Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon,
Speaker 1: and this week on the show we're joined by d
Speaker 1: I Y bow hunting guru Eddie Claypool, plus a bonus goals,
Speaker 1: hopes and hit list chat with the one and only
Speaker 1: Dan Johnson. All right, welcome to the Wired Dune podcast,
Speaker 1: brought to you by First Like. Today, we've got a
Speaker 1: great episode for it. This is a two parter of sorts.
Speaker 1: We are continuing our what would you do? Series? We
Speaker 1: started that last week with Grant Woods. Talked a lot
Speaker 1: about management and private land hunting and some cool stuff there.
Speaker 1: Today we're keeping at it and we've got Eddie Claypool
Speaker 1: who is a d I Y and public land focused
Speaker 1: deer hunter, so we're gonna get into that side of things.
Speaker 1: Eddie has been a longtime contributor to Peterson's Bow Hunting
Speaker 1: and a staple in the hunting kind of media world.
Speaker 1: He's a terrific white tailed deer hunter. He gets done
Speaker 1: in tough situations, he speaks his mind freely, He's got
Speaker 1: a different perspective than a lot of people on this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So if you're hoping to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to kill deer on you know, small properties
Speaker 1: or private land by permission or public land, I think
Speaker 1: Eddie is gonna have some ideas that can help you.
Speaker 1: He also has kind of been going through a little
Speaker 1: bit of a change in mindset and changing goals with
Speaker 1: his hunting, which is very interesting to talk about. So
Speaker 1: as I describe and I walk him through these different
Speaker 1: hunting snarrows as we do in this series, right, I
Speaker 1: tell him, Okay, imagine this situation in this place on
Speaker 1: this day. You know what would you do? You know,
Speaker 1: Eddie is is changing what he folk this is on
Speaker 1: as a deer hunter. So he's actually bought his first
Speaker 1: piece of private lands, so he's actually learning a little
Speaker 1: about that kind of thing. He's also changing what he
Speaker 1: wants to shoot and what his goals are going to
Speaker 1: be for hunting. So we get into that side of thing.
Speaker 1: We talked through a bunch of interesting, challenging deer hunting
Speaker 1: scenarios which are great want to learn some and uh,
Speaker 1: we also kick this episode off with a totally different
Speaker 1: kind of well, I take that back, it's not totally
Speaker 1: different because the the what would You Do episode with Eddie,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, we get into his changing mindset, we
Speaker 1: get into his changing goals. Well, that's something we also
Speaker 1: talk about in Part one of this podcast. Part one
Speaker 1: of this podcast, the first hour, actually is with my
Speaker 1: good buddy Dan Johnson. He was my co host here
Speaker 1: on the Wireton podcast for many years when we first
Speaker 1: kicked this thing off. He now runs his own podcast network,
Speaker 1: Great Deer Hunter from All Iowa. And what we've done
Speaker 1: every year, I think the beginning is we've done a
Speaker 1: podcast together where we talked through what our plans are
Speaker 1: for the upcoming hunting season, what our goals are, what
Speaker 1: we're hoping for, if there's any specific bucks were after.
Speaker 1: So we decided to tack that onto the front of
Speaker 1: this podcast. So Part one of this episode is me
Speaker 1: and Dan talking through all that stuff, and we actually
Speaker 1: discuss the same kind of transition that Eddie's going through.
Speaker 1: We discuss how our goals are changing, how our hopes
Speaker 1: and expectations for hunting has changed as well, and in
Speaker 1: a big way. I've been going through this shift this year.
Speaker 1: If you've listened throughout the last twelve months, you've heard
Speaker 1: about kind of this this wild hunting season I had
Speaker 1: last year and my burnout afterwards, and how I'm kind
Speaker 1: of shifting and changing a little bit of what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: and so me and Dan get into that a lot,
Speaker 1: as well as kind of preview some very exciting hunts
Speaker 1: we have coming up this year. Some bucks were after
Speaker 1: I saw a really nice Michigan dear the other day.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about that dear and uh and basically
Speaker 1: everything you need to know to get ready to follow
Speaker 1: along with our two seasons. So jam packed episode. It's
Speaker 1: a long episodes over two hours. I'm guessing this thing
Speaker 1: is gonna come out to so stick around for the
Speaker 1: full thing. Part one. That first just under an hour.
Speaker 1: Right around that first hour is me and Dan. If
Speaker 1: you don't give a rip about me or Dan, you
Speaker 1: can fast forward if you want two hour number two,
Speaker 1: in which we do though what would Eddie Claypool do? Section?
Speaker 1: So that is the game plan. I appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one plug. We talked about this over
Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks. I'm just gonna remind you
Speaker 1: again one more time. I put together a recent selection
Speaker 1: of my top gear recommendations that we've got over at
Speaker 1: the Mediator Store for this late summer early season time period.
Speaker 1: I've got some of my recommended targets, some of my
Speaker 1: shooting supplies, the clothes I like to wear for summer
Speaker 1: scouting or summer shooting, and then also my early season
Speaker 1: white tail kit from First Life, the shirt I like,
Speaker 1: the pants I like, uh. I think I even included
Speaker 1: the face mask I used for the early season. All
Speaker 1: that stuff is on my new gear recommendation page. You
Speaker 1: can find it at store dot the meat eater dot
Speaker 1: com slash mark. So go to the media to store
Speaker 1: slash mark, store dot the meat Eater dot com slash mark.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be my gear recommendation. We're hopefully gonna have
Speaker 1: you know, that's gonna be a rotating list of things.
Speaker 1: So if you're in the market for something new as
Speaker 1: far as hunting gear and you're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what a good option might be, I'm gonna put some
Speaker 1: things on there that I personally use and like, we
Speaker 1: stock a whole lot different hunting gear now on the
Speaker 1: Mediator Store. It's not just first Like gear now, it's
Speaker 1: not just our Phelps game calls. It's not just the
Speaker 1: fh F by no harnesses. We're selling all sorts of
Speaker 1: things now vortex optics, six sour optics. Uh YETI cooler's targets, uh, shirts,
Speaker 1: water bottle. I mean, I don't know. The folks on
Speaker 1: that business side of things are just really getting after
Speaker 1: building uh the Mediator's store into into quite the quite
Speaker 1: the machine and all of that. What's cool about that.
Speaker 1: I know nobody wants to hear about buying stuff, But
Speaker 1: the cool thing about what metators doing there with the
Speaker 1: store and everything is that allows people like me to
Speaker 1: do these podcasts, to film these TV shows, to write
Speaker 1: the articles, to do all this stuff and put it
Speaker 1: out there for free for you guys. Uh. So, hopefully
Speaker 1: that helps you out of ton is stuff that's helping
Speaker 1: you learn, inspire you, entertain you, whatever it is, I
Speaker 1: hope it's stuff that you're finding a lot of value in.
Speaker 1: So thanks again for checking that stuff out, Thanks for
Speaker 1: tuning in today. I am fired up. I am fully
Speaker 1: two thousand percent ready for hunting season, very excited, very
Speaker 1: excited for this conversation today. Me and Dan had a
Speaker 1: blast catching up. If you are a longtime listener, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be like Mama's apple pie. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be some comfort food for you here in part one.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna enjoy it. And if you are
Speaker 1: not a long time listener, maybe hearing me and Dan
Speaker 1: will inspire you to go back to the beginning and
Speaker 1: listen to some of those episodes in the early days
Speaker 1: where me and Dan were just figuring this stuff out
Speaker 1: and we were knuckleheads. We didn't know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're sharing the ups and downs and having fun along
Speaker 1: the way and uh, probably making fools of ourselves. But
Speaker 1: it's been a good ride. So thanks for being along
Speaker 1: for it, Thanks for tuning in, and let's get to
Speaker 1: part one with me and Dan Johnson talking through goals,
Speaker 1: hopes and hit lists, and then as soon as that
Speaker 1: wraps up, we will jump right to my chat with
Speaker 1: Eddie Claypool. All right now with me on the show.
Speaker 1: Back from a long I don't know what the right
Speaker 1: word is along, Uh yeah, whatever that is. We've got
Speaker 1: Dan Johnson by long time. I just had to get
Speaker 1: it out there. Wired Hunt co host, my great buddy
Speaker 1: and the Emperor of the Sportsman's Empire, Dan, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. Hey, Hey, thanks for having me, Mark,
Speaker 1: It's good to hear your voice. Man. I know, especially
Speaker 1: like this time of year, I just need some Dan
Speaker 1: Johnson in my life to to bring me back to
Speaker 1: the bringing back to earth, get me re excited. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just the doctor ordered. What's all this running bullshit
Speaker 1: that you're doing? Are you trying to be Cam Haynes. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get it quite that far, but just
Speaker 1: trying to make sure I don't turn to Dan Johnson.
Speaker 1: So oh dude, I stepped myself up for that one.
Speaker 1: That was hilarious. Dude, that was hilarious. Yep. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: just trying to just trying to maintain a decent fitness.
Speaker 1: So yeah, man, been doing I've been sticking to the
Speaker 1: running and did that racist spring and that was cool.
Speaker 1: So first first race of any kind of done since
Speaker 1: like middle school cross country, so it fell out of you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I was. I was proud to I finished
Speaker 1: my first half marathon and did pretty good, so that
Speaker 1: was that's cool. Yep. Yeah. I wish I had something
Speaker 1: physical that I could tell you I've accomplished in the
Speaker 1: last couple months or or this summer or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but it's not. I don't have. I'm like, my knees
Speaker 1: hurt a little bit less than normal this week, but
Speaker 1: other than that, the rest of my body hurts. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Well,
Speaker 1: here's one thing I did want to ask you about
Speaker 1: from the last few months. This happened like earlier this summer,
Speaker 1: I think, but I introduced you as the Emperor of
Speaker 1: the Sportsman's Empire. Yeah, so, so why the name change
Speaker 1: and and plug Sportsman's Empire and everything you've got going
Speaker 1: on these days? Because you're just going like gangbusters. And
Speaker 1: since the last time we were on the show, I
Speaker 1: think you've added another like five podcasts or something. So
Speaker 1: what's what's new with your business world? It's not like
Speaker 1: I don't I I still don't understand it, right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't understand how something that I have done has
Speaker 1: turned out to be as successful as it is, right. So,
Speaker 1: and what I mean successful, I don't mean like I'm
Speaker 1: a millionaire. I mean I'm actually getting to do this
Speaker 1: for a living, right, So, Like it started off with
Speaker 1: the Nine Finger Chronicles and that was great. Then the
Speaker 1: Sportsman's Nation happened and then basically to avoid uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh. You know, sometimes in the business world
Speaker 1: there's some bullshit, right, some bullshit popped up, and uh,
Speaker 1: I instead of going to bat and trying to fight it,
Speaker 1: which I did for a little bit, I decided just
Speaker 1: to flip it just by one word and go with
Speaker 1: a Sportsman's Empire. And uh and now I'm safe and
Speaker 1: the Sportsman's Empire, and and I could sit here and
Speaker 1: I could tell you that, uh it was it was planned.
Speaker 1: It wasn't planned. It was just you know, sometimes crazy
Speaker 1: things in business happened, and I needed an adjustment. So
Speaker 1: I made the adjustment, and uh, we're still firing on
Speaker 1: all cylinders. So it was a seamless transition into the
Speaker 1: from the Sportsman's Nation to the Sportsman's Empire, and uh,
Speaker 1: things are good. And I don't know, man, we we
Speaker 1: just we continue to put out really good content from
Speaker 1: some really really good content providers. And it's like a
Speaker 1: family over here. Man. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. So
Speaker 1: if there was like, no, I don't want you to
Speaker 1: offend any of your family members, but if you had
Speaker 1: to recommend for for people that listen to Wired to Hunt,
Speaker 1: so for folks that you know, you know, the folks
Speaker 1: that listen to Wired to Hunt if they wanted to
Speaker 1: try out some of the shows over in your crew,
Speaker 1: who would be like a couple of the top shows
Speaker 1: they should check out. That would be like a good
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps when they don't have any Wired
Speaker 1: Hunt and listen to. Yeah, so that's a great question.
Speaker 1: And so the good thing about the Sportsman's Empire is
Speaker 1: there's a couple of podcasts in there that are state specific.
Speaker 1: For example, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Michigan coming very soon, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think there's one more Oklahoma. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if you're living those states, we have state specific content
Speaker 1: coming out for you, all right. But you know how
Speaker 1: me and you were Midwestern guys, and so we don't
Speaker 1: really know too much about the strategies and tactics of
Speaker 1: the South. Um My buddy Parker McDonald over at the
Speaker 1: Southern Ground podcast he is, uh, he's killing it with
Speaker 1: Southern focused content. He's the man you and you've hung
Speaker 1: out with him before too, so um and then for
Speaker 1: someone who wants to do something a little different, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I could sit here and talk about all these podcasts.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's so much, there's so much good content.
Speaker 1: If you're a habitat guy, if you're a a d
Speaker 1: I Y junkie, like, we have stuff for that. But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna go way out of the box
Speaker 1: here and I'm gonna say there's a there's a podcast
Speaker 1: and it is probably it is the biggest sporting dogs
Speaker 1: podcast out there. It's called The Houndsman XP podcast. These
Speaker 1: guys are die hard coon hunters and competitive coon hunting.
Speaker 1: They talk about dog breeding, they talk about that lifestyle
Speaker 1: and things like that's very interesting. It's uh, it's one
Speaker 1: of the top performers on on the network. And because
Speaker 1: you know, just like just like all the podcasts, the
Speaker 1: people behind it are real passionate about what they do
Speaker 1: and that you can just feel that through the their
Speaker 1: their their podcast. Sweet, I love it. We'll glad, You're glad.
Speaker 1: It's going on all cylinders man. And my only question then,
Speaker 1: is is all of this business success and crazy work.
Speaker 1: I know it's one of those things like you do
Speaker 1: you took this job, like you chase this dream so
Speaker 1: you'd have time to go hunt and stuf off. But
Speaker 1: I know sometimes it ends up being the opposite and
Speaker 1: that we get so obsessed with our business work and
Speaker 1: that there's so much to do and all the pressures
Speaker 1: on you that you then don't get outside as much.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like leading into this hunting season, are
Speaker 1: you in a good place to get out in the
Speaker 1: woods or are you gonna be slammed and sitting at
Speaker 1: the computer the whole series. So I just hired a guy.
Speaker 1: So and Josh, if you're listening, I mean this with
Speaker 1: all due respect, I hope he slammed in, not me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Uh Um, But no, I
Speaker 1: hired a guy to help me out, and uh so,
Speaker 1: that's that's a win right there. As far as the
Speaker 1: business side of it is concerned, yes, man, it it's
Speaker 1: it's taking up a lot more time, and I the
Speaker 1: prep work for the seasons, I'm behind right like I'm
Speaker 1: behind on trail cameras, I'm behind on any type of scouting.
Speaker 1: I'm behind on the tree stands, setups and things like
Speaker 1: that that I've done in the past, which in the
Speaker 1: past I've relied a lot on that, but in the
Speaker 1: recent past I found success doing the you know, the
Speaker 1: mobile you know in first time in best time in
Speaker 1: type scenarios, just like last year, and a lot of
Speaker 1: focus on Western hunts where you can't you can't scout
Speaker 1: throughout I mean, I I'm not I'm not gonna make
Speaker 1: a trip out west just to scout, you know, during
Speaker 1: the summer months or the fall. And but so that's
Speaker 1: the negative part of it. But the positive part of
Speaker 1: it is is the brownie points have been at a
Speaker 1: all time high this year as far as being the
Speaker 1: little league coach, you know, being the soccer coach, um,
Speaker 1: doing things with a family, doing things with a wife. Right.
Speaker 1: I just got back from uh, a husband wife trip
Speaker 1: from UH from Nashville, Tennessee, and uh so the brownie
Speaker 1: points they're stacked this year. And I am gonna use
Speaker 1: every single one of them this this fall, like I'm
Speaker 1: planning on I'm going ben Anna's. And I think my
Speaker 1: wife knows that and so far she's cool with it.
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens. Did you get her name
Speaker 1: tattooed on your butt cheek? I saw you got a
Speaker 1: new tattoo the other day. No, I got a. I
Speaker 1: got a picture of you on my forearm. I would
Speaker 1: I would die happy man, that was the kid. No
Speaker 1: I got a. I got my kids initials H A
Speaker 1: A M K on my on my forearm, and I
Speaker 1: got a pretty cool on my other forearm. I got
Speaker 1: a cool looking arrow. And you know I didn't I've
Speaker 1: I don't have any hunting related tattoos. And it was time.
Speaker 1: I was feeling it and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm here in Nashville. Why don't I get get an arrow?
Speaker 1: And uh? And so here's the cool thing though, I'm
Speaker 1: getting this tattoo, and my tattoo artist he's killed one deer.
