Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, which has brought
Speaker 2: to you by first Light. I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson,
Speaker 2: and today I'm joined by my good buddy Clint Campbell
Speaker 2: to talk about his quest this season to kill a
Speaker 2: legitimate two hundred inch deer on public land. I know
Speaker 2: you noticed that this isn't Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 3: He's not here.
Speaker 2: Today's your old third stringer, Antonio. Mark is off actually
Speaker 2: recovering from a pretty nasty throat injury. You guys might
Speaker 2: not know this, but Mark is actually a very accomplished
Speaker 2: clarinet player. Well, he was wailing away the other day
Speaker 2: when one of those little Kenyon boys chucked a football
Speaker 2: in his direction. I'll spare you the details, but I'll
Speaker 2: just say it was a direct hit. And now Mark
Speaker 2: has to eat ice cream and apple sauce for a while.
Speaker 2: Hopefully he heals up soon, though, because we don't want
Speaker 2: him to suffer anymore. And plus I'm pretty sick of
Speaker 2: doing not only my job, but most of his. My
Speaker 2: guest today is a good friend of mine, Clint Campbell.
Speaker 2: Clint is a really good hunter who also happens to
Speaker 2: be the host of the Truth from the Stand podcast.
Speaker 2: Clint had the opportunity to hunt a very rare deer
Speaker 2: this year on public land, a buck that he's known
Speaker 2: about for a few years, a legitimate two hundred inch
Speaker 2: type of buck. It's truly incredible. So in this show,
Speaker 2: we're going to dive deep into that story and go
Speaker 2: even deeper into the reality of not only finding giant
Speaker 2: bucks on public land, but what to do if you
Speaker 2: do manage to locate one. Clint, Buddy, I feel like
Speaker 2: I needed to do this podcast with you, sort of
Speaker 2: as a wellness check. You're hanging in there.
Speaker 3: I'm hanging in there, man, I'm okay. You know, things
Speaker 3: are They were bleak for a moment, you know, I was.
Speaker 3: I tried to my buddies. So my buddy sent a
Speaker 3: text about that deer, and there were a couple of
Speaker 3: us that knew about him and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: of course, you know, look it's it's deer hunting, right
Speaker 3: and deer get killed, and you know, sometimes they get
Speaker 3: killed by people, sometimes killed by cars. Like you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes you just don't see them to die of old age, right,
Speaker 3: So I try not to get too precious on a deer.
Speaker 3: But and I tried to play it off with my
Speaker 3: buddies where I was like, it's just the deer, you know,
Speaker 3: and stuff igat And then my buddy reminded me. He's like, dude,
Speaker 3: he's like, you've been living in your truck, in your
Speaker 3: trailer for like, you know, thirty days or whatever. Essentially roughly,
Speaker 3: you know, since October fifth, I have basically hunted at
Speaker 3: this particular deer every possible moment you could get there,
Speaker 3: chasing weather fronts and stuff like that. He's actually, don't
Speaker 3: give me that. Don't give me that bs, you know.
Speaker 3: So I was like, and then my response back to
Speaker 3: him was like, I'm not crying. You're crying.
Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about this deer. Because you you
Speaker 2: sent me a trail camera video I don't know, week
Speaker 2: and a half ago, two weeks ago or something of
Speaker 2: a legit giant that you had found on public land.
Speaker 2: We don't need to get into the details other than
Speaker 2: you you found one in a probably five million buck.
Speaker 2: I mean, the level of that deer is is unreal.
Speaker 2: I mean, if that if that deer walked out in
Speaker 2: front of Lee Lakowski, he'd shoot it on site on
Speaker 2: his home farm, you know. And it's and he's making
Speaker 2: it to an old age on on public land. And
Speaker 2: you put in like it, like you mentioned some real
Speaker 2: time onto this deer, and you just found out just
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago that that deer is dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's yeah, he's dead. You know, we knew
Speaker 3: of him, and so it wasn't just me. It was
Speaker 3: me and two my buddies, and I think truthfully, the
Speaker 3: first time we knew of that deer was my one
Speaker 3: buddy had a trail camera picture of him, and I
Speaker 3: had trail cameras. Like so, I have two friends that
Speaker 3: we all kind of hunt the same general area, right
Speaker 3: and trying not to step on each other's toes and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But what we do, because this is
Speaker 3: like a huge piece of you know, mountain ground and
Speaker 3: big woods, is that we pull a lot of our
Speaker 3: a lot of our intel together. Because it's a little
Speaker 3: bit of ways away from me from where I live.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a ways away from like
Speaker 3: our one buddy and our other buddy kind of lives
Speaker 3: pretty local, and so a lot of times I would
Speaker 3: have asked them to check trail cameras if they run
Speaker 3: by one of mine or whatever, and just like check
Speaker 3: it and pull a card and like send me some
Speaker 3: pictures or whatever's good on it and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So our one buddy actually had this year on camera
Speaker 3: probably two years ago, and I had some cameras around
Speaker 3: there too, and then coincidentally also picked him up on
Speaker 3: a couple of different cameras, and so we knew of
Speaker 3: him for probably three ish years. I guess this would
Speaker 3: have been a third year. I mean, we probably had him
Speaker 3: prior to that before he was really identifiable, but it
Speaker 3: was probably three seasons ago that he was really identifiable
Speaker 3: where he showed up and it was like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: that's a good buck, Like he's probably like at that
Speaker 3: that year, he was probably like one hundred and fifty inches,
Speaker 3: you know, And there wasn't really a whole lot I
Speaker 3: could do about it because I was hunting Kansas like
Speaker 3: the past several years, you know, and so I was
Speaker 3: going to have that tag in my pocket. I knew
Speaker 3: I was going to be leaving at the end of
Speaker 3: October for the first couple weeks in November, and so
Speaker 3: this place is unless you really have time to dedicate
Speaker 3: to try to hunt October, it hunts really really it
Speaker 3: hunts really really hard in general, but it hunts exponentially
Speaker 3: harder in October because they can bed pretty much anywhere.
Speaker 3: There's no agriculture, so there's no defined destination food sources
Speaker 3: that you can kind of play like a bed to
Speaker 3: food game and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is true big woods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, true, true, big true, big woods. Deer don't live
Speaker 3: in every section of it. Right, There's certain pieces that
Speaker 3: you might go to that you would think a deer
Speaker 3: never crossed that area in the entire existence of that
Speaker 3: piece of dirt, you know what I mean, Like just
Speaker 3: by the nature of the way the habitat kind of
Speaker 3: lays out and stuff. And so we knew of him
Speaker 3: for a couple of years, and he was around again
Speaker 3: last year, and and uh, last year I think is
Speaker 3: really whenever I you know, I kind of took notice
Speaker 3: of it. I think we all dig was he was
Speaker 3: a big year, But it wasn't like we were kind
Speaker 3: of exclusively hunting him, and I think I had two
Speaker 3: hunts there last year and I had an awkward like
Speaker 3: a weird and I won't say awkward, but I had
Speaker 3: a weird encounter in super early October. And then it
Speaker 3: wasn't until after the season I realized that that you know,
Speaker 3: encounter that I had in the sign that i'd found
Speaker 3: in the proximity to where this year was kind of
Speaker 3: shown up on trail camera and I actually had a
Speaker 3: picture of him the day it was either the day
Speaker 3: before I think it was the day before I hunted
Speaker 3: that area. I didn't I didn't find any this out
Speaker 3: until postseason because I pulled one in and pulled the
Speaker 3: cameras and stuff like that. I killed a buck and
Speaker 3: pa local to me like mid October, so I didn't
Speaker 3: make it back there to hunt. And this was like
Speaker 3: October fifth or sixth or something like that when I
Speaker 3: had this kind of weird encounter. And then when I
Speaker 3: did my post season scout and my buddy and I
Speaker 3: were out scout and sure enough found like a pretty
Speaker 3: good rub about where I kind of heard this vocalization,
Speaker 3: you know, and then there was a really big scrape
Speaker 3: that wasn't far away from that, and so a lot
Speaker 3: of the dots started kind of connecting a little bit,
Speaker 3: and it was just a matter of like, wonder if
Speaker 3: he's going to show up? Right? There was a second
Speaker 3: one that was kind of a really interesting deer, and
Speaker 3: that was probably the one that really peaked my interest,
Speaker 3: and he was that deer was actually the one that
Speaker 3: really helped me start to try to piece the puzzle
Speaker 3: together as far as like how deer really use this area.
Speaker 3: And then this deer that subsequently just recently got killed
Speaker 3: that I was chasing, he showed back up and became
Speaker 3: even more visible than he had been in the past
Speaker 3: couple of years, and a bunch of different areas on
Speaker 3: a bunch of different cameras, and a bunch of different
Speaker 3: kind of sections of this piece, And that was kind
Speaker 3: of when, you know, for me at least, I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, this year, I'm going to dedicate I don't
Speaker 3: do it really ever, you know, hunt a specific deer
Speaker 3: more of a Hey, if there's an area that has
Speaker 3: a couple of good deer, I'm going to hunt this
Speaker 3: area on volume and hopefully one of these three or
Speaker 3: four good year that I like, maybe they passed by.
Speaker 3: But this was like an instance where I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not going to very often have an
Speaker 3: opportunity to hunt a deer of this caliber, certainly not
Speaker 3: in the state of Pennsylvania on public land. And so
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I had a great
Speaker 3: season last year, filled two tags, killed a booner, you know,
Speaker 3: so I was like, this is a great year to
Speaker 3: just kind of let them mature deer try to teach
Speaker 3: me some lessons. You know, if I don't fill a tag,
Speaker 3: and then you know, I'll get to chase a really
Speaker 3: kind of unique mature deer around the woods for as
Speaker 3: long as I can and kind of see how they
Speaker 3: live and how they act, and you know, and hopefully
Speaker 3: it'll make me a better hunter as I kind of
Speaker 3: continue to go. And so that was kind of the
Speaker 3: goal overall.
Speaker 2: I mean, so let's let's back up here a second.
Speaker 2: So this book, you found him or he kind of
Speaker 2: got on your radar three years ago?
Speaker 3: Three Yeah, it was three seasons ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, he was pushing one fifty. So they let's
Speaker 2: say for the last five years, for sure that beer
Speaker 2: that deer walks by ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 2: the hunters out there, he gets shot at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: I would just think that that's like very very likely
Speaker 2: and by four years ago, for sure that would be
Speaker 2: the case. Yeah, and he survives. And here here's something,
Speaker 2: this is part of what I wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: you about, is it's it's cool as hell to have
Speaker 2: that opportunity and find that deer of that caliber. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're talking a deer that's right at the two hundred
Speaker 2: inch mark all day long, you know, which is which
Speaker 2: is just bananas, right, But also the fact that that
Speaker 2: deer probably had a better chance to reach his full
Speaker 2: potential by being in that big wood setting on public
Speaker 2: land versus spending his time. If if he had spent
Speaker 2: more time on private land with any level of hunting pressure,
Speaker 2: he would have been so well known.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean he was. He certainly wasn't. He
Speaker 3: wasn't a celebrity, but there was a lot more people
Speaker 3: that knew of him than than just us. Like I
Speaker 3: met some guys while I was there, they you know,
Speaker 3: and I told my one buddy this that, you know,
Speaker 3: I stopped and talked to him. My one buddy killed
Speaker 3: a good buck and he sent me a message on
Speaker 3: his on his satellite device, and I wasn't sure what
Speaker 3: time it came in. So I saw a truck that
Speaker 3: I thought was his pulled off and it happened to
Speaker 3: be these other two dudes, and they recognized my truck
Speaker 3: somewhere and they're like, they're like, hey, you hunting that
Speaker 3: big one, So like right there, I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: so it's not just me and two of my buddies.
