Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording just outside
Speaker 1: of Kasan over Wisconsin. UM, in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Moments ago, I was asking my friend here, who's who's
Speaker 1: joining us today along with the honest but tell us
Speaker 1: that was a confusing sentence. I'm joined right now by
Speaker 1: j Honest to tell us and Doug Dern. And moments
Speaker 1: ago I was asking Doug Dern if he had heard
Speaker 1: the term driftless area of Wisconsin as a child or
Speaker 1: if it was just some kind of new marketing scam.
Speaker 1: And the answer is yes, but it really has become
Speaker 1: more prevalent in the last you know, ten to fifteen years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the word that term comes from is, you know,
Speaker 1: during the Ice Ages, glaciers leveled the Midwest. That's why
Speaker 1: it looks the way it does, flat and homogeneous. Um.
Speaker 1: But the glaciers missed this spot. They're like spread apart
Speaker 1: and split apart. They saw Doug standing there in all
Speaker 1: his hugeness, and the glaciers just didn't want to tangle
Speaker 1: with him and went around the driftless area and left it.
Speaker 1: Much topography like we're pissing distance from brick trout stream,
Speaker 1: beautiful brick trout Stream. We're a thousand yards if from
Speaker 1: where we just killed a turkey this morning. Oh, I
Speaker 1: would say we're five yards from there from where we
Speaker 1: killed a turkey this mor We're way closer where Doug
Speaker 1: is downed a lot of nice bucks. Well yeah, in fact,
Speaker 1: I one eye down that's hanging on the wall over there,
Speaker 1: which probably doesn't work on a podcast, but uh, it
Speaker 1: actually died right down here by the barn. I know
Speaker 1: that story. So yeah, we're we're in Doug. Like Doug
Speaker 1: Derren's family for several generations has had this farm here,
Speaker 1: um going way back hundred fifty years. In this final
Speaker 1: that's what we're recording, this old farmhouse. It's just what
Speaker 1: they called the buck check. Knox is full of giant
Speaker 1: bull ucks. Um, we're gonna talk a bunch about that. Oh.
Speaker 1: I was gonna tell you about the Driftless Area though.
Speaker 1: I was up and up on Lake Superior, Ashland, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and the guy up there has got a sugar shack.
Speaker 1: This guy named Bill Hart, hell of a nice guy.
Speaker 1: He's got a sugar shack up there, and he in
Speaker 1: response to the Driftless Area and all of its coolness,
Speaker 1: he has on his bottles of maple syrup. He writes
Speaker 1: from the famed drifted area of Well, that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: When you get getting something in some kind of label
Speaker 1: or marketing thing going, you can try to take you down.
Speaker 1: Trying to take you down. But yeah, this part of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin doesn't look like the normal Middle I mean there's
Speaker 1: a ton of topography around here, in rock out croppings.
Speaker 1: This used to be like Indians used to hide out
Speaker 1: here when they're trying to hide from the army. That's
Speaker 1: a great area. And in the honest else the Latvian
Speaker 1: lover and hunter. You guys got a Latvian camp not
Speaker 1: far from here, talk about that. Why do the Latvians
Speaker 1: like this place? As far as I know, they settled
Speaker 1: here when they all came over during the Second Well,
Speaker 1: some of them came over before the Second World War,
Speaker 1: but most of them emigrated during the Second World War.
Speaker 1: But it was very similar to Latvia's topography and landscape,
Speaker 1: so it felt like home. Yeah, there's only about three
Speaker 1: million Latvians alive today, something like that. One million in Latvia,
Speaker 1: two million in the US. Is that right, I think
Speaker 1: too in Latvia and then million worldwide. So explain that
Speaker 1: place you hunt on if you don't need to give
Speaker 1: like the GPS coordinates. But no, it's very similar topography
Speaker 1: to hear. You know, just beautiful oak ridges, you know
Speaker 1: oak flats. You know a lot of little bowls that
Speaker 1: just kind of, you know, peel off the main ridge.
Speaker 1: And uh, there's no agg. A lot of the neighbors
Speaker 1: have agg around us, but the country that we hunt,
Speaker 1: it's all just basically big oak forest. Yeah. It's a
Speaker 1: bunch of Latvian mugs who all bought property by each
Speaker 1: other to be by each other. And there's a Latin
Speaker 1: all owned once by maybe like one main Latvian guy,
Speaker 1: and over the years it got divided up, but it
Speaker 1: stayed in the Latvian communey and there's a Latvian pagan
Speaker 1: church camp Yep. It's spent a lot of time they're
Speaker 1: growing up. Is there is there a lot of Is
Speaker 1: there a lot of instruction involved with turning someone into
Speaker 1: a pagan? No, not much at all, really, you just
Speaker 1: kind of go with what seems very natural. They teach
Speaker 1: you a lot about nature, yes, Like, um, what's the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for? I think we were talking about
Speaker 1: this word the other day. Yeah, it's definitely do you
Speaker 1: find God in nature? It's like, what's that? What was
Speaker 1: the word for it? Not like polytheism, multi goods, there's
Speaker 1: like a word for finding God in the land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's evidence. There's like the wind mother, and there's
Speaker 1: you know, the um uh, like the god that takes
Speaker 1: care of farm animals, and then there's like the God
Speaker 1: that watches over wild animals and the like. There's just
Speaker 1: like kind of you know, God's kind of do their
Speaker 1: own little thing all about you in life. You know,
Speaker 1: I think animism might be the word I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: I can't believe Dug the fact checker during is a
Speaker 1: fact checking that. So, yeah, Yanni hunts turkeys here totally coincidentally,
Speaker 1: we came out the way Wisconsin runs are turkey seasons
Speaker 1: is and some dudes were complaining about this last night.
Speaker 1: I gave a talk at the university last night, and afterwards,
Speaker 1: instead of waiting in line to meet me and shake
Speaker 1: my hand, Janice went to a bar um and got
Speaker 1: to yapp with some guys in the bar and never
Speaker 1: complaining about the Wisconsin runs their turkey seasons. But Wisconsin
Speaker 1: Divide has a not doesn't have a long Turkey season,
Speaker 1: but has many short Turkey seasons that make up a
Speaker 1: long stretch of time. Yeah, I think you guys got
Speaker 1: like a B, C, D F and G season. I
Speaker 1: think there's an E in there also and a youth C.
Speaker 1: I don't know you said six. I counted to six,
Speaker 1: but I thought, but you didn't say. Oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: just want to think number seven. It does go F
Speaker 1: to G the alphabet you went, you skip d um
Speaker 1: minor issue. Yeah, I'm not. I'm confident in my ability
Speaker 1: to say the alphabet. So when you put in when
Speaker 1: you apply to hunt turkeys Wisconsin, you gotta pick a zone.
Speaker 1: What's Tommy zones at State? But I think there's only
Speaker 1: three or four Now, I'd have to look at the
Speaker 1: man Zone one. Yeah, we're zone one and that's pretty
Speaker 1: much the whole southwest corner. Um, I don't remember. And
Speaker 1: if you're a nonresident and you don't have any bonus
Speaker 1: points saved up, and you put in for zone one
Speaker 1: in season A, you will not draw the tag as
Speaker 1: I now understand. Like I didn't draw it. You might
Speaker 1: have a chance to draw it. Yeah, but I didn't
Speaker 1: get it. That's to get the first crack. But you
Speaker 1: don't just get the first crack, because there's a youth
Speaker 1: season that's get the first crack. But that's almost like
Speaker 1: too early of the first crack. They're not like hot
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I guess, but um ah, I know the
Speaker 1: people have pretty good success in it. And certainly the
Speaker 1: birds have been active the last two or three weeks.
Speaker 1: There's not a leaf on the trees, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's like buds. They'll be probably the two weeks it
Speaker 1: will look leafed out. Oh no, no, no, we're two
Speaker 1: weeks probably from well some of them will be like
Speaker 1: the soft woods, the willows and red maples. Will you
Speaker 1: be getting there, But you know, we're still waiting for
Speaker 1: that most here size that you found the when the
Speaker 1: morals will be up. So it's a couple of weeks off.
Speaker 1: Yet we went out this morning, just walked out of
Speaker 1: Doug's farmhouse up the main valley here um to the
Speaker 1: end of the field. Heard one freaking gobbler And that
Speaker 1: was a long ways off. And I wasn't even sure
Speaker 1: it was a gobbler when I first when I first
Speaker 1: heard so far away, but I mean it certainly was.
Speaker 1: But he didn't do anything by fly down time. He
Speaker 1: had shut up, and we hunted our took uses off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hunter our asses. I can't say the hunter asks off.
Speaker 1: We listened around a fair bit and eventually called in
Speaker 1: two towns. It didn't make a peep. We got one
Speaker 1: half gobble out of one after we were staring at
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes. Yeah. These I was sitting there trying
Speaker 1: to get comfortable and taking nap. It was like getting
Speaker 1: that time of day nine in the morning, and I
Speaker 1: was like, couldn't get my head quite how I wanted it,
Speaker 1: you know, to sleep. And also I noticed like the
Speaker 1: top of a tail fan maybe seventy yards eighty yards
Speaker 1: away and there's two gobblers out there strutting that just
Speaker 1: never made a sound. You know. We had a decoy
Speaker 1: out and we had to said it a little crossroad
Speaker 1: what you guys called the big woods, right, Um has
Speaker 1: said a little crossroad. And those times come in saw
Speaker 1: the head must of it just set to Stratton and
Speaker 1: then we kind of toyo Raulphi for long time. Adventually
Speaker 1: they came in. It was a great They were convinced. Man,
Speaker 1: they were he was ready to make love today there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was ready to make love to the decoy. Him
Speaker 1: and his body. That was just the great twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or half an hour of observing turkeys and watching them
Speaker 1: do what they want to do. And I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: can they see that decoy? And from where we were,
Speaker 1: we thought, well, maybe they couldn't see the decoy. So
Speaker 1: after we killed the one, UM, I walked up where
Speaker 1: they had been while they could clearly see the decoy,
Speaker 1: and they just they just they just waited. They were
Speaker 1: waiting for her to come and and um, giving full
Speaker 1: credit to Steve Ronella and the calling job, he was
Speaker 1: so subtle and so quiet. That's how I talked a lady,
Speaker 1: even though I was talking about smooth like butter and uh.
