Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything, all right. So I'm wearing my underwearing
Speaker 1: all my clothes and um, but I'm in bed. And
Speaker 1: remember the old sitcoms and they couldn't show couples in bed.
Speaker 1: I do. So they had the show that couple has
Speaker 1: always had like little beds, like two little beds with
Speaker 1: a night stand between them. And I was like, how
Speaker 1: a couple slept in old sitcoms and TV shows? That's
Speaker 1: how me and Mark Kenyon A Right now we're in
Speaker 1: a hotel room and we're in little beds, laying in
Speaker 1: little beds. Um and and and Doug during In and
Speaker 1: the Eagle are in little chairs facing us, but we're
Speaker 1: in chairs. Uh, Mark Kenyon, Now you like, like I
Speaker 1: think you've even said the sport that that that you're
Speaker 1: you use the term like you're a white tail guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: taking you like I understand what it means. I want
Speaker 1: you to explain for you know, what it means to
Speaker 1: be a white tail guy, because like I always say
Speaker 1: that I'm a big game generalist, which isn't really a
Speaker 1: category you know, no one types in big game generalists
Speaker 1: into search engines, the truth about big game general truth
Speaker 1: about big game generalists. But what is how your small
Speaker 1: game exploits fit into being a big game generalist. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a hunting generalist, but in terms of talking about
Speaker 1: big game. Yeah, in terms of big game of a
Speaker 1: big game generalist. But I'm a hunting generalist with an
Speaker 1: emphasis on big game generalistness. But what does the white
Speaker 1: tail guy mark for me? A white tail guy means
Speaker 1: that that's when I grew up on So that was
Speaker 1: almost all I hunted, growing up with white tails, and
Speaker 1: now it's still comprises probably of my hunting and then
Speaker 1: most of my year otherwise. I mean, I'm doing white
Speaker 1: tail relaid stuff almost the entire year, from January through December,
Speaker 1: whether it's hunting or scouting or preparing spots or all
Speaker 1: sorts of different things. So when I say I'm a
Speaker 1: white tail guy, I mean that is like my number
Speaker 1: one passion. It's also how I make my living. And
Speaker 1: then I have you know, as my ability to travel
Speaker 1: and do different things has grown, Um, you know, I've
Speaker 1: been dabbling in new things which which I've really come
Speaker 1: to enjoy. If I've been able to go hunting elk
Speaker 1: now for the last four years. You know, learned how
Speaker 1: turkey hunt like eight nine years ago, so I love
Speaker 1: doing that now. And you know, I pussed around with
Speaker 1: a small game when I was a kid too, but
Speaker 1: but white tails were what got me with a meat
Speaker 1: hook in the heart. I'd say, um, is your foot
Speaker 1: touch on the ground? That's interesting because I think that
Speaker 1: when TV evolved to allow couples to be in bed
Speaker 1: in one bed, I think one of the wasn't. I
Speaker 1: think that one of the people in the couple had
Speaker 1: to have a foot on the floor. There were crazy
Speaker 1: rules here. I think that once they could have the
Speaker 1: same bed that had to be on the floor. So
Speaker 1: this those are like SCC rules. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: marks fixing to come over into my bed, you know,
Speaker 1: with that before. It's been a really good trip, Steve.
Speaker 1: But I can't tell you what's funny is my uh
Speaker 1: one of my wife's biggest pet peeves about visiting my
Speaker 1: family is that as soon as I started dating Kylie,
Speaker 1: they changed my parents. In my bedroom where I grew up,
Speaker 1: they took out my regular full size bed and replaced
Speaker 1: it with two little TV slept over. Yeah, so now
Speaker 1: even we're still married and we sleep in separate beds there,
Speaker 1: what really, She's like, why do we still do this?
Speaker 1: But your parents did it for that reason because they
Speaker 1: explained that it was because the old bed is bad
Speaker 1: and they had company coming over, spent a weekend, and
Speaker 1: they happened to know someone who had these almost new beds,
Speaker 1: and you know, they don't want their son defiling the
Speaker 1: family home that that might be what's actually happening? How much?
Speaker 1: How comfortable are you? Like, how comfortable are you saying
Speaker 1: when you say you make your living doing it? Like
Speaker 1: like spell off of it? What that means? Because like
Speaker 1: a lot like most, not most dudes in the world,
Speaker 1: if you said, hey, do you want to make your
Speaker 1: living hunting? Not most dudes in the world, most dudes
Speaker 1: who might be inclined to be listening to this right
Speaker 1: now would would be like, sure, So what does it
Speaker 1: look like? What does it mean to be like to
Speaker 1: be like a professional white tail guy? So what that
Speaker 1: means for me? It's not actually the hunting that makes
Speaker 1: my living necessarily, it's content that I create based on
Speaker 1: those experiences. So I run wired hunt dot com, which
Speaker 1: is a deer Hunting website and the Wired Hunt podcast,
Speaker 1: which is a deer hunting podcast. So I make probably
Speaker 1: my income from at tizing and things related to that.
Speaker 1: And then I write for most of the big deer
Speaker 1: hunting magazines and written for Outdoor Life, Feeling, Stream, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: So do some freelance writing um. And then a little
Speaker 1: bit of like merchandise sales and some digital e books
Speaker 1: some kind of things like that, but basically content related
Speaker 1: to white tail hunting. Um in my core audience. And
Speaker 1: really where I started was like that, you know, the
Speaker 1: tagline of what you're hunt was deer hunting for the
Speaker 1: next Generation. So it's been really focused on that really
Speaker 1: really serious white tail guy that's thinking white tails all
Speaker 1: your own, and um, you know, producing content around that
Speaker 1: that lifestyle that that's something I think that you said
Speaker 1: something to Doug and then Doug said it to me. Um,
Speaker 1: so I want to circle background and ask you about it.
Speaker 1: Where there's like a seasonality to hunting, okay, and in
Speaker 1: the business of hunting. So when I say the business
Speaker 1: hunting means that's like content, right, just like stuff that
Speaker 1: people watch for enjoyment, stuff that people watch and read
Speaker 1: in order to learn equipment that people purchase, just like
Speaker 1: the activity around hunting is like strongly seasonal, where after
Speaker 1: Labor Day, um, people start like there's like a creeping
Speaker 1: interest in hunting, and then it lingers past hunting season
Speaker 1: kind of through the holidays as people are still thinking about,
Speaker 1: like it's still freshener head like stuff they wanted to get,
Speaker 1: stuff they wanted to do. They're still excited about it.
Speaker 1: They're kind of sharing memories about their fall, and then
Speaker 1: it sort of peters off and goes away. And uh,
Speaker 1: Douglas recappy conversation you had with you and you were
Speaker 1: saying that that it's kind of like in the white
Speaker 1: tailed world, it's kind of almost not that way anymore.
Speaker 1: I'd agree with that. Yeah, Like what like why because
Speaker 1: there's always something to be doing. So I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just start at the beginning of the year. In
Speaker 1: January and February, it's postseason scouting, so you can you
Speaker 1: can scout and see sign and so many different things
Speaker 1: a lot better during that time frame. Tracks in the
Speaker 1: snow um as as a stow excuse me, as the
Speaker 1: snow starts to melt in early March, depending where you're at,
Speaker 1: then you can really see related signs, so rubs and
Speaker 1: scrapes and stuff left over from the year before. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that going on January through March,
Speaker 1: and then you know, late February through March then is
Speaker 1: shed hunting, and that's huge in the white tail community
Speaker 1: these days. So I mean tons of interest related to
Speaker 1: shed hunting. And then once you get later into the spring,
Speaker 1: then everyone's worked on their habitat projects. So then all April,
Speaker 1: May June you're talking food plots or timber stand improvements
Speaker 1: or creating bedding cover or whatever it might be. And
Speaker 1: then you get into summer and then everybody's talking about
Speaker 1: hanging my tree stands, getting out your trail cameras to
Speaker 1: see what kind of bucks are in the area, scouting
Speaker 1: bean fields, um, getting all your final prep archery practice,
Speaker 1: rifle practice, whatever is you're doing all the way, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden September and you're you're hunting
Speaker 1: again in some states October first and others and it's
Speaker 1: spread out. But yeah, I mean, my every single day
Speaker 1: of my year something white terror lad is going on.
Speaker 1: Um except for the last like seven YEA cabout cab
Speaker 1: when when when you say you're going out in January
Speaker 1: to check tracks, what exactly are you doing? So, I
Speaker 1: mean that kind of situation like you might be walking
Speaker 1: the edges of cut Cordfield and see if you can
Speaker 1: cut a big track, and if you cut a big track,
Speaker 1: you might Okay, there's a mature buck potentially here, and
Speaker 1: if the season is done, that's a great opportunity to
Speaker 1: follow that track back and determine where that buck's betting.
Speaker 1: And you know, no risk there if I bump him,
Speaker 1: no big deal, and youved in the strong likelihood he's
Speaker 1: gonna be alive next hunting season. And these these mature bucks,
Speaker 1: at least in the places where I hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: like Michigan or other heavily pressured states. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of hunters. These bucks, they bed places for a reason,
Speaker 1: like nothing's happening willy nilly. If a buck, if a
Speaker 1: mature buck is bettered in the area, it's because he
Speaker 1: knows he's got you know, safety, he's not got a
Speaker 1: lot of humans going in there. He's got some way
Speaker 1: to get out of there quickly. He can observe or
Speaker 1: smell what's happening throughout the day. So when you find
Speaker 1: those kinds of areas. Not only is that mature buck
Speaker 1: that's alive right now probably going to continue to use that,
Speaker 1: but that's probably gonna be you as in the future
Speaker 1: by future buck. So if that buck, if you kill
Speaker 1: that deer, someone else is gonna come in there and
Speaker 1: pick it up. So if you can identify those buck
Speaker 1: betting areas, you're in a good situation moving forward. So
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time backtrack and deer. Sometimes
Speaker 1: what when you look for a big track, like what
Speaker 1: what is the I mean, everybody likes to you know,
Speaker 1: everyone likes to think they know a big track. Okay,
Speaker 1: where you got that the dew clause or splayed out
Speaker 1: like the animal gets to a certain way, like talk
Speaker 1: through some of that stuff, some of the fallacies and
Speaker 1: truths about like what does a big old buck track
Speaker 1: look like. I can't say I'm an expert on this,
Speaker 1: but what I always look for as a four finger track.
Speaker 1: So something that wide across there, if you've got it,
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's a running track. If it's a
Speaker 1: walking track, a walking four finger wide track. Now consider
Speaker 1: that my hands are extremely powerful. That a big hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's very subjective, I know, that's a walking track,
Speaker 1: four fingers one on a grown male. And that that's
Speaker 1: have you heard that, Doug. That's something I've been told
Speaker 1: a lot. Ye. And the key is the walking tracks,
Speaker 1: because any of your or any bucks track looks big
Speaker 1: if it's yes, a running our moving tracks. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I mean yeah, I mean imagine
Speaker 1: a four finger track from me, and that's one of
Speaker 1: my cattle got out. You know, have you ever done
Speaker 1: a handoff where you take your pressed gar see who's
Speaker 1: the most powerful. It would be an interesting one. I
Speaker 1: do want to point out that I did have you
Speaker 1: on on the handoff length at least. Yeah, but when
Speaker 1: you factor in height like my proportion. You know, I've
Speaker 1: told this story for my old man met John Wayne,
Speaker 1: and John Wayne commented on my old man's hand that stuff,
Speaker 1: let's be proud of. Yes, what was the comment. I've
Speaker 1: never shook a hand bigger than mine, And my old
Speaker 1: man just said, and you never fought in the war
Speaker 1: and I didn't. He sat it out. He sat it out.
