. It restores a lovitality to that to
Speaker 1: that area. And so that's what we try to do here.
Speaker 1: We had a special little rare prairie. Let's let's boost it,
Speaker 1: let's help it along, let's help it grow. So we
Speaker 1: remove some of these invasive autumolives and buckthorn trees in
Speaker 1: there too. So all that to say is that we
Speaker 1: we it was neat to make some change to this
Speaker 1: already pretty neat spot. See that come together hunt the
Speaker 1: first trey I ever thought we should hunt from on
Speaker 1: my last hunting trip on the back forty and have
Speaker 1: it come together where you know. That morning I got
Speaker 1: in around the edge of this and oh, an hour
Speaker 1: after daylight, spotted a buck way down the swamp beneath me,
Speaker 1: and pulled up my binos and it was that spencer
Speaker 1: buck was the funky side of deer, and you could
Speaker 1: just see he was cruising across the swamp. He wasn't
Speaker 1: with the doughe but he was. He was searching for
Speaker 1: a doll. Just you could see the way he was
Speaker 1: moving on a mission across the swamp. So that got
Speaker 1: me excited. And maybe ten minutes later I saw another
Speaker 1: flash of white down there. I pulled up my binoculars
Speaker 1: and I see a doll running across and then a
Speaker 1: big set of white times behind her and run. Soon
Speaker 1: after I could see the drop time, so I could
Speaker 1: see it was not was the drop buck that I've
Speaker 1: seen a few days before. So I'm watching watching, I
Speaker 1: see the dough squired out and maybe fifteen minutes later,
Speaker 1: here she comes again, and here comes the droptime buck again.
Speaker 1: So I was excited by that, but it was pretty
Speaker 1: far away. This is five yards away maybe, and on
Speaker 1: the neighbors, you know, off in the distance. I could there,
Speaker 1: You could just see him through the binoculars, so that
Speaker 1: I knew they were in my world, but I did
Speaker 1: not necessarily think they'd be on top of me anytime soon. Um,
Speaker 1: So fast forward forty five minutes when I saw a
Speaker 1: flashing movement right underneath me, about sixty seventy yards away,
Speaker 1: passing through the cedars. I wasn't expecting it necessarily to
Speaker 1: be one of those bucks, but I saw a nice set,
Speaker 1: a nice kind of profile view of of of antlers
Speaker 1: passing through the cedars, just like a flash. Really quick,
Speaker 1: I knew it was a buck that I wanted to
Speaker 1: get another look at at least though, So I grabbed
Speaker 1: my grunt tube, let out a couple of just deep grunts,
Speaker 1: and five seconds later, this deer comes popping back out
Speaker 1: from behind the seedar and instantly saw it was the
Speaker 1: draftime buck. And it's it's beautiful. It's so neat that
Speaker 1: we have a captured on film and I can relive
Speaker 1: that moment because just a really cool deer, and he
Speaker 1: came into the grunt, walked underneath one of these seeds,
Speaker 1: just ripped up a scrape dirt and leaves, like kicking
Speaker 1: twenty behind him. You can just see it thrown way
Speaker 1: back there. Yeah, he was fired up and made that
Speaker 1: scrape and then kind of walked across behind a big
Speaker 1: oak tree that's in there, and I couldn't get a shot,
Speaker 1: And it was there was a moment of significant tension
Speaker 1: where he was. If he continued on that route, he
Speaker 1: was going to hit where my wind was blowing. It
Speaker 1: was blowing r the edge and he was headed right
Speaker 1: for it. And so in my head, I'm thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: if he steps out from behind that oak tree, he's
Speaker 1: gonna be right. He's gonna be right in my wind,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be either I'm gonna have a quick
Speaker 1: moment to get that shot or he's gonna blow out
Speaker 1: of there. So I was mentally preparing myself for that,
Speaker 1: and then just out of pure luck, he stopped, turned
Speaker 1: around and started to go back the way he came,
Speaker 1: but angled even closer to me. So he came back,
Speaker 1: came around the oak tree and walked right to the
Speaker 1: most perfect place for a shot something like that. Perfect.
Speaker 1: I stopped him with it a little map, it's a
Speaker 1: little sound, stopped him and uh, it's a pretty good grunt.
Speaker 1: When you went, when he went? When he went? Man?
Speaker 1: Did he? Um? Did he peg you? Or did he
Speaker 1: just stop? He stopped and looked right in our direction yet?