Speaker 1: He's from New York City, he moved to Nashville. He's
Speaker 1: dating a girl from Nashville whose parents own a ranch
Speaker 1: in Montana, and he went out there and he shot
Speaker 1: his first deer. I think it was last year or
Speaker 1: the year before. And so we had these this awesome
Speaker 1: conversation while I'm getting fresh tattoo about hunting and you know, like,
Speaker 1: what's the next step if I want to do this?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, man, I'm gonna need a bigger tattoo
Speaker 1: because this this conversation doesn't take you know, isn't a
Speaker 1: quick conversation. So it was that that that portion of
Speaker 1: it was cool because he he really wants to get
Speaker 1: into more hunting. So that's sweet, just sending the sports
Speaker 1: and his empire. Do you get that? Do you bust
Speaker 1: out that business card? Oh? Yeah, dude, I I sent
Speaker 1: it to him. I I showed him some picks. He
Speaker 1: showed me some picks, and and uh, I think I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna probably stay in contact and and hopefully uh,
Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't want to say a mentor because uh,
Speaker 1: I told him, Hey man, I know people in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I know people in northern Alabama or in this general area.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking to be more educated, I said,
Speaker 1: I'll hook you up anyway I can, so that you know,
Speaker 1: I did my part to try to get this guy
Speaker 1: to stay in hunting and uh and spread his wings
Speaker 1: into archery. Very cool. Yeah, I love it. Tattoos for you?
Speaker 1: Any new tattoos? Yeah? Have you gotten a tattoo? No?
Speaker 1: Do you have the tattoos? I did not do not.
Speaker 1: Are you ever going to get a tattoo? You know?
Speaker 1: I actually have been considering it. Um My wife is
Speaker 1: really into tattoos, so she she wants to get some
Speaker 1: new ones. She's got I don't know, five or something
Speaker 1: like that, and she's threatening to get something new, and
Speaker 1: so I've got to thinking maybe I would go and
Speaker 1: and get my first one. Um, it would probably have
Speaker 1: to be your face on my forearm. So yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: that would be sweet. We should get we should get
Speaker 1: matching tattoos my face on your forearm, your your face
Speaker 1: on my crotch inside of my thigh or something like that. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that that sounds pretty cool, sounds good. Yeah, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I thought all serious, its like maybe a tattoo on
Speaker 1: my upper arm or forearm, and have to be something
Speaker 1: like hunting, fishing, outdoor related, something that just basically like
Speaker 1: stamps me forever, like this is my thing. Um, I said,
Speaker 1: have figured out what that right thing is, so we'll see.
Speaker 1: So I got a I got an idea. This is
Speaker 1: what I think my next tattoo is gonna because after
Speaker 1: I got this tattoo, it looks pretty sweet and it's
Speaker 1: very simple, but I want something with meaning. And I
Speaker 1: thought about getting of a pretty cool uh tattoo of
Speaker 1: tapo lines and in that this topo line is going
Speaker 1: to have a little star in it somewhere and it's
Speaker 1: going to be the location of like my favorite tree
Speaker 1: stand to hunt, and you can look at and go man, like,
Speaker 1: look at all the memories I can see just on
Speaker 1: these topic lines so or or like GP coordinates or
Speaker 1: something like that. That is that is cool and something
Speaker 1: like you like only you would be able to learn
Speaker 1: out about and like look at and be able to
Speaker 1: see all the detail and remember what those little lines
Speaker 1: actually stand for. That's yeah, that's a cool idea, Dan, Yeah, ah, man,
Speaker 1: I like it. Well, here here's how's the boys. The
Speaker 1: boys are crazy. I mean they're they're two and four now,
Speaker 1: so you know what those ages are like, Um, they're
Speaker 1: a blast. We just got back from Idaho, so we
Speaker 1: were out there for the last three months and uh,
Speaker 1: they were just wild mountain men. Did a lot of camping.
Speaker 1: I think we camped like seventeen eighteen nights and um
Speaker 1: did a lot of hiking and a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of water time this year because the kids are
Speaker 1: just very very into catching critters now. So my oldest
Speaker 1: has become like he has my d NA, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. Like he is obsessed. Like he will sit
Speaker 1: by the creek with his net and catch minnows. He
Speaker 1: would literally do it for eight hours straight. Like he
Speaker 1: can focus and wants nothing else but to catch an animal.
Speaker 1: So he's been This year was the first year he
Speaker 1: really was able to put all together and start doing
Speaker 1: all the stuff on his own. So he's catching minnows,
Speaker 1: he's catching like big sculpting, he's catching crayfish, he's catching frogs,
Speaker 1: um and tadpoles, and so he's just like, that's all
Speaker 1: he wants to do is catch these things. So he
Speaker 1: we had we did a lot of that, more and
Speaker 1: more fishing. Um. Everett caught his first fish on a
Speaker 1: fly rod by himself this year, so it was pretty sweet.
Speaker 1: Um and uh yeah, I mean just did a lot
Speaker 1: of exploring, a lot of climbing bowlers and just being boys,
Speaker 1: boys being boys. So it was great summer, had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, caught a lot of fish and uh
Speaker 1: and now though like everyone's brain is switching to white
Speaker 1: tails in a big way. We're back in Michigan. The
Speaker 1: boys are playing right now. Literally just before I started
Speaker 1: this podcast, the boys came crashing in my office and
Speaker 1: said we need our rattling andlers. And they came in
Speaker 1: here and got rattling andlers and the two year olds
Speaker 1: got his like orange beanie on his head. Everett's got
Speaker 1: a buy no harness on his chest like you guys
Speaker 1: are nuts. They're uh, they're really into it. So they
Speaker 1: they play hunting all the time and they shoot their
Speaker 1: bows and it's it's super fun. The whole brother dynamic
Speaker 1: has really gotten to a new place now that now
Speaker 1: that Colt's bold enough that they can really engage like peers.
Speaker 1: So they're just terrible toesome and uh, luckily they're they
Speaker 1: seem to be into the stuff that I'm into right now,
Speaker 1: and we're having a lot of fun sharing it together,
Speaker 1: so that I'm excited for this fall hopefully more blood
Speaker 1: trails and stuff. I think I told you last time
Speaker 1: that Everett is just like he doesn't have the color
Speaker 1: blindness issue that I have, so he is like my
Speaker 1: blood trailing savior. He can see the blood. He's my
Speaker 1: new trailing dog. So he just goes out there like
Speaker 1: there's blood, there's blood, there's blood. So it's very very handy.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. That's awesome. So so I think that's a
Speaker 1: great segue into like the main thing that I was
Speaker 1: hoping we could talk about today, which is like what
Speaker 1: our hopes are for the year, Like you know how
Speaker 1: every I think every year we've done like a goals,
Speaker 1: hopes and hit lists conversation. I've gotten a request the guy,
Speaker 1: some some guy hit me up on Instagram the other
Speaker 1: day and he's like, Hey, what are you and Mark
Speaker 1: gonna do another one of these? These are my favorite episodes. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I've gotten I've gotten some list too. So we had
Speaker 1: to do it. We had to get get caught up
Speaker 1: and get caught up on you know, what's what we're
Speaker 1: doing this coming to year, what our hopes and goals
Speaker 1: are for the year, if we have any specific hit lists, bucks,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So I figured out would
Speaker 1: be the perfect time since the since the ramp up
Speaker 1: is in full speed now, So are your game? Your
Speaker 1: game for that? I'm down. Let's get it started, all right?
Speaker 1: What do you uh? Let's first like cover plans, like
Speaker 1: just like where are you hunting? And I'll do the
Speaker 1: same too, because I haven't talked about this either, So
Speaker 1: what's your yeah? Man? So about a month ago, my
Speaker 1: slate got flipped up on what I thought was gonna
Speaker 1: happen in here in Iowa. Al Right, So I didn't
Speaker 1: really I didn't kind of know that if you asked
Speaker 1: me a month ago, how what the fall was gonna
Speaker 1: look like. It would have been uncertain. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know what would have happened. Right. I have my
Speaker 1: main farm where I killed my buck last year in Iowa,
Speaker 1: still there. But I lost, Uh. I lost the farm
Speaker 1: that I hunt that's really close to me, right. The
Speaker 1: landowner passed away and the kids are gonna sell it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh so I'm down. I'm down that property. And
Speaker 1: then the previous year I lost, uh I lost uh
Speaker 1: what was it like a hundred and sixty acres? So,
Speaker 1: but I I didn't do anything off season to kind
Speaker 1: of try to find anything new per se for, you know,
Speaker 1: to find new property. I've just been leaning towards the
Speaker 1: public side of things, all right, So I was a
Speaker 1: little uncertain. Well, here's the very short story of it.
Speaker 1: I got connected with a guy who owns like I
Speaker 1: want to say, just under two I think it's somewhere
Speaker 1: around two hundred acres in a different county here in
Speaker 1: Iowa that nobody hunts. And he's like, well, my my, uh,
Speaker 1: my cousin hunted it. Uh he passed away two years
Speaker 1: ago and no one, no one hunts it anymore. And
Speaker 1: if you would like to you know, you're more than
Speaker 1: you're more than welcome to comment hunt it, and so
Speaker 1: that intrigues me. Yeah. So, uh, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: egg ground, but it's in a really good neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: so I kind of just fell into this property. I
Speaker 1: had some help from another another guy and who lives
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. He's like, man, I can't hunt Iowa every year.
Speaker 1: You know, why don't you take a look at the
Speaker 1: you know, take a look at this property. Let me
Speaker 1: know what you think. And when I draw an Eyowa tag,
Speaker 1: maybe you can show me the ropes. And I'm like, yeah, dude, absolutely,
Speaker 1: let's do it. So I I picked that piece of
Speaker 1: property up and I think Sunday, this upcoming Sunday, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be heading down there to throw up some trail cameras,
Speaker 1: do a quick summer push for scouting, and and then
Speaker 1: hopefully come back in a month or so check the
Speaker 1: trail cameras and just see what's living on this property.
Speaker 1: The guy says, Now, I don't know the definition of
Speaker 1: good deer is different for all people. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what good what he means by good dear. You know,
Speaker 1: my definition might be different from his. Cousin's definition. Um,
Speaker 1: he said he's found some good antlers shed hunting it before,
Speaker 1: So I don't know, we'll see, we'll see what happens, Um,
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm I'm jack to go start the process over.
Speaker 1: It's been a couple of years since I've gotten a
Speaker 1: new property, and it's so yeah, exact, I love that,
Speaker 1: you know, starting a fresh chess game on a new
Speaker 1: board and you know, playing playing the game. And we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens on there. But I'm going to South
Speaker 1: Dakota for sure, more than likely going to be going
Speaker 1: to Nebraska. And let's see Nebraska in September. I think
Speaker 1: October I'm gonna go to South Dakota and depending on
Speaker 1: how what October looks like, Dude, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: get down to Oklahoma and possibly Missouri this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you add in that's what That's what I'm saying, Mark.
Speaker 1: The brownie points are at an all time high, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna be able to get away with it.
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm burning the bridge down to and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna and then after the season's over, I'll rebuild it all.
Speaker 1: Put the brownie points back in the pot and and
Speaker 1: start all over again. It's an annual cycle. What I know,
Speaker 1: you're Nebraska and South Are you doing the same kind
Speaker 1: of stuff You've done in Nebraska and South Dakota, same areas,
Speaker 1: same general type of hunt. Yeah, somewhat. There's been some
Speaker 1: changes is recently with units and tag allocations in Nebraska,
Speaker 1: so that part has to be will be changed. But
Speaker 1: South Dakota probably going to one of the same areas
Speaker 1: that I've gone to, not last year, but the year before. Um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a mule deer focused trip. Oklahoma will
Speaker 1: probably be it will be a white tail however, they
Speaker 1: got some They got some mule deer in western Oklahoma too.
Speaker 1: Don't know what I'm gonna do there. And then Missouri
Speaker 1: will be a probably like one of those four day
Speaker 1: hunts where I popped down there during the week, hit
Speaker 1: him up and uh, you know, hit a piece of
Speaker 1: public up. See what I can do closer to late
Speaker 1: October and uh. And then if I do good in
Speaker 1: Iowa and I connect right off the bat like I
Speaker 1: did last year, then I'll drop down and go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Uh down, back down to Oklahoma or back down to
Speaker 1: Missouri or something like that. So the Oklahoma Missouri stuff
Speaker 1: is that is that both public land and you're just
Speaker 1: like just winging it against trying to find something or
Speaker 1: have you like scouted and found spots you like already
Speaker 1: or what's what's the progress? Yeah, yeah, so I've got
Speaker 1: most of it's just been digital scouting, right looking for
Speaker 1: water access. I'm like one chin hair away from buying
Speaker 1: a beater beater boat that I can use to pull
Speaker 1: down there and some of some of these properties and
Speaker 1: access public ground through waterways, right, So I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll see. It's uh, some of that stuff still up
Speaker 1: in the air, guaranteed for sure, because I already have
Speaker 1: the tag is South Dakota, but how the rest of
Speaker 1: those three states lay out because they're close, you know,
Speaker 1: And and way on the back burner is also Minnesota
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin because yeah, just just and that's way on
Speaker 1: the back burner because of how close everything is to Iowa.
Speaker 1: And so if you know, some of those aren't gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But if I if I have one of those dream
Speaker 1: years that everybody talks about, and you just you show
Speaker 1: up someplace, shoot a deer, show up someplace, shoot a deer,
Speaker 1: show up someplace, shoot a deer, and uh, I have
Speaker 1: all my tags filled and I still have time. Well,
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna use that time this year, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go do some exploring and
Speaker 1: have a little adventure this year. What what happened to you?
Speaker 1: Because I remember a few years ago, Dan, I was
Speaker 1: always bitching at you, like, go hunt some other places,
Speaker 1: hunt some other places, and you said, why would I
Speaker 1: ever leave Iowa When everywhere else I go I know
Speaker 1: won't be as good as this? So why would I
Speaker 1: leave here? What happened, Dan? How other than the fact
Speaker 1: that you have a lot more flexibility with your job,
Speaker 1: what changed in your brain? And now all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're wanting to go chase public land, dear, on
Speaker 1: all these other states where I'm telling you one thing, Dan,
Speaker 1: I know from experience, it will not be as good
Speaker 1: as your stuff in Iowa. No, no, no, And dude,
Speaker 1: there's been a I think we've even talked about this
Speaker 1: in one of the episodes, and I can't remember if
Speaker 1: it was me on yours or yours on mine. But
Speaker 1: you know, you have this awakening where you really kind
Speaker 1: of what is important type of deal and and yes,
Speaker 1: I'm all it's awesome for me to be able to
Speaker 1: go chase big bucks in Iowa. And my standard in
Speaker 1: Iowa is higher than anywhere else. I really I realized
Speaker 1: that now, and I realized that I can go out
Speaker 1: and and killing my buck in South Dakota last year
Speaker 1: was a perfect example. He's not a giant, he wasn't
Speaker 1: the even the biggest dear that I saw or attempted
Speaker 1: to hunt, but I got him and it was an
Speaker 1: amazing experience and I had so much fun doing it.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, dude, if I can fit this in
Speaker 1: other places, I'm gonna go do it. And so it's
Speaker 1: not about like it's in Iowa. Yes, it's about trying
Speaker 1: to locate the biggest, baddest buck, right, but there's so
Speaker 1: much other adventure out there. Uh, landscape changes, just the
Speaker 1: experience behind all of it. That's what I want now.
Speaker 1: And I want to be able to go, you know,
Speaker 1: talk to my kids or my grandkids or some buddies
Speaker 1: at a trade show or or you know, at a bar,
Speaker 1: me like, oh, dude, I'm hunting Nebraska. Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: hunted there. Yeah, I've hunted there too. Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: hunted there. That's a great place. I like that state,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of stuff, And so it's just
Speaker 1: more about realizing that, dude, nobody lives forever and if
Speaker 1: you want to go do some of this right now
Speaker 1: with the time to go do it. Yeah. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you are speaking my language right there with you. It's
Speaker 1: a it's awesome stuff. Man. I'm glad to hear you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a fun season. Yeah, it's gonna be It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a blast. And um, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll see what happens. What about you, dude, are
Speaker 1: are you? Uh? I know that what last year was
Speaker 1: a full schedule for you? Yeah, So what's what's on
Speaker 1: the docket this year? Yes, the last year was nuts,
Speaker 1: And as you and I talked about this spring on
Speaker 1: your show, it like forced me into like rethinking a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff and pivoting and kind of refocusing on
Speaker 1: what matters to me, like you said, and what makes
Speaker 1: me happy and satisfy with all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So so this year, I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: a pretty different year in a lot of regards, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm very fired up and excited about it. Again.