Speaker 1: His name was not John Wayne, his name is Maryon
Speaker 1: and he sat the war out. Wow. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know if my dad rubbed his nose in it. The
Speaker 1: director John Ford rubbed John Wayne's nose in that because
Speaker 1: Ford uh was in the service and did propaganda films
Speaker 1: and put his life at tremendous risk many times. And
Speaker 1: later I went on to make all these great Westerns
Speaker 1: with John Wayne and Ford would uh. Ford would embarrass
Speaker 1: and ridicule Wayne Um about his uh lack of service. Interesting,
Speaker 1: your knowledge about films has surprised man, This dude, I
Speaker 1: like movies a lot. May not realize you had that
Speaker 1: catalog in the mind. There interesting big buck tracks? Do
Speaker 1: they get there's a big huge buck track as he
Speaker 1: gets older? Does it? Does it round off on the tip?
Speaker 1: I think it varies? Is very individual. I think you see,
Speaker 1: this isn't something I've gotten as far to do. But
Speaker 1: I know some guys and I probably should try to
Speaker 1: do this more so they will actually go about trying
Speaker 1: to identify individual bucks by their tracks, and so there
Speaker 1: will be leading toward. That's what I'm leading towards. So
Speaker 1: if you want to jump into that, jump into that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's I haven't done this yet, but there are
Speaker 1: some guys I know that can look at certain tracks.
Speaker 1: They can or can they say they can. I can't
Speaker 1: verify that. But they tell me they can identify like
Speaker 1: a little chink in it, or rounded edge on one side,
Speaker 1: or something like the chink chink h something like that.
Speaker 1: And then so here's something some people do to to
Speaker 1: make this a little bit easier. Make track catchers. So
Speaker 1: let's say you have got a food source and maybe
Speaker 1: there's a handful of trail that leading to that food.
Speaker 1: So let's just say it's a cornfield and there's a
Speaker 1: handful of trails leading to that cornfield, and you want
Speaker 1: to know, how is buck X coming into this area.
Speaker 1: What some guys will do is they will go in
Speaker 1: there and they will rake out back up. I'm sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that you're out with your with your knockers
Speaker 1: and you see a big old buck standing in the
Speaker 1: field and you're like and you're you're wondering, like what
Speaker 1: what route is he using to get here? Like how
Speaker 1: can I head him off? Because once he's in it,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna correct. So so in that case, then
Speaker 1: you're curious, like, you know, back in the woods, what
Speaker 1: is he doing before he arrives here? And so one
Speaker 1: whether there's several ways to determine that. One you could
Speaker 1: observe if you can find an observation stand or something
Speaker 1: where you can watch that and see to the timber.
Speaker 1: Number two, you could use trail cameras, so I actually
Speaker 1: put a camera on trails and stuff and monitor that way.
Speaker 1: Or a third way is making these track catchers, where
Speaker 1: you essentially will clear out an area on that trail
Speaker 1: really clean and flat without leaves and making you a
Speaker 1: nice even dirt area, and then come back in the
Speaker 1: next day and see which one of those trails has
Speaker 1: that big buck track or you know, maybe you saw
Speaker 1: the buck come off trail X, and you know to
Speaker 1: go check that track catcher because you know he walked
Speaker 1: through there, and then you can see that print clearly
Speaker 1: pressed in there and say, Okay, he came through here,
Speaker 1: this is what his track looks like. Take a picture
Speaker 1: of it or something, and in the future you've got
Speaker 1: one more tool in your chest that you can use
Speaker 1: to try to pattern that deer are you Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with umm, not familiar with, but but lion hunters
Speaker 1: in the desert. The guys that are hunting lions in
Speaker 1: the absence of snow will carry around little whisk brooms,
Speaker 1: sometimes full on brooms to dust out just to to
Speaker 1: to to wipe it clean on any kind of little
Speaker 1: crossing spots or like dry creek beds just to try
Speaker 1: to see. We used to do that as all hunting guides,
Speaker 1: like certain bigger trails that we walked a lot, and
Speaker 1: you'd get to certain sections that were just like soft
Speaker 1: and sandy, or you knew that it was some sort
Speaker 1: of like just a crossing or whatnot. It would often
Speaker 1: have elk tracks, and so we would clean them out
Speaker 1: and that way, next time you walk through, you'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: somebody was here in the last twenty four hours. You
Speaker 1: know there's elk in the area. When when fur trap
Speaker 1: and uh, you know in fur trapping trap muskrat and
Speaker 1: mink and raccoon and beaver and stuff. You pay a
Speaker 1: lot of attention to undercut banks, like a lot of
Speaker 1: animals like to do to move along streams. They'll always
Speaker 1: use undercut banks because it gives you overhead protection. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not if you're a little mink work and you're
Speaker 1: just not exposed to avian predators and whatever else. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of food onto there because all the
Speaker 1: other ship that's trying not to get eaten is also
Speaker 1: living under the undercut bank, and I would just go along,
Speaker 1: like go along my hip boots, And anytime you had
Speaker 1: to undercut bank where's a little bit of sand or
Speaker 1: mud on the bottom, you just would not even thinking
Speaker 1: about a kick water up in there to slick it.
Speaker 1: So the next time he came by, you'd see, you know,
Speaker 1: you'd like slick it out to make to see if
Speaker 1: there's a mink work in it or whatever. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a technique that probably has it's probably
Speaker 1: an invented many times, you know. Yeah, well that makes
Speaker 1: this a simple but effective Oh yeah. But like the
Speaker 1: first time someone did it and showed it to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, I've been like walking this trail for
Speaker 1: three years, you know, and how got anything? Yeah? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so that's like the January kind of activity. Now. Shed hunting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: are people like our dudes hunting sheds because they're trying
Speaker 1: to learn what kind of bucks are about, or they
Speaker 1: just hunting sheds they want to find if they'd like
Speaker 1: to have them. I guess the ladder. I think it's
Speaker 1: a combination of both. At least for me, it's both.
Speaker 1: And most of the guys I hang out with it's both.
Speaker 1: I mean, we write antlers are are cool. I love
Speaker 1: having a nailer in my hand and getting look at
Speaker 1: it and turned around. Given the people. Usually I'm giving
Speaker 1: people with them. Yeah, there are a few far between
Speaker 1: in Michigan dougs loose with them, schools and whatnot. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've you're thinking about the end. It's it's funny that
Speaker 1: you say that, though, because when you Mark was saying, uh,
Speaker 1: deer hunting, what was it for the next generation. That
Speaker 1: was one of the conversations that we had up there
Speaker 1: on the mountain. It was that I'm twice his age, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I am. It's it's a bitter sweet that's a
Speaker 1: bitter sweet thing. Though to realize, my god, you're the
Speaker 1: old guy. You know, they've become less and less important
Speaker 1: to me. I used to very much just like hoard him,
Speaker 1: never wanted to give him away, and then eventually I
Speaker 1: was just like, really, why he's important to me? I
Speaker 1: think there's a threshold maybe, like I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: just starting to get to that point where I haven't
Speaker 1: like at first it was so like I had to
Speaker 1: and then ten and then twelve, and like it's such
Speaker 1: a special thing. And then once you get to a
Speaker 1: certain number yet it's easier to part with them. Um,
Speaker 1: but if it's on your property, it's nice to know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I found both sides on a couple of
Speaker 1: different occasions, and it's like, I want to kill this, dear,
Speaker 1: or if I kill this year, it's gonna be cool
Speaker 1: to have a sheds. But this is okay, all right?
Speaker 1: Uh So to recap, like, now, now I got myself
Speaker 1: all messed up. I get it the ship, but I
Speaker 1: wanna get back to the primary question. So with all
Speaker 1: the trail cameras and watching and looking and scouting and
Speaker 1: all that kind of ship you're telling me now, and
Speaker 1: then you'll find a shed antler. Now I want to
Speaker 1: back up for the real neo fights here. Um, dear,
Speaker 1: I'm going way backing up. Dear lose their antlers every year.
Speaker 1: Some people don't really realize this. A deer drops his
Speaker 1: antler and regenerates it every year. So when people talk
Speaker 1: about horns and antlers, and sometimes people will say like, oh,
Speaker 1: that dear is horns, and yeah, okay, that's fine, but
Speaker 1: it's not a horn. It's an antler horn. An animal
Speaker 1: keeps his whole life mountain goats, big horn sheep, all
Speaker 1: that crazy African animals. They got horns, and then you
Speaker 1: retain your horns. With one exception, the prong horn, the
Speaker 1: American prong horn or antelope um is, it is the
Speaker 1: only horned animal that sheds its horn and girls it
Speaker 1: new every year. And horns are like basically made out
Speaker 1: of hair. Antlers are like bone. Um. So when we
Speaker 1: say a shed, we mean like the annual shed and
Speaker 1: a buckle with some exceptions, but generally a buck every
Speaker 1: year is going to grow bigger and bigger antlers if
Speaker 1: he's fortunate enough to live so long and hits what
Speaker 1: age mark six seven eight older than that they started
Speaker 1: they started to go back downhill. Yeah, but one and
Speaker 1: the one of the thousand bucks lives that olde. They
Speaker 1: just don't live that long too much, it happens to him. Um.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me that you have and all the
Speaker 1: thinking and scouting and looking and trail cam in that
Speaker 1: you're up to, that you'll now and then find a
Speaker 1: shed antler and be like, I didn't know that this
Speaker 1: buck existed. Well, it depends if it's property that you
Speaker 1: hunt that I've been doing all those things. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: still happens sometimes, so he lived his whole damn year,
Speaker 1: but shed his antler evaded your attend lots of times
Speaker 1: that these deer have different ranges. So like the bucks
Speaker 1: that I'm seeing in the summer and the hunting season,
Speaker 1: but those those might be very different than a buck
Speaker 1: that shows up in March and sheds zanndler. For example,
Speaker 1: there's a deer I've been hunting and watching for a
Speaker 1: couple of years now that he shows up on this
Speaker 1: property like the first week in September, right when when
Speaker 1: the velvet comes off, he relocates that fall range defined property.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, like like you give it an
Speaker 1: acreage like what you're talking about. So there's a property
Speaker 1: in mid Michigan that I hunt that is a nine
Speaker 1: d acre farm that I have permission to hunt on,
Speaker 1: so small, relatively small like small farm. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it mean it's all relative, right, Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: like like like in Michigan, when I live in Michigan
Speaker 1: and we were hunting, we hunted a lot of like
Speaker 1: working family farms that were big enough to support you know,
Speaker 1: a family. There's a lot of farms in the range
Speaker 1: of of three to four acres in the area up
Speaker 1: man by us. At least, everything's getting fractured, smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller properties. I mean, it's all forties and
Speaker 1: eighties these days. Almost as when I say, um, so
Speaker 1: I feel somewhat um fortunate to have ninety acres to
Speaker 1: hunt on there. Um it gives me enough to work
Speaker 1: with half of its open field, so you can't do
Speaker 1: much with that, but then the other half has some
Speaker 1: cover and stuff. Dude, I'm not dogging on having ninety acres.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm just trying to clarify for people
Speaker 1: who don't really deal in acreages in their head. We're
Speaker 1: talking about when you point that out a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago. That's so funny to hear me talk about
Speaker 1: properties when hunting out west. That's something you guys don't
Speaker 1: think about it at all. But yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: everyone that I hunt with and around. That's how you work.