Speaker 1: And then he stopped because they wouldn't. They didn't move
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes. They just were in full struck because
Speaker 1: I overcalled. My specialty is getting turkeys attention. And then
Speaker 1: once they once I got it, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: like the puppeteer man, it's so hard to shut up. Well,
Speaker 1: if they had been gobbling, it would have been impossible
Speaker 1: to shut up. He's like this, I can make him goblin.
Speaker 1: And it was just one short It didn't even wasn't
Speaker 1: even a full gobble no, and then they and then
Speaker 1: you shout. If you around the woods listening, you'd heard
Speaker 1: that and been like, I don't know what was that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just like a half ask gobble, but there
Speaker 1: were mature birds, you know. Give give a recap on
Speaker 1: your morning, man. I played hard to get on our
Speaker 1: second set up this morning and it did not work.
Speaker 1: It did not pan out. I was very confident because
Speaker 1: hard to get worked for me about four days ago
Speaker 1: in California, and he kind of cruised on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of the ridge that we were set up on.
Speaker 1: I heard him gobble four or five times as he
Speaker 1: went by. Well, we never heard we. I would have
Speaker 1: thought we could hear your birds, but never heard that
Speaker 1: any of that. Yeah, there's a little bit of wind.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually blowing from you guys to us,
Speaker 1: so that would oh, it was quiet. If there would
Speaker 1: have been birds goblin, we would have heard him. Well
Speaker 1: that's not true because they go within half a mile
Speaker 1: of us. But anyways, he gobbles. I've been calling every
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen minutes, just you know, one little set
Speaker 1: of helps and I can hear him gobbile by us
Speaker 1: and kind of goes away, and I'm thinking, man, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we'll give him one more call. If we can't
Speaker 1: turn him, we got to go chase him. And the
Speaker 1: next time he gobbles, he's like, come up on top
Speaker 1: of the ridge, and then he gobbles again. He's a
Speaker 1: little bit closer. You're probably thinking you're gonna kill the bird.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. At that point, I'm like, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: one more soft little call, and I'm gonna set the
Speaker 1: call down. And the next thing is gonna happen is
Speaker 1: you know, Tie is gonna pull the trigger and set
Speaker 1: that call down. And thirty minutes later, it was as
Speaker 1: quiet as it had been at that moment, And so
Speaker 1: it didn't work, you know, And I don't know if
Speaker 1: I if I had called more, had I pulled him
Speaker 1: in an hour later? I think we end up spooking
Speaker 1: that bird with either another gobbler or with a hand,
Speaker 1: maybe had two hands. I don't know. We spooked three
Speaker 1: birds not far from where we last heard. Did you
Speaker 1: see the bird? Not when we're not when I was
Speaker 1: working him. I saw him an hour later when we
Speaker 1: but when you quit calling, you didn't see. But when
Speaker 1: he gobbled, I was like, he is at a hundred
Speaker 1: or less and he's closing the dish alone. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna set the call down. It's nice when a gobbler
Speaker 1: has the courtesy to gobble a lot when he loses interest.
Speaker 1: But let you know, because then you can gauge like
Speaker 1: this is going the other way, and then you know,
Speaker 1: just to like no holds barred, like any you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's the lose now, I'll just make insane noise,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be like I'll do my hand dying noise,
Speaker 1: you know, like anything, because but when they just shut up,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, he shut up. He's coming to you like,
Speaker 1: you know, here fifty misses, like it's gotta because he's
Speaker 1: walking over here, you know. But then like you know,
Speaker 1: when nothing happens, you stand up and he's just gone.
Speaker 1: Every thing that happens turkey hut. We're talking with us
Speaker 1: the other day. Is we used to hold out west
Speaker 1: You can sneak up on turkeys. You know, we used
Speaker 1: to get where you knew the round the other side
Speaker 1: of the ridge. You call and call and call, and
Speaker 1: nothing happens, like oh they must have wandered off, and
Speaker 1: you stand up. They're still standing there, but like you
Speaker 1: just suck at calling. It's a pro this just don't care.
Speaker 1: Before we get onto farther turkey stories. Let's just take
Speaker 1: a quick break to our sponsors. Very smooth. My other
Speaker 1: morning set up, I just got very lucky. We heard
Speaker 1: birds goblin on a classic like point off of a field.
Speaker 1: They were up above us. You had like a season
Speaker 1: is worth of turkey hunt this morning, and we gotta
Speaker 1: had a lot of good turkey hunt this morning. And
Speaker 1: we got in right underneath them at the bottom, and
Speaker 1: I think they flew down into the field kind of
Speaker 1: a way from us, and we had time to drop
Speaker 1: a decoy in sitting against a tree, and I looked
Speaker 1: back up on the horizon. I could see, you know,
Speaker 1: them moving, and I made one little scratch and they
Speaker 1: were walking down the hill and it just happened to
Speaker 1: be that they were gonna come right down that How
Speaker 1: do you know that, I don't, but it just seemed like,
Speaker 1: you know, they were very confidently coming down that hill,
Speaker 1: and I don't They couldn't see the decoy at that point.
Speaker 1: You only there. Well, you just never know. You never know.
Speaker 1: That's the problem too with hunt hunting, lots of hunting turkeys,
Speaker 1: like you're always doing stuff you don't know, Like today,
Speaker 1: I could say, well, once those two that were I
Speaker 1: don't want to say they were hung up because they
Speaker 1: weren't like suspicious. They were just strutting the odd of range.
Speaker 1: Once I started being like, Okay, that's gonna scratch the
Speaker 1: leaves and purr, right, and eventually they came in. So
Speaker 1: now do you sit and go like, oh the trick,
Speaker 1: the trick is scratched leaves and purr or was it
Speaker 1: just that they came in even though I was doing that?
Speaker 1: You know, it's so hard to You gotta see things
Speaker 1: happen again and again and again and again and again
Speaker 1: before you start formulating an idea. But I'm coming to
Speaker 1: see that shutting up when you got a bird, it's
Speaker 1: just he's responding. He likes what he hears. It's in
Speaker 1: your best as as fun as it is just to
Speaker 1: get him to keep him talking. It's just give it
Speaker 1: ten minutes, give it fifteen minutes now and then and
Speaker 1: see if that doesn't move that bird way in your direction.
Speaker 1: And that ten minutes when we sat there was both
Speaker 1: really short and really long. It's just like and I
Speaker 1: did without having to watch. You can't tell. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't tell I have how long is this going on?
