Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Mason's first callahan, Um, yes, sir, do
Speaker 1: a uh act like go all a sudden died. Okay,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just like all of a sudden fall over
Speaker 1: dead and here we are, um, and you realize you
Speaker 1: need to pick up the show, okay, like you're in
Speaker 1: the driver's seat, all right, and you know that the
Speaker 1: first thing that needs to happen is you need to
Speaker 1: do a thing where where you where you insult the
Speaker 1: listener and and tell them that they need to go
Speaker 1: and do the subscribe, you know, make sure there's sub
Speaker 1: subscribed to the podcast, not just downloading individual episodes, and
Speaker 1: then and then maybe insult them a little more and
Speaker 1: then tell them how they need to also give it
Speaker 1: a good rating. Um, alright, so I'm just like that,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Ryan Steve's down all right, listen up, folks.
Speaker 1: As you know, we've recently lost Steve. But let's be honest,
Speaker 1: he probably piste off half of you anyway. So what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need you to do is go onto iTunes, subscribe,
Speaker 1: hit the furthest right star so we can keep this
Speaker 1: ball or rolling that good. Mark, you tried, that was
Speaker 1: very good. I don't think I can. I don't think
Speaker 1: I can speak to that at all. Mark can. You
Speaker 1: can't do any better than that. No, And I'm a
Speaker 1: podcaster myself, and I feel like I got showed up.
Speaker 1: That was good. That makes me feel good. Before I
Speaker 1: did it where I was gonna die and Yanni had
Speaker 1: to take over and just did not do like he
Speaker 1: just I think because it wasn't convincing, like I didn't
Speaker 1: really seem dead enough to him. I thought he had
Speaker 1: a very authentic little chime in there when he said,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, Steve down, that was a good contribution.
Speaker 1: That's what that was, like the dish to Ryan that
Speaker 1: really set him up. Yeah, it made him feel like
Speaker 1: I was kind of thinking about the house. Oh absolutely, Uh,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon got a quick question for you from a
Speaker 1: dude that wrote in named Danny, not my brother, not
Speaker 1: my brother Danny. I've been saving this one for you
Speaker 1: because this is like right up in your this is
Speaker 1: in your little white tail. Dear world. Ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Then we'll get into permissions. You know, I can't even
Speaker 1: never listened to that song, I know, and I really
Speaker 1: I promised myself. I was like, I'm gonna listen to
Speaker 1: that before I go out there again. And well I'm
Speaker 1: singing permissions to the tune of traditions Shiddler around the roof.
Speaker 1: The we're just talking about over lunch is um Yanni.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Hubris in Greek tragedy. Yes, yeah, Hubris
Speaker 1: is uh excessive pride, and the Greek tragedy that's it's
Speaker 1: usually like what gets you trouble. His excessive pride happens
Speaker 1: an animated cartoon to the Hercules. So but you know,
Speaker 1: I think about that, like I remember learning that that
Speaker 1: in the Hubris is like the trouble of Greek tragedy.
Speaker 1: But then I think of the one at like Oedipus.
Speaker 1: Oedipus doesn't know that he's like the story begins where
Speaker 1: he's adopted but doesn't know he's adopted, and he goes
Speaker 1: to like a seer, like a like a basically a
Speaker 1: fortune teller, and the fortune tellers says like, oh, I
Speaker 1: see your future bright and clear. You're gonna murder your
Speaker 1: dad and have sex with your ma. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: always adopted, So he splits down purposely to avoid that.
Speaker 1: Fath runs away and stumbles into a new town where
Speaker 1: he kills a feller and has a sex little lady.
Speaker 1: And guess who they were Yep, his mom pa. But
Speaker 1: I just don't see. I gotta go, like re look
Speaker 1: at that and find out where that fits in with
Speaker 1: the Hubris because that just seems like bad luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that. The overconference bit was every
Speaker 1: Greek tragedy. I remember Sharon white Hill. When I was
Speaker 1: in college, I took a class on Greek tragedy with
Speaker 1: Professor Sharon white Hill, whose husband was a beekeeper. I
Speaker 1: did a little uh day labor and for him moving
Speaker 1: the bees around. So Mark, here's your question. Is this
Speaker 1: related to No, not at all Greek tragedies, says I
Speaker 1: was just saying about the conversation at lunch, and I
Speaker 1: keep running around in my head like the only Greek
Speaker 1: tragedy I remember doesn't seem to have a hubrist element.
Speaker 1: But that's where in that same story about Oedipus, the
Speaker 1: edible complex right that you want to have, you want
Speaker 1: to make love to your ma um. In that same
Speaker 1: story is where he comes to that city and the
Speaker 1: thing that the monster tells the riddle, what walks on
Speaker 1: four legs in the morning, two legs during the day,
Speaker 1: and three legs in the evening. And if you don't
Speaker 1: get it, like it kills you. But he gets it.
Speaker 1: It's man, that you crawl in the morning of your
Speaker 1: life and then you walk on two legs and then
Speaker 1: in the end you use a cane. I like it.
Speaker 1: And that's how he gets into the town to to
Speaker 1: you know, do the unmentionable the unspeakable. All right, this
Speaker 1: guy says, Hey, I've been bow hunting for white tails
Speaker 1: over the last month on public land in Texas. You
Speaker 1: follow him, follow in the Sam Houston National Force. You
Speaker 1: know where Sam Houston was killed. Mark oh Man. That
Speaker 1: was my best guess. Um. You know, Uh, there's like
Speaker 1: a school thought that Davy Crockett didn't actually that Davy
Speaker 1: Crockett surrendered. There's a theory based on some like uh
Speaker 1: personal accounts that came out of the Mexican Army, that
Speaker 1: Davy Crockett didn't fall at the Alamo heroically, that he
Speaker 1: surrendered and was executed. I read some stuff and I
Speaker 1: think it was The Lines of the West was a
Speaker 1: book I read by the Robert. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: they talked a little bit about how some of the
Speaker 1: mythology around Crockett isn't quite everything that it was chocked up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a real shame that people think of Davy Crockett
Speaker 1: and Daniel Boone not the same kind of guy. So
Speaker 1: the reason I bring it up, he's hunting the Sam
Speaker 1: Houston National Force public lands for white tails, and he says,
Speaker 1: I've been sitting in a tree stand under a few
Speaker 1: oak trees where I see you plenty of sign but
Speaker 1: no actual animals. The last day I went out, I
Speaker 1: started wander around a bit, figuring if they won't come
Speaker 1: to me, I'll go to them. Picturing it so far
Speaker 1: country of Texas, somewhere like that, up a few dolls,
Speaker 1: but never got a good look for a shot. I'm
Speaker 1: my way back to the truck I turned. I took
Speaker 1: the dirt road as the understory of the forest can
Speaker 1: be thick. That's when I see the most dear and
Speaker 1: it's them crossing the road, noticing me, and then bounding
Speaker 1: right back into the thick stuff, never to be seen again.
Speaker 1: Any suggestions on how I can get in front of
Speaker 1: these animals, I want to continue to hunt with a
Speaker 1: bowl right through gun season, which starts November four. Well,
Speaker 1: we're a little late. Well I know if I've been
Speaker 1: saving it to talk to you about it. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: feeling is he should not be he needs to stay
Speaker 1: up in a tree. So it's yeah, does he walk
Speaker 1: around or does he stay in a tree if he's
Speaker 1: just hunting with a bow. Yeah, it's pretty tough in
Speaker 1: a situation like that to stock up on one in
Speaker 1: flat country in the thick area like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's one. That's one thing if you're up
Speaker 1: in you know, some bad lands type habitat or like
Speaker 1: I don't know, eastern Montana, or there's some rolling grassy
Speaker 1: hills and you can get up on one top, look
Speaker 1: over the edge and make a sneak on one. But
Speaker 1: it's really hard to do and even like the Midwest
Speaker 1: in the flat areas, let alone as thick and nasty.
Speaker 1: Is that because I imagine a lot of Texas could be,
Speaker 1: at least from the things I've seen. But there's definitely
Speaker 1: guys that do it. But I feel like inefficient and
Speaker 1: you're doing it more just because you want to go
Speaker 1: through the exercise of still hunting and you know, possibly
Speaker 1: catch you know, crossing paths with that deer at you're
Speaker 1: doing it as a as a thing, like a goal
Speaker 1: you set off for yourself just to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that, but I think that's what he's getting,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, he's just trying to kill a deer.
Speaker 1: What I might say, though, is did he say he's
Speaker 1: been hunting a month already? Month straight? Chick? Let me check. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: let's just assume he said he's been hunting for the
Speaker 1: last month. Okay, he's hunting over the last month. He
Speaker 1: sees him on the road, and so it sounds like
Speaker 1: maybe he's um, relatively novice will assumption um, if that's
Speaker 1: the case. I feel like a lot of people, newer hunters,
Speaker 1: newer white tail hunters, they find a spot that looks good,
Speaker 1: like an oak tree, and they're like, all right, this
Speaker 1: is what I've heard is good, this is where I
Speaker 1: should be, and they hunt it today and then tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and then hunt the next day, and they hunt it
Speaker 1: over and over and over and over again. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of newcomers end up trying that and
Speaker 1: then not seeing many deer. Maybe the first day they
Speaker 1: saw five does or something like all right, this is
Speaker 1: it great and the next day they say three, and
Speaker 1: a week later they say too. And UM. So my
Speaker 1: first recommendation, knowing very little about the situation, UM, I
Speaker 1: would say, Okay, let's assume maybe he's been hunting this
Speaker 1: one oak tree many, many, many times. I would say,
Speaker 1: first tip raf the bat is switch it up. Hunt
Speaker 1: totally different places than where you have simply because of that.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta make sure that you are not
Speaker 1: educating the deer. He has most likely try new areas
Speaker 1: simply because you can catch them off guard. Um, that's
Speaker 1: a good starting point. If you can find other oak
Speaker 1: trees away from where he's been, that might be another
Speaker 1: place to start, or water other things that might draw
Speaker 1: on those deer. But we don't a whole lot about
Speaker 1: a situation. We had to go down there and check
Speaker 1: it out. I want to. I would like to betting
Speaker 1: area too. I think he should maybe walk around and
Speaker 1: look for that. I feel like in Texas. It's so
Speaker 1: I've never hunted in Texas, so I don't know, but
Speaker 1: from guys I've talked to down there, it's just very
Speaker 1: very different than a lot of the very defined habitat
Speaker 1: types like I encounter where I hunt in the Midwest
Speaker 1: or even in some places in the Rocky Mountain West
Speaker 1: where have whitetail hunted, where you can easily determine, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a betting area, this is a feeding area,
Speaker 1: This is likely where they moved through in some of
Speaker 1: these kind of brushy Texas areas. And I know there's
Speaker 1: very diverse habitat types of Texas, so this might not
Speaker 1: be what he's dealing with at all, um, But in
Speaker 1: a lot of these it's just a brushy, thorny, dry jungle. That's,
Speaker 1: you know, a homogeneous habitat type. That's really tough to
Speaker 1: figure out where those focus points are. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: why guys hunting that country on private land are all
Speaker 1: they're all running bait, you know. Another gives you something
Speaker 1: to gives you some point to focus on. Yeah. Another
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of guys do in Texas, more
Speaker 1: so than more so than where I don't at least
Speaker 1: is rattling. Now, it might be different in public land
Speaker 1: if it's really heavily hunted down there. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it's like there, but if it's not too bad,
Speaker 1: rattling seems to work at a disproportionately high rate in Texas,
Speaker 1: like off the charts compared to anywhere else. Our buddy
Speaker 1: in South Carolina, Robert Abernathy, they have fantastic luck rattling
Speaker 1: up bucks and the swamps in South Carolina. Callahan may
Speaker 1: or may not have rattled up a mulder this year,
Speaker 1: that's true. I think indicators would be that, yes, like
Speaker 1: there's too many odds, like the deer which shouldn't have
Speaker 1: done what he did, so I feel like the rattling
Speaker 1: is what ultimately led to his demise. But you definitely
Speaker 1: don't hear about rattling muld here people that don't know
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Uh. Ratling. Rattling is when you
Speaker 1: take a pair of antlers or something that sounds like
Speaker 1: antlers and make the simulate the noise of two bucks
Speaker 1: sparring or fighting, and other bucks will just in there.
Speaker 1: They're interested in, you know, her dynamics and who's doing
Speaker 1: what and who's a big man around town. They'll come
Speaker 1: running up out of curiosity, right Mark, more than it's
Speaker 1: to join the fight. I think it depends on the deer.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll see a lot of the younger bucks that
Speaker 1: come running and curiosity but then you do get those,
Speaker 1: at least in the white tail side of things. You
Speaker 1: get these big mature bucks if you have one in
Speaker 1: the area that will come in looking it kicks mass
Speaker 1: really like he comes in like in in and not
Speaker 1: just trying to look from way off like fired up
Speaker 1: to the tree. It's crazy how sometimes these deer can
Speaker 1: pinpoint and literally be right underneath your tree looking around
Speaker 1: where is he at? And that's why I like, I
Speaker 1: feel like that the deer that I saw that morning,
Speaker 1: they were moving hard to make it in the picture,
Speaker 1: but said right to left down this ridge. I'm on
Speaker 1: a spur ridge that down low where I can see
Speaker 1: this this ridge, and you know, rattled for probably twenty minutes, um,
Speaker 1: you know, short sequences, and and moved tan yards straight
Speaker 1: up my spur ridge. And here's this set of legs
Speaker 1: on my ridge pointing downwards straight to me, and I
Speaker 1: can see through the brush that you know, here's this
Speaker 1: old face, heavy horned deer of some unknown size just
Speaker 1: staring my direction. I was like, oh, maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have moved, and you want to blouch in him though
Speaker 1: I did he actually so he ultimately did take off
Speaker 1: and followed the direction of the deer that I'd seen
Speaker 1: earlier in the day and and I moved to get
Speaker 1: a better van manage point of that area. And Doug
Speaker 1: the uh funding pirt about this to me? Anyways? They're nice,
Speaker 1: is uh pack uh pack pack Iraq Ratlin told him
Speaker 1: this story. The first thing he said was, I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's my pack ire it is. In fact, you
Speaker 1: guys are arguing about this. I thought you'd arguing about
Speaker 1: a pack raft, no pack rack. I thought you had
Speaker 1: his pack raft no sorry e contraption, which made me
Speaker 1: wonder why he was being sold, like like that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so Doug, and the whole morning is making so
Speaker 1: much more sense now. And I mean I had my
Speaker 1: rifles set up on my bag crack that thing like
Speaker 1: one too three and looked up and he had marched
Speaker 1: seven yards out of the remember for no reason. I
Speaker 1: mean he was free and easy, so um and boom
Speaker 1: yeah yeah so uh. And we've had some some kind
Speaker 1: of similar scenarios where we don't know definitively with with
Speaker 1: the Muley's, but all signs point to yes, they definitely
Speaker 1: fight all the time. Why would they not be interesting
Speaker 1: to him? But because you could be like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm gonna go see if rattling white tails works.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what you're doing and you just
Speaker 1: went up saying a treat, you said tree thirty times
Speaker 1: clacking antlers together, and nothing's gonna show up, and you'd
Speaker 1: be like, it doesn't work. So it might just be
Speaker 1: that people don't do it with those because it hasn't
Speaker 1: been done. Now, Yanni, have you ever I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend too much time time about this, but have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of someone like clacking elk antlers together,
Speaker 1: like rattling for elk? Because people thrash brush for elk? Sure,
Speaker 1: I've heard I've heard it. I've heard people doing it
Speaker 1: by accident because they found like a set of sheds
Speaker 1: and then like a bull comes screaming by, so they
Speaker 1: obviously rattled him in. But I've never heard of someone packing.
Speaker 1: Can you don't need to just packed a little packed?
Speaker 1: The pack rack? Yeah, pack rack looks like um, but
Speaker 1: if this crack is not gonna sound like to six
Speaker 1: point bulls going at it? You've ever heard that in
Speaker 1: the woods Man? A different cadence deep? Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the hoof sounds that you hear with it and just
Speaker 1: the thrashing. I mean, I don't even know if one
Speaker 1: man alone, you'd be lathered in a sweat if you
Speaker 1: were actually trying to like replicate that sound like it
Speaker 1: might just be impossible to make it. I would like
Speaker 1: to let everybody know that Joanna can't expect a nice
Speaker 1: little Christmas present with little juice in there, because I've
Speaker 1: had the pack rack for so long, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully hopefully before Christmas, because we're going to Mexico in
Speaker 1: January for cuz here I'd like to add it with
Speaker 1: me there because you are not getting yours back from
Speaker 1: keeping u um, you know real quick. I do not
Speaker 1: wonder if maybe the story of Oedipus isn't Greek tragedy. Well,
Speaker 1: I just don't think the assumption is hubrious is everything
Speaker 1: wouldn't like the thin doesn't Maybe the the that story
Speaker 1: doesn't count as Greek tragedy. Maybe it's just mythology and
Speaker 1: not Greek tragedy. But the point is, Um, I think
Speaker 1: that the biggest I think the biggest hurdle people have
Speaker 1: when they wanted, the biggest hurdle that people who are
Speaker 1: wanting to get into hunting or who have been introduced
Speaker 1: to hunting and want to continue to do it. The
Speaker 1: biggest hurdle they have is the spot to hunt. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: people are like, oh kids these days, they just wanna
Speaker 1: play video games, like like, yeah, a lot of them do.