Speaker 1: I've got permission on two properties, or I've got this
Speaker 1: property that property that you can hunt and you have
Speaker 1: to um cherish those because they're fleeting getting permission. They
Speaker 1: can you can lose it quick. You can get kicked
Speaker 1: off a property, like we joked about. Um and they
Speaker 1: sell it off from under her or some little some
Speaker 1: little cousin. Yeah, and then that happens. Cousins are the
Speaker 1: bane of hunters man, because every d of the owns property.
Speaker 1: It's inevitable. They got some damn cousin who eventually is
Speaker 1: gonna come around. I want to tap into his birthright
Speaker 1: and boot you off the property. But you got a
Speaker 1: ninety acre property, and then you have freedom to roll
Speaker 1: them there. But in all the surrounding properties you might
Speaker 1: not be able to. Whatever happens there is someone else's business. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I try to get permission as many places as
Speaker 1: I can, you know, to increase your flexibility and your
Speaker 1: options and stuff. So in some places I have permission
Speaker 1: on multiple property, someplaces just a tiny little piece here there.
Speaker 1: But in this case you have, you have permission on
Speaker 1: a ninety surrounded by other landowners. Um, and there was
Speaker 1: a buck of interest. Buck of interest. And yeah, he
Speaker 1: he shows up in September, He hangs out till January
Speaker 1: and then he disappears. But I don't understand what you mean,
Speaker 1: like shows up from where? Like how far away? Could
Speaker 1: it possibly be? Not a mile or two? I've I've
Speaker 1: heard and seen examples of a mile or two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be. It could be just on the other
Speaker 1: side of your six or forty acre block. Um So,
Speaker 1: I know like in some cases, like in this case,
Speaker 1: I a neighbor, a sort of distant neighbor that I
Speaker 1: keep in communication with, has gotten summer trail cameras with
Speaker 1: this buck, but I've never seen him before, gotten pictures
Speaker 1: in the summer, but then he sees him almost never
Speaker 1: during the fall. I see him all the time during
Speaker 1: the fall. Do you think he's moving there because of
Speaker 1: because of something going on with agricultural timing or do
Speaker 1: you think it has something to do with him prep
Speaker 1: and coming in because he's fixing to mate some doughs.
Speaker 1: I can't necessarily put my finger on because you know,
Speaker 1: the crops are rotating every year. So it's not like
Speaker 1: he's only going over there on years when it's a
Speaker 1: soybean here, and then he comes over on mine when
Speaker 1: it's a soybean. Hear in my on on the property
Speaker 1: I can hunt there, so it's not necessarily related to that.
Speaker 1: Um you know, a lot of a lot of times
Speaker 1: bucks will prefer to summer in areas with more mature
Speaker 1: cover and stuff because when they've got those big velvet antlers,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily wanting to get in the thick, nasty
Speaker 1: stuff that they nest that they would and then later
Speaker 1: in the fall. So a lot of times you're gonna
Speaker 1: see mature bucks in the summer and like habitatic where
Speaker 1: I'm at, they might bed and hang out in areas
Speaker 1: of big mature tim stands that are close to like
Speaker 1: a soybean field or something good summer nutrition. And then
Speaker 1: once you get into September two stosteronees rising valvet comes off.
Speaker 1: They start relocating to these fall ranges where number one,
Speaker 1: there's better fall cover because once those leaves come down,
Speaker 1: they require a different cover. And then number two, they
Speaker 1: want to go where there's going to be more does
Speaker 1: because of course that time periods coming up the rut,
Speaker 1: but they want to establish their own space from other
Speaker 1: bucks and they need space. How old this dear that
Speaker 1: you're looking at? This buck should be five and a
Speaker 1: half this year, which in Michigan doesn't happen. Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1: I have found that the older of the deer gets,
Speaker 1: the older of the buck gets, the less he moves
Speaker 1: tighter core range. Yeah, I've seen it, heard the same,
Speaker 1: what do you feel as a deer's core range? Like
Speaker 1: how much? Um? I should say what you feel because
Speaker 1: it's known now because the tracking data, it's like it's
Speaker 1: not like intuition anymore, like like how much space does
Speaker 1: a white tailed deer you use? So I am going
Speaker 1: to get this specific numbers wrong here, But there's a
Speaker 1: home range and a core range or kind of terminology
Speaker 1: that's thrown around. The home range is something like where
Speaker 1: that buck spends about sevent that let me take it back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: about seventy of his movements are going to be within
Speaker 1: that home range, and that can be like three hundred
Speaker 1: six thousand acre or something like that, like a relatively
Speaker 1: large area where he might at some point in time
Speaker 1: turn up. Yeah. But then there's that core range whereas
Speaker 1: he's spending the very mostly that's the most concentrate amount
Speaker 1: of his movement, and that can be forty acres so
Speaker 1: much tighter area where he's betted most of the time,
Speaker 1: where he's gonna be feeding most of the time. But
Speaker 1: then there are those these four ways, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: well proven, especially during the rut, that bucks and even
Speaker 1: does will take these extended fourays randomly mile two out
Speaker 1: of their core range, seemingly at random, possibly following a
Speaker 1: dough or different things like that, and then they'll return
Speaker 1: back to that core, you know, a week later or something.
Speaker 1: It's always kind of add something it's interesting to add. Uh,
Speaker 1: just sort of compare it to what the Arizona guys
Speaker 1: see with their white tails, because it's so much more open, right,
Speaker 1: and they get to sort of experience what you're talking
Speaker 1: about through their binoculars at two miles away. You know.
Speaker 1: We talked to some guys that killed box that they've
Speaker 1: seen like sleeping underneath the same cactus or same oak tree,
Speaker 1: you know, dozens of days, you know, like and just
Speaker 1: they don't move. Sometimes these boxes live in one little
Speaker 1: bitty canyon, you know, and sleep under the same tree.
Speaker 1: There's a story we heard about a desert white tail.
Speaker 1: You might remember the details, Johnnie. Someone someone in our
Speaker 1: circle um of associates had found a desert white tailor
Speaker 1: a CU's deer under a tree and it was a big,
Speaker 1: nice bucket. It wasn't seasoned, and it had distinctive antlers.
Speaker 1: And then they looked for it and looked for it
Speaker 1: and looked for it. Over the next several years, is
Speaker 1: this right. They could never find it, and then one
Speaker 1: day they found it again laying under the tree. Just
Speaker 1: was there probably like maybe it was just in that
Speaker 1: little pocket the whole time. But yeah, but what they
Speaker 1: talked about, these guys are hunt CUSI a lot because
Speaker 1: you because you're looking at it. It's like like in
Speaker 1: the Midwest, all white of activities like hidden from view,
Speaker 1: you know, and you have to do all the stuff.
Speaker 1: But like out there where it's open, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get back and just observe the whole thing. They talk
Speaker 1: about his glass up a big buck, finding his like
Speaker 1: identifying his little zone, and then just finding a little
Speaker 1: sniper's perch somewhere like in the vicinity of his zone.
Speaker 1: And then you just lay there for a couple of
Speaker 1: days waiting for him to do his and you just
Speaker 1: like peeking in on it, you know, which isn't the
Speaker 1: luxury you have now in flat flat timbered brushy country.
Speaker 1: I will point out though, to your point, you're honest
Speaker 1: store of at those core and home ranges in the
Speaker 1: amount of movement, even a white tail in Midwest or
Speaker 1: Northeast that is very habitat dependent too. So I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're in an area where they have to travel
Speaker 1: much farther distances to get between decent food and good
Speaker 1: security cover, it can be much larger. But I think
Speaker 1: in an area where it's evenly dispersed cover, food, water, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I think those numbers tend to be in that range.
Speaker 1: So the buck you're talking about, the buck that got
Speaker 1: to be five and a half years old, how did
Speaker 1: he get to be five and a half years old? Like?
Speaker 1: How is he avoided getting shot four times? So when
Speaker 1: just every bucket shot or not everybody, every buck of
Speaker 1: bench she gets hit by a car, killed by coyotes,
Speaker 1: shot by a gun, or just whatever other accidents befall
Speaker 1: tangled up in a woven wire fence like I've seen
Speaker 1: it quite a number of times over the years. Like
Speaker 1: just stuff happens to him. Yeah, so I think a
Speaker 1: lot of luck, right, I mean, because all those things
Speaker 1: you listed up fences, cars, coyotes, none of that stuff
Speaker 1: has happened yet. But outside of luck, I think two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, he has a very tight core range like
Speaker 1: he I've never had a buck that I've hunted and
Speaker 1: observed that is so habitual in a small area that
Speaker 1: he uses like I during the hunting season. Because of
Speaker 1: how this property lays out. There's a big hill up
Speaker 1: towards the front of it that I can sit on
Speaker 1: and I can look down over. I can actually see
Speaker 1: a decent ways into this area some fields, and you
Speaker 1: can actually see into this brush you like multiflora rose
Speaker 1: type stuff that great cover and tall grass. But from
Speaker 1: high I can see down into it. And so you
Speaker 1: guys ever chase cotton tails down that multiflora rolls because
Speaker 1: that's on a neighboring property, but I can see it
Speaker 1: um and that buck during the hunting season is there
Speaker 1: almost every day. I mean, he stakes stays in a
Speaker 1: very small are so I know he's possibly gonna come
Speaker 1: feed on the property I can hunt. He's gonna bed
Speaker 1: just over the edge into the thick stuff. And then
Speaker 1: if I hunt, you know, one of these one or
Speaker 1: two stands where I can see that area, I can
Speaker 1: almost almost guarantee you I'm going to see him. Our
Speaker 1: dudes hunting that property too, not often. So that's the
Speaker 1: thing we've got going is that there's a hunter there
Speaker 1: that doesn't go in very often, so he has kind
Speaker 1: of sanctuary there on that property most of the year.
Speaker 1: And then on the property I can hunt. I'm very
Speaker 1: very careful about how I hunt it and one I
Speaker 1: hunt it. So he's got kind of a two property
Speaker 1: section there that's almost hunter hunting pressure free that he
Speaker 1: can roam around. And so he's got that going for him.