Speaker 1: But it took me a while to get here. Like
Speaker 1: I had a long period this winter and spring where
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to think about any of the
Speaker 1: stuff or do any of the stuff. I had a
Speaker 1: serious burnout issue this year. But I'm back and uh
Speaker 1: and stoked about so we can talk about some of
Speaker 1: that stuff. But as far as like this literal plans
Speaker 1: where I'm going, I'm gonna do the Idaho public land
Speaker 1: thing again for white Tails. Basically, I've got you Furthers
Speaker 1: coming up, so I'm hoping I was hoping to weasel
Speaker 1: my way in there and be like, oh, first, can't
Speaker 1: come Well, I know someone who might go, well, you
Speaker 1: give me a show if you want to come along
Speaker 1: one of those times. There's there's lots of stuff out there. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a it's a tough it's a
Speaker 1: it's a weird situation. So it's a tough spot. But
Speaker 1: also like there's good opportunity and it's kicked my tail
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, and uh, me and further
Speaker 1: just want to like get it done at least once
Speaker 1: before we explore anywhere else. So exactly, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: do the Idaho thing. And then in October basically what
Speaker 1: I did, Like last year, I had like nine different states,
Speaker 1: I think, and there was like periods where I was
Speaker 1: gone like three weeks out of four and it was
Speaker 1: just too much, way too much travel, way too much,
Speaker 1: just like anxiety around every one of these trips and
Speaker 1: what we were trying to get done, you YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: So this year I've just tried to scale back a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff and and do things that are just
Speaker 1: like for fun. I'm just choosing places and doing hunts
Speaker 1: now that are like something I'm gonna be excited about
Speaker 1: to go to this place or to be with this
Speaker 1: person or something like that, versus like, oh, I gotta
Speaker 1: go to the spot because I'm gonna kill a hundred
Speaker 1: six buck or anything like that. It's you know, when
Speaker 1: we get to our goals, I'll talk about that more.
Speaker 1: But basically, like the Idaho hunt is fun because me
Speaker 1: and Further go there and there's this place and we
Speaker 1: can fish and we can hunt and it's cool. So
Speaker 1: then in October, me and our buddy Tony Peterson are
Speaker 1: going to do a hunt together in North Dakota, and
Speaker 1: that one's gonna be fun because it's an area that
Speaker 1: we both just think super pretty, super cool and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll kill a deer there and that would be like
Speaker 1: where to go out camp there, hunt public land and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not high standards, shoot whatever we can shoot,
Speaker 1: but that'll be cool. So that's my October trip. Um
Speaker 1: in November, I'm doing I am filming a hunt in November,
Speaker 1: and that is for our one Week in November show
Speaker 1: that we did last year. We're doing a season two
Speaker 1: of that, and I'm filming that hunt in Nebraska first
Speaker 1: week in November, and that one's gonna be another one
Speaker 1: that I chose just because like it's a super fun area.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to kill one with a handheld decoy
Speaker 1: again because I tried that last year for the first
Speaker 1: time and I didn't get it done, but I had
Speaker 1: a riot, Like it was a lot of fun and
Speaker 1: I want to give a shot again. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: go do that. So it would be a very different
Speaker 1: kind of rut hunt, right, I will just be run
Speaker 1: around chasing stuff and uh, just enjoying myself. So that's
Speaker 1: my November trip. And then in December, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: and hunt with do you know the guys from the Element,
Speaker 1: Tyler Jones and Casey Smith. You do, Yeah, I've I
Speaker 1: don't think i've met him in person, but I've talked
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah. Cool dudes, And um, they're doing some
Speaker 1: stuff with us, and so I'm gonna go hunt with
Speaker 1: them in Texas on some public land down there, which
Speaker 1: sounds like it'll be gnarly, just like spiny thorny cactus
Speaker 1: e crap. And uh, we're gonna try to kill a
Speaker 1: white tail down there in public. So that is the
Speaker 1: that's the for sure plan. So like one trip a
Speaker 1: month versus like three trips a month, so I think
Speaker 1: it'll be much more manageable from the travel front. And
Speaker 1: then of course I'll be hunting at home in Michigan
Speaker 1: on my Michigan places, and then I'll be throughout all that.
Speaker 1: And then there's a there's a chance. I'm still kind
Speaker 1: of working on it, but I might have access to
Speaker 1: some stuff in Ohio and if that ends up coming through,
Speaker 1: that will be kind of like my I'll go for
Speaker 1: a day this week, I'll go for two days next week.
Speaker 1: They'll just kind of here there since that's relatively close
Speaker 1: to home. Um, So that's that's what my twenty two
Speaker 1: season looks like it's uh what, Idaho, Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas.
Speaker 1: It's all public land, I guess as far as all
Speaker 1: the traveling hunts, but Michigan and Ohio would be private. Um.
Speaker 1: So good mix of stuff, good mix of the country. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, last year, as you know, I was
Speaker 1: filming those two shows, and one of those shows was
Speaker 1: a lot of that travel, and it was just like
Speaker 1: it was just it's it's gonna be nice this year
Speaker 1: to not be filming as much. Not that I don't
Speaker 1: like to film, but filming just adds something that just
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult and more stressful. It's not quite
Speaker 1: the same kind of experience. And so this year scaling
Speaker 1: back a little bit on it, and I think that
Speaker 1: will be nice, just a little reset button for me
Speaker 1: and doing some some fun different hunts, but fun or
Speaker 1: fun in the way that I can just like go
Speaker 1: out there, experience them, have stories to tell from them,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily the same in that the camera brings.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's what I've got on schedule. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty excit about him. Let me let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: after a burnout season, like you mentioned, how how and
Speaker 1: when does that recovery go from burnout to the fire
Speaker 1: started again? What's that look like? So for me, it
Speaker 1: really was like all like you know, my season ended
Speaker 1: like January twelve or something like that, and from January
Speaker 1: until like the summer, I really was not too into,
Speaker 1: you know, getting serious about deer stuff. It really was
Speaker 1: like four or five six months. Not that I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing things. I was still writing about deer stuff. I
Speaker 1: was still doing a few things here and there, um,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like I was throwing on a deer
Speaker 1: hunting show on YouTube or something. I was not consuming
Speaker 1: dear content for fun. I wasn't like texting buddies about
Speaker 1: deer for fun. Um. I went the opposite, and I
Speaker 1: like just removed myself from it in a big way
Speaker 1: and went hard on like the other things I like.
Speaker 1: So I have I probably had my fishiest year ever,
Speaker 1: Like I fished more probably than ever before. Really you know,
Speaker 1: continue diving down that wormhole and have had a blast
Speaker 1: doing that. Um, really really really enjoy that. And that's
Speaker 1: like zero pressure, zero expectations, just like just fun, nothing else.
Speaker 1: And and I've needed that, like I've needed that thing.
Speaker 1: I can like uh, dive into without any of the
Speaker 1: other like strings attached and and so that's been a blast.
Speaker 1: But then like you know, June May and June probably
Speaker 1: starting to get the itch, and then July like all right,
Speaker 1: like I was fired up, and now that August is here,
Speaker 1: like now I'm I'm full blown obsessed mode where like
Speaker 1: every night I'm watching some kind of video at night,
Speaker 1: or I'm reading some kind of article, or I'm going
Speaker 1: back and listening to old podcasts. I'm staring at my
Speaker 1: maps and all that kind of stuff. But it took me,
Speaker 1: you know, it took me a good chunk of time
Speaker 1: to get back there. Um, and I'm glad I'm back there.
Speaker 1: And I've had like a lot, uh, Like we had
Speaker 1: a really good conversation to spring, you and I talking
Speaker 1: about this stuff, and I've had a couple of those,
Speaker 1: and I've had to kind of like just like last
Speaker 1: year was really like a breaking point for me in
Speaker 1: like a lot of different ways, and just like what
Speaker 1: I want to do with this in this world? You know,
Speaker 1: what's what what are my goals for myself with with
Speaker 1: this thing I've been doing, And who do I want
Speaker 1: to be and who do I not want to be.
Speaker 1: I haven't been chasing like something that's maybe not really
Speaker 1: what I want, and I've kind of landed in a
Speaker 1: place that has me feeling better than I have in
Speaker 1: a long time, just basically like a big middle finger
Speaker 1: two to the expectations of what other people might want
Speaker 1: of me or what other people are doing. I think
Speaker 1: that the saying is like comparison is the death of
Speaker 1: joy or something like that. And I think I've realized
Speaker 1: that for too long, I've allowed myself to be too
Speaker 1: worried about how I compared to other people, or how
Speaker 1: my performance compares to other people, or how my success
Speaker 1: or my numbers or whatever. I think. I'm very as
Speaker 1: people know, I'm very goal oriented, very achievement oriented, and
Speaker 1: I sometimes have let that like get into my head
Speaker 1: too much. And I finally kind of sound like I
Speaker 1: don't need to be I don't need to be Mark
Speaker 1: Dreary or Andy may or Levi Morgan. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: be like I. I can be a very happy deer hunter,
Speaker 1: and I think I can still be successful in this
Speaker 1: line of business just being what I am, which is
Speaker 1: someone who loves this stuff, someone who's a pretty good storyteller,
Speaker 1: but someone who's you know, a decent but average hunter.
Speaker 1: Like I screw up a lot. I don't always I'm
Speaker 1: not always going to be killing big deer, and I
Speaker 1: don't always want to do that. I don't want my
Speaker 1: life to be one percent nothing, but you know, managing
Speaker 1: and growing deer and shooting two hundreds every year. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be a person who loves the
Speaker 1: fish and hiking camp too, and really loves the deer
Speaker 1: hunt and gets out there and kills a good one
Speaker 1: ever a few years, but also screws up every few years,
Speaker 1: and good or bad, he's gonna tell a fun story
Speaker 1: about it that you can relate to, Like, I think
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that has led to me being
Speaker 1: successful in any kind of way. And rather than fighting
Speaker 1: to be something different than that, I think I'm just
Speaker 1: coming in terms of being who I am and what
Speaker 1: I am and embracing that and enjoying that versus like
Speaker 1: punishing myself because I'm not killing four big bucks a
Speaker 1: year because I don't have as successful of a video
Speaker 1: series of somebody else, Like forget all that stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: just sick of worrying about that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: uh and all that I think kind of I had
Speaker 1: to have a year like last year where I kind
Speaker 1: of realized, like, you were just killing yourself for a
Speaker 1: stupid thing, get back to the fun of it. And
Speaker 1: so that's that's where I am this year, I think.
Speaker 1: And um, I think also last year, like I killed,
Speaker 1: I had a tough year in so many different ways.
Speaker 1: But another thing I did, which was kind of freeing,
Speaker 1: as I killed a couple of young bucks and you know,
Speaker 1: it was actually fun and I don't really feel bad
Speaker 1: about it. And I think that also changed my perspective
Speaker 1: on what I can do and what I should do
Speaker 1: and what I will do as well. So I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna feel bad if I go out on these public
Speaker 1: plan hunts and you know, tag a smaller buck or
Speaker 1: younger buck if that's if that gets me excited, if
Speaker 1: that would be something I'd be pretty pumped about. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of done with comments on YouTube or
Speaker 1: what people send me on d ms on Instagram or
Speaker 1: what someone at work says or whatever. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: do me And uh, I think that's gonna I think
Speaker 1: that's gonna work pretty well. Hey, you go get it,
Speaker 1: like I love that. I Uh, dude, I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: the same boat. Man. The best part about all that
Speaker 1: you can kind of boil it down is is, uh,
Speaker 1: I stopped giving a ship about what other people thought
Speaker 1: about me a very long time ago, and uh um,
Speaker 1: it's free to be able to do what you want
Speaker 1: and enjoy your own success the way you define it,
Speaker 1: not someone else. So uh, dude, I hope that whatever
Speaker 1: you're looking for, you find it and you slay it.
Speaker 1: Nice buddy. So let's let's talk about that a little more.
Speaker 1: Let's talk goals. So I'll just briefly expand on what
Speaker 1: I just said there. My my, my season is very
Speaker 1: different than maybe like six seven years ago when you
Speaker 1: and I did one of these episodes, because back then
Speaker 1: or even five or six years ago, we would have
Speaker 1: these goals hopes, some hit list conversation and I beg,
Speaker 1: all right, my goal is to kill a five year
Speaker 1: old buck in Michigan or like a four or five
Speaker 1: year old buck in Ohio. And I want to kill
Speaker 1: only Holy Field in Michigan. And I got a fill
Speaker 1: a tag in this day in this stick. You know,
Speaker 1: I was very that this year I only have two goals.
Speaker 1: Goal Number one is just is just keep it fun,
Speaker 1: Like I just want this year to be fun. And
Speaker 1: that's like anytime I'm in a tough spot or um
Speaker 1: debating what to do, or I'm sitting there and I'm
Speaker 1: starting to stress out about shooting hunt here or there,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna remind myself, is this fun? And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do what's what's fun this year. And I'm actually
Speaker 1: betting that that's probably gonna make me more successful too,
Speaker 1: or at least okay with whatever success comes by, because
Speaker 1: as you've you've heard over many years, I allow myself
Speaker 1: to get pretty stressed out during the hunting season. So
Speaker 1: this year, it's like I keep on telling myself, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be my season of joy, Like that's what it's
Speaker 1: gonna be about. So that's goal number one, and then
Speaker 1: goal number two is shooting. I just want good, clean shots.
Speaker 1: I don't want any more rush shots. I don't want
Speaker 1: a gut shot, I don't want to miss. I just
Speaker 1: want good shots. So this spring, this is one thing
Speaker 1: I have been doing all year, more than I have
Speaker 1: in the past. I've kept shooting all through the whole
Speaker 1: year pretty much. And in April I met with a
Speaker 1: shooting coach, had a really good time with him, and
Speaker 1: uh kind of tore down my whole system again and
Speaker 1: rebuilt it. And I've been shooting since April all the
Speaker 1: way through the summer, and I'm feeling better about my
Speaker 1: shooting than ever before. So I'm excited about that and
Speaker 1: I just want that to continue this year. So if
Speaker 1: I can have fun all year, and if I can,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you can't control the situation. But if
Speaker 1: I can feel like I had in control shots as year,
Speaker 1: where I know I did my part right at least,
Speaker 1: then this year is going to be a success. I
Speaker 1: don't care what I shoot. I don't care if it's
Speaker 1: five big bucks or nothing. If I can do those
Speaker 1: two things, this is gonna be a very successful year.
Speaker 1: So those are my two goals for this year. Now
Speaker 1: I do have other hopes, but those are my two goals.
Speaker 1: So that's that's what I got there. What do you
Speaker 1: go from a goal standpoint? Man, I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: it's like. The more I do this, the less I
Speaker 1: want to make goals because something always happens, or something
Speaker 1: changes so quickly before a moment of success or before
Speaker 1: a moment of failure, you find yourself going you know,
Speaker 1: that's not even what I wanted in the first place.
Speaker 1: But your mind changed, right. So if I you know,
Speaker 1: right now in Iowa, and I'm after a big, fat,
Speaker 1: mature buck, right, that's that's what I want. I want
Speaker 1: a four four year old or older five year old
Speaker 1: or older. Um, I don't know if he's got big fat,
Speaker 1: If he's got big antlers, that would be awesome. Um no,
Speaker 1: lie there. But on on top of that, you know,
Speaker 1: on my out of state hunts, it's gonna be any
Speaker 1: I llegal, any legal buck. Uh. And then as those
Speaker 1: vacation time or as that that trip starts to wind down,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be any legal deer. So I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it's I'm I. I like to go into these things
Speaker 1: with absolutely zero expectations now and just go with the
Speaker 1: flow and let whatever happens happens. And I think that
Speaker 1: if if you start to what what I My goal
Speaker 1: is to learn how to hunt animals in different environments.
Speaker 1: And so when I go out west to Nebraska, completely
Speaker 1: different landscape than what I hunt in Iowa or South
Speaker 1: Dakota or you know this year Oklahoma, these are different landscapes.
Speaker 1: So in order for me to be successful, I have
Speaker 1: to learn, and I can't. I can't just say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for any legal buck, because hell, I don't
Speaker 1: even know where any legal buck lives out there right now.
Speaker 1: I have to go educate myself on how to hunt
Speaker 1: in these environments and and use the principles from how
Speaker 1: I think dear move and other scenarios, or what I've
Speaker 1: learned in the shorter period, you know, a short period
Speaker 1: of time in some of my other Western hunting experiences
Speaker 1: or out of state hunts, and and really go and
Speaker 1: try to focus on you know, focus on what how
Speaker 1: how they move through the terrain, and just learn about
Speaker 1: dear behavior and other environments. And and once I can
Speaker 1: do that, then I feel like I can go. Okay,
Speaker 1: my goal this year is this because I know how
Speaker 1: they live out here now, and and honestly, man, I
Speaker 1: wish I could say I do know how they live,
Speaker 1: but I really don't. It's it's just I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: still in data collection mode and education mode on my
Speaker 1: oddest date hunts, and in Iowa, I'm in a completely
Speaker 1: different mode. I'm in you know, I'm in locate a
Speaker 1: big deer and try to kill him mode. So two
Speaker 1: completely different Uh, like a set of expectations to different goals,
Speaker 1: you know all that stuff. So yeah, that's my goal.
Speaker 1: I get that. Now you mentioned Iowa being different. Do
Speaker 1: you have any bucks that you hope made it to
Speaker 1: this year from the from last year that you know
Speaker 1: and have history with or is there any of that
Speaker 1: you actually know for sure based on a picture cell
Speaker 1: can't picture anything yet, Like, do you have any specific
Speaker 1: deer that you know would tickularly your fancy if they
Speaker 1: showed up? Yeah, there's only this year, only one, because well,
Speaker 1: I lost the main property the we're I think I
Speaker 1: told the story about I was one ridge over all
Speaker 1: last year from a really big deer. Lost that property, right, However,
Speaker 1: it's next to some public so I might be able
Speaker 1: to backdoor in there and uh maybe see if it's
Speaker 1: running that core area as well. I might throw a
Speaker 1: trail camera up in there. Uh come you know, come September.
