Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and this week on the show, we are
Speaker 1: talking traveling to hunt white Tail's epic white Tailed road trips,
Speaker 1: and I'm joined by two wild crazy dudes from Texas,
Speaker 1: Casey Smith and Tyler Jones. No, it's not now, I
Speaker 1: do that. That was like the intro to the intro
Speaker 1: and then all right, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast,
Speaker 1: brought to you by First Life. We are off the
Speaker 1: rails already today, folks. And on the show, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by two voices you should recognize by now because they
Speaker 1: have been joining us on the Wired podcast every week
Speaker 1: this season over on rut Fresh. Welcome back, Tyler, Casey,
Speaker 1: Thanks man, I'm afraid to say anything. Yeah, you under
Speaker 1: screwed up. I'm gonna have to keep that in. Mark
Speaker 1: also used my media name, which is Casey insaid of
Speaker 1: Casey's good, it's extra work placing that, man. I hate
Speaker 1: to have to do anything extra Monda. Mark is like
Speaker 1: leader in the end man, He's not even putting any
Speaker 1: line out for the end of the rod Yip the
Speaker 1: year on namph only anyway today on the show. Uh,
Speaker 1: we are laughing a lot, yes, But I also want
Speaker 1: to talk, you know, about this crazy year you two
Speaker 1: just had, which will go into detail on but for
Speaker 1: everyone listening, not only were going to hear the story
Speaker 1: of this epic Whitetail road trip you guys have been
Speaker 1: on all fall. But you know, I know we've had
Speaker 1: Tony had a conversation with U k C last year
Speaker 1: at about traveling to deer Hunt, and I think we've
Speaker 1: talked the two of us about some of this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, but I think this year, in particular, you
Speaker 1: guys have taken it to another level. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: just the duration and the diversity and the different pressures.
Speaker 1: I think you've been put under to try to figure
Speaker 1: out dear Fast in different kinds of places, and somehow
Speaker 1: you managed to get it done. So I want to
Speaker 1: break down how you did it, um. But before we
Speaker 1: get to all of that, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is going to be out there in the world. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, I guess, but I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: like in your world's your Yeah, probably is. I'm answering
Speaker 1: all my own questions. We could just shot the podcast.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is in case why you're
Speaker 1: hunt podcast listeners don't know. You guys have officially joined
Speaker 1: the Mediator family. You were like kind of dating Mediator
Speaker 1: with Retfresh and now like you're you're in a full
Speaker 1: bear hug forever. So welcome and congratulations you guys. Thanks man.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm tired, Yeah, tired for sure, but I felt
Speaker 1: the Mediator stuff. I feel pretty good about it. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I uh discussed at length, um
Speaker 1: some of the details involved around doing something like this,
Speaker 1: and uh, it seemed like a really great option for us. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, I think media was doing some great things
Speaker 1: and been hunting space and uh, we're glad to be
Speaker 1: a part of it. Man. It's been cool to get
Speaker 1: invited on the you know that conversation. But that's fine, guys,
Speaker 1: you'll have fun without you're just reproducing so much. We
Speaker 1: come hang out. Yeah, no, it's a it's pretty exciting
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, kind of um be able to
Speaker 1: join forces, as they say, with a bunch more like
Speaker 1: minded individuals who like to do the same kind of
Speaker 1: stuff we do. And uh, it's um kind of a
Speaker 1: I don't know, a cauldron of hunting creativity over here
Speaker 1: where you know. One of Tyler and I shrinks is
Speaker 1: that we can bounce stuff off each other really well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of how we hunt um caused once. Um,
Speaker 1: but sorry for the inside jokes, guys, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: used in the promise. Um. But it's nice to be
Speaker 1: able to incorporate people like you and Clay and Tony
Speaker 1: and others into that and then kind of continue to
Speaker 1: build on that and maybe we can all be better
Speaker 1: hunters after all this, I hope. So I can use
Speaker 1: all the help I can get. I don't know you've
Speaker 1: been seeing the bucks Man. Yeah, you had a good
Speaker 1: season too, good season and good trip here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't say it, but we are all
Speaker 1: here together in person because we're hunting in Texas right
Speaker 1: now together. Yeah, um, and it has been a good
Speaker 1: start to the trip for me. But I think we're
Speaker 1: saving that story for your show. Sounds good down the road, um,
Speaker 1: So everyone will have to tune in. If you are
Speaker 1: not already tuning into the Element podcast, you should be,
Speaker 1: um after you're listening to Rough Fresh and Wired to
Speaker 1: Hunting Foundations. Of course, gotta pad my numbers. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you you know, you get your taste for the seriousness
Speaker 1: and the deep dive on Wired to Hunt. You're like, Man,
Speaker 1: I need a release of just jokes. That's what we're
Speaker 1: here for, because I'm a joke. Uh No. We we
Speaker 1: appreciate that, Mark. We do try to be tactical when
Speaker 1: when it's an option, but you know me, I always
Speaker 1: just escape into the humor. So I enjoy it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: enjoy the funny guys bring to the table. In fact,
Speaker 1: we brought humor. No, this's just nope, sorry, is this
Speaker 1: for our podcast? I'm sorry? Mark, you take off? We
Speaker 1: got there's a there's a lot of humor. We have
Speaker 1: to tell you all about it. So we gotta save
Speaker 1: the first, the first really big laugh for your show,
Speaker 1: you tell me. Yeah, I guess it has to do
Speaker 1: with Wired to Hunt, So maybe we should. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we can hear it twice too, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just this, you're in store for more of this,
Speaker 1: all right. So um, we're lining up. We're gonna pick
Speaker 1: Mark up at the airport, you know. And and we
Speaker 1: thought about getting balloons and candy and roses and having
Speaker 1: the big sign. Man, we're too subtle for that. You know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of my middle name is subtle Um. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we're brainstorming about, you know, how we could play a
Speaker 1: joke on Mark because we never joked with Mark. We're
Speaker 1: always really easy on him, don't. Yeah, he's Tinder. You know,
Speaker 1: he's like crystal glass. You know, you just can't crack it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we're like, you know, we could get some
Speaker 1: T shirts made that are inspired by the great brand
Speaker 1: that is Wired to Hunt. But instead, you know, if
Speaker 1: you happen to misspell or just um rearrange some letters
Speaker 1: and wired, it becomes weird. So we had there's some
Speaker 1: T shirts made that looked just like the Wired Hunt. Uh,
Speaker 1: and change it real quick. What did you do on that?
Speaker 1: I broke the nose a little bit and there's kind
Speaker 1: of cock eyed um. That really pretty little icon. We
Speaker 1: worked on it. Now it's all that's if you've been
Speaker 1: wanting Wired to Hunt shirt for a long time, you
Speaker 1: might might be able to message us. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of extras that have been printing. You have to sell
Speaker 1: us on the bed the weird. The weird to Hunt
Speaker 1: will go for high dollars. Where we're at this taco
Speaker 1: truck and we all get out of the truck and
Speaker 1: you guys must have taken off your jackets or something
Speaker 1: then at that point, because then I remember like just
Speaker 1: like saying hi to a couple of the guys and
Speaker 1: I turned and then I recognized, like, oh wow, he's
Speaker 1: he's wearing a weird Hunt shirt. And then the first
Speaker 1: thought in my mind was, we don't sell us anymore?
Speaker 1: How do you get that? And the next thing I
Speaker 1: thought was that doesn't say weird. It was the dude.
Speaker 1: That joke really went over as good as we could
Speaker 1: have hoped at the airport, but it was a disaster
Speaker 1: trying to get in airport, so we put our jackets
Speaker 1: on and waited for the truck moment. So we are
Speaker 1: here in Texas because we're filming a show, an episode
Speaker 1: of a new show. You guys are working on, um,
Speaker 1: and you've alluded to it, like on rout Fresh you've
Speaker 1: said a couple of times, Hey, we're filming something for Mediator. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear more about this Hunt then, UM. But
Speaker 1: why don't we give folks just a really quick idea,
Speaker 1: like an overview of this new show was what's it called?
Speaker 1: And maybe a little bit inside it's like how it
Speaker 1: came about because it was kind of cool that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: about a year ago we started talking about this in
Speaker 1: brain story, like, hey, what could this be? We would
Speaker 1: be the right way to approach it. Um, So one
Speaker 1: of you guys want to kind of give us a
Speaker 1: quick overview of how you got to this idea and
Speaker 1: and what it is that you actually went about trying
Speaker 1: to put together us here. Yeah, they so the idea
Speaker 1: comes from just a humble the humble moment that Casey
Speaker 1: and the Hunter had. I guess right, Uh, we were
Speaker 1: actually this time of year last year, we were in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: It goes back for the than that does it South Dakota.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Yeah, that's right. So I guess it's yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: it really came It became a thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: sometimes you come across like a good joke and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I'd like to keep you know, keep that going in
Speaker 1: the loop of my friends. And it doesn't. This one
Speaker 1: happened the whole season. But basically, we long story shure,
Speaker 1: we we realized that Casey's truck tended to see a
Speaker 1: lot of bucks. Whatever whoever was in there with them,
Speaker 1: you know, they were they were in the bucks a lot,
Speaker 1: and we started to realize that that was mainly because
Speaker 1: whoever's you know, hanging out with Casey is typically driving
Speaker 1: around a lot trying to see stuff. Uh. They started
Speaker 1: in South Dakota when they had COVID and him and
Speaker 1: you know, Hunter didn't like to get up early, Casey
Speaker 1: had COVID, and so they would just be driving around
Speaker 1: the early morning seeing bucks. So they started calling the
Speaker 1: buck truck. Well, you know, Oklahoma happens later in the
Speaker 1: season and and uh it solidifies with killing a buck,
Speaker 1: me and Casey killing a buck out a buck truck
Speaker 1: and anyway, Uh, yeah, we've done lots of this, but
Speaker 1: it's it's the whole the whole idea is that um,
Speaker 1: you know, we thought, well, that's kind of just that's
Speaker 1: the way a lot of dudes hunt. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you and a buddy getting your pick up and you
Speaker 1: go hunting, and and it's like, for us, the truck
Speaker 1: is a delivery method for um, for us to get
Speaker 1: places that bigger deer exists than you know, North Texas
Speaker 1: or whatever, East Texas. And then it's a place that
Speaker 1: we've slept, it's a place we've eaten, we map scout
Speaker 1: out of it, we road scout out of it. We
Speaker 1: uh look for you know, um pressure, not just deer,
Speaker 1: but like all these different things that you would do
Speaker 1: you can do out of a truck, um kind of
Speaker 1: the thing. And then it's all stuff that helps you
Speaker 1: get access as well. Here's creative stuff to it as well.