Speaker 1: Are you friendly with the other guy? Yes? He is
Speaker 1: he a wearing this buck also? Um? Yes, Now he
Speaker 1: doesn't know. We haven't talked about to the degree I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with this buck. Yeah, he might be aware, like,
Speaker 1: oh I heard there was a big buck back there.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people think of it, but
Speaker 1: they don't think of it like what is it actually
Speaker 1: up to? Yeah? Yeah, so so but yeah, we we've
Speaker 1: like had drinks together and I mentioned, oh, there's this
Speaker 1: nice buck that I see every once in a while.
Speaker 1: And so he's on board with the idea of let's
Speaker 1: let's just let's let dear get bigger and stuff. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think he's not quite um as serious about as
Speaker 1: I am. But we've talked about in the past and
Speaker 1: it sounds like he's not interested in shooting a year
Speaker 1: and a half old bucks and stuff. So there's a
Speaker 1: couple of different people I've I've I had to meet
Speaker 1: everyone I can in the area, and most of them
Speaker 1: want to see you know, bucks get a little bit
Speaker 1: of age on him, so that's a good thing. In
Speaker 1: the general area, there's a handful propers where they don't
Speaker 1: do that, a couple of propers where they do. Um.
Speaker 1: But then the second or the third thing, I guess
Speaker 1: that has allowed this buck to get to that point.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'm gonna take too much credit for myself,
Speaker 1: but I've chosen not to kill him. Um. So the
Speaker 1: very first year I saw him, I saw him the
Speaker 1: night before, the night before opening day of bow season
Speaker 1: in Michigan, and he was a nice three and a
Speaker 1: half year old buck. Was the best looking buck I
Speaker 1: had seen on the property that year, and at that
Speaker 1: point I was I was interested in shooting at three
Speaker 1: and a half yield there in Michigan because that's still
Speaker 1: hard to find two. So he was a buck that
Speaker 1: I would shoot. But opening night came in, a different
Speaker 1: buck came and I killed that deer, and so I decaid,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna kill this other deer now because I've
Speaker 1: already taken one off this property. So I was just
Speaker 1: gonna shoot those the rest of the season. So he
Speaker 1: got he got a free pass the rest of that year.
Speaker 1: I had him within bow range later in the season
Speaker 1: and chose not to shoot him. Last year. Um, he'd
Speaker 1: be a four year old, and again I was seeing
Speaker 1: him a lot, learned a lot about him from the
Speaker 1: past year. So I definitely wanted to shoot him last year.
Speaker 1: Had I saw him with my own eyes twenty seven
Speaker 1: times during the season. Last year, UM had him Yeah
Speaker 1: crazy right, UM had a shot at him at forty
Speaker 1: yards one evening, but it was like right at last night,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't feel comfortable taking a shot in
Speaker 1: those conditions. Oh, but you would have shot him last year.
Speaker 1: I would have shot him last year. How many have
Speaker 1: so last year he probably would have been like a
Speaker 1: hundred mid one one thirty eight pointer. Four year old
Speaker 1: is a four year old, UM, which is a really
Speaker 1: good Michigan buck um. But so he had all these
Speaker 1: encounters earlier in the season. Gun season comes and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I think I couldn't pull it off.
Speaker 1: He's probably gonna killed during gun season. You know, I
Speaker 1: made you made peace of that reality, Like I had
Speaker 1: an awesome experience with this year. He's probably gone. But
Speaker 1: lo and behold, December shows up, he's still alive, and
Speaker 1: something like clicked in my mind, and like early of
Speaker 1: December when I realized he made it through all October,
Speaker 1: he made it through all of November in the rut
Speaker 1: and gun season, and I kind of realized, Wow, this
Speaker 1: deer could actually make it another year. Um, and I
Speaker 1: had already I'd already killed two bucks. I'd already killed
Speaker 1: two bucks last year and several does. And I realized
Speaker 1: I don't need to fill another tag. I don't need
Speaker 1: to kill this buck. He probably could make it the
Speaker 1: next year. And I've just come like it's been a
Speaker 1: very unique thing to be able to watch it here.
Speaker 1: Over two years, I've become, you know, so invested in
Speaker 1: like this experience, in this interaction with this deer, that
Speaker 1: I kind of got to the point where I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I'd like to I'd like to see
Speaker 1: if he'll be around next year. Yeah. But as a
Speaker 1: writer at this point, as a writer, you almost can't
Speaker 1: kill it, some bitch, at this point, you gotta be
Speaker 1: like the story would be. And there he was, And
Speaker 1: I had this chance. You ever see the movie The
Speaker 1: Golden Seal. No, there he was. I had a chance.
Speaker 1: And then just like you ever see Uh Deer Hunter, what,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I know I should. I saw The
Speaker 1: hun five times by the time I was thirty. Vietnam movie.
Speaker 1: You don't know like I've heard of it. I just
Speaker 1: hadn't seen it. It's boys in Pennsylvania grew up in
Speaker 1: the in the mining world. Every year they hunt, they know,
Speaker 1: they go up and hunt the mountains every year, and
Speaker 1: they go off to Vietnam. Um one of them in
Speaker 1: the Green Berets. They wind up in a prison camp.
Speaker 1: Two of them wind up in the prison camp together.
Speaker 1: The VC used them to make bats on Russian Roulette.
Speaker 1: They get deeply damaged. Come home. Robert de Niro uh
Speaker 1: goes up back hunting with his friends. Uh. For some
Speaker 1: weird reason of red stag comes out. Uh. The movies
Speaker 1: they always you know, you always fine in American movies
Speaker 1: there has got red stags in them, like they did.
Speaker 1: They make that mistake and last in the Mohican know
Speaker 1: who made the movie definitely is not a wild lef.
Speaker 1: So stay comes out. But the nero uh doesn't shoot
Speaker 1: it steady starts, you know, He's like it's over, it's over,
Speaker 1: and doesn't shoot the Golden Seal it's a very valuable seal.
Speaker 1: And you say seal. Are we talking what kind of seal? Seal?
Speaker 1: I don't know a ring seal. I can't rather it
Speaker 1: was when I was a kid, So it's an animal
Speaker 1: gets crack at it. Yeah, dude finally gets crack at it.
Speaker 1: The size not to take the shot. He's like, Noah,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. So I think, now this buck,
Speaker 1: when you get the chance, you gotta be like, let
Speaker 1: him walk off into the sunset, man, because don't you
Speaker 1: think you know him too well now to shoot him? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's definitely getting that. I've got nothing your dog.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't shoot a dog. I would shoot is this deer?
Speaker 1: After all of these years of interactions, how are you
Speaker 1: gonna then go jab an arrow into him? I know
Speaker 1: it's a really weird paradox um, dude, because because you're
Speaker 1: a percent right after the movie and in the end,
Speaker 1: he's like, ma'am, look at his face, he's gonna pull
Speaker 1: back and shoot that year having your socks, Doug, I'm
Speaker 1: wearing my comfy shoes without socks, dude, post hunt, let
Speaker 1: him let him out there and m toes out. So
Speaker 1: now I'm interested in this buck. Uh he's going to
Speaker 1: get where exactly is all My friends threatened to do
Speaker 1: that too. Not Uh so he continues to be in
Speaker 1: eight or is. He's starting to get some junkers so
Speaker 1: up to this point, really so I have that's fine,
Speaker 1: that's fine. I'm trying to get some heavy ship here
Speaker 1: right him finally take he got his stickers. Well, so,
Speaker 1: so he is a he is a tight and tall
Speaker 1: eight pointer. He has been that the last two years.
Speaker 1: He's just gotten heavier every year. But I don't know
Speaker 1: what he looks like this year because I haven't seen
Speaker 1: haven't seen him because he's on the because he's on
Speaker 1: the instry place. So I saw he's gonna show up,
Speaker 1: You don't, I don't so right right about a car
Speaker 1: right about now is when he uses shows out. So
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of this is not a done
Speaker 1: deal yet. Oh no, it's not done deal. But in
Speaker 1: December he made it through the hunting season. He made
Speaker 1: it all the way through March. I saw him in
Speaker 1: March still carrying think so you you don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. There was there's he's not walking under your
Speaker 1: tree stand every night, right, not yet? But while starting
Speaker 1: right about now. He usually starts to never found a chet?
Speaker 1: What have you name? What's his name? Don't tell me
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a name. He has a name. He
Speaker 1: has a name. That's what his white tailed guys do know.
Speaker 1: You saw me name it? Care? Yeah, you named one
Speaker 1: snow angels, so I won't be ashamed at all of Well,
Speaker 1: I named him snow king, snow angela snowflake. He picked
Speaker 1: up a lot of names, all sort of based off
Speaker 1: of snow thing. Did uh? What does his name? You
Speaker 1: don't want to tell me, I will tell you. And
Speaker 1: I know it does sound ridiculous to some people from outside,
Speaker 1: but no, it's an efficiency thing is It's an efficient
Speaker 1: That's all it is. Yeah, because of game stuff, L
Speaker 1: says lhol Fabio. We do it with a hint of
Speaker 1: um um sarcasm sarcasm. But I think everyone at this
Speaker 1: point does with a hint of sarcasm. Almost everyone does
Speaker 1: with hin sarcas because there's some outlandish names out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, what am I gonna do for three years? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know that one eight pointer that I've seen twenties
Speaker 1: seven times? Well, I did try to I did try
Speaker 1: to dub a carib but we're looking at that one
Speaker 1: Caribo way over there. Yes he did, but it just
Speaker 1: was cumbersome, and so we settled on snow Angel. So
Speaker 1: this buck I refer to as holy Field because he's
Speaker 1: got a chunk missing out of his ear, so it
Speaker 1: was a natural fit. And uh and yeah, hopefully he'll
Speaker 1: be there when I get back to Dude, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: think so much less of you if you jab an
Speaker 1: arrow into this deer after all of this time together.
Speaker 1: But on balance, I'd be really disappointed if you get
Speaker 1: if you get the opportunity. But you know what, here's
Speaker 1: here's no way looking at it. He's walking dead. What
Speaker 1: do you mean he's gonna get killed? Like, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just like he's at the end of his time on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's it's five and a half by someone or something. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was interesting though last year, so I have a podcast,
Speaker 1: so I talked about all these things with my own
Speaker 1: audience a lot, and so the story of holy Field
Speaker 1: has become like this long running thing that all these
Speaker 1: people are following. And so last year when I decided,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I don't want to shoot him.
Speaker 1: This year, um, and I explained, I had a really
Speaker 1: lengthy conversation all you know, going through my thought process
Speaker 1: and and why I decided I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: There was a in an incredibly passionate response from a
Speaker 1: lot of people. A lot of people are like, I
Speaker 1: totally get it, And then a lot of people, I
Speaker 1: can't believe you're not gonna shoot it. You're letting us down,
Speaker 1: Like kill that damn buck what we want to like
Speaker 1: someone else is gonna kill They wanted a resolution, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want a resolution to the story. But you said
Speaker 1: it was pretty equal, though you had other people that
Speaker 1: were like, oh, I'd say it was. It was like,
Speaker 1: totally get what you're saying. But then there was a
Speaker 1: very loud and passionate ten percent that wants that dear
Speaker 1: dead UM just to see just yeah, like you said, resolution,
Speaker 1: like they have their story wrapped up. Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that feel like they're living vicariously through
Speaker 1: this experience, Like and because it's been such a consistent
Speaker 1: thing we talked about UM and some people are probably
Speaker 1: just so sick and tired of me talking about it.