Speaker 1: But outside of that, I really do think that, um,
Speaker 1: outside of that man one buck, I think there's one
Speaker 1: deer that showed up last year that was well excuse
Speaker 1: me too, both of them eight pointers. One was a clean,
Speaker 1: clean four year old. I mean he was pretty, he
Speaker 1: was pretty wide. He was pretty tall. I mean he's
Speaker 1: like a giant eight and then another eight pointer not
Speaker 1: as big of a frame, but he had junk all
Speaker 1: over the place, like junk on the base, is junk
Speaker 1: coming off the g twos and things like that. And uh,
Speaker 1: the first one that I mentioned, I didn't get any
Speaker 1: pictures of him after the season, but the the eight
Speaker 1: pointer was junk that owed up. He showed up late
Speaker 1: January after the season is over, so but I haven't
Speaker 1: had any pictures of him yet so far. However, all
Speaker 1: my trail cameras are out late. I have one cell
Speaker 1: camera up in that area and it's not catching anything
Speaker 1: too serious. I did. I did have one mature buck
Speaker 1: on camera so far, only one. He's an eight point
Speaker 1: or two, but he's not right on that cusp of
Speaker 1: do I want to put my tag around him or not?
Speaker 1: So we'll see. Um. So as far as just to
Speaker 1: answer your question, probably just one deer so far that
Speaker 1: I have any type of history with, well, does that
Speaker 1: does that make you nervous at all? Or do you
Speaker 1: feel like you know, you've had years like this in
Speaker 1: the past and September October they'll be there. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: that's why I try not to get so jacked up
Speaker 1: anymore because I look at look, you know seven years ago,
Speaker 1: you know when we started the uh the Wired to
Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, and we would have these conversations and I
Speaker 1: would a mark, Dude, I got seven shooters on the
Speaker 1: property right now, and every year, guess what would happen
Speaker 1: at September the old shift? They're gone, you have the
Speaker 1: old September shift, and so that I know it's coming,
Speaker 1: so I know sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad.
Speaker 1: So I don't even get my hopes up anymore until
Speaker 1: it's time to go actually hunt those properties. And so
Speaker 1: sometimes I may not even I may not even really
Speaker 1: get too hype about anything anymore until October or like
Speaker 1: late October, I mean, And so who knows who like,
Speaker 1: who knows what's gonna what's gonna happen, And a lot
Speaker 1: of it has to depend on my first my first
Speaker 1: card poll before the the process starts, if that makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: locating a deer via trail camera, trying to triangulate his
Speaker 1: position and then hop into a really good terrain feature
Speaker 1: where he's at at that time, and hopefully, uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, hopefully get have an encounter with a shooter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's come a long way, haven't we. Things have changed, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's all for the better too, write
Speaker 1: I find myself enjoying the time spending the tree stand
Speaker 1: more these days then you know even five years ago
Speaker 1: where it was. Man, you know, I gotta shoot a buck.
Speaker 1: I gotta shoot a buck now, I know what I
Speaker 1: need to do. I just you know, if a deer
Speaker 1: show like I just I just need the deer to
Speaker 1: show up, and you can't. You can't sit there and
Speaker 1: stress like, oh my god, a deer it's not showing up.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so frustrated. Well, they're You're wasting your energy
Speaker 1: at that point, right, You gotta you gotta start over again,
Speaker 1: and then you keep you keep going through whatever process
Speaker 1: works for you. And that's that's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: I wonder if like this, like that trajectory, if that's
Speaker 1: tied to age, or if that's tied to like your
Speaker 1: journey along with the path as a deer hunter, Like
Speaker 1: is there something to be said like this, like stress
Speaker 1: and comparison all that is yet just because we are
Speaker 1: younger and now we're aging out of that or is
Speaker 1: it actually like we've come into our own as hunters,
Speaker 1: and we for a long time we are still just
Speaker 1: there was so much to figure out, there was so
Speaker 1: much to really get our heads around. And now like
Speaker 1: we both are confident in our experience and what we
Speaker 1: know and how to do it. And now it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's different. Now, it's like, Okay, we know what
Speaker 1: to do, and if if it doesn't work out, it's
Speaker 1: not because we're idiots, it's because it didn't happen today.
Speaker 1: But we, you know, we're confident in the path. And
Speaker 1: and I wonder if that's part of like this shift
Speaker 1: in our mindsets in recent years. Um, I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and so I can't speak for you, but I
Speaker 1: can speak for me, alright. So let's see here sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen. So I'm on a seven year run in
Speaker 1: in Iowa, right, and so as far as my skills
Speaker 1: are concerned, I'm confident. I'm not shaky, like you know,
Speaker 1: like there's a difference probably between a rookie going to
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl and Tom Brady going to the super Bowl,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Now, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: sit here and compare myself to Tom Brady. But I've
Speaker 1: been around the block now a couple of times, and
Speaker 1: I know that I know how this thing works. Right
Speaker 1: If if they don't show up, there's no reason to
Speaker 1: get stressed about it. You have to do your job
Speaker 1: and do what has worked in the past. And you
Speaker 1: can do that without getting stressed or worked up about it.
Speaker 1: Just do what you do what you do. Just just
Speaker 1: put the plan into process or into you know, into
Speaker 1: go mode, and it just it just kind of happens
Speaker 1: at that point. And when it happens, then I feel
Speaker 1: like it's more pure, and it's uh, it's less like
Speaker 1: reading a textbook and more like catching the ultimate wave
Speaker 1: like uh, like body from point break. God, that's great.
Speaker 1: You had to somehow get a point break reference and
Speaker 1: hell yeah, I don't know, man, it's just um, it's
Speaker 1: just this this thing that I love to do, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: frustrating like running, it's like walking. It's as like it's
Speaker 1: not as I don't know how to put it without
Speaker 1: sounding and kind of arrogant. But I feel like I've
Speaker 1: figured certain things out, especially in Iowa. Right, But you
Speaker 1: remove me from what I feel very comfortable and confident
Speaker 1: in on the farms that I hunt in the terrain
Speaker 1: in Iowa. And now I'm a different hunter right because
Speaker 1: of the different scenarios and the different environments and things
Speaker 1: like that. So I'm two different people in in and
Speaker 1: out of certain worlds. So in Iowa, man, I'm confident
Speaker 1: like I can go into I could go into an
Speaker 1: area and I can say, well, of all the other
Speaker 1: places I've hunted, this, this is a good. This place
Speaker 1: looks like big Buck would live here, and I would
Speaker 1: either throw a trail camera in there or I would
Speaker 1: hunt it a couple of times. And I bet you
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna I'm gonna find the deer that live
Speaker 1: in this area if I give it enough time, A
Speaker 1: good deer in whatever area I'm hunting. And you take
Speaker 1: me out of that, Yeah, it's different. Yeah m hmmm,
Speaker 1: I um, I get that, hundredson, Get that. And I
Speaker 1: will say, kind of rewinding the tape a little bit
Speaker 1: and just jumping back into kind of how I have said,
Speaker 1: you know, here in my local stuff, I'm not it's
Speaker 1: worried about you know, specific deer or anything. I still
Speaker 1: do get excited though, to possibly see one of these deer,
Speaker 1: you know again, Like yeah, for a lot for a
Speaker 1: few years, there is you know very well. I was
Speaker 1: like upset with specific deer right and it was like
Speaker 1: I gotta kill this one deer and it was like
Speaker 1: that deer or bust um. And and now I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm still excited for a couple of deers show
Speaker 1: up and hopefully get a crack at them. But I'm
Speaker 1: also like I've just kind of come to the terms
Speaker 1: of the fact, back to what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: the whole time, Like nobody cares if I kill this
Speaker 1: deer or not, Like nobody really cares. Why should I
Speaker 1: care that much? I mean, this is not like for death.
Speaker 1: This is just we're just out there chasing, as our
Speaker 1: buddy Tony likes to say, rabbits with antlers with a
Speaker 1: stick and string, and there's no reason to do it
Speaker 1: except to have fun and to put meat in the freezer.
Speaker 1: So why am I out there freaking out about whether
Speaker 1: or not someone's gonna kill my buck quote unquote or
Speaker 1: if it's gonna happen. Like I'm gonna go out there
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna hope to see one of these deer
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna, you know, keep tabs on them as
Speaker 1: best as I can, and I'll study the patterns and
Speaker 1: I'll do the thing because it's fun. But if it
Speaker 1: just doesn't happen, I'm just I'm just sick of getting
Speaker 1: all frustrated about it. So yeah, in that world, there's
Speaker 1: only one person. It's me. Yeah, you know, you're you.
Speaker 1: You are in your world. I'm not in your world, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's that's where I really think a lot
Speaker 1: of people get frustrated in is because they're not they're there.
Speaker 1: There's too much into the equation. They're putting too much
Speaker 1: into the equation where the equation is quite simple if
Speaker 1: you can figure it out. And once you figure it out,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh man, this is this is awesome and
Speaker 1: and it's it's okay to let people into your world sometimes,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to defining success and actually having success,
Speaker 1: you're you're in control of that, nobody else is. So
Speaker 1: one last thing I gotta I gotta drop in here
Speaker 1: before we wrap it up, which is just uh, the
Speaker 1: hopes I have for a few deer in my Michigan
Speaker 1: spots because most of my honest state stuff saw that
Speaker 1: I saw the velvet, the velvet video you posted. I mean,
Speaker 1: anythink about that one? Is that compare him to some
Speaker 1: of the deer that you've gotten the past off that property.
Speaker 1: So this is in that general area. Um, so this
Speaker 1: is down in my local. I've got some different Michigan spots,
Speaker 1: and in that area, I've killed some you know, some
Speaker 1: pretty good deer. You know, bucks, uh four to six
Speaker 1: years old, And I killed my biggest Michigan buck, which
Speaker 1: is like a hundred sixty five in ten pointer, and
Speaker 1: then I've got a couple others that are like one
Speaker 1: thirty one forty. Um. So I got eyes the other
Speaker 1: day on a buck that's probably the middle of the
Speaker 1: pack on that one. He's the kind of deer that really,
Speaker 1: if you gave him another year, you know, he'd be
Speaker 1: like a mega giant. Um. But there's no way I'm
Speaker 1: passing like a hundred forty five hundred fifty thirteen pointer
Speaker 1: or something. So so yeah, I got eyes on a
Speaker 1: really nice buck. Um. He's got splits off both of
Speaker 1: his brow times and both of his G two's, So
Speaker 1: like one G two is a really deep split and
Speaker 1: the other G two is more of like a hook
Speaker 1: coming off of it, and then on his brow times
Speaker 1: there's like a small split coming off both brow times
Speaker 1: and actually a little tiny like sticker drop or almost
Speaker 1: coming off the main beam. And otherwise he's a main
Speaker 1: frame eight. So he's an eight with all that stuff. Um, so,
Speaker 1: really really cool deer. We don't get like nontypicals like that,
Speaker 1: at least in the areas I hunt very often. So
Speaker 1: that's a very uncommon set of characteristics. So that's just
Speaker 1: exciting to see a deer like that. Um. I actually
Speaker 1: got footage of him. I saw him again when I
Speaker 1: was out glassing last night too. Um I there's a
Speaker 1: possibility he's a buck that I no. I never saw
Speaker 1: this buck last year, but I got a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of him. He had split brow times last year.
Speaker 1: And again, like I said, we don't get those kinds
Speaker 1: of deer. Um. So it's the only split brow time
Speaker 1: buck I've had on camera. And I don't know years,
Speaker 1: three or four years, and now this buck comes back
Speaker 1: has splits, but more junk. It's not a perfect match.
Speaker 1: Like you know, sometimes the bucks you can see like
Speaker 1: it's obvious for sure, like they just got bigger, but
Speaker 1: all the same characteristics. This buck is like ish like
Speaker 1: kinda so I don't know, maybe maybe not, but super
Speaker 1: cool buck. Um. I did see another buck for sure.
Speaker 1: That is a deer from last year. I found this
Speaker 1: bucks shed two years ago. He was a wide eight pointer.
Speaker 1: Last year he popped a ninth point, so he was
Speaker 1: a nine points a three year old last year saw
Speaker 1: him like everywhere was passing him. And this year he's back.
Speaker 1: He's a ten pointer now but otherwise it looks exactly
Speaker 1: the same. And so he'll be a four year old
Speaker 1: this year and a deer I've seen a lot and
Speaker 1: super cool, so he'd be one I take a crack
Speaker 1: at would be excited about. Uh. So he's the wide
Speaker 1: nine and then the the number one buck. I have
Speaker 1: yet to see him, but I know he made it
Speaker 1: through the season. Um, he's a deer. I was calling Jr.
Speaker 1: Because two years ago, two or three years ago, whenever
Speaker 1: it was that, I was still in tran Um. This
Speaker 1: buck looked like him, but like a junior version of him,
Speaker 1: like a miniature version of him, and like every time
Speaker 1: I see him coming through the woods of like, oh
Speaker 1: ship's tran And then I realized it was not it
Speaker 1: was the little guy. Um, so I passed him a
Speaker 1: bunch that year, and then last year he was a
Speaker 1: deer I would have shot as a four year old
Speaker 1: last year and he was like just a big, really
Speaker 1: big eight pointer, um, and never got a crack at him,
Speaker 1: made it through. I don't know if he's still around
Speaker 1: this year, but he was around as of like late
Speaker 1: January or February. So knock on wood, hopefully he'll be
Speaker 1: around this year. And my guests that he'll just be
Speaker 1: a really big eight again and a five year old,
Speaker 1: so he would be a deer I'd be I'd be
Speaker 1: stoked to see as well. So so there's Junior, there's
Speaker 1: that non typical dude, there's the Y nine, and then
Speaker 1: there was another just like solid eight pointer last year
Speaker 1: I saw around quite a bit in one of these
Speaker 1: areas and um, and I passed on him as well,
Speaker 1: and I was like, kind of if he, like God,
Speaker 1: he might be might be a four year old I have,
Speaker 1: but probably a three year old, and so I never
Speaker 1: really tried to get after him, but I thought about it.
Speaker 1: And so if he's around this year, he would be
Speaker 1: a definite shooter too. So yeah, so there's a handful
Speaker 1: of good Michigan deer run around and you never know
Speaker 1: what might show up. There's always the chance for a surprise.
Speaker 1: But um, I do love still having some places I
Speaker 1: hunt year after year where you do get to know
Speaker 1: some of the deer year after year, because that going
Speaker 1: back to the fun, like it is fun to see
Speaker 1: these deer and see how they change, and to try
Speaker 1: to look back at what do they do on camera
Speaker 1: last year? And what did I see last year? Will
Speaker 1: they will they do that thing again? Um? I love
Speaker 1: like the public land new hunting kinds of places, But
Speaker 1: there's something to be said about having some history like
Speaker 1: that is a fun puzzle to work through too, So
Speaker 1: I'm excited about that. I definitely want to be able
Speaker 1: to do that someday. Right to own the property or too,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man like be in control of something
Speaker 1: because I've I've never had that. I've never had a
Speaker 1: property where I could go in and you know, be
Speaker 1: in control where it's just me or my fami, my
Speaker 1: hunting right because if I always share it with someone else,
Speaker 1: they go and do their things. There's never really any
Speaker 1: conversations about what to shoot or not to shoot. Um
Speaker 1: And thus the days for me of really trying to
Speaker 1: identify and follow along with a single deer. Are almost
Speaker 1: all but over until I you know, get get that
Speaker 1: opportunity someday hopefully. Why don't you go buy that farm
Speaker 1: those landowners, those kids are selling. Yeah, dude, I live
Speaker 1: in the most expensive county in Iowa. Unfortunately, and unless
Speaker 1: I had a million dollars just kind of sitting in
Speaker 1: my back pocket, uh, it's not gonna happen. All right, folks,
Speaker 1: here's what we gotta do. We all gotta start. We
Speaker 1: got all gotta go and start buying Dan Johnson. Let's
Speaker 1: give him some uh Iowa farm. No, we're gonna We're
Speaker 1: all gonna go and like put your podcast on repeat
Speaker 1: so that your number skyrocket to like ten million downloads
Speaker 1: an episode, and then you can charge a million dollars
Speaker 1: for your sponsors next year and buy farm and then
Speaker 1: invite me to hunt the next year. I draw right there,
Speaker 1: we go, Hey, all right, if that, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what If that works, you know, let's let's give it
Speaker 1: a try. All right, All right, man, this is uh.
Speaker 1: I think this is a good place to wrap it
Speaker 1: up and get to part two of my podcast today.
Speaker 1: But thank you, this is uh, this is too this
Speaker 1: is this is too long and coming again, and I
Speaker 1: think we got to try to figure out a way.