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't I guess I don't remember
Speaker 1: if he looked up or towards us. I'd have to
Speaker 1: go look at the video again, I don't remember, but
Speaker 1: either way, whatever, along. Yeah, I was a full draw
Speaker 1: and he had an air on him seconds later, so
Speaker 1: and he ran like he ran maybe fifty sixty yards
Speaker 1: and was down. Um, So that was it was super cool,
Speaker 1: like between that wide eight which is so cool lash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great man, It was, it was. It was awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been a project that's been a ton
Speaker 1: of work and a lot of a lot of Last
Speaker 1: year felt like we were just beating her head against
Speaker 1: the wall, and I was I was surprised by how
Speaker 1: little um progress we were seeing. To see it change
Speaker 1: this year in pretty dramatic fashion. Just this really encouraging
Speaker 1: to me. And uh, and what you can do. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't like we did anything really crazy with with
Speaker 1: an insane budget. We we went. We didn't sink tons
Speaker 1: and tons and tons of money into the changes we made.
Speaker 1: We we use small equipment. We rented something for a
Speaker 1: day to plant the trees. Um, you know this is
Speaker 1: something that that I could have done, you know on
Speaker 1: my own. Maybe. Um, what I'm trying to say here
Speaker 1: is is not outside of the possibility for anyone else
Speaker 1: to do something similar. Um m hm. How how bad
Speaker 1: do you wish? Like like if you had that place,
Speaker 1: if all of a sudden we said, like, I know
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to back out onto plan, But if
Speaker 1: also it was just yours for whatever reason, would that
Speaker 1: be like a favorite hunting spotty yours? Last week while
Speaker 1: we were hunting, I thought about this a lot, and
Speaker 1: even one of the cameraman I joked that maybe we
Speaker 1: should save up some money and whenever the new owners
Speaker 1: want to get rid of it, will buy it from
Speaker 1: Because yeah, is this place pretty far from where you live. Mark,
Speaker 1: It's clote relative the close it's within. You know, I
Speaker 1: could hunt it if I wanted, um on a frequent basis.
Speaker 1: There's so much potential. Like to see the difference we
Speaker 1: were able to make in one year. I could I
Speaker 1: could sit here for two hours talking to you about
Speaker 1: all the other projects I'd like to do if we
Speaker 1: had this for ten years, and how how much, how
Speaker 1: just how awesome it could be. It's it's I think
Speaker 1: what we've proved here was that you can make progress
Speaker 1: towards a goal like we had, and I think you can.
Speaker 1: I can confidently say like we made positive steps in
Speaker 1: the right direction in two years basically a year and
Speaker 1: a half. Um. But there's a lot lots more we
Speaker 1: could tackle if we had the time. And hopefully, you know,
Speaker 1: some days somebody will yeah. Well. One of the beautiful
Speaker 1: things about the project is it you're starting to, you know,
Speaker 1: helping create a blueprint. Not that you're you know, like
Speaker 1: like we're inventing anything here. It's like a thing that
Speaker 1: people do. We're just doing a version of it. We're
Speaker 1: creating a blueprint for how to come in and and
Speaker 1: maximize wildlife habitat, like you know, restore piece of property
Speaker 1: that has been You know that that the priority for
Speaker 1: that land was different. The priority for that land wasn't
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat. The priority that land was making food for
Speaker 1: people to eat, which is like noble and been great.
Speaker 1: But what can be done when you can take a
Speaker 1: little piece of ground and bring some you know, environmental
Speaker 1: stewardship and good conservation practices and and kind of watch
Speaker 1: that impact. And if you could do that, or people
Speaker 1: can do that in a lot of places all across
Speaker 1: the country and create like this extensive patchwork of pieces
Speaker 1: of ground like that with some protections on them into
Speaker 1: the future, it's good for everybody. Yeah, yeah, that's the truth.
Speaker 1: Are you are you want to talk about what's gonna
Speaker 1: happen with that place or should we hold off? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can talk about that, but I want to give
Speaker 1: a little prelude to that in in and that this
Speaker 1: project not only open my eyes from a habitat perspective,
Speaker 1: but it also opened my eyes from the perspective of
Speaker 1: how you can use and enjoy a place like this. Um,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a tendency, especially within like the hardcore white
Speaker 1: tail hunting world. Two look at a property. If you
Speaker 1: were to have access to a property, whether you own
Speaker 1: it or have lease or it's a hunt club or whatever. UM,
Speaker 1: there's there's often a tendency to be hyper sensitive to
Speaker 1: keeping it all to yourself or keeping it all to
Speaker 1: just you know, no extra impact, no extra people, because
Speaker 1: especially if you're trying to target mature deer or big
Speaker 1: deer or whatever. Um. One of the overarching principles for
Speaker 1: being able to have deer like that around and to
Speaker 1: be able to get a shot at deer like that
Speaker 1: is to keep those deer unaware of the fact that
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of hunters trying to kill him, so
Speaker 1: keep pressure low. So for a lot of years I
Speaker 1: have obsessed over the idea of you know, nobody else
Speaker 1: out in these property if you can control it, you
Speaker 1: know nobody else out there. I'm only going to go
Speaker 1: in there a few times and everything's just right, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to mess it up because if I
Speaker 1: do that, Buck is gonna be out of here. Um.