Speaker 1: I just want to move on to something new. You know,
Speaker 1: what's refreshing about you? I like about you One of
Speaker 1: the things is that the there's sort of these national
Speaker 1: standards in big bucks, right where people sort of like,
Speaker 1: what is an acceptable big giant buck is set by
Speaker 1: like very specific regions that just for a multitude of reasons,
Speaker 1: are able to produce genuine, big, huge giant bucks, right,
Speaker 1: Like big huge giant box used to like for a
Speaker 1: while it was like Alberta, right, That's where big bucks
Speaker 1: came from, and then it woant not be in that
Speaker 1: certain place. Is like certain places in Illinois and Iowa
Speaker 1: started like cranking out big bucks, and they would set
Speaker 1: sort of the national standard of what's a big buck.
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna put a buck on like the
Speaker 1: cover of a magazine, bucks on the covers of magazines
Speaker 1: are oftentimes not even real bucks you'll have. There are
Speaker 1: magazines in existence that's who have an editorial stance against
Speaker 1: the captive servant industry. So they have an editorial stance
Speaker 1: against pen raised deer and canned hunts, yet they adorn
Speaker 1: their own covers with pen raised bucks. And it creates
Speaker 1: the same way that you hear and I'm I'm attuned
Speaker 1: to this now that I have a daughter, the same
Speaker 1: way that you hear that there's a standard of beauty
Speaker 1: put forth by the fashion industry and by the media
Speaker 1: that is unachievable by most women who don't have the
Speaker 1: time and money to devote to their appearance. Where we
Speaker 1: would create like a beauty standard. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm aware this. This doesn't keep me up at night,
Speaker 1: but it's the thing people talk about, the same thing
Speaker 1: happens with bucks, right, But you have like you, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, don't feel that you're able to look and
Speaker 1: be like, well, what is like good for the area?
Speaker 1: Like what is a big buck kind of for a
Speaker 1: normal guy hunting normal kind of little ninety acre parcels
Speaker 1: of land in a heavily hunted area and celebrate those
Speaker 1: deer without feeling that you need to go down and
Speaker 1: and and you go down to Texas to a high
Speaker 1: fence place to enter into the real white tail guy world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think that one of the um one
Speaker 1: thing that has come out of the deer hunting media
Speaker 1: world has been just the setting of unrealistic expectations for people,
Speaker 1: because if you watch TV, all you see are these
Speaker 1: gigantic bucks being killed so easily, it seems every single
Speaker 1: time you watch a show. But they're an Aisle or
Speaker 1: Illinois or Kansas and they're hunting tightly managed thousand acre
Speaker 1: it's just thing that people can't relate to. But then
Speaker 1: you get people, even especially maybe newer hunters, that watch
Speaker 1: that stuff. That's their only way of establishing in context
Speaker 1: for what is good or what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1: So then they start hunting and they're thinking like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I shoot a buck like that, and they get disappointed
Speaker 1: and the frustrated they hang it out like apologetic about
Speaker 1: their deer all the time, which is that's like the
Speaker 1: really painful part to me is when people like send
Speaker 1: you pictures like yeah, it's just a little one, you know,
Speaker 1: But I'm like, dude, don't be like so disrespectful to
Speaker 1: the animals. Man. You know, I think any animal you kill,
Speaker 1: I mean should be celebrated and respected, and that is awesome.
Speaker 1: I think everybody needs to set their own goals for
Speaker 1: what that experience, for what experience they want. So for me,
Speaker 1: you know, I like to target mature bucks because I
Speaker 1: want a certain experience out of that hunting season. If
Speaker 1: I were shooting the first year I saw my hunting
Speaker 1: season be done, it would be an evening and evening
Speaker 1: event um so so out of my hunting experience, I
Speaker 1: of course want me. I also want a lengthy experience.
Speaker 1: I want to be out there for a long period
Speaker 1: of time. I want to be learning and observing and
Speaker 1: interacting with these animals. I want to challenge um. And
Speaker 1: you know, hunting mature buck allows that whole thing to happen,
Speaker 1: and I enjoy that chess match. I enjoy whether it
Speaker 1: be a situation like this where I hunt one single
Speaker 1: property and learn a specific buck like that is a
Speaker 1: really interesting, unique way to engage with like with an animal.
Speaker 1: And then I also enjoy the challenge of, like going
Speaker 1: to a brand new place. I don't know anything there,
Speaker 1: and I just enjoy the challenge of trying to learn
Speaker 1: that property and learn what's happening here, How can I
Speaker 1: interact with how can I set up and kill a
Speaker 1: deer here? There's something really cool about all these different things.
Speaker 1: But that buck, this buck you've been watching for these
Speaker 1: three years, is that right? For three years? You've been
Speaker 1: aware of him for three years. This buck you've been
Speaker 1: watched for three years, he knows so intimately, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of in the autumn of his life. Whether you
Speaker 1: give him or not. He's in the autumn of his
Speaker 1: life all that. That's something bitch, still wouldn't make the
Speaker 1: cover of a magazine. No, No, you're not even close.
Speaker 1: Like why is that? Okay, I don't mean that socially,
Speaker 1: which is what let's explore it. Socially. It won't make
Speaker 1: the cover of the magazine because it doesn't meet sort
Speaker 1: of the national thing, sort of the the national somewhat
Speaker 1: false notion of what a big buck is supposed to look. Correct,
Speaker 1: that's a social aspect. But why is it that that
Speaker 1: deer could be five and a half years old and
Speaker 1: be that big. But a deer from Buffalo Connie, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: that's five and a half years old, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: able fit that deer's antlers inside that Buffalo County deer's antlers.
Speaker 1: So there's two high level things going on there. One
Speaker 1: would be habited nutrition and one would be genetics. Um.
Speaker 1: So this buck just doesn't have the genetics to develop
Speaker 1: into a gigantic deer. Um, he just hears what he is. Gigantic.
Speaker 1: Gigantic antler deer are very rare. I mean, even in
Speaker 1: places like Buffalo County, they're still relatively rare compared to
Speaker 1: the average um. So most mature bucks, probably even in
Speaker 1: the best places in the in the country, are still
Speaker 1: going to be you know, a five six year old
Speaker 1: buck with great habitat nutrition maybe would only be hundred
Speaker 1: and forty. So they don't all in those places. All
Speaker 1: old bucks aren't huge, not all. It's it's always a
Speaker 1: bell curve, right, so there's always gonna be that average.
Speaker 1: You know, most of your bucks maybe at five or six,
Speaker 1: might be hundred. Remember when we were in Texas, in
Speaker 1: the amount of like cold bucks that that manager was
Speaker 1: shooting that they were, they were in that range. They
Speaker 1: were hundred forty bucks, but he was shooting him for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One, they weren't gonna get big.
Speaker 1: But by taking them all out along with hundreds of dose,
Speaker 1: he was leaving more habitat, more nutrition for you know,
Speaker 1: the ones that they're really trying to An interesting thing
Speaker 1: that that that dude brought up is talk about the stress, right,
Speaker 1: just less competition with the other dear. He felt that
Speaker 1: by and this guy's this guy manages an extremely large
Speaker 1: property for some fairly wealthy individuals, and his mandate is
Speaker 1: to produce to have this giant property more than ten
Speaker 1: times the size of the property you're talking about it.
Speaker 1: I believe um, he's supposed to produce every year two
Speaker 1: gigantic bucks. That's his mandate, and he's a full time
Speaker 1: manager on this place to create two gigantic bucks. And
Speaker 1: his efforts to create two gigantic gigantic bucks. Once he
Speaker 1: identifies some candidates, they go in and start and systematically
Speaker 1: remove the competitors of those candidates to give those competitors
Speaker 1: less stress, because stress inhibits antler growth. I would concur
Speaker 1: I think that falls into your habitat and or just
Speaker 1: herd dynamics. So this buck feels like he's just lucky,
Speaker 1: but meanwhile he's just being watched and coddled. But you
Speaker 1: would think until you talk to the guy, but then
Speaker 1: he talks about this that even with all of that,
Speaker 1: there are bucks that vanish, and there are bucks that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden that you see him once and
Speaker 1: never see him again. The mystery, like there's still a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of mystery as much as he's like just
Speaker 1: actively doing this, Like one day one shows up on
Speaker 1: a camera and you never see him again. But and
Speaker 1: that's some thick, thick country. I mean you want to
Speaker 1: talk about Michigan being thick. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: country that there's places where you just don't even go
Speaker 1: into it because it's so thorny and nasty. Yeah, everything's
Speaker 1: like twelve feet high. Once you get up on a ladder,
Speaker 1: so holy ship, you can see a long ways, but
Speaker 1: you can talk on the ground. Yeah, I just can't
Speaker 1: see anything. But so so that the genetics deal and
Speaker 1: then the nutrition, yeah, I think and and and then
Speaker 1: you made a good good soil porcelo soil, and then
Speaker 1: what what kind of available food sources and everything. So
Speaker 1: of course deer that live in agricultural country are going
Speaker 1: to have terrific amounts of food and protein that things
Speaker 1: they need to grow big anglers um. And then soil
Speaker 1: does make a big difference too, So that's why you
Speaker 1: see such tremendous production of big angler deer along like
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River Corridor and all that stuff going on
Speaker 1: there by you doug um. So those types of things
Speaker 1: do lead to these genetic um or these I don't
Speaker 1: know if you gonna call it freaks, but these huge
Speaker 1: antler deer that you're just not going to see as
Speaker 1: often in other places. So how I'm back on your
Speaker 1: deer again. So how big of a deer, how big
Speaker 1: of how big of a body is He's a tanker,
Speaker 1: big old body, just a huge girthy chest. His neck
Speaker 1: like seamlessly goes right into his shoulders and chest. And
Speaker 1: when he walks around, he's got those curls on his neck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: foot on the floor over there, and he's got the
Speaker 1: sagging belly. Um. So I mean yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: love just a big bodied, mature buck. I mean. And
Speaker 1: we're talking a lot about inches and antlers and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I just want to make sure antlers are cool, right,
Speaker 1: and we enjoy big antler deer there neat to see.
Speaker 1: They're where, they're rare, they're special because, like we just
Speaker 1: talked about, large antler deer are are not the the
Speaker 1: average thing here to see. So there to be, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, there to be appreciated and valued. And it's
Speaker 1: neat to hunt. But that's not all there is. Like
Speaker 1: there's such an antler craze in the white tailed world.