Speaker 3: It's like me too, my buddies, these two guys. And
Speaker 3: then I knew my other buddy knew that there was
Speaker 3: a couple of guys on this one piece of private
Speaker 3: that wouldn't far away that was also also new of him, right,
Speaker 3: And so I'm like, there's I know, at least like
Speaker 3: seven or eight guys probably know of this deer like
Speaker 3: within the area. And then just the number of trucks
Speaker 3: that you would see kind of in that area kind
Speaker 3: of told you that there was there was more than that, right,
Speaker 3: But you're right, like this area hunts, you know. He
Speaker 3: was definitely aided by the fact that it's a big
Speaker 3: wood setting, he's not on private, and he's in an
Speaker 3: area that doesn't have a lot of structure, so there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of defined areas that are like real,
Speaker 3: real obvious places that you should set up, right Like,
Speaker 3: there's not like a he's gonna have to cross this
Speaker 3: saddle or anything like that, right, Like, there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of topography change and stuff like that, and so
Speaker 3: you're really kind of relegated to try to get into
Speaker 3: areas where you're using using habitat almost like structure like
Speaker 3: soft edges and stuff like that that they're going to
Speaker 3: want to travel and things like that, and that again,
Speaker 3: that's why it hunts tough, and it's why it hunts
Speaker 3: better in November than it does in October, because you
Speaker 3: really just kind of play like where the dough is
Speaker 3: going to spend time. You find where the thick cover is,
Speaker 3: there's probably going to be a dough group that's betting
Speaker 3: in that general area, and you play those odds, right,
Speaker 3: And so even when you lay a plan for that area,
Speaker 3: it's still kind of if you're hunting a specific deer,
Speaker 3: it's still a little bit of like a hand grenade
Speaker 3: toss to a degree, right, and but you know, you
Speaker 3: use the intel that you have, and you know, the
Speaker 3: one part that I started feeling good about was I
Speaker 3: actually saw the deer on the hook on the hoof
Speaker 3: October twelfth. And that was kind of like an odd
Speaker 3: hunt because I just kind of jumped into a tree
Speaker 3: as it was getting late in the evening, and I
Speaker 3: knew he was in that general area. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: like I'm gonna sit this tree cause I think I
Speaker 3: can kill him here. It was literally like I need
Speaker 3: to get into a tree cause it's four o'clock and
Speaker 3: I just need to watch right and he I just
Speaker 3: caught a glimpse of him at about sixty yards or so,
Speaker 3: and then I got some camera intel on him in
Speaker 3: you know, Ladish October, and that was the part that
Speaker 3: like I he made a rub on camera on video,
Speaker 3: and I was able to identify the tree and see
Speaker 3: how he was making rubs and stiff from there, It's
Speaker 3: like I got a real good He had an interesting
Speaker 3: ant like characteristic that you know, people will make that
Speaker 3: mistake that big deer run rub big trees, or they
Speaker 3: you know, they rub real tall or whatever. Right, this deer,
Speaker 3: this rub that he made was maybe only you know,
Speaker 3: six inches long, and it was probably only like a
Speaker 3: foot and a half off the ground, right, And so
Speaker 3: if you looked at that rub, you would think nothing
Speaker 3: of that caliber of animal was making that rub, right,
Speaker 3: but the detail he was leaving he had an interesting
Speaker 3: ant like character ristick on one of his longer times,
Speaker 3: and because of the way that time was, you know,
Speaker 3: a skew if you will, he was making tick marks
Speaker 3: that were like sixteen inches above where the rub stopped
Speaker 3: at the bottom, right, and so it was like, and
Speaker 3: that was what I was when I said, you know,
Speaker 3: I was gonna let up mature deer just kind of
Speaker 3: teach me some lessons. It's those types of things of
Speaker 3: paying attention to those small details when you're trying to
Speaker 3: chase a critter like that, right, that if you can
Speaker 3: just figure out small things and it's not going to
Speaker 3: be like, oh, here's a rub, it's like no. I
Speaker 3: was examining every single rub as I was walking through
Speaker 3: the woods to see if I could find a tick
Speaker 3: mark that was sixteen inches or so above where the
Speaker 3: rub was at to know that that was him and
Speaker 3: he's spending time in this area. So I started finding those, right,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of how I started putting my
Speaker 3: plan together. You know. The only bummer was is where
Speaker 3: I got that video. You know, in the off season,
Speaker 3: I said that would be where I would kill him
Speaker 3: if I were going to kill him. It's probably the
Speaker 3: best setup I had, right, because there was some topography
Speaker 3: there that was going to make him kind of move
Speaker 3: in an area. And I heard some fighting on the
Speaker 3: twenty fifth of October heard buck roar and a buck fight,
Speaker 3: and I had assumed it was him. And I was
Speaker 3: a little outside the game one a morning and I
Speaker 3: was like, you know what, the twenty six I'm going
Speaker 3: to make a move back closer to that. And my
Speaker 3: thought was I should go to that spot with a
Speaker 3: topography and I should sit that. That should be my
Speaker 3: first sit. And I've debated it, and I debated it,
Speaker 3: debated it. Literally that morning. I got out of my
Speaker 3: truck and I was going to walk to that spot,
Speaker 3: and I was at the last minute, I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going to save that spot for
Speaker 3: November because I think it's I think I'm probably like
Speaker 3: four or five days out from it being real good there. Right.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm going to go in on the
Speaker 3: west side of this particular kind of terrain feature and
Speaker 3: I'm going to set up there and I'm going to
Speaker 3: be about one hundred yards away from that spot. And
Speaker 3: so I should catch any of the action it's kind
Speaker 3: of coming through, you know, but not booger that up.
Speaker 3: So I should be in the game, but not booger
Speaker 3: that spot up. And sure shit, he walked through that
Speaker 3: spot at eight fourteen that morning, you know. And so
Speaker 3: it's one of those things where it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: whenever you're hunting a deer like that, you're probably only
Speaker 3: going to get one crack, right, And it's you know,
Speaker 3: I constantly try to tell myself when I go out
Speaker 3: of state, I'm aggressive, right because I'm only there on
Speaker 3: short time, and when I hunt in state, a lot
Speaker 3: of times, I'm a little bit more conservative, and I'm
Speaker 3: trying to like like work that out of myself to
Speaker 3: a degree, right, And this is like a time where
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, I just would have been aggressive, been
Speaker 3: like what, you know what, this is a good spot.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to go there, right, and whatever the
Speaker 3: results are, they are, And if it's boogered up, it's
Speaker 3: boogered up. I'll figure it out later, you know. But
Speaker 3: not being aggressive probably cost me, you know, an opportunity,
Speaker 3: probably a chip shot shot, to be honest with you, right.
Speaker 2: So that's exactly what I was going to say, is
Speaker 2: it is so much easier to the decision making process
Speaker 2: on the road, to me, is so much easier than
Speaker 2: at home because you don't have that, you don't have
Speaker 2: the luxury of time, you know, like you don't if
Speaker 2: you go in and blow them out. I mean you do,
Speaker 2: but it's like, doesn't feel the same thing as knowing
Speaker 2: now you've got thirty five days left to hunt and
Speaker 2: you might not see him again. And I you know,
Speaker 2: you said something there about how you know you're only
Speaker 2: going to get one crack at a deer like that?
Speaker 2: Most likely that's probably true, But I don't think it
Speaker 2: has to be like when you when you're on him
Speaker 2: like that. I think we I think we tell ourselves
Speaker 2: that sometimes so we feel better about playing it so
Speaker 2: conservatively and not being so cavalier. But when you see
Speaker 2: you know, and you're not the only one. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know a lot of really good kind of over
Speaker 2: the road public land hunters who take that aggressiveness on
Speaker 2: the road, but they really tamp it down when they
Speaker 2: get home, and it's like it's just it's a hard
Speaker 2: it's a mental thing to overcome. But when when you're
Speaker 2: on a deer like that, I mean that deer clearly
Speaker 2: spending real time there. I don't know if you if
Speaker 2: you bump that deer, I don't know if he's not
Speaker 2: back there tomorrow, because he has a lot of dudes
Speaker 2: looking for him, you know. But it's such a that's
Speaker 2: such a scary risk to take.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. It's one of those ones where
Speaker 3: you know, I was kicking myself, like when I pulled
Speaker 3: that card and I saw that, and I was like,
Speaker 3: you gotta be kidding me, you know here like here,
Speaker 3: you here, it was right, And I really should have
Speaker 3: probably went and did it for the reason that I
Speaker 3: was trying to get the Missouri right, So I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I usually don't hunt this area, like I know, it
Speaker 3: hunts tough in October, and I basically chased every cold
Speaker 3: front in October. And so what I would do, you know,
Speaker 3: is I would you know, every Saturday, I would go
Speaker 3: up and I would have jiu jitsu at night, and
Speaker 3: I would leave right after jiu jitsu, and I would
Speaker 3: drive the couple hours and I would sleep in the
Speaker 3: I would sleep in the front seat of my truck
Speaker 3: in a sleeping bag, and I would get up early
Speaker 3: and I would go hunt a morning set that I
Speaker 3: thought was pretty good. I would see some deer. I
Speaker 3: was seeing deer, like all October. I passed a deer
Speaker 3: you know, on like the sixth or seventh or whatever
Speaker 3: it was that I would shoot any other year, you know,
Speaker 3: Like it's one of those ones where I'm like, I
Speaker 3: can't believe I just passed that dear, you know, like,
Speaker 3: and truthfully, that was the only good buck I had
Speaker 3: in bow range, Like the whole season was that was
Speaker 3: that encounter. And so I would chase, you know, I'd
Speaker 3: go up Saturday and I hunt the morning and I
Speaker 3: would scout and walk like seven eight miles whatever it
Speaker 3: was until like it started getting dark. And then whatever
Speaker 3: I happened to be whenever it was getting dark is
Speaker 3: where I would get into a tree, right, And some
Speaker 3: of it was checking trail cameras, so someone's putting out
Speaker 3: some additional trail cameras looking for sign. I was trying
Speaker 3: to find a track, you know, cut a track, find
Speaker 3: a rub, find a scrape with a track in it,
Speaker 3: like anything you know that I could do to try
Speaker 3: to find them. And so I would do that on Saturdays,
Speaker 3: and I would basically hunt every cold front that came through,
Speaker 3: you know, even minor temp drops. I wasn't looking for
Speaker 3: like ten degrees. I was even looking just for like
Speaker 3: five degree changes and stuff like that. Anything that was
Speaker 3: just like different, you know. And I would go up
Speaker 3: and take my trailer and I would you know, work
Speaker 3: from it during the day. I'd get up in the morning,
Speaker 3: hunt the morning to about nine thirty ten o'clock, come
Speaker 3: back to the trailer with starlink, and I would set
Speaker 3: up and I would work all during the day. Then
Speaker 3: I would peace out around thirty or so and get
Speaker 3: back to the woods and hunt the evening. Right And
Speaker 3: so that was basically all of October. I knew October
Speaker 3: was kind of really a flyer just from cheryl camer data.
Speaker 3: I knew that place kind of turned on like it
Speaker 3: was a good rut like piece of dirt, if you will, right,
Speaker 3: But I also wanted to kind of like know that
Speaker 3: I was in the right area when Rutt kind of
Speaker 3: kicked off, right, because these deer, I've had so many
Speaker 3: deer in this area do two different things, right, Like,
Speaker 3: it seems to me like this particular area like as
Speaker 3: the deer get older, they become a little bit more
Speaker 3: homebodyish right, and they don't move quite as much. But
Speaker 3: then there's also like the groups of deer that just
Speaker 3: completely vanish and disappear. And so I wanted to try
Speaker 3: to get a good beat on whether or not what
Speaker 3: deer in him, specifically if they were still around in October.
Speaker 3: And the crazy thing was was I just had a
Speaker 3: sneaking suspicion that deer was still around because I don't
Speaker 3: I don't know if any of us got any pictures
Speaker 3: of him. I think the last sure we had of
Speaker 3: him was like September twenty first, until like I had
Speaker 3: him on the twenty sixth. I don't know if anybody
Speaker 3: any of my other buddies got him on camera like
Speaker 3: prior to that. But yeah, I mean he basically goes
Speaker 3: at a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people. Weren't telling the truth in your little
Speaker 2: circle at that point.
Speaker 3: No, I mean we were all pretty like forthcoming, right like,
Speaker 3: because when I had that encounter with him, you know,
Speaker 3: I was talking to my one buddy, and I mean
Speaker 3: I told him I had the encounter. I told him
Speaker 3: where I had the encounter at. You know, it's like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is where where it was at. He and I
Speaker 3: probably talked more than our other buddy or other buddy
Speaker 3: also just had had a baby recently, so like his
Speaker 3: time getting out. Oddly enough, out of the three of us,
Speaker 3: he was the only one to killed a buck, so
Speaker 3: he wasn't getting out nearly as often as like he
Speaker 3: probably would have been the past years and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: you know. And so but you know, a buddy, my
Speaker 3: one buddy, and I think we were sharing pretty freely,
Speaker 3: like of what we were seeing, what we weren't seeing,
Speaker 3: you know, if we were cutting a track or not
Speaker 3: cutting a track or whatever. But yeah, I bet, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure there was a little bit of secrecy going on.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like we're all chasing a big dear.