Speaker 1: Schedules are tough these days with both of what we
Speaker 1: got going on. But if we can somehow figure out
Speaker 1: a way to do like a check in like this,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like once a month or something through
Speaker 1: the hunting season, it's just so much fun to get
Speaker 1: to talk about what's going on in our lives in
Speaker 1: the hunting season and like foul along, like I missed
Speaker 1: that if if we can see it, we should try
Speaker 1: to do that this year. Absolutely, And let me say
Speaker 1: good luck to you Mark man, I hope you slay,
Speaker 1: and good luck to everybody who's listening. Man. I I
Speaker 1: love when I see success from other people man, whether
Speaker 1: it's someone like Mark or you know, regular Joe who
Speaker 1: you know put in sixty hours on the factory line
Speaker 1: and got out then got it done. So I enjoy
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, so true. Agreed. All right, thanks buddy,
Speaker 1: alright back with me on the show for your third appearance.
Speaker 1: I think Eddie, we've got Eddie Claypool. Welcome back, Eddie,
Speaker 1: thank you glad to be here. These uh, these are
Speaker 1: always some of my favorite chats. So I appreciate coming
Speaker 1: on every every time I start thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: wanting the chat in the weeds on something d I
Speaker 1: y bow hunting. My buddy Tony Peterson always reminds me,
Speaker 1: you gotta call Eddie. You gotta call Eddie. And when
Speaker 1: we were when we were talking about doing this series,
Speaker 1: you popped into my mind before Tony suggested this, So
Speaker 1: I got ahead of him on this one. I said,
Speaker 1: we gotta talk to Eddie. So I'm glad you're able
Speaker 1: to make it happen. Thank you for doing this well.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. If you want to get some redneck
Speaker 1: you know Amphiles, you're you got the right guy what
Speaker 1: we're looking for. And uh, you know, with the season
Speaker 1: about to kick off, I know you're hitting the road
Speaker 1: here soon and me too. We're doing this little mini
Speaker 1: series Eddie where I'm calling out to what would you
Speaker 1: do format in which you know we were basically, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna run you through a bunch of hypothetical hunting scenarios,
Speaker 1: gonna take you through some doozies. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: little bit of a gauntlet here and there, and uh,
Speaker 1: I just want to hear how you would handle it.
Speaker 1: How you would deal with this challenge or this situation,
Speaker 1: What would you be thinking about, what's the kind of
Speaker 1: what are the other things you'd want to know to
Speaker 1: better make a decision? Um? You know, I think we
Speaker 1: can just have an interesting conversation about these different possible
Speaker 1: scenarios and uh and learn a little bit about how
Speaker 1: Eddie Claypool makes it happen in the woods. So are
Speaker 1: you game to go down this path? Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: interested see how what comes out of my mouth too.
Speaker 1: I'll probably be learning about myself. That sounds good to
Speaker 1: me than Eddie. So I think in the interest of
Speaker 1: just scratching our white tail, that's as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: How about we just jump right into the first scenario.
Speaker 1: And in this one, Eddie, I want to imagine that
Speaker 1: you have got to go back to your public land roots. Now.
Speaker 1: I know that recently you you picked up, you bought
Speaker 1: a piece of property yourself, but let's let's imagine that
Speaker 1: you couldn't hunt it this year for whatever reason. You
Speaker 1: can't hunt your home for your home farm, so you
Speaker 1: gotta hunt public land. And you unfortunately realize this in August.
Speaker 1: It's late and you're like, oh, man, I gotta hunt
Speaker 1: some new public land. You only are going to have
Speaker 1: one weekend in August to prepare for this brand new adventure.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you one weekend, so you've got two days.
Speaker 1: How would you spend your only two days of public land?
Speaker 1: Whe tell prep if that was the situation you were in,
Speaker 1: what would you do over the course of those forty
Speaker 1: eight hours to maximize your preparations and scouting to hunt
Speaker 1: this public peace? Now, I got a point one of
Speaker 1: the things. This would be a new piece of public
Speaker 1: land you're hunting. This can't be somewhere you've been before.
Speaker 1: So that's the situation. What would you do it? Well?
Speaker 1: Now on what I got to get done, you know,
Speaker 1: in the season, and only having those two days to
Speaker 1: on ground, I'm going to spend a lot more time
Speaker 1: outside of those two days on maps and Google Earth
Speaker 1: and stuff, you know, looking at it from aerial and
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm gonna the during those two days. The
Speaker 1: main thing I'm gonna do is drive the roads, learn
Speaker 1: all the access points, and you know how to get
Speaker 1: around in the place and get a feel for the
Speaker 1: lay of the land, and you know what's there in
Speaker 1: the way of the habitat, but mainly now a days,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use technol ergy to scout that I'm
Speaker 1: going to get above it and look down on it,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna want to know where the roads are
Speaker 1: for the main access or any access points are. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mark them all, and then I'm going to look
Speaker 1: for the most inaccessible spots on that public land. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be some spots somewhere that has some serious problems
Speaker 1: obstacles about getting a warm body to them, and those
Speaker 1: are the few that I'm gonna mark, and then I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, take it to the next level that any
Speaker 1: normal whitetailed guy would do is figure out what winds
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need to hunt them, how I'm going to
Speaker 1: get to them. If that means, you know, if I've
Speaker 1: got to get watercraft involved something, Usually there's you know,
Speaker 1: um water, you know, creeks, rivers, lakes, something, and there's
Speaker 1: usually spots along them that are like a long way
Speaker 1: from a road. And so water access is an important
Speaker 1: thing I've used over the years, either chess waiters to
Speaker 1: wait you know, creeks that the average guy is not
Speaker 1: going to try to even think about getting across or
Speaker 1: putting in a little small canoe or something. But the
Speaker 1: two days I'm going to be there in the summer,
Speaker 1: I'm not really big on putting myself out in that
Speaker 1: habitat and walking around in it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to gain them and accept a lot of ticks and jiggers,
Speaker 1: and it may be a snake bike. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my scouting from above at home a
Speaker 1: lot outside those two days, and then the two days
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to all the work to learn all
Speaker 1: I can learn about the road and water access points,
Speaker 1: and um, look at the land in comparison to what
Speaker 1: it looks like from above, in other words, to compare
Speaker 1: the fields. See what's being farmed this year versus you
Speaker 1: know an open field on Google Earth. That the imagery
Speaker 1: could be a year old, you know, and it might
Speaker 1: be a fallow field this year's grown up in weeds
Speaker 1: or something. And I want to learn what I can
Speaker 1: from the roads. But mainly the two days, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be me out there beating my brains out through
Speaker 1: that habitat looking for anything dearer. Wise, UM, I just
Speaker 1: don't put a lot of stock and needing to do
Speaker 1: that in August. I would like to have had those
Speaker 1: two days back the previous um January or February. You
Speaker 1: know where I where I could have got in there
Speaker 1: when everybody's out, the woods are open and the signs
Speaker 1: still there. But if I've just got two days in August,
Speaker 1: it's going to be learning where I'm gonna mount my
Speaker 1: attack from figuring out where everybody else is probably gonna
Speaker 1: mainly be and what they're gonna be doing, and then
Speaker 1: trying to get around, you know, to where they're not
Speaker 1: none of them going to be getting to, and then
Speaker 1: you're planning to be once the season kicks off. That's
Speaker 1: when you'll really get boots on the ground in the habitat,
Speaker 1: in setting stands and and figuring it out as you
Speaker 1: go in season. Is there right? Exactually? And then really
Speaker 1: I'm kind of you know, I I know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of narrow in my scope on light till I've never
Speaker 1: really been an excellent early season might kill hunter. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not real good at figuring out how to kill
Speaker 1: those big mature bucks in early October, all of them
Speaker 1: I've ever dealt with. That is one of the least
Speaker 1: likely times you're gonna kill them now, I do know
Speaker 1: the hunting community has figured out how to short circuit
Speaker 1: that now by you know, the grow your own, feed
Speaker 1: your own, um, you know, cornering them and stuff. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Yeah, I'm not that if you
Speaker 1: want to hunt them straight up to fair Chase, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna really plan on killing my buck in early October.
Speaker 1: I probably won't plan on really hunting them seriously until
Speaker 1: the third week of October, uh earliest. I'm a rud hunter.
Speaker 1: That's money what I've always just honed in on with
Speaker 1: catching bucks when they're out prowling. And uh so I'm
Speaker 1: going to go in there in early October and soon
Speaker 1: as you know, the temperatures are inductive and I can
Speaker 1: get around, and I'm going to go ahead and put
Speaker 1: my you know, feet on the ground and learn a
Speaker 1: lot of things I learned. Then are you know old
Speaker 1: signed like signpost drubs areas where you see, you know,
Speaker 1: where the big bucks have rubbed their horns in past years.
Speaker 1: But I'm not really planning. I'm looking more for pinch points,
Speaker 1: if you want to get technical. I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: lay of the land and the way the vegetation and
Speaker 1: it all comes together and the and the pinch points
Speaker 1: can be very subtle things that you know, maybe early
Speaker 1: on bow hunter may not really recognize that is a
Speaker 1: pinch point just because of the certain changes in vegetation. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got to kind of get some you know, experience
Speaker 1: under your belt to figure out how those bucks like
Speaker 1: to move through different types of habitat. Just an edge
Speaker 1: between a you know, a real grown up field and
Speaker 1: an open woodlot can be a pinch point if if
Speaker 1: if you know, you know, if it's if it's in
Speaker 1: the rights and area, So it doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: that classical hour glass pinch point. I'm looking for like
Speaker 1: between two big blocks September with a little, you know,
Speaker 1: narrow tree line in between them. But um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go in there in early October and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get a real good feel for where a few
Speaker 1: of these points that I think these rutting bucks are
Speaker 1: gonna walk through when they're going from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. And and that's a lot of what I
Speaker 1: do on the aerial scouting. You can you can figure
Speaker 1: where the bigger blocks the cover at in relation to
Speaker 1: the food, and you can kind of put a pink
Speaker 1: by numbers together and figure out, well, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of the feedings going on here, a lot of
Speaker 1: the bettings going on over here. So all I got
Speaker 1: to figure out is how are they getting between those
Speaker 1: two points and get right in the middle there in
Speaker 1: a in a bit of a pinch point and hunting
Speaker 1: during the rut. And I know that may not be
Speaker 1: the number one best way to do it, but it's
Speaker 1: what I've done. And you've got to dance with the
Speaker 1: one that brought you so um, I've just always done that.
Speaker 1: And because of the time that I usually put in
Speaker 1: and the patience I usually put in, I I have,
Speaker 1: you know, feathered my nest with a lot of good
Speaker 1: bucks during that light October to light November period, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a question for you, and I know that you've
Speaker 1: been hunting public land white tilles for a long time
Speaker 1: and you saw what things were like, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: plus years ago, and you've also seen what public lands like,
Speaker 1: excuse me, in the last couple of years. And I
Speaker 1: know that recently that you've had some frustrations with you know,
Speaker 1: all the hunters and the pressure and how that's changed things.
Speaker 1: I'm curious have you had to have you had to
Speaker 1: seek out some of those more subtle pinch points more
Speaker 1: recently in these newer days because the obvious pinch points
Speaker 1: are becoming you know, a spot that everybody goes to now,
Speaker 1: is that those subtle spots become more important now in
Speaker 1: recent years because of the fact that public land hunting
Speaker 1: is gained popularity and those obvious pinch points are becoming
Speaker 1: obviously popular. Oh. Absolutely, that's just a no brainer right there,
Speaker 1: because I mean twenty years ago, when I was hunting
Speaker 1: public land hardcore, I I didn't even hardly it didn't
Speaker 1: seem like public land because I I just didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with people. Uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. To me, see, I've been at this like
Speaker 1: forty plus years now, and I've seen a pretty broad
Speaker 1: spectrum of what the hunting industry has been through, and
Speaker 1: I've watched the game departments evolved. I've watched the hunting
Speaker 1: industry evolve, and I've seen and I know that sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm called a negative Nancy, but I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 1: to you. Over the you know, the past forty and
Speaker 1: especially the past twenty years, I haven't seen a whole
Speaker 1: lot of positives and um, the hunting world, populations of
Speaker 1: the animals, the mature animals, the access to the hunting um.
Speaker 1: A lot of things have gone backwards. Um. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean to be negative, but I'm just telling you
Speaker 1: what I have seen. And yeah, nowadays, if you go
Speaker 1: try to hit the most obvious pinch points, you might
Speaker 1: as well to sco play golf because there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a guy or two or three that's already set in there.
Speaker 1: And uh that I don't deal with. I I have.
Speaker 1: I started my hunting career out west in the late
Speaker 1: seventies and I was a wilderness fanatic and I'm just
Speaker 1: not a endo. I don't like dealing with people. I'm
Speaker 1: my only child, and I'm not socially good and i
Speaker 1: don't like dealing with people. And God forgive me for it,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to go to probably the most worthless
Speaker 1: sort of spot if necessary, to get away from people.
Speaker 1: But then again, that's the greatest thing you can do
Speaker 1: in public plan because any any buck worth is, you know,
Speaker 1: white gold is gonna hide out where people ain't tromping
Speaker 1: him up and stomping him up twice a day. He's
Speaker 1: gonna figure out where in his home that he can
Speaker 1: hide out and have some security. And of course I
Speaker 1: figure that same thing out because that's where the you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to figure out where the people aren't getting to.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be some nooks and crannies on all public
Speaker 1: lands that for some reason, and it can be a
Speaker 1: multiple to the reasons, but there will be some reasons
Speaker 1: why they're overlooked. And you know, there might still be
Speaker 1: a guy or two getting into him once in a while.
Speaker 1: But but if that old buck doesn't get bumped but
Speaker 1: once ever so many days versus he's you know, going
Speaker 1: through this pench point and he gets killed the first
Speaker 1: time he walks through it or shot at or wounded.
Speaker 1: I mean he's gonna be back there in that thicket
Speaker 1: that you know, eight foot tall Johnson grass thicket that's
Speaker 1: ten acres that nobody in the right mind walks through it,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's eight foot tall Johnson grass, right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, I mean, those bucks, unless they
Speaker 1: just totally light out and go for a no new
Speaker 1: home range, they're going to have to be in those
Speaker 1: areas where the people aren't. And so that's what I do.
Speaker 1: In the last twenty years. Gosh almighty, ever since the
Speaker 1: advent of the video era of the hunting world. See
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so far before the advent of video hunting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean TV, and I mean back
Speaker 1: in them days, it was just utopia. It was just
Speaker 1: too good to be true. Living through that era and
Speaker 1: then having to live through this one is just enough
Speaker 1: to make you want to shoot yourself because you know
Speaker 1: the difference between the way it used to be in
Speaker 1: the way it is, and it haunts you. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I think ignorance would be blessed. In other words, maybe
Speaker 1: I just started bow hunting twenty years ago and didn't
Speaker 1: even know the way it used to be. So yeah,
Speaker 1: on public land nowadays, don't don't go here's another thing,
Speaker 1: elk too out west. I've watched what's happened to the
Speaker 1: elk thing. If you go to any of your classical
Speaker 1: elk cabitat the stuff that they want to live in
Speaker 1: and that they do live in all year except hunting season.
Speaker 1: If you go to that anymore on public lands, and
Speaker 1: then across the counter type of hunt, you're you're just
Speaker 1: you're out of your mind. You gotta look for the
Speaker 1: hell holes and just go right straight to them. Because
Speaker 1: after the first day season or two out west all
Speaker 1: of Elk pile off and and canyons and and living
Speaker 1: and blow down cliff the areas where nobody goes. And
Speaker 1: it's the same way with our public land. White tells
Speaker 1: you just gotta get don't park, it's the normal trail heads.
Speaker 1: Don't walk the normal you know, routes in and get
Speaker 1: in the normal pinch points, get your top blow out
Speaker 1: or not taplow anymore. That see that. That dates me
Speaker 1: right there. But get your aerials or get on Google
Speaker 1: Earth and and pick out the most inaccessible spots on
Speaker 1: public lands and the thickest, nastiest ones. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got some spots on public plan that I have worked
Speaker 1: on two or three winners in a row, trying to
Speaker 1: get them where I felt like I could shoot a
Speaker 1: deer if it come by. You know. Um, I'm talking
Speaker 1: stuff that's so thick that you I often don't see
Speaker 1: a deer touch within twenty yards of me, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's where they spend their days. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you get back in there and they get to chase
Speaker 1: them those around and that during the day, and it
Speaker 1: can be quite a little freak show going on around
Speaker 1: you in them in them hell holes on public land sometimes.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's it's just a matter of common sense
Speaker 1: to me. I don't know if if I call it that,
Speaker 1: because I've been doing it for forty plus years, but
Speaker 1: if if it's a new guy, beginner, don't go with
Speaker 1: traditional thoughts, don't go with traditional advice. Get outside the
Speaker 1: box and and just dive in and you're gonna figure
Speaker 1: it out. Um, you know, don't go fish fight with
Speaker 1: everybody over the traditional pinch point to get a wife
Speaker 1: from them. Let them have them. Those big old bucks
Speaker 1: won't walk through them probably and the douled anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: get back in their hoard or just staging an arc,
Speaker 1: you know, and those stickets and get away from the
Speaker 1: traditional good spots and and and take your chances on
Speaker 1: that and you'll be better off. So so then kind
Speaker 1: of jumping off of them, I've got another scenario because
Speaker 1: I want to I want to pitch or I want
Speaker 1: to pivot to a different situation. Let's imagine that you
Speaker 1: instead of being the hunter that you are, and instead
Speaker 1: of you know, having the experience that you have, let's
Speaker 1: imagine that instead you are a newer hunter. Well, how
Speaker 1: suld I frame this? Basically, you're someone who is hunting
Speaker 1: not for a trophy buck. You're not trying to hunt
Speaker 1: them mature buck. You're just trying to get any buck.