Speaker 1: But I think that the people who the people that
Speaker 1: I have met who have been introduced to hunting, later
Speaker 1: when you go like hey man, what's up you've been
Speaker 1: getting out? Their thing is usually like no, it's not
Speaker 1: a place to go, right. People don't live in place
Speaker 1: where you have a ton of access to public land.
Speaker 1: It's a pain and an ass to get permissions. It's
Speaker 1: the number one throughout the new hunter recruitment and and
Speaker 1: fisherman and the world's changed. Um the advent of pay
Speaker 1: to play on private land has really changed things where
Speaker 1: a lot of people that you you should just let guys
Speaker 1: come hunt, no want to charge money to come hunt.
Speaker 1: A dear dear friend of mine recently went to that model. Um,
Speaker 1: So for for some of the year, old point out,
Speaker 1: he'll be mad that I brought that up. For some
Speaker 1: of the or he went to that model that has
Speaker 1: restricted use. I think that there's a thing where we
Speaker 1: live in I don't know if we live in a
Speaker 1: more litigious society, but there's at least the perception that
Speaker 1: we do. And so there's a reluctance on the part
Speaker 1: of landowners to allow people to come on their land
Speaker 1: because they feel like they're gonna get sued when the
Speaker 1: guy twists his ankle. Um, that's the thing that has changed.
Speaker 1: What else is changed, Mark, I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at the bare bone, it's just a supply and demand issue.
Speaker 1: Right to your point, it's harder and harder to find
Speaker 1: places to hunt. And now landowners to what you just
Speaker 1: said there, they're finding that, um, there's value to their
Speaker 1: land that may they may not be using otherwise. So
Speaker 1: we're seeing some people that in the past just let
Speaker 1: guys go hunt whatever, and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: find out, oh, Bob down the street got five grand
Speaker 1: a year to let so and so hunt their place.
Speaker 1: So so you do have that pay to play model increasing.
Speaker 1: And then and another thing going on is that I
Speaker 1: think I think it's fair to say that the level
Speaker 1: of intensity maybe or further that the hunt that some
Speaker 1: segment of the hunting population has now has increased pretty
Speaker 1: substantially over the last decade or two. That most serious,
Speaker 1: if we're talking white tails as most serious white tail guys.
Speaker 1: So they're investing in things related to hunting. A huge
Speaker 1: part of that is land ownership. So I saw that
Speaker 1: since eleven, private land ownership for hunting has gone up,
Speaker 1: so more and more people want to own land, so
Speaker 1: that for the purpose hunting. So then that leaves all
Speaker 1: the other people that don't own land, Well, then now
Speaker 1: they've lost even more potential places where they could go. Um.
Speaker 1: Urban sprawl changing um thoughts on hunting. So areas where
Speaker 1: the population used to be fine with guys hunting behind
Speaker 1: the house, Maybe these people just don't want anyone out
Speaker 1: there with a gun or they're not okay with hunting.
Speaker 1: So that kind of thing is happening in some urban areas.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different pressures. I think that
Speaker 1: there's get tougher for the average guy or galda, get
Speaker 1: us about to go, especially if they're not out west, UM,
Speaker 1: Midwest and the East. I think it's something in private
Speaker 1: land ownership. So there's just not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: public land or places together these days. And it might
Speaker 1: I realize it might even be like a matter of
Speaker 1: perception too. They're just seems like it's different now when
Speaker 1: it's actually not. And it might just be that people
Speaker 1: who I would kind of bet this that the people
Speaker 1: who it's important too and really work at it and
Speaker 1: are smart about it still can go out and have
Speaker 1: the same level of success in getting permissions of places
Speaker 1: to hunt on private land. They can still have the
Speaker 1: same success that everyone had before. MH. But it might
Speaker 1: just be that when you're getting into it and you
Speaker 1: don't realize how much work it is, it seems like
Speaker 1: more daunting or less realistic than it is. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's the work aspect. I think
Speaker 1: it's harder work to be able to get that access
Speaker 1: in those places. I think it's still be done the
Speaker 1: po to take it seriously and are willing to put
Speaker 1: in the work. Absolutely, they can have lots of places.
Speaker 1: But for the average person who's either just getting started
Speaker 1: or who's kind of lukewarm on it, who wants to hunt,
Speaker 1: but they don't really want to devote a whole lot
Speaker 1: of their time in a given year defining places. That's
Speaker 1: the seconda. I think that suffers a lot well than
Speaker 1: working for permissions. The good friend of mine he is,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's changing irrigation pipe. He's you know, neighbor calls.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, we gotta move cattle. We you know,
Speaker 1: we're build a new fence. And he's you know, almost
Speaker 1: sixty and retired. But it's his full time job, like
Speaker 1: maintaining his bird hunting permissions and his trespassing access and
Speaker 1: things like that. But he's not necessarily paying for it.
Speaker 1: He's putting in sweat equity. Right, I was trying to
Speaker 1: get I want to have Jimmy dorn Um of Bell
Speaker 1: Tom Pizza down here, and he said he can't because
Speaker 1: he's traveled right now. And I was saying, yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a bummy jim bummer. Jimmy dorn can't come. But
Speaker 1: he's not really gonna have that much to add anyways,
Speaker 1: because he hunts a buddy's place who hangs out at
Speaker 1: his bar, and he hunts a guy's place who he
Speaker 1: harvest wheat for. And you know he's like, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: meaning that's permissions. I feel it's sort of like, in
Speaker 1: large measure, comes down to working your connections. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: more than cold rolling, because like when I I want
Speaker 1: to lay out, so like when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: out the permissions that we had. We did. We hunted
Speaker 1: on we had a lot of public land around us,
Speaker 1: but we also hunted on some private farms, and we
Speaker 1: hunted on private farms of farmers that went to church
Speaker 1: my parents. So there's like a very strong community connection
Speaker 1: where you see these people every week and they're in
Speaker 1: your social circle. But I had trapping. I may attained
Speaker 1: trapping permissions on about twenty farms in Mouskeegon County, Diego County,
Speaker 1: Manistee County. Um, what's the county big rabbids is in?
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, I don't know. Maccosta County. That's what it is.
Speaker 1: Permissions over place, and I would make I would go
Speaker 1: on a PLAT book. This is pre like on X
Speaker 1: and whatnot. I'd go on a PLAT map and just
Speaker 1: find every place I wanted to have a permission on it,
Speaker 1: how to write it down in a let yellow legal pad.
Speaker 1: And my old man would just tirelessly work the phones, calling, calling, calling,
Speaker 1: until he could find a personal connection to those people
Speaker 1: through a mutual friend or somehow would develop an end
Speaker 1: because he felt your odds increase so greatly if you
Speaker 1: could find that connection. I know so and so so
Speaker 1: my old man would like, Oh, i' know a guy
Speaker 1: up there, an insurance salesman up in Macosta, and he
Speaker 1: called him and be like, hey, you know, we're my
Speaker 1: son's looking at these places. He's trying to get on right.
Speaker 1: He would work at work and he would score. He
Speaker 1: had a very high success rate on scoring permissions. I
Speaker 1: remember at the same time, I went and ran an
Speaker 1: ad in a newspaper Macosta County because I was just
Speaker 1: trapping beaver and a lot of people hate beavers because
Speaker 1: beavers plug up your creeks and dams and ditches and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and so some people love them, some people hate him.
Speaker 1: I ran an ad in the Macosta newspaper saying, free
Speaker 1: beaver control, free problem beaver removal. Never got a hit
Speaker 1: off that ad, but my old man would tear it
Speaker 1: up by trying to build personal connections. And yeah, you
Speaker 1: think about when we were on Sandhill Crane's on the Panhandle.
Speaker 1: How long would it take that dude to get a
Speaker 1: permission on land? Anyone within a hundred miles dependent. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone were too too fast, but it didn't
Speaker 1: take more than half a day. He would work and
Speaker 1: he wasn't from there. He is this is a grad student.
Speaker 1: It's like a grad student who moved to do a
Speaker 1: PhD program the Texas Panhandle. Where was he just from
Speaker 1: the Midwest or something nasty for Nancy? Yeah? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had his pitch dialed, you know, he had his end
Speaker 1: sort of just to get the conversation rolling and then
Speaker 1: you know he explained everything and yeah, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: working family, but he was just sort of like had
Speaker 1: some in like had good relationships with some farmers. Was
Speaker 1: able to build on that and be like, Oh I
Speaker 1: hunt on so and sols place. That's always a good
Speaker 1: You call him up, he'll give you the word. He
Speaker 1: had to work extra hard when we were there because
Speaker 1: not only did he have to get permission, but when
Speaker 1: we're there filming, you gotta also get the landowner to
Speaker 1: sign the location release so that we can film there.
Speaker 1: Another thing that he thought was very effective is what
Speaker 1: schools he at? Texas A and M. Right, what schools
Speaker 1: in Lubbock, Texas not Texas Tech. Look it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: edifice is Greek mythology. By the way, I like that
Speaker 1: it's Greek mythology, not Greek trap. Does account? Was it
Speaker 1: a play? Like who's the famous play? Right? Back then Pericles. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: nasty Fanacy Mike went was doing a PhD program at
Speaker 1: the local university, and the local university is an egg school,
Speaker 1: like a land Grand egg school, much like the egg
Speaker 1: school that you live not nearby market. I'm on Michigan
Speaker 1: State University. And the people in the community respect the
Speaker 1: school because it's a lot. They have a strong egg program,
Speaker 1: so farmers know it. Relatives went there and Mike knew this,
Speaker 1: No was this and would come and say, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: a you know, I'm from the Texas Tech. I'm from
Speaker 1: Texas Tech. I got all these connections. I feel like
Speaker 1: we're giving away Mike's secrets right now. Did he tell
Speaker 1: us his own secrets? Well? The flip side of that
Speaker 1: is growing up in Missoula the surrounding areas. If somebody
Speaker 1: was like, hey, where are you from when you were
Speaker 1: knocking on doors, I never said Missoula, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: say yeah. No. Maybe like if you were from Madison
Speaker 1: and you went out and started banging on doors out
Speaker 1: in rural Wisconsin, thinking it's gonna get you somewhere that
Speaker 1: you're from Madison. If you're doing that, though, I feel
Speaker 1: like you have to have some some throwback to the air.
Speaker 1: So like when I'm trying to get permission on Iowa
Speaker 1: or something, but I'm from Michigan, you encounter that same
Speaker 1: worry like as soon as you okay please, so as
Speaker 1: soon as you knock on the door, you' they're gonna say, oh,
Speaker 1: well where you from? And you know, if I stay
Speaker 1: him from Michigan, most likely you get one of two reactions.
Speaker 1: You get one where they get cold and they don't
Speaker 1: want they have towners there, or they get the curious
Speaker 1: like you came all the way from Michigan to hunt
Speaker 1: deer here, really like oh yeah, and then you get
Speaker 1: a conversation going there. But what I would try to
Speaker 1: do for the people who you could, since you know,
Speaker 1: weren't too into the out of towners, I would always say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, so and so and so and so are
Speaker 1: my friends. They hunt in the area, they live here,
Speaker 1: they they they hunt over on Bob and Jerry's down there,
Speaker 1: um so on and so forth. With you any kind
Speaker 1: of throwback to touch into the community, I feel like
Speaker 1: that helps. And then another one of my little things
Speaker 1: that's led to a lot of the permission I've gotten
Speaker 1: is that even when they're like, no, you know, we
Speaker 1: already have someone hunting, or no, we don't want you
Speaker 1: to hunt, whatever might be. I always try to end
Speaker 1: that conversation. I keep that conversation going as long as
Speaker 1: I possibly can, because he never knows. I've had people
Speaker 1: change their mind after talking to you for a while,
Speaker 1: if you just end up talking about something random, and
Speaker 1: then fifteen minutes later, after they see your half decent person,
Speaker 1: that ends up all of a sudden, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Larry doesn't hunt here that often. I guess you could come, um,
Speaker 1: but if that doesn't happen, I'll always end the conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, is there anyone else you happen to know
Speaker 1: that I should, you know, maybe would be worth talking
Speaker 1: to in the area. And lots of times they'll him
Speaker 1: and Han and then they'll say, well, I'll go talk
Speaker 1: to so and so down there. And then when you
Speaker 1: talk to so and so, you can say, hey, Bob
Speaker 1: from Extra told me to come down and stop by,
Speaker 1: and then you're in, and then you can just keep
Speaker 1: pointing back to the last one was telling me he
Speaker 1: would never any million years allow me access on his land,
Speaker 1: but he thought that I should run down and talk
Speaker 1: to you, you don't phrase it that way. My old
Speaker 1: man had certain like things that that I still stand
Speaker 1: by to day on when just comes to banging on doors.
Speaker 1: So cold calling is pick your time well and the
Speaker 1: time to do it. I feel we're not having this
Speaker 1: conversation as the proper amount of structure, trying to find
Speaker 1: way to impose structure on it. No, never mind, I
Speaker 1: do want to get around and talk about the small
Speaker 1: game in. So we want to talk about the small
Speaker 1: game in. Let's focus for a minute on the dudes
Speaker 1: and don't of cold rolling. Cold rolling being is not
Speaker 1: a dude from your mom and dad's church. You're just
Speaker 1: like just completely a dude coming in with no kind
Speaker 1: of I'm friends with Doug sorts of things. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: My old man and these are things I learned from
Speaker 1: him that I know to be true. Was very particular
Speaker 1: about the time that you do this, and you don't
Speaker 1: do it during a farmer's busy as seasons, which tend
Speaker 1: to not be during hunting season. You don't do it
Speaker 1: when they're sitting down to dinner. He felt the window
Speaker 1: between mid day he thought was appropriate, and he thought
Speaker 1: that the window between dinner and like winding down getting
Speaker 1: ready for bed was a good time to approach someone
Speaker 1: about it, and he felt that you do not do
Speaker 1: it during hunting season because it's like they've been getting
Speaker 1: in and day with dudes banging on their door. Like
Speaker 1: picture of this, like you're in an area, you're trying
Speaker 1: to hunt geese and you're you got there's some big
Speaker 1: grain fields and his geese is plowing into the grain fields.
Speaker 1: Every guy out there is seeing this, and he's going
Speaker 1: up to the house nearby and banging on the door
Speaker 1: to see if he can do it. The thing is
Speaker 1: that you want to approach this guy now when he's
Speaker 1: getting hit up all the time, but also not when
Speaker 1: it's so far away that it seems like he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to commit to something that far out. So like
Speaker 1: this window of time when you're kind of the first
Speaker 1: guy to show up, um, but you're talking about something
Speaker 1: in the foreseeable future that you'd like to be doing.
Speaker 1: Was He felt that was the time to be making
Speaker 1: these calls. And then as far as the end thing,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna go up to a guy probably not
Speaker 1: gonna go up and just be like, um, hey man,
Speaker 1: can I come hunt big giant white sail bucks? On
Speaker 1: your place. That's not gonna be the end, you know,
Speaker 1: think so I think a better in is gee, mr um,
Speaker 1: come February, would it be possible that I might come
Speaker 1: out and hunt squirrels on your place? Because then he's
Speaker 1: not doing something that's gonna be pissing off the cousin
Speaker 1: who comes out every year to hunt deer and you
Speaker 1: wiggle your way in. I had a permission one time
Speaker 1: from a guy where there was no way he had.
Speaker 1: Oh there's no way, you know, not gonna happen, not
Speaker 1: deer in turkeys. I've actually got squirrel permission on this place,
Speaker 1: and I would go hunt squirrels in the winter, and
Speaker 1: then I would text message him pictures of the squirrels
Speaker 1: that I cooked, being like thanks so much, look at
Speaker 1: what we made with our squirrels, which just tickled him endlessly.
Speaker 1: Event she he's like, you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: come on hunt deer and turkeys, go ahead. We do
Speaker 1: the same thing, but with shed hunting because that gets
Speaker 1: you in the door, Like, we'll do it in February.
Speaker 1: March is like a great time to do this, I think,
Speaker 1: because no one's banged on his door before banging on
Speaker 1: his door and you can say the same kind of thing. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know lots of same thing. I'm in Iowa. We're
Speaker 1: in the area. We've been looking for shed antlers. Curious,
Speaker 1: maybe that might be okay? Behind I we know's we've
Speaker 1: got a couple hundred acres or something, and we drove
Speaker 1: from Michigan just come out here and alers dear lose
Speaker 1: their antlers. Yeah, and then you get it, get telling
Speaker 1: a little interesting story about biology, and then um and
Speaker 1: then yeah, lots of times it seems harmless. And a
Speaker 1: lot of farmers you shed antlers as a nuisance because
Speaker 1: they're popping tractor tires. Oh, so you can say, hey,
Speaker 1: you ever had a tractor tire popped? And then maybe
Speaker 1: you'll get lucky and say, well, actually that did happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell them that's not so much interested and
Speaker 1: finding shed antlers as I am and prevent entire pops.
Speaker 1: I've got a deal for you. I can help you
Speaker 1: to day yep. So so if you get shed hunting permission,
Speaker 1: then you've got a great reason to come back, you know.