Speaker 2: And didn't you find out though, after you found out
Speaker 2: the buck was dead, that one of your buddies had
Speaker 2: missed him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my one buddy actually it was the day before
Speaker 3: he the day before he killed he actually shot just
Speaker 3: shot right under him. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and the
Speaker 3: thing was like my one buddy and I, it's like
Speaker 3: we had an agreement. It's like, dude, whoever kills this dear,
Speaker 3: the other guy, we're taking the We're taking the guy
Speaker 3: out for like a steak and bourbon. Dinner or staking
Speaker 3: Scotch dinner, you know, like that was like on the books,
Speaker 3: you know, because I was like, no matter what, like
Speaker 3: if one of us gets a crack at this dear
Speaker 3: and we get him on the ground, like it's just
Speaker 3: cause for celebration regardless, right, And I mean that's just
Speaker 3: speaks to like having good dudes, you know, around you
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So so let's let's back up a second here. If
Speaker 2: if I were to go back, if I were to
Speaker 2: take you back to Clint camp on let's say October
Speaker 2: one of this season, and now we're going to ask you,
Speaker 2: all right, you've got this freaking giant, You've been working him,
Speaker 2: you've been aware of him a long time, this is
Speaker 2: your focus for the season. What would you have pegged
Speaker 2: your odds at of killing that deer?
Speaker 3: M I mean when I go into it, like I
Speaker 3: gave myself one hundred percent because I don't ever like
Speaker 3: to feel like I'm walking into something and that's gonna fail, right,
Speaker 3: Like if I don't think I'm going to kill him,
Speaker 3: then what am I? Why am I hunting him? You know?
Speaker 3: But that's part of like, you know, just like sports talk, right,
Speaker 3: It's like any football team. It's like you walk into
Speaker 3: a game and it's like you could be oh and
Speaker 3: sixteen facing the team that's sixteen and oh and you're like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna win the game, right because if you don't
Speaker 3: think that way, you have no chance. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I wanted to get to, because you
Speaker 2: you put in real time on this, dear. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I've had a few situations in my life where I
Speaker 2: found a big one. You know, I've talked about a
Speaker 2: million times when I found a booner on public here
Speaker 2: in the Cities one time, hunted him for thirty days,
Speaker 2: killed his buddy. Ever saw them again. But it takes
Speaker 2: it takes that mentality, Okay, I know. I mean even
Speaker 2: though you know you're kind of tricking yourself, right Like,
Speaker 2: you know that your odds are not one hundred percent
Speaker 2: that you're gonna kill a two hundred inch buck on
Speaker 2: public land in Pennsylvania, right like, But you have to
Speaker 2: you have to put in that requisite work to believe
Speaker 2: in yourself enough to see that process through, even though
Speaker 2: you know, like the odds are less than one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: they just are. But if you're believing in the process
Speaker 2: and what you've put in. That's what keeps you making
Speaker 2: that drive and sleeping in the truck and doing the
Speaker 2: scouting and everything. And I think I think that you.
Speaker 2: I think it's easy for people to kind of contextualize
Speaker 2: that around a buck of a thousand lifetimes. But if
Speaker 2: you're just starting out, or you've killed a few deer
Speaker 2: and you want to bump up from you know, two
Speaker 2: and a half to something bigger or whatever, the same
Speaker 2: rules really kind of apply. Like if you don't put
Speaker 2: in the work, you know, you're not gonna have that belief,
Speaker 2: you won't hunt as hard like that. You have to.
Speaker 2: You have to have that faith in yourself somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you have to. You have to fool yourself
Speaker 3: a little bit. It's the thing that helps you get
Speaker 3: up at four o'clock in the morning and every morning,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. When you don't when you
Speaker 3: don't want to write, especially whenever you're sleeping in the
Speaker 3: front of your truck, you're tired, you know, you didn't
Speaker 3: get good sleep, and midday when you're when you're scouting,
Speaker 3: all you really want to do is go back to
Speaker 3: the truck and take a nap, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But you're not going to get any closer if you
Speaker 3: don't put the time in right. I mean, I felt
Speaker 3: pretty good about my odds of seeing him, Like I
Speaker 3: thought that that would happen, but I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: have any delusions of like what this was going to be.
Speaker 3: You know, I knew that I had a pretty good
Speaker 3: chance to see him because I thought, you know, in general,
Speaker 3: me and my two buddies, I thought we were all
Speaker 3: in the right general area like to have have a
Speaker 3: visual of him right and truthfully, like you know, like
Speaker 3: I said, I was one hundred percent because that's how
Speaker 3: I forced myself to get up and do this every
Speaker 3: day and like work and do all the things I
Speaker 3: needed to do get I mean, I still trained jiu
Speaker 3: jitsu like three days a week while I was doing
Speaker 3: all this right, so it's like my life didn't miss
Speaker 3: much of a beat, you know, while I was doing it.
Speaker 3: But realistically, I thought it was fifty to fifty. You know.
Speaker 3: I thought I had a couple places that were one
Speaker 3: spot in particular that I thought was really dialut if
Speaker 3: I could time it right, and that was the spot right,
Speaker 3: and it was just a matter of like could I
Speaker 3: be there when he was going to be there, right,
Speaker 3: And so realistically I thought I had a fifty to
Speaker 3: fifty percent chance. I thought for sure, it's like I
Speaker 3: would see him at some point, whether or not I
Speaker 3: was going to be close enough to get a shot
Speaker 3: or not, or at the right spot. Whenever he was
Speaker 3: close enough to get a shot, that I was like,
Speaker 3: it's a kind of a toss up, right, because you
Speaker 3: know just the way they move on that piece and
Speaker 3: how far they can move. Like, for context, there was
Speaker 3: a deer that my one buddy and I knew of
Speaker 3: the previous couple of years that we were hunting this
Speaker 3: other general area because I hadn't hunted this area until
Speaker 3: last year at all, even know I had cameras on it,
Speaker 3: had been scout it. And there was one particular deer
Speaker 3: that you know, I had an encounter with in an
Speaker 3: area and I thought for sure, like that general area
Speaker 3: is where you could kill him. And he got killed
Speaker 3: also I think during during gun season, and he he
Speaker 3: was killed roughly four and a half five miles as
Speaker 3: the crow flies from where we had him on camera
Speaker 3: and where I had an encounter with him, right, So
Speaker 3: you know the distance that they can that they travel
Speaker 3: in this general area. I knew that. You know, when
Speaker 3: you do see him, the chances of him being around
Speaker 3: there for an extended period of time are probably limited,
Speaker 3: especially once you got into like the later part of November.
Speaker 3: Like I figured like that October earliest November time frame
Speaker 3: was probably like the best time. Once you hit mid October,
Speaker 3: I was like, I think he's probably gonna really be
Speaker 3: searching and then he'll probably make his way back because
Speaker 3: I always usually got him again in like late October
Speaker 3: early December timeframe, right, And so I knew there's probably
Speaker 3: like a period of two weeks where he's just going
Speaker 3: to be gone, right and probably not going to be here,
Speaker 3: which is why I kind of put my odds at
Speaker 3: like fifty to fifty, because it's like he's not going
Speaker 3: to spend all his time here. He's going to travel,
Speaker 3: you know. And I know that, and I know from
Speaker 3: prior experience they travel a long distance in this area.
Speaker 2: So I think, I think there's something so important to
Speaker 2: what you just said. And I've been thinking about this
Speaker 2: a lot lately, where if even if you have that
Speaker 2: buck's entire home range to hunt, let's say the land
Speaker 2: that you hunt, he's he spends ninety percent of his
Speaker 2: time there or whatever. Like the time that he's probably
Speaker 2: going to bounce and leave your world is the time
Speaker 2: when you can haunt him, you know. And I think
Speaker 2: that a lot of times. I think this is the
Speaker 2: blessing and cursive trail cameras, right, Like you use trail
Speaker 2: cameras to go, here's my window when this giant's going
Speaker 2: to be here. Probably here's the window where he's probably
Speaker 2: just going to light out and go somewhere where I
Speaker 2: just don't know yet, And they're like very consistent on that,
Speaker 2: and trail cameras teach you that. But trail cameras can
Speaker 2: also tell, you know, the average person like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you just had a one forty walk through here, you
Speaker 2: know twice this week, so like now that becomes your
Speaker 2: target buck, and that that might have been him. Just
Speaker 2: like we literally just had this happen at my buddy's
Speaker 2: place over in Wisconsin. We had a buck show up
Speaker 2: for two days that was probably pushing one fifty beautiful
Speaker 2: mainframe ten point or just a toad for up there,
Speaker 2: and then he's gone, and my buddy's like, I'm super
Speaker 2: excited to go hunt gun season now, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: that deer is freaking gone, dude, Like that was just him.
Speaker 2: He followed a dough winery that was part of his
Speaker 2: rot route or whatever for a couple of days and
Speaker 2: he's gone. And I think a lot of people, I
Speaker 2: think they go into a one buck hunt or they
Speaker 2: you know, kind of pin their hopes on a deer
Speaker 2: that's really totally out of play. I mean, i'll give
Speaker 2: you another example quick here.
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 2: I have a property over in Wisconsin. This's twenty eight
Speaker 2: acres and one of the neighbors who borders me has
Speaker 2: like sixteen acres sixteen and he's got a food plot
Speaker 2: in there. Whatever he lives there. He puts a lot
Speaker 2: of work into this little piece and we've had a
Speaker 2: buck the last few years. That's a very big, non
Speaker 2: typical for over there. I mean probably upper one sixties,
Speaker 2: tons of stickers, really cool deer. But every year you
Speaker 2: talk to him and this guy is like, you know,
Speaker 2: stickers is back, blah blah blah. And I'm like, you
Speaker 2: have sixteen acres, man, and you hunt the shit out
Speaker 2: of it, like you're you're not going to kill that deer,
Speaker 2: Like you can't. You can't work that deer using you know,
Speaker 2: a fifty like a hundredth of his home range, a
Speaker 2: fiftieth of his home range, whatever, Like there's just there's
Speaker 2: just no way. But it's like so many people are
Speaker 2: out there looking at just you know, maybe a couple
Speaker 2: of pictures or whatever and going there there, that's my season,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm going to do. And hey, that's like
Speaker 2: if you want to do that, that's fine. But the
Speaker 2: more you the more you do the kind of hunting
Speaker 2: like you're talking about, the more you learn, like what's
Speaker 2: really in play for me and what's not. And a
Speaker 2: lot of these deer aren't in play that long in
Speaker 2: a lot of places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, in this type of setup or in
Speaker 3: this type of setting, like if you don't have a
Speaker 3: couple of years of intel like trail cameras, scouting, visual
Speaker 3: on the hoof like whatever, like it's you have on
Speaker 3: you have virtually no chance, right, just because of how
Speaker 3: much ground they cover and how many HIGHI holes they
Speaker 3: have and and things like that. It's a little bit different.
Speaker 3: Like and it goes back to what we were talking about,
Speaker 3: what we were talking about the beginning, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: part of the reason why I think this deer got
Speaker 3: to that age is because he lives on a piece
Speaker 3: of you know, big woods that he has vast land
Speaker 3: to travel. He has a lot of places he can
Speaker 3: hide and a lot of places guys aren't willing to
Speaker 3: hike two to hunt, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: you know, it gives him the opportunity to grow old.
Speaker 3: When you have those places that have a lot of
Speaker 3: structure and and things like that, I think, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe you don't need as much intel because it's really
Speaker 3: defined how deer are probably going to move, right. You know,
Speaker 3: you can start to you know, anticipate how they're, where
Speaker 3: they're going to be and when they're going to be,
Speaker 3: and like the food is here, and the betting is here,
Speaker 3: and the does live here. It's like when it starts
Speaker 3: to set up like that, it becomes a little bit
Speaker 3: a little bit easier. But you know, this year, there
Speaker 3: was there was none of that. You know, there was
Speaker 3: no structure, There was no and so you know, the
Speaker 3: only really reason we were able to kind of successfully
Speaker 3: i think, kind of stay close to him and know
Speaker 3: that we were in his core areas because we literally
Speaker 3: had three years of intel of trail cameras data on
Speaker 3: him of like being in different places different times of
Speaker 3: the year, right, because that was the biggest thing for me,
Speaker 3: was like was knowing that he would be in the
Speaker 3: general area, like in the October October timeframe, right, or
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to spend any time hunt him, Like
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to pin my whole hunt on just
Speaker 3: trying to hunt him in November and hope that he
Speaker 3: comes through on a dough during the rut, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I wasn't gonna do that. I'm not that lucky,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like we'll just put it
Speaker 3: that way. I'm not I'm not that kind of I'm
Speaker 3: not that lucky of a guy, right, So I knew
Speaker 3: that he was probably still in the area just by
Speaker 3: like previous years intel, you know, and that I needed
Speaker 3: to spend my time like trying to like get a
Speaker 3: visual or cut his cut his sign somewhere and then
Speaker 3: getting that visual in mid October. Like if I didn't
Speaker 3: see him, didn't have him on trail camera or anything
Speaker 3: in October, right, like I probably would have left him
Speaker 3: went to Missouri, like like I was planning to, right,
Speaker 3: But because I saw him in the middle of October,
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, I know he's here. Like this
Speaker 3: is his I always assumed this was his core area.