Speaker 1: But it was, you know, just to watch him. I
Speaker 1: mean that was the visual on that was, you know,
Speaker 1: kept your interest in the numbness of my leg and
Speaker 1: shoulder and my neck up against the tree. It all
Speaker 1: went away. Checking those birds out man. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: saying after that was over, if you're like hunting turkeys, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what I said, but I said,
Speaker 1: if you don't like turkeys, you can expletive deleted exactly
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah. Um, so yeah, during's farm. Now, tell
Speaker 1: these guys, tell listeners about like when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: about the deer situation out here. I remember that. This
Speaker 1: is a way ass interesting story. Wow, that's uh uh,
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. When I was a kid, you
Speaker 1: saw a deer out in the field, I mean you
Speaker 1: got a car and drove. I mean somebody said, hey,
Speaker 1: it were some deer out on mcglenn's Ridge or Cunningham
Speaker 1: Ridge or something like that. You drove out there and
Speaker 1: checked it out. Um, the deer in this area, we're
Speaker 1: over in the Bearable Bluffs, the Barable Hills. Um. Prior
Speaker 1: to that, I remember my brother David did a speech
Speaker 1: conservation speech when he was in seventh or eighth grade
Speaker 1: about the management of the white tailed deer. Is he
Speaker 1: an expert? No, he was doing one of those you know,
Speaker 1: competitions at school or whatever. And uh, he did a
Speaker 1: great job of it, as I recall, under some very
Speaker 1: difficult circumstances. Should I tell you what that was. He
Speaker 1: had kicked in the growing and was all swollen up
Speaker 1: and and the night that he gave that speech was
Speaker 1: in incredible pain. Yeah, and he did a great job
Speaker 1: of it. I think he got second place. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he'd have wanted had he not not taking a blow too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But through the uh management program of the of the
Speaker 1: Department Natural Resources. Um. And when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you would you'd have to if you want to shoot
Speaker 1: a dough, you'd have to have get four guys together,
Speaker 1: like months ahead of time and sent in for a
Speaker 1: party permit. So one guy or you would get one
Speaker 1: dough tag for four guys, so your deer tag was
Speaker 1: a buck tag. Um, and then there would be this
Speaker 1: one tag for four guys to be able to shoot
Speaker 1: a doll. Let me dre up because I'm doing a
Speaker 1: bad job of hosting right now, because just for people
Speaker 1: who live in all their areas or who don't follow
Speaker 1: this kind of thing. This area right now, like right
Speaker 1: now is the good old days on deer or maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago is the good ol days. No, no,
Speaker 1: I would say, right. It's just this place produces tons
Speaker 1: of deer, and it's famous and becoming for gigantic bucks,
Speaker 1: and we should be able to produce more of them.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how hop on a soapbox I
Speaker 1: want to get about, you know, deer management. We have
Speaker 1: too many deer in my opinion, and where I hunt
Speaker 1: and what I you guys are in the these This
Speaker 1: area is also part of the c w D, the
Speaker 1: chronic wasting disease on the northern edge of it. Chronic
Speaker 1: wasting disease goes hand in hand with shiploads of deer. Oh,
Speaker 1: you don't get c w D in the area that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of deer, that's right. High deer
Speaker 1: density makes a big difference. And and then to control
Speaker 1: the diseases, you want fewer deer. And um, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons to to have fewer deer in
Speaker 1: this area. And and again you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what other guys experiences are in various parts of the
Speaker 1: state and all that I just know around here and
Speaker 1: on the land that i'm hunting, which is our farming
Speaker 1: a little bit in the area around it. I'm not
Speaker 1: hunting that, but seeing it, we have way more dearer
Speaker 1: than than what we should have. And from a forestry perspective,
Speaker 1: from well, it depends if what you want to see
Speaker 1: as a ton of deer, I guess you should be
Speaker 1: happy as a clamp. But uh, if you want to
Speaker 1: have deer in the future, then we should have fewer deer.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna I mean, it's possible that we'd have
Speaker 1: a crash of the of the deer here heard here,
Speaker 1: because because our habitat will be depleted. Um, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are guys who are gonna, you know, from around here,
Speaker 1: got each other over discussion. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's a heated discussion. And I still think, say, I'm
Speaker 1: old enough. I'm fifty six years old, and I'm old
Speaker 1: enough that there are in my generation won't shoot a
Speaker 1: doll and you know it's just that way. You don't
Speaker 1: do that. Oh, I know tons of old guys like
Speaker 1: that because they come from the day when they were
Speaker 1: any well, right, but the mentality, I mean you have
Speaker 1: to shift that mentality. A lot of a lot has
Speaker 1: changed about deer hunting, and one of the things is
Speaker 1: the numbers. But if I want to back up, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, because I was just trying to set the
Speaker 1: stage that right now there's a ton of deer, giant
Speaker 1: box for this area right now is the good old
Speaker 1: days of deer hunt now I was, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean look at this. I wish you could see this
Speaker 1: room like I'm staring eye to eye right now with
Speaker 1: the buck known as the standard. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the standard, because that's that to
Speaker 1: me in the story of this area, like the standard
Speaker 1: at for YouTube like that deer sort of like is
Speaker 1: this like sort of the epitome. Yeah, it's like this
Speaker 1: really important moment in this area. So dogs growing up,
Speaker 1: it would be a big deal to cut a deer track.
Speaker 1: You now live like your family lives. And I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna sit down and list like top and
Speaker 1: white tail locations in the u S, you probably wanted
Speaker 1: them to be around here. And you're a man always
Speaker 1: drove north the year. Yeah, Dad always went up north.
Speaker 1: He hunted. They're still guys in this area that go
Speaker 1: up there for the tradition of it. Uh. He went
Speaker 1: and hunted up in Phillips. They lived in a tent
Speaker 1: for you know, a week or ten days. Um. And
Speaker 1: then when I was a kid twelve years old, we
Speaker 1: uh hunted up in that area, and then we hunted
Speaker 1: by red granite. Um. And because Dad want us to
Speaker 1: have that North Woods you know experience and all that,
Speaker 1: like pulp wood yeah yeah, and alder swamps and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and cedar swamps and uh, I think
Speaker 1: the first three years that I deer hunted, I saw
Speaker 1: three deer. And then I started playing high school basketball.
Speaker 1: Yeah dug, big tall bastard anyway, Wait around anyway, So
Speaker 1: I started playing high school basketball, and so you had
Speaker 1: to be here. And then sudden we started hunting the
Speaker 1: farm and I'm on out opening day, shot first buck
Speaker 1: in the fourteen years old Bang there was a buck?
Speaker 1: What the hell are you going up there for? Um?
Speaker 1: And I you know, and as I say, I appreciated
Speaker 1: that that experience and everything, but you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of just really getting to hunt deer, this is the
Speaker 1: place to do it and that, but that was like
Speaker 1: a little surprising. Then you were like, oh wow, there
Speaker 1: was deer here all along. It was like coming. It
Speaker 1: was all happening at the same time I was getting
Speaker 1: it was that uh seventy mid seventies, early seventies, seventy
Speaker 1: three and seventy round. No, no, it had a horn
Speaker 1: on it, you shot it. But it was still the
Speaker 1: party tag thing. So all you could shoot we're bucks
Speaker 1: because you know, unless you had the party tag um.
Speaker 1: And you know I got involved with that with some
Speaker 1: other guys. Um. And if those guys are listening right now,
Speaker 1: they're chuckling about it. But um, so anything with antler
Speaker 1: on it, you shot. And really that was the mentality
Speaker 1: here for a long time, and in the eighties when
Speaker 1: the deer herd really started to explode. And I didn't
Speaker 1: live here from nineteen eighty five until h n nineties,
Speaker 1: so there was I lived in New England for a
Speaker 1: few years and it actually did in deer Hunt for
Speaker 1: five years. Uh So then um came back in the
Speaker 1: nineties and you know, um a you know, two and
Speaker 1: a half year old um six point or eight point
Speaker 1: or maybe it was a year and a half old buck.
Speaker 1: UM probably couldn't have been but that was a hundred
Speaker 1: ten inches or something like that. And for those of
Speaker 1: you know what how big that is. That was a
Speaker 1: big deal. That's at that same time, late eighties, early nineties,
Speaker 1: like when I started hunting. I guess I did my
Speaker 1: first league. I killed my first deer and I was thirteen. Um,
Speaker 1: you shot. This is West Michigan, so just across Lake
Speaker 1: Michigan from Milwaukee. You shot. If you saw a buck,
Speaker 1: you shot that thing. Oh yeah, and that was something.
Speaker 1: Tell it here to my old man killed a two
Speaker 1: and a half year old buck, like a nice eight
Speaker 1: point two and a half years old. That's something. That
Speaker 1: deal was in the newspaper. You It's like you did
Speaker 1: not bucks didn't live. I think that the year and
Speaker 1: a half old bucks will do it all the we're
Speaker 1: breeding all the dogs because there were It's just you
Speaker 1: just shot. You would sit there and you see does
Speaker 1: come out at dusk. You sit there just like hallucinating,
Speaker 1: spike antlers on him behind the ears. It's like you
Speaker 1: just shot bucks. And I understand, I'm not even down
Speaker 1: on it, man, I understand it's like super complicated. But
Speaker 1: if you saw a buck, if you kill the forky,
Speaker 1: you had a fantastic year. First bucket shot had one
Speaker 1: antler and I was on cloud nine. That's a bucket
Speaker 1: shot when you started basketball? Yeah, where'd you start hunting?
Speaker 1: Just forty and worth of here? Oh that's your deer
Speaker 1: hunting too. Well. We hunted in southwest Michigan and over here. Um,
Speaker 1: I think in Michigan we can start hunting in twelve
Speaker 1: and here it was fourteen fourteen with a gun. Twelve
Speaker 1: of the bow Michigan to Michigan's four team was fourteen
Speaker 1: with the gun. Oh, so I had it mixed up
Speaker 1: because I killed my first deer of the gun before
Speaker 1: I was supposed to. Ye, statue of limitations has run
Speaker 1: out on that violation, I hope. Plus they changed the
Speaker 1: rules now they it wasn't my fault. At that age,
Speaker 1: you're like, you're sort of an instrument of your father.
Speaker 1: You're not like a I think the Bible says when
Speaker 1: you're old enough to like not butter bread, But like,
Speaker 1: at what age are you capable of reason? I don't
Speaker 1: know anyhow if I had murdered someone and I'd be
Speaker 1: out of jail long time ago. With about how you know?
Speaker 1: So you're when you're thirteen is not held responsible. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys, you guys just shoot teeny bucks. Then, you
Speaker 1: know what I was gonna say. It's interesting because that
Speaker 1: time period two so I started hunting probably round like
Speaker 1: late eighties, early nineties to must have been so two
Speaker 1: eight two. I think I killed like a little crotch
Speaker 1: warner my first year. But those early years and the
Speaker 1: five years before I actually started holding the carrying a gun,
Speaker 1: just coming out here with my dad. I remember those memories. Finally,
Speaker 1: of driving in. We'd always come in it would be
Speaker 1: late nine pm, and every big field within like the
Speaker 1: last five miles of getting to camp, we would swing
Speaker 1: the headlights onto the field and just start counting. You know.
Speaker 1: That was like I look forward to that. You know,
Speaker 1: that was like so exciting because and we'd count. Often
Speaker 1: times you'd hit over twenty you know on one field.
