Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and this week on the show, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by Culli newcome to discuss and recap my Arkansas public
Speaker 1: land mule back deer hunting adventure. All right, welcome to
Speaker 1: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Life,
Speaker 1: and today we're continuing the series in which I'm recapping
Speaker 1: my pretty wild season of traveling hunts. As I've discussed,
Speaker 1: I've been on a journey of sorts this year, going
Speaker 1: across the country to different regions of white tailed country
Speaker 1: to learn about how people hunt in that unique place,
Speaker 1: meeting with a regional expert to dig into what types
Speaker 1: of tactics they use, where they hunt, how they find
Speaker 1: word of hunt, how the deer act in their area,
Speaker 1: and what the hunting culture is there too. So that's
Speaker 1: what I did. I spent a day in Arkansas with
Speaker 1: Clay Newcomb and James Lawrence learning about the old ways
Speaker 1: of hunting, the mountains down south still hunting and hunting
Speaker 1: terrain features, and finding public land deer and big woods
Speaker 1: country really interesting stuff. So I got to spend a
Speaker 1: morning with Clay and afternoon talking to James, and then
Speaker 1: we actually went in on mule back deep into this
Speaker 1: public land section and spent the next three and a
Speaker 1: half days myself on my own trying to kill buck
Speaker 1: up there. So that's the story we're gonna share. It's
Speaker 1: a good one, it's a fun one. It was a
Speaker 1: heck of a hunt. It gave me a really interesting
Speaker 1: glimpse into deer hunting in the South, into some of
Speaker 1: the influences that Clay has had that come from a
Speaker 1: time long ago, and why there's there's a certain appeal
Speaker 1: and certain value to doing things as a hunter that
Speaker 1: maybe we don't need to do anymore, but have value
Speaker 1: in being less efficient and harkening back to a bygone era,
Speaker 1: talking about getting a little taste of what it was
Speaker 1: like back in the day for somebody like Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: going in on horse or mule and staying out there
Speaker 1: for a week or two hunting deer, hunting bears, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. I got just the tiniest little glimpse
Speaker 1: of what that life might have been like. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what. It's pretty cool. So that's the plan for today.
Speaker 1: We do also, in addition to Clay, have my buddy
Speaker 1: Tyler Emmett. He was one of the cameraman on this
Speaker 1: trip and I wanted to have him on the show
Speaker 1: to help give some color and some perspective on the
Speaker 1: hunts because he was there with me, right next to
Speaker 1: me during the hunts on my own, but he was
Speaker 1: in the airport hopping on a plane and timing ended
Speaker 1: up getting goofy. So he's in here. He shares a
Speaker 1: couple of quick thoughts, but then has to bail because
Speaker 1: of the flight, so I didn't really work out. But
Speaker 1: he's here. You'll hear a bit from him, but just
Speaker 1: understand that's why he sounds a little distant. That's why
Speaker 1: he wasn't in much of the show. But regardless, I
Speaker 1: thank you here to like this one. Me and Clay
Speaker 1: get into some interesting debates around scent control too that
Speaker 1: you're not gonna want to miss. So well that said,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Thank you for listening all right
Speaker 1: with me? Now, I've got Clay newcome and Tyler Emmett
Speaker 1: and the both of you guys were with me on
Speaker 1: this heck of a heck of an adventure in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and so I appreciate you taking time to come here
Speaker 1: and help me recapit a little bit rather than doing
Speaker 1: the you know how you're doing, what's new, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: I just want to get right in the story because
Speaker 1: we've got a lot to cover, uh and Clay. This
Speaker 1: trip began mostly, I think it began when we got
Speaker 1: to James Lawrence's place. He's a mentor of yours, and
Speaker 1: he was gonna help kind of set our sights on
Speaker 1: what we should be doing, what we should be thinking about,
Speaker 1: what I should be targeting. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: like that that we're hoping to chat with him about
Speaker 1: at his place before we headed to the mountain. Can
Speaker 1: you can you start us out, Clay, just jumping right
Speaker 1: into who James is and how he was an influence
Speaker 1: on you. Sure. Yeah, So James Lawrence. People that have
Speaker 1: listened to some of my stuff in the past may
Speaker 1: have met James Lawrence. He's been on some podcasts with
Speaker 1: me and stuff. But James is in his I believe
Speaker 1: James is seventy three years old, and he's just one
Speaker 1: of these guys that has lived his entire life in
Speaker 1: the same spot and has been a hunter since he
Speaker 1: was a kid and has really dedicated himself two being
Speaker 1: the best that he can be with the resources he
Speaker 1: has in the place he lives, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's never traveled to hunt other than with me. In
Speaker 1: in the last five years, he's he with me to
Speaker 1: Canada white tailed deer hunting. Other than that, he's probably
Speaker 1: not hunted out of the county he lives in, you know.
Speaker 1: And I always I love those kind of guys. I
Speaker 1: really do that their their world is not propped up
Speaker 1: by you know, kind of I want to say exotic travel.
Speaker 1: You know, that's probably not a good descriptor. But he's
Speaker 1: just he's just dedicated himself to what what he's got,
Speaker 1: and so he's we're down in the Washington Mountains and James,
Speaker 1: it's from the area that I grew up in, so
Speaker 1: my hometown, which I don't live in anymore, and that's
Speaker 1: in the mountains of western Arkansas, and it's a difficult
Speaker 1: place to whitetail hunt, and it is getting increasingly better.
Speaker 1: I believe we have probably better deer populations right now
Speaker 1: than we've had and even since when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but just difficult hunting conditions you know, run good terrain
Speaker 1: and just vast stretches of continuous hardwoods, pines and just
Speaker 1: closed canopy timber like you would find in a lot
Speaker 1: of places in the East. But the mountains make it
Speaker 1: harder because you've got a lot of topographic differences and
Speaker 1: changes and and and so James as he's developed a
Speaker 1: style of hunting that really he kind of came up
Speaker 1: with on his own. And his story is pretty unique
Speaker 1: because his family, they as in the tradition of where
Speaker 1: we come from, with a ran hounds on deer and
Speaker 1: still due to the state people down there, it's legal
Speaker 1: and it's great. I absolutely love running deer with dogs.
Speaker 1: So James grew up with that, but from an early
Speaker 1: age he he didn't like it. Not for some ethical reason,
Speaker 1: he just you know, he just did. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to go out in the woods and hunt them. And
Speaker 1: his uncle taught him how to track deer in the leaves,
Speaker 1: which is difficult. James learned how to still hunt, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, just moving through the timber very slow and
Speaker 1: going to good areas where he thinks deer are and
Speaker 1: just spending time on the ground moving. Number two, he
Speaker 1: he hunted out of tree stands some but just learning.
Speaker 1: He learned how to use topographic features where these how
Speaker 1: these mountains funnel these deer into certain predictable areas year
Speaker 1: after year, And he learned how to hunt these saddles
Speaker 1: and pinch points and heads of hollows and flats, and uh,
Speaker 1: he's a big scrape hunter. He always liked hunting scrapes,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's what we talked to James about
Speaker 1: when you came down, Mark. Yeah, and I was so
Speaker 1: glad that you were willing to introduce me to him
Speaker 1: and let's spend some time there, because it was it
Speaker 1: was eye opening in a lot of ways. First and
Speaker 1: foremost just seeing the success he's had down there. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of shocking when I was imagining the type
Speaker 1: of terrain he was hunting and how difficult it likely was,
Speaker 1: and you told me about it, and then seeing you know,
Speaker 1: and hearing about what he does and how he's actually
Speaker 1: I mean, he's really filled the walls up with a
Speaker 1: whole lot of great stories and deer and uh, that
Speaker 1: was great. But then just hearing from like just getting
Speaker 1: a chat with him, I mean, as you said to
Speaker 1: us prior to meeting him, he was as nice as
Speaker 1: you could get, as welcoming as you could ever imagine
Speaker 1: someone like this could be. Um, I mean, just incredibly
Speaker 1: kind and generous with his time and his insight, and
Speaker 1: he gave us, you know, me in particular. I know
Speaker 1: you've learned a lot from him over the years, but
Speaker 1: me in particular gave me a really quick rundown on
Speaker 1: some really helpful ideas for what I should be thinking
Speaker 1: about and planning for when I head into to hunt
Speaker 1: this kind of way. But I guess I probably should
Speaker 1: rewind just a little bit and set the stage more,
Speaker 1: because you know, we we headed to James because he
Speaker 1: had hunted in the way that we're gonna hunt. But
Speaker 1: to start Clay when I when we approached you, we
Speaker 1: we were talking last year, I think, and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: we've got this new show, and I think it'd be
Speaker 1: pretty cool to come down hunt with you and and
Speaker 1: get like a genuine Arkansas experience. Why why was the
Speaker 1: hunt that we ended up having that genuine Arkansas experience
Speaker 1: that you thought I should have. We because we were
Speaker 1: gonna take a mule heading into the heading to the
Speaker 1: mountains of public land, camp out there and and hunt
Speaker 1: these hard to find big woods, big mountain deer in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Why was that the experience you thought that I should have,
Speaker 1: well Mark, because I like you so much. I wanted
Speaker 1: to share the gold of Arkansas that number one. Uh No,
Speaker 1: There's a ton of different places we could have gone
Speaker 1: that would have been better, you know. I mean what
Speaker 1: we did. What did was really probably the hardest way
Speaker 1: to kill a deer here. We we have a broad
Speaker 1: range of habitat and types of hunting in Arkansas. You know,
Speaker 1: you get over into the Arkansas Delta near the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: and you've got as good at white tail hunting there
Speaker 1: is probably anywhere in the country in certain stretches. I mean,
Speaker 1: really it's like hunting the Midwest. And and then you
Speaker 1: get into so where I live in the Ozark Mountains
Speaker 1: up here on private land and the Ozarks kind of
Speaker 1: some of these cattle pasture um or you know, cattle
Speaker 1: farm type private land hunting. We've got quite a few deer.
Speaker 1: You know, we could have gone hunting and I would
Speaker 1: have anticipated seeing seven to twelve deer a day, you know.
Speaker 1: And in but this what I call interior mountain hunting
Speaker 1: is the most traditional style of hunting because that is
Speaker 1: what basicly the first white Europeans that came here were doing.
Speaker 1: They were using equal animals and doing long hunts. And
Speaker 1: that is really what James did when he was younger.
Speaker 1: And he didn't do it because it was cool there.
Speaker 1: He didn't do it because he was trying to replicate something.
Speaker 1: He did it just because that's that was a good
Speaker 1: way in the in one of the most successful ways
Speaker 1: he knew how to kill dear was to use an
Speaker 1: equal animal, get back in as far as he could
Speaker 1: with as much supplies as he could carry, and stay
Speaker 1: back there and hunt and a lot of times solo.
Speaker 1: And uh so that's what he did. And I was
Speaker 1: always very intrigued by his stories and that kind of hunting,
Speaker 1: and so that's what I started doing five or six
Speaker 1: years ago under James. I've never what's kind of sad
Speaker 1: is I've never actually hunted with James like that. You know, he's, uh,
Speaker 1: he's in great shape for his age, but he's he's
Speaker 1: not he's not like he was when he was forty
Speaker 1: or fifty, you know, And so we've not been able
Speaker 1: to do it together. But but I've got mules. He
Speaker 1: used horses, and he told me how he hunted and
Speaker 1: what he did, and you know he basically he would pack.
Speaker 1: He would use his horse to and put panniers over
Speaker 1: it with your big pouches that drape over a riding saddle,
Speaker 1: which is key, and you'd carry all your supplies and
Speaker 1: walk the horse in. And we're not hunting. This is
Speaker 1: not like the West. We do not have the big,
Speaker 1: vast country that the West has. So you know, you
Speaker 1: might be walking in two to five miles and carry
Speaker 1: all your stuff with you, and then when you get there,
Speaker 1: you make your camp. And then once you get to
Speaker 1: camp and you have all your stuff unloaded, you've got
Speaker 1: a riding saddle on your animal, and you can use
Speaker 1: that animal to ride, or you can just leave your
Speaker 1: animal at camp and use it to haul everything out,
Speaker 1: including aim, which is exactly what we did. I mean
Speaker 1: we not to give away the not to give away
Speaker 1: too much here, Mark, but I mean we we kind
Speaker 1: of pulled it off just the way we hoped we would,
Speaker 1: and it it's fantastic and it's a it's a fun
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say it's the most efficient way. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it's the best way, but you know,
Speaker 1: with the way that we hunt. We absolutely every one
Speaker 1: of us there gets to choose the way we want
Speaker 1: to do something, and that is valuable. And to me,
Speaker 1: this kind of hunting is valuable partly because of how
Speaker 1: much I love James, but but also because this is
Speaker 1: the most This is the way that guys would have
Speaker 1: been doing it back in the early eight hundreds when
Speaker 1: they were market hunting, digger and bear, you know. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to dig into that more, but maybe a
Speaker 1: little later, since we only have Tyler for little bit,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to kind of pick your brain. Tyler.
Speaker 1: We you know, we got to bring you in on
Speaker 1: this and you got to meet James and you get
Speaker 1: to see and hear his stories. And then you were
Speaker 1: following along with us, capturing the experience as me and
Speaker 1: Clay did what he just described, which was we threw
Speaker 1: our gear on the mule on day one and we
Speaker 1: hiked into this big stretch of public land, hiked all
Speaker 1: the way in, set up camp. What what was your
Speaker 1: impression of this as we got kicked off? Um, well,
Speaker 1: it was great to go meet James, you know, and
Speaker 1: from the beginning kind of got just seeing his uh,
Speaker 1: his garage full of you know, antlers and deer. Got
Speaker 1: fired up thinking it was going to be low to
Speaker 1: a deer, but as we got kicked off, it was
Speaker 1: a little slow. Um, and maybe I was a little
Speaker 1: bit sorry about you know it, Um, I was a
Speaker 1: little bit uh because you didn't see much much sign
Speaker 1: of deer. So I was maybe a little bit um
Speaker 1: over zealous by seeing his garage and all the success
Speaker 1: he had. Granted that was over fifty sixty years of
Speaker 1: hunting or more. I can't remember how old he was
Speaker 1: or when he started hunting, but it was it was
Speaker 1: cool to do it in this you know, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's not Western style but kind of
Speaker 1: long hunting style to go out in camp and check
Speaker 1: out the landscape. But it was definitely Uh. After a
Speaker 1: couple of days of scouting and hiking around, I was
Speaker 1: a little bit nervous that we were in a success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I mean, James, his wall, he said,
Speaker 1: is a lifetime resume there. It definitely did give me
Speaker 1: even more hope than I was expecting because I thought,
Speaker 1: going into this man, this is going to be really hard.
Speaker 1: We're not going to see deer or very many at
Speaker 1: least and uh, you know, if if somehow this happens,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a miracle. And then we go to
Speaker 1: James's place, take a look at his his wall there,
Speaker 1: and he starts telling some stories, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden I started thinking, Man, maybe it's better down here
Speaker 1: than I realized. Um, but we we we get up
Speaker 1: the next morning, we load up, go to a trail
Speaker 1: head and then you know, throw the panniers on the mule,
Speaker 1: load all of our stuff on there. We've got camping gear,
Speaker 1: we've got hunting gear. I'll tell you. One thing I
Speaker 1: was surprised by, Clay was the fact that you run
Speaker 1: your climbing sticks unattached, just randomly thrown all over the
Speaker 1: place and not back. Come on, Mark, come on, I
Speaker 1: should have known this was gonna come up. I gotta
Speaker 1: give you a little gotta give you a little crap
Speaker 1: for that one. Well, I wouldn't say that that's entirely
Speaker 1: that's not my always m O. But sometimes you gotta
Speaker 1: stick them where you can stick them. When you got
Speaker 1: a you know, paniers and you're trying to just cram
Speaker 1: stuff and little little nooks and crannies. We caught it.