Speaker 1: It's a meat crisis. You need food, your family is
Speaker 1: desperately hungry. And let's say you've got a day job,
Speaker 1: so you don't have a lot of time either. So
Speaker 1: it's like a your weekend warrior who's just trying to
Speaker 1: get a deer and yeah, just a bohn and you're
Speaker 1: hunting public land. So how would your advice change on
Speaker 1: public land given that now I'm talking, I need any deer.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to kill it on the weekends. I just
Speaker 1: gotta eat. How would you approach things in that case?
Speaker 1: Is it the exact same advice you just gave or
Speaker 1: something different? Now? Not at all? Not really? I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't worry about doing what I just said. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a trophy buck scenario. I've been locked in
Speaker 1: on antlers for I don't know how long. I even
Speaker 1: back when I didn't know how to get him, I
Speaker 1: was infatuated with him and I But if you're just
Speaker 1: wanting to hunt to get a deer and fun. You
Speaker 1: can take a lot of the pressure off and a
Speaker 1: lot of the work. Now you're going to have some
Speaker 1: people problems. Get ready for that and get mentally psyched up,
Speaker 1: but you know that's okay. Don't worry about it. Just
Speaker 1: go and have some fun. Um, get in the traditional
Speaker 1: spots that fine. People will be coming and going here
Speaker 1: and there's something there, but they're gonna move the deer.
Speaker 1: They'll run dose by you, they'll run the small bucks
Speaker 1: by you. Just get used to it, be happy with it.
Speaker 1: Shoot one of them when you can. Don't get anal
Speaker 1: about it. Um. Like a trophy hunter does you know
Speaker 1: when that stuff gets all messed up for him, he's
Speaker 1: just he's ready to go cork off and tear the guys.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been out there set and have guy
Speaker 1: put a tree stand up forty yards from me. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm like. But the way I mean, no,
Speaker 1: just take the traditional advice there on public land, like
Speaker 1: for instance, in October. One of the very best ways
Speaker 1: I used to kill deer, and I'm we're when we're
Speaker 1: talking about just killing deer, you know, of any kind, shaped,
Speaker 1: size or sex. Um. October can be really good for
Speaker 1: that because um it's cooling down a little. The masked crop,
Speaker 1: the acorn crop is usually falling. So what I would
Speaker 1: do is I would go to the public land and
Speaker 1: if it's any kind of traditional Midwestern stuff, it's usually
Speaker 1: got acorn producing trees, and or another big one is
Speaker 1: per simmons. Um, if you're in habitat has per simmons
Speaker 1: and or acorns that are falling in October, go and
Speaker 1: start your scouting. Spread down with bug crap. Get get
Speaker 1: out there, find out where there is some good acorns
Speaker 1: hitting the ground or per simmon thickets that are starting
Speaker 1: to drop, and set up on them. And you know
Speaker 1: that time of year in early October, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you're gonna get overrun with people.
Speaker 1: Then it seems like the madhouse begins around the last
Speaker 1: week of October when everybody from out of state comes
Speaker 1: and the population of hunters quadruples, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And uh so get out there early and just hunt
Speaker 1: some food sources if you can scout, like if it's
Speaker 1: a public lanned area that they do the share cropping
Speaker 1: in the farming in get out there in glass in
Speaker 1: September and spout some spots where the hung deer are
Speaker 1: coming out into some bean fields, or you know, something
Speaker 1: like that. But master trees have been good to me.
Speaker 1: In October, I can walk through a lot of country
Speaker 1: and look at a lot of oaks, and there will
Speaker 1: be certain ones that everything's just right. And when the acorns,
Speaker 1: usually the white oaks, are hitting the ground in October,
Speaker 1: them deer will concentrate on that hard core. And all
Speaker 1: you gotta do immediately if you see an acorn crop
Speaker 1: hitting the ground with a lot of you know, tracks
Speaker 1: around it and droppings and stuff, and maybe a few
Speaker 1: of them little early season rubs, just back off down
Speaker 1: wind or where you want that set a tree stand
Speaker 1: real quick and get out of there, you know, and
Speaker 1: slip back in there, usually for an evening hunt's been
Speaker 1: the best to me. Um, get in there early early
Speaker 1: evening and get set up and let them come in
Speaker 1: there to feed in the evening and and fill your
Speaker 1: tag and have some fun. Yeah. Great, great advice. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of newer hunters who get into
Speaker 1: this and by default have to hunt public land. But
Speaker 1: when they go out there seeking out public land information,
Speaker 1: it's it's mostly a bunch of people like you and
Speaker 1: me who are obsessed with big deer and stuff, and
Speaker 1: then this new hunter is thinking, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: sounds like a death march, and they're doing this and
Speaker 1: this and this and this and this, and I think
Speaker 1: I think you're I think your example is perfect and
Speaker 1: it's a great reminder that if you're just trying to
Speaker 1: kill a deer, the opportunities are out there and you
Speaker 1: don't need to kill yourself to do it. Just a
Speaker 1: few things have got to go right to get that dough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just spend so long since I thought outside the
Speaker 1: big antler box that I just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I remember in my early days I have public planned
Speaker 1: a lot and I killed you know, plenty of dear
Speaker 1: early season, and you know, I actually get better in
Speaker 1: October and I did November then, Um, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: get out there, have fun and do your thing and
Speaker 1: then lay the November to the nuts like us, you know.
Speaker 1: So so I know that because of some of like
Speaker 1: the just the NonStop bumping into people and all that,
Speaker 1: I think part of that was what led you to
Speaker 1: eventually wanted by your own play, right, And from what
Speaker 1: I understand, you correct me, if I'm wrong, but I
Speaker 1: think you're entering your third year with that property, is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, this will be my third fall on it.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, getting old is a learning experience,
Speaker 1: and I think I went from you know, early age
Speaker 1: to about fifty five. It seems like before I realized
Speaker 1: that you finally do get old. I made a lot
Speaker 1: of good years through my forties and fifties, hardcore, still
Speaker 1: just going and not feeling any let up. But in
Speaker 1: the past about five to eight years, you know, age
Speaker 1: is catching up with me. And I'm going through such
Speaker 1: a time, a metamorphosis of change and and mental and
Speaker 1: physical and emotional that I don't hardly know myself anymore.
Speaker 1: And you were correct in the fact that part, definitely,
Speaker 1: part of the reason why I invested my life savings
Speaker 1: in a piece of ground was to kind get away
Speaker 1: from the maddening crowd of the public lands. Though I
Speaker 1: also because of that that's been my mantra is the
Speaker 1: public land. It's really almost prostitutional to go to what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, because you're turning your back on your roots,
Speaker 1: You're turning your back on everything that really feathered your
Speaker 1: nest and made you feel like a man. And taught
Speaker 1: you everything, because there's nothing any harder than consistently killing
Speaker 1: big bucks off public land with a bow. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's right up there, high at the top of the
Speaker 1: challenge pile. And now, but what I found that recently
Speaker 1: was more than the fact that I wanted to get
Speaker 1: away from public land. That was a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: But the main thing I have found out is that
Speaker 1: with age, my priorities have changed. They I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been like pulling teeth because I've been siding down a
Speaker 1: slippery slope, clawing all the way to stay at where
Speaker 1: I've been, and I haven't got it done. I've just
Speaker 1: slowly slid down the slope. And now I'm a new creation.
Speaker 1: And basically what I want now, what I want now
Speaker 1: out of my bow hunting time doesn't really have much
Speaker 1: to do with those big trophy bucks anymore. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to well, it doesn't have to do with having
Speaker 1: to prove my macho is m too to everybody by
Speaker 1: killing them off public plan. I mean, you've got to admit,
Speaker 1: through the most of your life there is some and
Speaker 1: this is a taboo subject with guys. We don't like
Speaker 1: to talk about our egos and we don't like to
Speaker 1: admit we got them, but we do. We love to
Speaker 1: accomplish something. It's the challenge. It's put in the mail,
Speaker 1: you know, in the mail being he wants to be
Speaker 1: a good you know, and so. But when you get older,
Speaker 1: you you just that fades away. I have gotten to
Speaker 1: where I could literally care less about what anybody else
Speaker 1: knows that I do, thinks I do what I do.
Speaker 1: I am out there now. The reason I got this land,
Speaker 1: I call it my old man place. It's the place
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna just take my time and enjoy. I
Speaker 1: I get so much fun I'd have going and pulling
Speaker 1: trail camera cards and looking at the deer and just
Speaker 1: watching them, um throughout the year, watching their whole year,
Speaker 1: how they you know, everything changes. Um Now I don't
Speaker 1: have to work. I used to work, you know, solid
Speaker 1: straight nine months, six seven days a week, to get
Speaker 1: off in the fall and hunt. You know, now I don't.
Speaker 1: I get to watch them all year. I watch him
Speaker 1: shed graantlers, I watched him start growing new ones. I
Speaker 1: see them come and go. I'm learning so much about
Speaker 1: deer right now that I didn't know outside of the
Speaker 1: three months I used to spend on them, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, I just have a ball out on that property.
Speaker 1: It's so peaceful. I'm out in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 1: that of course that fits me. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be around. I can't hear a car all
Speaker 1: day long. I don't see or hear a human thing
Speaker 1: all day long out on that place. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: peace and quiet and uh and oinman, I guess that's
Speaker 1: what you you mature into. I think after forty years
Speaker 1: is that pad money go and pile and a pile
Speaker 1: of antlers up that would fit in a dump truck.
Speaker 1: I'm ready just to just take it. I haven't even shot.
Speaker 1: I'm not shot a much a good big buck off
Speaker 1: my place the first two years hunt it it. I
Speaker 1: just I didn't shoot one. So let me ask you
Speaker 1: this then, eddie back to like kind of some scenarios here.
Speaker 1: I know that you've you've hunted two years there now.
Speaker 1: I also understand that you've started doing some habitat work
Speaker 1: and some of that kind of stuff too. If you
Speaker 1: could rewind the clock back to the offseason or like
Speaker 1: just before your first season hunting this place for the
Speaker 1: first time, you could rewind the clock then and change
Speaker 1: one thing that could either be change one of the
Speaker 1: habitat projects you did, or change hunting strategy you end
Speaker 1: up trying, or change a stand location or anything that
Speaker 1: you can go back two years and change one thing.
Speaker 1: What would that be and why? Well, boor that's a
Speaker 1: good one. I almost pulled a blank or not with
Speaker 1: I've made some mistakes, nothing big. I'm learning as I go.
Speaker 1: I paint my numbers. I haven't took a bunch of
Speaker 1: courses or had any big shots come in and teach
Speaker 1: me habitat management. I'm one of these old cusses that
Speaker 1: wants to do everything on his own, make his own
Speaker 1: mistakes and learn. And i haven't done everything right. But
Speaker 1: I've got enough common sense. I'm probably pretty good biologists,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. After my life outdoors, I
Speaker 1: could qualify as a biologist, except I can't spell with
Speaker 1: scientific names. But anyway, I wouldn't change a lot of
Speaker 1: anything that I've done. I had cattle in the place
Speaker 1: the first year, and that's probably the biggest thing I
Speaker 1: would change. I am turning my place into it just
Speaker 1: basically it's gonna be a hole in the ground that's
Speaker 1: gonna be a wildlife mecca. I'm gonna let it go natural.
Speaker 1: It's had cattle on it since the beginning of time,
Speaker 1: and it's been burned off. All acres got burned off
Speaker 1: slick off every year for for as long back as
Speaker 1: you can see. I stopped the cattle this year. I
Speaker 1: stopped the burning this year. I'm gonna, you know, do
Speaker 1: selective burning in the future. But you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change a lot in the habitat except let it go
Speaker 1: natural a year quicker because not having the cattle in there,
Speaker 1: it's making a big difference in my prairie. My grasslands
Speaker 1: are growing up and the prairie itself to bloosh them.
Speaker 1: It's already about four ft tall this year, when everybody
Speaker 1: around me is at two ft because the cows keep
Speaker 1: it eight. And it's gonna make a lot of difference
Speaker 1: in the number of deer I have. They're gonna bed
Speaker 1: in my prairie now. And I don't care if I
Speaker 1: kill a deer on that place for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. I almost don't want to kill one, because
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna walk up to it and look
Speaker 1: at it and go, why ow, there's another dead deer.
Speaker 1: Um If it's a hundred and typical. I'm still not
Speaker 1: going to be thrilled about killing it. Um. I've gotten
Speaker 1: where I'm more into the providing him with the place,
Speaker 1: and I get a whiz off of looking at him
Speaker 1: on the camera. But I am not going to get
Speaker 1: a whiz out of killing him. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: I I mean it sounds a little bit crazy, but
Speaker 1: also crazy in like the way I may I understand it,
Speaker 1: You know what I mean that I can see where
Speaker 1: you're at, and I can also I too in a
Speaker 1: different scale, But I too have gotten to know local
Speaker 1: deer and and it is it's almost sad when you
Speaker 1: do walk up on a deer that you watched for
Speaker 1: three years and you're never gonna get to chase him again. No,
Speaker 1: he's gone for good. And I know that's fine. We're
Speaker 1: hunting a renewable resource and I get it. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't plan on probably ever not killing UM. I eat
Speaker 1: it and I utilize it. But I also have gotten
Speaker 1: so far from I was a fetish on antlers. I
Speaker 1: mean I would walk naked backwards across the United States
Speaker 1: to kill hundred forty inch deer at one point, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, that's insane. I worshiped it to
Speaker 1: the point it was an idol to me. I literally
Speaker 1: sacrificed my existence for it. And uh, I guess I've
Speaker 1: kind of come full circle now and I'm ready to
Speaker 1: give something back. I want to let him have a
Speaker 1: quiet place to live, good food, good habitat, watch him
Speaker 1: come and go, watch him do their lifestyle. And then
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I've got a buck on there
Speaker 1: finally this year. Finally, that's a pretty pretty exceptional animal, uh,
Speaker 1: for the area. Sure, And I've been thinking about it.
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do if that thing comes walking
Speaker 1: right by me here in the fall? Am I going
Speaker 1: to kill that? And here's the deal. He's a world
Speaker 1: class genetic, dear, He's a probably a four and a
Speaker 1: half year old's what he appears to probably be. And
Speaker 1: given two more years, this buck will probably would probably
Speaker 1: eclipse two hundred inches. And I don't care about that.
Speaker 1: But what I do care about is having a deer
Speaker 1: like that on my property. It gives me an extreme
Speaker 1: sense of satisfaction to know that I'm providing him with
Speaker 1: the place to live in security. And of course he
Speaker 1: ain't totally secure because he don't just stay on me
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, he he may get killed
Speaker 1: by one of my neighbors, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But if I had my brothers, I wouldn't even pull
Speaker 1: a string on that, dear. I'd let him go two
Speaker 1: more years, just so I could say, one day before
Speaker 1: I croaked, I had a two inch plus deer on
Speaker 1: my property one time, you know, And then I'd be happy.
Speaker 1: You could put me in my pine box. That would
Speaker 1: be pretty cool. That would be pretty cool. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: put him on my wall. I really don't. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't. I used to would have. I would have
Speaker 1: done anything to have that dear. Well, I've spent forty
Speaker 1: years and I've not killed a two deer. And now
Speaker 1: though I can say with all honesty and I do
Speaker 1: not expect you to understand it, I don't expect anybody
Speaker 1: under about sixty to understand it. But there's somebody out
Speaker 1: there gonna be listening to this that's gonna understand this.
Speaker 1: It finally becomes not about the killing, but more about
Speaker 1: the doing. I do. I do get that. Let's let's
Speaker 1: imagine then. Let's imagine you've got a friend of yours
Speaker 1: who you have decided to let hunt your home farm
Speaker 1: with you. I don't know if that's something that you
Speaker 1: plan to do or have done, but let's just imagine
Speaker 1: I've actually finally started thinking about that, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you. Most of my white
Speaker 1: kill honey life, I've been a pretty selfish guy. I
Speaker 1: just tended to my own needs, and didn't you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't a real sharing person. I just I mean,
Speaker 1: you know how that works. You can't share everything or
Speaker 1: you ain't gonna have nothing. Does that make sense? I
Speaker 1: mean I kind of did my own thing and kept
Speaker 1: it quiet. And when I first got this place, I
Speaker 1: was still a little bit in that rut, and I've
Speaker 1: slowly gotten out of it. I wasn't going to consider
Speaker 1: letting somebody come in there and kill one of my
Speaker 1: big one of Did you hear what I just said?
Speaker 1: One of there? Okay, so there's a problem right off
Speaker 1: the bat. But anyway, nowadays, yeah, I'm I'm actually I've
Speaker 1: actually woke up in the middle of the night with
Speaker 1: it on my mind and realized what I was thinking
Speaker 1: about and just have shaped my head going, Wow, you
Speaker 1: mean you'd bring somebody in there and let them kill
Speaker 1: one of them big bucks? And you you just not
Speaker 1: even care that you'd be happy for him, and you
Speaker 1: know that. I guess that's my new evolution process to
Speaker 1: get to where that's the new challenge to quit being selfish.