Speaker 1: You know, just deer everywhere. And as the years went on,
Speaker 1: it got to be less and less and less and less,
Speaker 1: and right now, I mean I haven't been back in
Speaker 1: probably four or five years. The last couple of times
Speaker 1: I've gone back, I had one hunt. I went back
Speaker 1: and hunted three and a half days hard and did
Speaker 1: not see a deer. Yeah, like five years ago, and
Speaker 1: they're having tough hunting right now up there, right now,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are blaming it on the
Speaker 1: you know, being in that t zone. They had some
Speaker 1: tough weather too. And again, these guys only haunt the
Speaker 1: opening weekend. I think I want to say, last year, right,
Speaker 1: if you hunted only opening weekend last year, you didn't
Speaker 1: see any deer. I fog the whole time. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember I was texting you rain, rain, fog, snow,
Speaker 1: and I mean driving snow the first three day days
Speaker 1: on this farm. You know how many deer there around here.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting up there comfortably in a box, blind, comfortably
Speaker 1: sunrise to sunset, and I saw six deer in the
Speaker 1: first three days. And I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1: They're just not out. It's not happening. Uh. After Thanksgiving Day,
Speaker 1: killed the dough on Thanksgiving Day, killed two bucks. On
Speaker 1: the next day we saw hunts of deer. And then
Speaker 1: when we hunted, I had a bunch of friends come
Speaker 1: out over the holiday hunts people all famous people from Kazanovia. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly the my favorite some of my favorite peo, not
Speaker 1: all of my favorite people from Kazanovia of but but
Speaker 1: certainly some of them and their kids. And in the
Speaker 1: course of three hours, no joke, deer, we killed only two.
Speaker 1: But um uh, but that that amount of deer there's
Speaker 1: so you know, you're just talking about how his deer
Speaker 1: hunting changed, and you know and all that. So the
Speaker 1: numbers are different. But the other part of it is
Speaker 1: you can hunt a lot of different places. And I
Speaker 1: control this land, you know. I mean I've had last
Speaker 1: year and over thirty people deer hunts out here over
Speaker 1: the course of the seasons. Yeah, you know, different veries.
Speaker 1: You know. That's nice. And they weren't all famous. Dog
Speaker 1: got accused of only that famous people filmed out here
Speaker 1: and had some famous people out hunting here, and Dog
Speaker 1: got a cues on letting famous people hunt his land.
Speaker 1: And then the guy down the bar stool comment that
Speaker 1: just the other day Dog had ten people out there
Speaker 1: and he sure was hell an't famous. So now you
Speaker 1: got me. Uh No, I'm glad I got you because
Speaker 1: I want to I want to change this drag. I
Speaker 1: don't want to change the subject. I have a quick
Speaker 1: question though, for you. I do you feel like just
Speaker 1: forty miles north of here. It could be a big
Speaker 1: difference of what is going on here because you are
Speaker 1: kind of micromanaging just you know, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: me micromanaging this spot. So yes, I feel like that
Speaker 1: could happen, especially when you said, well there's egg around.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on up there. Um. I
Speaker 1: think there's been some good changes to dear management. I
Speaker 1: think some of the bad changes have been. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they took away the rbuk uh from the biologists to
Speaker 1: you know, to uh to help manage the herd. I
Speaker 1: want to explain the earn a buck all right? To
Speaker 1: encourage people to encourage hunters to shoot does right if
Speaker 1: you're trying to reduce the population and also take pressure
Speaker 1: off of box. You know, wildlife managers use a tool
Speaker 1: called earn a buck where, um, you can't shoot a
Speaker 1: buck unless you shoot a dough first, that's right. So
Speaker 1: if you just think about I don't want to dwell
Speaker 1: on this subject too long, but deer are born basically
Speaker 1: like like humans, a one to one sex ratio. Okay,
Speaker 1: for every dough that drops or every dough fon that
Speaker 1: drops out of a dough, a buck fon is gonna
Speaker 1: drop out of one or humans are female deers somewhere
Speaker 1: right in there. And when you're sitting out there and
Speaker 1: you see five does and one buck you're looking at,
Speaker 1: you're not seeing a natural population dynamic. If what you're
Speaker 1: seeing is actually representative of what's there, you're not seeing
Speaker 1: a natural dynamic. There would be a healthy Most people
Speaker 1: who understand why it's hill deer would say that a
Speaker 1: healthy population of dear the racial is not that skewed
Speaker 1: high buckeddoor ratio. Yeah, it's never gonna be. It's never
Speaker 1: gonna be one to one because they just have They
Speaker 1: just have an easier time dying and they don't live
Speaker 1: as long bucks don't. But it should be substantial. Well
Speaker 1: it was anyways. I don't want to, I don't want
Speaker 1: I just want to explain, like earn abut people are
Speaker 1: gonna be like, what the hells that means? They got
Speaker 1: rid to earn a bux And I understand why they did,
Speaker 1: because there's places like I don't even talking about that
Speaker 1: where that was what maybe the blame was placed on.
Speaker 1: Why there are fewer deer. Uh. I even though I've
Speaker 1: hunted with some DNR guys, I've never seen a d
Speaker 1: n R guy kill a deer. Hunters killed deer. So
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's always the hunters
Speaker 1: who are going to be managing the deer. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's and and that's the mentality that I
Speaker 1: have here. I do what I think is right for
Speaker 1: our property, um, based on the guidelines, are based on
Speaker 1: the seasons and the structure that that those uh, that
Speaker 1: the the deer managers have. I thought arnerbuck was a
Speaker 1: good thing. We still have it here. I mean, we
Speaker 1: shoot more goals and we shoot bucks here. Um. And
Speaker 1: and the liberal uh and I mean liberal lots of
Speaker 1: dough tags certainly could be a reason for it, whether
Speaker 1: there's a reason for it, um. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: management within a particular area, I guess is the way
Speaker 1: I feel that, you know, the hunters are way more
Speaker 1: in control of that. And I think some of the
Speaker 1: changes that have happened in the deer management have been good.
Speaker 1: But UM, I still have an awful lot of faith
Speaker 1: in in UH that was that's an apartment of natural resources,
Speaker 1: big game managers and how they put you know, season
Speaker 1: structures together. I like the fact that we've shrunk it
Speaker 1: used to be really big zone serve like it is
Speaker 1: a Turkey with much bigger zones. Now it's going much
Speaker 1: more on the county to county basis, and I think
Speaker 1: that's going to take into account more of that. You know.
Speaker 1: You you get an area like where you're hunting up there,
Speaker 1: where there are a fewer here. Well, why is that?
Speaker 1: Well I'm not exactly sure because I don't I don't
Speaker 1: hump there, but you guys should have a better feeling
Speaker 1: for that. That's the thing these Eastern states, Like what
Speaker 1: the state. I grew up in zone one to three,
Speaker 1: So all in Michigan, right, you got the whole state,
Speaker 1: eighty three counties. They would break it up into three units.
Speaker 1: Basically divide the lower peninsula a half and make the
Speaker 1: up its own unit. You go out west, they draw
Speaker 1: units by watersheds. Yeah, you're look at to say and
Speaker 1: be like, there's units in the state because you're fine
Speaker 1: tune in your management plan in a way that allows
Speaker 1: you to account for all these little micro things like
Speaker 1: you take the arias Tom about me, like, well you
Speaker 1: know what, that spot doesn't have any dear. It's a
Speaker 1: great management tool if you can be like, okay, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about that spot and not talk about this
Speaker 1: whole half of the damn state. Yea, you know, because
Speaker 1: it just really allows you to get into it. There's
Speaker 1: a guy, I think it was Frederick Jackson Turner, there
Speaker 1: was some environmental historian. He went back and argued, if
Speaker 1: we really wanted this way off topic, but he went argued,
Speaker 1: if we want, we really wanted to govern the country
Speaker 1: in a better way, we'd get rid of the state
Speaker 1: lines we have now and draw our states according to watersheds,
Speaker 1: talking about government that way, you know, and give people
Speaker 1: a sense than having these arbitrary straight lines cutting through
Speaker 1: things that shouldn't be cut through. Like you you live
Speaker 1: in a it wasn't always watersheds, but you live in
Speaker 1: like a specific like geo region. Yeah, you know, Well
Speaker 1: think about it. The back of our farm, the uh
Speaker 1: where my cabin is, and the pond up there, that's
Speaker 1: in a different county. That's an different deer management zone. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: the pond is essentially the that that runs north south,
Speaker 1: that's the Richland Stock County line. So that's in a
Speaker 1: different management zone. No, Well, there's always gonna be some art.
Speaker 1: You're always gonna draw a line. Like when you draw
Speaker 1: that line it's gonna cut through a damn deer. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like half the deer is gonna be there's probably
Speaker 1: d right now, half of them. Then one man's But
Speaker 1: if you took your premise and said the watershed, well, hell,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the same little valley there, and uh
Speaker 1: that's where they draw a lot of managing. But again,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to pry and narrative out a dog here,
Speaker 1: and I keep um teasing it out and then stomping
Speaker 1: on it when he gets into it. I kind of
Speaker 1: want to. I want to get into the whole like
Speaker 1: better next year. Nice next year, So nice bug next year.
Speaker 1: It sounds very interesting. And to keep these podcasts coming
Speaker 1: to you for free, we're gonna take thirty seconds to
Speaker 1: listen to our sixty seconds. Sixty seconds. It's an infro
Speaker 1: from our supporters, all right, so they're back in time.
Speaker 1: There weren't shipped for deer around here. Then they started
Speaker 1: to be getting a lot of deer here in the
Speaker 1: driftless area, and everyone shot every buck they saw on site, right,
Speaker 1: and then we went to the dogs late brother Matthew, Matthew,
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, I just my my new son's named Matthew,
Speaker 1: did you make that connection? Doug's late brother says, what
Speaker 1: Doug so out at the milk part. So, yeah, this
Speaker 1: deer that I was telling you that I killed within
Speaker 1: a stone's throw this this died, I should say, within
Speaker 1: a stone throw of the of the house here was.