Speaker 1: We cat also carrying them. Sorry, go aheady. We also
Speaker 1: were caring on a lot of camera gear on your
Speaker 1: mule was caring a lot of camera gear too, So
Speaker 1: you're just probably trying to We're trying to just stuff
Speaker 1: anything we could in that mule. Oh yeah, thank your
Speaker 1: mule for that. Yeah, meal was super handy for all
Speaker 1: the heavy equipment we were bringing in there. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was really neat to get to
Speaker 1: I've never done that. I've never been with any kind
Speaker 1: of stock animal, horse or mule going into hunt. I
Speaker 1: don't Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that. So
Speaker 1: just having the the added benefit of that was neat.
Speaker 1: And then there's just a certain I mean kind of
Speaker 1: how you talked about Clay, how this whole style of
Speaker 1: hunting is a throwback and it's it's much more for
Speaker 1: the experience than just the efficiency. Um. I just felt
Speaker 1: a certain lure to hiking into the mountains with with
Speaker 1: a critter like that, just felt like I was tapping
Speaker 1: into something different, something old, or something richer. Uh that.
Speaker 1: I just remember walking in that morning and you know,
Speaker 1: we hid. We headed in at first light, so the
Speaker 1: sun was still rising. It was a beautiful orange sunrise
Speaker 1: on the horizon. I remember the color of the sky
Speaker 1: was was really notable. And We're hiking along and I'm
Speaker 1: hearing the click click click click click cluck kind of
Speaker 1: slowly working behind me, and it was just I just
Speaker 1: remember smiling. I have a distinct memory of just smiling
Speaker 1: and and thinking in my head, man, this is this
Speaker 1: is it? Like this is pretty cool? And and it was.
Speaker 1: We hiked in there, got to a spot where you
Speaker 1: thought would be a decent place to set up a
Speaker 1: spike camp, and we threw up tents and put your
Speaker 1: mule on the line. And then the idea was to
Speaker 1: try to get a late morning scouting slash hunting session
Speaker 1: in before before actually having an evening hunt. And the
Speaker 1: idea was to spend this part of the day with you, Clay,
Speaker 1: see what you do, see what your perspective would be
Speaker 1: on the landscape. UM, you would kind of share with
Speaker 1: me everything you think I should be thinking about, the ideas,
Speaker 1: the strategies, the tactics that might work here. UM, show
Speaker 1: me around. And then after that I was going to
Speaker 1: head out on my own. So you and myself and
Speaker 1: then our two Cameramon Tyler and another guy, Joe took
Speaker 1: off for hike. Um, do you want to walk me
Speaker 1: through you know, what was on your mind? Like, what
Speaker 1: was it that you wanted to show me? What were
Speaker 1: the most important ideas or tips or concepts that you
Speaker 1: in your mind were thinking, Man, you've got to get
Speaker 1: this across the mark for him to have success. What
Speaker 1: were those key things as we were walking out there.
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, when you're hunting like this
Speaker 1: or any kind of backcountry hunting, where you're camping and hunting,
Speaker 1: is you want to pick a campsite that is far
Speaker 1: enough away from where you feel like the game is
Speaker 1: that you're not going to spook them, but also not
Speaker 1: so are away that you wear yourself out coming back
Speaker 1: and forth the camp. And Uh, I'd say we got
Speaker 1: close to right. We probably I like to be about
Speaker 1: a half a mile from where I think I'm gonna hunt.
Speaker 1: Because what you found out because you guys ended up
Speaker 1: going in further than we anticipated, mark, is that you
Speaker 1: guys were hiking like a mile and a quarter or
Speaker 1: something to get to where you were hunting, or actually
Speaker 1: to the farthest place eventually. Yeah, and and that's a
Speaker 1: little bit too far just to utilize to just be efficient,
Speaker 1: but you kind of gotta it'd be better to be
Speaker 1: conservative than not, because when you bring in an equine animal,
Speaker 1: you're bringing in a little more disturbance than they're used
Speaker 1: to and you have a camp and you know you
Speaker 1: might have a fire. So that was number one. And
Speaker 1: we were on a big, big, long ridge top and
Speaker 1: essentially why I brought you there was we were gonna
Speaker 1: hunt saddles. And these saddles are essentially low spots, low swags,
Speaker 1: like the seat of a saddle in between two high
Speaker 1: points on a ridge. So if you have a if
Speaker 1: you have a long ridge, that ridge is not gonna
Speaker 1: be just flat all the way across the top. It's
Speaker 1: gonna kind of go up and down and up and down,
Speaker 1: and those low spots, deer that are traveling from let's
Speaker 1: say the north side to the south side of the
Speaker 1: mountain are gonna travel through those saddles. And any given
Speaker 1: ridge might have multiple saddles on it, and that's what
Speaker 1: we were trying to capitalize on that. And I said
Speaker 1: this before to mark there in any given set of mountains,
Speaker 1: there are probably ten things that deer do every single
Speaker 1: day that is predictable. So this is just one of
Speaker 1: the things that they do, and you're trying to calculate
Speaker 1: the amount of time you have to hunt, and a
Speaker 1: I bet a deer is gonna do this one thing
Speaker 1: during the time I'm hunting. And what we were doing
Speaker 1: was hunting saddles. And the reason I like the saddles
Speaker 1: high on these ridges is that the wind that's consistent. Typically,
Speaker 1: if you get off down on the side of the
Speaker 1: mountain automatically, your wind is much less predictable, and there
Speaker 1: are ways to predict what will do and you can
Speaker 1: hunt the sides of mountains effectively, for sure. But that
Speaker 1: was the main thing. And what I was hoping to
Speaker 1: find was signed in some of these saddles, and the
Speaker 1: deer aren't gonna make a ton of sign right in
Speaker 1: the middle of a saddle necessarily, you know, there might,
Speaker 1: but but we were looking forward. We were hoping to
Speaker 1: find some rubs. I was hoping to find a big scrape.
Speaker 1: And one of the saddles we came through, which we
Speaker 1: really didn't, but we walked three quarters of a mile
Speaker 1: or so and found just a little bit of bucks
Speaker 1: on a few acorns. And I had seen some year
Speaker 1: in that area the weekend before. I've done a little
Speaker 1: bit of scouting before, and so we felt like there
Speaker 1: were some deer in the area, but certainly it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of place with your typical standards for assessing
Speaker 1: deer sign You wouldn't go there and go, Holy cow,
Speaker 1: this place is smoking hot. I mean at all? Would
Speaker 1: you agree, Mark? And I think one of that that
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest takeaways for me from our
Speaker 1: our morning spent together, was that you kept reiterating to me,
Speaker 1: you know, don't expect Michigan sign or Iowa sign or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. One I think I think we decided we
Speaker 1: need to make a chart or something where we would say,
Speaker 1: one Arkansas rub equals ten Michigan rubs, one Arkansas scrape
Speaker 1: equals fifteen Michigan scrapes, or something like that, because it's
Speaker 1: just so different. And I think that if you hadn't
Speaker 1: told me that, I would have been much less confident
Speaker 1: in these areas. I would have been thinking, man, we
Speaker 1: gotta keep looking because there's there's nothing here. You know,
Speaker 1: one scrape means nothing to me at home, um, But
Speaker 1: to me or to you, you're saying, hey, one scrape
Speaker 1: here equals a lot back home. So that was very
Speaker 1: eye opening and helpful for me. And you know, I
Speaker 1: want to reiterate to that this was what I would
Speaker 1: call interior mountain hunting. Like you could go down into
Speaker 1: other areas in that county closer to disturbance, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it be clear cuts where the cattle pastures, whether
Speaker 1: there was you know, human disturbance and creating edge and
Speaker 1: different stuff, and you would find just number one, more
Speaker 1: deer and so they would leave more sign. So this
Speaker 1: was interior mountain honey, which is where there's the least
Speaker 1: amount of deer. But that's just where we were, so
Speaker 1: we kind of knew what to expect, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, but I'd say that that was
Speaker 1: the main thing we were working on here, and you know,
Speaker 1: just hunting these mountains, there's other there's other things that
Speaker 1: you can look for, you know, benches, the heads of
Speaker 1: these big holl us, so there's big, big long finger
Speaker 1: big long ridges, and they have fingers that fall off
Speaker 1: these ridges, the heads of hollows. A lot of times
Speaker 1: there's game trails and these fingers that fall off ridges
Speaker 1: are typically you'll find there might be a mile a
Speaker 1: mile long ridge and there might be five fingers that
Speaker 1: fall off of that ridge, and you might scout those
Speaker 1: fingers and and find one finger that has some buck
Speaker 1: sign and some acorns, and you know, deer move up
Speaker 1: and down that mountain on that finger. That would be
Speaker 1: a good strategy. But there's a lot of things you
Speaker 1: could do. But we were hunting high saddles. Can you
Speaker 1: can you elaborate a little bit on how you like
Speaker 1: to hunt the saddles, because that was one of the
Speaker 1: things like as we started walking along and you were
Speaker 1: talking about the importans in these saddles, which is something
Speaker 1: that James had reiterated as well. Um, you know the
Speaker 1: thing I was wondering the most of I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a few saddles out here, I'm gonna scout them.
Speaker 1: I'm likely going to spend some time in them. But
Speaker 1: what's the smartest way to actually set up on one? Um,
Speaker 1: That's where my head very quickly jumped up to what
Speaker 1: were your thoughts on that when you're sitting one of
Speaker 1: these what's the right way to think about how you
Speaker 1: position yourself, how you think about wind, how you expect
Speaker 1: dear to move through them, all that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you just have to predict the wind, based upon
Speaker 1: the prevailing wind direction and the forecast, you know, and
Speaker 1: if the winds out of the north, you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to sit set up on the on the southern edge
Speaker 1: of the saddle. So you know, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: if you envision the saddle just as like a square,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's got there's there's for four
Speaker 1: directions that you could go. You know, you would you
Speaker 1: would set up on the the down wind side of
Speaker 1: the saddle, hug that side, and then your access point,
Speaker 1: whatever side of the saddle you're coming into it from.
Speaker 1: You're gonna try not to walk through that saddle because
Speaker 1: ground sit in the mountains is is critical because these
Speaker 1: deer don't they're not smelling humans very often. And you know,
Speaker 1: you can try to cover your ground scent. You can,
Speaker 1: there's stuff you can do, but still you you hope
Speaker 1: to not have to cross through. So the ideal situation
Speaker 1: is that you would slip into a saddle and you
Speaker 1: would go to the favor hug the favorable side so
Speaker 1: that you know, eighty percent of the places that deer
Speaker 1: travels if he comes through that saddle, You're gonna be
Speaker 1: good on wind and you just gotta be able to see.
Speaker 1: You just that's the main thing. You just you just
Speaker 1: gotta be able to see as much as possible in
Speaker 1: that saddle. And if you hunt these saddles year after
Speaker 1: year a lot, you you'll learn, Okay, the deer typically
Speaker 1: hug that side over there, and maybe there would be
Speaker 1: nothing that would indicate that that's just a inside of
Speaker 1: this micro environment. That's typically what they do. And the
Speaker 1: saddles that you were hunting were pretty big, bigger than most,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you could have probably shot a
Speaker 1: hundred hundred plus yards and lots of places you were hunting,
Speaker 1: which isn't entirely normal. Usually you're hunting a saddle that
Speaker 1: maybe it's forty fifty yards across, you know, you can
Speaker 1: almost you could bow hunted almost. So those are the
Speaker 1: main things mark just visibility to be able to see
Speaker 1: all the way across it, and then just getting where
Speaker 1: the wind is most favorable. Yeah, okay, so here's another thing.
Speaker 1: Then when it comes to these setups, I recall another
Speaker 1: one of these questions I had was when do you
Speaker 1: set up and post up in a spot like this
Speaker 1: and hunt a saddle versus doing what James had done
Speaker 1: a lot in the past. And which you know, we
Speaker 1: were talking about a lot with him, and you and
Speaker 1: I were talking about which was still hunting through these places,
Speaker 1: so actually creeping, creeping through the mountains on foot hoping
Speaker 1: to see one. And you had told me, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what James does, and sometimes you do that,
Speaker 1: but you also like to get up actually in a
Speaker 1: climbing saddle, you know, up at a tree and hunt
Speaker 1: a saddle to which is what we just described. Um,
Speaker 1: can you elaborate on that, you know, why you choose
Speaker 1: to sit up in a tree more often than still
Speaker 1: hunt and why James maybe still hunted a lot, uh
Speaker 1: and less so posted up. What's your take on that?
Speaker 1: You know, I think a lot of that is just
Speaker 1: personal preference. You know, you just have so much time
Speaker 1: to hunt, and and James spent a lot of his
Speaker 1: time still hunting on the ground, moving and a lot
Speaker 1: of that was just personal preference. But I think I
Speaker 1: would do that more, and do that more at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a hunt when I'm trying to scout, because
Speaker 1: that the great thing about being mobile on the ground
Speaker 1: is and still hunting is that you are hunting, so
Speaker 1: you're in the game, you know. But you're also scouting.
Speaker 1: And what I would do is I might still hunt
Speaker 1: for a morning and all of a sudden find what
Speaker 1: I'm looking for, you know, find that saddle that's got
Speaker 1: some sign in it, and I go, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: sit here for two days, I'm gonna kill a deer
Speaker 1: and and then get up in a tree and hunt.
Speaker 1: Um so, and I think to James back, James was
Speaker 1: most actively still hunting in the sixties, seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: and they're just weren't a lot of deer. So I
Speaker 1: think he learned that, man, I could I can sit
Speaker 1: on the side of this mountain or in a tree
Speaker 1: for a long time and not see a deer, I
Speaker 1: gotta go find one. I think now that we have
Speaker 1: more deer, it's probably not as critical to move, and
Speaker 1: it's a little it's just more conservative to just setting
Speaker 1: a tree and wait for him. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: the the real story, you know what I mean? Now?
Speaker 1: That said, though, I know that you have done some
Speaker 1: of it, and James talked to you a lot about it,
Speaker 1: so you know, if one were to want to steal
Speaker 1: on which was one of the things I did want
Speaker 1: to do a little bit. Um what's here like one
Speaker 1: of the best practices when try to do that, or
Speaker 1: at least you know, what's the things that have worked
Speaker 1: for you or that you think are important when doing
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Because that was that was one
Speaker 1: of the deals I was hadn't spent any time doing
Speaker 1: in the past. I was particularly interested in seeing like, Okay,
Speaker 1: could this kind of thing work out here? So James
Speaker 1: was almost exclusively still hunting using a firearm, whether it
Speaker 1: was a muzzleloader or during the rifle season. And number one,
Speaker 1: you got to get the wind in your favor, so
Speaker 1: you pick where you're gonna go based upon the wind direction.
Speaker 1: Number Two, you're moving, you're moving slow through You're moving
Speaker 1: very slow through areas where you feel like there could
Speaker 1: be dear So maybe you you know, you get out
Speaker 1: of your truck and you walk to hundred yards regular speed,
Speaker 1: you know, and you get back there and you start
Speaker 1: seeing a little bit of sign, you slow down. James
Speaker 1: has said many times to me that because the biggest
Speaker 1: question you have when you're doing this, well, these deer
Speaker 1: can hear me walking and dry leaves? Why am I
Speaker 1: not spooking every animal around here? And uh? And he
Speaker 1: just said, you know, deer walk and make noise. But
Speaker 1: what deer do is they take a series of steps
Speaker 1: and then they stop. They take a series of steps
Speaker 1: and then they stop. And he said, you can about
Speaker 1: walk right up to a deer if you do that,
Speaker 1: And it makes sense. I mean, we've all watched deer
Speaker 1: and deer's out there feeding and it hears something, what
Speaker 1: does it do? It picks up its head and it
Speaker 1: watches and after some time it puts its head back down.