Speaker 1: I guess right, that makes sense. Yeah, it does easy,
Speaker 1: easier said than done. I know from first for my
Speaker 1: own spirit. I mean, if I was in my thirties
Speaker 1: or forties, it never entered my mind. It would have
Speaker 1: just been me me, may you know? And that's it. Well,
Speaker 1: let's play this out a little bit. Let's say you
Speaker 1: decide you're gonna invite a buddy out there to hunt
Speaker 1: your home farm, and we'll say that a buck catches
Speaker 1: your buddy's eye, not not your future, but another really
Speaker 1: really nice one. And he says, man, Eddie, if you're
Speaker 1: okay with it, I would love to take a crack
Speaker 1: at this deer and really try to figure him out.
Speaker 1: And you say, yeah, absolutely, Tony, go go go chase him.
Speaker 1: And uh he comes to you though, he says, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I've never really targeted a big, mature buck like this before.
Speaker 1: I've never really been trying to figure him out. And
Speaker 1: he says, I know that trail cameras are all the
Speaker 1: rage how would you recommend how would you go about
Speaker 1: teaching your buddy or showing your buddy how you would
Speaker 1: use trail cameras on your home farm to pattern a
Speaker 1: buck like this, Like what would your take be on
Speaker 1: figuring out that deer in a place like what you
Speaker 1: have there? Well, you know what I'm about to say
Speaker 1: may not go along with the mainstream very well, And
Speaker 1: I get it. I do get it. I do know
Speaker 1: how some of these guys take this big buck killing
Speaker 1: to an art. I've talked to him and and really
Speaker 1: figured out, like, for instance, they've got some ground that's
Speaker 1: got these big bucks on them, and they trail camera
Speaker 1: all year, usually cellular wise, so that monitor these dear
Speaker 1: year round. It's home. I'm not gonna lie to you,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I don't. I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends and honey industry, and I don't really care
Speaker 1: because I don't. I'm not real politically correct. I just
Speaker 1: say the way I believe it. I don't care if
Speaker 1: I step on some toes. But the way they do
Speaker 1: some of this stuff anymore, to me, it's just killing,
Speaker 1: it's harvesting. There is very little hunting to it. To me.
Speaker 1: In my book, um, they monitor this buck all year,
Speaker 1: they know everything that's going on with them. They get
Speaker 1: a set up and they will not go in there
Speaker 1: and hunt almost till the day they plan on killing
Speaker 1: that deer. And there is often not always, but in
Speaker 1: some states, especially Kansas, they're baiting, involved in different things.
Speaker 1: But they will get this down to such a given
Speaker 1: that I've had one guy from Iowa has killed so
Speaker 1: many big ones I don't even But anyway, he said
Speaker 1: he usually only has to hunt to maximum of three
Speaker 1: hunts in a year, and he will kill his target
Speaker 1: buck every year. And I'm like, that don't even sound
Speaker 1: interesting to me. That that's just I don't know what
Speaker 1: would be exciting about that. I I I go hunting
Speaker 1: because I want to hunt all the time. I want
Speaker 1: to hunt all I can hunt, and I want to
Speaker 1: goof up and not do things right, and I just
Speaker 1: want the whole rounded experience. I couldn't give less of
Speaker 1: a hoot. I had one fall in my whole life
Speaker 1: that I had to work. I've never worked from September
Speaker 1: through the end of December in my adult life except
Speaker 1: one fall. Now that's quite a statement because how many
Speaker 1: people would like to live that lifestyle. Right. But but
Speaker 1: in that one fall, I only got to get out
Speaker 1: and hunt three days. I was working seven days a week,
Speaker 1: and I begged from Peter to pay Paul and took
Speaker 1: off work a few days. And I killed two really
Speaker 1: good bucks in three days a hunting that year, and
Speaker 1: felt like I had done nothing. I was a nervous,
Speaker 1: dang wreck because I didn't get to go hunting but
Speaker 1: three days a week. I was almost sick all year,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it wasn't about that
Speaker 1: I'd killed two good bucks that year in three sets.
Speaker 1: I saw right then and there that with me, it
Speaker 1: was more about the bowl hunting than it was about
Speaker 1: the killing, you know. And uh and so nowadays, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, these guys get this down to such an art.
Speaker 1: So if I had a guy that was coming to
Speaker 1: my place won't know how to kill on those bucks,
Speaker 1: what would I tell them? I would tell him, don't
Speaker 1: do none of this baiting, don't do none of this patterning,
Speaker 1: don't do don't I don't even use trail cameras ever
Speaker 1: in relation to my hunting. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But to fare what's out there, that's it. I just
Speaker 1: like to see the deer. And the only thing a
Speaker 1: trail camera will do for me that even profits me,
Speaker 1: I think, is if there's a particular, really exceptional specimen,
Speaker 1: it'll tell me that he's around, so that I can
Speaker 1: then decide if that matters hood or not. I'm going
Speaker 1: to hold out for that, dear. But I don't use
Speaker 1: cameras to pattern nothing. I just use it to observe deer.
Speaker 1: And what I do is I still hunt away. I
Speaker 1: always did, even back. You know, I know this may
Speaker 1: sound weird, but half of my hunting life was spent
Speaker 1: pre trail camera. Does that make sense? I mean girl cameras,
Speaker 1: the first trail cameras I remember coming in that I've
Speaker 1: even saw. If I'm not mistaken, I'm going to say
Speaker 1: around two thousands. Uh. I mean, I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever owned the trail camera to weigh into the two
Speaker 1: thousand's um, so I I had already cut all of
Speaker 1: my hunting teeth before any ability to use trail cameras
Speaker 1: to help you hunt. And no Google Earth, no uh,
Speaker 1: no real aerial photography. I mean I I come from
Speaker 1: the generation of where you just went out there and
Speaker 1: you figured out how to deer hunt on your own.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's what I tell them. Nowadays, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not gonna get I don't know how to
Speaker 1: tell them to use trail cameras. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to tell them to use Google Earth on a on
Speaker 1: a big buck. I mean, I just go, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, find those pinch points, set on them during
Speaker 1: the rut. And it's probably the dumbest way to try it,
Speaker 1: but I will tell you this, if you put the
Speaker 1: time in and have the patients and are in it,
Speaker 1: you're in one of these pass through spots. If there
Speaker 1: is a big buck within a mile or two of
Speaker 1: you somewhere at some point, he'll walk right straight through
Speaker 1: that during November. And you just gotta be willing to
Speaker 1: figure out if you're willing to put in the time
Speaker 1: and the sacrifice to set there. Because I set in
Speaker 1: some off the wall places that probably ain't never had
Speaker 1: a bow hunter set in them. I'm talking to some
Speaker 1: ignorant looking places that our way out in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, in these fence lines now and these little
Speaker 1: finger draws out in the prairie that no human in
Speaker 1: the right mind usually I can't even like to find
Speaker 1: a tree to get in that makes sense, you know,
Speaker 1: and go out there and said all day, and I'll
Speaker 1: set there ten twelve hours sometimes and not see a
Speaker 1: single deer sometimes. But I've learned if I sat there
Speaker 1: a week during the right time in November, if somewhere
Speaker 1: within him one mile radius to me is a big
Speaker 1: buck excuse me, big buck, there is a very very
Speaker 1: very good chance that's going to walk through. This hilarious
Speaker 1: because you know, I've got a good ability to see
Speaker 1: these these uh I call them passed through spots, big
Speaker 1: buck travel corridors. Does something make sense? Uh? And and
Speaker 1: and then things they don't Always they're not where the
Speaker 1: normal there are those big mature deer don't hang out.
Speaker 1: We're all the normal dear are hanging out and they
Speaker 1: don't walk through the same spots until they get out
Speaker 1: of their mind once they start breeding and mid the
Speaker 1: late November, then you might catch us a big one
Speaker 1: doing something normal. But before that you better be h
Speaker 1: out on the fringe of normal. Um. Well, of course
Speaker 1: I'm talking more like a blue collar d I y
Speaker 1: guy that'shunting public planned again, I'm not talking like these
Speaker 1: guys like um for instance, Um, you know some of
Speaker 1: these guys that have have got these big spreads in Iowa.
Speaker 1: The people that are on TV. I mean, they custom
Speaker 1: grow those deer and know everything about them, and they
Speaker 1: go kill him, you know what I'm saying. But a
Speaker 1: guy like me, a guy like you that's doing it
Speaker 1: the old fair chase on our own with with with nothing,
Speaker 1: no silver spoons. You just got to get out there,
Speaker 1: put a lot of time in. And you know, if
Speaker 1: a guy come to my property, I'd say, listen, here's
Speaker 1: what you do. You get out there and you figure
Speaker 1: out how to kill that here. I I don't even
Speaker 1: want to try to tell you because I don't know
Speaker 1: how to kill it. Get out there and do it
Speaker 1: on your own. You'll be much more satisfied. And um,
Speaker 1: I don't care how they do it. I wouldn't put
Speaker 1: any stipulations on a guy because I mean, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: let them come in there and start dumping a big
Speaker 1: old pilot corn out and setting over it. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Uh, that's a little bit. That's a
Speaker 1: little bit over the line for me. And see I
Speaker 1: hunt up there in Kansas for baiting. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a prevalent thing. I've often made the statement the Kansas
Speaker 1: owners wouldn't know how to kill a deer if they
Speaker 1: took their cornerways on them, which I know that really
Speaker 1: right there is gonna red really get me in find standing.
Speaker 1: But anyway, anyway, um hey, corn don't sure nothing, but
Speaker 1: it's sure can um it can do some things that
Speaker 1: I call it the golden corowl. You know that, the
Speaker 1: golden nuggets. Um. Then pour bucks, Oh my god, I mean,
Speaker 1: all you gotta do dump a bag of corn out
Speaker 1: October and put a camera on it. You know, you
Speaker 1: know every buck that you got within a half mile
Speaker 1: in every direction within a day. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how they find it and how they prone in
Speaker 1: on it, but uh I went to end them places
Speaker 1: in Kansas dump a bag of corn out and put
Speaker 1: a camera on it, and within two days have pictures
Speaker 1: of every mature deer almost virtually within quite a distance.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? And I mean it's everybody's
Speaker 1: always trying to make the process easier, I guess, And uh,
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, when you
Speaker 1: get my age, you finally figure out it ain't about easiness.
Speaker 1: It's more about satisfaction of doing it on your own
Speaker 1: and either winning or losing. Yeah, So let me ask
Speaker 1: you about one of these examples you just shared, and
Speaker 1: it ties into one of the scenarios I wanted to
Speaker 1: throw at you. Um you mentioned you'd like to sit
Speaker 1: these pass through areas. It's kind of off the beaten
Speaker 1: path pass through spots. So let's imagine you're sitting in
Speaker 1: one of those. It's November, hunting the rut. You're sitting
Speaker 1: in one of these great rut spots, these these pinch
Speaker 1: points that you like that should be a good quality
Speaker 1: rut travel corridor. The problem is you've hunted all week
Speaker 1: and nothing's coming through. You've not had one good buck
Speaker 1: come through. My question for you is how long will
Speaker 1: you stick it out in one of those spots before
Speaker 1: eventually saying, well it just it's just isn't the spot?
Speaker 1: Or do you ever find a spot like that and say,
Speaker 1: come hell or high water. If I sit here seven days,
Speaker 1: he will eventually come through. I have that much confidence.
Speaker 1: What's your approach and how do you know when you
Speaker 1: finally have to pull up stakes or not? Well? I
Speaker 1: think the best way to answer that would be what
Speaker 1: I know about the area in general and how much
Speaker 1: experience I have in it. If it's a fairly new place.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go down with the ship on
Speaker 1: a spot like that. If it's if it's not getting
Speaker 1: a job done. If I go by feel, I've often
Speaker 1: said this, I hunt by feel feel. I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to explain what feel is other than that
Speaker 1: we small voice in your head. But like I said,
Speaker 1: a place like that and things ain't feeling right, things
Speaker 1: ain't happening. If it's a fairly new place and I
Speaker 1: don't know what you know is going on around, I
Speaker 1: will I will abandon it. I would say about three days.
Speaker 1: It's about what I'm going to give a spot like
Speaker 1: that if I if I'm not getting anything going on now.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if it's a time proven place
Speaker 1: and or I know the habitat around it and the
Speaker 1: deer that's living in that habitat, and I know there's
Speaker 1: some big ones around, and maybe I have some previous
Speaker 1: knowledge of this place, Ben you know what, I think
Speaker 1: it is a pass through, then I'm going to set there.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna wait because if I know there's some
Speaker 1: big ones around, you know, on both sides of me somewhere,
Speaker 1: and um, this is where that they're gonna walk At
Speaker 1: some point, I'll give it up to I'll give it
Speaker 1: till I I lose my mind. What you have, I've
Speaker 1: actually lost my mind and just run naked brains. But
Speaker 1: I mean once in a while, once in a while
Speaker 1: I've got burned, not a lot. And it just depends
Speaker 1: on how large your deer you're hunting too, because I
Speaker 1: mean I've often led hundred forty to fifty bucks walk
Speaker 1: in those places, and you know, I don't know whether
Speaker 1: that's good or bad, but um, I have rarely, if
Speaker 1: ever set those places in November that I couldn't kill
Speaker 1: a good solid, you know, trophy buck of some size.
Speaker 1: I I've been greedy and not take you know, hundred
Speaker 1: and deer because I was wanting a bigger one and
Speaker 1: thinking one bigger one would show up. And then there's
Speaker 1: been times on the flip side where I've broke down.
Speaker 1: Finally I've sat there long enough, I'd just be getting
Speaker 1: sick of the whole thing, about to go crazy, and
Speaker 1: here comes a hundred and fifty deer, and I know
Speaker 1: that there's a bigger one around. I know there is,
Speaker 1: and I just would go ahead and harvest the thing,
Speaker 1: and um call it good and and sometimes actually for
Speaker 1: a season be wondering, you know, did I make the
Speaker 1: right decision? But there ain't no pad answer to none
Speaker 1: of this stuff. It's everybody's an individual and they've got
Speaker 1: to do what they're comfortable with. And uh, I've been
Speaker 1: through the ringer on every scenario possible of learning what
Speaker 1: what you can, can't, should shouldn't do, and uh, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of I'm kind of past it. Finally. Now I'm
Speaker 1: out into the clear where I don't put that kind
Speaker 1: of pressure on myself. I don't have to make myself
Speaker 1: answer those questions anymore. I go out, I said, as
Speaker 1: long as I want, I see what I see, I'm happy.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty much it. I go back to the
Speaker 1: camp and talk to the wife. From pet to dog,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good place to be. Well. Let
Speaker 1: me let me throw another November situation at you, and
Speaker 1: this is this is another thing that I've frequently been
Speaker 1: confronted with and bounced back and forth on. So let
Speaker 1: me let me paint this picture. Let's say again, it's
Speaker 1: November and you're kind of looking for a great spot.
Speaker 1: Like we just described, you're kind of working through a
Speaker 1: new area and you end up coming across just a
Speaker 1: dynamite rut spot. Let's say it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: pinch point that is also downwind of some betting habitat.
Speaker 1: So you've got those two things that seemed great. The
Speaker 1: problem is that there is no great tree that's just
Speaker 1: perfectly in range of where those trails converge, where that
Speaker 1: pinch point converges beneath the betting year. So there's there's
Speaker 1: two options. You get here ready. There is one tree
Speaker 1: that is twenty yards from this pinch point and from
Speaker 1: the convergence of trails, but it's a pencil thin bean
Speaker 1: poultry you're gonna stand out in it. And there is
Speaker 1: one other, you know, relatively well trod down trail on
Speaker 1: the downwind of that tree as well, So there's also
Speaker 1: this risk that you might get winded by some deer
Speaker 1: as well. Or there's there's a second tree and it
Speaker 1: seems perfect as in, it's it's big, it's gnarly, it's
Speaker 1: like a branchy oak tree of some kind. So you
Speaker 1: can climb up in there and disappear, and there's there's
Speaker 1: nothing there's nothing downwind of it at all, because it's
Speaker 1: right in the edge of a Let's say it's down
Speaker 1: wind or sorry, just on the edge of a pond.
Speaker 1: Let's say, so there's nothing that's gonna get beneath you.
Speaker 1: The problem is that one is gonna put you forty
Speaker 1: one yards from the trail convergence. So do you take
Speaker 1: the lousy tree with some stuff downwind of it still
Speaker 1: but you'll have a perfect twenty yard shot if they
Speaker 1: come through in that spot. Or do you take the
Speaker 1: farther away tree but it's super safe from win perspective
Speaker 1: and you'll will be very nicely hidden. Which tree would
Speaker 1: you pick? I have hunted both those trees numerous times,
Speaker 1: so I can relate to this. I had a spot
Speaker 1: in Illinois one time that presented me with the first scenario,
Speaker 1: the little spendy tree right where you wanted it right.