Speaker 1: It's my mobile pharmacy. Uh. If uh you know we
Speaker 1: need some duct tape or something, or some toilet paper,
Speaker 1: I know where that stuff is, you know. And then uh,
Speaker 1: funny enough, it becomes my glassing platform a lot because
Speaker 1: you can climb up on top the truck and glass
Speaker 1: from it, you know. So and then like uh pulled
Speaker 1: the buck boat around. We got some buck bikes that
Speaker 1: we hauled around. Uh and all it works. Man, you
Speaker 1: put buck in front of anything, it works really well.
Speaker 1: The alliteration with those two bees. Yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: been you know, easy to do because it's just such
Speaker 1: a natural thing that to get two dudes, we'll getting
Speaker 1: to pick up and go try to kill deer. So
Speaker 1: and it's you're kind of on the island whenever you
Speaker 1: go out of state to go hunting. So the thing
Speaker 1: that like you're anchored to is your vehicle, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's, um, it's very utilitarian. It's very natural for
Speaker 1: that to be kind of the thing that the centers around.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna take the buck truck and you're gonna
Speaker 1: travel across the country hunting like crazy. Um. And I
Speaker 1: remember early on you were talking like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll make maybe we'll add some stuff to the buck truck.
Speaker 1: We'll do some different things to make it better, you know,
Speaker 1: be the perfect rig for this kind of thing. Did
Speaker 1: you end up doing anything new with the truck or
Speaker 1: just go with the original? And you know, it was
Speaker 1: never um like a pimp my ride ever, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, because that just you take the the
Speaker 1: natural part of it out when you do that. We
Speaker 1: thought about that stuff a little bit, uh, and then
Speaker 1: we ended up you know, just kind of adding a
Speaker 1: rack when you needed a hall stuff or uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, making sure we got the right trailer here.
Speaker 1: It's sure. It really is real natural like and we
Speaker 1: didn't we're not auto mechanics. We're not and wait, so
Speaker 1: we didn't want to pull out a weld and towards
Speaker 1: to try to do something to it or put a
Speaker 1: you know, something on it just for the sake of
Speaker 1: doing it. So like whatever is on the truck or
Speaker 1: with the truck at any time, it's literally what we do.
Speaker 1: And we actually actually have had intentions to do some
Speaker 1: things that we don't do, which is also exactly how
Speaker 1: we operate, you know, like we'll be two days from
Speaker 1: having to leave them, like oh, we need to register
Speaker 1: the boat or something like. We just always like you know,
Speaker 1: wait until the last second to kind of get things.
Speaker 1: And that's not even waiting, it's just the last seconds,
Speaker 1: the only second you have, which is everybody else they
Speaker 1: got nine to five agot families and stuff. And another
Speaker 1: thing too on this is this isn't like the first
Speaker 1: season we've traveled to hunt. It's kind of what we've
Speaker 1: been doing for a long time. And so like this
Speaker 1: was just um a way to uh not even condense it,
Speaker 1: but just like structuralize what we do because in the
Speaker 1: past we always just been like having like we know
Speaker 1: what we're doing for the next week and then we
Speaker 1: figured out after that. But this year we kind of
Speaker 1: scheduled out the fall and it actually worked out really
Speaker 1: good that way. Um, it's almost like operate pretty good
Speaker 1: with deadlines. I'm also procrastinator, which um kind of actually
Speaker 1: told itself true in this series because I killed a
Speaker 1: lot of deer on like the last day of hunts.
Speaker 1: So I got killed three deer on the last day
Speaker 1: of hunts. I believed, uh four if you count one
Speaker 1: that we left early. So it's kind of wild, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, So it just it made sense to just
Speaker 1: kind of keep on having the truck the way it
Speaker 1: was because over the past I on that truck for
Speaker 1: a few years. Um, we almost told it one time,
Speaker 1: actually tired three days into heaven only for like a week,
Speaker 1: and we almost totaled it. Um, not not by our
Speaker 1: fault of our own but back to the main story,
Speaker 1: like we didn't really have to make any alterations to
Speaker 1: it to make a hunt drug because we already hunted
Speaker 1: out of it. You know. Yeah, there was there was
Speaker 1: some definite you know, challenges to producing the series though,
Speaker 1: Like I have hunted a lot the last this would
Speaker 1: be the third year that is rety similar to the
Speaker 1: amount of hunting that I've done, Like you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty uh through and through each year it's the same
Speaker 1: amount pretty much. Um, it's about as much as I
Speaker 1: can do and this year, the challenge was because we're
Speaker 1: producing this series. We it's a different model than us
Speaker 1: just making YouTube videos, which is what we've done for
Speaker 1: the last seven years or whatever. And so one of
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges was, um, like when I would shoot
Speaker 1: a deer or he would shoot a deer or whatever,
Speaker 1: like we're still stuck and we're like connected to the
Speaker 1: buck truck, you know what I mean, Whereas in the
Speaker 1: past we would leave in hop camps around and go
Speaker 1: like if you know, if you's November second and you
Speaker 1: shot a deer, you probably should be hunting somewhere else,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have time, So one of us leave, well,
Speaker 1: I mean in uh, in Kansas this year, I shot
Speaker 1: a deer ninety minutes into hunting, you know, and so
Speaker 1: November one, so I got got a I got a
Speaker 1: lot of rutt. He's ahead of me, and I had
Speaker 1: to just hang around camp for like four days until
Speaker 1: he shot one, which puts pressure on me, yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm like feeling bad that he's just hanging out, you know. Which, Uh,
Speaker 1: when you shoot a deer in the middle of the
Speaker 1: fall and you've been hunting harder, it's there's like a
Speaker 1: day of like I'm good with something around. But then
Speaker 1: like day two of like being tagged out, you got
Speaker 1: the pomo real hard. You're like, man, I go a
Speaker 1: couple of states over and all. Yeah. Yeah, I also
Speaker 1: had um what I talked about this on my podcast,
Speaker 1: but um, second day of South Dakota shot a buck too,
Speaker 1: and just hitting forward, I mean pointing the shoulder didn't
Speaker 1: get any penetration, probably didn't kill the deer, to be honest,
Speaker 1: but um, I thought it might be. Uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to hold yourself pretty too, pretty
Speaker 1: high standards if you're gonna show stuff on you on video,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and I thought it would be just
Speaker 1: best for me to just kind of eat my tag
Speaker 1: as opposed to continue hunting. I was pretty sure this
Speaker 1: deer lived. Um, I mean I barely got past the
Speaker 1: broadhead on it. But uh yeah, So I I ate
Speaker 1: my tag on the second day of like a week
Speaker 1: long hunt, and so I also sat around for like
Speaker 1: five days. They're just kind of like buck trucking, you know,
Speaker 1: so it it it. There was definitely like lots of
Speaker 1: challenges in that manner. And then also, uh, we're very
Speaker 1: like fly by the seat of our pants. With a
Speaker 1: lot of things we do and um, some of the
Speaker 1: like uh consistencies and motifs and those kind of things
Speaker 1: in the series that we wanted to do and we
Speaker 1: had talked about doing. Um, you know, kind of made
Speaker 1: things challenging at times because uh, we're you know we
Speaker 1: all A lot of times we weren't actually because we
Speaker 1: had so many people with us, we would take more
Speaker 1: in one truck. So just like making sure that we
Speaker 1: took the time to do those things and video those things. Man,
Speaker 1: it was it was a lot. It's a very big
Speaker 1: project for us. Yeah, but we're it's fun. I like
Speaker 1: that challenge outside of the hunting space to like the
Speaker 1: video producing is something I I do enjoy actually, So
Speaker 1: so how many how many states total did you hit
Speaker 1: with the buck truck? Uh? This week? Seven? Seven states?
Speaker 1: And what were those states? States? It's a good question, Mark,
Speaker 1: We'll I ask that question. Um. That's so for the
Speaker 1: audience here whenever, First of all, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: faux paw to say, hey, where'd you kill that? Right?
Speaker 1: Don't do that to us, say what's yeah, you can?
Speaker 1: You can? You can? But I was kind of being
Speaker 1: hyperbolic there. Uh, I think um yeah, it's hyper in general.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of coffee and some good lunch.
Speaker 1: But a running joke is like when somebody asked, like,
Speaker 1: hey man, what WM was that? Oh man, that's a
Speaker 1: great question. I'm really glad you asked that question you
Speaker 1: and you just leave it. You know. I think that
Speaker 1: might come from Parks and Rick if I remember right
Speaker 1: straight to jail. Yeah, Uh that was um so to
Speaker 1: stop being a smart alec, I'm sorry. Uh, Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas.
Speaker 1: That's a heck of a run. And he had all
Speaker 1: we both had in Colorado this year. For I was
Speaker 1: on a mule he hunt. He had in white tails
Speaker 1: in Colorado. Do we any other states? We just hunted
Speaker 1: Texas a lot. In between two we had a lot
Speaker 1: of public anti Texas, so that's kind of where we
Speaker 1: filled our gaps and did other things there. So let's
Speaker 1: can can we start at the beginning of the buck
Speaker 1: truck trip, the first of the trips, and like you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to go really deep into seven
Speaker 1: different states, but maybe could you give me like the
Speaker 1: cliff notes of like the major highlights or highlights from
Speaker 1: each trip, and then let's kind of talk through like
Speaker 1: a key learning opportunity or something you took away from
Speaker 1: that trip. I think that'd be a good way to
Speaker 1: go through this. And we'll see across these six seven
Speaker 1: trip won't talk about today. So across those first six,
Speaker 1: you know how maybe you guys became better hunters. What
Speaker 1: some things were that stick with you? Now? So what
Speaker 1: was the first? So Nebraska was first, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the preteenses and'll that Tyler maybe tell like kind
Speaker 1: of the fun part of it. But the neat thing
Speaker 1: about Nebraska for us was, um uh, he's hunted there
Speaker 1: for a few years and had some really great encounters
Speaker 1: and then him and I went two years ago and
Speaker 1: he killed a really nice buck there way back on
Speaker 1: some that country like packing style stuff. Um and um.