Speaker 1: And you know, you obviously you're not trying to get
Speaker 1: right up on the deer. You're just trying to get
Speaker 1: within sight of the deer. And he's had a lot
Speaker 1: of success doing that. And I can't say that I have.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I've just not spent a ton of time
Speaker 1: still hunting like that. Nine percent of the time I'm
Speaker 1: I'm stand hunting the mountains or hunting on the ground.
Speaker 1: Just and uh. But then number what I've asked him
Speaker 1: several times is how do you know when to walk fast,
Speaker 1: when to walk slow? How much time to spend? And
Speaker 1: he just kind of laughs and he says, you know,
Speaker 1: you just go with your gut, you know, And he said,
Speaker 1: I might I might spend a day inside of a
Speaker 1: quarter mile stretch, but always moving just a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, but he also might might walk much
Speaker 1: further than that. And there are times when when he's
Speaker 1: moving fast, times when he's moving slow, you know, using rises.
Speaker 1: Probably the final thing that I hear him talk about
Speaker 1: is using these rises and changes in topography to just
Speaker 1: creep over just you know, if you get a little
Speaker 1: flat and you kind of come up to that flat,
Speaker 1: you know, just creep your eyes over and just go
Speaker 1: real slow while your body is being shielded by the train.
Speaker 1: Just kind of probably standard standard stuff that Western spot
Speaker 1: and stock guys would understand. So so we did a
Speaker 1: little bit of both of those things. I'll uh foreshadow
Speaker 1: here a little bit and and say that we did
Speaker 1: some of the stand hunting up in the saddle up
Speaker 1: in a tree, and then we also tried some of
Speaker 1: this creeping along still hunting stuff. And before we lose Tyler,
Speaker 1: he's on a plane and about to leave. I do
Speaker 1: want to get Tyler you're quick perspective on what you
Speaker 1: thought about the two different styles of hunting without giving
Speaker 1: away what actually happened. Um, what did you think about
Speaker 1: getting up into his saddle for the first time in
Speaker 1: hunting in a tree. That was something we had to
Speaker 1: teach you like that week. What do you think about
Speaker 1: that versus when we were doing the creep along still hunting.
Speaker 1: What was your experience of those two things? Um, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was fun to get up in the
Speaker 1: tree and learn that process. But you know, as I've
Speaker 1: done a lot more filming on hunts in you know,
Speaker 1: the West where you're hiking around and and so I after,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a little bit of a do
Speaker 1: after a few hours in the tree and we weren't
Speaker 1: really seeing much. I was like thwilling my thumbs a
Speaker 1: little bit. But the spotting stocks was fun. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: definitely that like you were talking about, you know, like
Speaker 1: like James said, moving like a deer. Um, take a
Speaker 1: few staffs stop, take a few steps stop. We had
Speaker 1: that program going where I was what twenty yards behind
Speaker 1: you bark and then I was just I was just
Speaker 1: trying to film you from afar and like and just
Speaker 1: kind of walking you off and do the uh you know,
Speaker 1: just be the deer, and just I kind of enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: It was nice, you know, walking a beautiful part of
Speaker 1: the country, even though we weren't really seeing much of
Speaker 1: the time, but both were you know, had their I
Speaker 1: mean we weren't seeing much deer and either either scenarios.
Speaker 1: But you know, there was when you're stuck up in
Speaker 1: the tree, you uh, I feel like You're like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something over there, and maybe I have that
Speaker 1: like scatter brain mentality where I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we should go check something else out. But once you're
Speaker 1: in the tree, you're kind of you're there, right if
Speaker 1: you guys know better than anybody. But so yeah, we
Speaker 1: uh I kind of say I would hear the spot
Speaker 1: and stock to send the cameraan because you're moving around
Speaker 1: all the more. But but it was they were not
Speaker 1: you know, both not really say we weren't seeing there.
Speaker 1: So either way we were doing it, we were not
Speaker 1: seeing dear so you could walk around and look for
Speaker 1: deer or stand tree on my saddle and results. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that was kind of a nice thing about it,
Speaker 1: was that it was actually, um, you know, we had
Speaker 1: those options. So in some hunts where you're just stuck
Speaker 1: doing one thing, you're you're just stuck with it and
Speaker 1: that's the way to do it, and you have a
Speaker 1: certain level of I don't know if it's stress, but
Speaker 1: just um discontent. Knowing that well, there's no other change
Speaker 1: you can make in this case, at least, you know,
Speaker 1: I was able to said, well, let's change it up,
Speaker 1: and then you get this new boost of enthusiasm, a
Speaker 1: little bit more excitement and optimism again. And you know,
Speaker 1: and that's that's actually what we did, because we hunted
Speaker 1: that first night in the saddle. I was able to
Speaker 1: sneak in down this ridge, got to one of these saddles.
Speaker 1: It had been a spot where we were when we
Speaker 1: were scouting that first morning. We found one little, tiny
Speaker 1: little rub that was the only sign we found. Um,
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, there's this little rub. There were
Speaker 1: a bunch of acorns in the ridge back behind us,
Speaker 1: and then now here's this saddle, so let's let's watch it.
Speaker 1: So you and me and Joe all climbed up into
Speaker 1: trees sat up there that night and at you know,
Speaker 1: the last half hour of daylight. So we did have
Speaker 1: one dough move across the saddle way off in the distance,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I thought that was that was
Speaker 1: encouraging to at least see a deer um. But the
Speaker 1: next morning we sat the same spot and saw nothing.
Speaker 1: And so this is where having these other options was
Speaker 1: pretty appealing, because after seeing one deer over the course
Speaker 1: of a lot of hours sitting in that tree, you know,
Speaker 1: it was pretty easy for me to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we've got another card we can pull here, let's get
Speaker 1: on the ground, let's still hunt, let's scout, and let's
Speaker 1: try to find something. You know, that's that's a little
Speaker 1: bit more um oh, that's a little bit more promising.
Speaker 1: So we had that option, which which definitely helped helped
Speaker 1: a lot. That's a good point about having those I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about it like that, but like getting
Speaker 1: that new enthusiasm from having to get a couple of options.
Speaker 1: I mean in the moment, I didn't really think about that,
Speaker 1: but that it's to the good point. But it also
Speaker 1: can make the itch to switch mode is a little
Speaker 1: bit too. You know, you're like, okay, this is working.
Speaker 1: You know, you can get a little bit that way.
Speaker 1: But we saw a fox that morning. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: That was cool to see that. That was that was
Speaker 1: a cool encounter. So so yeah, like you know, like
Speaker 1: me and Tyre were saying, it's it's nice to have
Speaker 1: these options and these things to work with. UM. And
Speaker 1: after that that first morning, on the second day, I
Speaker 1: decided to get out of the tree and kind of
Speaker 1: poke around a little bit more. UM. You know, one thing,
Speaker 1: Clay that we haven't talked about but but did actually
Speaker 1: feature into our scouting was looking for acorns. UM, can
Speaker 1: you elaborate a little bit on how important acorns are
Speaker 1: and this part of the country and this specific scenario,
Speaker 1: because you know, I remember thinking two things. There are
Speaker 1: two things that really well, three things that stood up
Speaker 1: to me if there was like the big three that
Speaker 1: was in my mind the entire time I was hunting
Speaker 1: on my own after spending time with you and James.
Speaker 1: It was one, trust your terrain feature that being the settle.
Speaker 1: Number two was remember sign here is different, so don't
Speaker 1: get you know, too concerned by the lack of it.
Speaker 1: And number three was acorns. Why is that so important?
Speaker 1: What are you looking for when it comes to that?
Speaker 1: I remember when we were walking around, you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at the ground and looking at
Speaker 1: acorns and analyzing the acorns you found. Um, what was
Speaker 1: your take on that? So you're always looking for trends
Speaker 1: with acorns? I mean that any anybody around here. If
Speaker 1: you were just to walk up to a deer hunter
Speaker 1: in the store, their high probability you would say, you
Speaker 1: got any acorns over there, or you know, acorns falling yet,
Speaker 1: because that is just a key food source for when
Speaker 1: we're hunting and talking with talking with some of these
Speaker 1: biologists that I know this part of the country really well.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because acorns in the broad scheme of a
Speaker 1: white tail's diet are not as critical as we feel
Speaker 1: like they would be. But the time we're hunting them,
Speaker 1: it is. You know, it's there. It's their primary food
Speaker 1: source or what they're their preferred food source. And so
Speaker 1: during October November, that's what we're looking for his acrons
Speaker 1: and man acron mast. Predicting acren mast, even with our
Speaker 1: best science, is very, very difficult, and so I love
Speaker 1: hearing guys talk about acrons because all all through the summer,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be like, man, we had a
Speaker 1: frost and April and you know, my rooster crowed three
Speaker 1: times that morning, and I think the acorns are gonna
Speaker 1: make up high, you know, and we have all this
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence for why the acrons are gonna make in
Speaker 1: certain places and that's important because what happens in these
Speaker 1: mountains is that, well, actually I believe i've I've heard
Speaker 1: that two out of five years you will have a
Speaker 1: very good crop of acrons in this part of the world.
Speaker 1: So in a good crop of acrons isn't always good,
Speaker 1: because a good crop of acorns might mean that there's
Speaker 1: acrons in all portions of the elevation changes in the mountains.
Speaker 1: You know, there's acrons the pie, there's acrens in the middle,
Speaker 1: there's acorns down low. What you're the best case scenario
Speaker 1: is that there's acorns in in pockets. There's there's sections
Speaker 1: of the mountain that have a lot of acrons and
Speaker 1: other sections that don't. And so that's what I was
Speaker 1: looking for. But then there's these other obscure years, which
Speaker 1: I would call this you're kind of obscure, is that
Speaker 1: it's really hard to predict where they were gonna be.
Speaker 1: There were there were there were acrens up high where
Speaker 1: we were hunting, but not a lot, not really enough
Speaker 1: to just draw the deer in and just be like,
Speaker 1: this is where the deer gonna be because there's acrens
Speaker 1: um there were some acrons down low. There were some
Speaker 1: akrons of pie. It was hard to predict. So really
Speaker 1: what we're hoping is on any given year that you
Speaker 1: could say with certainty, man, the acorn is made up
Speaker 1: high and so that's where all the game is gonna be.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's kind of a descripture of what we're
Speaker 1: the way we're thinking and talking down there. You know, now,
Speaker 1: I remember you grabbing acorns like you. You spend a
Speaker 1: good amount of time when we did find acorns looking
Speaker 1: at them, grabbing them, scratching them with your knife, um,
Speaker 1: examining the husks, all that kind of stuff that the
Speaker 1: nut Ah and you were talking about. Well, I think
Speaker 1: this means that they're fresh, or they're not fresh, or
Speaker 1: you think this means the deer was eating them versus
Speaker 1: a squirrel or something. There's probably a lot of folks
Speaker 1: that have never taken the time to examine an acorn
Speaker 1: and really read what the story is there. Can you
Speaker 1: can you tell me what you were looking for and
Speaker 1: what you know, what details helped you determine what actually
Speaker 1: was happening or how recently it happened. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: was looking for fresh acorns that fell this year, and
Speaker 1: I think what can happen is well, first of all,
Speaker 1: there's there's to two types of oak trees that we're
Speaker 1: dealing with. We're dealing with red oaks and white oaks.
Speaker 1: White oaks fall and they sprout basic rely immediately and
Speaker 1: so they'll send out a root shoot down and they'll
Speaker 1: and then in the spring they'll send the shoot up.
Speaker 1: But what that means is that a white oak acre
Speaker 1: and begins to break down really quickly as soon as
Speaker 1: it hits the ground. That's important. Number two, the red oaks.
Speaker 1: The red oaks lay on the ground through the whole
Speaker 1: winter and don't start to sprout until the spring. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: shorter window of time that a white oak acre and
Speaker 1: is laying on the ground. And a white oak acre
Speaker 1: and will not last through the winter. It will rot
Speaker 1: or or you know when it when it sprouts, it
Speaker 1: essentially becomes not as edible to an animal. Okay, a
Speaker 1: red oak acre and falls on the ground and it'll
Speaker 1: lay there and in March it'll look and in the
Speaker 1: meat will be just as good as it was when
Speaker 1: it fell. And October and so what can happen mark
Speaker 1: is when you have a bumper crop of red oak acorns.
Speaker 1: They will persist. They just they just last longer on
Speaker 1: the ground. And you might be looking at a red
Speaker 1: oak acre and from two years ago that the hole
Speaker 1: still looks good, but it's actually rotten on the inside,
Speaker 1: just because it it didn't sprout for whatever reason, the
Speaker 1: acren didn't turn into a tree and it wasn't eaten.
Speaker 1: And you'll be walking through the woods and see a
Speaker 1: whole acren laying on the ground and it is of
Speaker 1: no value to wildlife. So I you know, you pick
Speaker 1: up an acre and you try to determine if it's
Speaker 1: from if it's this year and it's good food for wildlife,
Speaker 1: or it's last year's haul that's empty. And so the
Speaker 1: way you can tell is just the weight of it.
Speaker 1: You know, old acre is gonna be phil hollow, and
Speaker 1: then you crack it open and you know it's just
Speaker 1: mush on the inside and and uh, you crack open
Speaker 1: a good acren and you have this white acorn nutty
Speaker 1: me inside of it. And I think a lot of guys,
Speaker 1: if they're not really paying attention, might go into an
Speaker 1: area and think, man, I saw a lot of acorns, Well,
Speaker 1: they saw last year's acrens. You know that that's that's
Speaker 1: the long version of what I was doing. And then
Speaker 1: you're also trying to look into in the trees as well,
Speaker 1: especially the time of year we were there. We were
Speaker 1: there in mid October, so there were still acorns in
Speaker 1: the trees, and an acorn in the tree is actually
Speaker 1: as valuable as an acorn on the ground, because that
Speaker 1: means that tomorrow that stand is gonna be as good
Speaker 1: as it is today or maybe better because sometimes and
Speaker 1: and there's so many variables and acron production, different trees
Speaker 1: produced different amounts. So you still have two white oaks
Speaker 1: that look the exact same there are twenty yards apart. Genetically,
Speaker 1: one of those might be better than the other and
Speaker 1: just produce more acrens there. You know, there's some unfavorable
Speaker 1: advantage to that one being there and that one being there.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of oh that I did a
Speaker 1: podcast with with Craig um Harpologists Craig Harper, Yeah, Craig Harper,
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee. We did a whole nerd out session
Speaker 1: on acorns and oak trees and it's just fascinating the production,
Speaker 1: how they produced and whatnot. But you know. So, so
Speaker 1: we're walking through the woods and you know, if you've
Speaker 1: got bunoculars, you can look up in some of these
Speaker 1: trees if you can get side of the canopy. But
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking up hoping to see a bunch
Speaker 1: of acorns in a tree, you know. Um, so that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the acorn story. You said that one acorn in
Speaker 1: the tree is as valuable as and acorn on the ground.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's some kind of like saying there.
Speaker 1: You know how they say, like a bird in the
Speaker 1: hand is better than two in the bush or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's gotta be some way we can relate to
Speaker 1: an acorn in the trees a valuables and acorn on
Speaker 1: the ground. There's something there about life we could figure
Speaker 1: out some day. Ye yep. But yeah, so we're looking
Speaker 1: for a corns. Found some, but not a lot. Uh acorns? Sorry,
Speaker 1: uh and uh. He did the saddle the first evening,
Speaker 1: saw the one dough hunted there again in the morning,
Speaker 1: saw nothing. And so I thought to myself, well, I
Speaker 1: only have two two days or two and a half
Speaker 1: days left, and I was I was worried about sitting
Speaker 1: anyone place for a whole lot of time, given how
Speaker 1: little I had to work with. UM, So I thought,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's let's try to poke around a
Speaker 1: little bit more here, explore and and try the still
Speaker 1: hunting thing. And so that's what I did that afternoon. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you had left and you were hunting a totally different area. Um.