Speaker 3: I now really think that it is right. And now
Speaker 3: I have a better idea that I actually even think
Speaker 3: like a section of this is more in play than
Speaker 3: the rest of it, if that makes sense, right, Because
Speaker 3: you know, at one point my buddy and I both
Speaker 3: did this. We were talking about it on the phone
Speaker 3: one day. We both basically took like the primary areas
Speaker 3: where we had him relatively consistently dropped a pin and
Speaker 3: then put a mile radius around it. And that was
Speaker 3: what I was scouting in October, was I was basically
Speaker 3: scouting that mile radius around that central kind of area
Speaker 3: that we thought was kind of like, let's just call
Speaker 3: this the center of his home range, right, And then
Speaker 3: just spent time walking like that mile radius and like
Speaker 3: the little areas that I thought he might be hiding
Speaker 3: out and dropping a camera and stuff like that, just
Speaker 3: to you know, see if I could pick him up.
Speaker 3: And you know, and a lot of that time was
Speaker 3: probably spent for not but based on you know, what
Speaker 3: I ended up learning where he was spending a lot
Speaker 3: of his time. But you know the benefit of that was,
Speaker 3: you know, I really got to understand this piece a
Speaker 3: lot better for future hunts, and I basically just gave
Speaker 3: you know, I gave this season up to either trying
Speaker 3: to kill this deer or I was going to little
Speaker 3: mature deer teach me like that was my goal. Those
Speaker 3: are the two goals I had to either fill my
Speaker 3: tag with this deer. I was talking to my buddy
Speaker 3: Jako for about this because he was like, man, you know,
Speaker 3: hunting a deer like that, one specific deer in that
Speaker 3: type of country. He was like, is like a task,
Speaker 3: you know? And I was like yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3: but you know, the season that I had last year,
Speaker 3: I was like, I feel like I owe it to
Speaker 3: like my development, if you will to do this and
Speaker 3: let a mature deer, if nothing else, just teach me
Speaker 3: some lessons and probably some hard lessons. I was like,
Speaker 3: but you know, for me, that was part of like
Speaker 3: the gratitude of the season that I had last year,
Speaker 3: was like, let's do something hard this year, knowing that
Speaker 3: the success rate's probably not going to be real high, right,
Speaker 3: but the growth I think I can get out of it,
Speaker 3: like as a hunter but also just as a person.
Speaker 3: I was like, I think will be well worth it.
Speaker 3: And so that was kind of the that was kind
Speaker 3: of like the secondary goal.
Speaker 2: Man. That's I mean, first off, that's really cool, but
Speaker 2: also it's just it's it's like a missing component of
Speaker 2: a lot of people want to kill big deer, but
Speaker 2: they don't understand that that's just a part of it.
Speaker 2: Like you have you have to do things that are
Speaker 2: it's not the challenge of killing a big deer alone
Speaker 2: doesn't really mean that much without like all the other
Speaker 2: variables involved, right, And so if you're not, if you're
Speaker 2: not trying something to help yourself level up a little bit,
Speaker 2: like you're just you're just not going to get there.
Speaker 2: And that's that's just how it works. And the thing
Speaker 2: that I love about your story with this deer is,
Speaker 2: you know, for a while the public land thing was
Speaker 2: so hot. It's starting to that that I feel like
Speaker 2: that's like sort of died down now and we're kind
Speaker 2: of back to leases and box lines and like trophy,
Speaker 2: we're like back to trophy hunting again. But public land,
Speaker 2: as bad of a rep as it gets a lot
Speaker 2: of times, can be sometimes a better option if you
Speaker 2: want a giant, or you want a great hunt, or
Speaker 2: you want to really learn how to do something out there,
Speaker 2: better than good private land. And this is this is
Speaker 2: like nobody really wants to hear this. But I ran
Speaker 2: into this with my daughters this year, or one of
Speaker 2: my daughters anyway. The other one killed a buck right away,
Speaker 2: so she was tagged out, but one of them didn't.
Speaker 2: And so we just had a weekend in early November,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, let's go run that decoy.
Speaker 2: Let's do what we did last year, hunt some of
Speaker 2: the private pieces we have. Couldn't see a deer, and
Speaker 2: I told her, I said, you know, I got a
Speaker 2: spot on public that I haven't been into for a
Speaker 2: few years, but I killed some good deer in there,
Speaker 2: and I saw some big ones, and I'm like, maybe
Speaker 2: we can just roll in there and find something. And
Speaker 2: she's never done that kind of hunt, dude. We pulled
Speaker 2: up and there's there's a couple old logging roads and
Speaker 2: there's big woods. It's thousands and thousands of acres of timber.
Speaker 2: And I got out of the truck and I could
Speaker 2: see big rubs from the truck and a scrape where
Speaker 2: these deers scraping right by this gravel road. And I
Speaker 2: told her, I said, we're going to go back and
Speaker 2: get our stuff, We're going to walk in here and
Speaker 2: we're gonna hunt, Like we're not going to go because
Speaker 2: I just was originally going to go walk it with
Speaker 2: her and just kind of look around. And we went
Speaker 2: in there, and because you know she's crossbow hunt, she's twelve,
Speaker 2: we set up on the ground, which is tough over there.
Speaker 2: It was kind of that rainy southeast wind almost no
Speaker 2: wind kind of stuff where it was like we keep
Speaker 2: getting that weather pattern this year. So we sat that
Speaker 2: night and when we walked in there, the amount of
Speaker 2: sign and it keep in mind I had just come
Speaker 2: from Iowa public Land, but still I didn't see sign
Speaker 2: like that in Iowa anywhere I went. And I covered
Speaker 2: some ground like it was like we are We're in
Speaker 2: the belly of the beast right now. There's something going
Speaker 2: on here. We didn't see any deer that night, but
Speaker 2: it was rainy, the wind sucked. It was just like
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not I don't count this as
Speaker 2: like a negative toward what we have working here, Like
Speaker 2: this was just sort of a probably wasn't going to
Speaker 2: work out. So we go back to the cabin and
Speaker 2: I'm like, do I want to go back in there
Speaker 2: with her in the morning, and I'm kind of like
Speaker 2: debating because I have easier setups on private, you know,
Speaker 2: And we were literally hunting any bucks. She'd shot any
Speaker 2: illegal buck, but I was like it bothered me, and
Speaker 2: so I don't get reception in the campies. I walked
Speaker 2: outside and I pulled up on ax. I'm like, why
Speaker 2: are they there? Like I didn't understand this, this concentration
Speaker 2: a sign And I found a private hayfield I didn't know.
Speaker 2: It looks like a horse hay field or whatever, nine
Speaker 2: hundred yards away in the exact direction that that scrape
Speaker 2: line was going. And there had been a bunch of
Speaker 2: tracks on the road because we were dealing with a
Speaker 2: lot of rain. And I was like, why why are
Speaker 2: the deer doing this? Like why would they go to
Speaker 2: that chunk of big woods and leave this one when
Speaker 2: they're all kind of the same, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So I'm like maybe logging activity or something. And then
Speaker 2: I found that and I'm like, I'll bet you that's
Speaker 2: the destination, Like it's it's you know, there's no agg
Speaker 2: up there, right, And so I told my daughter, I said,
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning, we're going to go the long way in
Speaker 2: it's gonna be a pain in the ass, but we're
Speaker 2: gonna not We're gonna We're gonna get ahead of these
Speaker 2: deer and go set up again in that blind. You know,
Speaker 2: we'd piled some dead falls together whatever, and I was like,
Speaker 2: maybe we'll catch them coming back in in the morning.
Speaker 2: And we got in there and it was super foggy,
Speaker 2: dead still kind of rainy, and we heard a stick
Speaker 2: snap like an hour into the morning, and she got ready.
Speaker 2: Deer never showed up, and I know there's like little
Speaker 2: logging roads and stuff they'll peel off of, and so
Speaker 2: I'm like, maybe he didn't get here. And I looked
Speaker 2: up and there was like one hundred and thirty inch
Speaker 2: or stand in forty yards away and he had us
Speaker 2: peg and he just cut down or ran away, and
Speaker 2: I was like, man, we.
Speaker 4: Almost almost had an amazing buck on public land in
Speaker 4: the Big Woods when we couldn't find a four key
Speaker 4: on private.
Speaker 2: Ten minutes down the road. And it's like that shit
Speaker 2: is so cool just to have that opportunity, And a
Speaker 2: lot of people kind of ic themselves out of that
Speaker 2: and they look and go, well, I have grandma's forty
Speaker 2: acres to hunt or whatever. I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: scout the public down the road that gets pounded. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, man, you just don't know on any given year,
Speaker 2: you don't know what you're going to find in there.
Speaker 2: And there's there's some opportunities that are just like, you know,
Speaker 2: really great deer that you can work on public and
Speaker 2: it's so freaking cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I mean, I think, especially when you start
Speaker 3: thinking about states that aren't known for for a good deer,
Speaker 3: I think that the only way that you can find
Speaker 3: like the upper caliber of deer is to is to
Speaker 3: go to the to the public, like for the most part, right,
Speaker 3: I think it's different whenever you get to like the
Speaker 3: Iowa's and Kansas is and Illinois and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: where it's like you can find good deer. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's good deer everywhere in those states. Right, it's just
Speaker 3: a matter of you know, being at the right on
Speaker 3: the right piece, right, whether it's private or public or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I really think when you start talking about states
Speaker 3: like Pennsylvania, for example, you know, I think you have
Speaker 3: a better chance to find, you know, a quality deer,
Speaker 3: and like it's like, let's just say quality in the
Speaker 3: terms of age structure, right, because that was ultimately the
Speaker 3: one guy that I ran into. You know, he asked
Speaker 3: me where I was from, because that piece that I
Speaker 3: was hunting a little bit of a ways away from
Speaker 3: my house a couple of hours, and his question to
Speaker 3: me was like, well, how did you, like, why do
Speaker 3: you hunt here? Right? And he'd been hunting there a
Speaker 3: long time, so it's like I think at first he
Speaker 3: was a little bit precious on the spot where it's
Speaker 3: like people coming in that aren't from here hunting this area,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean type of thing. Even though
Speaker 3: I'm from I'm a resident, right, but it's still like
Speaker 3: I'm not a local. And I just said, I looked
Speaker 3: on a map and I was looking for a place
Speaker 3: that I thought had enough land mass, you know, that
Speaker 3: deer could hide during gun season. I was I can
Speaker 3: get age on them so I could hunt the age
Speaker 3: class of deer that I wanted to hunt. What's relative consistency,
Speaker 3: you know, And that to me was like the most
Speaker 3: important thing, was like being able to find a place
Speaker 3: where they can you know, get to like four and
Speaker 3: a half years old, you know, I'll even take three
Speaker 3: and a half because a lot of the deer around
Speaker 3: me locally, don't make it.
Speaker 2: Three and a half.
Speaker 3: Like that's usually like upper end age class of deer
Speaker 3: around here. You'll get your occasional four and a half
Speaker 3: an occasional five and a half, right, But like buying large,
Speaker 3: like the more mature deer you get on camera at
Speaker 3: local to me is probably like three and a half
Speaker 3: is probably like the you know, the larger part of
Speaker 3: like the mature quote unquote age structure. But this area
Speaker 3: was like big enough where I was like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that you can get the get the age on them.
Speaker 3: And I think whenever you're talking about states like Pa,
Speaker 3: if you do want to hunt deer that you know,
Speaker 3: get to that four and a half year old or
Speaker 3: older kind of age class, like that's your best option,
Speaker 3: right because if you're hunting the back forty and you're
Speaker 3: around a bunch of other back forties, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's a heavy hunting heritage state, and you could throw
Speaker 3: Michigan probably into this too, you know, or even Wisconsin
Speaker 3: for that matter, probably to a degree. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of people and you know, it's not whatever they
Speaker 3: want to do however they want to hunt, but like
Speaker 3: a lot of people aren't trying to kill, you know,
Speaker 3: the better deer in the air. They're just trying to
Speaker 3: have fun and shoot a deer, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and like, you know, or power to him. But if
Speaker 3: you're a person who's looking for an age class to chase,
Speaker 3: you know, or something like that, or a type of
Speaker 3: experience you're looking for, and those places, you know, you're
Speaker 3: probably not going to get that on your back forty
Speaker 3: or your grandpa's back forty or one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: acres that you own over here, Like it's just you know,
Speaker 3: it's going to probably be hit. And this as far
Speaker 3: as like yeah, one year you might be able to,
Speaker 3: but then the next five you might not. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of the situation I had, you know, several years ago,
Speaker 3: because we own property back in Western PA, like my
Speaker 3: family does, and I hunted that, you know. Growing up,
Speaker 3: I had like private property that I hunted, and then
Speaker 3: as I got older, we had like other family pieces
Speaker 3: that I that I hunted, and I just got to
Speaker 3: a point where I was hunting a specific buck. You know,
Speaker 3: this is like the last time I hunted a specific
Speaker 3: year prior to this. And I had four different encounters
Speaker 3: with him in late season, and like all well within
Speaker 3: like marginal bow range, just could never get him shot.