Speaker 1: We were going to so we have a couple of
Speaker 1: guys who are newer to our crew, and this is
Speaker 1: a big project. So we're like, hey, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: to Nebraska before South Dakota. Make it a big swing,
Speaker 1: you know because those states touched. So you can drive
Speaker 1: straight north and get there pretty quick and just do
Speaker 1: like a practice run. Let's film this thing like it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a Buck Truck episode, but we're gonna live
Speaker 1: and learn and laugh, love and all those uh illiterations
Speaker 1: that while women put on their walls right uh, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna you know, kind of be ready to
Speaker 1: go when we start filming Buck Truck on October one. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: we we've started filming and doing what we were doing right,
Speaker 1: and we were like, Casey c. We have these two
Speaker 1: guys that are are um new to this uh thing
Speaker 1: that we're doing right, and that would be like running
Speaker 1: being camera operators or videoing with a video camera. So
Speaker 1: they're learning a lot, right Spike Spike and Greg Greg
Speaker 1: they both started about they both started in August, I think, um,
Speaker 1: and we'd had them down or to to our place
Speaker 1: in February to do some pig hunting, and we didn't
Speaker 1: really get a whole lot of footage, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of getting used to so we go into it. Uh. It's, um,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty intense hunt, like we're hunting far. I
Speaker 1: mean even from day one. Case he's going like a
Speaker 1: mile and a half. I think I did them over
Speaker 1: a mile on the first morning too. So just you know,
Speaker 1: long long trips, uh, some of its back country. Some
Speaker 1: we end up in you know, like some hillier terrain
Speaker 1: and um, anyway, long story short, we kill two bucks
Speaker 1: on the same evening and within five minutes of one another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: within within a short period of time from each other.
Speaker 1: And also we were like eight yards straight line distance
Speaker 1: from each other. We couldn't see each other. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: were we were hunting two different trails on each side
Speaker 1: of this thing or whatever. Um I had hunted this
Speaker 1: is similar to where I killed the year before. So
Speaker 1: but I I let Ksey hunt my spot because I
Speaker 1: had seen a buck on a trail, you know, in
Speaker 1: the eight yards south of me. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: just see what was happening on that trail. Ends up,
Speaker 1: I kill like a toad that that evening. Um we
Speaker 1: getting toad like tried to jump the string and cutn't
Speaker 1: because he's so fast here. Um. And so that was like, well,
Speaker 1: I think we got to sleep at like three thirty
Speaker 1: that morning. You know, we had to pack on my
Speaker 1: and and what was also what's crazy is like if
Speaker 1: we'd had if we were just hunting by ourselves. Sometimes
Speaker 1: having a cruise like a big advantage and sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: messes up deer, and sometimes uh you can say, hey,
Speaker 1: can you bring a pack into me so I don't
Speaker 1: have to go out and then back in so save
Speaker 1: some time. We still got in bed at three thirty
Speaker 1: at night, but as pretty awesome, dude, the guys brought
Speaker 1: us pizza back when they brought the packs and in
Speaker 1: the back country drinking carbonated waters and and and eating pizza.
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, so this was early so sometimes September, right,
Speaker 1: So what was what was the setup? This is a
Speaker 1: great plain state, this is early season. How do you
Speaker 1: kill two bucks within eight yards of each other the
Speaker 1: same night? Like? What made this place so great? I
Speaker 1: call it providence? But if you want to talk about
Speaker 1: tactics here, uh, I think it's just long ways from
Speaker 1: from parking. For one. I mean we walked over a
Speaker 1: mile to get in there, and we also did up
Speaker 1: and down a couple of times. And then you've got
Speaker 1: agriculture on private and good bedding cover on public and
Speaker 1: hunting pretty tight to the bedding cover. Um. And also
Speaker 1: uh they think about the wind, Well, that place has
Speaker 1: weird wind here. It does. It's one of those places
Speaker 1: where like the terrain can there's it's it's hard for
Speaker 1: wind to be just opposite, right, but rank and from
Speaker 1: in my experience, can almost move we in a whole
Speaker 1: cardinal direction. And this place is a lot like that.
Speaker 1: So if you were to say, uh, there's an east wind,
Speaker 1: you might go back there, and it's really a south
Speaker 1: from from this one little spot. Yeah. And here's another
Speaker 1: thing that's hard about that time of years. This is
Speaker 1: like late September but still early season. Warm. We're walking
Speaker 1: in t shirts, you know, sweating pretty hard. Um, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a still evening in that situation most of
Speaker 1: the time, and your thermals are gonna drop. And this
Speaker 1: is like a thing we've seen across the US is
Speaker 1: that your thermals are dropping towards deer in most situations,
Speaker 1: towards creek bottoms, right, So like, how do you kill
Speaker 1: that deer? And it's literally it's a matter of I
Speaker 1: mean it the micro we call it like micro moves.
Speaker 1: So once you get into the area like a twenty
Speaker 1: yard or a ten yards distance from tree to tree
Speaker 1: that you could could possibly hang in, Like that's the
Speaker 1: difference in killing a deer sometimes And we just happened
Speaker 1: to not mess it up on both ends. And I
Speaker 1: do this thing where we like get out our phones
Speaker 1: and look at the map and just shoot holes in
Speaker 1: the boat as much as we can, and if it
Speaker 1: still floats, we'll hunt it. And if you can find
Speaker 1: a good hunting partner that you trust, and if you
Speaker 1: both can set your pride away and not be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's doging my idea and just realize that, hey,
Speaker 1: we're both trying to kill each other, dear, like you can.
Speaker 1: You can do some pretty good stuff. I get what
Speaker 1: you're saying. No, dear, at the end of that, it
Speaker 1: sounds real weird. It is a huge advantage you're trying
Speaker 1: to kill each other, dear, which you could turn into
Speaker 1: that if you didn't set your producie um. So this
Speaker 1: set up then food betting weird. Wind long distance away
Speaker 1: from the road and these so these bucks are transitioning
Speaker 1: away from bedding cover heading towards those that those food
Speaker 1: sources whatever that was. What was the food source. It's
Speaker 1: actually Milo, which is weird because that's like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a preferential thing. In most cases, there might
Speaker 1: have been corn up further, but what I could see
Speaker 1: was Milo, and they weren't actually transitioning straight into that
Speaker 1: they were kind of cutting the corner there, so they
Speaker 1: might have been heading up there was there's a couple
Speaker 1: of pivots in that area. Um, some stuff that's planted. Um,
Speaker 1: that's hard to tell from where they very well could
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go scout the private very well,
Speaker 1: could be water that they're heading two up there too. Um.
Speaker 1: We more reading the fact that it's there's some really
Speaker 1: good trails in the area that lead to that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the means to an end is is kind
Speaker 1: of more important than like what the thing is. It's
Speaker 1: good cover too, so you know there's deer in there
Speaker 1: and they have to go somewhere, you know. So I
Speaker 1: think that time of year you've got bugs and stuff too.
Speaker 1: They will come up high just to get away from
Speaker 1: the bugs because the wind is blowing up there. So
Speaker 1: so so general question that would apply to all of
Speaker 1: your trips, but in this case maybe be an example
Speaker 1: of this. Um, when you're approaching and beginning one of
Speaker 1: these hunts, are you always if you if you know
Speaker 1: the are you already and you know some good stuff,
Speaker 1: do you plunge right into your best stuff route the
Speaker 1: gate or do you always kind of easier way in observe,
Speaker 1: scout and work your way through the trip, Like, how
Speaker 1: do you approach this because you've got you know, four
Speaker 1: or five or six seven days per state, you're doing
Speaker 1: all these different things. What's that like timing and aggressiveness
Speaker 1: level look like as you go through one of these.
Speaker 1: So we have a term that we use for this
Speaker 1: actually because we've kind of identified that, like there is
Speaker 1: a thing where you can be spinning your wheels by
Speaker 1: being too uh conservative on a hunt like that because
Speaker 1: you kind of have a limited amount of time right
Speaker 1: you kills them. So we call it being knowledgeably aggressive
Speaker 1: where you take all the pieces that you can collect
Speaker 1: data wise, no matter what that is, driving around, glassing
Speaker 1: food sources, seeing deer movement. You know, you might see
Speaker 1: deer moving to uh water tank ten miles from public ground,
Speaker 1: but then you know water is a limited resource and
Speaker 1: they're gonna be going to that cattle water tank to
Speaker 1: to get the water. You take all that stuff, mix
Speaker 1: it with map scouting and um, you know, just your
Speaker 1: general hunting knowledge and knowledge of the way dear act,
Speaker 1: and you do the most aggressive thing that you can
Speaker 1: knowledgeably do without saying that's reckless. And that's pretty much
Speaker 1: my approach. I think a lot of people look at this.
Speaker 1: This is a question that's posed a lot of times.
Speaker 1: I think Tony Tony has answered this for me even
Speaker 1: but like I think a lot of people look at
Speaker 1: this whole question as like black and white, and it's
Speaker 1: really not at all. Um Like, there's a middle ground.
Speaker 1: It's just like politics, right, Like there's some middle ground
Speaker 1: there that we could probably all benefit from. Let's dive
Speaker 1: into that. I was actually pivoting what y'all do what
Speaker 1: you want, uh so, but you know, like there there's
Speaker 1: uh the ideas that um, you don't have to be
Speaker 1: it's not aggressive and observation sit you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you can still get into the mix without really
Speaker 1: I mean there's there are times I'll go in and
Speaker 1: sit and be like, dude, if this doesn't work, this
Speaker 1: is gonna mess the whole thing of and and you
Speaker 1: can sometimes make a play that sixty yards from there
Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it stands a chance and messing things up,
Speaker 1: but it's not a guarantee, you know. So I think
Speaker 1: that's where you gotta you gotta sitting somewhere in that
Speaker 1: middle ground, like early on especially um to where you know,
Speaker 1: if if it doesn't work, UM, then you learn something
Speaker 1: and you maybe didn't mess up everything in there. It
Speaker 1: also helps to hone your skill set in that situation
Speaker 1: to where um, that first evening that we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: I took a forty eight yard shot and UM made
Speaker 1: a good shot. And I'm not saying that every guy
Speaker 1: needs to do that, and that I would even do
Speaker 1: that like right now at this time of the year, um,
Speaker 1: because we've been traveling so much. I haven't shot my
Speaker 1: boat all summer like I was in May or may
Speaker 1: not do that, but but I got, you know, knocked
Speaker 1: around on the truck for all I know. Right, But
Speaker 1: if you know that, like, hey, I feel very comfortable
Speaker 1: on large bodied animals out to fifty yards, that extends
Speaker 1: your range and therefore your your radius can be you're
Speaker 1: not intruding on the bubble as much where you can
Speaker 1: still take a shot. And then you pair that with like, um,
Speaker 1: your calling ability. UM, I really feel good about calling
Speaker 1: in early October grunt call it especially uh. And if
Speaker 1: you kind of know how to communicate with deer on
Speaker 1: a at least a hunting type level, and you feel
Speaker 1: pretty confident that you can use that to your advantage
Speaker 1: as well, where you don't feel like you have to
Speaker 1: just bail off in the big mix to try to
Speaker 1: get a shot at one. If you think you can
Speaker 1: get him closer to you, it helps. Hunting a lot
Speaker 1: is is a good thing. Man like you. It's not
Speaker 1: even that, um, you know, like we're not sitting here
Speaker 1: trying to toot our own horn or nothing. But like,
Speaker 1: we just hunt a lot. So we see a lot
Speaker 1: of things happen and we learn from that. So that's
Speaker 1: that's why the observation said is not my favorite, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's why we podcast because, Um, I don't ever
Speaker 1: want to call myself an expert, but I have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience now and hopefully people can learn from
Speaker 1: some of the experiences I have. Maybe guys who don't
Speaker 1: get to hunt as much can still like kind of
Speaker 1: secondhand have the experience and that we shared with people. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So biggest takeaway, biggest lesson learned from that Nebraska on
Speaker 1: what was that for you you? Guess? Uh, do you have
Speaker 1: something mm hmmm, I mean I would say, don't don't
Speaker 1: ignore the thing you know that works. Um, we went
Speaker 1: in and killed two bucks in a place that we
Speaker 1: knew was a good spot, and I was trying to
Speaker 1: make something else work for about a day and a
Speaker 1: half and it almost did. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: that other spot was money. I think my takeaway is, um,
Speaker 1: the best food in the area, even if it's not
Speaker 1: a great food source, is the best food in the area.