Speaker 1: Was there anything of note that you saw or that
Speaker 1: you did when you were hunting on your own? Um,
Speaker 1: that might be, you know that were there any things
Speaker 1: that you were doing that were different than what I
Speaker 1: was doing that it might be useful to understand about
Speaker 1: different ways of hunting this train. You know, Mark, what
Speaker 1: I primarily did the whole time you were hunting was
Speaker 1: I was. I was scouting. For the most part. I
Speaker 1: did very little sitting. I think I hunted one afternoon
Speaker 1: where I stayed in the same spot for you know,
Speaker 1: four hours and didn't move. The entire rest of the
Speaker 1: time I was, I was on my mule and I
Speaker 1: was just covering a bunch of ground, just trying to
Speaker 1: find I went into some new areas. Um. So I was.
Speaker 1: And the reason I wasn't hunting with you is I
Speaker 1: didn't want to get in the way or use up
Speaker 1: some potential spots that you would use. So you know,
Speaker 1: I was at camp with you at least one night there,
Speaker 1: but I had gone off and I didn't really find
Speaker 1: anything encouraging during the three days that I was stomping around.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't even think I saw I do
Speaker 1: not believe that I even saw it deer. And I
Speaker 1: mean I went miles and miles on that mule. And
Speaker 1: if you're on the back of a mule, if you
Speaker 1: see a deer, you're just gonna spook it most of
Speaker 1: the time. But if you see deer, that's a day
Speaker 1: to point, a very good day to point of Okay,
Speaker 1: there was a deer there at nine fifteen this morning,
Speaker 1: So why is he there? And you know, will it
Speaker 1: be there tomorrow or would there be more deer through
Speaker 1: here today? You know, so just scouting, speaking of that,
Speaker 1: speaking of you, Scotty on your mule, I remember I
Speaker 1: was worried. One of the things I was worried about
Speaker 1: out there was how do these deer react to human presence?
Speaker 1: Because you know, there's some places where deer are super
Speaker 1: kg about, you know, walking around there, and if if
Speaker 1: you walk through an ara once that might you know,
Speaker 1: shut them down. There's other places where they're so used
Speaker 1: to people being around that it's not as big as
Speaker 1: a deal. Um. I remember thinking, man, we're hiking, you know,
Speaker 1: to get to that first settle. As a mile and
Speaker 1: a half to get to that first settle, I hunted something. Man,
Speaker 1: I just hiked a mile and a half across this
Speaker 1: ridge and I just laying down a ground trail that
Speaker 1: will eliminate all this area behind me the whole time.
Speaker 1: And then later after that two days of hunting or
Speaker 1: the two sets of hunting and seeing nothing, and then
Speaker 1: I decided, okay, I want to do some still hunting
Speaker 1: and explore more. I want to scout more to figure
Speaker 1: this out. In the back of my mind, I was
Speaker 1: also constantly asking myself, well, how far can you push
Speaker 1: it without spook and stuff too much? I was always
Speaker 1: trying to I just didn't have the context or history
Speaker 1: to know, like how sensitive our deer in a big
Speaker 1: woods area like this on public land to to me
Speaker 1: being here or me having been there yesterday. What's your
Speaker 1: take on that? What's your experience been? Are they forgiving
Speaker 1: or you know, once you walk through an area hunting
Speaker 1: area once or twice, it's it's going to be shot.
Speaker 1: You know, I would say these deer probably somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle of that pendulum. You know, there's certainly not forgiving.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think this is not
Speaker 1: true wilderness in this in the very by definition it's not.
Speaker 1: And so these deer experienced humans coming through there. And
Speaker 1: you know, you're always trying to minimize the amount of
Speaker 1: scent that you're leaving. And I've I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of different responses from deer with ground scent, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had and I know you have to mark.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes you walk into a stand and you know,
Speaker 1: an hour later a deer just walks right over your
Speaker 1: ground scent and doesn't even show any sign of nervousness.
Speaker 1: And at other times you walk in and you know
Speaker 1: you've done whatever you're gonna do for sent control, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know a lot of times I just stomped
Speaker 1: my feet into the dirt and try to get dirt
Speaker 1: up on my boots. Sometimes I like using cover sense
Speaker 1: to cover ground scent, whether that's doe, estris or something
Speaker 1: not an attractant. Well, not estra stough. I think you
Speaker 1: can use estra stough, but a doe dough, urine, synthetic
Speaker 1: dough you're in just something that's not gonna spook them.
Speaker 1: Or if you're hunting in areas with livestock walking through
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you got there, cattle, cattle, uh, cattle droppings, whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, get that on your scent on your boots
Speaker 1: and cover that ground center because you are leaving ground
Speaker 1: scent wherever you're going. But boy, it's just unpredictable. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't too worried about us walking through those saddles
Speaker 1: and and dear and if you did it every day
Speaker 1: for a week. Yeah, I was more concerned about just
Speaker 1: our scent, especially with Camberman and whatnot, just blowing off
Speaker 1: down the side of the mountain and settling down into
Speaker 1: where those deer were bedding and then going like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's like five guys up on top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: So so this this is the perfect place then to
Speaker 1: dive into the thorny controversial topic of scent control. Clay,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been targeted. Yeah, well we've talked
Speaker 1: about in the past a little bit, but I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, since we spent some time together in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and then you know, we're doing a whole one week
Speaker 1: in November show where uh you dove into this topic
Speaker 1: a little bit, uh, accusing accusing me of being like
Speaker 1: a bag of pooh and thinking that, yeah, the bag
Speaker 1: sent for you, but the pooh inside the bag isn't.
Speaker 1: I think you made some kind of analogy like that,
Speaker 1: So I may have. I wasn't directly targeting you, though, Mark.
Speaker 1: So here's here's what I want to get your perspective on.
Speaker 1: You and me were talking about this a little bit
Speaker 1: with your dad too, and um when we we actually
Speaker 1: stayed at your parents house one night in between trips,
Speaker 1: and uh, you you told me that your position on
Speaker 1: scent control has actually evolved a little bit and that
Speaker 1: you understand my perspective maybe a little more than you
Speaker 1: did even months ago or a year or something. Can
Speaker 1: you can you give me a the what your stance
Speaker 1: on scent control has been over the last you know,
Speaker 1: five to ten years or whatever, and then be what
Speaker 1: is your slightly evolved perspective as of right now if
Speaker 1: that's still true? May it's not true? Yeah? Now, basically,
Speaker 1: my dad grew up inside of the he came of
Speaker 1: of fruition in his hunting world right at the time
Speaker 1: that commercial scent control products began to come out in
Speaker 1: the early to mid nineties, so he used them extensively.
Speaker 1: So I grew up with a I mean you you Mark,
Speaker 1: he could go up to Michigan with you right now
Speaker 1: and hunt and you and him would I really feel
Speaker 1: like beyond like the exact same page with every just
Speaker 1: the very detail oriented sent control you know, not dressing,
Speaker 1: not using your hunting clothes in the truck, not you know,
Speaker 1: pulling your rubber boots out of a scent contained box
Speaker 1: with baking soda. I mean like he, he did it
Speaker 1: to the fullest extent. So I grew up hunting that
Speaker 1: way for years, years and years and years. And when
Speaker 1: I went to Call and kind of left the Gary
Speaker 1: Newcomb deer camp, it was it was more an issue
Speaker 1: of just practicality, Like I had limited amount of time
Speaker 1: to hunt, limited money to buy sent control products, and
Speaker 1: I started hunting different though than he did because of terrain.
Speaker 1: I started hunting uh private land where we were hunting
Speaker 1: the same stands over and over based on terrain features
Speaker 1: in these lands. And I pretty much just was like
Speaker 1: the wind's blowing out of the south if I'm setting
Speaker 1: in that tree. It doesn't matter what I smell like.
Speaker 1: And so I started not using sent control practices and
Speaker 1: and I really poke fun. And if your people are
Speaker 1: listening to this and they've heard me, I love to
Speaker 1: poke fun at people because I think it's fun. I
Speaker 1: think it's fun to argue about this stuff because it
Speaker 1: is so insignificant in the sense of this is really
Speaker 1: if this is our biggest problem in life. If your
Speaker 1: biggest problem is deciding whether you should use syn control
Speaker 1: or not, that you've got a fantastic life, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's why this is a fun topic. But it's
Speaker 1: highly divisive. So but my comments are not lightly spewed
Speaker 1: out there just from you know, two seasons of anecdotal evidence. Basically,
Speaker 1: I started not using scent control and just hunting the wind,
Speaker 1: and I killed deer, you know, I mean it just
Speaker 1: it just didn't matter. If the wind is predictable, you
Speaker 1: know where the deer are gonna be, you know, seventy
Speaker 1: percent of the time, it doesn't matter what you smell like.
Speaker 1: That's just the bottom line. So that's the way I
Speaker 1: hunted real hard for lots of years. And then I
Speaker 1: was like, I recognized the amount of energy effort, time,
Speaker 1: money that people were putting into scent control, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of like, hey, you don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: just use the use the in Okay. That So that
Speaker 1: that's section one. Section two is this idea which you have,
Speaker 1: and and I agree with this. There there are things
Speaker 1: you can do. There's science behind some sent control products
Speaker 1: that probably reduce your human odor, that do reduce your
Speaker 1: human od that's science. What Clay Nucom says is that
Speaker 1: in his experience, I have not found that amount that
Speaker 1: it does reduce your scent to be a functional value
Speaker 1: in the field. And that's kind of where I stand.
Speaker 1: That being said, Um, I mean, I just think because
Speaker 1: I'll tell you two years ago, I started kind of
Speaker 1: getting back into hunting a specific deer is what it was.
Speaker 1: I had a big deer that was on some really
Speaker 1: small properties, and so I thought, man, I'm gonna dial
Speaker 1: the scent control back up. Let's just try it, let's
Speaker 1: just go all in. So two years ago, uh, I
Speaker 1: started washing my clothes, all the all the clothes, and
Speaker 1: set free bags, baking soda in the in the bags,
Speaker 1: pine and cedar chips in there, using the spray, using
Speaker 1: ozone products. And now this might be anecdotal. The first
Speaker 1: time that I put all my energy back into sent control,
Speaker 1: I went out and had dear smell me at daylight.
Speaker 1: And I'm not kidding Mark and I I almost took
Speaker 1: it as a sign just like you're wasting your time.
Speaker 1: Uh really it just had deer just blow at me
Speaker 1: that just hardly got down wind. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: I think it's because he go in the woods with
Speaker 1: a gallon of tuna fish with you every day I do.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be used against me. No, No, see
Speaker 1: at the at at the sick Control, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done that. You know, I wouldn't have done it. Um No,
Speaker 1: so can't Can you reduced human odor with these products? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do. I believe you can. Um do the ozone
Speaker 1: products work. I have a hundred percent believe the science
Speaker 1: of ozone. I mean it works. What I have yet
Speaker 1: to find is to work real consistently in the field. Um.
Speaker 1: I am swayed when people tell me that it works,
Speaker 1: like I had. I've had two guys in the last
Speaker 1: week and they didn't know kind of my banter about this,
Speaker 1: and they were like, yeah, man, I started using ozonics
Speaker 1: when I was in a in a in a deer
Speaker 1: blind and I stopped getting smelled. And I'm like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I sorry to argue with that. Also, there's a ton
Speaker 1: of guys that I know that have had the same thing,
Speaker 1: the same scenario, and it not work. I guess my
Speaker 1: my philosophy is that there's only so much energy, effort,
Speaker 1: time and money that we can put into hunting. And
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for limiting factors inside of hunting. What
Speaker 1: is the real the real problem, What is the real
Speaker 1: thing that keeps you from being successful? And I have
Speaker 1: found for me that it is not that sent control
Speaker 1: products are not in the sphere of things that make
Speaker 1: my success rate go way up. That that's all um,
Speaker 1: that and and and and then I guess the other
Speaker 1: core component of what I'm saying is that, yes, sent
Speaker 1: control products can reduce your scent, but I do not
Speaker 1: think that as significant in the field. Because if clay
Speaker 1: Nukem is it a odor with no scent control, wind
Speaker 1: is blowing forty yards away a deer, a doe walks through,
Speaker 1: my scent blows smells me like crazy. Scenario to Clay
Speaker 1: Nukem using full throttle scent control using ozone products deer
Speaker 1: walks forty yards down from his scent into his into
Speaker 1: his wind. I find that, dear still spooks, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it just it just still spooks. Now, was
Speaker 1: there less out or yeah? Did the deer? How did
Speaker 1: that dear interpret that? I don't know, but I've not
Speaker 1: seen that, dear. Just go, well, he's probably not there.
Speaker 1: He's probably he was probably here two hours ago, and
Speaker 1: then just walk through it. So anyway, no, So Mark,
Speaker 1: aside from me, like, I'm not trying to incite argument,
Speaker 1: like what what do you think about that? Do you think?
Speaker 1: What would you say? Yea? So, so first I will
Speaker 1: acknowledge that you're you're onto like something that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense and that I grew with in in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, which is sevent the time when
Speaker 1: the winds predictable, you don't need to worry about sent
Speaker 1: at all, and it's it's not a big deal. And
Speaker 1: you know, it depends on how much energy you want
Speaker 1: to put into it, and if the return on that
Speaker 1: energy is not worth it, especially if scent of the time,
Speaker 1: you know, the end is just the way you want it,
Speaker 1: and you can play the wind and deer will never
Speaker 1: be down wind of you, then you're great and you're
Speaker 1: gravy and your gold and then it's fine. And I
Speaker 1: also understand that there's certain situations where you simply can't
Speaker 1: pull off a strong scent control regimen because of the
Speaker 1: limiting factors of the hunt. Like the hunt that we
Speaker 1: did in Arkansass that we're talking about, there's no way
Speaker 1: I could have really practice cent control because we're camping
Speaker 1: up there for a week. You know, you're sleeping in
Speaker 1: the same stuff and the tent you're having, Like, even
Speaker 1: if we wanted to, it would be nearly impossible. And
Speaker 1: if we did want to try to practice scent control
Speaker 1: on that hunt, it would be miserable. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: can't have a fire, can't you know? You have to
Speaker 1: have all sorts of different clothes and try to bring
Speaker 1: extra storage to keep stuff clean, and try to bring
Speaker 1: all this extracent control stuff. It's just not realistic in
Speaker 1: a situation like that. So in that scenario, I get it,
Speaker 1: like it's just not gonna work. Um. But and and
Speaker 1: to the point you made in the One Week in
Speaker 1: November episode, You're like, hey, you can do everything you
Speaker 1: want to the bag, but if there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: crap in the bag. The deer is still gonna smell you, right,
Speaker 1: And you were saying the bag is like all your
Speaker 1: clothing and try and keep that scent free. Doesn't change
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a stinky human in that bag.
Speaker 1: All of that is true. All that is true and accurate,
Speaker 1: and all that I think makes it really hard for cent.
Speaker 1: It makes it really really hard, nearly impossible to keep
Speaker 1: deer from smelling you. That's said, Yes, seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the time there's consistent winds or seventy percent of the time,
Speaker 1: you know where deer are gonna be, and you know
Speaker 1: you can just make sure your wind is safe. What
Speaker 1: I'm worried about is that other thirty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned how right right for you? You're limiting
Speaker 1: factor isn't the wind. There's all these other bigger problems
Speaker 1: you need to deal with to kill a deer. Well,
Speaker 1: what if I've already checked the boxes and all of
Speaker 1: the other things, and what if I'm hunting in the
Speaker 1: place where Man, it's that you just don't know where
Speaker 1: the deer are gonna because there's so many deer here
Speaker 1: and it's unpredictable how they move or there's shifting winds
Speaker 1: um or or guess what these are wild animals And
Speaker 1: and yes, seventy percent of the time that buck is
Speaker 1: going to go out in front of me through the
Speaker 1: pinch point. But what about that one time on November
Speaker 1: seven when he does something crazy and he comes behind
Speaker 1: me in the place I've never seen the buck go before.