Speaker 3: And so the following years like I'm gonna kill him.
Speaker 3: Open him day and he came out out of the
Speaker 3: crick bottom and I saw him, and he just he's
Speaker 3: with a couple other deer, and the other's deer got
Speaker 3: spooky and he turned around and walked away, and then
Speaker 3: someone shot him in gun season, and I knew where
Speaker 3: he was bedded, but he was on the neighbors And
Speaker 3: that was when where I stopped kind of hunting public land,
Speaker 3: not because I have think there's anything wrong with it,
Speaker 3: but I was like it killed me to know that,
Speaker 3: Like I knew where that deer was at, and there
Speaker 3: wasn't anything I could do about it. I just had
Speaker 3: to wait and hope that he took the travel route
Speaker 3: that I was setting up on right and that things
Speaker 3: were going to break my way as opposed to getting
Speaker 3: within fifty yards of him, you know, and having enough
Speaker 3: daylight or whatever to work in, you know. And that
Speaker 3: was kind of the thing for me. It was like
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, I want to hunt a
Speaker 3: better age class a deer, and I want to be
Speaker 3: able to if I know where a deer is at
Speaker 3: I want to be able to go get him, you know,
Speaker 3: and and that's ultimately why I ended up, you know
Speaker 3: where I ended up. And you know, finding this caliber
Speaker 3: of deer to hunt this particular year was just kind
Speaker 3: of a was just kind of a bonus.
Speaker 2: Right, Just just to be clear, you said that's when
Speaker 2: he stopped hunting public, but you meant stopped hunting private there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what. Yeah, and that and that's.
Speaker 2: That is a that is a hard thing to get
Speaker 2: across where if somebody has their four year, they're eighty,
Speaker 2: that's that's private. They don't want to go hunt in public.
Speaker 2: But if you want, you know, like you said, in
Speaker 2: some situations, you might have a better chance to find
Speaker 2: a big one if you have more room to room,
Speaker 2: and you might have a better chance to figure out
Speaker 2: how to like how to really work some deer. And
Speaker 2: you know, like I say this a lot on about
Speaker 2: public land hunting, and I truly believe it. You know,
Speaker 2: private land is so appealing because you feel like you're
Speaker 2: only working the deer generally, you know, but if you're
Speaker 2: on forty acres and the next forty over has five
Speaker 2: hundreds on it, and the next forty over has two
Speaker 2: hunters and the next forty. Oh, you really are working
Speaker 2: the hunters too. You're just not thinking about it. You're
Speaker 2: thinking about what are the deer doing on my place now?
Speaker 2: And you know you can't divorce that from the fact
Speaker 2: that they're getting pushed around and shot and all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff on other properties. You go out in thousands
Speaker 2: of acres of unbroken timber in pa or wherever you have,
Speaker 2: you accept the fact that you're going to be working
Speaker 2: against other hunters like you have. You have to work
Speaker 2: the hunting pressure to some level, but you also get
Speaker 2: to work that deer, maybe in his entirety, and not
Speaker 2: worry about him hopping the fence and betting where you
Speaker 2: can't get him and somebody else might shoot him. And
Speaker 2: there is there is like something really appealing to that.
Speaker 2: And it's like, you know, I push this message on
Speaker 2: here all the time and in my Foundation podcast because
Speaker 2: I believe it so much. But I'm like, if you're
Speaker 2: limiting yourself, you know, to forty acres and you're not
Speaker 2: happy with your hunting or eighty acres or whatever you have,
Speaker 2: you're not out anything. By going to try to figure
Speaker 2: out some of the local public land or some of
Speaker 2: the you know, maybe going like you do a couple
Speaker 2: hours to a different part of the state, or I
Speaker 2: do here in Minnesota quite a bit, just to see
Speaker 2: if you can find something to work that puts you
Speaker 2: in a little bit different place and gives you a
Speaker 2: different chance to you know, kind of flex your muscles
Speaker 2: a little bit. That shit's fun, and it's like that
Speaker 2: is how you get way better. And you know, getting
Speaker 2: better at something is pretty enjoyable typically.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the other thing is too, is that you know,
Speaker 3: I guess at this at this point, like I just
Speaker 3: go where the deer are that I want to chase,
Speaker 3: right And so whether it's that piece I was on
Speaker 3: this year or if it's stuffed local, wherever the deer
Speaker 3: are that I want to chase is where I'm going
Speaker 3: to hunt, you know, regardless of you know, because around
Speaker 3: me the public gets hammered, right, Like it's crazy pressure,
Speaker 3: like the pressure that that this big woods piece gets.
Speaker 3: Like I think some of the locals think there's there's
Speaker 3: pressure there, but you know, what I always kind of
Speaker 3: say is like, man, if you're deterred by hunting in
Speaker 3: areas that you where you see tree stands and flagging
Speaker 3: tape and bright eyes. Dude, you will never even set
Speaker 3: up where I live, you know, to mean, because you
Speaker 3: walk into the woods and it's all over the place,
Speaker 3: you know, and so you can't really care much about
Speaker 3: what other hunters are doing, right because like you just
Speaker 3: never step foot into the into the woods, right. And
Speaker 3: I think that coming from a place that like that's
Speaker 3: kind of what the pressure is, Like, I think is
Speaker 3: a is a benefit to a degree because I'm not
Speaker 3: typically deterred when I see a truck in a parking
Speaker 3: lot or I see someone out in the woods. Like
Speaker 3: for example, the deer I killed last year in Kansas,
Speaker 3: I was glassing the deer that I killed the night before, right,
Speaker 3: and I was watching a guy walk about two hundred
Speaker 3: yards away from where I was watching the deer that
Speaker 3: I was wanting to kill, right, And some people would
Speaker 3: have been like, well, that's too close, like a deer
Speaker 3: that's blowing up, like he just walked through a bunch
Speaker 3: of stuff. Right, I was like, whatever, Like he's he's there.
Speaker 3: This deer may or may not really know that he's there.
Speaker 3: He's on a dough, Like he's probably more focused on
Speaker 3: the dough. He's gonna come out, you know, probably tomorrow
Speaker 3: night with this with this doe again, right, as long
Speaker 3: as like she doesn't get bumped, you know or boogered
Speaker 3: where they're petted. And so I went in the next
Speaker 3: afternoon at like three o'clock and I killed a boom
Speaker 3: and crocket deer on the ground at five point thirty,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And there was guy, there
Speaker 3: were guys all over that in trucks and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and it was just one of those things where it's
Speaker 3: like I knew where this deer was, wasn't so concerned
Speaker 3: about what they were doing. I had a plan and
Speaker 3: I and I thought that I could get it done
Speaker 3: without them interfering, you know, And so I wasn't too
Speaker 3: broke up about other people hunting the hunting the piece necessarily.
Speaker 3: You know. Now if they walk through exactly where you're
Speaker 3: gonna be, it's a little bit of a different story, right.
Speaker 3: But it's just like there were trucks there every day,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. But like I was, I
Speaker 3: think they actually helped me because I wanted a deer
Speaker 3: in a certain spot and that's where he ended up being.
Speaker 3: And I had seen that over the past year or
Speaker 3: two as well, right, And this was a big deer.
Speaker 3: So he was being pretty consistent, you know, like he
Speaker 3: wasn't going to change up unless someone made him change,
Speaker 3: you know. And and so I wasn't, you know, put
Speaker 3: off by the fact that there were other guys hunting
Speaker 3: the hunting the area. In fact, I saw two guys
Speaker 3: walk out of where I thought he was bedded with
Speaker 3: a dough in the eat like where he was typically
Speaker 3: betted in this CRP. The evening that I glassed him
Speaker 3: and I drove out to go back to my camp,
Speaker 3: I watched two guys walk out of where he's where
Speaker 3: he was betting with that dough, right, And so it's
Speaker 3: like he would say like, oh, man, that's all buggered up,
Speaker 3: But like I was like, ah, they didn't. They didn't
Speaker 3: bother him, you know. I was like, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: he's he and that dough are probably used to people
Speaker 3: walking around the area because they're doing it all the time, right,
Speaker 3: And as long as they didn't get bumped, I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't think it'll change much of what they're gonna do.
Speaker 3: And sure enough, like it worked out the next day.
Speaker 2: I think that we have a very skewed view of
Speaker 2: the impact that we put on deer, Like I think,
Speaker 2: I think for sure more hunting pressure sucks, like well yeah,
Speaker 2: just generally, but the the reality out there is, man,
Speaker 2: you can bump into them, you can have people going
Speaker 2: all over small game hunters come in and you know
Speaker 2: how it is, like you how many times you've been
Speaker 2: sitting on your stand or sitting there glassing like you said,
Speaker 2: and you see somebody go through, burn through, burn dogs, whatever,
Speaker 2: and then an hour later there's deer there, you know,
Speaker 2: and or you bump one and you're like, I'm never
Speaker 2: going to see a deer here, snorted a million times
Speaker 2: and then they come right back through. Like I ran
Speaker 2: into this this year in Iowa where I killed my buck.
Speaker 2: I had a whole plan going down there. The last
Speaker 2: time I drew there was there wasn't hardly any hunting
Speaker 2: pressure there. This time there were freaking people everywhere. I
Speaker 2: mean it was. It was nuts. The first four spots
Speaker 2: I went to had trucks, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: like i gotta i gotta recalibrate my plan because I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not working in it's not twenty twenty anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Something changed, and so I started looking
Speaker 2: at it and going, well, most of these guys probably
Speaker 2: aren't going in very deep. They're probably sitting obvious stuff
Speaker 2: like there's there's that you know, kind of first layer,
Speaker 2: you know, and down there the woods it's all nice
Speaker 2: deciduous force, it's easy to walk through. It all looks
Speaker 2: like it looks good. There's lots of deer, so there's
Speaker 2: tongues of sign. So I'm like, looking at, you know,
Speaker 2: on X again, I'm like, okay, I love river bottoms.
Speaker 2: I love those flats along rivers that have willows and
Speaker 2: just like that sawgrass and kind of like just that
Speaker 2: different level of habitat right. And I was like, the
Speaker 2: river that I'm hunting along is so low right now.
Speaker 2: I've never seen it like this, and I've turkey hunted
Speaker 2: and deer hunting down there a fair amount. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: there's probably better vegetation, like better nutritious vegetation for browsing
Speaker 2: in those spots than anywhere else. And so I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna go figure that part out. And dude,
Speaker 2: it was like a ten minute walk, you know, and
Speaker 2: this is Iowa, of course, but there were there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people hunting down there, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's tracks along the people tracks along the river, and
Speaker 2: I can see a blind in this one spot. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: But you get in there and you're like, well, the
Speaker 2: deer been browsing like crazy, and here here's a good crossing. Here,
Speaker 2: here's a good crossing there. The cover is different. There's
Speaker 2: actually like vibrant green plants growing along the river. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is probably just the next layer in. And you know,
Speaker 2: we were we had a bunch of deer around us.
Speaker 2: Decoyed went down the river and shot him and it
Speaker 2: was like all we all I had to do was
Speaker 2: sort of like forget about all the trucks, like forget that,
Speaker 2: you know, like this is not what I expected, and
Speaker 2: just go in and find them and then you work them.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people just aren't you know. They
Speaker 2: bring They bring us sort of a set of rules
Speaker 2: to public land that just doesn't necessarily apply. You know,
Speaker 2: like if you if you knock down a door somewhere
Speaker 2: and walked in and you were gonna go sit, you
Speaker 2: could go sit a field corner and shoot a deer,
Speaker 2: right like, maybe probably not going to do that on
Speaker 2: public land. In a lot of places, like it's going
Speaker 2: to take a little bit. Like you mentioned about that
Speaker 2: big when you were after how there's no bed to
Speaker 2: food food to bed type of thing, Like you're not
Speaker 2: you know, the cornfield isn't over there and the river
Speaker 2: bottom isn't over there, Like it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2: But you're like, you know, there's soft edges in the woods,
Speaker 2: and I'm starting to think about this. In fact, I
Speaker 2: just wrote a Foundation's episode about it, Like the connective
Speaker 2: tissue that the deer use, you know, like that that
Speaker 2: river bottom buck eye killed. There were three river bottom
Speaker 2: flats and the connective tissue was the shortest route between
Speaker 2: them to stay hidden and stay in those willows and
Speaker 2: shit like that and just not go into that wide
Speaker 2: open woods where more people were. And it's like it's
Speaker 2: a linear thing, right, like if they if they're over
Speaker 2: here and they want to get over there, why what
Speaker 2: are they going to use to get there? And that's
Speaker 2: soft edge, Like you're talking about those real soft edges
Speaker 2: in the woods, the big woods. They just use them.