Speaker 1: So it's all relative. Yeah, it's very relative. So he had,
Speaker 1: uh the mile of thing. I wasn't even really referring
Speaker 1: to that, but he he had really some really good
Speaker 1: encounters early in the trip on what would be known
Speaker 1: as hay Meadows, and it's just because that was the
Speaker 1: only thing there. So yeah, probably a big takeaway. South
Speaker 1: Dakota was next. And here's a question. First, so Nebraska
Speaker 1: was supposed to be like, uh, like a warm up,
Speaker 1: but then he both killed. So now is that going
Speaker 1: to be an episode? That is it's gonna be one.
Speaker 1: I have a disclaimer. Um, like we mentioned, the guys
Speaker 1: were still learning, and the footage is not rock it's
Speaker 1: not trapod footage, you know, So it's good. It's good.
Speaker 1: There's some cool moments, for sure, but like there's some
Speaker 1: there's some times when like these dudes you know, are
Speaker 1: freaking out a huge deer. You know, they're like one
Speaker 1: hand in this thing or whatever. You know. So but
Speaker 1: it's almost more fun though, where you speel the excitement
Speaker 1: from the other side of camera. I think that's what
Speaker 1: we all communicated to when we're playing buck Truck, is
Speaker 1: that that raw nature of just what it would be
Speaker 1: like two follow to hunting buddies around the country. If
Speaker 1: you watching Nebraska, just holding in the air for the
Speaker 1: next few episodes, So South Dakota, then what was the
Speaker 1: what's your headline of the South Dakota trip? Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And and as you think that through, give me a
Speaker 1: little background as far as was this the place that
Speaker 1: you already knew, did you have scouting intel from previous years,
Speaker 1: or was this a brand new spot? Uh? I ended
Speaker 1: up shooting my dear in a brand new spot, but
Speaker 1: similar area regionally, it was as uh, pretty similar to
Speaker 1: some of the some of that stuff I hunted. I
Speaker 1: guess one of the things with the buck truck is that, um,
Speaker 1: the buck truck flies around when it goes out of state.
Speaker 1: So like our like area of reach is about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half any direction. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: way we treat stuff, you know, that hour and a half.
Speaker 1: You know, outside circumference is real far. I'd like to
Speaker 1: find him a little closer, but if we have to,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll make that jaunt to do it, you know,
Speaker 1: and have done it quite a few times, and um,
Speaker 1: so should we do that a lot easier when we're
Speaker 1: tent camping. Uh So in the past, that's what that's
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that we've done to find a year.
Speaker 1: But we actually stated u um he met like a
Speaker 1: pastor up there last year who gave us a wing
Speaker 1: of his church to stay in while there. So it
Speaker 1: was actually super nice because you know, battery charging batteries
Speaker 1: for cameras and just having a decent place to you know,
Speaker 1: lay on air, mattress or whatever it was was nice.
Speaker 1: But it also kind of limits you because you just
Speaker 1: you just can't help it. But like mentally, you are
Speaker 1: pretty locked into that place. This hunt was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that Tony actually or the one that Tony joined.
Speaker 1: Was he allowed in the church? Uh, he came in,
Speaker 1: he did, but it was after dark. Um big takeaway,
Speaker 1: Tony's weird. But actually, truthfully, Tony is a lot taller
Speaker 1: than I thought he was. That's the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever met him in person. He's taller than you. I
Speaker 1: think you, Yeah, he might be like red rounder one's taller. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like six two six six three maybe. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: thought he was like my it's like a five eleven
Speaker 1: type guy. And I was like, whoa Tony is tall? So, um,
Speaker 1: that's uh. I will tell you my My biggest uh
Speaker 1: takeaway from that hunt was that from year to year
Speaker 1: places change a ton because in twenty twenty one we
Speaker 1: hunted uh similar top uh country, you know, in the
Speaker 1: same spot per se, but something some of it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we covered some of the same stuff and had to
Speaker 1: kind of readjust because it changed so much. One was lush, green,
Speaker 1: rainy while we were there, and the deer were doing
Speaker 1: completely different things than they were this year, which um
Speaker 1: uh you look on the uh USDA drought meters or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it was like extreme drought there. It was very,
Speaker 1: very very dry. So how how much time do you
Speaker 1: give a spot? This is like a situation I found myself.
Speaker 1: And so you go to a place that you know
Speaker 1: in the past, Like produced you go into a zone,
Speaker 1: you feel confidently, all right, I know what do you
Speaker 1: do here? Um? You're going for the first night maybe
Speaker 1: let's say you go in there, it's not what you're expecting.
Speaker 1: When do you decide you need to pivot and change
Speaker 1: things up? Do you go back in the next day,
Speaker 1: but I we're gonna give it another day, or I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give it one more sit or or do you
Speaker 1: say no, I know this place will produce because there's
Speaker 1: this feature that if you give it time, you know
Speaker 1: something will happen. Like how quickly do you assess the
Speaker 1: situation like this and then realize like, I gotta scrap
Speaker 1: this because it's it's gone. Is that I have a
Speaker 1: couple of different scenarios that where I think about this,
Speaker 1: but like it depends on time of year as much
Speaker 1: as anything. So um, during this hunt, Um, it's gotta
Speaker 1: happen quick. I mean it really that For me, I
Speaker 1: I will move, I will pivot quick quick. And almost
Speaker 1: any situation nearly all a year long. But in this situation,
Speaker 1: if they're they're doing the same thing daily, and so
Speaker 1: if you didn't see them the night before, they're probably
Speaker 1: not going to do that the next day more than
Speaker 1: more than likely. Also, um, there's a lot of deer
Speaker 1: in South Dakota, and um, you know you should see
Speaker 1: some deer. So in this situation, I'm very quickly pivoting,
Speaker 1: and that's that's why I ended up on new property
Speaker 1: um on the second day of the season, hunting a
Speaker 1: different place. But um, like in the rut, it's very
Speaker 1: similar there as well. Uh though I can there can
Speaker 1: be like dead days and then just crazy days in
Speaker 1: the rut, but I still don't give it a whole
Speaker 1: lot of time in the rut, So I mean it's
Speaker 1: just kind of in the same thing. Late season goes
Speaker 1: back to those early season patterns a lot of times
Speaker 1: where it's just like if they're not doing it, then
Speaker 1: they're not there pretty much. And I think, um truck
Speaker 1: camera data comes into play here too, and that's the
Speaker 1: kind of the public private type thing. And some people
Speaker 1: run cans on PUB two. But in this situation where
Speaker 1: you don't have any cameras out, so like you run
Speaker 1: into like a different approach where like maybe you know
Speaker 1: you got cameras in a place and there's a couple
Speaker 1: of fifties on camera you don't see in the first night,
Speaker 1: and you're like, ah, this is worth sticking around. Whereas
Speaker 1: we are literally dealing with what we observed. So if
Speaker 1: you don't see them. I'm bouncing quick, you know, like
Speaker 1: there's not many things that keep me in the same
Speaker 1: place too long in that situation. So what ended up
Speaker 1: being the setup that worked in South Dakota, Like what
Speaker 1: worked um I. I found a small property actually that
Speaker 1: had um It had basically it was like a peninsula
Speaker 1: UM that was surrounded by creek like water essentially, and
Speaker 1: had agg on one end, probably a half mile away.
Speaker 1: And then um I ended up So I ended up sitting.
Speaker 1: I did one of my more observation type sits. I
Speaker 1: went in. This is a good thing about saddle hunting
Speaker 1: is that you don't have like a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: on your back. But I went in with the intention
Speaker 1: of sitting on a landmark tree what we call landmark tree,
Speaker 1: which is just a big cottonwood that sticks up higher
Speaker 1: than anything else in the country. And dear ten tend
Speaker 1: to gravitate towards those things that they can see above
Speaker 1: the grassland. And I was gonna hang in that while
Speaker 1: I get in there, and I just don't feel good
Speaker 1: about it. I started, as I'm going in, I find
Speaker 1: some good trails are going up to this agg that
Speaker 1: I'm crossing, and I'm like man, there's a I'm there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of deer moving up through this stuff without
Speaker 1: even going by the landmark tree there. And so I
Speaker 1: just actually sit sit on the ground and Eric and
Speaker 1: I we're gonna watch deer and potentially be able to
Speaker 1: move across these little saddles and these draws, uh to
Speaker 1: get shots. Well, I started having I'm it's not I'm
Speaker 1: not telling tell the long story anything, but like I
Speaker 1: started having deer moving towards me. But as I'm seeing
Speaker 1: them coming off this peninsula, which is full of willows, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing them like dip down back into this creek
Speaker 1: before they come up towards me, and Uh, I start
Speaker 1: looking at the creek is super dry, Like Casey said,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know if there's water there. I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like it, but there has to be
Speaker 1: like a deep hole there. I think they're going to
Speaker 1: water and just make that assumption. And like the long
Speaker 1: story short, that's what I did. The next day. I
Speaker 1: the next morning, I sat and I betted a deer
Speaker 1: out on that peninsula and I went and sat next
Speaker 1: to or I assume there was water in there. I
Speaker 1: come in from the other directions it up next to
Speaker 1: a water hole that's just getting hammered, and he comes by.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was actually going to water. I
Speaker 1: think he was gonna go on up to to act.