Speaker 1: What do you do in that situation when you are
Speaker 1: only counting on the wind being in your favor and
Speaker 1: you didn't do anything else. I'm worried about these little things,
Speaker 1: those little moments. Where can I stop you right there
Speaker 1: because I've got a question that that's a fantastic example.
Speaker 1: But have you seen dear be dead down wind of
Speaker 1: you within yards that you honestly knew that they got
Speaker 1: your wind, but they went ahead and walked through it.
Speaker 1: And let me let me put a caveat on that too.
Speaker 1: I think there wind is so un scent and wind
Speaker 1: are so unobservable by human senses. We can't smell at
Speaker 1: that level. Number one, Number two, you can't see it
Speaker 1: with your eyes. And number three like because I could
Speaker 1: tell you times when I've seen dear walk dead down
Speaker 1: mind wind to me and not smell me and it
Speaker 1: was because the thermals there is because it's something I
Speaker 1: couldn't see. It wasn't that they that I fooled him
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't use them sink control. Do you have
Speaker 1: some real examples of when a deer should have smelled
Speaker 1: you and didn't because of your sin control practice? Great question,
Speaker 1: and and so my answer to that is absolutely hundreds
Speaker 1: of hundreds of examples of that. But I will preface
Speaker 1: that by saying that I have if I have hundreds
Speaker 1: of examples of and maybe maybe it's a dozens, but
Speaker 1: dozens or hundreds of examples were dear definitely were down
Speaker 1: wind of me, and I could tell you for a
Speaker 1: fact that I observed them analyzing the wind. If that's
Speaker 1: the case, I can also tell you that there are
Speaker 1: thousands where they got down wind of me and still
Speaker 1: did wind me. So all this is to say that
Speaker 1: if you do every if I were, if I do
Speaker 1: everything right. So first I'm talking about there's a small
Speaker 1: percentage of situations where the wind, but we're playing the
Speaker 1: wind wouldn't help me. Okay, so we're talking about this
Speaker 1: thirty time, and then within that thirty percent time, if
Speaker 1: I do everything right, I'm still getting winded maybe on
Speaker 1: average seven times at ten. So now I'm talking about
Speaker 1: there's a thirty percent of the time you're hunting where
Speaker 1: this applies, and then all that only thirty percent of
Speaker 1: those times do I actually pull it off. But that
Speaker 1: is worth it for me. So because if that one time,
Speaker 1: if I'm just getting five percent better chance of killing
Speaker 1: a deer or killing the deer I'm after, or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, that little bump is worth it to me
Speaker 1: because of the time and energy I invest into all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I want that little extra bump. I
Speaker 1: would if if the one time that this actually works
Speaker 1: happens to be the time when it's a oh that
Speaker 1: walks through this down wind hole and she stops and
Speaker 1: she sends you know when. The reason why, I can
Speaker 1: tell you without a doubt, like not anecdote, I can
Speaker 1: tell you I could point to dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: deer that did this. I can tell you with confidence
Speaker 1: that they were within the cone of my wind and
Speaker 1: they were considering what's up there is because typically when
Speaker 1: you're using an ozone product um which helps this a lot,
Speaker 1: they'll stop, they'll hit your wind trail, and they're win
Speaker 1: that wind cone and they'll be like, oh, there's something
Speaker 1: up there. I've had this happen with ozone. I think
Speaker 1: also using like a cover like nose jam or something
Speaker 1: helps with this um where they will hit your wind
Speaker 1: and they will stop and be like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: something and they'll stop, they'll lift their nose up, they'll
Speaker 1: kind of shift their head around, they'll lick their nose,
Speaker 1: they'll stare in your general direction. And then I've had
Speaker 1: this happen so many times, and it's like the moment
Speaker 1: of truth. You see him hit the wind, and then
Speaker 1: you sit there and you're thinking, well, what's it gonna
Speaker 1: be today? Is am I gonna pull it off today?
Speaker 1: Or no? And you're sitting there on the edge of
Speaker 1: your seat and one of two things happens. Either they
Speaker 1: spook like normal and you're like, well, it didn't work today,
Speaker 1: or they analyze the situation. They sit there, they sniff,
Speaker 1: they sniff, they lick, they stare, and they say, hmm,
Speaker 1: there's something up there. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's not enough to really spook, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't like the situation. And O those turn and
Speaker 1: walk back the way they came or option number three
Speaker 1: is they'll do the thing, they'll sit, they'll think, they'll lick,
Speaker 1: and they'll say nothing, keep going. And I've had all
Speaker 1: three of those things happen. But I've had enough deer
Speaker 1: that moved right on through. They analyzed it and deemed
Speaker 1: it safe. I've had that happen so many times, Clay
Speaker 1: that I even though even though seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: time they don't do that, the thirty percent of the
Speaker 1: time that they do that is like such a miracle
Speaker 1: and such a useful thing to me that I want
Speaker 1: to do all that work to get that of the
Speaker 1: third percent in time. Um Because if that's a dough
Speaker 1: with a buck behind her that I end up shooting,
Speaker 1: that was worth it. If that's a if that's a
Speaker 1: if that's a single dough that if she did spook
Speaker 1: and started blowing, fifteen deer that we're behind her would
Speaker 1: blow up, or the fifteen deer that are in front
Speaker 1: of me would blow up in the whole night's screwed.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that one deer doesn't spook
Speaker 1: because that might be the key to everything. Um So,
Speaker 1: so it's worth it to me, But I do know
Speaker 1: that it's it's not gonna work most of the time.
Speaker 1: Even when you do everything right, it's a pain in
Speaker 1: the butt. And there's certain situations when it isn't even necessary.
Speaker 1: All those things are true. Yeah, now that's a I
Speaker 1: can get behind that mark um for real. You know,
Speaker 1: we joke a lot about or we we get we act.
Speaker 1: You know, I've intentionally gone on and on about SA control.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, and and I mean, if
Speaker 1: you say you've seen that then and you believe you,
Speaker 1: then uh, that's great. I think. I think, I think
Speaker 1: what gets under by and for whatever reason, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a jerk and so I key in on stuff like this.
Speaker 1: But like the guy that you know drove in his
Speaker 1: truck to his deer stand and gets out and like
Speaker 1: sprays down with scent shield and is is thinking that
Speaker 1: he's a hundred percent eliminating his odor. It's just the
Speaker 1: product just doesn't work that good, you know. But I
Speaker 1: know how you're doing it, and I know how my
Speaker 1: dad does it. And if you if you can go
Speaker 1: to that level of legitimate scent control, then it could
Speaker 1: be worth it. But you gotta do a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, you know, you gotta be you gotta
Speaker 1: be highly detail oriented, which you're fantastic at. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so is my dad and and I can be
Speaker 1: a hund percent to and have been. And so that's
Speaker 1: a thing if if you're gonna do it is one
Speaker 1: of those things. If you're gonna do it, you gotta
Speaker 1: do it a thousand percent. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: to think that you could do that level of stint
Speaker 1: control and like a hunt we were doing, it's just
Speaker 1: really not it would I don't know anything is possible,
Speaker 1: but it would have been ridiculous to even try. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like the way I look at it is, Man, if
Speaker 1: there's any chance I can do this a little bit better,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't I. It's like, Okay, I know that, like
Speaker 1: most people, it's hard to guarantee that every single time
Speaker 1: you take a shot at an animal it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a perfect shot. Right. I can't tell you that every
Speaker 1: time it's gonna work perfectly. Right, Some days a deer's
Speaker 1: gonna do something crazy. Some days I might pull the trigger,
Speaker 1: some days the wind might blow it. Like so, if
Speaker 1: if I were to say, well, since I'm never going
Speaker 1: to get it perfect, I might as well not practice
Speaker 1: and try, you know, that doesn't make sense to me,
Speaker 1: So the same thing goes a win like, well, I
Speaker 1: know I'm never gonna get my scent control perfect, and no,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna get I'm never gonna not gonna get
Speaker 1: deer spooky me. So I'm not gonna try then like that.
Speaker 1: To me, I'm like, no, if I can, if I
Speaker 1: can get a little better, if me practicing a little
Speaker 1: bit more this year might improve my odds for the
Speaker 1: next shot by one percent more, I'm gonna keep practicing
Speaker 1: more if I can do a little bit more with
Speaker 1: sent control, and maybe that helps me one percent more
Speaker 1: two percent more this year. Yeah, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: do that a little more. So that's that's the way
Speaker 1: I look at it. But I see all sides of it, um,
Speaker 1: and I definitely definitely agree like man, doing one or
Speaker 1: two of these things is basically just a facade. If
Speaker 1: it makes you feel better, okay, great, it's not going
Speaker 1: to help you a lot. I think. I think, like
Speaker 1: you said, you gotta go, You gotta do it all
Speaker 1: to get some kind of benefit from it. Um. But
Speaker 1: anyone who tells you that they are one sent free
Speaker 1: and never ever get winded by deer uh. And never
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who claims there instable in this regard,
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time believe in them. Yeah. Now, hey,
Speaker 1: here's here's one other this is this, here's one other thought. Mark,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about statistics, and we're talking about a
Speaker 1: real world not like on paper, but like real world
Speaker 1: functional stuff, that's gonna it's gonna make us better. And
Speaker 1: and we all have to evaluate, like what what do
Speaker 1: we have the resources to invest in? Is? And and
Speaker 1: I guess I guess I'm thinking about what you're saying,
Speaker 1: is that we are talking about what you just described
Speaker 1: is a minuscule amount of favorability in your favor if
Speaker 1: you're really looking at it, because how many times the
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the thirty percent, how many times do
Speaker 1: you go hunting in a year and see a shooter
Speaker 1: buck twice? And so you're talking about or tell me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, I'm talking about in a thirty year
Speaker 1: period of time, with those statistics, maybe sent control would
Speaker 1: help you killed maybe one dear, maybe two dear? Is
Speaker 1: that is that that right now? And then my my
Speaker 1: combat the thing that I'm I'm not trying to combat.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: I'm distilling down the way I think I would. I
Speaker 1: would say, if there's that much energy going into extent
Speaker 1: control for me to kill one more buck over the
Speaker 1: period of let's just say ten years, I could take
Speaker 1: that energy and put it into something else and maybe
Speaker 1: kill two more bucks. You see what I'm saying. Totally
Speaker 1: get what you're saying. And and the only uh thing
Speaker 1: I would offer differently is that I'm not worried just
Speaker 1: about like that big mature buck winning me. I really
Speaker 1: care about every single dell that might win me, because
Speaker 1: every dough that wins you could be the dough that
Speaker 1: blows your whole hunt, especially, And that's that's what I'm
Speaker 1: saying too. It's like, how many times, though, is that
Speaker 1: gonna play out like that? Because usually a dose spooks
Speaker 1: or dough walks through your sent and she doesn't have
Speaker 1: a shooter buck behind her. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I do. But but what I'm more referencing is, and
Speaker 1: this is because I hunt a lot in high deer
Speaker 1: density areas, and like, if a dose, even if there's
Speaker 1: not a buck on the dough, even in early season,
Speaker 1: next season, yeah, next week. Well, not even that. I'm
Speaker 1: talking like, if a dough blows out on hunt today,
Speaker 1: on December whatever, mid December, I'm not worried about they're
Speaker 1: being buck behind her. But if a doe starts blowing,
Speaker 1: that's my night. Like if I have one dough start blowing,
Speaker 1: my entire night's done. If that happens every single one
Speaker 1: my hunts, I'll never ever see a mature buck um.
Speaker 1: And there's so many doughs where I hunt, there's always
Speaker 1: dough is gonna be done with you. It's nearly impossible
Speaker 1: in a lot of the places that hunt to ever
Speaker 1: get a place that's bulletproof from a wind perspective. There's
Speaker 1: I mean I hunted places where you can see forty
Speaker 1: night and you just know like eventually something's gonna get
Speaker 1: down wind. I mean most of these places, and I
Speaker 1: you know, there's just a couple of places where you
Speaker 1: can hunt with a pond. But when you hunt flat
Speaker 1: country in agg land, where there's not water, there's not
Speaker 1: big valleys, there's nothing to act as like a blocker
Speaker 1: for wind where deer won't ever go, you just know,
Speaker 1: well it's gonna happen. And so the question is will
Speaker 1: I have a night where a doe starts blowing and
Speaker 1: gets down winto me and alerts the entire two acres
Speaker 1: to my presence, Or can I get away with that
Speaker 1: dough passing through giving me the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 1: and then all the other deer that come through up
Speaker 1: wind to me? Just keep doing the thing that is
Speaker 1: almost in every single hunt occurrence for me, Clay, and
Speaker 1: I need those three days out of tend to work
Speaker 1: out to ever see a mature buck. Yeah, man, that
Speaker 1: makes a ton of sense. And that what you just
Speaker 1: said to about about flat ground, Like almost every place
Speaker 1: I hunt over here has a significant topographic you know,
Speaker 1: elevation change, and if you're on the edge of something,
Speaker 1: you're sent I mean, there's just first of all, there's
Speaker 1: a high probability they aren't gonna come from that way.
Speaker 1: You can almost know that, and that your your sin
Speaker 1: is gonna be blowing off the side of a mountain
Speaker 1: kind of inconsequentially, you know. So now, and that's a
Speaker 1: great point is that apples to apples. Were not comparing
Speaker 1: apples to apples when we're talking about our white tail hunting, really,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But no, Hey, everything you
Speaker 1: said is a percent reasonable, Mark, we have done it.
Speaker 1: We have come to terms here. No longer would it
Speaker 1: be this hostility between us. I am saying, great job, Mark, Kenyon.
Speaker 1: I believe you, and and I'm right back at the clay.
Speaker 1: I can see your perspective on it, and there's it's
Speaker 1: it's warranted, and I can totally understand your argument. So
Speaker 1: the the nasty tension, the oozing disc comfort that we've
Speaker 1: experienced whenhere around each other, can now be gone. You
Speaker 1: can just put it to bed. So so okay, moving
Speaker 1: on from sank control that taking care of Day three
Speaker 1: or Hunt three or whatever this was. It was the
Speaker 1: second day of the hunt, but it was the third hunt,
Speaker 1: so that that's the second morning saw nothing. So I
Speaker 1: decided to still hunt that afternoon. And I'm curious what
Speaker 1: you think about what I did here, Clay, because I
Speaker 1: decided to move on from that saddle after hunting it
Speaker 1: and evening in the morning, and I wanted to slowly
Speaker 1: still hunt my way down this ridge, looking for any
Speaker 1: new sign, looking for anything that might clue me into
Speaker 1: there having been a a bit more activity here, and
Speaker 1: then push on past where you and I had ever
Speaker 1: been to before together. Because that that morning before we
Speaker 1: had gone past the first settle, and we got we
Speaker 1: got close to the second. There's another settle on the storge.
Speaker 1: We got to the edge of that and then turned around.
Speaker 1: In my head, I thought, all right, I'll still hunt
Speaker 1: my way through that. I'll get to the second saddle,
Speaker 1: I'll examine it again, and assuming there's nothing new, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep moving and I'm gonna head into new untouched
Speaker 1: country and see what I find. Well, what happened is
Speaker 1: I get I come up out of the first saddle.
Speaker 1: I get to the side of this ridge, and I
Speaker 1: remember seeing a bunch of acorns and I was like, cash,
Speaker 1: I don't remember there being so many acorns here. So
Speaker 1: I stopped for a second. I was just kind of
Speaker 1: looking around and thinking. And then I look off to
Speaker 1: my left and I see a little knob come off
Speaker 1: of the main ridge that I hadn't noticed the previous morning.