Speaker 1: So I really appreciate it. Established whether small game hunting
Speaker 1: or shed hunting or whatever it might be, it's an
Speaker 1: easy end they feel more comfortable established for poor and
Speaker 1: then yeah, from there you can see where it goes. Um. Plus,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about doing any one of those things
Speaker 1: is it allows you to walk that property, gives an
Speaker 1: excuse to better learn that property, to decide if it
Speaker 1: really is, you know, worth your time to try to
Speaker 1: deer hunt there, whatever it might be. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're driving out from Michigan, Iowa, most places are
Speaker 1: worth hunting. But you want to make sure that if
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend a ton of time and money, that
Speaker 1: you have a spot that seems half decent. So so
Speaker 1: mark out of your sort of portfolio places you hunt. What. Um,
Speaker 1: how many permissions do you have that aren't like aren't
Speaker 1: like leases just like flat out some dude, out of
Speaker 1: an act of kindness lets you hunt his place. Uh Um.
Speaker 1: I probably have six or seven different spots that are
Speaker 1: just actually more than that, probably eight or nine I
Speaker 1: guess that are across scattered states that I have permission
Speaker 1: to hunt that it wasn't through connection, it was just
Speaker 1: from knocking on doors or random randomly meeting someone. I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about permission. So if I meet someone while
Speaker 1: I'm ount in Montana or Iowa, Ohio or somewhere, and
Speaker 1: I happen to think they might own land, I will
Speaker 1: I will try to navigate the conversation there in any
Speaker 1: way possible reception this uh, this farm you speak of,
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you hear about something like that, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna avoid that conversation. I'm getting getting in there.
Speaker 1: I got the first thing that comes to mind. And
Speaker 1: it's amazing how many times, not not most of the time,
Speaker 1: but some of the time. I guess you'll come to
Speaker 1: find out that maybe they don't have somebody hunting, or
Speaker 1: maybe they do. But again, you never know who they
Speaker 1: might know, who they might know. So I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you just have to always
Speaker 1: be thinking about it, always be working for it, because
Speaker 1: it's so easy to lose permission first off, um, So
Speaker 1: that's a big part of this conversation. I think, too,
Speaker 1: is just as important as getting it, as you really
Speaker 1: need to learn how to keep it. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that happen that are out of
Speaker 1: your control. So yeah, and you lose it for various reasons.
Speaker 1: You can lose it because you screw up, and then
Speaker 1: you deserve to lose it, like not leaving gates the
Speaker 1: way you found them, driving on wet fields, because there's
Speaker 1: could be things that that if you grew up, if
Speaker 1: you if you've grown up around egg land and kind
Speaker 1: of grow up around working properties, those things you like, know,
Speaker 1: you don't do that. Someone who's not familiar with that
Speaker 1: world might do without realizing it's a real problem. Like
Speaker 1: you might notice that there's tire tracks skirting around the
Speaker 1: edge of an alfalfa field and be like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna drive there, not really realizing at the only time
Speaker 1: you would ever do that, as if it was just dry, dry, dry,
Speaker 1: And then you go out and leave a big couple
Speaker 1: of ruts in the guy's field, you're gonna lose your permission,
Speaker 1: likely or he gives you. Here's here's the story to
Speaker 1: happen me One time, me and my brother had turkey
Speaker 1: hunting permission on a place and he had given me
Speaker 1: and my brother permission, and one day we had our
Speaker 1: other brother and a buddy of ours to go honey.
Speaker 1: Now we were not going to hunt without securing extra
Speaker 1: permissions for two more people. We go to the guy's house.
Speaker 1: He's not there, So our first stop was to go
Speaker 1: down his driveway, but he's not there. We then set
Speaker 1: off to go look for him, and we come across
Speaker 1: him and this guy is never even gave us a
Speaker 1: chance to explain ourselves, was out of his truck beating
Speaker 1: on our hood because the one thing he said was
Speaker 1: I'm giving two of you permission. Never even got a chance, honestly,
Speaker 1: never got a chance to explain to him that we
Speaker 1: were coming out to find him to inquire about two
Speaker 1: other individuals. In his mind, it was the conversation was
Speaker 1: over when he said too, So that was a permission.
Speaker 1: I lost out of being a kind of a dumbass,
Speaker 1: kind of assuming that there was some flexibility. It's a bummer, yeah,
Speaker 1: And to be just like screamed at by someone is difficult,
Speaker 1: for sure. I had a friend get the harder it is.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who had permission, who got permission,
Speaker 1: you know, by way of his knock indoors, and he
Speaker 1: went to go This was a handful of years ago,
Speaker 1: and trying to remember his story, but as I remember it,
Speaker 1: he had gotten permission and then came back there and
Speaker 1: don't a week later or something with his wife to
Speaker 1: do some scouting. And this guy lived down this little
Speaker 1: like two track road way back in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: So he decided to go down the road park his car,
Speaker 1: and then his wife was going to stay in the
Speaker 1: car while he went off and did some scouting or
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing. Um, he hadn't told the landowner this,
Speaker 1: and so he goes off to his walking, but his
Speaker 1: wife is sitting in this car pulled off the side
Speaker 1: of the road and this guy's farm and this guy
Speaker 1: comes up from behind. The landowner ends up seeing this car.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the same vehicle that this friend had used before.
Speaker 1: So he sees a random car with a lady sitting
Speaker 1: in the front seat, and he was so mad about
Speaker 1: somebody trespass he went running up with a shotgun, screaming
Speaker 1: at her through the window. And uh, just because of
Speaker 1: you know, lack of communications. But nope, nope, that didn't
Speaker 1: work out too well for end. If my number one
Speaker 1: rule is no gray area, there are no assumptions. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is exactly the Hey, just so you know, I
Speaker 1: have this crappy old white Chevy with a gray topper.
Speaker 1: That's me and it's and then if friends are it's
Speaker 1: also like the timing conversation and figuring out like what
Speaker 1: would be kind of valuable to these people, like hey,
Speaker 1: like you know gates, you knock it all out up front,
Speaker 1: and then if somebody's like, hey, I know you got
Speaker 1: permission on that place, can I come to I'm always like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll talk to him this winner. We'll see
Speaker 1: about next next year, because I already got permission this year,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna push my luck this year. Such
Speaker 1: a tenuous thing, I think, yeah, because then you always
Speaker 1: got like every farmer's got a cousin or something, so
Speaker 1: you lose them too, not because you did something bad,
Speaker 1: but because he's like, oh, you know my cousin. He
Speaker 1: wants to come out with his cousins. I can't say
Speaker 1: no to them. So this year is just gonna be
Speaker 1: too crowded out here. That's a big way that people lose.
Speaker 1: You kind of have to take advantage why you have it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is this he had a walk that
Speaker 1: like this line that is not truly even there, uh,
Speaker 1: because you never know when those properties are gonna go
Speaker 1: go away forever, and typically when they're gone, they're gone. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can't push your luck either.
Speaker 1: We used to do a lot of gift giving and
Speaker 1: then offers of work, like I remember the main farm
Speaker 1: we hunted as kids. We hunted two main farms as kids.
Speaker 1: I remember the farmer broke his arm and for weeks
Speaker 1: my old man had me and my brothers were just
Speaker 1: little kids. For weeks we were out there shovel and manure. Well,
Speaker 1: the farmer's arm was broken because my old man would
Speaker 1: use us. You know, that's something Davy Crockett's dad did.
Speaker 1: People don't realize that's Davy Crockett. His father hired him
Speaker 1: out as an indentured servant to satisfy his own debts
Speaker 1: from the time I think from the time he turned nine,
Speaker 1: his father would would give his give Davis Davy Crockett's
Speaker 1: father would give his labor to his debtors. So male
Speaker 1: man would do a similar thing for hunt permissions. We
Speaker 1: would go out and shovel manure for Harold zeldn rust
Speaker 1: That's such a West Michigan name. Yeah. Yeah. The other
Speaker 1: families are great families and my mom, my mom's still
Speaker 1: the Frenz these families, but the zelden Rustan's at the
Speaker 1: zur Lot. So I grew up thinking that everybody had
Speaker 1: a Z last started a Z no but great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we did that, went out shovel ner. I used
Speaker 1: to throw hay bales for tom weirds mom, a farmer.
Speaker 1: I would throw hay bales for him in the summertime.
Speaker 1: Small price to pay because you only throw hay bales
Speaker 1: for like a day or two. Yeah, but there's so
Speaker 1: few people understanding that. It was understanding because we would
Speaker 1: hunt his place for small game, hunted his place one
Speaker 1: time for geese in an hour trap. Yeah. He had
Speaker 1: a handful of properties that he would call you to
Speaker 1: throw bails and you went through bales. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: better drop what you're doing and go. Yeah. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like a spoken thing. It wasn't like, oh, I'll give
Speaker 1: you permission on the you know, on the condition that
Speaker 1: you satisfy X demands. It was just sort of there
Speaker 1: was like this sort of recipant. It was like this
Speaker 1: built in understanding of I'm doing something for you, you
Speaker 1: will do something for me. I once saw have you
Speaker 1: guys seen the um poison dispensers for gopher holes or
Speaker 1: prairie dog holes that you can mount on the front
Speaker 1: of a four wheeler so you drive over the top
Speaker 1: of the hole, hit the button that drops a little
Speaker 1: a certain amount of uh poison pellets into the gopher hole.
Speaker 1: Uh buddy of mind. And I showed up. It was
Speaker 1: hunting season, but it and it was cold right. The
Speaker 1: the farmer rancher was like, no, I don't have time
Speaker 1: for this, and my buddies like, uh, you mind if
Speaker 1: we just we were asking for archery permission to hunt mule.
Speaker 1: You're on his place and he's like, what if we
Speaker 1: just shoot gophers? And it was like this, oh, with
Speaker 1: bows and arrows, if you're gonna shoot gophers and this
Speaker 1: is not an exaggeration at all, and this is not
Speaker 1: like an archery trick shot at all. But it gopher
Speaker 1: is standing up on the edge of this guy's yard
Speaker 1: and the guys like, can you hit that one? This
Speaker 1: is like a fifteen yard shot with a compound bow. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not not crazy. Uh my buddy, uh kyler shoots
Speaker 1: the thing and guys like, all right, stay on the roads.
Speaker 1: That I think is the thing that people, yeah, because
Speaker 1: like when people are gonna go do a farmer or
Speaker 1: a property owner of favors, they tend to want to
Speaker 1: do the enjoyable favors. So you get a lot of
Speaker 1: guys who, because farmers do need to do a lot
Speaker 1: of in some areas, need to do a lot of
Speaker 1: prairie dog work, like controlling prairie dog colonies or ground
Speaker 1: squirrel colonies which destroy you can destroy crop land or
Speaker 1: destroy pasture land. So people are like, oh, it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound half bad. And if that's something this guy really
Speaker 1: needs to get done and actually pays to have done,
Speaker 1: I'll volunteer for that. It's less people who are like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: do need help stringing fence, fixing fence, moving pipe whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that stuff goes a long way. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of guys that aren't gonna take you
Speaker 1: up on it because like in the time it would
Speaker 1: teach you what to do and show you all the
Speaker 1: analyst he could have had it done, but they're impressed
Speaker 1: that you offered yes. And and to be clear, I
Speaker 1: think very much this particular rancher was just like kind
Speaker 1: of had to eat his own words because he's like,
Speaker 1: there's no way in hell you're gonna hit that prairie dog.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, yeah, I just yeah, go for
Speaker 1: it type of thing. So and then he's less worried
Speaker 1: about having deer running around with arrows coming out of
Speaker 1: weird parts of them. Yeah what else? Mark? Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: to this point of we're talking keeping permission, we're kind
Speaker 1: of fast forwarding a little bit from getting it, but
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we can stay and I want to
Speaker 1: stay on and keeping. So not only though it is
Speaker 1: doing in the gift given yet you mentioned it, which
Speaker 1: gift giving you. I've done Christmas cards, I've done veggies
Speaker 1: in the garden, I do venison, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But another thing that seems simple, but some people really
Speaker 1: value it, especially if it's someone who's older, maybe a
Speaker 1: little more low lee. Um, there's a gentleman. I hunted
Speaker 1: his property that I know. This guy just wants a friend,
Speaker 1: like he just wants them to talk to you myself.
Speaker 1: So I mean when when I had a friend in
Speaker 1: the truck, Yeah at him. So whenever I'm there, though,
Speaker 1: he just you make time to just sit in there.
Speaker 1: You're just planning on forty five minutes that we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk and we're gonna talk about World War two, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the dust Bowl, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the book he wrote, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about how we still love to go dancing, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the same stories every time, and I love
Speaker 1: it and I appreciate the guy so much, and I
Speaker 1: say everything, and we talked politics and I disagree with
Speaker 1: what he says, but no in my head and like
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right and U and it's great. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's I know that he appreciates that so much.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to hunt um.
Speaker 1: And I think there's people out there like that. It
Speaker 1: is appreciation to I know lot of ranchers where it's
Speaker 1: like even if you do everything right but you're not,
Speaker 1: you don't show them that you truly appreciate the work
Speaker 1: that they've done, how they've maintained their place, kind of
Speaker 1: the sweat and tears that they've put into it. They're
Speaker 1: just gonna be like, yeah, I feel a little taken
Speaker 1: advantage of. So yeah, it is the true interest in
Speaker 1: the in what's going on out there, like oh boy,
Speaker 1: I see you did this, and that's everything's looking so
Speaker 1: good this year, and that that's a big deal. My brother,
Speaker 1: uh makes veniceon summer sausages and it puts together gift
Speaker 1: bags for people that he for people who are he
Speaker 1: has hunting permission. It makes veniceon summer sausages and puts
Speaker 1: other things in the gift bag and brings that around. Especially.
Speaker 1: You could be like, hey, I shot this deer on
Speaker 1: your place and then that made this. Here's this summer sausage.
Speaker 1: People eat that. Eat it up metaphorically and literally. They
Speaker 1: may turn around and give it away, but it's a
Speaker 1: big deal that you drove the ninety miles or whatever
Speaker 1: to deliver this stuff. We used to hunt on a
Speaker 1: guy's place, you know. The last man to be legally
Speaker 1: hanged in Wyoming was Tom Horne. There's a movie about
Speaker 1: Tom horn Um. He was a stock detective and he
Speaker 1: was kind of like caught up in he had old
Speaker 1: fashioned ways of dealing with cattle rustlers that were falling
Speaker 1: out of favor in his time, Like it was just
Speaker 1: getting the He was into the early nineteen hunters and
Speaker 1: you couldn't just ride out and start shooting people who
Speaker 1: were stealing cattle anymore. And wounded up getting him on
Speaker 1: the wrong end of a rope and he was hanged
Speaker 1: and shared in Wyoming. The last man to be illegally
Speaker 1: hanged Tom Horn, so we had I used to hunt
Speaker 1: of guys land named Tom Horn. So I brought Tom
Speaker 1: Horn a book about um Horn that's pretty good, which
Speaker 1: he appreciated. Now we would also hunt rabbits on his
Speaker 1: place a lot, and one day I brought him a
Speaker 1: carrot cake that was decorated with rabbits. And I felt
Speaker 1: like it really like he didn't didn't get that he
Speaker 1: didn't get and like standing there like look right, and
Speaker 1: I remember being like just looking at like what in
Speaker 1: the world these boys bring me a cake for it?
Speaker 1: What are it's it's got rabbits on there. You know,
Speaker 1: we um now that we want rabbits out here. So
Speaker 1: there's rabbits in the cake. Remember that fell a little flat.
Speaker 1: But he really liked the Tom hornbook. And so there
Speaker 1: was like a thought like trying to be like a
Speaker 1: thoughtful gift to say, hey, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: allowing us access to your property. And people are pragmatic,
Speaker 1: and I think people, especially in the agricultural world, are
Speaker 1: extremely pragmatic relative to other segment of the population. And
Speaker 1: I think that to be like, you know, how you
Speaker 1: let us come out and hunt your place. Well, here's
Speaker 1: all the stuff we cooked with the things we got
Speaker 1: in your place, like we put it to use and
Speaker 1: now we're here's something for you. That makes them feel
Speaker 1: like because when you like love a piece of land
Speaker 1: and work a piece of land, you'd like to see
Speaker 1: the land provide the fruits that you're labor. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so to have some Joe Shmo you know from town,
Speaker 1: come out and harvest something off the place and you
Speaker 1: see that he's using it and sharing it with you,
Speaker 1: it makes them feel like how they like good about
Speaker 1: the property's ability to provide a good see. It too
Speaker 1: for people to remember is you know these farmers and ranchers,
Speaker 1: they're not folks that really have downtime, Like they can
Speaker 1: work every minute, every day in perpetuity. And so you're
Speaker 1: already starting out your footing a little bit of a hole.
Speaker 1: So like, oh, boys have some free time. Huh, that's
Speaker 1: gotta be nice. Yeah, So like the last thing that
Speaker 1: he would ever be doing would be driving around trying
Speaker 1: to find a place to recreate. Oh yeah. Or you
Speaker 1: guys choose to sleep outside. I've gotten that so many times.