Speaker 1: But um, I mean I had him. I had him
Speaker 1: in like ten yards. He was so close that my
Speaker 1: side picture I lost his shoulder in my side picture.
Speaker 1: That's why I made a bad shot because I I
Speaker 1: where I thought I was aiming was not where it
Speaker 1: was aiming. It was like fully my side picture was
Speaker 1: full of Brown's hair. Yeah, so as I was really
Speaker 1: sick though when I pulled the trigger, I was. I
Speaker 1: fully expected him just I mean, I was to watch
Speaker 1: him fall over and didn't happen. But no, tough casey.
Speaker 1: Did you end up shooting one later that idea? And yeah,
Speaker 1: so i'd pull out by struggling for like six days straight.
Speaker 1: And so it's funny that um, uh, Tyler and I
Speaker 1: have affinity for different hunts. He likes evenings. I like mornings.
Speaker 1: What what did you say that? And it's it's weird
Speaker 1: how often it works out that that holds true for
Speaker 1: when we do have good encounters. Uh, so I will
Speaker 1: um that's around like we're talking about and UM see
Speaker 1: some deer on the mornings. Tyler scouted for me some
Speaker 1: in the mornings too. Is we're really the whole trip
Speaker 1: for everybody. He buck chucked around and dropped me all
Speaker 1: places and stuff, and uh, um, you know, I had
Speaker 1: a shot at um uh, a younger deer that I
Speaker 1: was happy to take home um coming off of ag
Speaker 1: Uh and um missed. And then on the way out
Speaker 1: ended up bumping um a group of bucks out of
Speaker 1: this little ditch pretty much that led up to an
Speaker 1: egg field. And it pains me to say that I
Speaker 1: killed deer on buck betting, because I like to make
Speaker 1: fun of it that kind of lightheartedly, right, But that's
Speaker 1: truly what I did. We bumped deer at a bucks,
Speaker 1: a group of bucks, out of a thick little pocket
Speaker 1: of like cedary type stuff. And I went back in
Speaker 1: the next morning with a really good wind and just
Speaker 1: it was perfect set up, and and sure enough they
Speaker 1: filter down off the egg in. It was just the thing.
Speaker 1: Did the thing? Did you get up in a tree
Speaker 1: or you I did, Yeah that you got I got
Speaker 1: up in the tree. Did you set up that set
Speaker 1: up right after you bumped him or in the morning
Speaker 1: when you went in in the morning when I went in,
Speaker 1: because UM, I do try to make like like quick
Speaker 1: judgment of things and don't try to like mill things
Speaker 1: over too much. But at the same time, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to hunt that, um that or hang that that
Speaker 1: morning and then needed that evening or something, because I
Speaker 1: might killed here that evening. But I knew that it
Speaker 1: was a good place in the morning, so we went
Speaker 1: in really early hung that morning. I actually made a
Speaker 1: mid morning adjustment to where my platform was in the
Speaker 1: tree because um, we found scrapes um on the way in.
Speaker 1: I wanted to shoot those scrapes. And then by the
Speaker 1: time I started getting a light, I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I need to be able to shoot the other direction
Speaker 1: over here. So I actually moved my platform like three
Speaker 1: foot in the daylight. And that was the move that
Speaker 1: made the difference for me. A key thing that I've
Speaker 1: noticed and several of these stories, and I think in
Speaker 1: previous conversations and I have two thousand percent of yours,
Speaker 1: is these micro adjustments like that is such a perfect
Speaker 1: example of what you brought up earlier, Tylor, Like these
Speaker 1: micro things, whether it be with your tree stand being
Speaker 1: ten yards over or your platform being you know, two
Speaker 1: ft too high or too low or whatever, like those
Speaker 1: little tweaks. So much of white tail success comes down
Speaker 1: to predicting something or or adjusting appropriately to what you observed,
Speaker 1: to account for any new possibility, to account for any
Speaker 1: little thing, to keep tweaking, adjust, observe a just observe adjust,
Speaker 1: tweaked this thing, tweak that thing. Um, it's easy to
Speaker 1: to be lazy and so uh and I do it
Speaker 1: all the time. Like there are so many times in
Speaker 1: the sea, like would kill a couple of bucks or
Speaker 1: several bucks a year. It looks cool, but there are
Speaker 1: so many times and I'm like, I was lazy and
Speaker 1: I messed it up and I could have shot another one,
Speaker 1: you know or whatever, and you just get so mad
Speaker 1: at yourself, you know, for just being lazy. And it
Speaker 1: really is like you have to. That's a good thing
Speaker 1: about having a hunting partner, you know, like he kind
Speaker 1: of keeps you accountable to to not be lazy or
Speaker 1: hype you up or what take a day off. It
Speaker 1: comes back from like your college football experience where like
Speaker 1: you can't take plays off, and the same thing goes
Speaker 1: with deer hunting. You know. It's kind of a cliche
Speaker 1: thing to go off of. But like, you know, you
Speaker 1: take a playoff, you're getting six on you right, like,
Speaker 1: and deer hunting is the same way you you you
Speaker 1: take a day off and that might be the day
Speaker 1: that he walked under the tree, you know or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. And that probably for me at least
Speaker 1: comes from a lot of failure in the past. I
Speaker 1: think that we're all gonna make mistakes where humans were imperfect, right,
Speaker 1: So like being able to learn from those mistakes is
Speaker 1: like huge and being able to learn quick kills you dear,
Speaker 1: what what microadjustments do you see yourself making? A lot? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I mean there's it's just like constantly going on my head.
Speaker 1: Every hunt I'm on, I'm thinking, man, am I and
Speaker 1: I is it this little knob? But I should be
Speaker 1: hunting on or should I really be you know, ten
Speaker 1: feet over on that a little nob because you have
Speaker 1: a slightly better view you. I mean, so just little
Speaker 1: things like that on you know, on the hunt that
Speaker 1: we that I'm on right now. I mean, you're so
Speaker 1: I do not I'm not a gear much. That's kind
Speaker 1: to me. I've almost kind of yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: came back from that a little bit you know, he
Speaker 1: can bog you down. Some people I think so too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people will do that, um like with me for gear.
Speaker 1: With me, I'm not like the engineering mind, so I
Speaker 1: know where my strong you know things are in my
Speaker 1: weak points and a weak points, Like I don't have
Speaker 1: the brain for engineering for putting stuff together, for like numbers,
Speaker 1: so I have to uh like offload that. So like
Speaker 1: I've got a guy for like my archery stuff that
Speaker 1: I really trust and he can really dial things in
Speaker 1: and he can really know the right weight for this,
Speaker 1: the right length of this, the right everything. So like
Speaker 1: that's the spot I can't do it. But I know,
Speaker 1: like I can use my energy well and efficiently when
Speaker 1: it comes to like should my tree stampy two ft
Speaker 1: should be in this one or should be you know,
Speaker 1: should my trail camera be five yards over here, fifteen
Speaker 1: yards over there? And I'll consider that little tiny adjustment.
Speaker 1: You know, those little things are the things that I do.
Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned the trail camera thing because we've
Speaker 1: noticed with some of our friends that have been hanging
Speaker 1: some trail cameras. Because now we have them a like app,
Speaker 1: we can see, you know, we'll give some cameras to
Speaker 1: some buddies that'll hang some stuff and be like, man,
Speaker 1: if it was just a little bit angled down, camera
Speaker 1: hanging is kind of an art. It's funny because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, our longest tenured bro Eric just killed his
Speaker 1: first buck ever that's on our channel, just went out.
Speaker 1: He'd self filmed the thing. It was. It was awesome
Speaker 1: and um he set up on that place. It's a
Speaker 1: place that we've hunted for quite a few years and
Speaker 1: um like the camera those guys hung and they hung
Speaker 1: it like ten or fifteen yards off of like probably
Speaker 1: where we had originally put the things, and we're like, man,
Speaker 1: this place is kind of dead. But we were like, dude,
Speaker 1: I promise you it's gonna be good because that's a
Speaker 1: good spot. So go in there and sure enough all
Speaker 1: the deer where and he called that thing in and
Speaker 1: shot it dude, so you know it made it work.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Um So, so real quick back to
Speaker 1: South Dakota. I'll move on major takeaway from that trip
Speaker 1: um or lesson something like that though my me, my
Speaker 1: major lesson um is this, um So, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I didn't grant to stop that deer and I
Speaker 1: felt like I was too close and I was gonna
Speaker 1: he was gonna come out of a skin if I
Speaker 1: grant stopped him. So, uh, something I have noticed, Um
Speaker 1: this is uh, I don't know you know how much
Speaker 1: you want me to admit this on your podcast, But
Speaker 1: I have hunted feeders a lot in the beat, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh, you learn a lot about deer when you
Speaker 1: hunt feeders because you may spend thirty minutes with dough
Speaker 1: inside of twenty yards does with a dough. Uh, So
Speaker 1: you get to learn a lot about how they react
Speaker 1: to different things, right, And I have noticed that this
Speaker 1: down that's it that makes them look up when they're
Speaker 1: at twenty yards or whatever a lot, especially in a
Speaker 1: quiet evening. And there's something about that frequency that's the
Speaker 1: same as maybe a dough blowing or maybe a leaf
Speaker 1: being drug, a foot being drug across a leaf that's
Speaker 1: like in that frequency range. And I can, I can.
Speaker 1: I've done. I know this because I had a running
Speaker 1: nose at one point and I'm sitting there with these
Speaker 1: does at a feeder and I just am like, you know,
Speaker 1: doing that and every time they would look up. And
Speaker 1: so we talked about this. I think Casey gave me
Speaker 1: the idea. I had told him this story, the same
Speaker 1: thing I'm saying here, and uh, he gave me the
Speaker 1: idea that like, that's what maybe I should have done
Speaker 1: in that situation. Was at ten yards, just go that's
Speaker 1: the element policy now and quiet. If if it's like
Speaker 1: twenty yards or less, we're gonna do just no sniffle.