Speaker 1: And there's this knob, kind of like a spur point
Speaker 1: that came off the main ridge, and I noticed it
Speaker 1: was just thick. For whatever reason, there was not a
Speaker 1: mature canopy over this little knob, and it was really
Speaker 1: thick new growth. Some of the thickest stuff that I
Speaker 1: had seen so far, and I thought to myself, Man,
Speaker 1: if I were a buck, I would be betting off
Speaker 1: this little spur ridge that comes off. This's the thickest,
Speaker 1: nastiest stuff I've seen yet. And I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's just watch that, like, let's just edge this way.
Speaker 1: I had seen all these acorns here and this little
Speaker 1: spur ridge, and I thought, I'm just gonna kind of
Speaker 1: edge my way over there and take a look and
Speaker 1: see what's going on. So I started, I left the
Speaker 1: main ridge and started dropping off to the side and
Speaker 1: just really slowly edged my way along and as Tyler described,
Speaker 1: and Tyler had to leave now because it was flight.
Speaker 1: But um, Tyler would be about yards behind me, and
Speaker 1: then my second cameraman, who we bring these two cameramen
Speaker 1: to have different angles in different coverage makes it very
Speaker 1: hard from hunting perspective. But I had him stay back
Speaker 1: like seventy eight yards and he was getting this far,
Speaker 1: far distant view. But I just didn't want three of
Speaker 1: us right together trying to walk through the woods and
Speaker 1: making all this noise. Um, So I started just lipping
Speaker 1: real quietly around this knob because the ridge was heading
Speaker 1: up to the top of a basically a high point
Speaker 1: on the bridge, and then there's a little spur that
Speaker 1: came off there, and so I moved my way through there,
Speaker 1: and then here's a rub and then I see that,
Speaker 1: thinking all right, this is this is great. This is
Speaker 1: only the second rub I've seen. Yet I keep moving
Speaker 1: a little further another like forty yards, and here's another rub. Man,
Speaker 1: this is good. And then I move another like fifty
Speaker 1: yards around this knob, circling and here's another one. So
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I've found three rubs all around
Speaker 1: this spur point coming off the ridge, and I've been
Speaker 1: looking at my map and I'm looking at the sign.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, this is interesting. And this also happens
Speaker 1: to be just just at the head of that second saddle.
Speaker 1: So I stood there and just glassed that little brushy
Speaker 1: knob for I don't know, half an hour, maybe watching
Speaker 1: it and just seeing like maybe could there be a
Speaker 1: buck bedded down there? And yes, no, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I watched and watched it, and now we're down
Speaker 1: to the last hour of daylight maybe, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, well, this is interesting over here, but I
Speaker 1: also know there's that saddle just around the corner. So
Speaker 1: I decided to move edge down just a little bit
Speaker 1: further so I could see into that saddle as well.
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, i've got a gun. This
Speaker 1: is a muzzle loader hunt. Um I could if I
Speaker 1: can see down into this valley or this starry of
Speaker 1: the saddle and then also be tight up next to
Speaker 1: where this little spur is, maybe that's like the best
Speaker 1: of both worlds. If there's bucks cruising the side hill
Speaker 1: of the ridge, I could take advantage of it. If
Speaker 1: there's a buck coming off this little point that I
Speaker 1: thought maybe something might bet on. Given the rubs and everything,
Speaker 1: I could see that or be within range of that,
Speaker 1: and then I could also be within sight of the
Speaker 1: saddle and see if anything was crossing there as I
Speaker 1: move over. I also remember that when you and I
Speaker 1: took that first walk through this area, we had found
Speaker 1: a little scrape right in the top of the ridge
Speaker 1: in the same zone. So now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I've got acorns. I have a little scrape, and I
Speaker 1: have three rubs all right next to the saddle. And
Speaker 1: as you have described, like one rub equals ten in Michigan. Well,
Speaker 1: I've just found three plus a scrape that sounds like
Speaker 1: an amazing concentration assign. Now, Um, so I was encouraged
Speaker 1: by that, sat down next to a tree on the ground,
Speaker 1: kind of overlooking all this and figured, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna watch it and just see what happens. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: before dark here comes four does by far like the
Speaker 1: most dear we'd seen, and they come across that saddle,
Speaker 1: across the saddle, go to the other side. They're out
Speaker 1: of range. Um, and this brings up a point that
Speaker 1: we haven't covered yet, but we should, which is what
Speaker 1: I was going to target on this hunt. I've been
Speaker 1: asking you leading into the hunt. You know, what do
Speaker 1: you think is realistic that I could see? Um? What's
Speaker 1: realistic when it comes to bucks? Should I should I
Speaker 1: try to take a dough? Should I hold out for
Speaker 1: a buck? Should I hold out for an older buck
Speaker 1: like I usually? Do? You know what's possible here? And
Speaker 1: you brought this up with James, or one of us
Speaker 1: brought us up James two, and he had some really
Speaker 1: helpful insight. Um, can you just recount what that was
Speaker 1: and and what your perspective was as far as you know,
Speaker 1: I had three and a half days or whatever it
Speaker 1: was to hunt. What was your perspective? And James is
Speaker 1: as far as you know, how I should adjust my goals.
Speaker 1: You know, with three and a half days to hunt,
Speaker 1: My my advice to you was shoot any legal buck
Speaker 1: you see or legal deer. And James had the same
Speaker 1: advice right off, without hesitation, shoot any legal buck you see,
Speaker 1: you know. And um and boy, anywhere you go in
Speaker 1: the country, with three and a half days to hunt,
Speaker 1: you know, your your your odds, there are the odds
Speaker 1: are already against you for taking a mature buck. I
Speaker 1: mean even in some great place, you know. So on
Speaker 1: this kind of hunt, we were looking for just a
Speaker 1: legal buck and we hoped, we hoped it would be
Speaker 1: a nice buck, and that would kind of just be
Speaker 1: a game of odds, you know. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: not a place we had cameras up. We didn't. We
Speaker 1: had no clue what kind of deer were in the area.
Speaker 1: But so, yeah, you were just looking for for a
Speaker 1: legal deer. And you know, I think you would have
Speaker 1: shot a dough if you would have thought that it
Speaker 1: was lone and it wasn't gonna you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: being followed by a buck, and um, so, yeah, we
Speaker 1: were just this was kind of a meat hunt, you know, definitely.
Speaker 1: And when I saw those four doughs, I I even
Speaker 1: tried to slip closer to them, just on the off
Speaker 1: chance that maybe they'd come back through, or maybe there'd
Speaker 1: be another deer behind them. And and to your point,
Speaker 1: I had decided that, yeah, getting any deer on this
Speaker 1: hunt would be a heck of an accomplishment. So I
Speaker 1: was excited seeing four shooter doughs, um and and yeah
Speaker 1: that was how that night ended. Though they never came
Speaker 1: back through, no other deer came through. But I had
Speaker 1: all of a sudden a lot of confidence in this
Speaker 1: little area and figure it, Okay, I'm gonna be right
Speaker 1: back here first thing in the morning. Maybe adjust my
Speaker 1: location a little bit closer into the saddle, a little
Speaker 1: further into the saddle, so if something comes through there
Speaker 1: like they did, I could get a shop and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, fast forward to that next morning. That's what
Speaker 1: I did. I slipped in there before darker, before daylight.
Speaker 1: I found a spot where I could kind of hunker
Speaker 1: up next to a tree and hide my cameraman behind
Speaker 1: some down logs. And at first light, yeah, pretty soon
Speaker 1: after first light, here comes some doughs through that same saddle,
Speaker 1: but they were further back, almost almost out of the saddle.
Speaker 1: They were kind of side killing it um and still
Speaker 1: out of range now and kind of passing through some
Speaker 1: thicker stuff. So they came through, and after I saw that,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, maybe I need to be
Speaker 1: deeper into this saddle, because you know, now both of
Speaker 1: the groups of doughs that I had seen had been
Speaker 1: on that farther side of it. So after I don't know,
Speaker 1: an hour after daylight, now maybe I'm like, okay, let's
Speaker 1: make an adjustment again one more time. And this is
Speaker 1: where hunting on the ground I think, really appealed to
Speaker 1: me on this trip and on some subsequent hunts where
Speaker 1: I was using a firearm. You know, so often I'd
Speaker 1: like to be up high and in a tree, But
Speaker 1: when you've got a gun, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: you're you're not as um vulnerable to getting spotted by
Speaker 1: deer as you are with a bow. When you need
Speaker 1: that deer to be forty yards away, and you know
Speaker 1: you have to have them that close to get a shot,
Speaker 1: that's hard. But if I can kill him at a
Speaker 1: hundred yards or kill him at seventy yards and see
Speaker 1: them at that distance. You know, I'm not worried about
Speaker 1: them seeing me next to a tree on the ground.
Speaker 1: And so I had thought to myself at this point, man,
Speaker 1: the benefit of being able to easily adjust my location,
Speaker 1: you know, just on like, hey, I need to move
Speaker 1: and just walk thirty yards, that benefit outweighed the added
Speaker 1: stealth I would get from being in a tree, just
Speaker 1: because of how different it would be to move locations
Speaker 1: to you know, put sticks and stand up and then
Speaker 1: pull it down, move to another tree, put sticks and
Speaker 1: get up in there in the saddle again, especially with
Speaker 1: cameraman too. So in this case, I mean, I'm very
Speaker 1: glad that I was on the ground because I just said, okay,
Speaker 1: well I saw what they did here. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: get up. I'm gonna move forty yards now a little
Speaker 1: bit further. And I moved to a spot where I
Speaker 1: could see down into that sad a little bit more
Speaker 1: and shoot to the other side of it if deer
Speaker 1: dig crossed through there, sat down the ground again. And
Speaker 1: now this is what I can't remember what happened. First, Um,
Speaker 1: we had a spike come in directly behind me. And
Speaker 1: it it walked right up on one of my cameramen
Speaker 1: and spooked. What I can't remember is if that happened
Speaker 1: before or after the next thing I'm gonna tell you about.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what happened first, um, but that's not
Speaker 1: too terribly important. We did see a spike. I did
Speaker 1: not get a shot of the spike. But what happened
Speaker 1: either just before or just after the was that while
Speaker 1: I'm sitting on the ground with my back back against
Speaker 1: the tree, looking down at this saddle, I hear a
Speaker 1: twig snap to my right, kind of right back from
Speaker 1: where I'd come from. Just imagine, there's this ridge, and
Speaker 1: then the ridge dips down right into the saddle in
Speaker 1: front of me. But that ridge also there's a high
Speaker 1: point under ridge, and then it falls off on either side. Right.
Speaker 1: I was just a little bit off to the left
Speaker 1: side of the ridge, so I'm just slightly below the
Speaker 1: highest point. I hear twig snap just to the right,
Speaker 1: just off of the high point, to the right side
Speaker 1: of the ridge, and I spin my head when I
Speaker 1: hear this snap, and as I looked to my right,
Speaker 1: I just see the tip top of times just beneath
Speaker 1: the rise of the hill walking parallel to me down
Speaker 1: into the saddle right away, I whispered to Tyler. Tyler
Speaker 1: buck right next to us. I mean he was, it
Speaker 1: was forty yards away maybe, as it was slipping down
Speaker 1: the other side of the ridge, and I'd get up
Speaker 1: on my knees, pull the gun up, put the gun
Speaker 1: up against this tree I was that was sitting in
Speaker 1: front of me. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what happened, right,
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty sure I was sitting up against the tree.
Speaker 1: And then there was another tree in front of me.
Speaker 1: So I got up on my knees and put my
Speaker 1: gun against that tree and spun, and as that deer
Speaker 1: came out all from behind that rise, he stepped into
Speaker 1: an opening and it had this all happened in like
Speaker 1: five seconds, four seconds. He was there, he was in
Speaker 1: front of me. Boom shot him. Hardly had time to
Speaker 1: even look at what this buck was, but I knew
Speaker 1: it was a buck, and it was you know, a
Speaker 1: legal buck, and it took a crack shot him. He
Speaker 1: ran off like a hundred yards and then immediately went
Speaker 1: down like bedded down though, And so I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't why I didn't know, but I appeared that it
Speaker 1: wasn't an instantly fatal shot. He didn't crash down. He
Speaker 1: ran off and stopped and went down, bedded down. And
Speaker 1: so I repositioned myself first shot for the follow up shot.
Speaker 1: I could see like times in the grass, but couldn't
Speaker 1: see him. And to make a long story short, he
Speaker 1: ended up getting up, went back down, couldn't get a shot,
Speaker 1: got up, got back down, couldn't get a shot, and
Speaker 1: finally got up and stood still in one position long
Speaker 1: enough that I was able to get the follow up
Speaker 1: shot and dropped him in his tracks right there. And uh.
Speaker 1: And I had killed a buck on day three of
Speaker 1: the hunt. Walked up on him and he was like
Speaker 1: a really nice I mean not a big big buck,
Speaker 1: but a nice eight point buck. Um, it was incredible.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. Yeah, man, thrilled. Well, I really feel
Speaker 1: like for a for a three and a half day hunt,
Speaker 1: you did really good, especially in that part of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, just to kill a nice racked buck, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So I was thrilled. You. You messaged me. It was
Speaker 1: it was later in the morning, like in ten o'clock
Speaker 1: thirty out and you said shot at eight point and uh,
Speaker 1: I was. I was as the crow flies really not
Speaker 1: that far from you, I mean, you know, ten miles
Speaker 1: but it took me two and a half hours probably
Speaker 1: to get to you. And by the time I got
Speaker 1: back around and yeah, man, I was thrilled for you.
Speaker 1: It works. You know. That's the thing about these this
Speaker 1: kind of hunting is you can't be validated by seeing deer.
Speaker 1: I mean, we deer hunt because we love deer. Oh
Speaker 1: it is. It's ridiculous how fun it is to watch deer,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, like you see you see these
Speaker 1: videos of like cats like looking at a window at
Speaker 1: a bird, and you know, you can just tell how
Speaker 1: pump they are to be watching this bird. Um, we're
Speaker 1: like that with dere We love to see just watch
Speaker 1: a deer that we're not even gonna kill. And that
Speaker 1: is part of the fun of hunting. So if you're
Speaker 1: gonna hunt for four hours, you know, to not see
Speaker 1: a single deer except the one that you shoot would
Speaker 1: not be as fun as if you had seen ten
Speaker 1: before you killed the one that you did kill. But
Speaker 1: but the result was the same, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I thought would happen, is that if
Speaker 1: you sit there long enough, it's gonna work out. And uh,
Speaker 1: and the plan worked. We stuck with the plan, you know,
Speaker 1: hunting these hot stackles and with just a little bit
Speaker 1: of sign, it just kind of worked like it was
Speaker 1: supposed to, you know. Yeah, And I'll tell you that
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest challenges though, was trusting in
Speaker 1: that plan. You know, I'm so used to you know,
Speaker 1: especially when you're hunting in high deer density areas and
Speaker 1: you know, what I do most of the time is
Speaker 1: trying to target a mature buck. You know. It's it's
Speaker 1: so focused on finding the best of the best sign
Speaker 1: and high concentrations of it and getting right into the
Speaker 1: middle of it and making sure you're on the freshest, hottest,
Speaker 1: biggest sign, and you need all these different points of
Speaker 1: validation to confer them that yeah, you're actually in it,
Speaker 1: and if you're not actually in it, you're wasting your time. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the exact opposite in this kind of scenario where
Speaker 1: it's man, you're not gonna have any of that, and
Speaker 1: you simply need to trust that this thing is good enough,
Speaker 1: this terrain feature is good enough, and wait and trust,
Speaker 1: like there's nothing to tell you. Oh yeah, I'm on
Speaker 1: the right track. Oh yeah, this is you know, here's
Speaker 1: a bunch of deer okay, yep, or here's a bunch
Speaker 1: of sign yep, you're on the right track. Nope, there's
Speaker 1: none of that. And so I remember, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about that to the camera, just about how kind of
Speaker 1: unnerving that is, and how I just kept on trying
Speaker 1: to remind myself, like, trust the terrain. Just trust the terrain,
Speaker 1: to keep on trusting it, and you know, eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the possibility could work out. And unfortunately it did.