Speaker 1: Like your days off, you want to go out and
Speaker 1: be cold again. We used to have where I grew up.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of not Amish, but they were
Speaker 1: like there are men and nights, but they had the
Speaker 1: same where they cut the same rigid sabbath and their
Speaker 1: deal like they had like last thing like Yoda and
Speaker 1: various things like that, and uh, their deal was that
Speaker 1: you do not hunt. I think they kept a Saturday sabbath,
Speaker 1: no Saturday hunting. And in fact, when I would trap
Speaker 1: land men and nite land and I had a lot
Speaker 1: of permissions with these guys because once I knew some
Speaker 1: of the people in that community could get permissions anywhere
Speaker 1: in the community. You pulled your traps like by dusk
Speaker 1: on Friday. Yeah, kind of they were not even on
Speaker 1: the land working. You pulled them and then re put
Speaker 1: them back out again. And it's just like a thing
Speaker 1: like I can't even begin to understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 1: But it's your place, Okay, Yes, if that's the rule,
Speaker 1: seemingly not that definitely doesn't seem arbitrary. But it was
Speaker 1: just like a different thing you were invited into. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean it goes that's a unilateral right, it's our
Speaker 1: universal rather rather the you may be on one place
Speaker 1: that the guy's like, oh yeah, drive wherever. Don't assume
Speaker 1: the next property is gonna be the same way. You're like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean your body down the road? Lets
Speaker 1: me drive through the field that's not gonna go over Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: guys that are touchy about driving, we would also this offer, like, well,
Speaker 1: does park at the house and ever even touched the car,
Speaker 1: just walk from the house. You're worried about gates and
Speaker 1: driving and all that, we won't even drive And some
Speaker 1: people like that sounds good. Great. Yeah, I've always thought
Speaker 1: that's important, just to make sure you know where do
Speaker 1: you want to part? Where should drive? Like that always
Speaker 1: seems to be one of those sticking points. It's good
Speaker 1: to have laid out ahead of time, like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: layout and get as many things on the table up
Speaker 1: front as possible. No no question marks if you can
Speaker 1: so no, no, Mark Kenny, You're an organized guy. So
Speaker 1: we handle. We touched on get kicked off once you've
Speaker 1: had it. We touched on maintaining. We're talking a bit
Speaker 1: about getting. Should we talk about getting or yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about get. Definitely need to talk a little more
Speaker 1: about Can I share my process? Oh please? Because I'm
Speaker 1: pretty now. I already mentioned like I'm always thinking about permission,
Speaker 1: so if if random up tunities pop up, I always
Speaker 1: tried to take it um So once like, I was
Speaker 1: driving around in Montana looking for places to hunt and
Speaker 1: ran across the guy that had a flat tire, so
Speaker 1: stopped to help him out. As I'm helping with his tires,
Speaker 1: before I can starts. You don't have old land, you
Speaker 1: know anybody that does? No, I just have a jack.
Speaker 1: But but any type of happenstance like that, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes good things come on that. But when you don't
Speaker 1: have a situation like that, when I'm simply what happened there,
Speaker 1: I was, I was joking. Yeah, So I got out
Speaker 1: yeah on likes because I helped him out and give
Speaker 1: him a drive back home and were just chit chat
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, what are you doing out here?
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm just trying to find a
Speaker 1: place to deer hunt and I knew and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we have all this land over here, and gosh,
Speaker 1: it was real nice to you to help us out
Speaker 1: and everything. I was like, I'm happy to do it.
Speaker 1: And then he brought me over for a beer. We're
Speaker 1: having a beer and then we keep talking, He's like,
Speaker 1: so you really like to hunt hunt? I was telling
Speaker 1: more and more about it, and by the end of
Speaker 1: you know, like an hour drinking beer and helping out,
Speaker 1: I had access. So yeah, that's good old American elbow
Speaker 1: grease access getting right there, man. Yeah, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: always come now, Yeah, it doesn't come falling out of
Speaker 1: the sky like that all time. So I kind of
Speaker 1: have like a process that I go through when it
Speaker 1: comes to to the to your point of being organized.
Speaker 1: This is where that comes out, I guess for me,
Speaker 1: because I think the biggest thing when it comes to
Speaker 1: getting hunting permission, at least around where I'm at, which
Speaker 1: is you know, south central Michigan, UM, where there's lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots and lots of hunters, like deer
Speaker 1: hunters in the state now somewhere around there, um. And
Speaker 1: then the vast majority of that vast majority of that's
Speaker 1: crammed in the bottom third of the state. There's tons
Speaker 1: of pressure are yeah. Yeah, So everyone's trying to get
Speaker 1: permission to hunt. So it's a numbers game. And whether
Speaker 1: that's you know, down by me or almost anywhere, it
Speaker 1: comes down to being a numbers game. Like you just
Speaker 1: need to go into it, in my opinion, knowing that
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a lot of nose so you need
Speaker 1: to ask a lot of people to get that one yes.
Speaker 1: So what I do is I would say, out of fifteen,
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty asks, i'll get one to two yeses.
Speaker 1: So we'll say one to ten um so rejection a
Speaker 1: lot of rejections. So I planned for that. And I
Speaker 1: hate I hate coal, coal knocking on doors like I'm nervous,
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable about it. I don't like to have uncomfortable
Speaker 1: conversations with people I don't know it. Also, I know
Speaker 1: that about myself. So I forced myself into a process
Speaker 1: to get past that. So I go and I look
Speaker 1: at PLAT maps or whatever digital online g S maps
Speaker 1: are out there or whatever, look at aerial maps and
Speaker 1: pick out. I always try to get a list of
Speaker 1: at least ten twenty properties that I would like to
Speaker 1: get permission on. I make a list and I find
Speaker 1: the landowner information so I know the names and the
Speaker 1: addresses for every one of those ten to fifteen places.
Speaker 1: Will say so. For example, I did this in Iowa,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people think that to hunt in
Speaker 1: Iowa at least in the white tail world. That's like
Speaker 1: the mecca of the white tailed world. Everyone thinks that's
Speaker 1: where the biggest deer are, that's the best deer hunting
Speaker 1: in the country. So people assume you need to pay
Speaker 1: an outfit or five thousand dollars or pay ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year for a least or something to go
Speaker 1: and hunt there. Um, I want to hunt there for free.
Speaker 1: So I did this. I put together a list um
Speaker 1: between looking at all these different things, and then all
Speaker 1: was a sadde a couple of friends in the area
Speaker 1: who said, hey, you know, this property looks like one
Speaker 1: you should look at. I've I've seen a big buck
Speaker 1: in that field. So I put together the list. I
Speaker 1: have fifteen properties and then the same area general region
Speaker 1: within like fifteen man maybe ten miles. Um. So I
Speaker 1: don't like knocking in doors and cold knocking. So because
Speaker 1: of that, what like a door to door salesman banging
Speaker 1: on the door and saying, hey, my name is Mark.
Speaker 1: Can I go on? Yeah, that's that's an uncomfortable thing,
Speaker 1: but sometimes that's what you have to do. So what
Speaker 1: I make myself do is I'm gonna do that and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do all of it in one dy. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna knock on fifteen doors, and one day I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a list. I don't have a plan, and that
Speaker 1: first store you go up to is I don't want
Speaker 1: to do this. I should just go back to Michigan.
Speaker 1: But you get through that, You get through that door knock,
Speaker 1: and it goes okay, you didn't get yelled at, you
Speaker 1: didn't get shot. It was okay. The next one feels
Speaker 1: a little bit better. The next one is even better,
Speaker 1: and then by four, five, six, seven, it's a snowball effect,
Speaker 1: and by twelve fifteen it's piece cake, nothing to it.
Speaker 1: So I can get through so many door knocking. That's
Speaker 1: but that is still your initial point of contact. Well,
Speaker 1: so it's like bang, bang on the door. This is
Speaker 1: if I've exercised all their options. So this is if
Speaker 1: you know, I've went through my whole personal network and
Speaker 1: there's nothing. This is if I've tried to, you know,
Speaker 1: strike up conversation in a hardware store or at the
Speaker 1: bar or whatever. I mean, anyway you can get a connection.
Speaker 1: Is is the best. This is if I have zero,
Speaker 1: if I have nothing else to work with, if I'm
Speaker 1: completely in the dark. Starting from grounds zero, you get
Speaker 1: the list. You try if you know anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a good example. Um, but
Speaker 1: any little bit of tidbit of information about the people
Speaker 1: or the area. Yes, anything like that, Like I'll slap
Speaker 1: a Hawkeye sticker on my truck when I put high
Speaker 1: school teams. Yeah, big deal, innum, But but yeah, you
Speaker 1: can do it. I got permission on over a thousand
Speaker 1: and over a thousand acres in Iowa for zero dollars
Speaker 1: um out of state dude. And then and it came
Speaker 1: came down to things that I said earlier. Where so
Speaker 1: I think you got to present yourself, you know, as
Speaker 1: a non dangerous, somewhat respectable person. You don't want to
Speaker 1: go up there in like a suit and tie and
Speaker 1: seeing like all toity. But I don't think you also
Speaker 1: want to show up like you've been shoveling maneuver for
Speaker 1: the last seventeen days and you're someone who looks a
Speaker 1: little sketchy. I think there's like a middle ground. So
Speaker 1: present yourself in a respectable way, have a decent thing
Speaker 1: planned about how you want to start a conversation. And
Speaker 1: then I always try to let that conversation go anywhere
Speaker 1: it wants for as long as it wants um. Even
Speaker 1: if they come out and say no, you know you
Speaker 1: can't hunt here. I'll keep chatting them up for as
Speaker 1: long as they want to chat because you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be disrespectful and bother them. Like if
Speaker 1: they want to be out of the conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be out of your hair. Sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1: But many times people just want chat sometimes especially I
Speaker 1: feel like some of these, you know, a slightly older gentleman,
Speaker 1: maybe it's on a farm and ile or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, roll Ohio where to my point earlier, sometimes
Speaker 1: they just want chat um and many times does lead
Speaker 1: to different opportunities. And then you leverage that last one,
Speaker 1: so you say, oh, Bob sent me, and then Bill
Speaker 1: sent me, and then as you keep going those things,
Speaker 1: they kind of all they all work together. I think
Speaker 1: another important thing, and I want to stay with your process. Best.
Speaker 1: Want to interject on a couple of points. When doing
Speaker 1: cold door knocking, go by yourself. Do not unless you
Speaker 1: can go with your wife or better a four year old.
Speaker 1: The best thing that could happen is you go with
Speaker 1: your kids. I cannot wait for my up. One of
Speaker 1: the those the most excited about this. You'll be tearing
Speaker 1: permissions a new one when you can go up with kids.
Speaker 1: The more you're probably doing it with the baby Bjorn
Speaker 1: sat right to your chest, walk right up. Because one
Speaker 1: you're just playing on like a basic innate human thing
Speaker 1: where you sort of like appreciate seeing like a father,
Speaker 1: like interacting with children in a way, or you're trying
Speaker 1: to like introduce them to the out of doors and
Speaker 1: be outside with them and and you know, and their
Speaker 1: kids come up to them and look them in the
Speaker 1: eye and you know, shake their hands. That just resonates
Speaker 1: with people. Don't go up there were three dudes, because
Speaker 1: you can want to making someone uneasy with a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. It's like go up by yourself, or if
Speaker 1: you can't go up with your spouse or go up
Speaker 1: with your children. Don't people off these Also, it's like
Speaker 1: four guys standing outside the door. And I think the
Speaker 1: way you're dressing is important too, because if you're like
Speaker 1: if you're in a suit here and be wandering like
Speaker 1: what are you either door to door proselytizing or sellings.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just weird and off but clean, caught,
Speaker 1: put together, look him in the eye. State your purpose.
Speaker 1: I've you know, seen where people come up and they
Speaker 1: like beat around the bush so much and sort of
Speaker 1: creates attention where the person's like, why are you at
Speaker 1: my door? So make your intentions known fairly quickly. There's
Speaker 1: like this one school thought that you're supposed to go
Speaker 1: up and start complimenting them on the place. But unless
Speaker 1: you're able to pull that off in a very authentic way,
Speaker 1: I think it can be off putting. Yeah, beautiful proper,
Speaker 1: couldn't help, but notice your beautiful property here. Like people
Speaker 1: are like, come on, bro, is a dollar harvester? Come on,
Speaker 1: like polite, But unless you can really pull it off,
Speaker 1: don't come up and do just like like sort of
Speaker 1: like cynical acts of flattery as a way to you know,
Speaker 1: as a way to establish when someone. If I get
Speaker 1: a knock on the door and I come up, some
Speaker 1: guys like beautiful house you have here, I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, where's this going? Boy? This is going somewhere?
Speaker 1: Or I don't want to go to the point of
Speaker 1: making your intentions known quickly, relatively quickly. I also think
Speaker 1: clearly because sometimes if you just generically say, hey, can
Speaker 1: I get permission to hunt here? That's like a lot
Speaker 1: to consider if you make it very clear maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just looking for somewhere to bow hunt for one week
Speaker 1: this year. If you're only going to be in that
Speaker 1: area for a week or whatever, it might be Specify
Speaker 1: what weapons, Specify how long or how often or anything
Speaker 1: like that, um because many times that will make them
Speaker 1: feel more comfortable or be your specific request might fit
Speaker 1: into their you know, set up, when a general request wouldn't.
Speaker 1: That's another permission I lost. I one time got a
Speaker 1: permission to trap muskrats on a large marsh and it
Speaker 1: was like a difficult march to get access to. And
Speaker 1: I got access to the march to a guy who
Speaker 1: wanted being a theater teacher, and he very plately after
Speaker 1: a while said like, I didn't realize that it was
Speaker 1: something that that needs to be done every day, so
Speaker 1: in the few I didn't lose it kind of lost.
Speaker 1: It's like in the future, um let's work on picking
Speaker 1: out like a handful of days. Because he didn't know
Speaker 1: that you might trap three months and in a giant place.
Speaker 1: He might be like using that point of access. It's
Speaker 1: just like in his mind he just pictured something that
Speaker 1: would happen a few times. But I do to yourself
Speaker 1: also to your point um starting out where you're talking
Speaker 1: about like a finite period of time this weekend, would
Speaker 1: it be okay if we hunted thing? Because you could
Speaker 1: always do it successfully, stick to your word. Everyone's happy.
Speaker 1: You go back again, and then it might turn into
Speaker 1: that you know what, just you know, you know the
Speaker 1: you know the place, you know the rules, help yourself.
Speaker 1: That happens all the time that you get in and
Speaker 1: eventually a guys just like you guys are you guys
Speaker 1: know what's up out here? Never any problem with you guys,
Speaker 1: go ahead and eliminate that vagary. Right, It's like I
Speaker 1: want hunting permission. That that's so much a place like
Speaker 1: Iowa that's upland birds and turkeys and uh sometimes mule
Speaker 1: deer and white tailor. Right, I don't think there's oh
Speaker 1: no western Nebraska. But it's like, yeah, well my kids
Speaker 1: really like to hunt pheasants. You know, said knock that
Speaker 1: stuff out of the gate before they have a chance
Speaker 1: to say no to it. Be real specific, finite amount
Speaker 1: of days will be out of your hair before you
Speaker 1: even though I used to have a permission where we
Speaker 1: can hunt everything but rabbits, and rabbits is usually the
Speaker 1: way to get in. But this guy had a kid
Speaker 1: who had rabbit dogs. Yeah, so he was like, sure, anything,
Speaker 1: but the thing that you probably think I would most
Speaker 1: readily let you go do is off limits. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: had a great permission outside of um actually kind of
Speaker 1: outside a red lodge and guys like, yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: can hunt. Here's like how the place lays out. Have
Speaker 1: a great time, but just uh, you can kill all
Speaker 1: the turkeys you see, and you can kill all the
Speaker 1: elky see, but don't shooting anything else because you know
Speaker 1: they're coming back from some disease or something. So of
Speaker 1: course all we see are like white tails and pheasants.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like just bizarre, O. We're old
Speaker 1: out there, you know. Yeah. And that's not a point
Speaker 1: you to argue with someone. It's just like okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that needs to be your attitude. Yeah, you can't explain
Speaker 1: it either. You can't be like, well, okay statistically and
Speaker 1: talk to the biologists and just so you know, here's
Speaker 1: this and it's like, oh, so you know my play
Speaker 1: is better than I do, all right, Mark keep walking
Speaker 1: us through the process. Well, I mean, I think we've
Speaker 1: kind of covered the all the bases of my process.
Speaker 1: You start by looking at all the maps, and and
Speaker 1: even before that, something I do is if I'm going
Speaker 1: into let's say I want to hunt a state of
Speaker 1: heaven hunted before we're gonna go back a little bit
Speaker 1: further in time here, I want to hunt a new state.
Speaker 1: Let's say I want to hunt in Illinois for white
Speaker 1: tails this year one. And if I'm going into that
Speaker 1: goal with hey, I want to be able shoot him
Speaker 1: ature buck, maybe for free, like I want to have
Speaker 1: a free permission. Um. So, first I'm gonna be looking
Speaker 1: at the map, like an aerial map of the state,
Speaker 1: and then you can start laying over things like, um
Speaker 1: hoping young record book data or something like that, which
Speaker 1: can tell you, you know, it's a rough estimate. Okay, Pope,
Speaker 1: young bucks, probably mature or whatever might whatever your goal
Speaker 1: might be. That's one way to say, Okay, it looks
Speaker 1: like this, this corner of Illinois looks like there's some
Speaker 1: disproportionately high quality hunting this little corner here. So then
Speaker 1: I can look at those specific counties. I'll pick a
Speaker 1: county Okay, I like the looks of you know what
Speaker 1: this area might be. And then I'll zoom in look
Speaker 1: at arials and try to find properties on arials that
Speaker 1: look like the right type of cover and habitat that
Speaker 1: could be high quality. And then you lay over the
Speaker 1: property ownership stuff and then pick out your specific places. Um.