Speaker 2: They use them for cover, they use them for brows,
Speaker 2: and they're just like one of those things that a
Speaker 2: lot of people would walk through and just never pick
Speaker 2: up on. But that's like, you know, you're hunting public land,
Speaker 2: like you're working a giant deer. What is what is like?
Speaker 2: What can you use to your advantage when you can't
Speaker 2: use those train traps and an obvious A to B
Speaker 2: type of food to bed thing or something and that
Speaker 2: that shit's so fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was That was probably my biggest learning curve
Speaker 3: of when I first started scouting in and then eventually
Speaker 3: hunting this place. And you know, I got to give
Speaker 3: props to my two buddies. I keep kind of referencing
Speaker 3: and I'm not mentioning them in name because I'm sure
Speaker 3: if they ever want their name mentioned, Like I've literally
Speaker 3: like the one won't even come on my podcast, Like
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm not coming on. So but because you know,
Speaker 3: when I first started up there, the one, my one buddy,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't remember how we met exactly, but
Speaker 3: you know, he was like, hey, you know, let's go
Speaker 3: walk the woods or whatever. And just because I was
Speaker 3: not sure whenever I was seeing sign if it was
Speaker 3: like if that sign was good or not for that
Speaker 3: particular area, right because I wasn't seeing a lot of
Speaker 3: it and I wasn't seeing big sign right, and so
Speaker 3: I just needed some context. And so we walked the
Speaker 3: woods a little bit and hung some trail cameras and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and like, and I was showing him like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is the type of stuff. I'm fine. He's like, no,
Speaker 3: that's good, and I was like, okay, cool. And then
Speaker 3: I ended up meeting my other buddy. Those two were friends.
Speaker 3: So that's how I met the other the other guy,
Speaker 3: and then he and I would walk the woods and
Speaker 3: stuff together, and they're both really really good hunters, and
Speaker 3: so I was able to kind of they expedited my
Speaker 3: learning curve in the area by kind of helping me
Speaker 3: understand like what good sign is for that area, what
Speaker 3: deer like to use in that area, how they kind
Speaker 3: of use the soft edges and stuff like that a
Speaker 3: little bit, you know, more effectively, where you're typically going
Speaker 3: to find like sign typically right, or where you're going
Speaker 3: to find pockets of deer, and so a place that
Speaker 3: would have taken me probably five years to start to
Speaker 3: learn to actually be able to hunt effectively, like you know,
Speaker 3: with their help, it's like I was able to kind
Speaker 3: of figure out what I needed to know within like
Speaker 3: three years, you know, which was you know, props to
Speaker 3: them for being cool and you know and helping me out.
Speaker 3: But you're right, it's like, you know, it's figuring all
Speaker 3: that little stuff out was was not just helpful for
Speaker 3: that area, but it's also changes how I look at other,
Speaker 3: like other landscapes as well. Right, So, whether I'm in
Speaker 3: Kansas or whatever, like you start to kind of you
Speaker 3: and I talk about this all the time. You start
Speaker 3: to create these like analogs between different places right where
Speaker 3: it's like I've never been here before and I've never
Speaker 3: hunted this type of terrain, but man, it feels a
Speaker 3: lot like this place I was in in Kansas or
Speaker 3: this place I was in.
Speaker 2: Missouri or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right Like this creek crossing is not in Missouri, but
Speaker 3: it's NPA. But man, it feels a lot like that
Speaker 3: one setup that I had that was like a drainage
Speaker 3: that went into lake to this lake, you know, And
Speaker 3: so it's it's stuff like that that you start to
Speaker 3: kind of start to kind of pick up on and
Speaker 3: then you know ultimately what happened this you know, for
Speaker 3: me this year is like you know, I've already kind
Speaker 3: of started looking at the map and going like what
Speaker 3: did I what did this deer teach me? You know
Speaker 3: that I can use to look at this landscape a
Speaker 3: little bit differently and start to like find other areas
Speaker 3: I want to explore, Right. And so I've already kind
Speaker 3: of started going through the map and kind of like
Speaker 3: dropping pins in areas that aren't even necessarily close to
Speaker 3: that particular area. Right. It's like, what are the things
Speaker 3: that this place had that allowed this deer, you know
Speaker 3: in and a couple others to reach a certain maturity
Speaker 3: or a certain caliber, And where can I find that
Speaker 3: in some of these other pockets? Right? And then the
Speaker 3: second part of that is is like, you know, where
Speaker 3: can I use like some interesting access to find these? Right?
Speaker 3: And so like I'm starting to like double down on
Speaker 3: it a little bit because I'm like, this is a place.
Speaker 3: You know. You know, when you find certain places or
Speaker 3: certain types of setups, you know, there's a reason why.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're in any state that doesn't grow
Speaker 3: giants consistently, right, if you're finding them somewhere, right, there's
Speaker 3: a reason why.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's just like when you're trying to hunt a deer,
Speaker 3: it's like you don't you don't take things at face value,
Speaker 3: ask like well, why did he do this? Why did
Speaker 3: he go here? Why why was he here on this date?
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: And so you know what I'm starting to do now
Speaker 3: is ask like, well, why was why was he able
Speaker 3: to grow so old in that particular area? Right? Like
Speaker 3: what did it have that let him do that? Right?
Speaker 3: And then where else can I where else do I
Speaker 3: see that like similarities? Right? And like let me go
Speaker 3: explore those, because chances are you know, when you're talking
Speaker 3: about big woods like that, you know there's I mean,
Speaker 3: there's deer in this in this in this area that
Speaker 3: I probably have never seen a person before, right, Like
Speaker 3: I feel pretty confident in saying that, you know. And
Speaker 3: so with that, it's like then they they have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to get age on them, right, And so you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's got to be more like him somewhere. You
Speaker 3: just have to, you know, put the work into to
Speaker 3: try to find them, right, And I'm not hung up
Speaker 3: on trophy hunting necessarily, but boy, it's fun to chase
Speaker 3: them like that because you know, you just they give
Speaker 3: you a different lens into their world than you know,
Speaker 3: other than younger deers. Just don't just don't give you, right,
Speaker 3: they just don't make the mistakes, they don't leave as
Speaker 3: much sign They make you work for everything, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's just a different it's just a different experience.
Speaker 3: And and that to me is like the fun part, right,
Speaker 3: Like is just that experience. So like, give me like
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty inch like seven year old deer.
Speaker 3: It's like I'd love to chase that deer, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like because that's just he's been around
Speaker 3: the block, man, Like he's not gonna You're not gonna
Speaker 3: kill him sitting on the inside corner of like foots.
Speaker 3: It's just not gonna happen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like you're gonna have to kill him in this funky
Speaker 3: little setup somewhere that like you wouldn't even think that
Speaker 3: a deer would you know, walk through that.
Speaker 2: Area or whatever the case is.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's that's what I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: you know, listening to you, I am not a one
Speaker 2: buck hunter generally, but every once in a while I
Speaker 2: find one that makes me a one one buck hunter quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the one thing about you know, the times that
Speaker 2: I've done it, it makes me think about deer in
Speaker 2: such a different way than I usually do. I had
Speaker 2: this buck in southeastern Minnesota on this farm, you know,
Speaker 2: quite a few years ago that was probably pushing booner,
Speaker 2: really cool deer, high and tight, just cool lass buck.
Speaker 2: And that dude was spending a lot of time in
Speaker 2: a valley on this one property, and he he taught
Speaker 2: me so much about like like the real nocturnal nature
Speaker 2: of some of these deer, but also just thinking about
Speaker 2: individual trails. I mean there was a trail that he
Speaker 2: took back to go to bed, very consistent, and it
Speaker 2: was like it bothered me so much because I knew
Speaker 2: the trail, I knew where to set up, and I
Speaker 2: knew that he wasn't coming through there in daylight. And
Speaker 2: it just like instead of thinking about that farm like
Speaker 2: I usually do, where I'm like where can I run
Speaker 2: into a decent book, Like I just want a good one,
Speaker 2: Like I don't you know, I said this part, this
Speaker 2: part's a big farm. I was like obsessed with that
Speaker 2: stupid ass valley, scouting it, looking for shann Antler's in it,
Speaker 2: running trail cameras on different trails leading out, and it
Speaker 2: was like it kind of occurred to me and I
Speaker 2: never killed that deer, by the way, but it occurred
Speaker 2: to me, like, I'm learning more about this this particular
Speaker 2: area in one season that I have in twenty years
Speaker 2: of hunting there because this deer likes to use it.
Speaker 2: And that was it, you know, And you you mentioned
Speaker 2: how we talk a lot about how, you know, figuring
Speaker 2: out you know, why, why does why did that buck
Speaker 2: have the opportunity to get to two hundred inches out there?
Speaker 2: How did he get that age on him? What? Where
Speaker 2: was his where were his sanctuaries? Like what was his
Speaker 2: like hideout strategy? How did he do it? When you
Speaker 2: when you start figuring that stuff out and taking it
Speaker 2: on the road with you or taking it to another place,
Speaker 2: or using that on another giant you find three years
Speaker 2: down the road, it's so beneficial. And you you mentioned that,
Speaker 2: and you said something way earlier about figuring out that
Speaker 2: this this deer had a very distinctive rub pattern, and
Speaker 2: it reminded me. So I killed a buck a long
Speaker 2: time ago, probably eight B nine something like that. I
Speaker 2: had bow hunt this deer in north central Minnesota. He's
Speaker 2: like one hundred and thirty inch nine pointer, but he
Speaker 2: was the biggest deer on this place. I had had
Speaker 2: eighty acres to hunt, and he was living in a
Speaker 2: cattail slough, and I'll tell you what, that son of
Speaker 2: a bitch just had that little sanctuary figure. He was
Speaker 2: unapproachable most of the time, and you'd see him in there,
Speaker 2: you know, like I glassed him in the summer, and
Speaker 2: I kept finding these tracks. These the biggest tracks I
Speaker 2: found on the farm had this like wonky kind of
Speaker 2: toe shape where it was like a very distinct and
Speaker 2: I remember like, like, that's got to be that deer,
Speaker 2: Like there's there's probably not another deer here that's like
Speaker 2: of that maturity level. And I ended up killing that
Speaker 2: buck with a rifle, like totally just scummed into him,
Speaker 2: bought a rifle tag that I'd never bought before, walked
Speaker 2: into that cattail sou like six days in the deer season,
Speaker 2: and he followed a dough through there, and I thumped
Speaker 2: him and it was stupid, but that deer had that
Speaker 2: distinctive hoof pattern, so it was him. And so even
Speaker 2: just like I think about that all the time now
Speaker 2: because I'm hunting cat taill slews a lot and where
Speaker 2: I live is very sandy, so tracks are a big deal,
Speaker 2: like we just you know, like I use tracks a lot,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, man, I think back to that deer
Speaker 2: in that season often, and it's not you know, it's
Speaker 2: not like a huge buck. It wasn't like a particularly
Speaker 2: special thing. But the journey that that deer took me
Speaker 2: on is like still there's still payoffs to this day
Speaker 2: from it. And that's I mean it's like I kind
Speaker 2: of shit on mark and is like name and bucks
Speaker 2: and stuff like that sometimes, but really, this this one
Speaker 2: buck thing, well I should hun him for a lot
Speaker 2: of reasons most justified it, but that that style of
Speaker 2: just going that's the one and I'm going to figure
Speaker 2: it out. That brings you to a different place as
Speaker 2: a deer hunter, and it's definitely can be like very beneficial.
Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. And that was that was the biggest
Speaker 3: thing for me, was you know, just how much more
Speaker 3: I had to pay attention to detail on this hunt,
Speaker 3: you know, hunting this particular deer, and how much more
Speaker 3: keyed into detail I was than on other hunts, right,
Speaker 3: for for whatever reason, well for an obvious reason, right,
Speaker 3: And it made me kind of think, like, man, like
Speaker 3: you should be keyed in like this all the time.
Speaker 3: Like when you're hunting, you know, and a lot of
Speaker 3: times I'm not. You know, It's like I'm just kind
Speaker 3: of like, hey, there's some rubs.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like in oh, cool, well there are some scrapes,
Speaker 3: and why are they there?
Speaker 7: All?
Speaker 3: Right? Cool? You know it's set up here, But it's not.