Speaker 1: You can't see it, but it's that one with the
Speaker 1: black velvet up there on the and that was the
Speaker 1: biggest buck that I had killed to date. You know,
Speaker 1: at that point, little Palm made it eight point um, like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's gotta be Yeah, like a lot of guys,
Speaker 1: I mean it should I be. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: a cool buck. I shot it across the road. It
Speaker 1: jumps to crack ky lung, shot jumps the creek, goes
Speaker 1: through the gate that we walked through this morning. There
Speaker 1: was no gate at the bottom of the hill. Then
Speaker 1: crosses the road, come up, comes up through these pines.
Speaker 1: Matthew is sleeping upstairs because he already got his buck,
Speaker 1: and he looks out the window thinks I'm like messing
Speaker 1: with him because where I shouted over anyway, it ran
Speaker 1: down through here, and he he thinks, I'm messing No,
Speaker 1: and did not. There was a very there was some
Speaker 1: very quick but correct decisions made about the shots that
Speaker 1: were taken. And uh, he looked out the window of
Speaker 1: the upstairs bedroom and saw that deer coming up through
Speaker 1: the pine trees outside of here. Comes down the stairs,
Speaker 1: grabs his deer rifle and hands and he's got his
Speaker 1: long John's on. Grabs his deer rifle and his orange jacket,
Speaker 1: so he's legal. Comes out the door. That hole that's
Speaker 1: in that porch door out there was from that day,
Speaker 1: which is twenty years ago, one years ago. That deer
Speaker 1: goes over, goes in between the silos over there and
Speaker 1: lays down and but it's still alive. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't hard shot. It was long shot. So and
Speaker 1: so we go around and, you know, safety conscious as
Speaker 1: we were, we're trying to finish it off. And my
Speaker 1: dad is walking across the top of the hill and
Speaker 1: he wonders, what the hell is going on? Comes down
Speaker 1: the hill. Uh, Matt and I are, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to get the deer out of there. And it gets
Speaker 1: up and it goes down by the milk house and
Speaker 1: kind of collapses again, and and you know it's we're thinking,
Speaker 1: well we should slit its throat. We gotta be safe here.
Speaker 1: My dad walks up to it, blam, shooting through the neck.
Speaker 1: Stuff's getting, you know, thinking when we were doing the
Speaker 1: right thing. He look for God's sakes, you know. So anyway,
Speaker 1: there was quite a lot of excitement had uh boy,
Speaker 1: you know, so we're all congratulating each other and talking
Speaker 1: about how this whole thing went down and grabbing the
Speaker 1: deer and I'm looking at it. I'm going, man, what
Speaker 1: a great buck. And I'm dean and Dad's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's terrific. And Matt, who's the quietest of all of us,
Speaker 1: kind of looks at it and goes, yeah, but that
Speaker 1: had been a nice buck next year, and that really,
Speaker 1: that conversation that came from that ended up being really
Speaker 1: where we started doing bigger buck management here. Um just
Speaker 1: let him slide. Well, It's what I started thinking then,
Speaker 1: was well, Okay, that's the biggest buck I've shot to date.
Speaker 1: The next one is gonna be bigger than that. And
Speaker 1: we started talking about it. Unfortunately, he died three months
Speaker 1: later in a car accident just right down here on
Speaker 1: the on the highway. But we started talking about that
Speaker 1: was what we had been planning that whole winter. It
Speaker 1: was more of our management at that point. And uh
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, after um, some changes in
Speaker 1: the group that hunted here. Uh, after I had instituted
Speaker 1: some rules. Um, everything that you see and here has
Speaker 1: been shot other than that buck has been shot since
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, plus four or five others. And
Speaker 1: I know you go, well, sorry, I guess describing it
Speaker 1: very well, but you can see the progression. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: To give you an idea, that the one of the
Speaker 1: black velvet that Doug shot there twenty one years ago
Speaker 1: out in the backyard here, he might be a hundred
Speaker 1: inches right, most people call a basket rack, although he's
Speaker 1: a little bit wider than your average basket rack. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, in our camp in Michigan, we would have
Speaker 1: been tickled to shoot a buck like that. I never
Speaker 1: shot a buck like that in Michigan. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: every good, every good numbers go around the room and
Speaker 1: just shout out numbers. Uh. There's a couple of others
Speaker 1: that are like in that one, like twenty type class,
Speaker 1: but not many. Everything else that jumps significantly significantly up
Speaker 1: into the one thirties, one forties, right, I mean there
Speaker 1: might be a couple are like the upper row over there,
Speaker 1: it's like one, you know, mid one thirties. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then there's just some gigant or bucks. And then of
Speaker 1: course the standard. Are we to talk about him yet? No,
Speaker 1: what's talk about staying in a minute. But I want
Speaker 1: to point out here because this is an important fact
Speaker 1: to point out. All this talk about big box and
Speaker 1: age structure, right demographics, Like I almost forget to bring
Speaker 1: this something that really needs to be stressed. The poundage
Speaker 1: of of venison, the poundage of meat coming off to
Speaker 1: property is increasing through all this. It's not like you're
Speaker 1: going like, oh, we you know, we used to shoot
Speaker 1: deer and eat some venison, but then we decided piste
Speaker 1: on that, and now we just shoot a giant buck.
Speaker 1: Now on that you're still talking about like all the
Speaker 1: dear meat you want because you're shooting does more than
Speaker 1: more than we've had. I mean, I have friends who
Speaker 1: non hunting friends who are like, hey, if you get
Speaker 1: an extra deer, if you have, you know, I'd like
Speaker 1: to get some venison as well. You know, I'll drop
Speaker 1: I'll drop on off at the at the the butcher
Speaker 1: for you. I got it out right down there, and
Speaker 1: and and so I do that. Um, like I said
Speaker 1: in the late season, I had you know, friends out here.
Speaker 1: I told those guys that day, let's shoot six or
Speaker 1: eight dolls, and we only got two. But um that
Speaker 1: wasn't because there wasn't some other shooting done. Ah, and
Speaker 1: those left. I mean, yeah, I mean I have all
Speaker 1: the venice, and I want all the time. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Like, in simplified terms, you might look at
Speaker 1: it that when I when I was growing up, you'd
Speaker 1: sit there and see a bazillion dolls, praying that you'd
Speaker 1: see a buck, any buck any one saw, they'd kill.
Speaker 1: Another way of looking at it, I mean to the
Speaker 1: point where you'd have twenty dolls for every buck running around.
Speaker 1: Another way looking at it would be shoot dos. Let
Speaker 1: a lot of those small bucks walk. You're still filling
Speaker 1: your freezer after a couple of years. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is grossly simplified, But after a couple of years you
Speaker 1: might be that you're still shooting dolls and putting me
Speaker 1: in the freezer. And now and then bam, you shoot
Speaker 1: a buck. That's like the old days, a buck that
Speaker 1: just got old, you know, that was allowed to reach
Speaker 1: maturity three or four year old dominant bark. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing, UH to me is that that the
Speaker 1: buck that I shot on Friday of last year that
Speaker 1: measures in a nine pointer measures about a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty inches, was aged by an expert at two and
Speaker 1: a half years And when I looked at the teeth,
Speaker 1: and knowing what I know about it, I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't disagree with you. So what's happening there? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe genetic selection, but also um, well, I think that's
Speaker 1: a part of it, but I think there's a herd
Speaker 1: health component. I meant to tell you this earlier that
Speaker 1: I talked with Keith Warnicky. I hope I'm pronouncing his right.
Speaker 1: Who's one of the big game managers. He's in fact,
Speaker 1: he's UM I think he said ahead of it, UH
Speaker 1: for d n R. And we were talking. I was
Speaker 1: talking with him about that, and UH he was explaining
Speaker 1: to me that statistics show that there in in especially
Speaker 1: in southwest Wisconsin, that the average size of the buck increases,
Speaker 1: buck's taken increases dramatically with the UH number of dose
Speaker 1: taken in the same area. Yeah, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: We had a bit of an infamous character I don't
Speaker 1: like to speak ill of the dead, but it's bit
Speaker 1: him an infamous character who was uh lives south of
Speaker 1: us here. That's the only people I like to speak
Speaker 1: ill of us the dead, because you don't gotta worry,
Speaker 1: all right, was his name? We don't worry about him
Speaker 1: coming back? Yeah, well anyway, Yeah, his name was Randy
Speaker 1: Hanko and a guy that I grew up with, and
Speaker 1: and he, as I said, he was a bit of
Speaker 1: an infamous character. But he uh on the farm just
Speaker 1: to the south of us here and got a bunch
Speaker 1: of egg tags and he shot twenty one drop damage checks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. Uh, he shot twenty one deer antler this
Speaker 1: deer one winner. And the next year is when that
Speaker 1: top row over there, which is the hundred thirty deer
Speaker 1: started showing up. And I told that to Keith last night,
Speaker 1: and he goes, that's what we're seeing. And I believe.
Speaker 1: I mean, so he has the the data, the scientific
Speaker 1: data that shows that I'm telling you, I've got the
Speaker 1: anecdotal uh stories that that's what happened here too, So
Speaker 1: you know, I believe that, and and I believe that
Speaker 1: in in my situation in the surrounding area. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a road on the back side of the farm. It's
Speaker 1: about three miles long. You can take a h it's
Speaker 1: a talent road. And you can take that drive in
Speaker 1: the in the late winter or the early spring in
Speaker 1: the evening and see a hundred deer And that's just
Speaker 1: too many deer. And those are all living on my farm.