Speaker 1: Um but you know, very different than what I'm used
Speaker 1: to in in so many places. And Mark, if we'd
Speaker 1: have had more time, like ideally you would do it
Speaker 1: hunt like that and have a week to hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you'd come in and had a full week
Speaker 1: to hunt, we probably would have spent more time scouting.
Speaker 1: We we would have tried to find a little more sign,
Speaker 1: or you know, one of us would have hunted. If
Speaker 1: we'd have been just hunting together and we'd have found
Speaker 1: one spot that had a little bit of sign, it
Speaker 1: was a good historic saddle. It might have been like, hey,
Speaker 1: you hunt here tonight, I'm gonna go over there and
Speaker 1: check that out and and still hunt a little bit.
Speaker 1: But scout and you know, about day three, just like
Speaker 1: all these hunts that happened, you know, we might have
Speaker 1: found something that was way better than what you were
Speaker 1: sitting on. But boy, I just calculated that. Man, if
Speaker 1: you just sit there, if you just stay in this
Speaker 1: area and do this, especially for the short amount of
Speaker 1: time we had, then it'll work, you know. And there's
Speaker 1: a couple of different responses to to hunting, and a
Speaker 1: guy just kind of has to figure out what he
Speaker 1: wants to do and what is successful. I don't have
Speaker 1: a hard time hunkering down when times get hard and
Speaker 1: just sticking with something where like so for instance, like
Speaker 1: I could go sit in the saddle for you know,
Speaker 1: three or four hunts in a row and not see
Speaker 1: a deer and go into it on that fifth hunt,
Speaker 1: thinking today is the day I feel better than I've
Speaker 1: ever felt. You know that it's gonna work out, just
Speaker 1: because statistically, you're like, deer is gonna come through here,
Speaker 1: and I've been here four times and he hadn't showed
Speaker 1: up today. There's gotta be a deer come through here,
Speaker 1: and and it works. At the same time, one of
Speaker 1: the best hunters I know down in western Arkansas. It's
Speaker 1: a good friend of my name is Scott Brown. He
Speaker 1: won't hunt a place more than once if he doesn't
Speaker 1: see a deer, and he's hunting the exact same type
Speaker 1: train mark and Scott. Scott will tell you, boy, if
Speaker 1: you go in someplace and don't see a deer, then
Speaker 1: go somewhere else. But he also knows all that country
Speaker 1: really well. He lives there. He and that's his strategy.
Speaker 1: His strategy is, actually, I'm gonna kill a deer the
Speaker 1: first time I go in somewhere, So I am going
Speaker 1: to maximize the number of first times that I go somewhere.
Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying, And a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of times. And I like that. I like going too
Speaker 1: a totally new spot and setting up, but I also
Speaker 1: like to kind of hunker down and just wait for one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It just takes, like it does take some under some
Speaker 1: knowledge of that place, or some confidence in that place
Speaker 1: to do that, at least for me. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm fine sitting in place over and over again. If
Speaker 1: I know, like hey, I know that bucks use this
Speaker 1: area in this kind of way. I know that eventually
Speaker 1: he'll come through it might not be today, it might
Speaker 1: not be tomorrow, but it will happen. Like I love
Speaker 1: a place like that. The hard thing for me this
Speaker 1: year was just I'm just you know, I just got hunches,
Speaker 1: or I've just got a suggestion, or I've just got
Speaker 1: a man, this is supposed to work like this, so
Speaker 1: I hope so um. That was the thing that kept
Speaker 1: my mind swimming day after day in these different punts,
Speaker 1: in these different locations like this, where you're just like, man,
Speaker 1: this is how it's supposed to work. I just don't
Speaker 1: have the time and history here to tell you that
Speaker 1: I know for sure, And so you're just kind of
Speaker 1: you're hoping and wishing on a prayer. And and fortunately
Speaker 1: this case, you know it, it panned out the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to and and it was a really cool experience.
Speaker 1: And you came rolling in a few hours later on
Speaker 1: your mule, and uh, and I guess that's something worth
Speaker 1: talking about because you know, as you alluded at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, going in like we did and camping out
Speaker 1: in there and bringing the mule, it's not all about efficiency.
Speaker 1: It's really a lot about chasing a certain experience. But
Speaker 1: there is something awfully efficient about having that mule. I
Speaker 1: was we were four miles away from the truck at
Speaker 1: this point. Um, that'd be a heck of a drag
Speaker 1: or a heck of a hike out with him on
Speaker 1: my back. But we were able to grab that deer
Speaker 1: and throw it on your mule, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: make for a much easier exit strategy. What's uh, can
Speaker 1: you talk to about the best way to pack a
Speaker 1: deer out, how you did that on the mule and
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that side of things. Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: that was really cool. And that is the probably the
Speaker 1: biggest the biggest cherry on top of hunting with a
Speaker 1: mule is that you're not worried about killing one way
Speaker 1: back in there. When I years ago, I remember I
Speaker 1: was bear hunting back in the mountains and my dad
Speaker 1: would be like, well, what are you gonna do when
Speaker 1: you kill one back there? And that was a legitimate
Speaker 1: question for us back then before I had stock. Is like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, that's gonna be a major deal getting it
Speaker 1: out of there, and um, and and that's just not
Speaker 1: an issue if you've got a mule that'll carry a deer.
Speaker 1: And what was cool about this deal too, is we
Speaker 1: carried the mule carried all our stuff out and the
Speaker 1: deer so and in the same one trip. So if
Speaker 1: we'd have been back there without that, without the mule,
Speaker 1: we'd had to make a couple of trips back in
Speaker 1: and out of there to get the whole deer out
Speaker 1: and everything. And and the deer wasn't a huge body deer,
Speaker 1: you know, so it wasn't wasn't a big deal for
Speaker 1: the mule. But what this strategy that I used, or
Speaker 1: the technique that I used, was you got the deer
Speaker 1: and then you cut about a four or five inch
Speaker 1: slit in the ribs, kind of in the middle, the
Speaker 1: middle section of the ribs, and you it takes two
Speaker 1: guys and and it can be kind of hard to do,
Speaker 1: but you basically put that slit over the saddle horn
Speaker 1: on your saddle, and once that saddle horn goes in
Speaker 1: the slit of that rib, you don't even have to
Speaker 1: tie the mute the deer down. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: just draped across the saddle, but it pretty much won't
Speaker 1: come off. And so that's what we did, and uh
Speaker 1: it uh. And then you can also still put your
Speaker 1: paniards on and pack all your camp and so we
Speaker 1: came out of there and the mule had all our
Speaker 1: camp in the deer and um, you know the other
Speaker 1: the way that when I bear hunt and how a
Speaker 1: bear out, as we'll go ahead and quarter the bear
Speaker 1: and just put the quarters in there. You could do
Speaker 1: the same thing with the deer. You can quarter the
Speaker 1: deer and put the quarters you know, in your in
Speaker 1: your pants. And um, I've also seen guys tie them
Speaker 1: up like basically drape them over the saddle and then
Speaker 1: tie their feet and not do the slit the slip tactic.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I enjoy that stuff. That's it. It's pretty handy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I mean I was really glad, really glad
Speaker 1: we had iusy for that one. Uh. It was it
Speaker 1: was just it was helpful and then just cool again.
Speaker 1: It was another one of those moments. Hiking in I
Speaker 1: had a moment like that and hiking out again, like
Speaker 1: looking back and seeing seeing my buck slung over the
Speaker 1: top of a mule. I mean, that's uh, that's a
Speaker 1: site you don't get every day. And and so much
Speaker 1: of this this week was like that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the modern deer hunting experience or most of
Speaker 1: us you know, so much of hunting now is you know,
Speaker 1: at least maybe it's maybe it's just me, me and
Speaker 1: people I hang out with, but it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like your I don't know, like a like a military persons.
Speaker 1: Sneaking in like assaulting a target is sometimes how we
Speaker 1: talk about. Like you're on a mission. You've got your property,
Speaker 1: you get in there, you get your fancy scent control stuff,
Speaker 1: you get your you know, your thousand dollar bow and
Speaker 1: your saddle in your ultra light sticks, and you hike
Speaker 1: into this place or you ride an e bike into
Speaker 1: this place or whatever, and you check your trail cameras
Speaker 1: and you look at your phone and you see what's
Speaker 1: on the cameras, and you're doing all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's very intense. It's very technology heavy these days, and
Speaker 1: in certain ways it's and oftentimes solo, it's often very
Speaker 1: very end goal oriented, like I'm trying to kill this
Speaker 1: one mature buck, and if any other deer comes through,
Speaker 1: I don't care. All I care about is that one deer.
Speaker 1: And so there's these very high stakes and I sometimes
Speaker 1: catch myself like being surrounded by pressure and stress and
Speaker 1: technology and uh, you know, all these things and I'm
Speaker 1: out there and I'm like, I'm not even having fun
Speaker 1: right now, Like I'm just piste off, or I'm just
Speaker 1: stressed out, or I'm just like overworked, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And I'll catch myself sometimes thinking what are you doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I don't love a lot of
Speaker 1: these things a lot of the time, but there are
Speaker 1: days or moments and I'm like, WHOA, this is not
Speaker 1: what I wanted to be all the time, and that's
Speaker 1: why I hunt. Like what we experienced together in Arkansas
Speaker 1: seemed like such a great reset where I wasn't worried
Speaker 1: about all these things. I wasn't stressed out about a
Speaker 1: big buck, I wasn't worried about trail cameras. I wasn't
Speaker 1: bringing any technology or send control stuff out there with me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a solo tactical assault man. I was there
Speaker 1: with a group of people. We're having fun together, We're
Speaker 1: having a shared commune experience. We were out there in
Speaker 1: nature camping hoping to see some deer, but if not, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's hunting. And it was very much
Speaker 1: a throwback to how I imagine a lot of people
Speaker 1: experience these things and and I've noticed Clay with you
Speaker 1: that you seem to actively, um, you actively are seeking
Speaker 1: out those types of counter culture, counter mainstream culture experiences.
Speaker 1: Maybe like you've you've made a choice to get involved
Speaker 1: with mules. You've made a choice to go and do
Speaker 1: these kinds of you know, hunts in the big woods
Speaker 1: that are a lot harder than what you could be
Speaker 1: doing in other parts of Arkansas. You've you've done and
Speaker 1: you've explored different arenas within the hunting culture like this.
Speaker 1: You've you've gone and you've tapped into things like you know,
Speaker 1: getting into coon hunting, bear hunting, all these different things
Speaker 1: that maybe you're different than the mains dream? Um is that?
Speaker 1: Is that purposeful? Is that mindful? Is that? Did that
Speaker 1: just happen because of how you were raised? Or have you?
Speaker 1: Have you thought to yourself at some point in your life, Man,
Speaker 1: I think they had something right a hundred years ago
Speaker 1: or two years ago. I want to get a taste
Speaker 1: of that. I want to be more like that. What
Speaker 1: does any of that make sense? A resonant? You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's probably a combination of a of a
Speaker 1: lot of different things, you know, talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of romantic hunt in a sense that we did out
Speaker 1: there with mules and hunting this way with really not
Speaker 1: a lot of technology. Uh, that's not the way I
Speaker 1: always hunt, you know. I mean that that is there's
Speaker 1: probably some media bias towards that because that's what people
Speaker 1: want to talk to me about, and that's what I
Speaker 1: enjoy talking about. But you know this, Mark, I mean,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of my white til hunting is not
Speaker 1: that dissimilar to yours, you know, I mean like hunting
Speaker 1: a single buck, you know, driving a truck to where
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt, and getting out and getting in a
Speaker 1: tree saddle, and you know, so a lot of my
Speaker 1: hunting is just pretty standard. But I find that I'm
Speaker 1: pretty goal oriented over periods of time. And I spent
Speaker 1: about ten years in this part of Arkansas trying to
Speaker 1: kill a three and a half year old plus age
Speaker 1: buck with a bow. That was my goal every year.
Speaker 1: I want to kill a three and a half year
Speaker 1: old deer or above every year. And I mean, I
Speaker 1: really can't say how many years I did that, but
Speaker 1: after ten twelve years, I was like, Okay, I can
Speaker 1: do this, Like I could do this probably for the
Speaker 1: rest of my hunting career. You know fairly successfully, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I just kind of proved myself that I
Speaker 1: could do that, and so I kind of I didn't
Speaker 1: forget that because I still do that, but I moved
Speaker 1: on to something else. And really it probably was six seven, eight,
Speaker 1: ten years ago that I really started hunting National forest
Speaker 1: in the interior National Forest like what we did. So
Speaker 1: that's not something I necessarily just always targeted. You know.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, we were trying to get
Speaker 1: away from that kind of hunting, you know. We we
Speaker 1: were trying to go hunt the private land. We were
Speaker 1: wanting to go to the Midwest, we were wanting to
Speaker 1: do something different because that was tough. And so when
Speaker 1: I became an adult and after I kind of did
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, I went back to that. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know why I like that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. I just, um, I do like to
Speaker 1: continue to challenge myself. I mean, like with traditional archery
Speaker 1: would probably be a good example of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. I've hunted with a compound since I was
Speaker 1: in the third grade and used to shoot. Gary Nucam
Speaker 1: hauled me around to every bow tournament within four hours
Speaker 1: of where we live and shot a lot of uh
Speaker 1: archery tournaments and stuff, and you know, when I got
Speaker 1: in became an adult, I was like, well, I'm done
Speaker 1: with that. Um and it just wasn't that interested in that.
Speaker 1: But it had built a skill set and shooting bows,
Speaker 1: and if I started, I kept bow hunting, and I
Speaker 1: just felt like I was carrying a rifle, you know.
Speaker 1: And there was some strategic people in my life that
Speaker 1: were traditional archery hunting, and I just remember going and
Speaker 1: talking to those guys and going, holy cow, how that
Speaker 1: dude is bow hunting, you know. And and for me,
Speaker 1: I was challenged by these traditional archers and so I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't know if I can do
Speaker 1: it or not. Let's see. And so for about seven years,
Speaker 1: I really heavily focused on traditional archery, and that was
Speaker 1: my go to weapon for everything. And Mark I missed
Speaker 1: a couple of real nice bucks. I killed some deer,
Speaker 1: killed one nice buck, killed bunch of bears. That was
Speaker 1: my main target during that period was bears. And about
Speaker 1: two years ago I woke up and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've kind of done it for me,
Speaker 1: for my standards, you know, I was like, yep, I
Speaker 1: can kill stuff with a traditional bow with consistency. I
Speaker 1: love it. It's awesome, And I said, but I think
Speaker 1: I'm ready to go back to the compound. So for
Speaker 1: the last two years I've shot compound and love it,
Speaker 1: just love it. I mean, when I go out with
Speaker 1: my compound bow right now, I feel really good about
Speaker 1: just killing a deer, and um, you know, the two
Speaker 1: years from now, that might wear off and I might go,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going back to the triad. Bo
Speaker 1: I just kind of like to keep things fresh. I
Speaker 1: guess I get that. Get that you you talk about, Um,
Speaker 1: you talk about in in a number of your pieces
Speaker 1: of work, you know, like your podcast Burglaries, about some
Speaker 1: of the influences that you've had and and someone in
Speaker 1: particular who you would have liked to go back in
Speaker 1: time and shake their hand and look him in the face,
Speaker 1: like someone like Daniel Boone or one of these other
Speaker 1: long hunters, mountain men, frontier types. Um, it's funny. I'll
Speaker 1: step out of my question and as in the side,
Speaker 1: I don't remember where, but somehow my son UM heard
Speaker 1: me talk about Daniel Boone or something, and then we
Speaker 1: were riding in the car together when I was listening
Speaker 1: to one of your podcasts about Daniel Boone and so
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, this is Daniel Boone and he started
Speaker 1: listening and he's three mind you. Um. He then found
Speaker 1: the song from the Daniel Boone TV show, Like my
Speaker 1: mother in law someone must have like heard him talking
Speaker 1: about Daniel Boone. So's like, hey, listen to this song.