Speaker 1: But then after you get the doors knocking, then you know,
Speaker 1: then it goes to everything I just said every conversation
Speaker 1: as far as it goes, utilize past connections, keep on
Speaker 1: going through the list, and then you'll hopefully, out of
Speaker 1: fifteen or something, you hopefully will get one. And then
Speaker 1: from there do everything we just talked about when it
Speaker 1: comes to keeping permission, and then keep building that rapport,
Speaker 1: keep that relationship up. I always then happen to say,
Speaker 1: happen of it, even if I get permission and I'm
Speaker 1: down there a few weeks or a few months later,
Speaker 1: anyone else around here you think I should chat with,
Speaker 1: you know, always trying to find another little couple of
Speaker 1: spots and just keep on branching from there. I always
Speaker 1: try to get In some states you don't need to
Speaker 1: do this, but in some states you need permission to
Speaker 1: go and track a wounded deer. So I'll try to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't cross over on the land. Can
Speaker 1: you do that anywhere? Yes, there are places where you
Speaker 1: can go on the land. You do not have permission
Speaker 1: for the retrieve game retrieval. Really, I know. I know
Speaker 1: Iowa has that. I know Ohio and Michigan do not.
Speaker 1: So in Ohio, so I I don't know that any
Speaker 1: place I'll ever hear about is how you can't. I've
Speaker 1: never heard about how you can. I think if I
Speaker 1: if I remember the Iowa law correctly off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, I think you're just not supposed to
Speaker 1: have your weapon with you. You need to leave it
Speaker 1: there across the line or so, you know what, now
Speaker 1: I think about it, You're right. I remember being somewhere
Speaker 1: where someone told me that that you can go over
Speaker 1: the're talking about unting waterfowl. You can go over to
Speaker 1: get it, but you can't bring a shotgun with you,
Speaker 1: and you can't bring a dog. Yeah. So so sometimes
Speaker 1: I should do better at this. Sometimes I preemptively do it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's post But either way, if you preremptively go
Speaker 1: and talk to your neighbors and get permission, that's a
Speaker 1: great way to again, just get a foot in the door,
Speaker 1: build a relationship, because then you're not even doing a
Speaker 1: big ask. Right, Hey, just just in case I happen
Speaker 1: to hunt Tom's place, just want to let you know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be there, and wanted to just make sure
Speaker 1: if I happen to hit a deer that comes over
Speaker 1: here where they'd be okay if I come and to retreat,
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to let you know in the door.
Speaker 1: And that is a great trick and lots of times
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, sure, and then you can offer, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll I'll be sure to let you know, or I'll
Speaker 1: stop by before I do it, or something like that.
Speaker 1: It gives you another excuse to stop him and chit chat.
Speaker 1: Then you start hunting the edge of his property. Well,
Speaker 1: don't do that just hoping one runs over, sing, go
Speaker 1: have another chat with put the tree stand right on
Speaker 1: the fence. But there's there's there's one particular property in
Speaker 1: mind that Um I'm just I've been working for like
Speaker 1: six years and someday I'm gonna get permission on this property,
Speaker 1: permission to shed hunt it. I have permission to retrieve
Speaker 1: deer on it. Um, and a really nice, really nice
Speaker 1: people that live there. Um, And you know, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out, that's fine, but maybe someday, you know,
Speaker 1: this will open up another opportunity to hunt. So I
Speaker 1: just keep on, keep on, trying to get to know
Speaker 1: more and more people. Um, and you might get permission.
Speaker 1: You might just make a new friend, which is great too. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I think it comes down to then just
Speaker 1: the work of it. I know so many people who
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about earlier. So many people
Speaker 1: complain about not having enough places to hunt or not
Speaker 1: having any word to hunt. And I think it does
Speaker 1: come around down to just work. Like you just need
Speaker 1: to do these kinds of things a lot. I even
Speaker 1: wish I did them more than I do them, because
Speaker 1: I still feel like I don't have enough places a
Speaker 1: lot of time. So like going into two thousand and
Speaker 1: eighteen already, like just like last week, I was sitting
Speaker 1: in my I know where it was, I don't know
Speaker 1: where it was, but I was sitting there, like telling myself,
Speaker 1: you gotta do better job getting more places next year,
Speaker 1: Like next year you are gonna have like ten new spots.
Speaker 1: You gotta do it. You gotta put in the work,
Speaker 1: you know. Just it's so easy to get lazy or
Speaker 1: to just be like, I'm okay with these two spots.
Speaker 1: It's fine. I think we've got we all have a
Speaker 1: lot of things going on. Or maybe it just it's
Speaker 1: uncomfortable trying to find places or have these conversations. Um,
Speaker 1: but if you want it bad enough, you gotta work
Speaker 1: for I used to know a guy. He was a
Speaker 1: professional trapper, and he was explaining how he how he
Speaker 1: like applies all of his permission getting efforts when he looks,
Speaker 1: and he used a lot of aerial photography, so this
Speaker 1: is I was thought in him before Google Earth was real,
Speaker 1: you know, commonly used for this, but he would use
Speaker 1: aerial photography and he had access to a ton ofment somehow,
Speaker 1: and a big part of his life and time was
Speaker 1: just like permissions right And he had identified he worked
Speaker 1: off of gas lines, so gas line right aways because
Speaker 1: in this sort of he's in this area where it
Speaker 1: was mixed like suburban rural interface and kind of like
Speaker 1: suburban communities up against egg land communities. But he had
Speaker 1: he identified power lines and gas line right aways is
Speaker 1: being these strips of like brushy habitat that he felt
Speaker 1: animals used as travel corridors and also he in his
Speaker 1: area was a big riparian area, so you had like
Speaker 1: a big river valley, and the river valley was low
Speaker 1: bottom lands that weren't developed and it was mostly timbered
Speaker 1: and brushy along those the river bottoms. So he had
Speaker 1: a couple of power lines, a gas line right away,
Speaker 1: and a riparian area. And he just systematically worked every
Speaker 1: piece of property that butted up against those things that
Speaker 1: he identified as being like travel corridors that he was
Speaker 1: interest Like, he hunt a lot of deer and had
Speaker 1: a lot of deer hunting products that he marketed um
Speaker 1: but also fox and kyoe. He knew traveled those things
Speaker 1: that could like they were they were um funnels or
Speaker 1: channels for wildlife, and that was just how he devoted
Speaker 1: his time. Like he his goal was to be that
Speaker 1: he would just own both sides of everything like that
Speaker 1: to focus his activities. Ye, you had a good turkey
Speaker 1: permission to spring mm hmm. Yeah, there's nothing real exciting
Speaker 1: about it. But it was just like yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: it was almost too good to be true because we
Speaker 1: saw strutters in a field and then we were like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's go ask you know, we just drove of quarter
Speaker 1: mile down the road, pulled in. She's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: have had it, you know. So we went back out
Speaker 1: and mof the first set up spoot him up into
Speaker 1: the trees. But then we chased him and caught up
Speaker 1: to him like an hour later, and we killed one
Speaker 1: and went back and we're hoping to just get to
Speaker 1: go back and say thanks and you know, build on
Speaker 1: the relationship and uh, maybe he gets sort of like
Speaker 1: an all access pass. So we're like, yeah, next time.
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, just stopped by any time, please ask
Speaker 1: before you go, you know. So but that was kind
Speaker 1: of like the thing that supposed he doesn't happen anymore though, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was saying at the beginning, how
Speaker 1: the good old days are over. Everything's different now, but
Speaker 1: now they come to think of it, last winter, I
Speaker 1: just want to take my kids small game hunting around
Speaker 1: where I grew up. And I called my mom to
Speaker 1: like check around for me. Right, We're just people and
Speaker 1: it was just there. We just had places to go. No.
Speaker 1: I heard a story while I was in Wisconsin. Is uh,
Speaker 1: like I think the guy he just he started talking.
Speaker 1: He stopped in somewhere, started talking to the to the
Speaker 1: hite if I think, and she's like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: husband doesn't let anybody hunting here, doesn't let anybody hunt here. No, no,
Speaker 1: no no. He's like, well, you know, could it please
Speaker 1: just you know, She's like, yeah, I come back at
Speaker 1: five or whatever. So it comes back. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I really don't let anybody hunting here. And I think
Speaker 1: it was the same thing he had, like someone else
Speaker 1: hunting there. But he's like, you know, I just kept
Speaker 1: talking to the guy and then sure enough he's like,
Speaker 1: well that guy doesn't really hunt here that much. I
Speaker 1: think you can hunt like this little corner over here,
Speaker 1: there's like the fifteen acres and he just and it
Speaker 1: was basically all just from a little bit of persistence
Speaker 1: and then just from having a long conversation. And it
Speaker 1: was only one who it was two because he came
Speaker 1: back in the evening, you know, but he's been he said,
Speaker 1: he's been hunting the place for years. Now. When you
Speaker 1: say it came back in the evening, you to talk
Speaker 1: to the husband, because yeah, he wasn't there at the moment.
Speaker 1: This summer, I was trying to scout some public land
Speaker 1: in southern Michigan and on my little landownership map I had.
Speaker 1: There was one access point to the backside of this
Speaker 1: big chunk of public that looked like very far away
Speaker 1: from everywhere else, and you could get into some pretty
Speaker 1: gnarly stuff. So I thought, I really want to try
Speaker 1: to sculpt that place out. So I go following this
Speaker 1: map and I turned onto the road what looks to
Speaker 1: be a public road on this map that leads to
Speaker 1: a little parking lot. It's just a little two track,
Speaker 1: and it looks it goes up next to this guy's yard.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, man, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: the map says it's good. So I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drive back there. So driving him, driving down
Speaker 1: the road, and I get maybe half mile down the road,
Speaker 1: and I see no trespassing signs on either side of
Speaker 1: the road. And then you get another like quarter mile
Speaker 1: down the road, and then you see like skull and
Speaker 1: crossbones on the trees, and then you get a little
Speaker 1: farther down and there's a skeleton, like a fake skeleton,
Speaker 1: holding a fake a r rifle. And then it says
Speaker 1: if you can read this year in my scope, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, this definitely seems like I'm this
Speaker 1: must not be the right place. So as I'm seeing
Speaker 1: all this, I'm like, okay, I need to find somewhere turnaround.
Speaker 1: And then right when like I see this and I realized, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get out of here, a golf cart comes
Speaker 1: flying down the road right at men. I'm like, oh jeez,
Speaker 1: here we go. So the guy pulls up and I
Speaker 1: bring down my window and at first he's like fiery
Speaker 1: and like, what the hell are you doing down here?
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know, I'm looking at my map,
Speaker 1: so I was looking for this piece of public land
Speaker 1: access it looked like this took me right to it,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I'm so sorry. Is this, you know,
Speaker 1: the private road? And he's like yeah, blah blad. He's
Speaker 1: he's real fired at first, but I just trying to
Speaker 1: be polite and explain my situation, so I'll get out
Speaker 1: of here right away. I'm so sorry, um. And then
Speaker 1: we got like a little bit of like momentum. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I can understand the why you came in here. It
Speaker 1: used to be a public road, but there are so
Speaker 1: many guys coming down here and leaving crap. And someone
Speaker 1: left a dead deer on the side of the road
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. I got the you know,
Speaker 1: state to shut it down or something, so now it's private.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't come down this road, you can't
Speaker 1: access from here anymore. But we just started talking and
Speaker 1: we just talked and talked and talked and talked, and
Speaker 1: finally he's he's talking about how it used to be
Speaker 1: people that hunted here, and I was thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I could get just from mission to drive down
Speaker 1: the road and park in the old parking lot and
Speaker 1: be able to access the back of the public land. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe the conversation will take us there in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind and where we're chatting about things. And
Speaker 1: then he's talking about back in like the seventies when
Speaker 1: he used to hunt, and he's talking about his old blinds,
Speaker 1: and then somehow we get to the chores he's doing
Speaker 1: these days, and then we're talking about how things are
Speaker 1: with his wife and how he wishes warmer in their house,
Speaker 1: and just it was a long time when we went
Speaker 1: everywhere with him, and I was just kind of listening,
Speaker 1: you know, And I don't want to sound like I'm
Speaker 1: always like conniving to try to get I was just
Speaker 1: gonna bring up not a bad way, but like the
Speaker 1: here you are, you're like, uh yeah, you're like a manipulator.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not it's not you, not you everyone,
Speaker 1: I just it's just you're. You're there, Like here's a guy,
Speaker 1: you want something from him, he doesn't want anything from you.
Speaker 1: And like that's like part of the the reason you
Speaker 1: don't want to go and bang on the door. Like
Speaker 1: if you were showing up and you're like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go bang on that guy's door and give him a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, you'd be so excited to go do it, right,
Speaker 1: We're like I gotta go bang on his door and
Speaker 1: bother him to ask him for something. And I don't
Speaker 1: like asking people for stuff, so it makes it uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And I think I think the I think if you
Speaker 1: see an opportunity or if you're if you're having a
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody and it seems natural too if an
Speaker 1: opportunity rises, I don't think there's any harm in letting
Speaker 1: the conversation go there or ask or just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes nothing comes of it. Sometimes like that he said
Speaker 1: no right off the bat, you still sit and talk
Speaker 1: to him, Yeah, because then it's a it's the plight
Speaker 1: thing to do in many cases be sometimes just interesting conversation.
Speaker 1: And then see, like in this case, we talked all
Speaker 1: over from every different side of the world, every different
Speaker 1: possible thing we could have talked about, and somehow got
Speaker 1: to the point that he's not feeling so good about
Speaker 1: cutting wood anymore. And I hear him saying, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm I like cutting wood. Would would that be something
Speaker 1: if I ever helped out, you know, cutting would um?
Speaker 1: You know, I'd be happy to help you out. That
Speaker 1: may be I could just drive down here in park,
Speaker 1: get the parking lot here, may maybe hunting a couple
Speaker 1: of times he's like, now we're talking, Yes we are.
Speaker 1: And then and then come to find out he's not
Speaker 1: hunting his property anymore. You can hunt my property too.
Speaker 1: So I just have countless examples of that kind of
Speaker 1: thing where if you're willing to help out, or if
Speaker 1: you got in there, yeah, um, and he didn't shoot
Speaker 1: me and and all that good stuff. It went down
Speaker 1: pretty well. Stove wood. Not yet, it's gonna be after
Speaker 1: hunting season, not gonna cut some wood. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: you just gotta let those things go where they may. Um.
Speaker 1: And then keep after every year I'm doing something like that,
Speaker 1: trying to find more spots. Yeah, gift given expressions of gratitude.
Speaker 1: I'd like to bring up like the the what like
Speaker 1: non traditional methods and then not really methods. But I
Speaker 1: just think, like, Uh, what's this saying about? You gotta
Speaker 1: be on the dance floor, right, Ryan, help me out? Uh,
Speaker 1: you ought to be on the dance floor. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like when opportunity knocks, you know, to make Hay
Speaker 1: when the sunshine or whatever you gotta dance on the
Speaker 1: music is playing, Maybe make Hay when the sun shines. No,
Speaker 1: it's definitely not. I can't kill him on the couch.
Speaker 1: But if you're not aware of the situation, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna come to you, right, if you're not just like
Speaker 1: thinking about or sort of like and wo wou terms
Speaker 1: like have it, you know, like put it out to
Speaker 1: the universe that you're looking for hunting permissions, right, Just
Speaker 1: like I just feel like after a couple of years
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, Right, I'm new to Bozeman and I haven't
Speaker 1: banged on any doors. I haven't really like made it
Speaker 1: like a point. I haven't done all these things that
Speaker 1: Mark's talking about but just sort of through you know,
Speaker 1: talking to people and chatting them up, and my kids
Speaker 1: making friends with other kids, and then I meet their parents.
Speaker 1: And the next in the beginning was social connections. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I felt like we needed to retouch on
Speaker 1: that and just make sure that we got touch on
Speaker 1: the dude with the letter. Yeah, I got his letter
Speaker 1: pulled up. Um, so get done with what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and it walk us through that appreciation. I think it's
Speaker 1: like people get to know you over the course of
Speaker 1: a few years, and I'm like, you know, ya, tell
Speaker 1: us and his wife after they put their kids to
Speaker 1: bad We'll sit up in butcher dear until they do
Speaker 1: it all themselves. And that's almost all they eat. Isn't
Speaker 1: that amazing? Oh they have him come out and hunt
Speaker 1: my place. Yeah, that's the type of person that I
Speaker 1: would let hunt my place, if I let people hunt
Speaker 1: my place, because hey appreciate it. I want to point
Speaker 1: out that my brother, My brother has a sign on
Speaker 1: his property which isn't big because ten acres and his science.