Speaker 1: I mean they're living all over the place, you know,
Speaker 1: but too many? Like like, define what me, each man,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing, here's the thing I often catch
Speaker 1: myself saying. I catch myself saying, here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: purposefully say now, and now someone talks about like, oh,
Speaker 1: deer are overpopulated, I'd like, from whose perspective? Car insurance
Speaker 1: companies sure overpopulated. Agricultural interests, sure overpopulated. Car insures they
Speaker 1: don't want to pay out premiums to people who are yeah,
Speaker 1: busting their car upon deer egg interest because they're losing
Speaker 1: crop damage, or insurers who are ensuring crops and you
Speaker 1: know someone's paying, right. So I'd be like, from my perspective,
Speaker 1: how can I say, dear overpopular? In fact, there is
Speaker 1: a thing. From a hunter's perspective, there is such thing
Speaker 1: as overpopulation. We touched on this earlier, but it just
Speaker 1: has to do with forest quality, has to do with
Speaker 1: other species. Like explained a little bit that like and
Speaker 1: I want to get talk about the state. We've got
Speaker 1: too much to talk about. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: the standard. Would talk a little bit about like you're
Speaker 1: we're trying to bring back certain native trees on your
Speaker 1: property and how that ties into like rough grouse, how
Speaker 1: that ties into forest health, white tails, turkeys, all that bs.
Speaker 1: So Uh, our woods here is predominantly the hardwoods, but
Speaker 1: our predominant species are red and red and white oak.
Speaker 1: And you have seen the popa stands out there as
Speaker 1: well or aspen stands. Uh, they're shag bark, hickory, and
Speaker 1: a few others. But in the driftless area, the biggest
Speaker 1: component of the woods that we're in danger of losing
Speaker 1: is the red and white oak because we don't have
Speaker 1: the fires and some of the things that brought that
Speaker 1: on um years ago. So as a part of our
Speaker 1: management planing of our woods, we're cutting in a shelter
Speaker 1: woods called the shelterwood harvest. It's a particular method of
Speaker 1: of managing the woods. Uh. Up in our big woods
Speaker 1: were cutting the trees that were little trees when my
Speaker 1: great grandfather bought this place. And you know that I
Speaker 1: wanted her up saying, Doug, besides me, dog, besides doing
Speaker 1: land manage on your own land. As a profession, Doug
Speaker 1: does land management. So this isn't just he says anecdotal.
Speaker 1: But I just want you the audience to realize that
Speaker 1: Doug is a it's very studied, a professional land manager.
Speaker 1: So so take as he's talking, keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: But this isn't just some dude talk about what he's
Speaker 1: seen on his hunted acres. He's down selling, he's down
Speaker 1: selling what his role in this and his background of this. Well,
Speaker 1: but I've also I relied greatly on um foresters and
Speaker 1: ecologists and and you know, I think the thing that
Speaker 1: I know more than anything is to be able to
Speaker 1: take information from different people and understand it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: red oaks going to ship red oaks going, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: losing red oak. Well, so deer hunters and turkey hunters
Speaker 1: know that that dear love white oak acorns and they
Speaker 1: loved to browse on red oak seedlings. So uh, we
Speaker 1: did a plan to up on fourteen acres up here
Speaker 1: behind the buildings where we planted and it was a
Speaker 1: uh crp planting every other row red red oak, white pine.
Speaker 1: And the idea was that the white pine would train
Speaker 1: the red oak to grow tall and straight and become
Speaker 1: quality hardwood. Well what happened, yeah, for competition for some
Speaker 1: sunlight and it would you know, train them. And so
Speaker 1: what ended up happening is we created almost the perfect
Speaker 1: scenario for white tailed deer. We've got bed and and
Speaker 1: the oak trees are in a row that they're just
Speaker 1: walking down like oh, there's a lollipop. There's a lollipop.
Speaker 1: There's a lollipop, and and and so we had these
Speaker 1: little bushes up there. So that failed. We planted uh
Speaker 1: six hundred oaks to the acre I think in six
Speaker 1: hundred or maybe it was a thousand oaks the acre
Speaker 1: and a thousand pines to the acre. Um up where
Speaker 1: we're doing that cut up on on top up in
Speaker 1: the big woods. The shelterwood harvest, which is this is
Speaker 1: natural regeneration receding um and there's some techniques involved with that.
Speaker 1: We have places up there that we have ten thousand
Speaker 1: seedlings breaker I mean, it's a carpet of them in
Speaker 1: the fall up there. Um, so you know the premise
Speaker 1: there is that well, even with deer population and all
Speaker 1: of that, some enough of them are going to survive
Speaker 1: to get up to that point where they're going to
Speaker 1: be above the brows line of the deer. But along
Speaker 1: with that is that we need to shoot a lot
Speaker 1: of deer to you know, keep to discourage them or
Speaker 1: to or to keep monitor, which is a part of
Speaker 1: why I bring other people in and I'm always encouraging
Speaker 1: people to shoot does or young bucksy. Yeah, what I like.
Speaker 1: I I was out here on a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago and you had kind of a number in your
Speaker 1: head of what you were hoping to see the trail, cammages,
Speaker 1: our things, what you're hoping to see them off in does?
Speaker 1: I said, it doesn't for trying to get some red
Speaker 1: oaks to get enough to grow up. And uh we
Speaker 1: were everything was all our crop land was in uh
Speaker 1: production at that time. So um it's now in crp
Speaker 1: um And so you know it's a really it's you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a constant balance of uh science and feel
Speaker 1: an art um. But that you know, that's a big
Speaker 1: part of what's driving me. So from a from a
Speaker 1: deer hunting perspective. Of course I want good hunting, and
Speaker 1: of course I want to see a certain amount of deer,
Speaker 1: but I also want to balance that ecosystem and balance
Speaker 1: the you know, I want to grow those oaks. A
Speaker 1: hundred years from now, this family, this farm is going
Speaker 1: to be in my family. And a hundred years from now,
Speaker 1: those oaks that are up there now that we're cutting
Speaker 1: are going to be replaced if we do this correctly,
Speaker 1: um by the seedlings that are ten thousand of the
Speaker 1: acre up there, and a hundred years from now, there
Speaker 1: will be deer in tier crazy and it will be
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty those trees left, the best ones. Um
Speaker 1: And so that's a part of my management strategy. So
Speaker 1: when I say there are too many deer, that's what
Speaker 1: my perspective is on it. Um M. I know hunters,
Speaker 1: and I know I have a couple of clients that
Speaker 1: all they want is more dear And you know the
Speaker 1: truth is they don't have the deer that we have.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I I go with I understand they're
Speaker 1: feeling there. Yeah, I want to see more deer, and
Speaker 1: why it's because they don't see that many. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe like honest is talking about where where he's at
Speaker 1: up there, and so we do things that we can,
Speaker 1: you know, to encourage that. But the cool thing to
Speaker 1: me about good forest management and good woodland management I
Speaker 1: like gold woods rather than forest, uh, is that it
Speaker 1: really is compatible with good wildlife habitat um. Turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just beautiful up there. Squirrel hunting is
Speaker 1: still great up there. Um when you you know, you
Speaker 1: open up those clear cuts and there's a lot of brush,
Speaker 1: there's rabbits in there, you clear cut those aspen stands
Speaker 1: and we didn't. I hadn't seen a rough grouse or
Speaker 1: heard a rough grouse here for years. And two thousand
Speaker 1: and one when we did the first couple of clear
Speaker 1: cuts and we did have aspen. Two years later, boom bump,
Speaker 1: we heard the John Deer tractor up there. Rough grouse.
Speaker 1: I love that noise. And I always say, there's some
Speaker 1: guy trying to get his lawnmower started. Yeah. Well, so
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me I was having a conversation
Speaker 1: with one of the wildlife biology students last night. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the Wild Turkey Federation pheasants forever uh trout unlimited, Um,
Speaker 1: those are the three that I can think of, what
Speaker 1: what's the number one thing? All of those organizations do habitat.
Speaker 1: M white tails live anywhere. Those other species have to
Speaker 1: have habitat a specific kind of habitat. And you know,
Speaker 1: pheasants forever say says build it and they will come.
Speaker 1: And I don't care that much about pheasants. I would
Speaker 1: if there was a way to uh to um. I
Speaker 1: wish I could stock grousse. I mean, it's just not
Speaker 1: you know, rough grouse. It's not possible. So the thing
Speaker 1: that I can do is to try to do things
Speaker 1: about the in the habitat. And it's good forest management,
Speaker 1: and quite honestly, it's good economic forest management too. We
Speaker 1: took that popple off at you know, fifty or sixty
Speaker 1: years and we were getting nice pulp wood out of it.
Speaker 1: We were getting nice bolt logs out of it. Um
Speaker 1: and uh oh. And woodcock is the other thing, of
Speaker 1: course that we have go through here. And I'm working
Speaker 1: with the Fishing US Fish and Wildlife Service on a
Speaker 1: on a plan for our bottom in there too to
Speaker 1: make that less mature, because the woodcock like that better.
Speaker 1: Woodcock and grouse kind of like the same habitat so
Speaker 1: white tails. On the other hand, hell, he'll live in
Speaker 1: your backyard, you know. So and so that seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the differences. And that was pointed out
Speaker 1: not only from you last night that I learned a
Speaker 1: few things, but um from talking with those folks, uh
Speaker 1: the wildlife biology student and then the big game manager
Speaker 1: and uh so those are the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: are in my mind when I'm not when i'm wor
Speaker 1: on this property and thinking about how we want to
Speaker 1: manage this property, but also when I'm working with my clients.
