Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I am Ben O'Brien, and this week I am in
Speaker 1: the offices of the Meat Eater here in Boseman, Montana,
Speaker 1: and I am joined by the great and powerful Mark
Speaker 1: Kenyon of Wired Hunt. Now you're gonna know Mark as
Speaker 1: a personality in our little Meat Eater family, which are
Speaker 1: also going to know him from all of his wonderful
Speaker 1: Wired Hunt media products. He's a white tailed dude, you know,
Speaker 1: self described white tail guy, and uh, I like him
Speaker 1: for that because I grew up as a white tail
Speaker 1: guy really on the eastern East Coast over there in Maryland,
Speaker 1: and I can relate to a lot of things that
Speaker 1: he loves to do. I love to do him too. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's a great conversation around um our meat
Speaker 1: Eater Christmas party, but it broke into some more serious
Speaker 1: conversation around the imperfect because a bow hunting around some
Speaker 1: of the imperfections around finding deer once you've hit them,
Speaker 1: and then should you tag a deer or not if
Speaker 1: you wounded it. A bunch of heavy topics, a bunch
Speaker 1: of laughs, a bunch of fun stuff. That's Mark Kenyon
Speaker 1: right now. Hey Mark Kenyon, Hey Ben O'Brien. We're just
Speaker 1: talking about the amount of podcasts, Like how many podcasts
Speaker 1: you feel like you've done both you've been involved in
Speaker 1: but then also hosted. It's gotta be a lot of them,
Speaker 1: a whole lot to under sixty years so Wired Hunt
Speaker 1: sixty five or so of another series I did and
Speaker 1: guests on a lot. You were like the you were
Speaker 1: like the pioneer of one of the pioneers podcast. You
Speaker 1: had to be one of the pioneers. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: few others before me, but definitely I launched it, launched
Speaker 1: the wire un podcast back in the spring of two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen. Wow, Okay, who's around then? Was there
Speaker 1: any other podcast around then? Because I certainly wouldn't listen
Speaker 1: to podcast. You know, the first hunting podcast I ever
Speaker 1: listened to was called bow Cast, I think, and I
Speaker 1: listened that way back in two thousand nine. I don't
Speaker 1: think that podcast lasted. I think it was around for
Speaker 1: a little bit and then it was off the rator
Speaker 1: by the time I started podcasting. Um, but I listened
Speaker 1: to that one. Peterson's Bow Hunting had a podcast way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nine for a little bit too
Speaker 1: that I listened to, but then that kind of faded away. Um,
Speaker 1: so there's a couple that started early, and maybe it
Speaker 1: was almost a situation where it was a little bit
Speaker 1: too early for critical mass. Yeah, that that might that
Speaker 1: might have been it, because I think Christian Burgh had
Speaker 1: one that was that was the Peterson's. Yeah, way back
Speaker 1: when I was was at Peterson and he is the
Speaker 1: only person I knew that it had a podcast, and
Speaker 1: I thought that's kind of a weird underground radio show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a it's a great medium, and I
Speaker 1: kind of got lucky in that when I dove into
Speaker 1: his was kind of a perfect meeting of the right
Speaker 1: time and the right kind of content. Yeah. Just uh,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, something or everybody should know is that
Speaker 1: we were coming off the meat Eater Christmas party. So
Speaker 1: if we sound signed a little sluggish to begin, you
Speaker 1: know that we I mean there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: booze there. It was a little bit of booze. So
Speaker 1: I got a full cup of coffee in from of
Speaker 1: me that I haven't got to dive into yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel free to just to I mean, people enjoy.
Speaker 1: I'm all, I don't drink coffee, So I'm drinking hot chocolate.
Speaker 1: That was really interesting me. But he told me a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago that you never even tasted a sip
Speaker 1: of coffee, not that I can remember. Now. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, saying it, don't recording like that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe one time I did, but I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: don't remember doing it. I've certainly never took an intentional
Speaker 1: drink of coffee. Are you susceptible to peer pressure? No?
Speaker 1: So if I were to tell your podcast audience that
Speaker 1: we needed to all comment and message you and tweet
Speaker 1: you enough, if that was, if there's a landslide of
Speaker 1: of protests that been needed to try coffee, would you
Speaker 1: give in for your listeners, for your beloved, for my people.
Speaker 1: I probably, I mean, like I said, I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily I'm not a staunch, you know, anti coffee person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pro pro yes, I think that. Um, I would probably
Speaker 1: try it, and then I would probably just you know, listen, people,
Speaker 1: it taste tastes terrible. You probably wouldn't like it. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't taste good. It's not that tastes like a sock.
Speaker 1: I heard, you know. That's not a bad way to
Speaker 1: describe it. But socks are inquired taste. Yeah, and listen,
Speaker 1: it's got it's got drugs bill into it that gets
Speaker 1: you all addicted and next thing you know. So I
Speaker 1: I um not against it. I have very many, many
Speaker 1: friends and colleagues and family members who I think I'm
Speaker 1: foolish for not for not doing it. But it more
Speaker 1: power to you if you don't need be given to
Speaker 1: the caffeine drug and you can still be productive and effective.
Speaker 1: And I happy, dude, go for it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think I'm doing all right. He's like, I'm tired
Speaker 1: a lot, like I probably get these little energy like
Speaker 1: if I drank if I drank a five hour energy,
Speaker 1: I would die, like if I immediately if I just
Speaker 1: drank a fool one of those things like chugged one.
Speaker 1: I had a boss one time who would drink like
Speaker 1: three or four of those things in a day, which
Speaker 1: really covers all the day about four hours if you
Speaker 1: drink four of them. And she would like three during
Speaker 1: the workday, have three of those things. And uh, I
Speaker 1: did try to sip of that one time and I
Speaker 1: had almost had to go home, Like, yeah, that sounds dangerous.
Speaker 1: Drinking that many, and so that that was part of it.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, but I still you know, now we're getting
Speaker 1: really deep, deep into my like what's going down in
Speaker 1: my life? Which is all we want to know. That's
Speaker 1: all it is. I eat a lot of sugar, So
Speaker 1: I'm not I got I got. No. We had Janna
Speaker 1: tell us his wife made this, like they call him
Speaker 1: adult cookies. I don't know why not because they're calling them, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think it takes so long to make them
Speaker 1: that they don't want to have the children eat him
Speaker 1: because they want to appreciate it. I would have thought
Speaker 1: it was something else. That's what I was thinking. I'm like,
Speaker 1: let's go, let's get it done for these adults cookies.
Speaker 1: I've had some in Colorado exactly. But I wonder why
Speaker 1: you're lingering that corner all night. You wonder why it
Speaker 1: has a bit the chippies in the cookies. Um, I
Speaker 1: must eating like a leven and these cookies that can't
Speaker 1: be I mean, that's not good for you, probably not great. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'll yeah, I don't. I don't drink a whole town.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't smoke, I don't dip. I don't
Speaker 1: drink coffee. But boy, like I'll rock a cake man,
Speaker 1: like half a cake. I don't even care. So listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not without like I can't make fun of the
Speaker 1: coffee drinkers for having advice, like because most people drink coffee,
Speaker 1: Like I can't get my morning started with a coffee man,
Speaker 1: And that's how you are with talcol cake. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I'll have I need my jool cake. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: see you saw my truck this morning. It's full of
Speaker 1: cake wrappers and yeah yeah, yeah yeah, like a nice
Speaker 1: sparkling water, yeah they say that, right, yeah, well no,
Speaker 1: those were Pellegrinos greenos, like giant bottles are huge. I
Speaker 1: thought you had giant bottles of open wine bottles, like
Speaker 1: sparkling white wine. This guy's about it's Christmas season. No,
Speaker 1: I do like I do like a nice sparkling water.
Speaker 1: That's good. I required that taste when I worked at
Speaker 1: Yett and they had free Lacroix. That's one thing I
Speaker 1: never got into. But I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: like it. But that's like that, it's nice. This is
Speaker 1: the plan for the whole podcast, right, it's just talking
Speaker 1: about beverages consumption habits. Yes, that's actually got I have
Speaker 1: a special announcement. That's we're changing the subject matter. Hunting
Speaker 1: is getting a little bit old. Um, we feel like
Speaker 1: we've done it all and we're just gonna yeah caffeine
Speaker 1: and caffeine related beverages. But yeah, that the meat eater
Speaker 1: Christmas parties every good time. Had a very good time.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic. It's cool, like we was telling me
Speaker 1: a little a little earlier. Just cool to see this
Speaker 1: whole group of people that to this point has largely
Speaker 1: been scattered all across the country, everyone kind of doing
Speaker 1: their own thing. Um. It was it was just an
Speaker 1: idea six months ago in a lot of ways, um,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, we're here with a
Speaker 1: whole group of people all together, working towards a common
Speaker 1: cause and seeing that physically manifested that was. That was exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about it before. I know, Like, but companies
Speaker 1: are these imperfect you know, entities that that have all
Speaker 1: these imperfections. And then a lot of times, um, we
Speaker 1: focus on those imperfections because we're trying to fix them, right,
Speaker 1: and that's for good reason. But it's nights like last
Speaker 1: night where you just in your people everybody's having fun,
Speaker 1: everybody's having a drink, and everybody's eating good food. We
Speaker 1: had like fresh oysters and Dungeoness crabs and seeking Dear
Speaker 1: Him and all kind of stuff, and um, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: And and you kind of forget about those imperfections for
Speaker 1: a while because you don't have to, like there's no
Speaker 1: problems to solve any more. Um, not that you know this.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad thing. It's just how it is.
Speaker 1: But I needed its needed. Every once in a while
Speaker 1: you need to just kind of like sit back and
Speaker 1: and and the holiday seasons are good for that, but
Speaker 1: like take stock and like what's really going on here? Um,
Speaker 1: and we get overstated for marketing purposes. But it's a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty cool thing to be a part of. I
Speaker 1: would say I would. I would say so too. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I haven't even know. There wasn't
Speaker 1: anybody who was like that guy at the Christmas party
Speaker 1: I left pretty early. Yeah, but nobody, nobody. Uh, I
Speaker 1: didn't see anyone who's going to be getting like a
Speaker 1: terse email this morning or anything like dear sir. Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of that appropriate behavior in the subject. That's good. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: we we had a white Christmas party, Christmas gift party.