Speaker 1: So she heard that Daniel Boone as a man and
Speaker 1: he is. Now for the last two months since I've
Speaker 1: visited with you, he has been in full blown Daniel
Speaker 1: Boone obsession. Old like we we listened to that song
Speaker 1: every morning on repeat and the two of us will
Speaker 1: sit there singing he was a big man. And he
Speaker 1: pretends to be Daniel Boone and he I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he's in it. He obsesses about these different hunters like
Speaker 1: he's he you know, he likes to pretend to be
Speaker 1: Steve or you or Janice or whoever. But right now,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone is the top of the game for him.
Speaker 1: And I bring that up though to to just I'm
Speaker 1: curious how much these historical figures, you know, you mentioned
Speaker 1: we kind of romanticize these kind of throwback hunts a
Speaker 1: little bit. How much to folks like that enter your
Speaker 1: mind when you go out and hunt in this kind
Speaker 1: of way or you go into a place like this. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's some kind of appeal even like, like,
Speaker 1: even though I don't hunt this way a lot, I
Speaker 1: still I'm like, Wow, there's something very attractive about what
Speaker 1: that must have been like and not wanting to tap
Speaker 1: into it just a little bit. Yeah, that's a good question, Mark,
Speaker 1: And the answer is I think about it all the time.
Speaker 1: I really do. I mean I really I think about
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. I think about Frederick Gerstacker, who's as a
Speaker 1: guy that hunted in the early eight hundreds here in
Speaker 1: Arkansas that I've read a lot about. And I think
Speaker 1: about these guys all the time. And I think, what
Speaker 1: I'm kind of on the search for, among probably all
Speaker 1: of us, is personal identity. And we we unconsciously draw
Speaker 1: a lot of personal identity from sources that we don't
Speaker 1: even recognize. And you know, the question I always bring
Speaker 1: up on Burglarys and I ask people constantly is why
Speaker 1: is it important what some dude did two hundred years ago?
Speaker 1: You know, for whatever my connection would be to him,
Speaker 1: whether it would be he lived in the same place
Speaker 1: I did, or he was interested in something I'm interested in,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a family member, or maybe it's a
Speaker 1: geographic geographic connection or whatever. And that answer, the answer
Speaker 1: to that question is not entirely tangible, but it is
Speaker 1: extremely clear that we draw an enormous amount of personal
Speaker 1: identity from a bunch of stuff that happened a long
Speaker 1: time ago. And there's that that can be positive and negative,
Speaker 1: big time mark. I mean, humans are just sponges for identity.
Speaker 1: We're all trying to figure out who we are and
Speaker 1: what is the functional expression of who we are that's
Speaker 1: gonna make us be successful and have a good family
Speaker 1: and be good deer hunters and be able to make
Speaker 1: money and and and make whatever impact we feel like
Speaker 1: we need to make on planet Earth. And uh, you
Speaker 1: just can't do that absent from history. And I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm really not a history I can't say that I'm
Speaker 1: like a history buff. I don't just devour history books.
Speaker 1: But I get into certain you know, there are certain
Speaker 1: things that that I do get into, Like Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: that series like that was fascinating to me, and um
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot myself inside of all the
Speaker 1: research and talking to the all these guys about Daniel Boone,
Speaker 1: and I think there, I think it makes your outdoor
Speaker 1: experience more robust. And that is something I'm very interested in,
Speaker 1: is in all areas of life, is to have a
Speaker 1: robust human experience and whatever you're doing, whether it's with
Speaker 1: your family or your career at you know, the I
Speaker 1: T place you work at, is like to be beyond,
Speaker 1: to have a beyond the surface level understanding of what's
Speaker 1: going on, who you're working with this life. And so
Speaker 1: if I can, if I can understand about the way
Speaker 1: these long hunters hunted and the history of North American
Speaker 1: hunting and how they market hunted animals out. But then
Speaker 1: there was the reintroduction of animals to kind of in
Speaker 1: the in some places actual reintroduction. But if you know
Speaker 1: the broader picture of conservation, then it makes a ton
Speaker 1: of sense and adds a ton of value to that
Speaker 1: you know, average eight point that you killed on the
Speaker 1: side of a mountain in Arkansas that otherwise might not
Speaker 1: have that much value. So I think knowledge just almost
Speaker 1: always brings a more robust experience to anything that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so true, So much of a hunting or
Speaker 1: any kind but so much of a hunt or hunting
Speaker 1: experience is experienced between your ears too, and having that knowledge,
Speaker 1: that context, even even being able to imagine all this
Speaker 1: greater greater and struggling to articular exactly what I mean here,
Speaker 1: but but but it adds this whole other level, this
Speaker 1: whole this sense of depth to to everything. Um and
Speaker 1: and I can't help but find myself romanticizing these things too,
Speaker 1: and imagining these things and putting myself into different places
Speaker 1: in different times and thinking, man, what what have that
Speaker 1: been like? How much I would have loved to be there? Man?
Speaker 1: So often like man, I was born two years too late.
Speaker 1: Um So, if I gotta ask you, if if I
Speaker 1: could go back to any time and like plant myself
Speaker 1: in a spot and experience something I would have liked.
Speaker 1: I've thought about this a lot, so it's easy for
Speaker 1: me to answer now. I would have liked to have
Speaker 1: been on the Lewis and Clark during That's where I
Speaker 1: want to go. I want to have got to go
Speaker 1: across the Great Plains and see be one of the first,
Speaker 1: you know, euro Americans to experience what that was like.
Speaker 1: The vastness of the wildlife populations and being able to
Speaker 1: go and see what the Rocky Mountains were actually like
Speaker 1: and going up into them, and you know, all all
Speaker 1: along that trip you don't know. You don't know what
Speaker 1: you're going to come across. Your your surprised by everything.
Speaker 1: You've heard, rumors of things, you've gotten reports, some scouts
Speaker 1: on different things, but the whole way, it's man, I
Speaker 1: don't know. And then seeing the the amazing plenty of
Speaker 1: what the American West was actually like would have been amazing.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I would like to to see and
Speaker 1: do if I could go back in time. Ah, what
Speaker 1: would your spot be? Would you go back and be
Speaker 1: one of Boone's buddies, cross into the government gap or
Speaker 1: what would you choose? Okay, I'm gonna give you a
Speaker 1: layered answer, mark because I am. I am thrilled to
Speaker 1: be alive in like, I'm confident that Daniel Boone or
Speaker 1: the Fulsome Hunters were doing a podcast series on Bear
Speaker 1: Grease right now about the the Fulsome site, which is
Speaker 1: a ten thousand plush year old site where they killed
Speaker 1: thirty two bison using this unique style of point and
Speaker 1: it's just an unbelievable story. And those those guys if
Speaker 1: they if they inside of their life could peer into
Speaker 1: the life that we live, they would be more fascinated
Speaker 1: with us than we are with them looking back. You know,
Speaker 1: we we live we're trapped inside of time, which makes
Speaker 1: us think that our lives are normal and our lives
Speaker 1: are not normal at all. In this last podcast, I
Speaker 1: did a section because I was kind of trying to
Speaker 1: quantify that statement right there, and they say that there
Speaker 1: they estimate that there's been about a hundred and seventeen
Speaker 1: billion humans that have lived on planet Earth. Ever, you know,
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens hundred and seventeen billion. Right now, there's seven
Speaker 1: point eight billion people on planet Earth. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to analyze those numbers, but basically, the vast, vast majority
Speaker 1: of humans that have ever lived have lived radically different
Speaker 1: lives than us, with not the amount of technology that
Speaker 1: we have. So I say that to say, I'm I
Speaker 1: think we're we're pioneers in a major way. Like I
Speaker 1: think just like we look back at boone and go,
Speaker 1: how did he do it? How did he travel that
Speaker 1: all that way? And buckskins? And how did he handle
Speaker 1: the cold? How did he can handle the hunger? How
Speaker 1: did he handle the thread of uh Indians? How did
Speaker 1: he kill all those animals? How did he do that?
Speaker 1: You know, they they'd be saying the same thing about us.
Speaker 1: How did how did they manage the all the stress
Speaker 1: and how do they manage that this and that? How
Speaker 1: to deal with trolls on Instagram? Exactly? Yeah, but I would.
Speaker 1: I would love to go back into Boone's time. I would.
Speaker 1: I'd love to be Dan Boone's buddy. I just have
Speaker 1: a ton of respect for the guy. I just really,
Speaker 1: there's so much we know about Boone and these weird
Speaker 1: you know, and Rannella said it so well so many
Speaker 1: times on that series, But we know a ton about
Speaker 1: Boon obscure, an incredible amount of stuff we know about Boon,
Speaker 1: down to his personal emotions and opinions on really specific things,
Speaker 1: which is kind of unique. And I think I would
Speaker 1: like old Dan Boone and uh but and this is
Speaker 1: probably because I'm deep into the research and kind of
Speaker 1: the heart of this podcast. I'm fulsome but I cannot
Speaker 1: get over trying to understand the human experience that applies
Speaker 1: to Seene Hunter would have had. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: like to be in their camp. I mean, were they
Speaker 1: happy or were they just miserable? Because of the life
Speaker 1: that they lived. Where there comedians in a group? You know,
Speaker 1: there's ten people in your camp. Was there one guy
Speaker 1: that was like super funny, cracking jokes about you know,
Speaker 1: applies to see Dad jokes um, And the the answer
Speaker 1: is yes, you know he was there. There would have been.
Speaker 1: They were just like us. They just didn't have the
Speaker 1: the knowledge or the technology that we have, but they
Speaker 1: had a whole other set of knowledge. So so either
Speaker 1: applies to scene Hunter or Boone Boone, you know, being
Speaker 1: around when old Boone was around. But I guarantee you
Speaker 1: if we were there for a week, we'd want to
Speaker 1: come back. I mean, oh, just incredible. And and it's
Speaker 1: also incredible to think about the resilience of humanity too,
Speaker 1: to become whatever we have to become to survive. So
Speaker 1: we look at some of the stuff that Boone went
Speaker 1: through and just went like, how was it even possible?
Speaker 1: Because you know, me and you go out and set
Speaker 1: four hours in a tree stand and get a little
Speaker 1: bit chilled, and we're like, man, I'm I'm ready to
Speaker 1: go home, you know, and uh, and these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone once spent two years on a hunting trip
Speaker 1: by himself without you know, no rain gear, living off
Speaker 1: of wild game and what every foraged and just a
Speaker 1: toughness that that would have taken. And to think, holy
Speaker 1: cal if me and you went and did that today, Mark,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what, how would we respond to that?
Speaker 1: But if we were there and didn't know any different,
Speaker 1: I guarantee it would have not been that big a deal.
Speaker 1: So just interesting stuff to think about. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: it definitely is, and it's it was. It was really
Speaker 1: cool to have, you know, a short opportunity to immerse
Speaker 1: myself in something that at the at the just very
Speaker 1: very little surface level could give you a tiny little
Speaker 1: opportunity to to experience what that might have been like
Speaker 1: just a little bit. I mean going in there, this
Speaker 1: whole this whole hunt for me was um, it was
Speaker 1: just a real treat, getting that taste, getting a feel that,
Speaker 1: getting to be out in the mountains, big woods, public land,
Speaker 1: camping out with the mule, hoping touh, hoping to still
Speaker 1: hunt my way into a buck, hoping something will come through,
Speaker 1: Hoping I'll bill sling a deer over top of a
Speaker 1: over top of a mule. I mean that that whole
Speaker 1: thing was just it was a really great adventure. And
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough, Clay for show me around,
Speaker 1: for for taking time to share with me how you
Speaker 1: think about these things and and how you go about it,
Speaker 1: and man, it was just a great time. So thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well man, you're welcome. But really I I thank you
Speaker 1: for coming down. I mean for you, uh and and
Speaker 1: you're the white tail guru. For your to think enough
Speaker 1: of what we're doing down here to come down here
Speaker 1: was honor to me. So I appreciate you coming man,
Speaker 1: because you you knew you were walking into something that
Speaker 1: wasn't an ideal. It's not the kind of place you
Speaker 1: travel to go hunt, you know. So yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a great time, and you know it. Man, you can
Speaker 1: come back anytime you want to. But me and you
Speaker 1: were kind of trapped in this media world where we
Speaker 1: gotta produce content. So and there's always pressure and it's
Speaker 1: dumb to talk about it, but there is a you know,
Speaker 1: producing media does put a big time strain and an
Speaker 1: unusual difficulty on a hunt that is not typically seen.
Speaker 1: Even in this conversation we're not talking about that, but man,
Speaker 1: that that that makes a difference. So I sell that
Speaker 1: to say when me and you retire, Mark and we're
Speaker 1: no longer making outdoor media. Come down to Arkansas and
Speaker 1: we'll go out and hunt for a week. Set up well,
Speaker 1: we'll set up a big camp and we'll we'll really
Speaker 1: do it right. But we can't be documented. I mean
Speaker 1: you can't. Nope, I'm on board, Sign me up. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm in for this one. This sounds good to me, Clay.
Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoyed our time, and I want to give
Speaker 1: you one opportunity here real quick for folks that want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Boone or the fulsome Sight and
Speaker 1: all the other cool stuff that you've been exploring or
Speaker 1: getting into. Can you just plug where they can find
Speaker 1: all the good work you're doing these days. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: check out Grease. So bear Grease is the Meat Eater production,
Speaker 1: just like Wired to Hunt is. So Mark and I
Speaker 1: are colleagues, and um yeah, Bear Grease podcast type it in.
Speaker 1: Bear Grease is a documentary style podcast, typically under an
Speaker 1: hour long, and on any given podcast, we might have
Speaker 1: three to five different guests that talk about these issues
Speaker 1: and and uh we will will pick topics and um,
Speaker 1: you know, like we did a whole We did three
Speaker 1: part series on Daniel Boone. We had really the best
Speaker 1: guests you could have in North America. I think I
Speaker 1: feel like so we we we We're getting some good
Speaker 1: guys on and the Fulsome site would be a good example.
Speaker 1: We're doing a actually a four part series on falsome.
Speaker 1: My dog's treating a squirrel out here, Mark, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you can hear that. I probably need to
Speaker 1: go shoot it out. Yeah yeah, and uh, she's looking
Speaker 1: at it too. And when she when test starts barking
Speaker 1: like that, she's looking at it. Um. The Falsome Sight
Speaker 1: Uh series is just fascinating. We went to the world's
Speaker 1: expert on Fulsome and archaeologist named Dr David Meltzer and
Speaker 1: um so anyway, yep, fun stuff man, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of a deep dive but kind of different, different than
Speaker 1: most podcast I guess. Yeah. Well, I've told you in
Speaker 1: person and I'll say it again for everyone to hear
Speaker 1: it is. It's truly fantastic, Like you're really doing a
Speaker 1: great job. There's a lot of podcasts out there these days,
Speaker 1: and I don't like to listen to most of them,
Speaker 1: but but Bear Grease is real deal. So well done, Clay,
Speaker 1: and uh, thank you for doing you and thanks for
Speaker 1: having me up there this year. Yeah, Mark, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Man, Thank you all right, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here. Have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season.
Speaker 1: I hope you with friends and family. I hope you
Speaker 1: are enjoying a little time off, maybe some time outside.
Speaker 1: And uh, I just hope you wrap up this year
Speaker 1: in a really great way. Thanks for being with us
Speaker 1: all these past twelve months. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: much I appreciate it. Until next time, stay wired to
Speaker 1: h