Speaker 1: But if I don't, if he if he wouldn't, if
Speaker 1: he wasn't walking, I just felt ten yards. I shot
Speaker 1: a here walking at fifteen last year and just smoked him,
Speaker 1: and so um at ten yards, I just was. I
Speaker 1: thought it was no big deal and I just didn't
Speaker 1: know where he was because the side picture was, you know,
Speaker 1: full of her. So yeah, My big takeaway was don't
Speaker 1: I said earlier, don't assume things are the same year
Speaker 1: to year. Okay, So South Dakota wraps up. You got
Speaker 1: a buck in the truck. You gotta punch tag and
Speaker 1: a tough, tough pill swallow. What was next, Ullinois? I
Speaker 1: can tell this one in about five seconds. We can
Speaker 1: make this quickly. Yeah we Uh, we struggled um to
Speaker 1: find the year we were on a prime farm like
Speaker 1: eleven acres hasn't been gun hunted since the sixties. We
Speaker 1: built a horse barn or yak barn or something on
Speaker 1: this place in the summertime to gain permission. So we
Speaker 1: just offered some help around the farm, and uh, we
Speaker 1: get permission, and long story short, there was there was
Speaker 1: some other guys that have hunted it, bow hunted it,
Speaker 1: and we kind of struggled with the whole permission thing
Speaker 1: because they were not super happy that we are in
Speaker 1: permission to and uh, I mean we hunted five days,
Speaker 1: I think, and we didn't hardly even see a deer
Speaker 1: till day five. For much all the corner was still in,
Speaker 1: all the crops were still in um and they were
Speaker 1: working on a combine, and I kind of went buy
Speaker 1: a game a cheerleading session, like, Hey, what are y'all
Speaker 1: gonna cut this? Yeah, I'll get this thing. They were
Speaker 1: like They're like, oh, we might cut tomorrow or something.
Speaker 1: He's like, Casey was like, oh, yeah, are doing a
Speaker 1: good job. Keep going in tonight if you want a
Speaker 1: man can help. They won't bother us. So but it
Speaker 1: was very tough and uh, basically the last evening, um
Speaker 1: I moved into a huge swamp and UM got caught
Speaker 1: setting up which I think. I think it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where like we're making noise setting up
Speaker 1: in the bucks like they can, there's somebody over there
Speaker 1: raking a tree, you know. And so Eric looked up.
Speaker 1: I was putting my jacket on, and Derek's like it
Speaker 1: was like standing up out of his bed at ninety yards.
Speaker 1: So I didn't get him killed. I called him into
Speaker 1: twenty but it was so thick with willows in there that, uh,
Speaker 1: we couldn't We couldn't even see him at twenty yards.
Speaker 1: I can hear him though, I can hear him. He
Speaker 1: sneezed like twenty yards and uh. And then same afternoon,
Speaker 1: Casey and yeah, so neat thing about having a career
Speaker 1: of guys, just like we got the two guys filming
Speaker 1: with us, and there's a guy who ends up being Michael,
Speaker 1: a lot who does a great job. He's like utilitarian man.
Speaker 1: He just does whatever he needed to do. And um
Speaker 1: he Uh he was supposed to be filming Isaac. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh Isaac with vector. He we were hunting with
Speaker 1: Isaac and so he was supposed to be filming him,
Speaker 1: and uh, Isaac was having some he had just had
Speaker 1: to be you know, family man, he had some stuff
Speaker 1: going on and couldn't hunt that evening. So we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to go sit in a tree, see
Speaker 1: what's going on on this part of the farm, can
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do observationship it's good to do it
Speaker 1: when you don't have a tag or a bow, like,
Speaker 1: that's the one time to do observations. So that's what
Speaker 1: Michael did, and uh, he saw Bucks. So I went
Speaker 1: over there and moved in on that spot that he
Speaker 1: had seen Bucks, kind of at Afar and um uh,
Speaker 1: we knew it was gonna be a good spot. Like
Speaker 1: this is like when we summer scouted this thing. Because
Speaker 1: we actually went up there, we knew we had the permission.
Speaker 1: It's like a lot different than other places. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: it was like this place is gonna be awesome. Let's
Speaker 1: go hang some cams. We had a couple like you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote target Bucks like Bucks that at least met
Speaker 1: our criteria, you know, and um uh, this area we
Speaker 1: had some pretty good Bucks on. Well, this area kind
Speaker 1: of was off limits for a little bit and then
Speaker 1: it kind of opened up to us. Um So we
Speaker 1: went over there and thought we're gonna have the same
Speaker 1: kind of seeing as one of those late October just
Speaker 1: kind of cool still evenings, but nothing. It's just milk
Speaker 1: toast kind of evening, you know, nothing like cold front
Speaker 1: or nothing, wind shift, nothing to like make them do anything.
Speaker 1: And then finally, like out of the swamp, Greg spots
Speaker 1: a buck behind us, just standing out on this peninsula.
Speaker 1: It's like giant buck. And this is where the dramatics start.
Speaker 1: And I try to not be a dramatics type guy.
Speaker 1: I really like it whenever things go well and you
Speaker 1: just smoke them, you know. But this deer comes out
Speaker 1: and walks to and he's like at forty five and
Speaker 1: he's at my five o'clock in a saddle which if
Speaker 1: you saddle hunt, you know, it's like the hardest spot,
Speaker 1: at least it is for me. And I'm really out
Speaker 1: of position. I'm watching this deer and then he gets
Speaker 1: to where I can't see him at all. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking at Greg, and Greg is looking at the deer
Speaker 1: and he's telling me what the deer is doing. The
Speaker 1: deer is going to go away from us. He's angling away,
Speaker 1: and so I get off the grunt call and start
Speaker 1: calling at him, and I'm giving him like these soft
Speaker 1: grunts because it's it's very quiet, and uh. He finally
Speaker 1: turns a one eight and comes back to us and
Speaker 1: gets to where he thinks you should be able to
Speaker 1: see the deer that I am, you know, the grunner,
Speaker 1: and um, I think he's at like thirty and so, uh,
Speaker 1: I like try to put my grunt in my pocket.
Speaker 1: I got my bow in my hand, getting adjusted very
Speaker 1: slowly because like we're pretty much skylined, you know, like
Speaker 1: we're really high in this tree because it drops off
Speaker 1: to where this deer is, so he's like way down
Speaker 1: from us. We're probably three ft up in the tree,
Speaker 1: and then he's like seven or eight foot below the
Speaker 1: base of the tree, so way down there. And um,
Speaker 1: I get to the point where I'm in such pain
Speaker 1: and discomfort because of the angle I'm at that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to to draw and try to shoot
Speaker 1: this deer. And about the time I decided to do that,
Speaker 1: my grunt call falls out of my pocket hits the
Speaker 1: ground right at the base of the tree. And the deer,
Speaker 1: I think he might have even seen us possibly up
Speaker 1: there in the tree, like knew that there was two
Speaker 1: big shapes of them. And when the grunt call falls,
Speaker 1: he looks down at the base of the tree, doesn't spook,
Speaker 1: doesn't panic, just looks down at the base of tree,
Speaker 1: and I'm a and he and I just draw my
Speaker 1: bow and he doesn't even pick up on it. And
Speaker 1: the rest of the story you just have to see
Speaker 1: on the video. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happens after that's cool too, but pretty awesome. So
Speaker 1: barely got her done in Illinois? Oh man, Like we
Speaker 1: were leaving the next morning early and I shot that
Speaker 1: buck that evening. Take away, Um, don't um infatuate yourself
Speaker 1: with one particular property. Uh, And by no means that
Speaker 1: do you mean any disrespect to anyone who helped us
Speaker 1: with any permission or anything in that. But we thought
Speaker 1: that that was gonna be like our chance I had
Speaker 1: booone and Crockett dear in this lifetime, and it just
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. And so like, man, maybe within that
Speaker 1: manage expectations. Yeah, I think, uh, my takeaway is don't
Speaker 1: it's similar, But don't um, don't uh think that your
Speaker 1: property is so good that you can just get away,
Speaker 1: especially in late October with fringe hunting. I mean, my
Speaker 1: best hunt was when I hopped thick into the swamp.
Speaker 1: We took hip waiters and I, you know, have a
Speaker 1: camera guy with me. We only have one pair of
Speaker 1: hip waiters and they have to be a size fourt
Speaker 1: team because if they don't fit me, then I can't
Speaker 1: use them. Right, so I fit everybody else might be
Speaker 1: a little loose. Well, So we had to cross the
Speaker 1: canal that almost went over the hip waiters and then
Speaker 1: hook my pool rope to the hip waiters, toss them
Speaker 1: up in the air and let Eric pull them across
Speaker 1: the you know, so they didn't land in the in
Speaker 1: the water. Yeah, it was a big dealble. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just point being hard access to get in
Speaker 1: there and had a good hunt. And I should have
Speaker 1: been hunting in that thick stuff the whole time, but
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, no pressure on this farm, I
Speaker 1: should be able to get away with it. That's my takeaway.
Speaker 1: Where too, next Kansas for first and November. And this
Speaker 1: is a place you knew, Yeah, I've I've hunted uh
Speaker 1: Kansas for twenty years now. Um in this particular place,
Speaker 1: um is um at lease that my dad um has
Speaker 1: had for twelve years. I think, really cool place. He
Speaker 1: he manages, Uh, they kind of manage it in a
Speaker 1: way that they really want to shoot five plus year olds. Um,
Speaker 1: and they just wanna They just mean they want. My
Speaker 1: dad wants us to just be happy and shoot deer whoever.