Speaker 1: I think it's called a white elephant. Was that? What
Speaker 1: is white? What I say white Christmas Christmas? Like white
Speaker 1: white elephant is the white elephant Christmas? Yeah, white elephant.
Speaker 1: Whereas you get a gift and then you steal other
Speaker 1: people a gift and steal them all that it's it's
Speaker 1: very very ruthless. You got kind of yeah, you were
Speaker 1: a frequent victim. Yeah. We had a deal, like at
Speaker 1: the very start of the party, before the booze started flowing,
Speaker 1: we had a deal where you would shoot the There
Speaker 1: was a squirrel target on the back fence at our
Speaker 1: CEO's house, and if you could hit it with the
Speaker 1: twenty two, you got squirrel. And that squirrel we gave
Speaker 1: you like special powers at the White Christmas Elephant gift
Speaker 1: exchange that we helped and like I had a squirrel
Speaker 1: because I hit this hit the thing with the two
Speaker 1: and I was very confused about how to use the squirrel,
Speaker 1: but it gave you like a power to like steal
Speaker 1: at any time or whatever. I ended up with a
Speaker 1: suite like a lever action NERF gun and had a
Speaker 1: sheriff's badge with the sheriffs badge. I feel like was
Speaker 1: the part that you liked the most. And I stole
Speaker 1: this from a coworker and I put on the sheriff's
Speaker 1: likely and I thought, well, I've got this, and like
Speaker 1: I've got the squirrel, nobody can take this from me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and like unpack the gift
Speaker 1: and put on the sheriff's badge like like I was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think everybody noticed that I was. And there was
Speaker 1: there apparently was an access of evil, like three people
Speaker 1: in the corner that we're conspiring to take the person's
Speaker 1: gift who seemed the most excited about what they had.
Speaker 1: Annie was very, very excited about ruining you. And we
Speaker 1: need to call her. Annie Razor is our VP of production.
Speaker 1: She's really the magician behind me either TV and all
Speaker 1: these fancy commercials you're seeing. But she at this moment
Speaker 1: and Josh Prestin as well, and Brodie Henderson. I think
Speaker 1: I can't remember the three, but they conspired to take
Speaker 1: away my joy. Yeah, when they walked over and pulled
Speaker 1: that sheriff's badge off you, you could see it in
Speaker 1: your eyes, could like crestfallen. Several of us knows that, like,
Speaker 1: did you see Ben's a little sparkle? Do you see
Speaker 1: that just a little bit of soul? Dead? Have that
Speaker 1: little sparkle just just disappeared and you'll never You'll never
Speaker 1: get it back. I'm sorry. Yeah, but I end up
Speaker 1: with M and m's I don't know, with like a
Speaker 1: yard long Eminem's good for the sugar guy, that's good
Speaker 1: for me. Maybe that's probably better because I would definitely
Speaker 1: shoot everyone around the office. You laid in bed undneath
Speaker 1: the covers last night, slowly weeping and eating so many
Speaker 1: of it. But yes, I mean those things devolved into
Speaker 1: like you know, fun time, fun times, but they did
Speaker 1: steal my joy. Um, so I'd like to call those
Speaker 1: people out for there. I think it's good. And they
Speaker 1: told me later. They came over and they said, well,
Speaker 1: you definitely conspired against you, only because I seem to
Speaker 1: have the most joy man some people. But the world
Speaker 1: is a tough place, smart Kenyon, I've noticed, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is why we need podcasts like this. Yeah, talk it through, Yes,
Speaker 1: otherwise I wouldn't you know? That just feels pretty cathartic.
Speaker 1: I feel a little better about my life. That's all
Speaker 1: this podcast ever was for right, just to stroke your
Speaker 1: ego and make you feel better. It's that's all it is.
Speaker 1: I think I said that at the beginning, like this
Speaker 1: is for me. I don't know, think I'm sorry about
Speaker 1: if you don't like me talking about the Christmas party.
Speaker 1: I don't have ever done. That's all I ever done.
Speaker 1: Word too. But yeah, yeah, you're the vet. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no way to pivot from the Christmas party to
Speaker 1: deer hunting, so we might as well just yeah, I
Speaker 1: want how how do you make that transition? Just do it?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not sure, but I like, you know,
Speaker 1: I would say I said this when I had Ryan
Speaker 1: Callahan on the podcast, that I felt like a good
Speaker 1: segment might be like the ship that's bothering me? Not say,
Speaker 1: we don't have segments here on this program, but we
Speaker 1: do have things that I like to talk about pretty
Speaker 1: much every episode to annoy folks. But also so can
Speaker 1: we call that a segment? Should I like to talk
Speaker 1: about on pretty much every episode? Pretty much every episode? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sponsored by Mark Kenyon's, sponsored by Coming for That, Sponsored
Speaker 1: by Black Rifle Coffee, which is it looks like it's
Speaker 1: a nice company. I haven't friends, We have like a
Speaker 1: big pile of it here in the for that last track, UM,
Speaker 1: I have a lot a lot of nice people work there.
Speaker 1: I just don't you know, I've never had their product.
Speaker 1: Did they pay you for this promotion? They did? Chit chen. Um.
Speaker 1: There's some things in the white tail world that bothered
Speaker 1: me now. But you know, for for point of fact,
Speaker 1: I am you know, I grew up a white tail hunter.
Speaker 1: I once wrote a white tail column for Peterson Sunny
Speaker 1: Magazine and and um a white tail blog for an
Speaker 1: RaSE American hunter. So growing you know, coming up in
Speaker 1: the industry and growing up, I think the at some
Speaker 1: level I was like, I'm gonna be a white tail guy,
Speaker 1: you know, like a white tail expert guy, um, or
Speaker 1: at least somebody that wrote a lot about white tails.
Speaker 1: M And you realized early on that was a path
Speaker 1: for despots and the low i Q types like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a path for the caveman like you. No. I
Speaker 1: just I think I just um ah hunted other things
Speaker 1: that I could hunt everything. But I still think white
Speaker 1: tails man. I would say that the best thing in
Speaker 1: the world is sitting in a tree and in like
Speaker 1: knowing every corner of an area where you're set of
Speaker 1: stand and then finally hearing that like, yes, and it's
Speaker 1: not a squirrel this time, because before it was. And
Speaker 1: I have to try to explain it to my wife
Speaker 1: a bunch of times around, like I can tell you
Speaker 1: what a squirrel sounds like and what a deer sounds
Speaker 1: like in a raccoon, and I can tell you abou
Speaker 1: an armadillo sounds like from living in Texas. Um, but
Speaker 1: there's I still feel like I've heard help bugle, I've hunted,
Speaker 1: go through all the things I've hunted, I've heard moose
Speaker 1: doing their thing. Um. But man, that like is um
Speaker 1: the pinnacle I believe, And it's the pinnacle enough in
Speaker 1: a very different way from those other experiences you mentioned,
Speaker 1: because those other experiences like an elk bugling or seeing
Speaker 1: a gown a mountaintop, those things are are are quite intense,
Speaker 1: while the moments as a white tail hunter are are
Speaker 1: punctual or there they are what they are because of
Speaker 1: the lack of intensity. For so much of the time,
Speaker 1: it's it's long stretches of monotony where hopefully you can
Speaker 1: fall into an almost zend state where you're just taking
Speaker 1: in the world around you and it's opportunity to to
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, I do that every time in the
Speaker 1: treesta and literally make that noise. Maybe that's why I'm
Speaker 1: not seeing doing it too loud. They can hear the vibrations,
Speaker 1: but but you do kind of slip into like the
Speaker 1: stream of consciousness of the woods. When you sit there
Speaker 1: long enough and it quiets down, you're just kind of
Speaker 1: part of it. And then though that is occasionally punctuated
Speaker 1: by these moments of this adrenaline burst of something happening.
Speaker 1: And it's those those contrasts that make it really exciting,
Speaker 1: and in a very different way than an elkhin is exciting.
Speaker 1: They're both really great, um in their own way. But
Speaker 1: what hunting is, I just grew up spending so much
Speaker 1: time and and you know like tall timber country that um,
Speaker 1: that's just that you know, that feeling you know, East Coast,
Speaker 1: big tall oaks and you know like pretty you know
Speaker 1: where we were, mountainous country, and so I just just
Speaker 1: being in that setting, watching leaves falling out of the tree,
Speaker 1: the heightens, like said, the heightened sense of awareness of
Speaker 1: you know, animals move birds. When the birds first start,
Speaker 1: you know, they're usually the first to sound off, but
Speaker 1: also things like when a squirrels chattering at you and
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, well that's that's an announcement to everything
Speaker 1: else around that what I've been up to. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think there is I have an appreciation
Speaker 1: that because like signifies everything that, like the foundational elements
Speaker 1: of my hunting life, you know, it signifies all these
Speaker 1: like none of this other stuff would have happened if
Speaker 1: it wasn't four before that. And so I'm um living
Speaker 1: here though, I mean living in Montana, there's there's some
Speaker 1: white tails around, but I'll never get the feeling of
Speaker 1: like being in a tree stand in a large set
Speaker 1: of timber, you know, leaves falling around me with with
Speaker 1: you know, listening for that, it's more yeah, it squirrels,
Speaker 1: Like there's a certain cadence with you've got the front
Speaker 1: step or the front leg in the back like coming
Speaker 1: up and there's like bum bum bum bum. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the rhythm that you here that you realize, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's in you know, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that comes to mind, but that that ends up for
Speaker 1: me being it's the pinnacle. It really just from it
Speaker 1: kind of and I think about it I think, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's rewind the calendar a couple of months. I
Speaker 1: can go do it right now. So I worry that
Speaker 1: because you you prelided all this by saying that we
Speaker 1: are entering the at the bother's bend segment, and so
Speaker 1: I feel like you're really setting me up, like all
Speaker 1: this stuff is so good. But no, no, I think
Speaker 1: that I got a lot of ship that bothers me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm from the East Coast and I'm Irish,
Speaker 1: Like this is pretty much that. This is all. That's all.