Speaker 1: I tried it a few times. I got nailed twice,
Speaker 1: and I was at the point of I knew I
Speaker 1: had to quit it or something. And I actually bought
Speaker 1: a top and bottom of gray sweatsuit, went got some
Speaker 1: rich dye, put black lines to it, made my own
Speaker 1: self the homemade set of tree lined camel. I was
Speaker 1: the color of the sky, except had the dark limbs
Speaker 1: through me you know, so I could get up in
Speaker 1: that and try to not stand out, in other words,
Speaker 1: and I will be dog gone. The very first time
Speaker 1: I got in it like that, a hundred sixty in
Speaker 1: deer come through there did not see me, which the
Speaker 1: two previous sets I'd had big bucks come in. I'd
Speaker 1: set the thing three times. The first two times I
Speaker 1: had big bucks come in and nail me in the
Speaker 1: tree and run off. All of the bucks were different bucks, um,
Speaker 1: so I guess I educted. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: educated the first too too bad, or if I was
Speaker 1: just lucky that the third one that hadn't been there
Speaker 1: come through the third time, but he didn't see me
Speaker 1: and I killed him. Then I had another spot that
Speaker 1: had that same scenario. Did not think I wanted to
Speaker 1: go that route, so I got back off to the side,
Speaker 1: off away from the action. Because I could get in
Speaker 1: that tree without figuring I was bumping deer getting there,
Speaker 1: I could get out without bumping deer going out. I
Speaker 1: had a good safe wind. I felt comfortable over there,
Speaker 1: but I was not right where I needed or wanted
Speaker 1: to be, and I ended up in the long run
Speaker 1: killing more deer. Out of that scenario, and setting it
Speaker 1: way more often and feeling way more comfortable setting there
Speaker 1: because I called a number of deer over to me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean with grunt calling stuff. And
Speaker 1: uh so I usually would opt for the UM does
Speaker 1: the better um. In other words, are you going for
Speaker 1: a one shot deal? If you're going for a one
Speaker 1: shot deal, planter or end in that little scrawny tree,
Speaker 1: set there all day, run through fourm off and hopefully
Speaker 1: get one shot. Right. Um. If you want to continue
Speaker 1: to hunt that spot repetitively, get in the safe tree
Speaker 1: and you can. You can hunt it repetitively and not
Speaker 1: run all your deer off. Probably not what. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna wind you. They're not gonna see you, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I guess it's what your goal is that day.
Speaker 1: If you want to go in there and go for broke,
Speaker 1: get in there and a little spinley tree, stand up.
Speaker 1: I'd stand up and I'd be real calm and not
Speaker 1: be moving all day long. You maybe have my bow
Speaker 1: in my hand, you know what I mean? And uh
Speaker 1: and to where it's a one shot deal, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna do some damage. You're gonna have some come down
Speaker 1: wind w that day and snort and run off. You
Speaker 1: may have a buck shooting there on you before you
Speaker 1: can get ready, and you may not. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're going for a one shot deal, get right
Speaker 1: in the middle of them and go for broke. If
Speaker 1: if you want to hunt there, repetitively take that other
Speaker 1: tree all day long and come back and hunt it
Speaker 1: numerous base under right conditions. Don't educate your deer. And
Speaker 1: if a buck comes through there, that's prowling real hard
Speaker 1: in the rut, nine chances out of tendue. Hit him
Speaker 1: with a grunt and he'll he's lively, especially maybe if
Speaker 1: you stick a decoy out behind you you know, or
Speaker 1: something you know, and uh, maybe he'll come right over
Speaker 1: to you and let you kill him. So I think
Speaker 1: that's just a matter of your I've hunted both those
Speaker 1: scenarios and the one that seemed to be best for
Speaker 1: me was staying out of the middle of the hub,
Speaker 1: staying off to the side of the hub and hunting
Speaker 1: longer and seeing more dear and if a few get
Speaker 1: through there that I know it eats you alive. To
Speaker 1: have a good buck come through there, you don't get
Speaker 1: your bow shot at him, but hey, you're better to
Speaker 1: do that than to have one run right in there,
Speaker 1: look at you in the tree, or come down wind
Speaker 1: of you on the one trail and smell you're right,
Speaker 1: you know, And so um, I think everybody, everybody should
Speaker 1: just do what they feel they want to do that day.
Speaker 1: If it's a one shot hunt, jump in the middle
Speaker 1: of and go to swinging and uh, if you're wanting
Speaker 1: to hunt that spot a lot in the rut, you
Speaker 1: better get off to the side, make sure you're entry
Speaker 1: and exit safe and your wind safe, and you're covered
Speaker 1: up to where they help see you. Yeah. Yeah, I've learned.
Speaker 1: I've been in the same scenario and been burned a
Speaker 1: few times too. But but sometimes it also pays off
Speaker 1: you just you just never know. So so here's one
Speaker 1: last here's one last quick scenario for you, Eddie. Let's
Speaker 1: let's play out this last example a little bit further.
Speaker 1: Let's say you you pick one of those trees. Let's
Speaker 1: say you you went for broke with the closer one.
Speaker 1: Let's hypothetically say, and you're sitting there and you're on
Speaker 1: public land, and that too, d buck that you have
Speaker 1: not been able to get before in all your years
Speaker 1: hunting public land and chasing these big deer. That two
Speaker 1: duck is coming in. He's walking right down this trail.
Speaker 1: He's gonna cross in front of at that pinch point.
Speaker 1: Tell me, Eddie, what do you do in this situation
Speaker 1: in the next thirty seconds or sixty seconds as he approaches.
Speaker 1: What are you doing to ready yourself, to calm yourself.
Speaker 1: What are you saying inside your head to get yourself
Speaker 1: mentally prepared for this once in a lifetime opportunity. The
Speaker 1: first thing when you said that is the absolute biggest
Speaker 1: thing is I'm never taking my eyes off that deer. Period.
Speaker 1: I've got to be subconsciously prepared to pull this maneuver off.
Speaker 1: Whatever that is. Get up out of the seat, get
Speaker 1: the boat, get the I gotta be able to do
Speaker 1: that subconsciously, So you better be pretty well trying. But
Speaker 1: I am never taking my eyes off that deer. I
Speaker 1: am not moving when I'm not looking at him in
Speaker 1: the eye. I'm gonna be watching him like a hawk
Speaker 1: to see what I can get away with and what
Speaker 1: I cannot get away with. Do not be trying to
Speaker 1: do something on automatic pilot, because I mean, if he's
Speaker 1: walking towards you, you know he's You've got to just
Speaker 1: get away with what you can in the next thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: You've got to pray to God that you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to get yourself up and get your bow
Speaker 1: drawn without him seeing that. And the only way you're
Speaker 1: gonna hope to pull out off his watch his eyes,
Speaker 1: watch his head, if he turns his head, or if
Speaker 1: he stops her second and looks back over his shoulder.
Speaker 1: You better be getting something done. Do not be doing
Speaker 1: it when you're You know you're gonna have that little
Speaker 1: guy in your head saying, oh my god, this thing
Speaker 1: is looking You know, he's looking right towards me as
Speaker 1: he's coming. And you know, I've actually had to literally,
Speaker 1: I've actually had to let him walk past me before
Speaker 1: I ever even started moving. I've got caught with my
Speaker 1: pants down and watched them come in, knowing that if
Speaker 1: I tried to get up, I'm gonna blow this. And
Speaker 1: I've had to let him walk under me at five
Speaker 1: yards and start to walk away before I ever started
Speaker 1: even getting up out of my seat. Now, you hope
Speaker 1: to not be in that position. You'd like to thank
Speaker 1: you if you could have just already been standing when
Speaker 1: he started coming in your way ahead of the game,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But but I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: watch that deer like a hawk to see what I
Speaker 1: can do and what I can't. And I'm just, if necessary,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do a thing until he walks
Speaker 1: past me and starts to go away when I can't
Speaker 1: see that big old google eye looking back at me
Speaker 1: from the side, you know. And I've had to kill
Speaker 1: a few out at thirty yards as they were leaving,
Speaker 1: and I've got burned a time or two and let
Speaker 1: him walk by me. But I just go with at
Speaker 1: the moment what I think to be good hudsmanship. And
Speaker 1: if I do not think, I've also tried to push
Speaker 1: my luck, of course, and Adam see me and stop
Speaker 1: slam to stop and stare at me in the tree
Speaker 1: because they caught me moving a little bit. So just
Speaker 1: watch them and learn x exercise great woodsmanship in that
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, make good decisions. And if you're on automatic pilot,
Speaker 1: which is called buck fever, if you're going through motions,
Speaker 1: it never works out. I did that for years. I
Speaker 1: just would try to do something and not really and
Speaker 1: realize that I wasn't even thinking about and it doesn't
Speaker 1: work out well. You gotta keep your head and have
Speaker 1: a rational thought process of what you can do and
Speaker 1: what you can't do. Don't get excited about that buck
Speaker 1: until you shoot it, because actually, until you've killed that deer,
Speaker 1: you haven't done nothing but be a glorified nature observer. Um,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to get excited about setting a tree and
Speaker 1: watching deer, right, So don't just be a watcher. Don't
Speaker 1: get excited until you shoot it and kill it. Then
Speaker 1: you can leap out the tree and jump up down
Speaker 1: and scream. You know. Um. Buck fever is a debilitating thing.
Speaker 1: My wife suffers from it NonStop and never makes any
Speaker 1: good decisions. When deer show up, she goes brain dead
Speaker 1: and literally it's able to throw her bow out the
Speaker 1: tree at the thing or something. And I did it
Speaker 1: for many years in my early career, but I finally
Speaker 1: got a grip on it and said, you know, if
Speaker 1: I don't stop getting buck fever, and if I don't
Speaker 1: start making good decisions, I'm never going to get good
Speaker 1: at this. And finally I just something happened in my
Speaker 1: head and I said, Okay, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: a glorified nature observer today. I'm gonna be a dear killer,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I don't know if I'd answered
Speaker 1: the question very well or not, but anyway, it did.
Speaker 1: It did if you could know this is one of
Speaker 1: those easier seven done things. But if you had to
Speaker 1: give someone who's dealing with that same buck fever issue
Speaker 1: that your wife has, if you had to give them
Speaker 1: one like a single line of advice for how to
Speaker 1: actually snap out of that, Like I understand that you
Speaker 1: have to snap out of it, but like, how do
Speaker 1: you reclaim control mentally? If you could give him like
Speaker 1: a one line, two line like do this, what would
Speaker 1: that one simple idea be. Well, what I always tried
Speaker 1: to tell someone, if they've getting buck fever that bad
Speaker 1: all the time on bucks, they need to start quit
Speaker 1: hunting them for a while to start killing deer. Go
Speaker 1: out and start shooting a bunch of deer. Learn to
Speaker 1: take your goo out and kill deer. Start shooting though,
Speaker 1: start shooting as manny go just kill deer. Once you
Speaker 1: get subconsciously trained to kill those deer, I think. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, the antlers. If you're an antler fanatic,
Speaker 1: antlers will always skyrocket you, you know, out of your skin.
Speaker 1: But if you're if you're if you get once. I
Speaker 1: finally got to kill a deer with my bows early
Speaker 1: on and got to where I was killing meat deer
Speaker 1: and quite a few deer. It become a lot easier
Speaker 1: for me to stay under control because I knew then
Speaker 1: and there that I had it within my ability to
Speaker 1: kill this deer and the fact that it had huge
Speaker 1: antlers or something would freak me out. It would, I
Speaker 1: would freak out, and I mean, I ain't gonna lie
Speaker 1: to you. I've had a couple of times, even as
Speaker 1: a old man, that I pulled. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: I can have a relapse of buck fever. I had
Speaker 1: one in Kansas a few years back with the biggest
Speaker 1: buck I've ever had in bow range in my life,
Speaker 1: and it caused me to not get the deer. I
Speaker 1: lost a one killed on the largest sandlers white tail
Speaker 1: I've ever had in bow range because buck fever come
Speaker 1: that day. I hadn't had it, and I don't even
Speaker 1: know ten or fifteen, twenty years, but because of that
Speaker 1: it got me. So I don't really feel like there's
Speaker 1: anything you can do about it. It's gonna happen. My
Speaker 1: wife's had it for twenty straight years. I've done every
Speaker 1: human thing I know to try to get her past it,
Speaker 1: and I've not been able to get her past it.
Speaker 1: And so I can't give a guy advice other than
Speaker 1: kill a bunch of deer with your bows. That ought
Speaker 1: to help. And then when the antlers show up, like
Speaker 1: when you turn and you see this giant rack coming
Speaker 1: at you, you've just got to turn your head and
Speaker 1: take a deep breath and go Okay, now that freaked
Speaker 1: me out, that did, But I can do this, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to look at them antlers again. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ease my head background and watch that deer come in,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to pretend I'm I. I have a
Speaker 1: really good ability to once I see one that I
Speaker 1: want to kill, I blankets antlers out. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's normal, if anybody else can do that or not,
Speaker 1: but I literally can have a two inch deer walk
Speaker 1: in on me, and once I turned that initial turn
Speaker 1: and see him, if he's big and I know he's
Speaker 1: a shooter, I won't be able to tell you whether
Speaker 1: he's a hundred and fifty inches or two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty inches. I I don't even realize they have antlers
Speaker 1: on him, one side to side. I'm gonna shoot them,
Speaker 1: and uh so, just you know, if you get freaked
Speaker 1: with buck fever, just kind of close your eyes a
Speaker 1: second and take a deep breath and go, Okay, it
Speaker 1: ain't about these antlers. I can kill this dear. I've
Speaker 1: been killing a lot of deer. This is a dear. Now.
Speaker 1: Just ease back around there and watch him come on
Speaker 1: in and do what you gotta do. And don't don't
Speaker 1: look at his antlers again. If you can, just look
Speaker 1: watch his watch his face, watch his eyes. I get
Speaker 1: fixated on their eyes. If I can see their eyeballs,
Speaker 1: that's all I ever watch. I watched their eyes, and
Speaker 1: that's where I get my readings of what and when
Speaker 1: to do things, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: those those eyes can definitely tell a lot of the story.
Speaker 1: Oh well, and I have got I have got to
Speaker 1: wrap this up. And the way we wrap this up,
Speaker 1: and and I've thoroughly enjoyed this, the way we wrap
Speaker 1: these up is with a quick, rapid fire set of questions.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you six really quick questions here, one
Speaker 1: after the other, and I'm just looking for a one
Speaker 1: word answer. Yes, or no that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: then we'll we'll send you on your way and off
Speaker 1: to deer hunting season. That sounds like it's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun. So ready for the last
Speaker 1: few here? Yeah, go ahead, all right, Eddie. Does the
Speaker 1: moon matter to deer movement? Yes? Or no? Yes? Would
Speaker 1: you take a fifty yard shot at a white tail
Speaker 1: with your bow? Yes or no? Yes? If you could
Speaker 1: only have one of these tools for the rest of
Speaker 1: your year's deer hunt, would you pick rattling antlers or
Speaker 1: grunt tube? Two expandable or fixed blade broadheads? Exploit? Should
Speaker 1: you stop a walking buck with a sound before shooting?
Speaker 1: Yes or no? No? Which state has better deer hunters?
Speaker 1: Kansas or Oklahoma? Did you say deer hunters or deer
Speaker 1: deer hunters? Which state has better deer hunters? Kansas or Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: Um boy, I'll go with my home state. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to I'm trying to get you in trouble here, ready,
Speaker 1: And that's and that's all I got for you. You.
Speaker 1: You've survived the gauntlet and given us a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting, interesting stories and in ways to think about
Speaker 1: this stuff. And I particularly have enjoyed getting to hear
Speaker 1: about your your evolution and growth in these in these
Speaker 1: later years of hunting. So thank you for sharing that. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's my privilege and God bless you. And
Speaker 1: I've talked to you down the line. Sounds great and
Speaker 1: that is a rap. For those of you who stuck
Speaker 1: through all two hours. Thank you appreciate that perseverance. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this one. I hope you laughed. I
Speaker 1: hope you learn something, and I hope that you are
Speaker 1: as fired up as I am right now. I've been
Speaker 1: out there getting after stuff. I just got back to Michigan,
Speaker 1: but I've already been hanging trail cameras. I've already been
Speaker 1: working on food plots, trim and lanes and prep and
Speaker 1: tree stands. It's time to get after it. Although I
Speaker 1: do have to say I forgot how miserable it is
Speaker 1: to do that kind of white tail work in humidity.
Speaker 1: Holy ship, the humidity here in Michigan is awful. That
Speaker 1: is one nice thing about spending time out West is
Speaker 1: as nice and dry and cool. I just about died yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was soaked from head to toe. I literally came
Speaker 1: in the house. My wife made me take off my
Speaker 1: clothes and pants because I've got like burrs and poison
Speaker 1: ivy and stuff on me, and even my boxes were
Speaker 1: silking wet. She didn't understand how that's possible, but I said,
Speaker 1: do you get out there hanging tree stands or trimming
Speaker 1: lanes in August in the Midwest, you will get it.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you what, there's a lot more to do.
Speaker 1: So my wife better used to uh soaking wet boxes.
Speaker 1: But I don't know where this is going. This is
Speaker 1: quite the tangent to wrap it up. Let's just end
Speaker 1: this sucker now. Thanks for being here, and until next time,
Speaker 1: stay wired. Don