Speaker 1: What's to say. I think it says trespensers welcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great, Um no not, I mean yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: appreciation is good. But but I just just just keeping
Speaker 1: your just being open, you know, in all situations to
Speaker 1: like something like that coming your way. Yeah, but you're
Speaker 1: kind of talking about like Lavy and pag and stuff though,
Speaker 1: now about putting it out there to the atmosphere and
Speaker 1: stuff like that to the universe. So do you put
Speaker 1: it out there to the universe? Well, it's like the
Speaker 1: it's just have it always in the back of your
Speaker 1: mind and if you happen to have an opportunity to rise,
Speaker 1: you kind of go there. But some people might see
Speaker 1: some of the flat tire and strike up a conversation
Speaker 1: with him, help him out, and never think to mention
Speaker 1: that you're looking for a place to deer hunt. But
Speaker 1: I am always thinking about that kind of thing, So
Speaker 1: I just kind of offhand mention it and it let
Speaker 1: do that happening. Maybe? Is that kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: like just kind of allowed networking and the karma of
Speaker 1: the universe allowed to happen, but also kind of don't
Speaker 1: you can get all over with it. I just think
Speaker 1: that it's like you don't have to go be on
Speaker 1: doors to get a hunting permission? Is my? Is my? Like,
Speaker 1: like you were so surprised today I remember I was
Speaker 1: telling about how my dad is a bowl hunter, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was well he was he is still a home inspector,
Speaker 1: and through his trade, he's gotten all kinds of hunting permissions,
Speaker 1: you know, because he's just he's like, but I mean sure,
Speaker 1: then that's sort of like almost like built. It's like
Speaker 1: the perfect way, Like you're in someone's house looking at
Speaker 1: the back, put it out to the universe. That's that
Speaker 1: you're you're out there interacting with I know. But again
Speaker 1: it's like nontradious, a little bit nontraditional, right, But I
Speaker 1: just think that in whatever whatever thing you do as
Speaker 1: a living or out there daily, there's probably a way
Speaker 1: that you could network or get hunting permissions. You know.
Speaker 1: I got in your home area. I got a handful
Speaker 1: of friends that are chiropractors, and they talk of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you have more than one chiropractor friend? Because
Speaker 1: I actually a good explanation for this. A group of
Speaker 1: guys all met each other going to chiropractor school, a
Speaker 1: school in Iowa, um, and they're all really in the
Speaker 1: hunting and I then became friends with one of them,
Speaker 1: who then introduced me to the others. So there's a
Speaker 1: group of three of them that are all chiropractors because
Speaker 1: of school and now they're some of my best hunting buddies. Well,
Speaker 1: they see forty people a day and they chat with
Speaker 1: them for fifteen twenty minutes, and every day they talked
Speaker 1: to every one of those people about hunting in some
Speaker 1: way if they happen to be No, there's a connection there,
Speaker 1: and they have all sorts of different permission because of
Speaker 1: those types of things. So whether you're a doctor or
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever, sometimes you can take you avangela. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were a guy, if you were a tractor
Speaker 1: salesman or a grain buyer. No, yeah, home inspector, I
Speaker 1: have the I have the worst job for it because
Speaker 1: I just sit in my home office all by myself
Speaker 1: every day. You never talked to anyone. I read flagged
Speaker 1: your foundation. Here, you see this crack, you know what?
Speaker 1: That's from that whitetail buck over there, that property. Let all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I talked about the letter because this is unconventional. I
Speaker 1: used to think it's just next level, it's next level,
Speaker 1: but this is like really, this is this is just
Speaker 1: this guy had we We got a letter after we
Speaker 1: talked about how we're gonna We talked about how we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about getting permissions and had a lot of
Speaker 1: a handful of enthusiastic uh emails coming from people encouraging
Speaker 1: us to have the conversation. And one guy shared with
Speaker 1: us his strategy, and his strategy is not like anything
Speaker 1: that we've touched on here, and it seems, on one hand,
Speaker 1: a bit much. On the other hand, it just seems
Speaker 1: like a really great way for those places where you
Speaker 1: just can't get it in, you can't figure out a
Speaker 1: good in. Yeah, and he wanted us to share this
Speaker 1: to help folks out. His name is Zeric, He's from
Speaker 1: the southeast Zerk. Should we just read the letter? Do
Speaker 1: you want to kind of give it a read what
Speaker 1: he wrote, read how he teed it up, and then
Speaker 1: and then walk us through the letter. He's not like,
Speaker 1: I really like this guy's approach. Oh yeah, uh new hunter, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and relatively new hunter says, and this is just his
Speaker 1: email to us, just sort of just saying, hey, what's up, um,
Speaker 1: listen to listen to what I got Because I'm relatively
Speaker 1: new hunter, forty two years old, but I have access
Speaker 1: to over a hundred acres of family land within an
Speaker 1: hour of my home. To expand my hunting locations to
Speaker 1: within minutes of my home, I developed a boiler plate
Speaker 1: letter that I customized for attempts to gain access to
Speaker 1: properties that I scout through online county tax maps that
Speaker 1: may produce hunting opportunities. When here talking about the online
Speaker 1: county tax map, he's talking about what used to be
Speaker 1: known as a plat book or a PLAT map, whereas
Speaker 1: public information who's paying taxes on what? So you can
Speaker 1: go down two at the township level in in in
Speaker 1: the east where you have township level politics, you go
Speaker 1: to your township, your county and just request a map
Speaker 1: and that will have all the land parceled out. And
Speaker 1: this reminds me of something we need to talk about.
Speaker 1: Not quite man, just so much stuff you can get
Speaker 1: out of these. You can use these to find places
Speaker 1: you don't need permissions, but there aren't like actually public land.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to explain, mhm, yeah, really quick,
Speaker 1: just to have the places are they're not like part
Speaker 1: like they're not like state forest, national forests, but just
Speaker 1: like weird little hidie holes that are that are places
Speaker 1: you could go hunt, but there would never be recognized
Speaker 1: as such off plat maps by looking at who's paying
Speaker 1: the taxes in it. But go ahead, Mark, just want
Speaker 1: to interject. The plat maps you can get them from
Speaker 1: your township hall or whatever. But you can also get
Speaker 1: digital versions very often if you just google the name
Speaker 1: of your count and then g I S map. So
Speaker 1: Kent County g I S map And most counties have
Speaker 1: an online version of that plat map where you can
Speaker 1: see the aerial and the property lines and then click
Speaker 1: on the property and get all their information too. So
Speaker 1: so go on. So that's what he's talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's close to what you can get on on
Speaker 1: X right, and you probably get a little bit more info.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you actually get get phone number,
Speaker 1: you can get home address name, you can get some
Speaker 1: property information. It's a great tool man. I used to
Speaker 1: I used to live on those things. Oh, here's my
Speaker 1: here's the quote. I was trying to remember opportunity dances
Speaker 1: with those already on the dance floor. That was good.
Speaker 1: I like that, all right, all right, So here's this guy.
Speaker 1: He gets on some plat maps around his area. Um,
Speaker 1: I've been complimented, complimented by the Oh I'm not reading
Speaker 1: the letter. It's this is the what he wrote to us.
Speaker 1: He's been complimented by the professionalism of the letter by
Speaker 1: end owners and managers that receive it always get a
Speaker 1: response because of how it is laid out and what
Speaker 1: is what it offers. I was even contacted by one
Speaker 1: owner that said that even though he could not permit
Speaker 1: other hunters on the property because his brother hunts it,
Speaker 1: he wanted to call me and say that through the
Speaker 1: years he has received several requests from people to hunt
Speaker 1: the property and that he had never received a letter
Speaker 1: so well written concerning that subject. Man, this dude's a
Speaker 1: writer and he can pitch himself. This guy is onto something.
Speaker 1: Are you paying attention Mark Kenyon? He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I'm no means arrogantly promoting my writing abilities. I'm more
Speaker 1: of a technical writer than a storyteller. But in this
Speaker 1: case I think would have developed gets the job done,
Speaker 1: or at least gets the owner's attention. Listeners are pissing
Speaker 1: themselves with anticipation. My letter highlights my intentions, what I'm
Speaker 1: offering in return a little about me, and does it
Speaker 1: in a way that visually conveys my message and shows
Speaker 1: I'm an individual that cares for the environment and is
Speaker 1: a responsible hunter. Not terribly long, but I believe it's
Speaker 1: not too much that the reader is overloaded and not
Speaker 1: too short what it would appear, but it was hastily
Speaker 1: typed out just to gain access to as much property
Speaker 1: as possible. He goes on to say, they just want
Speaker 1: to share the letter to help us help you guys
Speaker 1: out and get more permissions, and he also includes a
Speaker 1: the he's from North Carolina and the North Carolina Wildlife
Speaker 1: Resource Commission UM has a permission slip that they have
Speaker 1: on their website that you can just print out that
Speaker 1: is basically a release release hold harmless and indemnification indemnification
Speaker 1: produced by the n r A. So he attaches that
Speaker 1: in there too, to be like, hey you can, I'll
Speaker 1: sign this. You sign it. And then, because we live
Speaker 1: in a litigious world, he's given them a yeah. He's
Speaker 1: like a liability release because yeah, especially people that don't
Speaker 1: know much about hunting, and this guy's UM. I thought
Speaker 1: we got out of this that he Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: like looking for stuff closer to home. I think he
Speaker 1: was like looking to map. You can tell he's looking
Speaker 1: at spots sometimes that are small they're kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: closer to uh you know, urban zones, and uh so
Speaker 1: people might not be you know, talking about hunting much
Speaker 1: requests he's because he's looking at this little chunks man
Speaker 1: like little you know. I got the sense, you know,
Speaker 1: like he wouldn't be overlooking some little twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: acre wedge land somewhere, you know, which is another good point,
Speaker 1: Like that's another good way to find spots is sometimes
Speaker 1: those are the best, most likely places you can't get permission.
Speaker 1: Don't get over zealous and try to get the spot,
Speaker 1: take the ten in the twenty and um yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: go on ni um. That's about all he had to say.
Speaker 1: So I'll go to read his letter. I feel that
Speaker 1: the letter starts out almost kind of a little creepy
Speaker 1: because he's sort of saying like, and have I been
Speaker 1: watching you? No? Yeah, a little bit um because again,
Speaker 1: if but it obviously works if you're not familiar, because
Speaker 1: I think there's plenty of people that probably buy a
Speaker 1: piece of property, or you buy a house that sits
Speaker 1: on even if it's a quarter eco lot. And maybe besides,
Speaker 1: when you flipped through like the signing all the papers
Speaker 1: at the mortgage house, right. I was like, the only
Speaker 1: time you looked at the plat map, right, that that
Speaker 1: came in that package. Right, A lot of people maybe
Speaker 1: have never really looked at like an aerial view of
Speaker 1: their property. Right, So he includes it in there, and
Speaker 1: and it has an outline of his property. So is
Speaker 1: it too much to kind of say what he says
Speaker 1: for you to tell us what he says? No? Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, Hello, my name is Eric. I'm contacting you
Speaker 1: concerning the property you own on x y Z Road
Speaker 1: south of x y Z City in x y Z County,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, specifically parcel number six seven. And then there's
Speaker 1: a little map and the little parcels outlined, and then
Speaker 1: he even has like a um what you call like
Speaker 1: a little bubble, you know, it's a little arrow pointing, Yes,
Speaker 1: this is your property. This is the one I'm asking about.
Speaker 1: I take it back. That's that creepy dot's strike use
Speaker 1: creepy mark. That's that creepy diligent. Yeah, fine line between
Speaker 1: creepy and diligence. And like we've been talking about, he's
Speaker 1: eliminating the gray area, right, They're like, what of my places?
Speaker 1: Very very likely amitating gray? This dude, gets that done.
Speaker 1: This forty seven point eight seven acre parcel appears to
Speaker 1: be a mix of pine and hardwood stands and mayhold
Speaker 1: habitat for wild turkey, deer, and small game. I would
Speaker 1: like to enquire about the possibility to scout and legally
Speaker 1: hunt his parcel. In return for the opportunity to access
Speaker 1: is parcel to both scout to legally hunt, I'm offering
Speaker 1: a few items to help preserve the property. First would
Speaker 1: be marking the property per the n C Oldline standard
Speaker 1: was purple paint along the public roadways to indicate the
Speaker 1: properties private. And then no unauthorized entry or hunting is allowed.
Speaker 1: Talk about service and yourself and acting as though you're
Speaker 1: servicing someone else, he's saying. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: I will go and let other guys know, buzz off,
Speaker 1: this is now my hunt spot. And they explains the
Speaker 1: purple paint law how it came to be, and there's
Speaker 1: even a little diagram of like where the purple paint
Speaker 1: needs to be on the tree, how high off off
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, and this is good because a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, man, you know again, No, I
Speaker 1: need to keep half dogging on the guy. But I
Speaker 1: like at all, because here's the guy. He might not
Speaker 1: even realize that that's what you're supposed to do to
Speaker 1: mark it off limits. So now all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I should I guess I'd better do that.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I needed to do that, and now
Speaker 1: here's this fine young gentleman offering to do it for me.
Speaker 1: He continues to um explain that the marking per the
Speaker 1: Landowner Protection Act will give Wildlife officers the ability to
Speaker 1: directly address, insite anyone on the property without written permission
Speaker 1: to access or hunt the property. He's educating. Second, this
Speaker 1: parcel is large and could have unauthorized entry on the
Speaker 1: property and unwanted illegal dumping. Should we explain that most
Speaker 1: people know what that is, right, Yeah, people like trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of an old couch and a broken
Speaker 1: washing machine. Yeah yeah, never on. This isn't entirely bad
Speaker 1: because I've killed a lot of rabbits out of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Rabbits like that stuff. For some reason, they can't come
Speaker 1: up with five and a half bucks to take it
Speaker 1: to the city dump. Yeah yeah, the washing machine, It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, it's good rabbit habit. Tab When you just
Speaker 1: see like ten white garbage bags. They're eventually gonna ripped apart,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh it's when I recently took my wife
Speaker 1: on the last holiday season. I took my wife on
Speaker 1: stot of a tour of all my former hunting spots
Speaker 1: and just driving around in a vehicle being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: one time we and another time and you wouldn't believed
Speaker 1: that what in here? And that after a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: my wife was like, I just cannot believe all the
Speaker 1: appliances that are out in these woods, like welcome to
Speaker 1: West Michigan's where appliances go to die. And that time
Speaker 1: of year, they're very visible because there's no full All
Speaker 1: the leaves are down and it all just looks like
Speaker 1: it's like couches and appliance And I'm like, after a while,
Speaker 1: yeahest you don't see it anymore. It just feels like
Speaker 1: the woods. Um. So that's a safe assumption. That's a
Speaker 1: safe assumption that there are there is garbage dumping. During
Speaker 1: scouting trips, I would gather garbage that I can hand
Speaker 1: carrying bags and report any unauthorized activity on the property.
Speaker 1: The goal would be to leave the property cleaner than
Speaker 1: it was found and helped prevent any future costly clean
Speaker 1: up when development, agricultural use, or future sales occur as
Speaker 1: for me. So then he uh basically introduces himself his
Speaker 1: wife like a little bio man. What he does. There's
Speaker 1: a picture of he and his wife. I forgot him
Speaker 1: and his wife. Um he is a code enforcement officer.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good guy to know. Yeah, because if he
Speaker 1: was a guy that helps people who have been injured
Speaker 1: on other people's property get big settlements, that would not
Speaker 1: work well for him. I wouldn't. I wouldn't include that
Speaker 1: in my letter. But a code enforcer, if I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let someone of my land's gonna be a code enforcer. Man.
Speaker 1: Now it continues with the education which I like. He
Speaker 1: says this property is not within city limits and therefore
Speaker 1: discharging a firearms legal, but due to nearby residential properties,
Speaker 1: rifle hunting would only occur on sections of the property
Speaker 1: that would be far away from homes where responsible shots
Speaker 1: would be made if a clear shot. If a clear
Speaker 1: safe shot is presented, I am both the rifle hunter
Speaker 1: and a bow hunter and carry all items out with
Speaker 1: me that taken to a property during a hunt. This
Speaker 1: means that no deer stands or blinds, or any other
Speaker 1: item would be left on the property. I also recognize
Speaker 1: that there may be a question of liability for harm
Speaker 1: or injury to anyone on the property, either participating scouting
Speaker 1: or hunting. As a hunter, I recognize that harm or
Speaker 1: injuries may occur on any property that may hold natural
Speaker 1: or unnatural obstacles or dangerous I also use tetheror safety
Speaker 1: harnesses when I use climber tree stands. If granted permission,
Speaker 1: I would sign a waiver removing any owner's liability to
Speaker 1: injuries or harm to myself and others you permit to
Speaker 1: be with me while on the property. And then he
Speaker 1: goes on to talk about the the letter provided by
Speaker 1: the curacy of the n r A let we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. UM some of my requests I'm offering to
Speaker 1: mark the property is private for the Landowner Protection Act,
Speaker 1: become eyes for reporting issues that maybe of concern for
Speaker 1: you the landowner, and clean up the property is manageable
Speaker 1: to bree is found in exchange for access to the
Speaker 1: property for scouting and legal hunting. Name basically signs off
Speaker 1: says thank you for the opportunity permissions. That's good. I
Speaker 1: like that guy. One thing that makes me want to
Speaker 1: add I think I'm running out of things I wanted
Speaker 1: to add. I've talked about a bunch of times. Maybe
Speaker 1: I haven't told you about it. Market. There's a guy
Speaker 1: down in the Carolina, this guy by the name of Joe,
Speaker 1: who has a group back You have ever told you
Speaker 1: about backyard bow pro Uh? Is this? I think I
Speaker 1: may have heard of it. These guys, they there's a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, small parcel like suburban rural interface
Speaker 1: type properties in their area, and they got together a
Speaker 1: group where they have the group has a proficiency test.