Speaker 1: So many people are fixated on that that's been around
Speaker 1: for for for But I just always want to be
Speaker 1: careful to make sure that even though I might talk
Speaker 1: about it in a conversation like that, that's not all
Speaker 1: there is. There's so much more to it. Like so,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought body size and different things like that,
Speaker 1: or or history and experience of the deer or a
Speaker 1: set of circumstances. I mean, all those things make that
Speaker 1: hunt that deer uh special. Yeah, I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up. Go ahead. Well, I's just gonna say, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you folks talk about trophy country and trophy hunts and
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, and and and I think it's
Speaker 1: the same thing with white tails. My my favorite hunts
Speaker 1: are the ones that we've had these great stories about,
Speaker 1: you know, a group of people hunting together, you know,
Speaker 1: we get this dear or or like your story where
Speaker 1: you watched him for a period of time and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than and he came out and well
Speaker 1: I never saw him before I shot him. And it's
Speaker 1: not much of a story, you know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not that it's not a great deer or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I think the story really makes the you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe the suffering or sort of like we just
Speaker 1: did you know, we could have shot a caribou hundred
Speaker 1: yards from our camp. But um, we went out and
Speaker 1: went through a full experience. I mean each one of
Speaker 1: us did some more than others. But I don't think that, uh,
Speaker 1: I want to get back to like the aunt, the
Speaker 1: scoring system, and what people mean when they say a
Speaker 1: hundred forty inches of altland. But I'll point out that
Speaker 1: is a good story if all of a sudden do
Speaker 1: you didn't know about pops out because the uh, the woods,
Speaker 1: there's supposed to be an element that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: it's nice, and there's an element of the unknown and
Speaker 1: the element of the surprise and the element of mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've it like it doesn't like I don't think it
Speaker 1: needs to be that in order for it to be
Speaker 1: legit and needs to have like this agricultural overtone where
Speaker 1: you're like raising this deer up and taking care of him.
Speaker 1: I think there's lots of different ways that can be neat.
Speaker 1: I mean, like my experience I'm having with this deer
Speaker 1: I think is unique and like super valuable and I'm
Speaker 1: really enjoying it. But I think to your point to
Speaker 1: showing up in a new place and seeing that deer
Speaker 1: for the first time, that that that moment when you
Speaker 1: first see this deer in the shock, like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna happen, Like that can be really special
Speaker 1: to um. But I think, you know, it's just different.
Speaker 1: I like to surprise, you know, um one of the
Speaker 1: on our farm. I used to do a lot more
Speaker 1: trail camera stuff, and I still do a lot of
Speaker 1: it on client properties, but I don't I haven't had
Speaker 1: trail cameras out at all this year, and you know,
Speaker 1: very very few even at the end of the year
Speaker 1: last year in our property. Words I had in my
Speaker 1: other other people's property because they're that's what I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing online sort of like I don't know,
Speaker 1: kind of like that element of surprise. Also, you hear
Speaker 1: about this popping up more and more like the white
Speaker 1: Tail community, like that exact notion being that kind of
Speaker 1: just like some of us we get overloaded on our
Speaker 1: cell phones, so like you need to purge it for
Speaker 1: a while and you just you know, take off your
Speaker 1: Facebook app or whatever so you're not on there all
Speaker 1: the time. It's just too much. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people that I feel the same way about trail
Speaker 1: cameras are I know what lost the mystery of it
Speaker 1: you know everything or no, the deer that you're ever
Speaker 1: going to see. So I can I can totally understand
Speaker 1: that I enjoy using trail cameras. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I do like the idea of of that mystery, that
Speaker 1: surprise excitement. So I know, guys that are starting to
Speaker 1: get rid of them, Yeah, the trail I like trail cams. Like,
Speaker 1: there's a few things I like about him. One it
Speaker 1: just you want to becoming more educated, right, You're like,
Speaker 1: no more, you have more information. You know more about
Speaker 1: animals and how they move and how they interact with
Speaker 1: their environment. It's a valuable asset to a lot. Tro
Speaker 1: Cam images have like a surreal beauty to them that
Speaker 1: it's just just like that, just the sort of the
Speaker 1: without the hand of man really there at the second.
Speaker 1: Just like these like motion sensor activated images sometimes they're
Speaker 1: just incredible, Like it clicks at a time when a
Speaker 1: person wouldn't click, and the result is sometimes like stunningly
Speaker 1: beautiful of animals in their environment, completely unaware of any
Speaker 1: kind of intrusion. There's a beauty to it. Now when
Speaker 1: earlier market I want to step back to top of this,
Speaker 1: you're talking about hundred forty and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't understand it so well. Mark's referring to
Speaker 1: is a number that comes from the Boone and Crocket Club,
Speaker 1: now the Boone and Crockett Club and ORP and or popion.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about boding Crocket promitt. But Boone and Crockett
Speaker 1: um originated it, right, and they predate they pre date
Speaker 1: Pope Young by fifty years. And it's it's essentially the
Speaker 1: same measuring system. It's just one's bow. Ones. In the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, one wildlife populations in
Speaker 1: America were collapsing and near collapse and some of them gone.
Speaker 1: Um Theodore Roosevelt and the other number of influential conservationist
Speaker 1: hunters started a group called the Boone and Crocket Club
Speaker 1: and their initial mandate, their their initial like reason for
Speaker 1: existence was to establish and push for the enforcement of
Speaker 1: game laws in Yellowstone was in the first places. So
Speaker 1: they had this idea that let's have it be that
Speaker 1: instead of the unregulated commercial slaughter of wildlife, we will
Speaker 1: establish bag limits and seasons and parameters under which people hunt.
Speaker 1: And that was how the Boone and Crockett Club, that
Speaker 1: was their initial thing. They were starting from the ground up.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in place. The system of scoring that
Speaker 1: eventually came out of this was a way to catalog
Speaker 1: animal populations. And at the time, um, you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have genetic stuff, you didn't have sophisticated aging data,
Speaker 1: and they didn't understand like tooth analysis and all this
Speaker 1: other kind of ship. A thing that's just very obvious
Speaker 1: is the antlers on the males or in and bears
Speaker 1: is the general school size. And so the kind of
Speaker 1: way to say, like, how can we objectively measure and
Speaker 1: animals antlers in a way that is replicable where any
Speaker 1: two individuals could look at it and apply the same
Speaker 1: metrics to it. And they came up with a scoring system.
Speaker 1: The thinking being that if you were to score these
Speaker 1: things and then track these populations over time, since antlers
Speaker 1: are a product of age and habitat, age and environment,
Speaker 1: you would be able to see long term term and
Speaker 1: short term trends and antler growth and tell about the
Speaker 1: stability of a population. If you have a population, let's
Speaker 1: say you just there they were in conversation talk about this.
Speaker 1: Let's say in Colorado you have that every year Colorado
Speaker 1: produces ten bucks that have that score a two D
Speaker 1: on this measuring system. Ten meal gear box score a
Speaker 1: two or better on this measuring system. And then you
Speaker 1: realize a decade goes by and not a single buck
Speaker 1: comes out of Colorado scoring a two on this measuring system.
Speaker 1: You would look and think something is a miss in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Something is not there that was there once but now not.
Speaker 1: But now in addition to that, people also, well, let
Speaker 1: me add another thing to this. Years ago on on
Speaker 1: an island where I have a hunting and fishing shack,
Speaker 1: years ago, a non resons allowed to bears on that
Speaker 1: island every year. Then it became like a bear. Then
Speaker 1: it became that you have to draw an it's only
Speaker 1: about a fift chance of being able to get a
Speaker 1: bear on the island. That was because they had noticed
Speaker 1: a very slight but gradual decline in the average bear
Speaker 1: skull coming off of that island, and that hinted to
Speaker 1: them to the idea of over of the potential for
Speaker 1: over harvest, that the bears were shrinking, and they felt
Speaker 1: they were probably shrinking due to selective harvest of large animals.
Speaker 1: So here's where that like that information that metric ability
Speaker 1: influenced management policy. Um, but people also just use it
Speaker 1: and talk about it in a very fluid way, being
Speaker 1: like when you say that, that's what you're saying. And
Speaker 1: it's like a handful of measurements you take. You measure
Speaker 1: each like you measure the main beam and all this
Speaker 1: other ship and the scoring systems so pervasive that people
Speaker 1: don't even talk about times anymore. They talk about G
Speaker 1: two's and all this ship because when you fill out
Speaker 1: the form, there's measurements like what do the measurements look like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know about heart G one, two, three, four, those
Speaker 1: are your main times, Yeah, and you got your main
Speaker 1: beam lengths and your inside spread like his G two
Speaker 1: his right G two is this and that just because
Speaker 1: when you fill out the form, that line of the
Speaker 1: form is for the G two. It was funny when
Speaker 1: we were looking at our caribou, I was like trying
Speaker 1: to refer to a point I didn't know. Can I
Speaker 1: call us? Is this like the G Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't looked at how you score? Could I don't know?
Speaker 1: But that's of marks getting at with with the score thing.
Speaker 1: But a big like I think that when I saw
Speaker 1: about in the national sense, like big, huge, giant white
Speaker 1: tailed box aren't really guarded as big, huge box until
Speaker 1: they get to like have one inches of antler. That's
Speaker 1: like the like with mule deer. It's like if I
Speaker 1: could only kill a two in buck with elk, if
Speaker 1: I can only kill four inch bull with white tails,
Speaker 1: it's what I think one seventy because that's boon. That's
Speaker 1: a booner boon and cracker buck and make the boon
Speaker 1: and cracker record record books. I mean, but again, it's
Speaker 1: all relative. Like a guy in New Hampshire if he
Speaker 1: sees a hun during fifteen or hundred buck, he should
Speaker 1: be stoked. That's an amazing buck in that area, or
Speaker 1: in Michigan if you've got to. If so, if you
Speaker 1: duck is a hoping young buck, um gross well net
Speaker 1: but um in Michigan is like a pretty nice deer
Speaker 1: hundred fifty inches a giant deer in Michigan. Um in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: I'm sure hundred buck where you're at, it's like it's
Speaker 1: a nice buck. I would guess, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Get shot. Yeah, there's everybody will shoot that deer. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm guessing, like if that bucks you pull
Speaker 1: up with that in the back of the pickup truck,
Speaker 1: and people like on nice buck. If you pull up
Speaker 1: with that buck at the buck pole and opening it
Speaker 1: to a gun season, there's a two hundred people swarmed
Speaker 1: around at taking pictures and looking at him. To what
Speaker 1: degree because of your career? To what degree do you
Speaker 1: feel like you have to go shoot Big Bucks in
Speaker 1: order to like maintain your career? Would your career exists
Speaker 1: if you never shot a Big Buck? So early on,
Speaker 1: I thought so, I had this pressure like the first
Speaker 1: few years when you know, I was trying to build
Speaker 1: this this website, in this brand everything. I thought like,
Speaker 1: I gotta kill Big Bucks, and I stressed about it
Speaker 1: every year and stuff. Won't you won't be a businessman,
Speaker 1: you won't be a white tailed guy, I think. I think, Um, now,
Speaker 1: I don't worry about that nearly as much because I
Speaker 1: have not staked my reputation or what I'm doing on
Speaker 1: in any sense trying to claim like I'm the best
Speaker 1: deer hunter out there, or I'm an expert all all
Speaker 1: of stuff. What how I communicate in in in what
Speaker 1: I do, the service I think I provide. Is I
Speaker 1: I am a um just voracious learner. I love to learn.