Speaker 1: Properties are are unique, but the driftless area is still
Speaker 1: the riference, and most of my clients are in the
Speaker 1: driftless area. So all right, so tell me talk about
Speaker 1: the standard for a minute. So two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: my wife and I just built that cabin up there,
Speaker 1: and I just pop that little road that comes down
Speaker 1: through that you guys walked down, and uh, we had
Speaker 1: seen this, dear. In fact, I'm pretty sure I actually
Speaker 1: shot that deer of the year before hit him missed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hit him, nicked him in the back leg with
Speaker 1: a rifle, and yeah, yeah, I'm almost sure that I
Speaker 1: You know how it's easy to tell a story about
Speaker 1: the deer you killed, but the ones that bother you
Speaker 1: are the ones that that you missed or that got away.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm almost sure it was that deer. It
Speaker 1: was certainly that gene big, wide, heavy, it's not super tall,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, twenty when it was green, it
Speaker 1: was two ft inside, you know, sixteen points, lots of
Speaker 1: stuff on it. Um. And I had seen that deer
Speaker 1: was aged at four years old, so you know, he
Speaker 1: got there pretty quick, and he got there pretty damn quick. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Um that the year before, I nicked this buck that
Speaker 1: in my mind looked an awful lot like and it
Speaker 1: hit him in the in the back leg. Really just
Speaker 1: a horrible situation. One of those shots that you know,
Speaker 1: I think I talked about this before, um, and you
Speaker 1: can put the bullet the man I would just I've
Speaker 1: rarely I don't regret any shot that I didn't take,
Speaker 1: but that was one of those shots that I regretted
Speaker 1: taking because I I should have killed him with the
Speaker 1: first shot. And then you know, each shot after that
Speaker 1: gets more and more desperate, and I shot at that
Speaker 1: deer four times and I should have killed with the
Speaker 1: first shot. Because I had him, and then just and
Speaker 1: I just got I ran up over here. So the
Speaker 1: next year, my wife and I are driving down on
Speaker 1: that little road and this little beater jeep that I had,
Speaker 1: and this deer gets up out of the this brush
Speaker 1: alongside that road and just lumbers into the woods. And
Speaker 1: I went and my wife, who doesn't get excited about deer,
Speaker 1: she goes, oh my god, look at the size of
Speaker 1: that thing. And she's all excited about it, and you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not. I mean, I'm just like, I couldn't
Speaker 1: even talk because it's going away minute. A two ft
Speaker 1: wide white tail going away from you. Looks like i'll moose,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's going away from me, going down
Speaker 1: this hill. We get down to the buildings and down
Speaker 1: here to the farm, and we're doing a couple of things,
Speaker 1: and I kind of came up with this idea that well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's where he lives, that's where
Speaker 1: he beds. So I got the old tractor out and
Speaker 1: put the brush hog on and took a ladder stand
Speaker 1: and a hanger, put that back there, and I just
Speaker 1: drove back in the valley. Nothing happening here, just a
Speaker 1: guy out doing a little brush hogging, you know. So
Speaker 1: I took a little sweep through the brush and the
Speaker 1: stuff that was back there, clearing a little trail, got
Speaker 1: near this tree that's all forty yards from where that
Speaker 1: that betting area was left, the brush hog running, left
Speaker 1: the tractor running, put it in neutral, got out, strapped
Speaker 1: that thing to this elm tree that is, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe eighteen inches in diameter. Strapped that thing to it.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of a big guy. It's probably it's
Speaker 1: not a big enough tree. Got that hangar up there
Speaker 1: in the tree, got back down, got back in the tractor,
Speaker 1: and drove like nothing happening. Here were just you know,
Speaker 1: brush hogging. Two weeks later we had an early um
Speaker 1: or a buck uh hunt. But you could kill a
Speaker 1: buck if you had a dough tag, which I did have.
Speaker 1: And uh and sure enough I got up in that
Speaker 1: I get up in that stand, I mean, and I'm
Speaker 1: holding onto a limb, got my rifle in my other hand.
Speaker 1: I'm holding onto a limb, I mean that stand. Fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes do comes up out of the bottom and I
Speaker 1: hear and this brush comes around the corner and this
Speaker 1: his antlers. He walked up and this is the end
Speaker 1: of October and he walks up out of that bottom
Speaker 1: thirty five yards, brings his head up, shot him right
Speaker 1: in the chest, went over backwards. I mean, just like
Speaker 1: I planned it, it happened, and it was just it
Speaker 1: was crazy. So my dad was still hunting at the time,
Speaker 1: and and so that was two thousand five, ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and my nephew Sam, who hunts with us, and great kid,
Speaker 1: great hunter, very good hunter. Um on the radio goes
Speaker 1: Uncle Duck, Yeah, did you shoot? Yeah, because he can.
Speaker 1: They're they're awful ways and and so I can. He's
Speaker 1: relaying that to my father, who doesn't hear very well,
Speaker 1: pretty legical this information. He goes, Grandpa wants to know
Speaker 1: how big it is because he knew I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: pulled the trigger unless and I just told him Sam,
Speaker 1: he isn't gonna believe it. And I mean that was
Speaker 1: I mean it was the jump went from a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty five inches too, you know, a hundred ninety
Speaker 1: two inches on that's a that's a leap. There's not
Speaker 1: a buck hunter in this country, in the world. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to have that. Dear, so talk, we're running
Speaker 1: out time, we're run out into our self imposed time limit.
Speaker 1: But talk about oh the what happened with the tax
Speaker 1: neervice and stuff like. So, my dad has this little
Speaker 1: white Chevy S ten pickup that he still has, and
Speaker 1: uh so this is the end of October, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a warm day. We hang the thing up in
Speaker 1: the and so I didn't get a whole lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of it. You see the one that was hanging
Speaker 1: up in the shed, and I call it. I never
Speaker 1: had a deer mountain before, So I call this taxi
Speaker 1: drumstover in Bear Valley and and I just kind of
Speaker 1: described me just how big is it. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't measure it or anything. I said, it's I'm
Speaker 1: I have size thirteen shoe and I can put two
Speaker 1: of them inside the horns. He goes, so, you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to get that thing over here because it's warm
Speaker 1: and the skin will start to out him. He's telling
Speaker 1: me all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, okay, So we
Speaker 1: dropped that thing in the back of Dad's stend pickup.
Speaker 1: Now it looks like, you know, it's a big deer,
Speaker 1: but now it looks like a moose laying in there
Speaker 1: by the time we get over to Bear Valley, we
Speaker 1: got cars behind us, you know, the lights on it.
Speaker 1: We pull in and this guy mounts a lot of
Speaker 1: deer and we pull in. I walk up to Bill
Speaker 1: and I said, uh, so, hey, I'm the guy who
Speaker 1: called about the He goes, oh, well, let's go and
Speaker 1: take a look at it. And there's trucks lined up.
Speaker 1: You know, guys are gonna back in and they're gonna
Speaker 1: unload them, and they're because they're working on you know,
Speaker 1: he's got a whole assembly line there getting the skin
Speaker 1: off him and everything. He walks down there, take some
Speaker 1: one look at it, turns around and says, get all
Speaker 1: these other trucks the hell out of the way. We're
Speaker 1: backing that one up in here right now. So we
Speaker 1: back it up in there, and of course they've got
Speaker 1: a that they used to pull the skin off to
Speaker 1: the head, and huy, old guy there stands there it
Speaker 1: looks at me, says, you know, if I killed that dear,
Speaker 1: I didn't get the whole damn thing mount and I
Speaker 1: got a place to put it. So so they, you know,
Speaker 1: they get it scun and and uh take it in.
Speaker 1: The guy starts working on the head and so a
Speaker 1: bunch of dudes standing around, and you know, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I only know a couple of these guys. But everybody
Speaker 1: starts shouting out numbers and throwing the guys writing it
Speaker 1: down and throwing five bucks into a hat guessing how
Speaker 1: many inches it is. Guys are like one five, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're full of ship. That's way bigger than one seventy five.
Speaker 1: And it writes it down, and nobody guess two hundred,
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, I'll say two hundred. Dude was
Speaker 1: right on the green squarter. That one dude would hit
Speaker 1: it right on the head. I don't know what he wants,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was a pile of money. That
Speaker 1: was quite a night. It was, you know, it was
Speaker 1: quite quite a quite a show. Next year, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: might have had a dead buck next year. Well he
Speaker 1: was a dead buck next year. Like he's old. He
Speaker 1: was getting up there. Yeah he was four year old deer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would he have been like at five? We don't know,
Speaker 1: he's five year old deer. They started kind of rare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so no, don't he would have kept getting bigger, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I certainly think so. Yeah, we were wondering that before.
Speaker 1: How how old did they really? How old could a
Speaker 1: deer get around here if it didn't get hit by
Speaker 1: a car or shot or you know whatever, and you know,
Speaker 1: eight or nine I think is is probably the you know,
Speaker 1: the the limit of it. But you know, but it was,
Speaker 1: I mean personally, once that happened. Um, that's that's when
Speaker 1: I said, well, okay, so the rule about having the
Speaker 1: next buck having to be bigger than the one you
Speaker 1: shot this year, that changes now, so um, you know
Speaker 1: so otherwise I would have never shot it, probably shoot
Speaker 1: another deer in the rest of my life on this place.