Speaker 1: That's all we have speaking of Christmas parties. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: drink and be bothered by things is just about all
Speaker 1: that we do. Um, I'd love to be one of
Speaker 1: those family unions. I feel like, yeah, it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I got something I got. This is what grinds
Speaker 1: my gears. She grinds my gears. Um, so sorry, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean derail you know, no I did. I was
Speaker 1: kind of setting you up a little bit there, Like
Speaker 1: that's one of those compliments sandwiches. Well one with another compliment,
Speaker 1: I say, all this is a like part of my um,
Speaker 1: it's the self Estations podcast is because there are there
Speaker 1: are some things. Loving deer hunting so much and having
Speaker 1: worked around at some point in my career the North
Speaker 1: American White Hole Crew, getting to note those folks and
Speaker 1: working on their website a little bit, and getting to
Speaker 1: know a Winkie over the years, getting to know John
Speaker 1: Dudley over the years, getting to know some of the
Speaker 1: best you know, Lee and Tiffany, getting to know some
Speaker 1: of the best that do it, and seeing um the
Speaker 1: way they expressed their deer hunting, and seeing some of
Speaker 1: the changes really in the the deer hunting culture that
Speaker 1: you have driven. A lot of which you have driven, UM,
Speaker 1: there's still some things that like, there's still some wise
Speaker 1: that I think um or worth talking about. Let's do it, okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first of them is around um, how like how
Speaker 1: long do you leave a deer lay? I think in
Speaker 1: the prevailing I came up watching like The Hunter Specialties
Speaker 1: DVDs and Real Tree, Monster Bucks. I came up doing that,
Speaker 1: and I feel as though there's some things in the
Speaker 1: culture like we're seeded there and it just remained um
Speaker 1: just because that's that was the media that was available
Speaker 1: at the time, and then that kind of got seated
Speaker 1: into out their TV and just became like Paul Art
Speaker 1: of the thing that you do right, You shoot a
Speaker 1: deer and you leave it leg Now these are very
Speaker 1: general statements, but in general, I feel like, no matter
Speaker 1: if it's a big mature buck or it's I'm just
Speaker 1: shot a dough or whatever the case is, I've still regardless,
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking meat first. And you know, once I've
Speaker 1: got got a hole in the deer them, you know
Speaker 1: I was targeting or or wanting to kill, and so
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking meat first. So it comes down to
Speaker 1: for me, like i've shot a deer, either have an
Speaker 1: idea where the hit is. You know, we're talking archery
Speaker 1: here probably, but rifle as well, rifle less. So, but
Speaker 1: I have an idea where the hit is. I feel
Speaker 1: like it was a good shot. Um, A lot of
Speaker 1: folks don't film, you know, don't have film of every
Speaker 1: deer they've shot, so you can't go back and look
Speaker 1: at the video tape. A lot of times, like you know,
Speaker 1: your mind is moving so fast and you're you know
Speaker 1: a lot of this is reflex and instinct and in
Speaker 1: arch read in these close quarter situations, you think you
Speaker 1: hit him, well, you're not sure the blood you know, here.
Speaker 1: Another point of this is like what kind of how
Speaker 1: to read blood and how to understand how to track
Speaker 1: an animal that guys culturally are pushed to leave a
Speaker 1: deer lay overnight or for eight hours or the the
Speaker 1: Would you agree that the the prevailing thought is the
Speaker 1: longer you leave it lay, the better the chance of
Speaker 1: recovering the deer. I would say not entirely, But there
Speaker 1: are certainly situations where a common belief is better safe
Speaker 1: and sorry a lot of times, and I think sometimes
Speaker 1: that's warranted, sometimes not. And I can expand on it
Speaker 1: if you want, please, So I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Your issue is that too many people are letting these
Speaker 1: deer lay because they just want to make sure they
Speaker 1: get that buck or whatever, not taking two count the
Speaker 1: fact that they're letting something away for eight hours and
Speaker 1: it's hot out and when they get that the meat
Speaker 1: soured and they don't recover that meat. Yeah, and or
Speaker 1: um cootes come into play. So that is certainly a
Speaker 1: risk in waiting to track a deer in certain situations.
Speaker 1: I would argue that there are some situations where if
Speaker 1: you feel very confident with where you saw that shot placement,
Speaker 1: if you saw you were were able to check the
Speaker 1: shot site of impact and saw this type of blood
Speaker 1: at the at the site, there's certain indicators that will
Speaker 1: tell you, you know what this is a this is
Speaker 1: a dead deer, Like this is this is a deer
Speaker 1: that was hit double lunged. Um, we've got great lung blood.
Speaker 1: That's kind of thing where there's just there's simply no
Speaker 1: need to wait that long, wait an hour, two hours max.
Speaker 1: Something like that. Um, your your meat is not gonna
Speaker 1: go bad in that shorter time frame, assuming it's not
Speaker 1: a twenty degrees or something. Um, in that kind of situation,
Speaker 1: give it just a little bit of time. Because there
Speaker 1: are situations where like a single a single long hit deer, Um,
Speaker 1: that might look like a great shot if it just
Speaker 1: if if the angles a little bit off and you
Speaker 1: just get one long, that deer can can go a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than you'd want it to. So the
Speaker 1: situations where you don't I would never say, go out
Speaker 1: there five minutes later, go bouncing right now, yeah, nor
Speaker 1: would I mean, I think you have to understand a
Speaker 1: lot of things, right. You have to understand how far
Speaker 1: can a deer go with a double up right? In
Speaker 1: generally a hundred yards is what. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: if I had ballpark it most of the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think this comes down to though. That takes
Speaker 1: a level of understanding of where you saw that arrow
Speaker 1: or bullet hit, what the sign looks like, what the
Speaker 1: situation was, and knowing, um, what the right next step
Speaker 1: is based off of that. And I think there might
Speaker 1: be a lot of people who see people on TV
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let it lay, gonna let it lay. You
Speaker 1: see that ton on TV and wait overnight and waitever
Speaker 1: night and whatever night, and a lot of people I
Speaker 1: think maybe just start assuming or do that no matter what.
Speaker 1: And so I would say in the situation, I just
Speaker 1: outlined where it's that kind of hey, this buck is
Speaker 1: here within a hundred yards, barring some kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: um shocking surprise. In that kind of situation, it does
Speaker 1: not make sense to to risk anything with that meat,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a warm days. Need you need to
Speaker 1: take temperature into account. So if it's a hot day,
Speaker 1: I'm moving all my time frames up because yes, there
Speaker 1: would be nothing more devastating to me than walking up
Speaker 1: on a deer that I killed and not being able
Speaker 1: to recover that meat. Except for having the hind end
Speaker 1: gun that is accept the one alternative. There's one thing
Speaker 1: that is more devastating to me than that, which is
Speaker 1: knowing that it hit a deer and knowing that deer
Speaker 1: is probably going to die because of where that shot was,
Speaker 1: but not recovering it at all, Which is why I
Speaker 1: still believe that there are some situations where it is
Speaker 1: right to wait, because it is better to recover a
Speaker 1: deer that's missing behind quarter or maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of his his salard. It's better to make that recovery.
Speaker 1: It's not ideal, it's not what you want, but it's
Speaker 1: better to get that recovery than no recovery at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're understand right, I mean, and I don't UM when
Speaker 1: I say this bothers me. I think it bothers me
Speaker 1: for the reasons you outlined around UM just depth of
Speaker 1: thought around these types of things. And let's not fall
Speaker 1: back on some prevailing the idea that leaving it lay
Speaker 1: is the right thing to do because you're being cautious
Speaker 1: and you're trying to recover that deer in um in
Speaker 1: the first place, that's the goal. You hit a deer,
Speaker 1: you need to recover it. And so you know, having
Speaker 1: a having a bigger conversation around the balancing act that
Speaker 1: occurs there. And I think you said a lot of
Speaker 1: what I think about what you have to as a
Speaker 1: deer hunter have to understand, right. You have to understand
Speaker 1: shot placement, shot angle, You have to understand the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of different types of shots. You have to understand. Then
Speaker 1: once you determine that, then the next step is determined. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the temperature, right? What's the variabilities here? What's the temperature?
Speaker 1: What the levels of predation? Predation in this air? Where?
Speaker 1: Did what direction did this dear run? Did he run downhill?
Speaker 1: Did he run uphill? Is there a dry creek bed here?
Speaker 1: Is there a ravine he might is there a thick
Speaker 1: spot where he I know he might go. There's a
Speaker 1: ton of variables here. So but I think understanding that right,
Speaker 1: and so then you have you set that stage, paint
Speaker 1: that picture like, Okay, I hit him hard. I know
Speaker 1: I hit him hard. Hit him in a good spot,
Speaker 1: likely one long but probably too he ran downhill? You're like,
Speaker 1: what you know? His his front end was, you know,
Speaker 1: looking wobbly as he went downhill? Probably better way to
Speaker 1: say that, but that's that's what you're looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go get that buck. Yeah, he ran downhill right, Well,
Speaker 1: he ran uphill, stood for a while and chased a
Speaker 1: dough off. Then I'm thinking, I don't know, um, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty warm, and we've seen a lot of coyotes today,
Speaker 1: and he ran into a place where he's probably just
Speaker 1: gonna stay right, So I'm thinking, okay out. I don't
Speaker 1: want to leave him lay over night in this scenario,
Speaker 1: but man, I've seen on TV like guys just leave
Speaker 1: lay over night and and I gotta recover him. I'll
Speaker 1: get get the antlers and maybe get the backstraps. But
Speaker 1: at this stage, I'm sure I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: I think I hit him good, but I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get the meat. At this point where I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get all the meat. My philosophy there is
Speaker 1: just like I'm gonna find a way to determine where
Speaker 1: this tears at um. And then you have the other
Speaker 1: scenario where he runs close to a neighboring property, or
Speaker 1: he runs to a place where you're not if you
Speaker 1: push him, you push him on the public land, or
Speaker 1: push him into a place where he's gonna get whacked. Um,
Speaker 1: so I have for sure been I've been in a
Speaker 1: lot of these situations. You surely have as well. So
Speaker 1: um comes back to nuance. You gotta you gotta in in.