Speaker 1: But like his goal is to shoot you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's just a kind of a it's
Speaker 1: a it's something that he doesn't necessary, so I expect
Speaker 1: to happen. But he wants to shoot a two hundred,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And we've never seen one
Speaker 1: on the property. But anyway, Um, I had a I
Speaker 1: had a very short hunt there and then you know,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, we we kind of had to
Speaker 1: wait several days, um for k C kind of working
Speaker 1: a little bit. He doesn't a case. He is not
Speaker 1: on the lease and so um he has to kind
Speaker 1: of scratch out on public and any permission we can
Speaker 1: get that kind of thing. But yeah, I mean first
Speaker 1: first afternoon, I'm sitting there like playing solitaire, looking at
Speaker 1: my Bible apps some you know, and just like um
Speaker 1: doing a little reading, and all of a sudden, Um,
Speaker 1: Eric's like he's like not a shooter. It was like
Speaker 1: a hundred year is a nice year, you know and uh,
Speaker 1: but he knew right about it was a shooter because
Speaker 1: he's been there with me before. And um, the deer
Speaker 1: comes in works as scrape goes by me, and um,
Speaker 1: I got a big huge cottonwood on my blind on
Speaker 1: my right side here that's like blinding me from anything
Speaker 1: coming up the draw from the other direction, and that
Speaker 1: deer goes out. They're like thirties fixing and go into
Speaker 1: my blind spot in the tree trunk and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I see another deer walk out of like
Speaker 1: fifteen and it's it's a toad. I know which one
Speaker 1: it is immediately because I hunted him last year. Um,
Speaker 1: but just old deer. He's got you. It's a main
Speaker 1: frame ten with super heavy kind of tiracked with with
Speaker 1: some junk and uh, I mean easy shot, like kind
Speaker 1: of like South Dakota. Um, but yeah, I pretty much
Speaker 1: watched him fall. And what was he doing there? Like
Speaker 1: what was the set up he was? Um? He So
Speaker 1: I'm hunting a draw and um, basically the draw leads
Speaker 1: up to an egg food source like probably a mile
Speaker 1: or more away, about a mile away probably, um, which
Speaker 1: is wheat winter wheat, and this is just this is
Speaker 1: the most remote part of the of the place, that
Speaker 1: particular property. Uh, nobody ever goes there, I mean, and
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't even hunt this place most years,
Speaker 1: like the entire pretty because if there's not a five
Speaker 1: year old for me to shoot, then I'm just going
Speaker 1: to public with Casey and we're chasing. I'll shoot a
Speaker 1: one thirty every day in my life right now, you know,
Speaker 1: So I'm cool with that. Um, and we'll go chase
Speaker 1: deer doing that. But um, this year, I hadn't hadn't
Speaker 1: any cameras runn or anything, but I knew there was
Speaker 1: some good deal there last year and chased him for
Speaker 1: a little bit and yeah, he's Uh. I started looking
Speaker 1: back at footage from seen and I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: I'm very like, I'm pretty sure that this deer is
Speaker 1: a deer that I video in sixteen as a three
Speaker 1: year old, so I think that makes him nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very old, had a broken broken time already. He was
Speaker 1: just cruising, you know, just kind of not super fied.
Speaker 1: It was warm, but he was cruising for sure. Was
Speaker 1: fat and healthy, like yeah, I mean huge chest but
Speaker 1: maybe the biggest everything. So yeah, and then um pretty
Speaker 1: much became the camp cook me and Eric did for
Speaker 1: the next several days. But sneeze, that's why Casey, you
Speaker 1: were scratching out on the other stuff. I'll look information
Speaker 1: kind of bouncing around on that. And I had some
Speaker 1: okay hunts. Actually, Uh chase the deer that I had
Speaker 1: history with. UM. Who knows how old he is, but
Speaker 1: I saw him last year, big buck, giant frame. Um.
Speaker 1: He was actually a little smaller this year. I think
Speaker 1: probably related to the drought year. We also saw a
Speaker 1: lot of broken times across the country this year. I
Speaker 1: think the drought might have something to do with that.
Speaker 1: I noticed my buck when I got the antlers back
Speaker 1: because we I'm gonna shoulder madam. Um like the rack
Speaker 1: was super light, almost like it's and he had some
Speaker 1: broken times on November one. I just wonder if they
Speaker 1: don't grow as dance on drought years or something. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a thing or not. Just
Speaker 1: you know, somebody, I'll message you and let you know.
Speaker 1: So Um, I uh had a failed stock on that
Speaker 1: deer and then UM kind of had pretty tough ones
Speaker 1: after that. And it was kind of in we do
Speaker 1: this thing where like, uh, you're like day four of
Speaker 1: a hunt and you're just in despair and belly aching.
Speaker 1: That's kind of wallow on the floor sometimes. Um, you
Speaker 1: know it makes that can happen. I know, and I'm
Speaker 1: just in that mode. He doesn't do it very often.
Speaker 1: He's a super super up knows whenever I am doing that.
Speaker 1: It was Prema Donna, that for sure it was. It
Speaker 1: was bad. Well, it's just between pressure and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: limited public ground ground like you just hopeless. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you got a spot or two that work, and then
Speaker 1: the way they don't work on the wind for the
Speaker 1: next few days, you're like, I don't have word to hunt. Uh.
Speaker 1: So Uh we actually hit the phones and started, uh
Speaker 1: call him people and uh found a piece of permission.
Speaker 1: Uh that was like awesome, like mill of nowhere. A
Speaker 1: guy gives us to go ahead. We drive out to
Speaker 1: this place. It looks great. Random cold call. You had
Speaker 1: no end. I think you might actually call anybody. I
Speaker 1: don't think I did. You know, I didn't talk to
Speaker 1: anybody I called. I called a bunch of numbers, but
Speaker 1: I never got through to anybody. You got through to
Speaker 1: I think two people maybe Greg called him. Honest, I'll
Speaker 1: go I'll go to recent so i'll get on the app,
Speaker 1: I'll show you. But Tyler's call, for sure, I might
Speaker 1: have said we Tyler's call is the one that paid off.
Speaker 1: It was a guy that I hadn't talked to several
Speaker 1: years before, so I just he didn't remember me. But
Speaker 1: right off the bat, I tried like to show him
Speaker 1: I knew I had talked to him. I wrote down
Speaker 1: his dad's name in his phone name. And that's how
Speaker 1: I do it. Is like if I talked to somebody,
Speaker 1: I try to take notes right after and keep it
Speaker 1: in the contact him. So yeah, so it was kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh, yeah, I kinda remember you, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got this place out there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's any dear out there, which is always good to hear. Actually,
Speaker 1: and so we go out. It looks pretty good. We're
Speaker 1: gonna scout it. Uh really just familiar eyes of show
Speaker 1: with the place. Um. We hung a camera and then
Speaker 1: actually saw deer, a nice buck on the south boundary
Speaker 1: of the property, and the wind didn't set up to
Speaker 1: go after him. We were glassing from a long way away,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're just like, okay, tomorrow morning, that's we're
Speaker 1: gonna go over there. Um, because we had already decided
Speaker 1: because I was kind of holding Tyler back and I
Speaker 1: didn't want because he already feels his tag, you know.
Speaker 1: And I was like, Okay, I wanna put this limitation
Speaker 1: on myself. I'll be done and I can come back
Speaker 1: later in the month if I need to or whatever,
Speaker 1: and we'll keep on keeping on. Um. Well, while we're
Speaker 1: hanging this trail camera, I get the rumble from down
Speaker 1: Under while we're out there. And from then on, about
Speaker 1: three fifteen until about one thirty am, I'm I'm sick
Speaker 1: out both and like atrociously uh about as bad as
Speaker 1: I felt um, And I was like, man, why does
Speaker 1: this have to happen on November five? You know, like
Speaker 1: just it was bad, but about one thirty held it
Speaker 1: together enough to get some sleep. Woke up at five
Speaker 1: thirty the next morning and said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: only get so many Novembers in your life. I'm going hunting.
Speaker 1: And I was slow. I was for sure he was
Speaker 1: not In the next morning and I was in the
Speaker 1: I was on the couch. I think sleep, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and like I hear Casey just talking normal in the
Speaker 1: morning and there in the kitchen, and I'm like what
Speaker 1: is going on? I could not believe he was okay.
Speaker 1: I probably wasn't actually, but because I still actually I
Speaker 1: held it together enough to go hunt, and then still
Speaker 1: for the next few days kind of had some belly problems.
Speaker 1: But um, I got off that morning, went and hunted.
Speaker 1: It was almost observation sip. I got there late, which, um,
Speaker 1: I'm not the fastest in the morning. Anyways, A paired
Speaker 1: that with an extreme sickness, and I think we're inting
Speaker 1: the gate in shooting lit you know. Um so Uh.
Speaker 1: We made it down to kind of a place to
Speaker 1: observe from at about sunrise and within twenty it's heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy for us. Great morning, you know, can't miss this morning.
Speaker 1: It's the coldest day in five days. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: About twenty minutes into the hunt, I glass up a
Speaker 1: buck walking a fence line at about three fifty yards
Speaker 1: and putting binos on it, like, oh yeah, that's a shooter.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, it's pretty open between here and there.
Speaker 1: I can't make a move on. Hi, Let's see if
Speaker 1: we can get me to come over here. So I
Speaker 1: get out, rattle aandlers, and I just bang those things
Speaker 1: together as hard as I can whips his head up,
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a little bit, doesn't win. Eight
Speaker 1: and A crosses the fence and uh, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're doing this. So I bail off down the hill
Speaker 1: because this deer is gonna pick us off at like
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty yards because he's gonna be able to
Speaker 1: see us whenever he goes through this bottom and comes
Speaker 1: up on the on the ledge. Uh. So I get
Speaker 1: down behind that little rise that way. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever he feels like he can clear to see, he'll
Speaker 1: be in range. And uh. Um, we run down the hill,
Speaker 1: get set up. I have the son in our back,
Speaker 1: which is a really great thing for that situation. The
Speaker 1: wind is good, this year is pretty fired up just
Speaker 1: coming in on a string. He's probably one of the
Speaker 1: top dogs in the area. I think that's why he
Speaker 1: was just like I'm gonna go see what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on over there. Uh. And then I see
Speaker 1: antlers and I can just see giant brow. Times. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how big this deer was. Um, this deer
Speaker 1: is like super wide and tall brow times I'm freaking
Speaker 1: out of course, which I hold it together like um,
Speaker 1: like in an observed way, I look really calm, cool
Speaker 1: and collected at anytime there's a deer round. But um,
Speaker 1: inside I was like, oh my goodness, in Greg's behind me.
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's doing. He's probably we have
Speaker 1: this thing called the Greg Eys where so if you
Speaker 1: know Greg, you love Greg. But Greg is a very
Speaker 1: even killed guy. But when he sees a deer, his
Speaker 1: eyes go there so huge. I can only imagine what
Speaker 1: they were. This dear cleared the cleared the brush and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, routed that deer for like three fifty and
Speaker 1: shotty maybe watched him, watched him fall out. There ends
Speaker 1: up being the biggest buck in my life, all because
Speaker 1: Tyler Jones got me a permission on this property. So
Speaker 1: that's a pretty epic trip right there. It was takeaway,
Speaker 1: major takeaway for you guess um uh I think for me,
Speaker 1: just don't uh don't ever under underestimate the power of
Speaker 1: a remote spot. And it doesn't even have to be
Speaker 1: like middle and nowhere X State, But as much as
Speaker 1: like a you know, a couple hundred acres that nobody
Speaker 1: ever goes to for whatever reason, you know there's no
Speaker 1: good access for humans there or whatever. I think that
Speaker 1: people undervalue days that aren't prim rut dates, but at
Speaker 1: the same time you cannot replace the rut. It is
Speaker 1: just awesome, you know. And I don't want to say
Speaker 1: the first seven days in November or what because sometimes
Speaker 1: that kind of changes or whether kind of hasn't effect
Speaker 1: on things or whatever. But just rut action in general
Speaker 1: is the baddest thing there is, dude. It is so cool.