Speaker 1: I want to consume as much as possible. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to as many different people as possible. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm trying to take in every different input I
Speaker 1: possibly can, and then I try to share what I learned.
Speaker 1: And then I share my experiences lots of failures, lots
Speaker 1: of mistakes, occasional successes, and I share that real experience
Speaker 1: with my listeners, readers, etcetera. And I think that's much
Speaker 1: more relatable than the guy that kills a eight years
Speaker 1: buck every single year, doing it one specific way. Um
Speaker 1: So now I don't want necessarily where of course, like
Speaker 1: I need to have some credibility and they can you'd
Speaker 1: like to see that the things I'm learning and trying
Speaker 1: and doing are you know, paying off and that you know, okay,
Speaker 1: he tried to actually talked about X resulted in why?
Speaker 1: So that content is I think just more relevant to
Speaker 1: a larger, you know group of the you know, your listeners.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where your credibility is. Talking with
Speaker 1: you about white tails. I really enjoyed the conversations, and
Speaker 1: it's your experiences and the stuff the way you're looking
Speaker 1: at it all as the credibilities really there, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and the other thing I've done is that
Speaker 1: I'm not embarrassed to share like everything, and so I've
Speaker 1: I've shared all sorts of failures and mistakes I've made,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty rare within the white tailed world too.
Speaker 1: And so like on someone at one point said like,
Speaker 1: I just love your stuff, and he's like, and I
Speaker 1: think it's because you've cornered the market on failure you've done.
Speaker 1: You've done a great job of sharing all the mistakes
Speaker 1: you've made. So but you know what, we all make mistakes,
Speaker 1: we all fail sometimes, just most people don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and I'm I'm okay putting it out
Speaker 1: there and um hopefully getting as we go along. Everyone
Speaker 1: people have the idea that other people don't want to
Speaker 1: hear about the failures. I probably get more feedback when
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, yeah, when something bad happens, or I
Speaker 1: screw something up, like more emails and messages and stuff like,
Speaker 1: oh that happened to me too, Or I had the
Speaker 1: same issue but I thought it was the only one,
Speaker 1: or I didn't. Never they talked about how to deal
Speaker 1: with it, you know. And so we've walk worked through
Speaker 1: all sorts different channels that we all experience but very
Speaker 1: rarely do you get to follow along with with someone
Speaker 1: else on that experience. And you could do everything right nothing,
Speaker 1: especially with white tails, you can do everything right, and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, that dear turns and goes away and
Speaker 1: all of that, and it's like you sit there and go,
Speaker 1: what did I do wrong? There? Wild animals? I think
Speaker 1: people who are trying to established some notoriety or establish
Speaker 1: some claim in hunting in order to feed a career,
Speaker 1: like a media type career and hunting. Uh. You hear
Speaker 1: of so many examples, like there's a couple every year
Speaker 1: that come up of where they wind up crossing some
Speaker 1: pretty serious legal and ethical lines in order to achieve it.
Speaker 1: For sure, how much do you know the story about
Speaker 1: the guy we were talking about their day from Michigan,
Speaker 1: the guy from Michigan, How well do you know? I
Speaker 1: couldn't give you all the details that I mean, give
Speaker 1: a sketch of it. Though. The super high level story
Speaker 1: was back in the nineties, this guy um killed this
Speaker 1: gigantic buck up in northern Michigan. It was just incredibly
Speaker 1: widely wide or twice in place, in a place where
Speaker 1: you just would not see a buck like that, and
Speaker 1: it was at the time. I don't remember if it
Speaker 1: was the biggest buck killed in the state at the
Speaker 1: time where they believed it was, but I got a
Speaker 1: lot of notoriety. I was telling you guys. I remember,
Speaker 1: I don't know how how old I was, eight or
Speaker 1: ten or something like that at the time, but I
Speaker 1: even at that age, saw this picture in the newspaper
Speaker 1: and cut out the picture of this buck in the newspaper,
Speaker 1: put it up on my little board. Everybody saw. My
Speaker 1: dad was a score. My dad scored for uh, Pope
Speaker 1: and Young. He's he's like a certified score for Pope
Speaker 1: Young and Boone and Crockett, m U c c all
Speaker 1: that ship. So bucks flooded into our house to be scored,
Speaker 1: and I remember like just the buzz yeah or whatever
Speaker 1: the hell was called. And it's an impressive looking deer.
Speaker 1: I mean even still today when you see the pictures. WHOA.
Speaker 1: But eventually it came out that this was actually not
Speaker 1: a free ranging deer. This is possibly had been raised
Speaker 1: in a pen or different you know, um questionable activities
Speaker 1: had been involved with the with the killing of that dear.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't legit. It was proved, you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't wasn't able to enter it officially in the record books.
Speaker 1: He was kind of ostracized because of that, you know,
Speaker 1: for a good reason. Um. Some people still today say
Speaker 1: he was actually a really good legit hunter and he'd
Speaker 1: killed many bucks in legitimate fashion. Um. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: whether it be ego or a desire for notoriety or
Speaker 1: something to your point, he crossed that line in as
Speaker 1: if you a way and it's like there are I
Speaker 1: mean we could if we sat around, we could generate
Speaker 1: a list as long as your are man, dozens of
Speaker 1: cases where that happens. Like what is that? Do you
Speaker 1: understand the pressure? Like have you ever been like man
Speaker 1: um wired the hunt would get a would get a
Speaker 1: shot to the arm if if I just could or
Speaker 1: are you immune to it? I'm immune to it because
Speaker 1: that's just like not me, Like that's not my thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But like I said, I did feel that pressure like
Speaker 1: I should be killing like mature bucks, like you need
Speaker 1: to you have some kind of credibility. Um. But I've
Speaker 1: never been like the type that's trying like I have
Speaker 1: to kill a hunter eight and sure buck or something.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be in the cover of a
Speaker 1: magazine or something with that. I just want to do
Speaker 1: something I love, share what I'm learning and help people hopefully.
Speaker 1: So I've never been a position where I thought like
Speaker 1: that was gonna sky. I'm not doing TV or anything. Um,
Speaker 1: but I know lots and lots of people that are.
Speaker 1: And and I think it comes down to, like your
Speaker 1: like the why behind it. And so I think some
Speaker 1: people the why behind wanting a TV show or wanting
Speaker 1: whatever it is because they want fame and fortune and
Speaker 1: attention all that kind of stuff. Um My wife has
Speaker 1: just been different and so I just haven't worried about that.
Speaker 1: What do you say, Uh, do you ever give advice
Speaker 1: to people who wish they had a job in the
Speaker 1: in the like in hunting, like hunting or fishing or whatever,
Speaker 1: Like you gotta have people come and ask you hundreds
Speaker 1: and hunters. What do you tell people? Is there an answer? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, A couple of things. Um, you know
Speaker 1: I can speak to like content related careers because that's
Speaker 1: what I do, like the media type stuff. Um, So
Speaker 1: I would say number one, like figure out what your
Speaker 1: what whatever medium or type of thing is that you
Speaker 1: can do, Like either you have a natural skill set
Speaker 1: or experience in it or a passion. So are you
Speaker 1: gonna write, are you going to film? Are you going
Speaker 1: to photograph? Are you going to whatever it might be? Um?
Speaker 1: So what's like? Okay, once you figure that out, and
Speaker 1: then number two, just do it, like create stuff, like
Speaker 1: get out there, have experiences and put it out there.
Speaker 1: So for me, when I started a blog a website,
Speaker 1: um yeah, I had no reason that people should have
Speaker 1: been reading what I had to say. I had no
Speaker 1: one knew who this Mark Kenyon guy was. Um, but
Speaker 1: I just created. So I was just constantly writing, constantly
Speaker 1: producing content. And so so my advice is number one,
Speaker 1: pick what you what you're passionate about, what you want
Speaker 1: to do. Number two, do it, create it, and by
Speaker 1: doing it you get better, Like you can fine tune
Speaker 1: that craft the more you do it. But if you
Speaker 1: sit around and thinking, wow, someday I'm going to be
Speaker 1: a photographer, but I want to wait till I've got
Speaker 1: the seven thousand dollar camera and I'm gonna wait until
Speaker 1: this thing and that thing, No, you just gotta get
Speaker 1: out there with what you have, do it, fine tune
Speaker 1: your craft and then share it. And if you do
Speaker 1: that enough and you continue to go oh and continue
Speaker 1: to get better. And by sharing that, I mean like
Speaker 1: whether it be through social media or networking in person,
Speaker 1: you ustablished relationships connections. If you do all those things,
Speaker 1: and if you get better at all those things, opportunities
Speaker 1: come about. So for me with my website, I just
Speaker 1: started writing every Like when I decided I was going
Speaker 1: to do weird Hunt, I started the website and then
Speaker 1: every single day, without fail, I was working on every
Speaker 1: single day, like every day of the week. I had
Speaker 1: a new article. Weekends, I'd stay up, you know, late
Speaker 1: at night working on it. I worked before the day job,
Speaker 1: I work on it after the day job. And I
Speaker 1: just was like, I'm going to keep doing it. And
Speaker 1: then I shared on forums. I've connected with everybody I
Speaker 1: possibly on Facebook and Twitter and eventually Instagram. No, any
Speaker 1: one of these single one things like was the reason
Speaker 1: why I was able to do what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1: But the relentless um chipping away on all those different
Speaker 1: things I think led to it. So those are the
Speaker 1: three things that I recommend to most people at very
Speaker 1: high level. It's not like some secret that I'm sharing UM,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what's worked for me. UM. And then
Speaker 1: one other piece of advice, I guess when it comes
Speaker 1: to content his um, fine, you can't be a generalist
Speaker 1: when you're starting out, is my my thought. So if
Speaker 1: you want to be ah, if you want to start
Speaker 1: a podcast or a website. These days, if you start
Speaker 1: a general hunting podcast, it's hard to stand out because
Speaker 1: you can't necessarily create content that's perfect for the audience
Speaker 1: if you're just doing a little bit of this, a
Speaker 1: little with that. What I my The way I thought
Speaker 1: about things earlier was I want to be very niche
Speaker 1: because if I was very niche, I could say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is my audience. This is a very tight slice
Speaker 1: of people that are my audience. So it was super serious, passionate,
Speaker 1: relatively young people. And if I know who that audience is,
Speaker 1: If I'm very clear on who that audience is, it
Speaker 1: makes um my work as a content creator very easy
Speaker 1: because I know exactly what's going to resonate with that audience.
Speaker 1: So then because of that, I'm putting out stuff that
Speaker 1: was oh man, that's exactly what I've always wanted to see.