Speaker 1: There's some folks that are just getting to this that
Speaker 1: just haven't had the opportunity to have those experiences and
Speaker 1: learn yet. And that scenario, I would just caution people
Speaker 1: to not just see something on TV and say that's
Speaker 1: what's supposed to do. How to dive into it. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of great resources out there that that can
Speaker 1: walk you through what different colors of blood indicate. As
Speaker 1: far as shot impact, there's different resources that you can
Speaker 1: look at that will talk you through. Okay, if you
Speaker 1: see the arrow hit here, this is likely with the
Speaker 1: vitals that hit, this is likely. How much time you
Speaker 1: we would recommend you wait. Well, the Deer and Deer
Speaker 1: Hunting used to do like three D renderings of a
Speaker 1: app Yeah that show like show you exactly what vitals
Speaker 1: it probably went through. I don't know if it's still around,
Speaker 1: but it was a handy toolback on the day. Well,
Speaker 1: and then you also had a you know, different types
Speaker 1: of blood you can look you know, there's plenty of
Speaker 1: resources around what that looks like. If it's got it's
Speaker 1: bright red and has got bubbles in it, that's pretty
Speaker 1: surely long blood. If it's a the darker the blood,
Speaker 1: I mean you have dark like liver type blood, then
Speaker 1: you have if you're finding any bile or any types
Speaker 1: and chunks of greenys of green stuff, that's that's guts, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's that's that's the kind of scenario. If you
Speaker 1: get a gut shot, pawn shot, that is the one
Speaker 1: scenario where you're probably not gonna over that deer unless
Speaker 1: you wait, because you're not gonna get a blood good
Speaker 1: blood trail at all. But that deer, if you do,
Speaker 1: let it lay down. And this is the the imperfect
Speaker 1: part of deer hunting. Yeah, right, And we talked about
Speaker 1: this sometimes that there's there are some scenarios where things
Speaker 1: even if you did everything you possibly could have done right,
Speaker 1: there are so many variables when it comes to any
Speaker 1: kind of hunting, well it's deer hunting, elk hunting, cabra hunting,
Speaker 1: there are variables outside of our control. Sometimes sometimes the
Speaker 1: shot does not go just perfect and you get a
Speaker 1: you get a gut shot for whatever reason. Something that happens.
Speaker 1: That what happened then is water under the bridge. But
Speaker 1: any time like this, this is what happened. It is
Speaker 1: not what I want to happen, is that it is
Speaker 1: a bad situation, but that is what happens. So how
Speaker 1: do I make the very best out of this less
Speaker 1: than ideal scenario? And in that case, let me let
Speaker 1: me stop you there, because this is something that I've
Speaker 1: wrestled with and I think I've come to this conclusion recently.
Speaker 1: Just over UM. I had there was a scenario last
Speaker 1: year or two years ago I had where somebody I
Speaker 1: was hunting with shot of deer and we argued about
Speaker 1: I said, go get at damn deer. Man. We've seen
Speaker 1: six coyotes in this five days we've been hunting. This
Speaker 1: is it was a big giant buck I mean it
Speaker 1: was the buckets shot. I'm arguing that was it was
Speaker 1: like a one lung through the liver, quartering two angle
Speaker 1: shot that wasn't the best shot in the world, right
Speaker 1: without the worst shot, not the worst shot in the world,
Speaker 1: a lethal shot. Because I filmed it, so we had
Speaker 1: filming went able to watch it. Um watched what the
Speaker 1: deer did. The deer ran down into a dry creek
Speaker 1: bed that kind of fingered off into two areas, and
Speaker 1: the guy was hunting with who on the property knew
Speaker 1: that this deer was likely going to get down in
Speaker 1: that and run that dry creek bed until it ended.
Speaker 1: And somebody somewhere in there like we kind of know
Speaker 1: where this deer went to lay. And I'm and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just leave it laver night. I'm like, if you
Speaker 1: leave later night, you're you're losing the meat, Like you're
Speaker 1: not getting it. It was cold enough for the meat
Speaker 1: to be But those guys are gonna find it. They're there.
Speaker 1: I mean, we saw three kids within the hundred yards
Speaker 1: where the deer is gonna end up, Like they're going
Speaker 1: to find it and they're going to get chew on it. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's also you know, partly shot in the guts,
Speaker 1: shot in the vitals, but also in the guts, so
Speaker 1: you know that thing is gonna be sour by the
Speaker 1: time you get to it. I was like, I know
Speaker 1: it's gonna die. I think it's gonna die in four
Speaker 1: hours or five hours, it would be my guess, um.
Speaker 1: And they shot at about eleven am. I'm so just
Speaker 1: wait till three or four. Um, then you have a
Speaker 1: hunter that's like not it wasn't necessarily in this case,
Speaker 1: but some hunters like it's a hundred a inch buck,
Speaker 1: I gotta get those anilers like like, well, I'd much
Speaker 1: rather have that deer run to tim Buck two and
Speaker 1: die over there and me never find him than me
Speaker 1: find him and not be able to eat the meat. See,
Speaker 1: that's where I would disagree with you, because you don't know,
Speaker 1: you won't be eating any to meat if you wait. Now.
Speaker 1: I would argue that in that situation, the US outline
Speaker 1: where you think that that book is gonna die in
Speaker 1: three or four hours or something like that, it's like
Speaker 1: a very safe than Yeah, I'm all for I go.
Speaker 1: I would go and get him. Then I would not.
Speaker 1: I would not let a buck lay overnight unless I
Speaker 1: absolutely thought that it was necessary. So the question come
Speaker 1: becomes how safe is safe? Yeah, And that's that's a
Speaker 1: that's a judgment called each person gotta make. But I
Speaker 1: there as I like I told you, like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: that would make me more sick. I'm very fortunate I've
Speaker 1: not yet lost the meat from a deer here, because
Speaker 1: that would just devastate me. I would feel I I
Speaker 1: personally cannot justify killing an animal unless I'm eating it
Speaker 1: from That's where I draw my line for myself. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if I shoot a deer
Speaker 1: and I think it's a gut shot, and I know, man,
Speaker 1: if I go in there right now, I'm bumping that
Speaker 1: deer and I'm never going to find it, um, then
Speaker 1: you have, in my opinion, that you have the way, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's better to recover, better, recover some
Speaker 1: portion of that animal then to completely go to waste.
Speaker 1: But it is, it is. It's a shitty situation and
Speaker 1: to be and you don't want to be in that situation.
Speaker 1: You you're doing your best to make the right judgment
Speaker 1: call yeah right or wrong? Right? I mean you're again
Speaker 1: it comes back to the responsibility of a hunter. Um.
Speaker 1: The last podcast I did with you know du Sean's Motana.
Speaker 1: I saw him on the website. I'm not familiar with otherwise.
Speaker 1: He's just a wonderful human. Um. But he grew up
Speaker 1: in Czechoslovakia and they had this thing called I'll butcher
Speaker 1: the pronunciation of it. But Micklovic and their culture means
Speaker 1: like hunter. What it also means thinker. That means like
Speaker 1: the way he describes that is like the hunter has
Speaker 1: to be um, has to be the well, has to
Speaker 1: be well studied, has to be well studied in the flora,
Speaker 1: like they take classes before they can go hunting on
Speaker 1: the flora and the faun on have to learn these things,
Speaker 1: and like the respect for the hunter comes from the
Speaker 1: depth of thought and knowledge of the outside world. And
Speaker 1: the way he describes that as like, that's your responsibility
Speaker 1: because you're selecting an animal. You have to know the
Speaker 1: animal because you're I take it from the herd to
Speaker 1: be taken and you're eating it, and then you're you
Speaker 1: have to be efficient to find it and kill it
Speaker 1: and then once you know, in this case, once you've
Speaker 1: killed it, recover it. So I always think about that.
Speaker 1: So at this you know, there's like a if this
Speaker 1: was you know, teetering on, how do you all do
Speaker 1: you push forward and find the deer or do you
Speaker 1: let it lay? I don't think there's a clean answer.
Speaker 1: I think what bothers me is that some hunters think
Speaker 1: there's a clean answer there that's like always leave it
Speaker 1: lay or fall back on any lay. So that's what
Speaker 1: bothers me, there's a lot of hunters out there that
Speaker 1: do it the right way. I think most people will
Speaker 1: do their best job at it. But I think some
Speaker 1: of the cultural, the just relevance of leave it lay
Speaker 1: needs to be explored. And I think that's a good
Speaker 1: I think it's a good point, and I do think
Speaker 1: that it probably stems from media where there's not I
Speaker 1: can't I can't claim to know the thought process for
Speaker 1: the folks on TV saying this, but I would guess
Speaker 1: that a lot of people at a out a lot
Speaker 1: of the thought process and just say, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: let it lay, be safe, And maybe there was some
Speaker 1: serious thought in there and trying to find what their
Speaker 1: right judgment was, um, and then the viewer just misses
Speaker 1: out on that. So then it's just like thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this is just what you do. You just always let
Speaker 1: it lay. Or or maybe there is UM. Maybe there
Speaker 1: are people who are knowingly saying, well, I don't really
Speaker 1: care about the meat and I just want to get
Speaker 1: those antlers. I hope that's not the case. I pray
Speaker 1: that's not the case, but you know, there might be
Speaker 1: some folks out there like that. Yeah, And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know it's hard. These conversations hard because you want
Speaker 1: to generalize in any way, right, you just can't. It's
Speaker 1: not fair to people to generalize anyway. UM. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are people out there that are like, I'd rather
Speaker 1: like I either get the meat or the deer runs off.
Speaker 1: I don't care. And there's people out there that say,
Speaker 1: I don't care about the meat very much. If I
Speaker 1: get something, great, If not, I'm not really worried about it.
Speaker 1: As long as I get those antlers. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: That's what I'm here to do. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think these complex issues always goes back to like
Speaker 1: it'll be a you know, be a thinker and make
Speaker 1: and you know, be the Mick lvic And I really
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, man, it's the hunter and thinkers should
Speaker 1: be synonymous. Yeah. And so these are things that require thought.