Speaker 1: Well into something you said, like, you only get so
Speaker 1: many notes. Ever, you only get so many November days
Speaker 1: or whatever. So you're sick, You're like, oh man, you
Speaker 1: know what you can't if there's any way I can
Speaker 1: do it, you can't miss It's right. That's a great point,
Speaker 1: even when the weather is not perfect, even when things
Speaker 1: aren't just right, even when you're sick something if nothing else,
Speaker 1: Like that was my song out there. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: sick and I can't go hanging a tree because I
Speaker 1: might have to get down. Uh, just sit there and
Speaker 1: see something. If nothing else, you know, learn something, do
Speaker 1: what you can. Ye. So, in the interest of time,
Speaker 1: and we gotta get a hunting here pretty soon, let's
Speaker 1: just cover the next two states. What was your big
Speaker 1: takeaway from that? What was the next day. First off, Oklahoma, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Big lesson learned, Oklahoma, Um, did you kill one? I
Speaker 1: killed one? Yeah you did, Tyler and I should have
Speaker 1: man came close. So big lesson learned here. Big lesson
Speaker 1: for me is, um, uh, good spots are good spots,
Speaker 1: which is very contradictory to some things I've said earlier
Speaker 1: on this podcast. But the ruts different, like we talked about.
Speaker 1: So you had like a slow period and you trusted
Speaker 1: the good spot. Is that what happened pretty much? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Or I had a control camera at this place, um,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't had great data on that camera, had
Speaker 1: seen some bucks, a little bit of daytime, not much,
Speaker 1: but I just knew it was good and I hunted
Speaker 1: around that area. This was the first morning I hunted
Speaker 1: this spot, those particular treat and went in there and
Speaker 1: shot to do the first fifteen minutes. We're in the
Speaker 1: tree that morning. Yeah, just because I knew from previous
Speaker 1: experiences that spots worth on. So don't let your slow
Speaker 1: trail cameras get you too up in the month of November.
Speaker 1: Let me get the cave yacht. Uh mine. I just
Speaker 1: would probably reiterate the the same sentiment I had in
Speaker 1: Kansas that, Um, I didn't really trust this remote spot
Speaker 1: that I picked. UM, and I ended up having a
Speaker 1: almost killed a really good deer, like a really nice
Speaker 1: a point not you know, nothing huge score, but nice
Speaker 1: buck almost killed him from the ground with a like
Speaker 1: a two dimensional decoy. And um. And then I think
Speaker 1: the next morning or evening I went in there, didn't
Speaker 1: see anything at all, And over the course of that
Speaker 1: trip and the next trip, I ended up kind of
Speaker 1: retrusting the spot and I left there, but I retrusted
Speaker 1: it later on and it was awesome And I should
Speaker 1: have just stayed in there more than I did because
Speaker 1: it was super remote, and there's when people around Arkansas
Speaker 1: was next. That's correct, Yeah, I think let's see yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like Arkansas was a doozy. Yeah. Well what
Speaker 1: company keep has a big effect on how trips Clay
Speaker 1: was there with us and Arkans saw so it UM
Speaker 1: my my takeaway there, um probably like UM I would
Speaker 1: say that. Um. We so we were we have some
Speaker 1: different contacts in the area. A guy we stayed with
Speaker 1: that gave us some good information, and then a guy
Speaker 1: that we know that gave us good information as well. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's everybody's you actually encountered this probably in
Speaker 1: the deer country stuff a lot. But everybody's got their
Speaker 1: own style of hunting to an extent, right, A lot
Speaker 1: of people have these different styles and it works for them.
Speaker 1: But like if you've never done what Tony Treach does,
Speaker 1: you're a struggle to do that the first several years
Speaker 1: probably um, but Tony can literally break it down on
Speaker 1: a if this then that in every scenario, all the
Speaker 1: way through an entire stock. So for for me, like
Speaker 1: you know, I think that those guys as we're giving
Speaker 1: good information, but there's nothing that replaced me walking around
Speaker 1: in the landscape and observing what I was seeing and
Speaker 1: making you know, references to things I've experienced in the
Speaker 1: deer woods throughout my life and trying to put it
Speaker 1: all together. Because I did end up later in the trip,
Speaker 1: I killed the deer, killed the dough um and dough boat.
Speaker 1: I really gonnaen counter two bucks and actually ended up
Speaker 1: misjudging one um arranged a tree that was the only
Speaker 1: tree I could get a bounce off of. It was
Speaker 1: like sixteen yards from him. I thought it was ten
Speaker 1: and I thought he might jump strings, So better safe
Speaker 1: to shoot low than um, you know, have him jump
Speaker 1: and hit high. So I missed him blow. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my Takeaway's kind of just like, um, if you
Speaker 1: have hunted quite a bit, then definitely trust what you're seeing,
Speaker 1: trust your eyes. I guess yea I would. I would
Speaker 1: uh agree with everything Tyler said. And since I didn't
Speaker 1: have us dell or hunt as far as deer encounters
Speaker 1: go on that trip, I would say to give it
Speaker 1: a more novel approach. Don't let hunting success dictate your
Speaker 1: enjoyment of a hunt, because truthfully, this Arizona, I mean Arkansas,
Speaker 1: Arkansas hunt um was one of my favorite hunts of
Speaker 1: the season, and I uh Tyler and I were together
Speaker 1: for one hunt and saw some bucks, but by myself
Speaker 1: from a tree or the ground. I did not see
Speaker 1: a antler critter um the whole trip. And we gave
Speaker 1: ourselves some time on the trip but had an absolute blast.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. Yeah, so um yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take away from Arkansas, Texas will say for another day, right,
Speaker 1: hopefully there's a happy ending here soon. It's been some excitement,
Speaker 1: also food, some fun. It's very good food, good fun.
Speaker 1: Maybe too much food or one night. Sorry Mark, Uh.
Speaker 1: Since this is your podcast and we like to pi
Speaker 1: rate that thing, Um, I would like for you to
Speaker 1: tell us your big takeaway from the twenty twenty two seasons,
Speaker 1: since that's the theme of this thing. Great, great, great question.
Speaker 1: My biggest takeaway is getting back to my number one
Speaker 1: goal for this year, which is just getting back to
Speaker 1: the fun of it. And like I talked about all
Speaker 1: year leading up to this hunting season, like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: push the expectations aside. I'm gonna push like all the
Speaker 1: stress that I'm worried about doing this thing or that thing,
Speaker 1: or achieving this or being like this person or anything.
Speaker 1: I just says, forget all that, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: do what got me into hunting again, like make choices,
Speaker 1: because that would be the fun thing to do, not
Speaker 1: dumb hunting decisions. Um. Make time for the things that
Speaker 1: really matter, Make time to hunt with my dad, to
Speaker 1: do stuff with my son, to do things like that again. Um,
Speaker 1: and stop caring whatever everybody else thinks. And I think
Speaker 1: as a product of that, I had more fun and
Speaker 1: I had more success. I mean, I had like a
Speaker 1: season that'll go down in the history books as far
Speaker 1: as I mean, it was good, like as far as deer,
Speaker 1: but just like so many great memories, so many things
Speaker 1: I got to do. I got to take my son
Speaker 1: out like eight times this season. I got to do
Speaker 1: all these cool things and had like just incredible memories
Speaker 1: with my family, my dad, friends, kids, um, and great
Speaker 1: hunting to boot. I chose locations that I want to
Speaker 1: go hunt not because it's where I had the best
Speaker 1: chance to kill boon and cracker buck. But I chose
Speaker 1: to go places because like I just love the area
Speaker 1: or I know it would be a fun spot. Um.
Speaker 1: I planned my calendar not around like the absolute best
Speaker 1: way to kill six huge giant deer, But how do
Speaker 1: we make sure I can go to the family deer
Speaker 1: camp this year? How do I make sure that I'm
Speaker 1: around for certain key times when my son could go
Speaker 1: with me and do these different things. Um. I broke
Speaker 1: like a rule where I said I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: hunt for two different bucks in the same general area.
Speaker 1: But after I killed an opening night buck, I got
Speaker 1: to think of, you know, I really want to hunt
Speaker 1: this other deer again. This would be fun. And you
Speaker 1: know what, you don't know how many more hunting seasons
Speaker 1: you have left in life, go after it, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun. Um. So that's my big
Speaker 1: takeaway this year. It's good man. Um, still a few
Speaker 1: more bucks to shoot though, there's still some time. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get two more. Yes, that's exactly right. That would
Speaker 1: be an all time or if that actually happens. But
Speaker 1: you can make a plug before we get out of here,
Speaker 1: please do um. If you are a Wired Hunt fan
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast and you have not watched one
Speaker 1: of Mark's very first please go back right now, the
Speaker 1: furthest episodes back of the Hunt. Yeah, the early podcasts
Speaker 1: are rough. Gosh, dude, you're just a cute little kid. Man.
Speaker 1: Well though you are a cute kid with a mustache. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, guys. I appreciate you taking some time here midday.
Speaker 1: I know everyone's pet place to be. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: to Texas. Man. This is a lot of fun and
Speaker 1: I'm really glad we get to hang out and do
Speaker 1: the same thing too. It's it's been so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been great to get to spend time with you guys.
Speaker 1: Has been great to get to see what the Texas
Speaker 1: things all about. It's wild down here. Well, have further
Speaker 1: conversations on that. Um, but I'm tore up with prickers
Speaker 1: and cactus spines and all sorts of stuff all over me.
Speaker 1: But I'm really glad, I'm really glad ever here. So
Speaker 1: let's try to let's try to send this thing out
Speaker 1: with a one last let's go all right, Well that
Speaker 1: out of the way. Thank you all for listening, appreciate
Speaker 1: you being here, and until next time, make sure you
Speaker 1: check out all the stuff from the Element. Make sure
Speaker 1: you stay tuned next year on the media to YouTube
Speaker 1: channel for the Buck Truck. And until next time, stay
Speaker 1: you boys. Say it Hunt