Speaker 1: But um, you want to know what a good podcast
Speaker 1: whole sight M. I don't even give a sh about
Speaker 1: big white tills. I know you don't. I want to
Speaker 1: kill big the only thing I want to kill a big,
Speaker 1: giant one of his mulder. Well, I find it remarkable.
Speaker 1: You might I might have just shot a boon or
Speaker 1: musk ox. I didn't know that. I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 1: I might have got a boon or musk the coveted
Speaker 1: boone and Crockett muskat. Uh No, But here's the Doug
Speaker 1: and I have all. I want to wrap her up.
Speaker 1: I want to do my concluding thoughts. Doug and I
Speaker 1: have argued about this endlessly because I've had the fortune,
Speaker 1: the good fortune of I've never shot anything on this place.
Speaker 1: I don't think you haven't. And I haven't shot a
Speaker 1: turkey out here, No, you have not. I don't shoot
Speaker 1: anything on dogs property. But Doug, you haven't even shot
Speaker 1: a rabbit on this property. Yes, I have no Those
Speaker 1: rabbits run place. What about those mallards that was on
Speaker 1: my cousin's place. Yeah, every guy within thirty miles here
Speaker 1: is a during. Doug has even met live as cousins.
Speaker 1: So it was not a during place right where the
Speaker 1: mallars were and the Schmids place was that that big
Speaker 1: rabbit place. So but I had where I took a
Speaker 1: couple of for not for a second time hunters out
Speaker 1: on Doug's place, and Doug as is saying, like when
Speaker 1: people come out the hunter's place, Doug shows you the
Speaker 1: top shelf, dear, and Doug says, if you're gonna shoot
Speaker 1: a buck out my property, have it be that he'll
Speaker 1: fit in. He would fit in with those bucks. So
Speaker 1: it's not like like he doesn't tell you like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be blank inches or it's gotta be out
Speaker 1: of the ears. He just says it should have its
Speaker 1: home in this in this collection of bucks is what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do here. However, you're gracious enough where
Speaker 1: you say that people who are making their first visit
Speaker 1: to the farm, if you see a buck and you're
Speaker 1: excited about getting that buck, and that for you is
Speaker 1: like your benchmark, Like that's what you want. Go ahead
Speaker 1: the second time you come out. Screw you. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta shoot off the top shelf. As I told the
Speaker 1: neighbor kid the other day or last year, I should say, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no, But but I would say we have
Speaker 1: like I played Devil's Advocate with you a lot about
Speaker 1: the thing about like meat hunt or to shooting box,
Speaker 1: like not caring about the antlers. And I would say
Speaker 1: that over the years that I've been friends with you,
Speaker 1: you have enlightened me and move me in the direction
Speaker 1: of when it comes to white tales that like we're
Speaker 1: talking about all the Leopold said last night that a
Speaker 1: hunter is like a forester. When you pick a tree
Speaker 1: and strike it with your acts, you're making your mark
Speaker 1: on the landscape, right, And I've come to see through
Speaker 1: you about uh managing white tails. Okay, that they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not contradictory ideas. The management for for opportunity and
Speaker 1: meat harvest is not incompatible with managing for mature bucks.
Speaker 1: But we have thought about this a lot, and seeing
Speaker 1: what's happened out here and sort of the good times
Speaker 1: and fun to happen out here has been educational for me.
Speaker 1: And I've taken that and explain that to a lot
Speaker 1: of other people because I just haven't really been I
Speaker 1: moved out west, you know, when I as soon as
Speaker 1: I could, and I got out of the world of
Speaker 1: white tails a little bit, and it's just been an interesting,
Speaker 1: like sort of my lens back into white tailed culture
Speaker 1: has been here, and it's been it's been very informative.
Speaker 1: That's my concluding thought. But but I've kicked and screamed
Speaker 1: through these discussions. But I do see what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and I see what you're after, and I think that
Speaker 1: people need to make sense of it. And people who
Speaker 1: are just getting into hunting because they want to harvest
Speaker 1: throwing food and stuff, they might be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: trophy hunters, blah bah blah. I think you need to
Speaker 1: take some time and and and read up on this
Speaker 1: stuff because it's not as simple as you might think
Speaker 1: it is. Dear long term, dear management, quality hunting now,
Speaker 1: quality hunting for your kids, quality hunting for your grandkids
Speaker 1: without those ten year twenty year gaps where it sucks.
Speaker 1: Isn't just it just doesn't happen on its own. And
Speaker 1: thought and science, thought, science and restraint play into that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's my concluding thoughts, Yohnny. Big antlers are magical and
Speaker 1: it's so easy to demonize them, and oftentimes I think
Speaker 1: that the whole trophy hunter thing is demonized now or
Speaker 1: people want to do that and make it a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But it's like getting all those the community together around
Speaker 1: your truck to look at those antlers. There's community going
Speaker 1: on there and it's special, you know, and it's a
Speaker 1: good thing to have that, to have everybody come around
Speaker 1: and talk about it and being excited about it. And
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever turned me on to being excited
Speaker 1: about big antlers. Obviously media has something to do with it.
Speaker 1: But Helen Show recent uh meat eater turned you know,
Speaker 1: our our associate is now a hunter, killed her first
Speaker 1: elk um. If she was asking me about antlers, didn't
Speaker 1: really get it wasn't really excited about it. Shot her elk.
Speaker 1: Was at my house for butchering up her elk and
Speaker 1: having to be out in the garage, and there's a
Speaker 1: elk head on one wall and a mule there on
Speaker 1: another wall. She got to looking at him, asked up
Speaker 1: a couple of questions. I answered him. An hour later,
Speaker 1: she's like, can we take one of those down, you know,
Speaker 1: so I can hold and feel and look at it,
Speaker 1: and she kind of admires it. Whatever. By the time
Speaker 1: she left at evening, she's like, I kind of want
Speaker 1: to shoot a buck, you know, if there's something special
Speaker 1: about that, you know, like what what is it? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but they're magical. Could I have a second
Speaker 1: concluding thought? That's my concluding thought? I want a second one.
Speaker 1: The bucks were talking about and like the standard and stuff,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about some bucks that are raised behind
Speaker 1: a fence. They bring in like some jars semen and
Speaker 1: in seven eight a bunch of does and then you
Speaker 1: go down and buy them out of deer sale. These
Speaker 1: are real bucks. You get run over by cars, shot
Speaker 1: at surviving the real damn dear, like genuine, real wild bucks.
Speaker 1: They're gorgeous they really are. And I'll tell you something, um,
Speaker 1: and I'll try to make it part of my concluding
Speaker 1: thought that it's got to be a concluding thought. My
Speaker 1: I get to just because it's my podcast, all right.
Speaker 1: The standard, AH, within a one mile radius of here,
Speaker 1: since two thousand and five, there have been at least
Speaker 1: three bucks bigger than that one killed here and within
Speaker 1: a mile of this place one mile radius. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean bigger horns. They are more inches of horns
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe not as massive or whatever, but
Speaker 1: more inches and the way they score them. Uh. Thanks
Speaker 1: once again for putting into words in a way that
Speaker 1: I struggle with. That's one of my favorite things about
Speaker 1: Steve Romello. Ah, it is you know, deer hunting is
Speaker 1: a part of what we're trying to do with our property,
Speaker 1: and I think it should be a part of ah,
Speaker 1: the overall view of an area. I think it's a
Speaker 1: big part of the future. It's been a part of
Speaker 1: the past, and it's certainly part of the present. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a big part of the future of this
Speaker 1: area hunting in general, and it's really economically, I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a big part of this area. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, I love the driftless area. I love the
Speaker 1: Cansanovia area, Westford Township, Richland County, Bearable River, Willow Creek,
Speaker 1: and I just really appreciate that we've been able to
Speaker 1: bring some attention to it and uh have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun while we're doing that. Yes, sir, Yes sir,
Speaker 1: and Doug's cohorts got a turkey tag. Still, so tomorrow's
Speaker 1: gonna be up right and early. Now, you guys, I
Speaker 1: think I had to sleep in. We didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to kill this morning. So I get to go
Speaker 1: out again with Well, I'm gonna go out and sit
Speaker 1: against the tree up in the brush. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bring my I'm gonna bring a call. I'm just observed,
Speaker 1: all right, thanks tuning in media podcast. Oh, a couple
Speaker 1: of things. Go to um uh Yanni's T shirt website
Speaker 1: hunt to Eat dot com by a hunt to Eat
Speaker 1: T shirt. If you're single, that will solve your problems
Speaker 1: when you got one of those T shirts on, because
Speaker 1: you're the ladies are gonna look at you and they're
Speaker 1: gonna be like that man fills the freezer, that man
Speaker 1: brings home the bacon um two bucks he's always out
Speaker 1: of stock, but he's stocking up right yep. Tell him
Speaker 1: the website www dot hunt to eat dot com, not
Speaker 1: numeral hunt T O h U N T T O
Speaker 1: E A T B one y T shirts. Very important,
Speaker 1: Um Doug during loan oak interests. If you got a
Speaker 1: chunk of ground you want to talk to someone. Uh
Speaker 1: he doesn't build you on the initial phone call called
Speaker 1: Doug during talking about land whatnot. You'll be shooting Giant
Speaker 1: bucks pretty soon. Uh me either. The TV show not free, Well,
Speaker 1: it is for if you got TV. If you don't
Speaker 1: have TV, me eater dot vas dot tv, download and
Speaker 1: stream meat Eater all night and all day. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. Take our