Speaker 1: And I think, UM, in the white tailed world, like
Speaker 1: there has there's so much media out there, there's so
Speaker 1: much noise out there about um, this big buck or
Speaker 1: that big buck or that experience like this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that just it requires lots of knowledge.
Speaker 1: You know, you have it. I have some of it,
Speaker 1: Like I've tried to you know, as a function of
Speaker 1: my hunting. Learned these things, but it's worth three writing.
Speaker 1: These aren't with it? You can't really do it without
Speaker 1: these things. And I think it's there's nothing we do
Speaker 1: in our entire lives. I think that. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because sometimes we grow up hunting and you just do
Speaker 1: it because it's what you do and just because it's
Speaker 1: what your dad or grandpa or whatever family member friend
Speaker 1: did and as a kid, it was fun and you
Speaker 1: used to it. And you know, myself, growing up, I
Speaker 1: didn't really put a whole lot of thought into it.
Speaker 1: I just knew I loved it. But as an adult
Speaker 1: now and having had the tune to think on these
Speaker 1: things a little bit more, I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: more deserving of thoughtfulness and critical thinking in our lives
Speaker 1: and then hunting, because that's there's nothing more serious. There's
Speaker 1: nothing we are taking a life. Can you name one
Speaker 1: thing more serious than taking a life? So without a
Speaker 1: doubt that action should be something that serious thoughtfulness should
Speaker 1: be required. Yeah, yeah, that's how I like that, like
Speaker 1: the cultural significance of that, and that's and that's again
Speaker 1: it gets you know, we get real deep in this conversation,
Speaker 1: but it gets back into like what is a hunter
Speaker 1: traditionally in our society and our culture. I mean the hunter,
Speaker 1: a hunter was a provider. A hunter was you know,
Speaker 1: to be you know, really at you know, lack for
Speaker 1: lack of a better term. And there's a pun that
Speaker 1: I don't like, but like at the top of the
Speaker 1: food chain within a tribe, within a group of people,
Speaker 1: the hunter was seen, um was was seen with great significance.
Speaker 1: And I think, UM, I find our culture to be
Speaker 1: a little bit loose when it comes to that. Deer
Speaker 1: hunting cultures is the prevailing culture within the hunting world.
Speaker 1: More people go deer hunting than do anything else, by far, UM,
Speaker 1: and there's more dear than any other you know, game animal.
Speaker 1: America's big game animal by far. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of influence that goes into that. So that's one that's
Speaker 1: one that UM, I think spends into another thing that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about lately here in the office, and
Speaker 1: you and I've talked about song is it just um
Speaker 1: the wound rates and you know, the way you put
Speaker 1: is like the imperfections of bow hunting right and some
Speaker 1: of the difficulties around how we treat archery as as
Speaker 1: a group and then the results UM and how and
Speaker 1: how open we are about the results for fear of
Speaker 1: for fear of UM, I would imagine for fear of attack, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, what's your take me through? Like as as
Speaker 1: somebody who hunts, you know, mainly with a bow, Like
Speaker 1: your thought processes when you're talking about archery on your
Speaker 1: podcast or when you're trying to get people into two
Speaker 1: hunting and lead them into hunting and say pick up
Speaker 1: a bow first, you know that's what you ought to do, Like,
Speaker 1: what are you what are you thinking about that? Well?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that probably wouldn't be what I was. If there's someone
Speaker 1: new to hunting, that might not be my first option
Speaker 1: I would, uh, I think rifle hunting or crossbow hunting
Speaker 1: if that's the thing. UM is easier to perfect as
Speaker 1: far as the effectiveness of the UM be able to
Speaker 1: kill an animal like that, that process is simply easier
Speaker 1: to to become competent at, I guess than shooting a
Speaker 1: vertical ball, shooting compound ball or traditional ball. UM. So
Speaker 1: for someone getting started, that's probably great way to start,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole heck of a lot of things
Speaker 1: you've got to figure out when you're figuring out how
Speaker 1: to deer hunt. Um, it's nice to at least know
Speaker 1: that your methodology for take is going to be as
Speaker 1: relatively of assure things you can possibly get it. Um.
Speaker 1: So that being said, I am right, it is. It's
Speaker 1: clear then by way of me saying that using a
Speaker 1: vertical compound bow is more difficult, it is less is
Speaker 1: more difficult to become competent, it's more difficult to be consistent.
Speaker 1: There's more room for error. Um, there's more room for
Speaker 1: for things go bad, for imperfections. And this is where
Speaker 1: this weird like dichotomy comes into play, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: I would tell you that as a deer hunter, my
Speaker 1: number one goal is to make as quick and clean
Speaker 1: and ethical of a kill as I possibly can. If
Speaker 1: I'm going to take the life of an animal, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do so, um the best way I possibly can
Speaker 1: to limit any kind of suffering to make sure I
Speaker 1: recover that animal. I mean that that's I would say,
Speaker 1: that's first and foremost. At the same time, though it
Speaker 1: it might seem very hypocritical then to tell you that
Speaker 1: I actively choose to use a compound bow for my hunting.
Speaker 1: How do I how do I justify that? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have a perfect answer to that,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you that there is an experience,
Speaker 1: um and and maybe this is inherently selfish. Maybe this
Speaker 1: is something that we as as as bow hunter. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a flawed, selfish human because I love to
Speaker 1: bow hunt or I'd like to engage in hunting in
Speaker 1: that way. But but but the experience I have as
Speaker 1: a bow hunter is a very different experience than I
Speaker 1: have as a gun hunter. And that experience, that way
Speaker 1: of engaging with an animal, with the habitat, the skill
Speaker 1: and time and effort and practice, the amount of work
Speaker 1: that has to go into that to be successful, um
Speaker 1: makes it um incredibly compelling, addicting interesting, forces me to
Speaker 1: to become a more well rounded outdoorsman. But yes, it
Speaker 1: does opening things up to the possibility of things not
Speaker 1: going right. Um. And So so with that said, what
Speaker 1: I find is that I simply have a greater obligation
Speaker 1: if I If you're choosing to be a bow hunter
Speaker 1: and you're choosing to engage with animals and wildlife and
Speaker 1: stuff in this way, you just have a greater obligation
Speaker 1: to work your tail off, to do as much as
Speaker 1: you possibly can to become more perfect. You're never gonna
Speaker 1: become perfect. A bow hunter can't be perfect. There will
Speaker 1: always be perfect, yes, um So, mistakes will happen sometimes.
Speaker 1: I mean it is tough. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: things that can go wrong. Animals can move. Um So,
Speaker 1: no one, even the very best archers out there, even
Speaker 1: like John Dudley or someone, stuff is gonna go wrong
Speaker 1: sometimes for these guys or girls. So I think the
Speaker 1: obligation just becomes then for us as hunters bow owners
Speaker 1: to do everything we possibly can to every day become
Speaker 1: more perfect, get closer and closer and closer to minimizing
Speaker 1: any kind of air and hopefully, um hopefully because of
Speaker 1: how because of how uniquely engaging bow hunting is. This
Speaker 1: is a hypothesis, I guess, but because of how deep
Speaker 1: that interaction is that I think I think is unique
Speaker 1: with bow hunting. I think I think you could dive deeper.
Speaker 1: Not saying that you can't achieve some of these things
Speaker 1: as a rife hunter, but if I were to generalize,
Speaker 1: I'm over generalizing here, but I think via bow hunting,
Speaker 1: it forces you to get deeper into this thing, deeper
Speaker 1: into how you interact with these animals, understand these animals,
Speaker 1: all those things. I hope and I think it fosters
Speaker 1: a different level or a deeper level of care and
Speaker 1: in a desire to give back and to to find
Speaker 1: ways to make sure that we just don't take from
Speaker 1: this resource, but we also we also give. UM And
Speaker 1: I think maybe, I hope, maybe that is how bow
Speaker 1: hunting um provides a net benefit. Let me just say that,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that makes sense. No, it does. Um.
Speaker 1: And here's what happens. And my this is my and
Speaker 1: my estimation, and I've done it in my life. Um.
Speaker 1: And I will start by saying, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: sometimes been peer pressured into bow hunting because that's it
Speaker 1: was like a trendy thing to do. You got it's
Speaker 1: like we got a dog fight in the office. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been peer pressured into bow hunting because that's the
Speaker 1: trendier thing to do, right, the cool kids seem to
Speaker 1: be doing it. Um And nobody, I actually, no one's
Speaker 1: thinking that because they're looking at me bo hunting. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, yeah, people know what we gotta
Speaker 1: get into. What the guy said, I know, and also
Speaker 1: the text that I sent you. Those are two things
Speaker 1: with UM. But I think when it comes to this
Speaker 1: relatively serious subject, I always fall back on. Hunting is
Speaker 1: a very personal endeavor and in it in its nature
Speaker 1: and it's modern sense, right, because we could go to
Speaker 1: the store and get meat. Because there's other ways for
Speaker 1: us to to UM take on take on the act
Speaker 1: of conservation. Right, I could go help for the translocation
Speaker 1: help UM go help pick up trash on public lands,
Speaker 1: and be doing just as much for conservation air quotes
Speaker 1: as UM I would if I will go out and
Speaker 1: buy a license and shoot a deer. Right, So all
Speaker 1: the things that we use as reasoning, like what you
Speaker 1: were just doing there was a very like noble attempt
Speaker 1: to talk around. Hey, look, this ship is selfish. It
Speaker 1: is personal, UM. But it's selfish and personal because the
Speaker 1: end result is this thing that it enriches you to
Speaker 1: such an extent that it's appropriate. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day. It fosters caring for animals, and it fosters
Speaker 1: caring for the natural world. Like but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's a very selfish and personal endeavor. UM.
Speaker 1: And I guess we do need to own that and
Speaker 1: just own that. If you start from that owning, then
Speaker 1: you can then the rest of it just becomes simple. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: We talked about that with Kesh and Releaves fly fishing,
Speaker 1: like just own that ship, just own that. It's a
Speaker 1: very part it's a very selfish endeavor. But like this
Speaker 1: opportunity could side railist right now, going we're not going there,
Speaker 1: Mark and I had one time, like a two hour
Speaker 1: it was like seven o'clock at night, We're trying to work,
Speaker 1: and then we're not gonna do that here, we promise you. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think that that bow hunting is is selfish
Speaker 1: a lot of times. And it's like this, I admit it,
Speaker 1: like it's a selfish thing. I I enjoy the experience
Speaker 1: more with a bow in my hand than with a rifle.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, it does that complicate the ethical endeavor? Fuck?