Speaker 3: It's because I'm not hunting a specific deer and trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what this deer is going to do.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to figure out what some deer will do, right,
Speaker 3: And it becomes different if you're looking for a specific one,
Speaker 3: because it's just like when you think about sociology versus psychology, right,
Speaker 3: Sociology is the study of groups, right, and psychology is
Speaker 3: the study of the individual, right, And hunting a specific
Speaker 3: deer is like taking a psychology course and not a
Speaker 3: sociology course. Right. It's like I'm trying to understand one, right,
Speaker 3: not I don't care how the group, because that one,
Speaker 3: especially if they got age on him, like they don't
Speaker 3: act like the other deers, especially whenever they get to
Speaker 3: that you know, older age class, right, like they just
Speaker 3: you know, this dear, particularly like you would see some
Speaker 3: like trail camera intel on him, where he was with
Speaker 3: other deer, I can think of like a couple, but like,
Speaker 3: by and large, most of the stuff I had of
Speaker 3: him like he was by himself, Like he wasn't very
Speaker 3: often with with other deer, even in the summer, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I remember, I can think of like maybe two
Speaker 3: years ago, like maybe a couple of trail camera pictures
Speaker 3: that we got to him on this one scrape where
Speaker 3: he was with another buck, but I don't it wasn't
Speaker 3: more than like a handful of pictures, right, it might
Speaker 3: even been the same from the same day, like just
Speaker 3: like the rapid burst or whatever. And then this year
Speaker 3: in last year, me personally, like on the cameras that
Speaker 3: I was running, like, I don't have him on camera
Speaker 3: with any deer ever, you know. And so which would
Speaker 3: make sense because when he was like we got you know,
Speaker 3: he was young. He was a younger deer, right, and
Speaker 3: so maybe a little bit more amiable to be around,
Speaker 3: or maybe a little bit more interested in being around
Speaker 3: other deer or whatever. But it seemed like now as
Speaker 3: he got older, like he had no interest in being
Speaker 3: around other deer no matter what time of year it was,
Speaker 3: you know. He really kind of became a recluse, and
Speaker 3: like that was kind of telling, right, not just for him,
Speaker 3: but like how I think about whenever I'm trying to
Speaker 3: find another good deer or older deer. And then there
Speaker 3: was like you, I won't mention what they were, but
Speaker 3: there were two like habitat types that I found in
Speaker 3: proximity to one another that I felt like was the
Speaker 3: thing right for why he was spending time in an area.
Speaker 3: And I was talking to another buddy of mine who
Speaker 3: hunts a lot of big woods, and he was on
Speaker 3: a hammer this year and I think he missed like
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty inch deer public land in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: and I was talking to him about it, and he knew.
Speaker 3: I sent him a picture of like a scrape and
Speaker 3: a rub or whatever, and where I was at. He's like,
Speaker 3: oh man, he's like I love that area. He's like
Speaker 3: that's he's like that habitat rate there. He was like it,
Speaker 3: like he's like, you'd be surprised how many how often
Speaker 3: I find the biggest deer in those in those areas, right,
Speaker 3: And so that was kind of like when the light
Speaker 3: bulb went off, I was like, oh, wait a minute, okay.
Speaker 3: I was like it's this piece here that's next to
Speaker 3: this piece, and it makes a lot of sense why
Speaker 3: he's here now. And so when I say I start
Speaker 3: to look for those things now, it's like if I
Speaker 3: can find a place where those two types of habitat
Speaker 3: are adjacent to one another, It's like that to me
Speaker 3: is like where where like the light bulb starts to
Speaker 3: go off right, you know, And that's the type of
Speaker 3: Those are the types of lessons that you take with
Speaker 3: you, you know, as far as cutting tracks, like I tried,
Speaker 3: like this area a lot of grass, leaf cover, hard soil,
Speaker 3: like hard ground, or you're in a swamp with like
Speaker 3: mud and you know, uh heavy, you know, dense foliage
Speaker 3: or whatever that you're not going to see a track.
Speaker 3: But I did cut a good track on like the
Speaker 3: next to last day that I was hunting, and I
Speaker 3: know that wasn't this deer. And oddly enough, it was
Speaker 3: like by where I parked my truck. I didn't see
Speaker 3: it when I pulled in in the morning and I
Speaker 3: was getting ready, I was coming out at night and
Speaker 3: had my head lamps down and opened up my back
Speaker 3: door and I was like, holy shit, man, that's a
Speaker 3: big track, and got down and looked at it was
Speaker 3: like the size of my hand, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, it wasn't in the right
Speaker 3: area for it to be him. But I was like, okay.
Speaker 3: And the crazy thing was, is I think it's a
Speaker 3: younger deer. It was on hard ground too, so it
Speaker 3: wasn't like there was splay or anything like that, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. But the his hooves were still
Speaker 3: kind of pointy, you know what I mean, So where
Speaker 3: it's like it's a big track, but it was still
Speaker 3: kind of a younger deer because they weren't starting to
Speaker 3: round quite yet, you know. So you know, maybe next
Speaker 3: year for that.
Speaker 2: So you got you got a text with a picture
Speaker 2: of this giant dead and you don't know how he died.
Speaker 3: No, no, you know, it's the area he was in.
Speaker 3: You know, it could have been a hunter that shot
Speaker 3: him and like just never found him. Possibly. You know
Speaker 3: the picture that I saw, like there wasn't any entry
Speaker 3: or exit wounds and I could see back to like
Speaker 3: midway through his ribs or whatever, and so it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like you was shot unless it was like a
Speaker 3: really bad shot, like you know, guts type of situation.
Speaker 3: And the coyotes had got to him, and I could
Speaker 3: only see like basically from like the back of his
Speaker 3: ribs ounce I couldn't see like his his his hind
Speaker 3: quarters or his his his guts, or he could have
Speaker 3: got hit on the road, you know. So that's you
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, I don't know if we ever
Speaker 3: ever figured it out, you know, And it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 3: you know, to me, honestly, it's like he's not there
Speaker 3: to he's not there to hunt anymore, you know, which
Speaker 3: is a bummer, But you know, you just hate to
Speaker 3: see you know, I hope I hope fingers crossed that
Speaker 3: a hunter shot him and that they they get to
Speaker 3: claim him, you know, like that's that's what my hope is,
Speaker 3: just because I hate to see an animal like that,
Speaker 3: you know, get hit on the freaking road and like
Speaker 3: end up in the game commission, you know, you get
Speaker 3: scrapped or whatever. You know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so you're you're moving on from this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really matter how he was killed, because now
Speaker 2: he's just dead. But it's yeah, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it sucks that it played out that way, but it's
Speaker 2: also just like such a gift to have that opportunity
Speaker 2: for a season. I mean, I know when I talked
Speaker 2: to you the other night, dude, you were burned, and
Speaker 2: this was before you knew he was dead and you
Speaker 2: were you were kind of running on e But that's
Speaker 2: what that kind of thing is going to do to you.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, you you're not going to get
Speaker 2: that chance. That's just not going to happen very often.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think in total, I think
Speaker 3: from October fifth till I think the last day I
Speaker 3: hunted was like the seventeenth or something like that. I
Speaker 3: think was the last day that I hunted. I ended
Speaker 3: up hunting him twenty six days, and I ended up
Speaker 3: sleeping in my truck or in my trailer, like you know,
Speaker 3: cause there were days where I didn't hunt, or it
Speaker 3: was a Sunday that I didn't hunt, or it was
Speaker 3: the day where it's like, well, the first day I
Speaker 3: was gonna hunt because the wind was right and the
Speaker 3: weather was right, but then it got warm, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: hunt the next day and it's gonna hut the day after.
Speaker 3: So there was like some of that where I was
Speaker 3: just spending time there. So it's like one hunted him
Speaker 3: twenty six days and you know, I think I slept
Speaker 3: in my truck or my trailer like thirty thirty couple
Speaker 3: days or something like that overall within like that month
Speaker 3: and a half time period, so about half the days
Speaker 3: that you could possibly hunt him, like I hunted him essentially,
Speaker 3: you know. You know, and my wife, you know, got
Speaker 3: to love her man because she was like never said
Speaker 3: like when are you coming home or what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Like there was another editing of that. She was always
Speaker 3: like when I get back, She's like when you going
Speaker 3: back up? And I'm like, uh. I would literally come
Speaker 3: home on like a Sunday, go to jiu jitsu train
Speaker 3: and be like, yeah, I'm leaving Tuesday after jiu jitsu,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: there Tuesday, Wenesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday next week, you know.
Speaker 3: And so there was a lot of that, you know,
Speaker 3: but I will say I will say this because you know,
Speaker 3: I think we get wrapped and I certainly did, like
Speaker 3: I got wrapped up into this, and there were a
Speaker 3: few moments where I, you know, I try to remind
Speaker 3: myself like when the grind's happening, and like you're just
Speaker 3: not feeling it right, and you just you want to
Speaker 3: be anywhere but in the woods that at that moment,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, I try to just remind myself to
Speaker 3: be and I kept saying this to myself, like be
Speaker 3: where your feet are, Like be where your feet are.
Speaker 3: Don't wish the time away, don't wish you were somewhere else.
Speaker 3: You know, there is no place better to be in
Speaker 3: the world than where you're at right now, right, just
Speaker 3: like in general, right because it's really easy, especially when
Speaker 3: things aren't going your way or you're you know, you're
Speaker 3: not feeling like you're on him or whatever the case is,
Speaker 3: where you can really start to kind of get down.
Speaker 3: And there was an older fellow that I met. He's
Speaker 3: in his sixties, he's retired, and when I be's sleeping
Speaker 3: in my truck, he just so happened to like the
Speaker 3: park and sleep at the same spot because you can
Speaker 3: really see the stars in this area. And he's retired,
Speaker 3: and so he has a little set up in the
Speaker 3: back of his truck that he sleeps in. And so
Speaker 3: the first night, you know, because this all started in August,
Speaker 3: because there was an area I thought I could kill
Speaker 3: him in and and uh, I needed to see what
Speaker 3: the thermals were gonna do, and I got the right
Speaker 3: wind that I would want, would I would hunt that
Speaker 3: area on And so I went up in August before
Speaker 3: I left to go Elk County in and Idaho, slept
Speaker 3: in the bed of my truck, got up at like,
Speaker 3: you know, five o'clock in the morning, and hiked in
Speaker 3: so I could get into that tree. Literally climbed into
Speaker 3: the tree with my saddle, like got set up like
Speaker 3: I was gonna hunt, you know, obviously no bo or anything,
Speaker 3: and set up and just sat there and waited for
Speaker 3: the sun to come up to see what the thermal
Speaker 3: was going to do when the sun came up, based
Speaker 3: on that prevailing wind that I was getting that day, right,
Speaker 3: So that's kind of how obsessed I was. Like I
Speaker 3: was there in the summer, like sleeping in my truck,
Speaker 3: like getting into setups like to check thermals and stuff.
Speaker 3: And he happened to be there that night when I
Speaker 3: pulled in, and I'm like, man, who the hell is
Speaker 3: in this parking parking spot? You know, I mean, like
Speaker 3: it's like, is this guy knew about this big deer?
Speaker 3: And like I'm already battling like some guy like in August,
Speaker 3: you know, and uh, older guy he hunted the area
Speaker 3: a lot, told him what I was up to, and
Speaker 3: so he was like, you know, he hunts that general area.
Speaker 3: And he was like, Hey, I'm going to stay out
Speaker 3: of this area if you're if you're on something good,
Speaker 3: I don't want to booker you up. He's like, I'm not,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hunt this, I'm gonna go over this other area.
Speaker 3: We exchanged numbers and stuff, and he would text me
Speaker 3: every so often, and I went up a couple of
Speaker 3: different weekends to you know, to scout and do stuff
Speaker 3: and uh, and he was there almost every time. Right.
Speaker 3: He was doing some drywall work for you know, he's retired,
Speaker 3: but he was doing some like freelance drywall work for
Speaker 3: like a buddy of his that he knew in that area.
Speaker 3: And he would just go there and sleep in the evenings,
Speaker 3: right because he just like the stars, and he likes
Speaker 3: to camp, and he loves the fish. He's a woodsman,
Speaker 3: you know, and he just thought it was the coolest
Speaker 3: thing that I was trying to kill this particular deer.