Speaker 1: And and so that was a little bit of a
Speaker 1: h that was like a lens that I looked at
Speaker 1: habitat management in hunting through for for many of my
Speaker 1: years leading up to this. But taking on this project,
Speaker 1: we decided that, hey, this isn't going to be a
Speaker 1: place that just Mark hunts, and this isn't gonna be
Speaker 1: about just Mark trying to kill a big buck. This
Speaker 1: is also going to be about sharing it with other people.
Speaker 1: So last year we invited um Uh, we invite a
Speaker 1: researcher out. We invite Doug during a come out and hunt.
Speaker 1: We invited my dad to come out and hunt. We
Speaker 1: invited uh Cal and a new hunter last winter to
Speaker 1: come out in hunt. This year, we brought my dad
Speaker 1: back again. UH. We brought the hunt winner out last
Speaker 1: week to come and spend some time out there. We
Speaker 1: brought another new hunter out there, and what I learned
Speaker 1: was two full number one. I learned that even on
Speaker 1: a small property like this, even in a state like
Speaker 1: Michigan where there are a lot of other hunters there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on these deer, um, you can
Speaker 1: still share and have other people out there doing this
Speaker 1: these kinds of things and having a good time and
Speaker 1: still have quality hunting. We had way more people hunting
Speaker 1: this property than I ever would have thought we could
Speaker 1: have got away with and still killed some nice bucks. Um. So,
Speaker 1: from from that standpoint, that was eye opening and encouraging
Speaker 1: to me. But most importantly, I also was just reminded
Speaker 1: of how much more enjoyable hunting can be when you
Speaker 1: share it with people. A lot of my white tail
Speaker 1: hunting and a lot of other like really serious white
Speaker 1: tail hunters, you sometimes can get stuck in the solitary
Speaker 1: nature of it, and it's just like me trying to
Speaker 1: achieve my goal in my spot, in my way, and
Speaker 1: it's it's me waking up at three thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning and going out and hunting all day and I'm
Speaker 1: very mission focused or whatever you want to say. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of folks like that, and it was
Speaker 1: a great reminder to me. And getting to share this
Speaker 1: place with other people and hunt with other people and
Speaker 1: and see them enjoy this place of just and this
Speaker 1: is a simple thing and it's obvious, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: gotta get smacked over the head with it, like how
Speaker 1: great that is. It was great to be able to
Speaker 1: take a new hunter out there and see him get
Speaker 1: a shot at his first buck, and the highs and
Speaker 1: lows and the excitement it was. It was amazing to
Speaker 1: get to take my dad out there, and I got
Speaker 1: the opportunity to spend time with my dad on the
Speaker 1: property last fall and this year come back again. We
Speaker 1: changed a bunch of things to try to make it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a better situation for him, and he actually
Speaker 1: got to kill his first deer with arch equipment ever,
Speaker 1: his biggest buck ever. Um, getting to see all that,
Speaker 1: the the joy I got out of spending time in
Speaker 1: the property with my dad and with Dan and with
Speaker 1: Dane hunt winter and last year, or those of the people,
Speaker 1: that is what I will probably remember even more than
Speaker 1: those nice bucks I shot. And And so I think,
Speaker 1: if I take anything away from this personally, that is
Speaker 1: actually been my greatest lesson from the back forty. Um,
Speaker 1: you can transform a property not only in habitat and
Speaker 1: wildlife use, but also in how we as humans enjoy
Speaker 1: it and enjoy it together. And that was that. That
Speaker 1: was the moral of the story for me. That's good,
Speaker 1: super good. So tell us real quick, what's gonna happen?
Speaker 1: Les's unless you don't want to get into it. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was that was my long wind up to
Speaker 1: answering your question. Um, So, as I just described, I
Speaker 1: think that we have both I personally and we as
Speaker 1: a company obviously see the value and sharing places like
Speaker 1: this and and using it as a tool as a
Speaker 1: as a as a as a place where we can't
Speaker 1: help others experience something like that. UM. One of the
Speaker 1: things that came about this year is that I invited
Speaker 1: a new hunter, Dan j Jo, out to the property
Speaker 1: to hunt with us. And I had met him last
Speaker 1: year at a q d M a field to fork event. Steve,
Speaker 1: I know you had those guys on the podcast. I
Speaker 1: think it was last summer. We're all out here together. UM. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a mentorship program that that is is kind of
Speaker 1: been scaled across the country to help bring new hunters
Speaker 1: out there into the field, partner them with a mentor
Speaker 1: and spend a weekend teaching them how to do everything
Speaker 1: from shoot across bow to find deer and find deer
Speaker 1: sign and then actually how to gut a deer, process
Speaker 1: a deer, cook a deer, all these different things. So
Speaker 1: I met Dan at a program like that last year
Speaker 1: that I was mentoring at and I noticed in him
Speaker 1: that he, you know, I was really passionate, was excited
Speaker 1: about learning, but really struggled without a mentor. And we
Speaker 1: invited him back out this here. We had him come
Speaker 1: join us on the farm with Doug and helped plant
Speaker 1: trees and plant food plots and help to teach him
Speaker 1: along with all these different things and coming out of that.