Speaker 1: Yes it does, boy, it does a lot. Um. But
Speaker 1: I also just realized that I'm not out there just
Speaker 1: for meat. I'm not out there just for conservation. It's
Speaker 1: not at its core an altruistic thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: It is very much for me, but it's for me
Speaker 1: for a good reason, you know, because it enriches my
Speaker 1: life and it gives me something and the by products
Speaker 1: of which meat conservation I dearly love, and I think
Speaker 1: I like there. I think those byproducts are the some
Speaker 1: of the most important things that I've given to your
Speaker 1: fucking world around me, or whatever however you say it, so,
Speaker 1: you know, addressing what you said, I just think my
Speaker 1: opinion would be, after all that is that that this
Speaker 1: is just like what you said, is it's a very
Speaker 1: sometimes a selfish endeavor. I think when a fella puts
Speaker 1: on an orange vest and picks up a bow and
Speaker 1: goes out, like I would have to like, here a
Speaker 1: really good reason for that choosing to bow hunt during
Speaker 1: gun season when he could be with a gun. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, obviously we know that in the
Speaker 1: in wildlife management, in biology, like there's a reason why
Speaker 1: you can bow hunt from September to January, but only
Speaker 1: rifle hunt from you know, November one, November eleventh or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, just making those numbers up, obviously, But um,
Speaker 1: there's reasons for that, right, There's wildlife management reasons and
Speaker 1: wildlife managers and state game agencies are taken in wound
Speaker 1: loss numbers as they look at how many year can
Speaker 1: be killing from a certain state or a certain unit.
Speaker 1: So we know that too as we go into it. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are tree hunt deer doing just fine,
Speaker 1: and so the system we have in place is working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's selfish this thing. Maybe it's a working
Speaker 1: system and it's got a lot of good that goes
Speaker 1: into it. So um yeah. I mean the end, I
Speaker 1: think the imperfection of bow hunting are clear and present,
Speaker 1: but but not so damning that we should never do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's as long as we own it and
Speaker 1: as long as the only thing that does bother me
Speaker 1: is the guy or girl who who has experienced the
Speaker 1: imperfections of bow hunting and doesn't try to do anything
Speaker 1: about it. Like I'm just gonna grab a boat for
Speaker 1: the season. Yeah, I wound a couple of deer every year,
Speaker 1: but I got my buck, uh, put it up at
Speaker 1: the end of the season. And then next year, September three,
Speaker 1: I grabbed the ball out that I feel that shows
Speaker 1: up a disregard for the his nature of what we're
Speaker 1: doing and for life. And I would caution I would
Speaker 1: I would just want anyone. Yeah, I would go back
Speaker 1: to du Shaun and his his Mechlovic. But like in
Speaker 1: that area of the world and much of Europe, bow
Speaker 1: hunting is thought to be unspeakable. Like I've hunted in Bulgaria,
Speaker 1: hunting in Germany. It's starting to change the Scandinavia two.
Speaker 1: I mean, bo hunting is catching on in some of
Speaker 1: these areas. But traditionally they believe we have a rifle.
Speaker 1: This is ethical. Um, it's more ethical and and more
Speaker 1: responsible to use a rifle some and some of these
Speaker 1: areas and countries in Europe, b hunting is illegal for
Speaker 1: that reason, because we have a more powerful and more
Speaker 1: lethal weapon to choose not to use it as foolish. Um.
Speaker 1: There's arguments against that, like for us longer hunting seasons
Speaker 1: and things of that nature that that certainly we would
Speaker 1: argue for. But even that's very selfish. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you go over to Germany and they
Speaker 1: do driven months and they shoot rifles at running animals
Speaker 1: as a tradition, as part of their tradition. So all
Speaker 1: of this is oxymen roonic at some level, But there
Speaker 1: is if you think about the reverence and the culture
Speaker 1: and the European tradition for hunting there's more reverence, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit more thought, and they don't use bows. Um.
Speaker 1: But so that's just another another way to go about it.
Speaker 1: You know. So I think for us, we think hard
Speaker 1: about why we choose our tree. You know, I'm friends
Speaker 1: with a lot of folks that only pick up a
Speaker 1: bow and say that out say that out right, I
Speaker 1: only pick up a bow, I only hunt with a
Speaker 1: bow hashtag whatever, hashtag bow hunting only, um, and use
Speaker 1: that as a bow and use a bow to shoot geese,
Speaker 1: and use a bow to shoot turkeys, and use a
Speaker 1: bow to shoot all types of things. They could just
Speaker 1: as well a shot with a shotgun or a rifle.
Speaker 1: And you have a problem with that? Is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying? I mean, it'd be hard to explain. See
Speaker 1: I I don't have a problem with that for the
Speaker 1: same reasons that I just said in general, because I,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, it's personal and it's a different wave.
Speaker 1: It's it's a very different wave of hunting, right, the interaction,
Speaker 1: the experience you have with a rifle hunting a deer
Speaker 1: versus being forced to get that deer within thirty yards.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a totally different thing. It's you could
Speaker 1: set it up ethically where you're like, I'm only going
Speaker 1: to take these shots. I'm only gonna do But who
Speaker 1: in the world has never done right? That's right? So
Speaker 1: I think do I have a problem with it? I
Speaker 1: don't think that's one of the things I would go
Speaker 1: after as a hunter. Like if some other hunters said,
Speaker 1: like I just huntled about it all right, well you
Speaker 1: better be pretty good, then they're pretty good. But there's
Speaker 1: something there's there's there's something I think now I understand
Speaker 1: your point of view and the other but I do
Speaker 1: think there's also something admirable about self limiting and increasing
Speaker 1: the level of challenge because it's not just the actual
Speaker 1: execution the shop, but it's everything else that happens around
Speaker 1: that everything. You must be a whole lot more just
Speaker 1: be in the right position, being at the right time,
Speaker 1: understanding they're so um. There's so much more that goes
Speaker 1: into getting within dirty yards of an animal than um.
Speaker 1: And that that's why bow hang is so compelling to me. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: bohun is much more compelling than rifle. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not even close. Um. And I do most of my
Speaker 1: hunting with a bow, and so I'm not certainly not
Speaker 1: challenging that as much as I am just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look like we all know it, and let's just be
Speaker 1: more open about it, and let's just be let's let's
Speaker 1: look at win loss rates, and let's look at these
Speaker 1: things and try to um talk it through. Yeah, own
Speaker 1: it and get better. Yeah, for sure. And I think,
Speaker 1: um looking at these other examples in the world of
Speaker 1: where these things, how these things are being treated, is
Speaker 1: it provides some perspective. I haven't spent a ton of
Speaker 1: time in Europe hunting and around those cultures, but the
Speaker 1: time I have is has given me a lot of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a different way to think about it. Here's a
Speaker 1: different way, you know, um And and Sweden in a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of Scandinavia, Um, you have to take
Speaker 1: a competency test with your weapon before you have to
Speaker 1: shoot a running steel plate, shoot a running moose to
Speaker 1: to be able to get a license to go hunt.
Speaker 1: It was much that way for Ducheon and keep going
Speaker 1: back to him, but much that way for him and
Speaker 1: the Chechoslovaki growing up. Um And So there's there's probably
Speaker 1: some things we can implement around bow hunting to just
Speaker 1: ensure that as a group. You know, we're holding ourselves
Speaker 1: to a standard because there should be a standard, right,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I think so. The counterpoint
Speaker 1: to that would be, well, we are already struggling to
Speaker 1: recruit hirings. You want to put more barriers in the
Speaker 1: way of that. I'm with you. I'm not like a
Speaker 1: barrier do. I'm not like a like let the government
Speaker 1: figure that ship. I'm never that guy. I'm always like
Speaker 1: less of that is always is always good. Hopefully we
Speaker 1: can self regulate. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, self regulation, I would,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. I think that ends up
Speaker 1: being the best way to do it. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: and when we're on nobody's arguing against hunter safety classes.
Speaker 1: Nobody's like that sucks. And that's a great opportunity to
Speaker 1: incorporate more of this education. I think there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to prove what we're doing. They're probably it's a long
Speaker 1: time since I've done that, so I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what they're doing today, but I don't. I never shot
Speaker 1: a boat during I shot a shotgun. I remember during
Speaker 1: mine and a rifle shoot anything during ours, it was
Speaker 1: all classroom and well, when I grew and in my
Speaker 1: growing up, we didn't really hunt with archery tackle until
Speaker 1: I was like maybe eighteen sixteen, seventeen eighteen, and I
Speaker 1: think it was like thirteen or fourteen. Yeah, we it
Speaker 1: was two weeks out of the year and get a
Speaker 1: rifle out and you know, poke holes and animals. Thanks
Speaker 1: for me. It was poke holes and trees for a
Speaker 1: while for a while. But also, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: if if, and we'll look at this on the mediator
Speaker 1: dot com and hopefully in some articles to come by
Speaker 1: you and others, but look at is this really true?
Speaker 1: Is is is the wound loss rate on average for
Speaker 1: rifles you know, and and our tree? Where is that?
Speaker 1: Where is that level? Because there's a lot of over
Speaker 1: confidence with fire firearms, there's a lot of UM. I
Speaker 1: think we may find that we're completely off base. I've
Speaker 1: wondered about that because I do think shot selection with
Speaker 1: certain people with a firearm is much looser than much
Speaker 1: much looser. So that and and the number of hunters
Speaker 1: using that weapon significantly higher, So you've got a way
Speaker 1: higher number of hunters out there. And now again over generalizing,
Speaker 1: but a much higher number of hunters, a much higher
Speaker 1: percentage of those taking low UM quality shots probably. Um. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: the weapon itself might be more effective, but only when
Speaker 1: when used to use the right way, And there might
Speaker 1: I would be very interesting to see to what I
Speaker 1: because I think I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 1: But you know, the imperfecional about hunting being what they are,
Speaker 1: there's not that doesn't mean picking up a rifle is
Speaker 1: a perfect thing to do. I mean it goes back
Speaker 1: to an example you up earlier, like shooting a moving animal.