Speaker 3: And so we really hit it off and he let
Speaker 3: me know, get we out on the topic of like
Speaker 3: family or something like that, and uh, on the topic
Speaker 3: of wives or whatever the case is, you know, and
Speaker 3: maybe he was like, here, you spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time up here, and I was like, yeah. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe I said something about like, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, what's your wife thinking you camping out here
Speaker 3: or whatever the case is, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: like just talking some snack. And he let me know
Speaker 3: that his wife of like whatever it was like forty
Speaker 3: years had passed away, right, which was was you know,
Speaker 3: obviously sad, he's widowed, and so we were kind of
Speaker 3: talking about it. Let Be asked me how long I've
Speaker 3: been married, and I told him, you know, you know
Speaker 3: a little over twenty years now. And and I just
Speaker 3: asked him, hey, you know, cause he's a happy, go
Speaker 3: lucky guy man, you know, he had he's had a
Speaker 3: good life. And I was like, what's the key to
Speaker 3: that kind of marriage where it's like you get to
Speaker 3: do all this outdoor stuff and you know, and because
Speaker 3: he he's always done that. And he said, just make
Speaker 3: sure that you always give more than you take, was
Speaker 3: what he told me, right, And so I remember I
Speaker 3: was sitting in the tree on the day before I
Speaker 3: came home and I was just thinking to myself, like
Speaker 3: reminding myself to be where my feet are. And I
Speaker 3: thought to myself back to that conversation, and I asked myself,
Speaker 3: have I have I given more than I've taken to
Speaker 3: this point And the answer was was no. And I
Speaker 3: was like, I've taken my fair share of this false
Speaker 3: time for me to go home. And so I just
Speaker 3: kind of made the decision and that was gonna be
Speaker 3: the last day I was going to hunt. And then
Speaker 3: subsequently the next day I found out that deer got killed,
Speaker 3: and it was his words of wisdom that kind of
Speaker 3: like was like, because I was struggling, man, I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to go home. I was getting prepared
Speaker 3: to like work and hunt from the trailer for like
Speaker 3: the next week, you know what I mean, like this
Speaker 3: week actually, and and I was just thinking about him
Speaker 3: and what he told me, the advice he gave me,
Speaker 3: and I was like, nope, I've taken my fair share.
Speaker 3: I was like, it's time for me to go home
Speaker 3: and be where my feet are. My feet should be there.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, we get crazy on big deer,
Speaker 3: you know, and love chasing them, but at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, you know, they don't matter. And that
Speaker 3: was kind of you know, my one buddy or you know,
Speaker 3: mutual friend of ours, Chad, you know, text me about it.
Speaker 3: I said, you know that as like it sucks, you know,
Speaker 3: the deer got killed. I was like, but you know,
Speaker 3: in the grand scheme of things, that di didn't matter
Speaker 3: a whole lot. You know, It's like I learned a lot.
Speaker 3: I had a great time chasing him, and I was like,
Speaker 3: the man, I'm a fortunate guy with the life that
Speaker 3: I have, you know, I was like, and I need
Speaker 3: to remember that, you know, above all else and everything
Speaker 3: else will work itself out.
Speaker 2: Dude. That's so I'm so glad you said that, because
Speaker 2: it's so true that. I mean, that deer is cool
Speaker 2: as hell, right, and that's just like a that's like
Speaker 2: a special thing. But the thing that's really cool about
Speaker 2: it is just the challenge, like just just finding that challenge,
Speaker 2: trying to try to level up to it, getting as
Speaker 2: close as you can, putting in that work, doing your thing,
Speaker 2: seeing what it's all about. And then okay, well now
Speaker 2: he's dead, Like what's next, Like, wait, how are you
Speaker 2: going to keep yourself going? As a person, you know,
Speaker 2: and we we joked about this a little bit, but
Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta ask this before you wrap this up.
Speaker 2: Are you going to take that stick bow out and
Speaker 2: go stick a forky or something now, just to get
Speaker 2: like a palette cleanser out. I think you should.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's laying right back there. I've been shooting at
Speaker 3: the past couple of days because, uh, you know, I've
Speaker 3: basically was going to plan to hunt with it all year,
Speaker 3: was my plan, and then this dear showed up and
Speaker 3: I was like, man, I'm not going to take a
Speaker 3: risk of, like, you know, having an encounter with this deer,
Speaker 3: and it'd be the first year I'm using a stick
Speaker 3: bow and screw it up. And so I put it
Speaker 3: on the back burner and then picked it back up,
Speaker 3: and uh, yeah, I'm gonna take that out. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go out Saturday to some spots, a spot locally, you know,
Speaker 3: where I know there's some deer, and we'll see what
Speaker 3: comes through. I haven't checked a single trail camera locally,
Speaker 3: so I have no clue what's happening around me. So
Speaker 3: it's gonna literally just be you know, probably kayaking into
Speaker 3: a spot that I like actually where I killed my
Speaker 3: buck last year, and and kayak into there and take
Speaker 3: the stick bow along and see if we can make
Speaker 3: some magic happen. And and that's going to be you know,
Speaker 3: that's probably what's gonna what's gonna transpire. There's one other
Speaker 3: deer that I'm kind of interested in.
Speaker 8: He uh he.
Speaker 3: He has a kind of time frame. He's a very
Speaker 3: kind of he's a late season deer, I guess I
Speaker 3: should say. And so we'll probably make a run at
Speaker 3: him if I don't kill anything in the next like
Speaker 3: two weeks here at home. But yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 3: the that's the plan. We're just gonna have fun now.
Speaker 3: You know the stress, the stress is over, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's like, you know, it's you have
Speaker 3: an experience like that, and you know he's not there,
Speaker 3: and so the pressure is all kind of off at
Speaker 3: this point. It's like everything's gravy, you know. So there's
Speaker 3: no you know, if I get deer walks in and
Speaker 3: I got the stick bow in my hand, I get
Speaker 3: fired up. You know, I'm gonna let one rip. You know.
Speaker 3: That's the that's the game plan.
Speaker 2: Dude, I love it, buddy. Truth from the Stand Podcast
Speaker 2: Where do people find you out there?
Speaker 3: Clinton the dot com. Truth from Stand dot Com is
Speaker 3: the website, all the stuff's on their YouTube channels, Truth
Speaker 3: from the Stand, Instagram, you know, Apple Spot, all the
Speaker 3: normal places where you can find uh find content. You
Speaker 3: can find my nonsense there too.
Speaker 2: Lots of lots of great guests on there. You do
Speaker 2: do an awesome job with that podcast. I've been on
Speaker 2: there a bunch of times. Sorry he didn't get that,
Speaker 2: dear buddy, but it sounds like it still worked out
Speaker 2: pretty well for you. Thank you so much for coming on, man.
Speaker 2: I love chatting with you.
Speaker 3: You too, buddy. I appreciate you having me and hope
Speaker 3: Mark's feeling better.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week, folks. Make sure to tune
Speaker 2: in every week for more whitetail goodness. I'm your guest host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson and this has been a Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: podcast which is brought to you by First Life. I
Speaker 2: want to thank you guys so much for your support.
Speaker 2: We truly appreciate it here at meat Eater. And if
Speaker 2: you want some more content, you can head on over
Speaker 2: to the medeater dot com and get your fill podcast,
Speaker 2: video series, articles, maybe do a little shopping maybe find
Speaker 2: a recipe whatever. Maybe you're just bored with your commute,
Speaker 2: or you're gonna head out on some late season trip
Speaker 2: somewhere and you need to fill the time. You need
Speaker 2: to go check out Clay's Bargeres podcast, Brent Reeves This
Speaker 2: Country Life. We have a lot of really cool shows
Speaker 2: out there for you to listen to that aren't whitetail
Speaker 2: related necessarily, but they're pretty dang interesting and pretty fun
Speaker 2: to listen to. Go check them out at the meadeater
Speaker 2: dot com and as always, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 8: It's that time of the year again. I'm back.
Speaker 6: Marcus Kenyon. How are you your son of a gadwall?
Speaker 6: You look terrible. I'm just kidding her, am I I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I'm late. I crashed my recumbent bicycle into the side
Speaker 6: of a quiz nose and I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 6: I am as sober as a newborn blue crab. I
Speaker 6: swear to you, this is just kombucha. I'm watching the
Speaker 6: gut health. You gotta do it as you get older.
Speaker 6: And also I'm wearing this ankle bracelet that makes a
Speaker 6: beep beep sound if I have a drop of the stuff. Also,
Speaker 6: alerts the authorities, who in turn alert my parole officer.
Speaker 6: So there'll be none of that in the studio today,
Speaker 6: I promise you.
Speaker 8: Let's get go.
Speaker 6: Oh you're queuing it up already.
Speaker 8: Okay. I thought we've learned.
Speaker 6: A lesson this year, but I guess not.
Speaker 8: Here we go.
Speaker 5: I love those dagy b wat, those beachy, big big
Speaker 5: white tails. I love those beachy big dot hhat e
Speaker 5: e tails. I love those beachy big white.
Speaker 6: Tails, big white tails, big white tails.
Speaker 8: Big white tails are great? Hold what fun it is
Speaker 8: to sit in the freezing cold tree all day?
Speaker 6: Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great?
Speaker 2: Hold?
Speaker 6: What fun it is to sit in the freezing cold
Speaker 6: tree all day? Dashing through the woods for the morning
Speaker 6: light turns great across the fields and draws, creep in
Speaker 6: all the way, climb into the tree.
Speaker 8: Big bucks are on the way. What fun is to
Speaker 8: sit and wait for my gosh don deer all day?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 8: Big, I'm sorry?
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 8: Pisocato strings? Who do you think I am? And you
Speaker 8: get this out here? I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Big white tails, big white tails, big white
Speaker 6: tails are great? Hold? Fun it is to sit in
Speaker 6: the freezing cold tree all day. I hope sand dreams
Speaker 6: are high the rut. He's finally here. Mark said, it's
Speaker 6: the most wonderful time to kill o whitetail deer bingch
Speaker 6: points sand pettings where you'll find me hanging twenty feet
Speaker 6: in a tree, grunt tubes my bow inspector Cambo, it's
Speaker 6: really Camby be.
Speaker 8: He or two ago.
Speaker 6: I thought that this was fun, but now I'm frozen
Speaker 6: to my seat and the good times they are gone.
Speaker 6: I've ate up all my snacks, my hands and toes
Speaker 6: unnumb and we're gonna climbed down from my stand.
Speaker 8: That son of a bud decided to come on those.
Speaker 2: Pie g b wat takes. Those you b g b
Speaker 2: wat takes.
Speaker 6: I love those be and g bigup y eight shot
Speaker 6: gi eat jail. I don't know why this is happening,
Speaker 6: I swear to God, Oh officer, what seems to be
Speaker 6: the problem here?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: This?
Speaker 6: I don't know why this is happening. It must be
Speaker 6: a malfunction, you know. Sometimes it happens when the batteries
Speaker 6: run low.
Speaker 8: You don't know. You don't need to smell that, that's
Speaker 8: just kombucha. I okay, yes, you've got me.
Speaker 6: It's ever clear and pacific COOLi Caprice son. I am
Speaker 6: so so sorry. I don't know why my life has
Speaker 6: brought me here. Mark Marcus, I'm so sorry. Enjoy the
Speaker 6: rut or whatever.
Speaker 2: Good luck.
Speaker 6: Boys, Good to see you, Hayden. It's been a while. Hey, sorry,
Speaker 6: I'm late. I crashed my pontiacain take into a light
Speaker 6: pole and had to walk the rest of the way.
Speaker 8: But I'm here now. That's what matters.
Speaker 6: Give you a glass of Scotch, please, Hayden. Just two
Speaker 6: rocks in there. I don't my guys, we're starting already.
Speaker 6: This is happening.
Speaker 8: Okay, just give me the give me the glass, thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 8: It's the most wonderful time.
Speaker 6: To kill deer. With the run now just starting and
Speaker 6: dashing and dotting and veins cutting clean.
Speaker 8: It's the most wonderful time.
Speaker 6: To kill deer.
Speaker 8: There's far too much ice in this glass.
Speaker 6: It's the half happy season of all. There's gotta be
Speaker 6: at least twelve cues with grunting and bleeding and cold
Speaker 6: fronts and sleeting.
Speaker 8: The last weeks of fun.
Speaker 6: It's the half happy seedssin of home.
Speaker 7: There'll be pictures for posting and bragging and boasting and
Speaker 7: rug beds with big Bucks and toe. There'll be narrow
Speaker 7: miss stories and tales of your glories of booner bucks
Speaker 7: missed with our bulls. It's the most wonderful time to
Speaker 7: kill deer, not just one baby two. There will be
Speaker 7: no dose of blowing and looming knocks glowing and blood
Speaker 7: trails so clean.
Speaker 8: It's the most wonderful time to kill de Excuse me,
Speaker 8: Can I have a napkin?
Speaker 6: Please?
Speaker 8: I just spilled some scotch on my loafers. I can't
Speaker 8: have dirty loafers in the studio. Thank you tailgate beers
Speaker 8: for drinking, and Big Bucks is slinking.
Speaker 6: And chasing and sent jacking does They'll be fighting.
Speaker 8: And scraping and no more escaping and arrow shot true
Speaker 8: hitting key change. But no one told me that it's
Speaker 8: the most wonderful time to kill deer. I was very
Speaker 8: unprepared for this.
Speaker 6: There will be much morning sitting in cold fronts, are
Speaker 6: hitting the dawn, Kristen clean. It's the most wonderful time, Oh,
Speaker 6: the most wonderful time, Yes, the most swonderful time.
Speaker 8: To kill dear. There's too much ice in the glass rocks,