Speaker 1: The group conducts background checks on members they and they
Speaker 1: have like a bunch of rules, and they're very active
Speaker 1: in food bank donations. And they're also very active in
Speaker 1: getting permissions from a person and then assuring that that
Speaker 1: person gets a butchered and wrapped deer from their own
Speaker 1: property delivered back to them. So when you can go
Speaker 1: and seek permission and be like, all of the bow
Speaker 1: hunters in our group have all done background checks, we
Speaker 1: have a lot they have a liability waiver system. We've
Speaker 1: all passed proficiency tasks. We have like a seal of
Speaker 1: approval from our organization. Backyard bow Pro and we provide
Speaker 1: ex services of the community and we will offer x
Speaker 1: services to you if you're interested in having venison from
Speaker 1: your own property. And and that is how they and
Speaker 1: they have tremendous success. Do they cap like the number
Speaker 1: of people allowed on the property? I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about it, and you know, and and
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to them in a while, um, but
Speaker 1: it was it was a thing that they were having
Speaker 1: great success with. So just go look them up. If
Speaker 1: they're not around anymore, they won't be around anymore. But
Speaker 1: I feel that they're around still. Backyard bow Pro. Interesting idea,
Speaker 1: but maybe, like you were saying, you could just use
Speaker 1: it sort of as like as as part of your resume.
Speaker 1: You're over there talking to him, you're kind of getting close,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, yeah, belonging to this group is
Speaker 1: sort of certified me to be out. Yeah, sure, you'd
Speaker 1: be like if you can go online and check it
Speaker 1: out and see what kind of standards we have and
Speaker 1: and find out, you know, when you've got this sort
Speaker 1: of seal of approval from and granted it's almost like
Speaker 1: self serving, but just like an interesting way to sort
Speaker 1: of because there's no there's no like state or federal
Speaker 1: version of It's just something that like private people have
Speaker 1: to come up with the sort of come and be
Speaker 1: like that that a person who might and then and
Speaker 1: their specialty is dealing with people who are otherwise would
Speaker 1: otherwise be very uneasy with hunting that works well for him.
Speaker 1: Any final things you want to add, cal Um, I
Speaker 1: got one one thing that I disagreed with with what
Speaker 1: Mark said, Mark, Mark Kenyon, Um, so you wanted to
Speaker 1: hunt Iowa and people are under the assumption that coming
Speaker 1: from out of state, you gotta pay five thousand bucks.
Speaker 1: But you want to hunt Iowa for free. None of
Speaker 1: what we were talking about is hunting for free. You're
Speaker 1: not paying necessary paying cash money. But all of this
Speaker 1: stuff is, you know, you're, you know, in some cases
Speaker 1: providing a service. For some cases you're just letting them
Speaker 1: know that there's some good folks out there and you're
Speaker 1: willing to sit down and have a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: But um, you know you're going on somebody's nothing's for free,
Speaker 1: right um? And it's if you go I don't really
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. If you go up and knock
Speaker 1: on a door to a place where somebody is working
Speaker 1: their butts off to make some sort of living on
Speaker 1: a on a farmer ranch, and your attitude is I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get something for absolutely nothing from you. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna work out well. But in all fairness, the distinction
Speaker 1: not that I need to speak from Mark. The distinction
Speaker 1: Marcus John is like doing entering into a lease agreement
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, no you're not, You're not doing that.
Speaker 1: But it's also it truly is. I think in most
Speaker 1: scenarios there's there's some sort of an exchange. It's not
Speaker 1: just don't go knocking on somebody's door looking for something
Speaker 1: for nothing. Got that, Mark, I got that. You gotta
Speaker 1: Rebuttal I think I would say, I mean, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I think it was just a poorly war
Speaker 1: worded maybe explanation of the fact that simply that don't
Speaker 1: look at as costs being prohibitive to you being to
Speaker 1: hunt places, because sometimes you can still get access that
Speaker 1: doesn't require monetary payment. Now, of course you need to provide.
Speaker 1: You got to give them, whether it be conversation or
Speaker 1: simply uh, respect for their property, all these different things. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: definitely you don't want to be going in there. The
Speaker 1: thing is you are people. Some people do carry around
Speaker 1: this kind of ludicrous idea that they're somehow doing a
Speaker 1: great service to the land owner just by being out
Speaker 1: there deer hunt. It's like most guys, if they really are,
Speaker 1: like most guys are, like, man, Um, I got all
Speaker 1: these deer and I just can't find anyone who's willing.
Speaker 1: And I have looked high and low, who's willing to
Speaker 1: come out and shoot these great, big giant box on
Speaker 1: my place. It's like, not really your problem. And even
Speaker 1: we get a lot of letters from people saying, I
Speaker 1: keep hearing about all the wild pig problems in Texas.
Speaker 1: You think they'd be paying me to come hunt pigs,
Speaker 1: but I can't get a pig permission because the guy
Speaker 1: that owns the lane is like the only thing I
Speaker 1: hate more than pigs is letting dudes I don't know
Speaker 1: come around run around my property with guns like that's
Speaker 1: even more of a nuisance than pigs. So I do
Speaker 1: think you have to go into it that you are
Speaker 1: as graciously as possible, Um, and without being a suck up.
Speaker 1: You are coming in and saying I'm asking a favor
Speaker 1: of you. You're inconveniencing them. Yeah, and I like, I
Speaker 1: am open to ways in which I could offset that
Speaker 1: through just politeness, gratitude, offers of help. But at the
Speaker 1: core here I am not please understand, I'm not looking
Speaker 1: at this any other way than I am saying to you,
Speaker 1: May I please? Yeah, absolutely, because if not, you got
Speaker 1: the balance all mixed up, especially the case of a
Speaker 1: coveted animal like a deer, yeah or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: people love watching big old roosters straight across their lawns too,
Speaker 1: you know what we're talking about. Jack rabbits backed during
Speaker 1: the dust bowlt maybe, but generally it's like the guy
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, buddy, I'll do you a good turn
Speaker 1: and allow you access to my property, and I would
Speaker 1: expect some human decency back from you. Yeah. Yeahnny got
Speaker 1: nothing on that. You're spot on. Folks can't see it.
Speaker 1: But Yanni had a nod. He was nodding like he liked.
Speaker 1: He was agreeing with that. Yeah, he was thinking about
Speaker 1: dancing being on the floor. Mark um, Mark Kenyon, you
Speaker 1: want you wanna plug word to hunt podcasts and people
Speaker 1: are interested in like the d the nitty grittys, the
Speaker 1: nitty grittys, of deer hunting. Yeah, while you're done podcasts
Speaker 1: and not all this crazy flying around an airplanes out
Speaker 1: and more wilderness landscapes. But like the nitty gritty, sitting
Speaker 1: on the back forty chasing white tails three sixty five
Speaker 1: days a year, that is what we talk about. The
Speaker 1: Saga of holy Field. Didn't even talk about holy Field. Dude,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about it. Do you feel that, like,
Speaker 1: how many years have been trying to get this deer? Well,
Speaker 1: I've been watching him three years. The first year I
Speaker 1: passed on him, so I didn't want to hu in
Speaker 1: the first year. So two years I've been actively trying
Speaker 1: to kill um. And now you didn't do it again,
Speaker 1: I still got time. Are you are you feeling any Uh?
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before because you're like, you know,
Speaker 1: you guy that makes his living talking about deer hunt.
Speaker 1: Are you feel any sort of like uh, like like professional, Like,
Speaker 1: are you feeling like? Man? You know I didn't get
Speaker 1: the deer. Do I still have my claim to legitimacy?
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about my claim to legitimacy um, because
Speaker 1: like we talked about last year, I never based my
Speaker 1: claim to legitimacy based on whether or not I was
Speaker 1: going to kill more dear than anyone else or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. Um, but I do feel pressure both
Speaker 1: internal and external. The internal pressure someone else is going
Speaker 1: to get them quite like or he'll get hit by
Speaker 1: a car. Yeah, yeah, but I mean the internal pressures.
Speaker 1: I have put so much time and energy into it.
Speaker 1: Like any thing, whether it be all the time and
Speaker 1: energy put into writing a book or a project you're
Speaker 1: working on or anything. If you invest a ton of
Speaker 1: time and energy, there's a lot of pressure to get
Speaker 1: whatever outcome you're getting or hoping for, and so I have.
Speaker 1: This season has been a little bit of has caused
Speaker 1: me to reflect a little bit on getting back to
Speaker 1: the enjoyment of it and not being so focused on
Speaker 1: the outcome because I've gotten a little bit too deep
Speaker 1: into that and have lost the fun in a little
Speaker 1: bit of it. Like I got just so frustrated with
Speaker 1: a lot of things that were going on. Um, So
Speaker 1: I have to maintain that balance because I'm very achievement
Speaker 1: oriented and very very goal oriented. I can get obsessed
Speaker 1: with things like that. So I need to constantly like relax,
Speaker 1: get back to what why you do this? The love
Speaker 1: of what you're doing. Don't focus so much on whether
Speaker 1: or not you can kill this one single deer. But
Speaker 1: but that has been my season. I have, you know,
Speaker 1: put nine pc of all my time in the last
Speaker 1: three months or whatever it's been to try and to
Speaker 1: kill this one deer. You've been seeing them? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: how many times have you seen him? I've had eleven
Speaker 1: encounters with him? I think this is embarrassing. I tell
Speaker 1: the story. I've told the story on on my podcast
Speaker 1: More people here than yours. Um, November seven, I had
Speaker 1: him at twenty yards at eleven o'clock in the morning. Um,
Speaker 1: late in the morning. Yeah, late in the morning. What
Speaker 1: was he doing? Uh? He was just I think he
Speaker 1: was cruising, checking betting areas for betted does in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day. But I hadn't seen anything for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, so I had become a little
Speaker 1: bit distracted. And I was facing this direction, and I
Speaker 1: was holding my phone through the phone and looking up
Speaker 1: every you know, looking up every three seconds, and looked
Speaker 1: down the phone and I hear a little crunch behind
Speaker 1: my back, turned like that, and he's twenty yards away,
Speaker 1: spinning and running away. So I had him within shooting range.
Speaker 1: And I muffed it because I was on my phone.
Speaker 1: He's paranoid. Oh. But the next three days later I
Speaker 1: went back in close to that area and I had
Speaker 1: him within shooting range, but he was behind brush. Um.
Speaker 1: Later that day, one third in the afternoon that day,
Speaker 1: he came chasing a doll out of the bedding area
Speaker 1: sixty yards um, but running through there. Um. Then I've
Speaker 1: had him many more times that like eight um, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So seeing him a lot, had the
Speaker 1: close calls, but it's it'll be like he'll be here,
Speaker 1: and then I'll sit here, and then the next day
Speaker 1: I'll be sitting there, and he'll be there, and then
Speaker 1: the next day I'll be there, and then you see
Speaker 1: that I'm always one day behind him or one day
Speaker 1: ahead of him, like he'll be where I was yesterday sometimes. Um.
Speaker 1: So we've been playing cat and mouse and hasn't worked
Speaker 1: out yet. But last year I saw got a good
Speaker 1: look at you though. Oh he definitely that was the
Speaker 1: one time he's ever seen me to mine that I
Speaker 1: know off. Of course he might have seen me when
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's the one time in the
Speaker 1: three years of hunted. Yeah, So that I had a
Speaker 1: mental breakdown after Yeah, weird hunt, right, that's like the
Speaker 1: irony of that, so I had I wasn't. I was
Speaker 1: a bad place after that that For that next hour,
Speaker 1: I was in a real bad place. But I mentally, mentally,
Speaker 1: I was just so upset with myself that I all this,
Speaker 1: I mean so much talked around and because some hammen,
Speaker 1: you're upset, you didn't wanna tell me what it was
Speaker 1: that might have been. But but to what I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: so that happened, I was really piste off at myself, frustrated. Um,
Speaker 1: all my buddies we usually go down and hunt Ohio
Speaker 1: some property. We got dollar together and we spent like
Speaker 1: a week or so in there. Um, so they went
Speaker 1: down a few days ahead of time. But I kept
Speaker 1: pushing it back. I was like, I gotta focus on
Speaker 1: holy Field. I can't go kept pushing it back, pushing
Speaker 1: it back, pushing it back. I hadn't gone it earlier
Speaker 1: in the season like we usually do, so I was
Speaker 1: missing out on this camaraderie aspect of my hunting season
Speaker 1: that I usually have. But I had to kill holy Fields.
Speaker 1: I gotta stay here, I focus on him. Well, this
Speaker 1: thing happened and I was really frustrated. That night I
Speaker 1: moved and though I didn't see him that night. Um,
Speaker 1: but after that evening's hunt. And this is over course
Speaker 1: of the twenty seven day period, I hunted twenty six
Speaker 1: days for him, and fifteen of those were fifteen hour
Speaker 1: sits or fourteen hour sis. I was there, give me
Speaker 1: the rundown. Twenty seven days I hunted. Um. So from
Speaker 1: October November ninet hunted every day but one, and then
Speaker 1: fifteen of those days where all day sits where I
Speaker 1: would get in the head out to the tree stand
Speaker 1: two hours before daylight and I wouldn't come in until
Speaker 1: you know, after dark. Um. So I you piss into
Speaker 1: the bottle up there, not pissed for out the tree
Speaker 1: us come up and smell that. Yeah, especially, you should
Speaker 1: get dog during. You should try to hire dog during
Speaker 1: to piss of your treat because it work. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: got he's got photo evidence that buck. You should see
Speaker 1: if you get something from I shot a buck once
Speaker 1: right after finishing peing like moments. Um. But the point
Speaker 1: of my story being that that night or that day
Speaker 1: had been very frustrated with things, and then I went,
Speaker 1: you know, from like the low place of being really
Speaker 1: upset at myself to that, starting to think, why am
Speaker 1: I getting so upset about this? Like, I'm hunting, this
Speaker 1: is supposed to I love so many things about this.
Speaker 1: Why am I letting myself get so caught up in
Speaker 1: this too? Finally, by the end of that night, realizing,
Speaker 1: you know what, I just need to step away from
Speaker 1: it for a little bit. So I'm gonna go down
Speaker 1: to Ohio with my friends, spend a little time with them, um,
Speaker 1: you know, get back to some of the things that
Speaker 1: really matter here versus just killing one specific deer that
Speaker 1: I arbiturely have chosen to be the only thing that
Speaker 1: will make me happy this season for some stupid So
Speaker 1: I go down to Ohio and the second damn down there,
Speaker 1: my best friend kills the first buck he's killed in
Speaker 1: like four years, and I got to be there with him,
Speaker 1: help him recover. I actually saw the whole thing happened
Speaker 1: from across the valley and got to help him drag
Speaker 1: it out, got him do all that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: with him. Um, and it was It was the best
Speaker 1: moment of my whole hunting season. Getting to share that
Speaker 1: moment with my buddy and be a part of that
Speaker 1: and help out, and it just kind of reminded me,
Speaker 1: you know, in the end, those other things that really
Speaker 1: matter most. So I'm really, I'm really glad I made
Speaker 1: that decision. Was a great just reminder to to focus
Speaker 1: on the important stuff. And you know, hopefully holy Field
Speaker 1: still alive. I haven't. I haven't hunted there in the
Speaker 1: last like eight days and general fire. Yeah, I tend
Speaker 1: I usually stay out. I hunted Opening day. I usually don't,
Speaker 1: but I hunt an opening day. The no I took
Speaker 1: a gun on actually, um, and you're gonna shoot how
Speaker 1: we feel if you had a chance. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: another thing I didn't up deciding I'm gonna shot him
Speaker 1: with whatever is legal. Um, I'm I'm not a purist.
Speaker 1: I like bow hunting. I love bo hunting. I do
Speaker 1: that the most, But I'm not fundamentally posed to shooting
Speaker 1: him with a gun. But you passed on him another
Speaker 1: time with a gun last year. That was because he
Speaker 1: knew that he would at that point, he knew that
Speaker 1: it would live. I thought, I hoped that he would
Speaker 1: make it to this year. So last year I chose
Speaker 1: not to try to kill him with any weapon. And
Speaker 1: I could have killed with a muzzler sixty yards last year. Um,
Speaker 1: but shows at that point in the season because there's
Speaker 1: only like, you know, twelve days left of the season
Speaker 1: or whatever to see if you can make to this year.