Speaker 1: That's something that people do with firearms quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Uh deer drives in Iowa. I think it's still illegal.
Speaker 1: It's a big thing of Michigan. Big things in Michigan.
Speaker 1: It's a big thing down south, you know. I Um,
Speaker 1: but I think there's there's it's it's a traditional used thing.
Speaker 1: It's something that a lot of people do. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna sit here and tell anyone what to do, but
Speaker 1: I will just tell you that growing up for me, um,
Speaker 1: my grandfather, who was kind of the the patriarch of
Speaker 1: our family and our hunting camp and who everyone kind
Speaker 1: of he'd he'd set the laws. If you were to
Speaker 1: shoot it a moving animal, you were out. You're out.
Speaker 1: We had a an uncle of mine brought a friend
Speaker 1: up to her deer camp one year and they saw
Speaker 1: a buck chasing a dough across the field with inside
Speaker 1: a deer camp, and that guy ran outside the camp,
Speaker 1: grabbed his rifle off the side of the cabin, start
Speaker 1: pole pole, shooting that buck. He was gone. That wasn't
Speaker 1: acceptable because that in my grandfather's eyes, that is not
Speaker 1: you can't guarantee you're not gonna win an animal. Talk
Speaker 1: about self freak relation. That's um. So that was that
Speaker 1: was the world and the tradition I grew up, and
Speaker 1: so that's where my perspective comes from. Um. But I
Speaker 1: understand that there's different views. Yeah, there certainly is, and
Speaker 1: that's that's something we're here to explore. Man. Like, I
Speaker 1: think that's the beautiful thing about what we've got going
Speaker 1: with this company is that we're all willing to engage
Speaker 1: in these conversations and poke holes on our own assumptions.
Speaker 1: Like I got some assumptions about what bothers me, and
Speaker 1: I know that some of it's wrong, but what like
Speaker 1: they can't be all right right, um, But identifying these things, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you've been pretty forward and talking about writing
Speaker 1: a piece on on on this subject, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what it's the beauty of what we're gonna try
Speaker 1: to do is take these issues that we all have.
Speaker 1: We all know they're there. Um, I think I don't
Speaker 1: know if you would agree with this, but I think, um,
Speaker 1: maybe our father's generation and then some parts of our generation,
Speaker 1: UM would have rather pushed it on the rug for
Speaker 1: year of you know, persecution, then um, then talk it through.
Speaker 1: I think having those conversations is important. It's always something
Speaker 1: I've I've thought so too, like where we may not
Speaker 1: agree on everything, but I think it is a positive
Speaker 1: step to at least put it out there. Talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: think about I think through these things. This is something
Speaker 1: I know you'll um you're right about soon. But talk
Speaker 1: about if you have a tag, right, Every state is
Speaker 1: different for how they doll out their tags and licenses
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. But let's just build a
Speaker 1: scenario where I've got one tag for a deer every
Speaker 1: year with the bow. Let's just use a bow as
Speaker 1: an example. Um, the big buck that you we're chasing
Speaker 1: comes by, something happens and you plunk one into his
Speaker 1: high quarters, plunking arrow in his high quarters. He runs
Speaker 1: off your relatively positive that he's not he's not deceased.
Speaker 1: You try and try and try, you try to make
Speaker 1: it happy, and um, even in this you know, even
Speaker 1: we'll just make up in this hypothetical that you hunt
Speaker 1: around the area where he was last seeing there is
Speaker 1: blood but not a lot, there's hair. You know, you
Speaker 1: know that you put a arrow into an animal and
Speaker 1: then he's likely not dead. Um, do you not your
Speaker 1: tag or not? Yeah? So I've been in this situation myself,
Speaker 1: and um, it's almost twice a two situations kind of
Speaker 1: similar to this, and I had two different perspectives on it.
Speaker 1: One was like six years ago. One was this year,
Speaker 1: and I thought differently about it this year than I
Speaker 1: did six years ago. And it's again, it's another one
Speaker 1: of these issues that it's, uh, there's a weird line
Speaker 1: somewhere in here. It's hard to know where to draw
Speaker 1: that line, I think. Um, but that first scenario, hit
Speaker 1: a deer and saw where the arrow hit and it
Speaker 1: was it was back and low, and my first gut
Speaker 1: was that, you know that that should be a dead deer.
Speaker 1: But we tracked and tracked and tracked. I looked for
Speaker 1: him for three days, never found him. Very little blood. Um.
Speaker 1: I was devastated. It was this buck I've been watching
Speaker 1: for two years, the biggest deer at that point I
Speaker 1: ever got a shot at it. Just it was like
Speaker 1: a in my mind and head, it was like it
Speaker 1: was really it was a really Um, I just really
Speaker 1: didn't want to have end that way. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty devastated. Drove home that night. I'm not hunting anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: I got pulled over speeding on the way home. Um.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a bad place for a week, but then
Speaker 1: after a week, I was like, you know what, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that bucks still out there. I thought when
Speaker 1: we should have found him, he was dead. We should
Speaker 1: have found him. Um, the shot was low, might have
Speaker 1: been just like low brisket. Um. Just you know. I
Speaker 1: eventually convinced myself that I should keep hunting. And I
Speaker 1: got a picture, and I'm like, that's I got a
Speaker 1: picture of him. So he made it. I thought I
Speaker 1: thought he made it. I got a picture of a
Speaker 1: buck to look like him, So all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: keep hunting. And uh so this is two weeks after
Speaker 1: having that first shot and not being able to cover
Speaker 1: that buck. I'm hunting I see this buck come walking
Speaker 1: and and oh my god, that's the job breaker. It
Speaker 1: was real fast, how was happening? So I got in
Speaker 1: this picture of him alive. The night before I checked
Speaker 1: the camera scene it alive, and the next morning I
Speaker 1: made a move to go into that buck's core are
Speaker 1: again to try to get him set up like a
Speaker 1: hanging hunting type. The deal within like and I don't
Speaker 1: know what it was an hour of day later or
Speaker 1: something to hear that buck comes big, tall frame deer
Speaker 1: um and I got shot him. Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: just got this buck. It was amazing that all came together.
Speaker 1: Had been like the lowest of lows and then the
Speaker 1: highest highest. Now fast forward a few hours and I
Speaker 1: recovered the deer. Walk up with the deer. I look
Speaker 1: at him like, oh, that's not him. It's a different buck,
Speaker 1: And I was like, whoall he looked a lot like him.
Speaker 1: He was like a slightly smaller version of that deer.
Speaker 1: But then I realized I'd kill a different buck. And
Speaker 1: then as the season progressed, I kept checking trail cameras
Speaker 1: and stuff because my buddy was still hunting there, and
Speaker 1: no pictures of the original buck. No pictures of the
Speaker 1: original buck. No pictures of original buck, so maybe he
Speaker 1: didn't make it. Maybe was this buck all along that
Speaker 1: spring I go shed hunting right there in the area
Speaker 1: where this buck where I shot this buck, not far
Speaker 1: from that the original buck, and it was also close
Speaker 1: where I shot that other one. I find the original
Speaker 1: buck dead, and so that I'm thinking, man, you had
Speaker 1: killed that dear he holed up in this little bottom
Speaker 1: of a ditch and you just missed him. And me
Speaker 1: we grid searched, type I brought two different dogs in
Speaker 1: to try to find him. So either we just somehow,
Speaker 1: by some horrible struggle of fate missed him, or it
Speaker 1: had been like a several day thing he came back.
Speaker 1: So that was like, that was really shitty. Um, that
Speaker 1: was really shitty, And that was like, that was that
Speaker 1: first example of my life as a bow hunter where
Speaker 1: that happened and where it really made me like think
Speaker 1: about this whole top of the imperfection of ball hunting
Speaker 1: and the when that happens, what do you do? How
Speaker 1: do you process that? What does that mean if you're
Speaker 1: moving forward as a hunter, how do you how do
Speaker 1: you do everything you possibly can to make sure something
Speaker 1: like that doesn't happen again, etcetera, etcetera. UM, So that
Speaker 1: was that situation. That's how I dealt with that situation
Speaker 1: at that point. Now fast forward to this past season.
Speaker 1: I get a shot at a deer um in Montana
Speaker 1: on a hunt, and the shot seem pretty darn good
Speaker 1: from what I re meant from the shot, like I
Speaker 1: had video was consumed out, But I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good shot, Like that's a dead deer.
Speaker 1: There's no way that deer is not gonna die. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't find blood. I couldn't find blood, not that
Speaker 1: part of it, because I've got some red green color blindness.
Speaker 1: It doesn't pop to me and I'm by myself in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. So it wasn't like maybe I
Speaker 1: missed some blood that I should have, but I was
Speaker 1: having a hard time finding blood. Eventually, that grid search
Speaker 1: wasn't find anything that night. The next morning came back
Speaker 1: in daylight because I couldn't see anything anymore because how
Speaker 1: dark was that night. Came back in the next morning,
Speaker 1: search and search and search, find a little blood. Grid search,
Speaker 1: grid search, grid search, and I was devastating, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you are You're not gonna find this buck
Speaker 1: in here. I mean, it's just so thick, and I
Speaker 1: was unbelievably upset about it, so frustrated. Um And and
Speaker 1: that's all right, you're done hunting, like that deer is
Speaker 1: dead and you have to find that deer or you're
Speaker 1: going home with a punch tag like you're you're You're gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I've got five more days here until I
Speaker 1: have to go home, and I'm gonna walk every single
Speaker 1: hour of daylight and five days and if I don't
Speaker 1: find that deer, then I'm done. UM. So, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the right thing for someone to do. I
Speaker 1: think that if if I can understand, if you know
Speaker 1: that you hit a deer in a way that is
Speaker 1: clearly not fatal, like if you shoulder blood shot deer
Speaker 1: and it gets two inches of penetration, or if you
Speaker 1: just graze a deer there's a little bit of pair.