Speaker 1: We just saw that man. This place, the Back forty,
Speaker 1: it it's a perfect place to facilitate that kind of
Speaker 1: learning experience, both in the off season and then actually
Speaker 1: in the season. He came out and hunted and and
Speaker 1: had a really awesome experience. And so we've been looking
Speaker 1: at ways to find, um, how can we scale that,
Speaker 1: How can we keep that kind of learning experience happening here.
Speaker 1: How can the back forty not just be a terrific
Speaker 1: launching pad for Dan, but could it be something like
Speaker 1: that for other people too? And what we have settled
Speaker 1: on and what we're gonna do is we are going
Speaker 1: to give away the Back forty to the organization formerly
Speaker 1: known as the Quality Deer Management Association, now it is
Speaker 1: the National Deer Association. We're gonna donate it to the
Speaker 1: National Deer Associate and so that they can continue using
Speaker 1: this place as a um as a as a learning tool,
Speaker 1: a place that they can bring folks out and show
Speaker 1: them um things like have the habitat management we've done,
Speaker 1: and show them how to set up a tree stand
Speaker 1: and how to find deer sign and how to improve
Speaker 1: native grasses and why deer like to use these pockets
Speaker 1: of evergreens and then eventually take them out there for
Speaker 1: these hunts and and have a great, high quality place
Speaker 1: to have a first deer hunt. I know from working
Speaker 1: with some friends that have that worked for the Quality
Speaker 1: Deer Management Association and set up these mentored hunts that
Speaker 1: oftentimes finding a place to bring these new hunters is
Speaker 1: your greatest challenge. A lot of times private landowners, um,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily want to open up their ground to
Speaker 1: a bunch of new hunters in the middle of October.
Speaker 1: So that has been a struggle, and we thought, hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's help as much as we can there by
Speaker 1: providing a great place to do that in a great
Speaker 1: um essentially a living museum of of of learning opportunities here.
Speaker 1: That's what the back Ford it can be, and we're
Speaker 1: what we're hoping it will be. So the NDA will
Speaker 1: be taking on the property and using it to help
Speaker 1: other folks and teach other folks and and hopefully mentor
Speaker 1: a lot of people into the future. And that's at
Speaker 1: high level, that's our plan. Okay, tell people uh to
Speaker 1: close out, tell people how to go check out, and
Speaker 1: UH engage with back forty. Yes, So the best places
Speaker 1: go to the meat either YouTube channel and watched the
Speaker 1: show there. Season one came out last fall. Season two
Speaker 1: is being released right now every Sunday, I believe, Um,
Speaker 1: I can't run with time, but every Sunday a new
Speaker 1: episode is dropping through December. Um, so check that out.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get to see all the preseason work I've
Speaker 1: been talking about. You'll get to see my Dad's hunt,
Speaker 1: You'll get to see my hunt for the Droptime Buck.
Speaker 1: You'll even get to see the hunt where we take
Speaker 1: Dan the new hunter out and Dane the sweepstakes winner. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we're we're gonna be putting the some content
Speaker 1: also documenting what's gonna happen next year, these mentorship opportunities.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna create some stuff around that as well,
Speaker 1: so you'll be able to see all that at the
Speaker 1: meat eater dot com. We'll be sharing articles and podcasts
Speaker 1: about it as well. Mark. How many episodes of the
Speaker 1: back forty and season two are there going to be?
Speaker 1: There's six regular episodes, so there's there's two up. Well,
Speaker 1: by the time this comes out, there will be more, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yees. Six six episodes of the regular series and
Speaker 1: then some bonus content to come next year. All right,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Mark, Thank you again, Clay Newcomb Newcomb,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining them, Thanks for the X and Clay that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the excellent um book report you did on
Speaker 1: Bruno the Bear. Bruno, I'm gonna be giving you fascinating
Speaker 1: Still give you a lot more assignments in the near future.
Speaker 1: You did original research. Sounds good, like like a like
Speaker 1: a like a like a hard hitting journalist. It's like
Speaker 1: watching sixty minutes watching you work. Man. You should have
Speaker 1: seen me on the phone. Man, I was giving them
Speaker 1: left and rights bam bam at those biologies back in
Speaker 1: the corner. Good stuff, man, nice a lot. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you. Everybody. Go check out back forty. It's a
Speaker 1: great story. We're super proud of it. Enjoy