Speaker 1: So but that that is like another pressure. So there
Speaker 1: was like the internal pressures and then like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that have been following along with the
Speaker 1: story and like want to see what happens, and so
Speaker 1: I have felt some of that external pressure. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say that doesn't matter. Just hunt your hunt
Speaker 1: and enjoy it and learn from it and share what
Speaker 1: happens along the way. And that's that's what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. So when was the last you know? But
Speaker 1: you would probably have caught wind if someone got him, right,
Speaker 1: because you know the guys in your area. I think
Speaker 1: I would know. There's a there's a couple of people
Speaker 1: that I don't know, so if one of them killed,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have found out was the last day you
Speaker 1: knew that he was still in the living? I had
Speaker 1: him at eighty yards twice the night before fire up season. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how old is it? He's I and half I
Speaker 1: believe he's getting in the autumn of his life man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's not many bucks that older on my neck
Speaker 1: of the woods there, and I've hunted this property six
Speaker 1: or seven years, and this is the first buck that
Speaker 1: I know. This made it the first first five and
Speaker 1: a half year five and a half year old deer
Speaker 1: that's there. There's just three year olds would be usually
Speaker 1: be the oldest deer in the area. So, um, he's
Speaker 1: an anomaly. So it's been really cool to have that
Speaker 1: opportunity to see a deer so many times. I mean
Speaker 1: last year I saw him twenty seven times. This year
Speaker 1: it's been eleven so far. Um, and you got how
Speaker 1: long now because the rifle's gonna end? And you got
Speaker 1: how long did bow hunt him? Well, muzzler season now
Speaker 1: opens the day after fire up season, and you're getting
Speaker 1: on that yeah, and then uh and that's done the
Speaker 1: seventeenth and after that's bow you'de not gonna take that letter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he was reading and sent that letter to everyone's
Speaker 1: around that property and just locked that place up with
Speaker 1: just me permissions. I'll get that buck better, hopefully. Someone
Speaker 1: I know. I'm like, you know somebody I wanted to
Speaker 1: I wanted to be you because because because it means
Speaker 1: so much to you. You know, maybe that's silly that
Speaker 1: it matters so much to me. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm gonna learn because that's that's you're at and
Speaker 1: the thing that you're interested in, you're in the You're
Speaker 1: in in it the deepest way possible. Yeah, to just
Speaker 1: be that you like would go out. Most people walk
Speaker 1: around the woods. They don't know what's going on. If
Speaker 1: you go out and sort of identify this specific animal
Speaker 1: and those entire history and then like focus on them
Speaker 1: and try to get them rather than just sort of
Speaker 1: the blind random luck that happens. But I've also pointed
Speaker 1: out that it's gonna be sad too, with how well
Speaker 1: you know him. It was like shooting your brother, no
Speaker 1: doubt about. We're talking at lunch. We're talking at lunt
Speaker 1: about how I'm about who Greece Um, about being over
Speaker 1: confident or like you know, putting the deer on the
Speaker 1: wall before you shoot him and stuff. And as you
Speaker 1: guys were talking about, I was thinking in my head
Speaker 1: how I've envisioned what it would be like to shoot him,
Speaker 1: Like I've thought about that moment, like walking up on him, um,
Speaker 1: and I felt moments of like that already, Like I
Speaker 1: can't I don't remember when this, but but I actively
Speaker 1: remember thinking about shooting him and walking up and like
Speaker 1: holding his head and like feeling an immense amount of
Speaker 1: sadness about that moment. You had a mind movie about it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I know I know I will feel that way.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've hunted other deer in multiple years and
Speaker 1: had like many counters. I've had a shallower version of
Speaker 1: this in the past, and even those times, you know,
Speaker 1: you feel any deer I kill, there's a sense of
Speaker 1: of I don't know if more sadness, immense respect, a
Speaker 1: whole slew of different types of emotions. And I know
Speaker 1: that that will happen again with if I'm fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to kill this dear. I'm sure I will feel that,
Speaker 1: but maybe in a in a different way than before too.
Speaker 1: When we touched on this before, I remember Yanny saying
Speaker 1: he's got the feeling that way about a deer just
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Yeah, just watching the buck all day,
Speaker 1: watching waiting for him the stand up. You know, are
Speaker 1: you started being like, oh a little bugger seven times?
Speaker 1: I mean that's well, I mean every different scenario, right,
Speaker 1: so that's add a little more depth to the character.
Speaker 1: And I've never ever ever had anything like this happened
Speaker 1: before to this degree. I mean the year before was
Speaker 1: probably four or five times. Last year twenty seven eleven,
Speaker 1: this time, I mean that's pretty astronomical. So last question
Speaker 1: for you, if if you get them or someone else
Speaker 1: gets them, do you have you already picked out what
Speaker 1: buck is next? What buck you're gonna start like obsessing
Speaker 1: over next? Do is there a contender? There's a contender,
Speaker 1: you got one you might decide to obsess over well,
Speaker 1: just because like this, it's a small property. It's a
Speaker 1: single small property in a heavily hunted area, so there's
Speaker 1: almost only ever one like shooter buck any given year,
Speaker 1: like a mature buck and that area like three years old.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like the oldest buck will be. But there's
Speaker 1: a three year old this year. That's like a nice
Speaker 1: three year old um who I would love to see
Speaker 1: make it to next year. I'm really really hoping he
Speaker 1: makes it. He's like just a nice wide eight pointer um.
Speaker 1: And as we white tail guys do, I named him.
Speaker 1: This is uh a self fulfilling prophecy, is what my
Speaker 1: hope will be I'm naming him Survivor so that he's
Speaker 1: the buck I really want to survive this year. So
Speaker 1: that buck, are you gonna change his name when you
Speaker 1: start wanting to right next year, he's got to switch
Speaker 1: it up to dead. So now you're just like helping
Speaker 1: him along. And I've seen him a lot this year too.
Speaker 1: He's cool deer and and most likely all these deer
Speaker 1: won't even be around when I get back to hunting
Speaker 1: in a couple of days. But he gotta hope. And
Speaker 1: because I have been picked up by other hunters, probably
Speaker 1: you never know. I mean, I do what I can
Speaker 1: to try to um have an environment where they might
Speaker 1: be able to make it through, you know, like we
Speaker 1: talked about last year or last podcast. UM, so hopefully
Speaker 1: they'll be a few bucks to make it throw. But something, yeah, bro,
Speaker 1: and some do they always do. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: I just I really understand about like getting on the
Speaker 1: phone at eleven am. And I was so lucky this
Speaker 1: I was in Wisconsin hunting gun deer this year and
Speaker 1: sitting in tree stands and I forgot my phone opening day.
Speaker 1: It was like the best thing that ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: Like I was kind of stressed like we like drove
Speaker 1: for me five minutes and then to walk back into
Speaker 1: the property and not like in the car, I'm like, gosh,
Speaker 1: I run back and get it, you know, pictures. But
Speaker 1: I knew really in the back of my head. No,
Speaker 1: like mid day, you're gonna be like emailing and freaking yeah,
Speaker 1: flipping Instagram, you know. And uh, but that first day,
Speaker 1: I was the worst tree stand sitter I've been. And again,
Speaker 1: I just haven't been doing it a lot in the
Speaker 1: last twenty years. But man, you just forget. And I
Speaker 1: had a pretty open set up, like they had cut
Speaker 1: all around this tree stand is somebody else had put
Speaker 1: it up there years ago. But I think what you
Speaker 1: used to have pretty good cut her. I mean I
Speaker 1: was now just like playing to the to the world.
Speaker 1: It's I had to be an extra good sitter, you know.
Speaker 1: And and by like you got lighted seven and by
Speaker 1: like eight, I'm just like, you're being way too fidgety
Speaker 1: on it. You're being way too fidgety, you know. And
Speaker 1: the first like six d I see, I'm just seeing
Speaker 1: flax because they're seeing me a long time before, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's just why like you got like a chest
Speaker 1: like a breast pocket. If you're like dying of guilt
Speaker 1: about stuff you're supposed to be doing, but you're sitting
Speaker 1: out in the woods instead, and you're trying to like
Speaker 1: even if you're trying to maintain the appearance that you
Speaker 1: are at work, right, you haven't shared with you This
Speaker 1: is just like a tip I'm giving people, Like my
Speaker 1: work structure is that I need to act like I'm
Speaker 1: not hunting. But if I was in one, if you
Speaker 1: get like a breast pocket, uh, and you just ease
Speaker 1: er out like a like a poker player close to
Speaker 1: the chest, I'm doing it right now. Ease are out,
Speaker 1: do what you gotta do. Ease er back, and you know,
Speaker 1: spooking deer. No no, I'm not saying that necessarily. The
Speaker 1: phone was um, but you are taking yourself out of
Speaker 1: the game. You should know about coming and you should
Speaker 1: be like getting, yeah, what gets the tree and positioning
Speaker 1: yourself for when he's coming. You don't know he's coming,
Speaker 1: and he's just yeah, but just speaking to the the
Speaker 1: like the idea of being a good tree stand hunter
Speaker 1: and a good you know, Eastern white tail hunter. It
Speaker 1: just requires you to freaking sit still, move your head
Speaker 1: slowly you know, don't jerk your whole body around when
Speaker 1: you're looking over your shoulder behind the tree, you know,
Speaker 1: and just it's I just remember like on Sunday morning
Speaker 1: when I got into the tree, and like midday, I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I've done a really good job
Speaker 1: the last four hours. You know, I've just been like
Speaker 1: sitting here, like not moving, not dicking around, not going
Speaker 1: in for more sneakers and more snacks than another couple
Speaker 1: of kids candies to the Halloween candy confiscated. Maintaining that
Speaker 1: focus though, it's tough when you're doing day after day
Speaker 1: after day all day and you're sitting. Yeah, people think
Speaker 1: it's easy. Oh they're just sitting a tree all day.
Speaker 1: I know. It's compared now, compared to you know, Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain el hunting or whatever, it's not the same kind
Speaker 1: of physical way and tilS like a different kind of
Speaker 1: a different dude. We got a friend, Jeff Lander, who
Speaker 1: guides this is bow only area up outside of Edmonton, Alberta.
Speaker 1: And by the time Rut comes there, they're dealing in
Speaker 1: like negative zero weather hunting November up there. And to
Speaker 1: hear his stories about what it takes two tree stand
Speaker 1: hunt in November and Alberta is like it's like some
Speaker 1: harrowing tales of endurance, and just like the clothes, and
Speaker 1: just to try to manage everything because you gotta have
Speaker 1: You gotta be at some point be able to whip
Speaker 1: out bare fingers and shoot the damn dear and like
Speaker 1: to be able to be warm enough to pull all
Speaker 1: that off in a way that makes sense. There's no joke, man,
Speaker 1: I believe in the focus factor is so much larger
Speaker 1: than anybody has put You can't put enough words on
Speaker 1: paper on it. It's like you have got in the
Speaker 1: tree stand, which admittedly have done at this point. Let's
Speaker 1: just call it zero compared to everybody else in the room.
Speaker 1: And then but the mule deer, rightful, elk whatever, man
Speaker 1: it the second you let your head go out of okay,
Speaker 1: do or die? This is it. This is my opportunity.
Speaker 1: And the second you wander away from that mentally, you
Speaker 1: make mistakes. I mean, you just do absolutely, man, mental focus.
Speaker 1: I want to touch on one thing I keep wanting
Speaker 1: to come back to and in big time white tailed
Speaker 1: guy world, thinking it is okay to snake her out
Speaker 1: and just whizz off the edge of tree stands, Yeah,
Speaker 1: snaker out. That's the general practice. That is the general practice.
Speaker 1: I've read study. There's been studies done to test the
Speaker 1: reaction of deer to human urine, a placebo, dear, earine, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: a handful of different things, and there's no noticeable impact.
Speaker 1: So buck me and juice is just may not be
Speaker 1: particular to dog. I think he's just seeing a universal effect.
Speaker 1: I've had it happened three times. I've got a joke
Speaker 1: with my buddies that when I'm not seeing dear, I'll
Speaker 1: be like, well, I thought I had bucked juice, so
Speaker 1: I would be like, well, it's trying to try to
Speaker 1: bring him in. So I've had big buck encounters three
Speaker 1: times while doing that. Yeah, because that's what I do.
Speaker 1: But I always feel a little bit like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I bet you that the big time white tail guys
Speaker 1: are like truckers with the bottle, with the bottle that
Speaker 1: they then throw off a highway over pass. There might
Speaker 1: be some, but but most I hear, what what do
Speaker 1: you think about the sound though? Because I got a
Speaker 1: story about that that brings in bucks. Don't tell me
Speaker 1: on opening day, some doughs I can't see. I think
Speaker 1: they're doughs, but they're what do you call it? When
Speaker 1: they just like they blow at you, just bow. I
Speaker 1: can't see them. A couple of I'll do the noise.
Speaker 1: People who don't know the noise we're talking about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. It's the worst noise in the world.
Speaker 1: And do then I'll do the out version, y'all, even
Speaker 1: do a good out version. Yeah, here's an antilope. Here's
Speaker 1: what antilope does. So and there it is. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. I'd a lot nothing that makes its adent
Speaker 1: all because they blew at me once and thirty minutes
Speaker 1: goes by, so I'm thinking they just went in the
Speaker 1: other direction, well, along the same ridge that they're on.
Speaker 1: Thirty minutes later, I need to take a leak, So
Speaker 1: I just moved a little bit and make a bunch
Speaker 1: of movement. And as soon as I start, my piece
Speaker 1: starts hitting the leaves down the low and I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: that's awfully loud. You know, I'm like, damn it. You
Speaker 1: know it's on the same ridge. So I don't know. Coincidence.
Speaker 1: Might have been the same deer and they were aware
Speaker 1: of me already, and so they were just like, are
Speaker 1: you down there again? Or but here's the thing, I
Speaker 1: don't really do it that way. I aim it back
Speaker 1: so arches out, it kind of hits the tree broadcast,
Speaker 1: which is quiet. So I was gonna say my recommended
Speaker 1: trajectory is to hit a tree trunk close to you.
Speaker 1: That makes it much quiet. You don't make like a
Speaker 1: little leaf pile down there and go on it. But well,
Speaker 1: like I said, I was in the middle of a
Speaker 1: clear cut. Okay, I know I should have just yeah,
Speaker 1: I had. It was one of these all days. Throw
Speaker 1: a long distance because you're when you're fourteen feet up,
Speaker 1: you can lander, not Jeff lander the lander. You can
Speaker 1: land or way out yonder or to whatever. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like to go on the leaves because this
Speaker 1: is real loud. If you're in close, you've got to
Speaker 1: be conscious of everything. And had some very painful, prolonged
Speaker 1: peas in close on mule deer archery. What do you
Speaker 1: mean where you're like every sound matters. You've basically stripped
Speaker 1: down to nakedness because you think everything's making Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it can be part of your calling game for
Speaker 1: ELK too. You've heard elk p in the woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's that's what I go back to those you know,
Speaker 1: when a deer peas and the story about the noise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's some kind of leaf liquid noise there. So
Speaker 1: all day sit and I'm just like lunchtime. So I've
Speaker 1: reached in for an apple. I take a bite out
Speaker 1: of an apple, and just as I do that, I
Speaker 1: see something off to my left. I'm in some thick
Speaker 1: bedding cover and there's a buck, like twenty yards. It
Speaker 1: would been like a kind of wettish day had already
Speaker 1: been there. He had been walking through and just kind
Speaker 1: of come into an opening, and I'm like, mid bite
Speaker 1: of my apple. Jesus, a deer right there. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking he saw me, but he didn't. I watched him.
Speaker 1: He just kind of fiddling around. It was like a
Speaker 1: bunch of down maple tree leaves I remember seeing there.
Speaker 1: And so he was there for like ten minutes, eleven minutes,
Speaker 1: twelve minutes, and I'm watching him and he's just fiddling
Speaker 1: around and he won't leave, and now he's at like
Speaker 1: twelve yards eleven yards, and this whole time, I have
Speaker 1: to pee. I gotta pee, I gotta pee, I gotta pee.
Speaker 1: In this Finally, like the stupid buck won't get out
Speaker 1: of here, I gotta pee, and I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's see what happens. So I just took a pe
Speaker 1: off the tree while wa channel buck twelve yards away.
Speaker 1: See what happened. And I went into leaves and couldn't
Speaker 1: reach a tree. Couldn't reach a tree trump so peeing
Speaker 1: off the stand into leaves with about twelve yards away,
Speaker 1: and he looked up, looked in the area of that
Speaker 1: sound for like five seconds as it was going, and
Speaker 1: then he just kept hearing it, and he's like munch
Speaker 1: on leaves or whatever, and then his head back down
Speaker 1: eating this stuff. I didn't care one bit. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: recommend that after I would never have never recommend doing
Speaker 1: They're just they've been doing where they have been playing
Speaker 1: disembodied human voices to animals out in the woods to
Speaker 1: get their response. They don't like it. I believe that
Speaker 1: they don't like it that they have cameras set up
Speaker 1: so they know when they're there and they can play
Speaker 1: a disembodied human voice and no, what's the message though, Well,
Speaker 1: they've been using the als a brasive voices they can find,
Speaker 1: so they use pundits from the extreme left and extreme right.
Speaker 1: That's part of the study. I think they're using like
Speaker 1: Rachel man Out and Bill O'Reilly or something like that,
Speaker 1: like the voices that they like, these sort of like
Speaker 1: voices that tend to make some segment of the population
Speaker 1: extremely angry. It's a prolonged debate over three months. They're
Speaker 1: not controlling for enough. I remember that being a part
Speaker 1: of it. They're they're they're the part I read they
Speaker 1: were looking at lions with how my Olwain lions would
Speaker 1: respond to human voice, and they're not big fans. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, Mark Kenyon, thank you for very much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Thank you, it's been fun. Callahan again, thank you. No,
Speaker 1: that was awesome. Mark. Thanks and you can find these guys.
Speaker 1: You can find callahana old cal four oh six. Right,
Speaker 1: that is correct. Well, see a l four oh six.
Speaker 1: I never thought i'd go on this line. That's your
Speaker 1: Instagram handle, okay, four oh six, Mark Kenny wire to
Speaker 1: hunt you runn under wire to hunt. I'm across it
Speaker 1: all yep, Instagram, Facebook, etcetera, etcetera. All right, thanks guys,