Speaker 1: But if there's some way you feel very very clear
Speaker 1: that that is a non lethal hit, and then you
Speaker 1: but you still did everything you possibly could do to
Speaker 1: make sure of that, um in that situation, or especially
Speaker 1: if you can see him again, I get a picture
Speaker 1: again in that situation, I totally. I can understand continued
Speaker 1: hunting that kind of situation. And again, this is just me.
Speaker 1: This is the way I think. I know, there's different
Speaker 1: perspectives on I would say if that if you shoot
Speaker 1: a buck and it's a clearly lethal hit, I personally
Speaker 1: would have a really hard time now not punching that
Speaker 1: tag like um. But that took a while for me
Speaker 1: to get to that point. Like that first year, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: because there's something that people the thing you hear is
Speaker 1: you gotta get back in the saddle, like the only
Speaker 1: way to get over this is to start hunting again.
Speaker 1: And I understand that from like a how to make
Speaker 1: you feel better standpoint? Like maybe, but is that the
Speaker 1: right thing? I don't know. I mean, I don't there's
Speaker 1: not necessarily I don't know if there's a clear cut
Speaker 1: answer from like from a how I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I think we're my heads at now. For me to
Speaker 1: feel okay with what I'm doing, I would have punched
Speaker 1: that montante um. Yeah, And it becomes that right like
Speaker 1: we we could have a wildlife manager come in here
Speaker 1: and tell us like, oh, where you know, as far
Speaker 1: as woon loss rates got an we take into account
Speaker 1: when we're doing the equation of population studies, we're taking
Speaker 1: into account the population of deer plus the population of hunters,
Speaker 1: and then we're putting wound loss rate in there somewhere
Speaker 1: in that equation. I'm sure. I'm sure that happens um
Speaker 1: and we'll endeavor to find someone that can give us
Speaker 1: some more information on that future articles and podcasts and
Speaker 1: things that we do. But but for sure that's happening.
Speaker 1: So given that it becomes a personal thing when managed
Speaker 1: from a larger macro management perspective, it's not the end
Speaker 1: of the world. It's like, that's so we're we're not
Speaker 1: saying like, wow, man, you know, as a as a hunter,
Speaker 1: who's responsible for these things, like don't do this? No, No,
Speaker 1: that's not it. It's more like, and I think as
Speaker 1: a kid, you don't really have the caring for like
Speaker 1: the animal. You just don't have the capacity to have
Speaker 1: the caring and empathy empathy for the animal as you
Speaker 1: do um when you've developed this really these relationships with
Speaker 1: these dear and you've tracked them and hunted them, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think I would also argue that white tail
Speaker 1: hunters have the most empathy for the animals. People always
Speaker 1: talk ship and I have in the past about naming
Speaker 1: dear but yeah, we we'll continue to. But one of
Speaker 1: the good things is that you develop empathy for that animal.
Speaker 1: It's based on your relationship with it. It's a very unique,
Speaker 1: weird kind of relationship. And then again the like one
Speaker 1: of the more complex relationships, and it's um, the hunter's
Speaker 1: paradox is what I would have very much so. And
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of folks I've written and been philosophized,
Speaker 1: if that's the word about about these things, but you know,
Speaker 1: they'd like to put a point on it. I think
Speaker 1: it's a personal thing, but I think um, as a hunter,
Speaker 1: it's something to consider, like, it's something to have in
Speaker 1: your like, don't don't discount that scenario. Don't say I
Speaker 1: always unless I get like, I only tag it if
Speaker 1: I have the actually animal. Leave yourself some room to
Speaker 1: make that. Just make that choice when it's necessary, you know,
Speaker 1: And don't don't write it off in any way. Keep
Speaker 1: it because it's it's useful. Yeah, I definitely agree, and
Speaker 1: for me, it's it comes a lot of people. You
Speaker 1: don't have to do this. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: do this, but I think more and more, and and
Speaker 1: definitely myself. The more time I the deeper I getting
Speaker 1: hunting just from just the activity participating in it. The
Speaker 1: more I think about it, and the more I think
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing, the more I think about why
Speaker 1: am I doing it? Or how is this okay? Or
Speaker 1: how is what I'm doing? How do I justify this
Speaker 1: to my stuff? How do I Those things are just
Speaker 1: in my mind a whole lot more. And it's those
Speaker 1: kinds of questions that lead me to the debates that
Speaker 1: we just had had that own debate my own head
Speaker 1: and the decision I made this year versus what I
Speaker 1: made that one year. I think the more and more
Speaker 1: you think about these things, the more it will influence
Speaker 1: some of these decisions around all these tricky, hairy, complex times.
Speaker 1: And I've been we were talking last night, I've been
Speaker 1: I'm not like a staunch opponent of the grip and
Speaker 1: grand but I'm just like kind of over it. And
Speaker 1: there's a million reasons why not to do it, I think, um,
Speaker 1: but I get why people do. If you look at
Speaker 1: my Instagram account, you'll see plenty of grip and grins
Speaker 1: on there from years past. I haven't done one in
Speaker 1: a while, but it's I've done them recent enough that
Speaker 1: you could call me a hypocrite or a flip flopper. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'd have to defend that. But that's just it's
Speaker 1: keep evolving, keep thinking about the thing that we're doing. Um.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I mean, white del hunting is
Speaker 1: is it? Man? It is the core of what we do.
Speaker 1: It is the most prevalent type of hunting, and it's
Speaker 1: the most the relationship with the animal we have the
Speaker 1: most as a society and a culture, I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: we can talk about charismatic mega faun in our relationship there,
Speaker 1: but it's not as tense on a daily basis. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've lived in Texas, deer lived in my backyard. I'm
Speaker 1: here in Montana. There's deer in my backyard. Last night. Um,
Speaker 1: we went to the media Christmas party and they were
Speaker 1: deer walking around all over the place. So our relationship
Speaker 1: with these animals are is much more tangible than our
Speaker 1: relationship with others. I think is the point that you're
Speaker 1: getting to with this that we can clearly point to
Speaker 1: where to hunt being the most important cut podcast. This
Speaker 1: is it. This is the white tail podcast. You better
Speaker 1: listen to that or your a loser. And to close
Speaker 1: this all out of tell I gotta tell a quick story.
Speaker 1: Here's um. We were in a meeting the other day
Speaker 1: and my wife texted me, but I've been it's very intense, right,
Speaker 1: a couple of days worth of UM meetings. My wife's
Speaker 1: texted me something around the like missing you. Of course
Speaker 1: I missed her too, and so I texted her back,
Speaker 1: what do you have it there? Did you pull it up?
Speaker 1: Ben texted his quote unquote wife, busy meeting day, but
Speaker 1: can't wait for a weekend with my lovees. Are you okay?
Speaker 1: And I responded, I can't wait. You text your buddy,
Speaker 1: sweet nothings that are meant for your lady. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we got a good laugh out of that one. We're
Speaker 1: going to have a good weekend, you and I this weekend.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for it because what we are love.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we established that early on. Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: That's where we're gonna end it right there, Thanks buddy,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ben. That's it. That's all. Another episode of
Speaker 1: the Hunting Collective in the books. Thanks Mark Kenyan A
Speaker 1: great conversation as a white tail hunter. White Tail lover.
Speaker 1: It's good to hear his perspective on some of those different,
Speaker 1: more difficult topics. But it's just good to hang out
Speaker 1: with that guy. He's a good, good, good man. UM.
Speaker 1: It's very caring and the way he approaches hunting, and
Speaker 1: really enjoy enjoy talking to him as always. What else
Speaker 1: is on the docket to talk about? Hey, UM, there's
Speaker 1: a little thing online. It's a big controversy, big, big
Speaker 1: controversy online this last week about UM stickers. I got
Speaker 1: what like three negative comments. Basically the whole internet was
Speaker 1: talking about the sticker gate. I called sticker gate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good name for it. UM posted about, Hey,
Speaker 1: go go to the uh the meat eater dot com
Speaker 1: store you know there and buy some stickers. Well, apparently
Speaker 1: the sticker was four bucks, but the shipping was six pot,
Speaker 1: making it a ten dollar sticker. That better be a
Speaker 1: damn good sticker for that much money. So that was
Speaker 1: something I didn't know. I didn't know about the shipping.
Speaker 1: So now that I know that, UM, we'll try to
Speaker 1: get that changed. But in the meantime, UH, there's more
Speaker 1: stuff there, so you could order, for example, a pro
Speaker 1: nuance anti bullshit T shirt. You can also order a
Speaker 1: kick ass hoodie with the Hunting Collective podcast logo on there,
Speaker 1: and then you can also um order a sticker right
Speaker 1: those three things are there right now. So if you
Speaker 1: go to store dot the meat Eator dot com or
Speaker 1: just go to the metator dot com click on shop,
Speaker 1: you'll find those items there. You can buy them now
Speaker 1: and buy them in any quantity that you want. But
Speaker 1: I think we'll get over sticker Gate all three folks
Speaker 1: that can claimed. Hopefully you will also get there and
Speaker 1: buy a shirt or a hoodie or something cool like that.
Speaker 1: Um It's it's fun to have put that stuff out there,
Speaker 1: so I hope that you like it. And while you're there,
Speaker 1: if you have a little more time, click on the
Speaker 1: newsletter button up there. It's a subscribe Click on there.
Speaker 1: You put your email in and then every Wednesday, the
Speaker 1: Mediator Crew, which I'm a part of, send you an
Speaker 1: email with all this awesome content in it. It's got
Speaker 1: Pat Durkin, it's got Brodie Henderson, Steve Ronella me, it's
Speaker 1: got Mark Kenyon, it's got a pril fokey, it's got
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff they're in So you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to go and do that. It's been to be very important,
Speaker 1: uh for everyone. So we thank you, thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: thank you for commenting, and really appreciate um all the
Speaker 1: support we've had recently. UM, all the downloads and the
Speaker 1: listens that that we've been getting been that that's been
Speaker 1: growing precipitously and I'm thrilled about that and never thought
Speaker 1: um we'd be in a position where are today, but
Speaker 1: I'm happy about it. So thank you again for listening
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time on the Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: Bye m