Speaker 1: Because I'm creating content for like one guy or girl
Speaker 1: first is trying to create everything for everybody. So once
Speaker 1: you can do that then you have an ability to
Speaker 1: connect grow from there. And so since I've been able
Speaker 1: to grow from there, now I can expand and do
Speaker 1: different things and generalize a touch. But I think that
Speaker 1: that is a helpful UM process to go through early on.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, man, that that that part of the other
Speaker 1: ship is all pretty obvious. But that's an interesting perspective
Speaker 1: on it. I don't know that I entirely agree with it,
Speaker 1: but but I like it fair enough. What did you
Speaker 1: first start writing about then? I mean, obviously it was
Speaker 1: white tails, but when you were saying I'm trying to
Speaker 1: connect specifically with a small group of people, what was
Speaker 1: the So, Yeah, when I started the website, I was
Speaker 1: like twenty one, and you know, I was you know,
Speaker 1: at that point, I was just switching to like trying
Speaker 1: to target mature bucks and stuff. So I was writing
Speaker 1: about my own experience. At that point, I was writing
Speaker 1: about things I read. I was writing about UM. I
Speaker 1: was trying to interview different people, like people that were
Speaker 1: established new stuff. I was trying to get them on
Speaker 1: the phone and pick their brains and share some of
Speaker 1: those experiences. I was doing gear reviews, just anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about earlier, I'm I was doing
Speaker 1: something white tail related every day almost. Um, so it's
Speaker 1: the niche was white tail this sorry, let me let
Speaker 1: me clarify. So, yes, the niche was white tail, and
Speaker 1: it was the three sixty five days a year white
Speaker 1: tail guy. And then again it was everything was with
Speaker 1: a little bit of an angle towards that younger generation,
Speaker 1: So the things that my generation was interested in, and
Speaker 1: then also the way I was communicating those things. So
Speaker 1: I was communicating with YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it might be at the time. And
Speaker 1: then also different technologies and stuff. We talked a lot
Speaker 1: about so apps to help out with deer hunting or
Speaker 1: you know, trail cameras or different things related to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, originally that weird hunt idea in the very
Speaker 1: beginning was like the intersection of technology with hunting and
Speaker 1: all that. It's it's kind of changed from there, but
Speaker 1: early on are the things I was tackling. So what's
Speaker 1: the what's the future being a white tail guy? The
Speaker 1: future of being let me ask you this, what are
Speaker 1: the like, uh, when you look at deer hunting, um,
Speaker 1: white tail deer hunting, what's like? What's the what do
Speaker 1: what do you when you look into a crystal ball,
Speaker 1: what do you see for just the average whatever, like
Speaker 1: just some new number in the future, do you imagine
Speaker 1: like what kind of you know, be recognizable? Do you
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be like seismic changes? When I think
Speaker 1: about stuff, I'm like, I can't. I just really hired
Speaker 1: for me to picture of the future right now with
Speaker 1: the prospects of stuff like c w D. So I
Speaker 1: think the last decade or so, we've kind of been
Speaker 1: like the glory days of of white tail hunting in
Speaker 1: a lot of places. Um, you know, herds have grown
Speaker 1: tremendously since the sixties and seventies, most places, average age
Speaker 1: of bucks has been rising tremendously as more and more
Speaker 1: people are letting young bucks grow, They're paying attention to
Speaker 1: things like her dynamics, they're trying to improve avatat or
Speaker 1: you know, think about conservation and kind of what they're doing.
Speaker 1: So all those things have been happening for for a while.
Speaker 1: So we're in a generally good place, like reaping the
Speaker 1: benefits of those activities, generally reaping the benefits of those activities.
Speaker 1: So I think all those things most people would recognize
Speaker 1: as a positive trend, I think, um But to your point,
Speaker 1: there are concerning things like c w D, which is
Speaker 1: one of those deals that is such a long term issue,
Speaker 1: like the impacts in the short term for most people
Speaker 1: right now, it's beyond like what they're looking at. When
Speaker 1: we say c r D, we're talking about chronic wasting
Speaker 1: chronic wasting disease. And we did a a very exhaustive
Speaker 1: conversation with a c w D expert a few podcasts ago,
Speaker 1: so you can go find that if you want to
Speaker 1: catch up and what we're talk about. I don't want
Speaker 1: to recap it all now. But yeah, so like a
Speaker 1: do Z wildlife disease issue. So those the issues over that,
Speaker 1: and why I think a lot of people struggle with
Speaker 1: like looking at head on and why to do something
Speaker 1: about it, is because it doesn't necessarily have like population
Speaker 1: level impacts right now that you can see and feel,
Speaker 1: um verse is something like h D, which is a
Speaker 1: disease of virus. Excuse me that in one year you
Speaker 1: can lose your deer herd and that's something like holy crap,
Speaker 1: all right, that you can feel that and like wrap
Speaker 1: your head around that. But the c w D you
Speaker 1: might not necessarily see and feel that. But as I
Speaker 1: understand it, you know, over the course of decades, population
Speaker 1: level impacts do start showing up. So in Wyoming, in Colorado,
Speaker 1: where CWD has been around for a long time, they
Speaker 1: are seeing that a significant proportion of bucks or deer
Speaker 1: and the herd are dying every year from CW. So
Speaker 1: I think it's quite possible that fifty years from now
Speaker 1: we will be seeing that in a lot of states.
Speaker 1: What I when I asked that question that that's I
Speaker 1: like your perspective on it. But when I asked that question,
Speaker 1: when I look at it, what I'm seeing is the
Speaker 1: way the relationship people have with deer um, the more social,
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual relationship that people have with deer, would
Speaker 1: change if it winds up that we begin to look
Speaker 1: at deer as disease vectors. That would be a scary
Speaker 1: situation happen if it were to happen, like a thing
Speaker 1: that I really the thing that I'm most afraid of,
Speaker 1: I'm not most afraid of of, Like like a disease
Speaker 1: like e h. D. Let's say it's gonna come carry
Speaker 1: away sixty or se dear. I mean that happens all
Speaker 1: the time. You recover from it like it's a it's
Speaker 1: a pretty like a natural part of our system that happens.
Speaker 1: It's like you get these like too many deer disease
Speaker 1: comes in White's amount, They recover, You get back up
Speaker 1: and run. In a few years, things go on with
Speaker 1: chronic wasting wasting disease. The thing I worry about and
Speaker 1: hasn't thankfully it hasn't happened yet, would be that you'd
Speaker 1: have some cases where there's irrefutable proof that a person
Speaker 1: that would that would make the jump and then a
Speaker 1: person would contract a fatal disease from consuming dear meat.
Speaker 1: Like just how that would shift public perceptions of the
Speaker 1: value of deer. And if there's a thing that you
Speaker 1: can learn if you look at global it's just like
Speaker 1: global politics, global wildlife issues. Wildlife thrives in places where
Speaker 1: it has a cultural value. If it does not have
Speaker 1: cultural value, it does not thrive. Um. The reason we
Speaker 1: have wildlife in America and the abundance we do is
Speaker 1: because we've a fixed a tremendous amount of cultural value.
Speaker 1: It is not here by mistake and as and if
Speaker 1: it becomes that that we look at dear with suspicion
Speaker 1: Um I think it's I think it could really have
Speaker 1: like a really alter things. And and like you being
Speaker 1: a white tail guy and you talk about like pursuing
Speaker 1: white tail guys and that's your audience. That's smart because
Speaker 1: of big game hunters hunt white tails. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about a major thing here, you know. Um, So that's
Speaker 1: something that worries me a little bit for sure. Great.
Speaker 1: I hope that in the interim, in the next forty years,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, or whatever the timelines, I hope
Speaker 1: we find some types of solutions because as a a
Speaker 1: grim situation to imagine if you're worried about if you
Speaker 1: can't eat deer anymore, um, because not only does that
Speaker 1: impact us as hunters, but then also if if if
Speaker 1: you want to continue hunting. So let's say, okay, CWD
Speaker 1: is prevalent and we've all decided that there's possibilities of
Speaker 1: a transferring humans. So people aren't going to eat deer anymore,
Speaker 1: but hunters continue hunting them from the outside looking in.
Speaker 1: Now Now one of the most understandable and relatable elements
Speaker 1: of of why people hunt being looked at from the
Speaker 1: outside all of a sudden, that's gone. So now non
Speaker 1: hunters look at what we're doing and saying, so you're
Speaker 1: just gonna kill these deer and you're gonna toss it out.
Speaker 1: That would even waste my time with it, same reason
Speaker 1: I don't waste my time shooting shiploads of carpet stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like it just would cease to be of any
Speaker 1: hunt other stuff. But I think, yeah, I think you'd
Speaker 1: see it would be It would be both an issue
Speaker 1: of what we're able to do and it's like a
Speaker 1: credibility issue to the outside world. It became another conversation
Speaker 1: that we had UM with someone that I know UM
Speaker 1: in our area. There the biggest, not their one and
Speaker 1: only concerned with, their biggest interest in hunting deer is
Speaker 1: the antlers. I didn't have the same concern about CWD
Speaker 1: that I didn't. Really that's really upsetting to me because
Speaker 1: of that. With some of it's the public perception, but
Speaker 1: some of it's just it's a personal thing. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? But what they don't realize is
Speaker 1: when they're looking at when they say that all they
Speaker 1: care about is antlers, what they're looking at is they're
Speaker 1: not really thinking about where that value came from. They
Speaker 1: didn't create that value. They inherited that value when they
Speaker 1: look at antlers is because those antlers represent something and
Speaker 1: stand for something, Right, A dude, if you had a
Speaker 1: dude from Mars come down and land on Earth, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't see a buck come out and be like some
Speaker 1: of a bit, some antlers are awesome. He just wouldn't.
Speaker 1: It's like they value it because they were brought up
Speaker 1: in a social context that puts the value on that.
Speaker 1: And the bigness, like the bigness of them is alluring
Speaker 1: to you because it's a rarity, like like planes, the
Speaker 1: equestrian planes, Aboriginal bison hunters, like the Blackfeet, the crow.
Speaker 1: They really valued a white buffalo. It was an anomaly, right,
Speaker 1: it was like because you had to look at ten
Speaker 1: thousand to find one and it had an extreme value.
Speaker 1: So when people say like I just like the antlers, dude,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, okay, you do because of how you
Speaker 1: where you were brought up, how you were brought up,
Speaker 1: what the value system of it came in because it
Speaker 1: was a rarity, because it was an achievement to have
Speaker 1: one get to be old. Anyways, if you start to
Speaker 1: chip away at if you start to chip away at
Speaker 1: like the legacy of deer, the broader cultural meanings of
Speaker 1: dear you will see a diminishment in that interest. Like
Speaker 1: that interest is is there's a tremendous foundation there that
Speaker 1: they might not be able to articulate and they might
Speaker 1: not know the history of But it's like they didn't
Speaker 1: come out of a vacuum thinking big antlers are cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a learned it's a learned thing. Little kids don't
Speaker 1: have it, they pick it up. Um So I think
Speaker 1: that if you know, there are ways in which even
Speaker 1: that value over time, wouild just cease to be that
Speaker 1: big of a deal. This is me being my most pessimistic. Now.
Speaker 1: The other way to look at it would be that,
Speaker 1: like how ship generally kind of continues along, right, So,
Speaker 1: um yeah, if I really had to like go and
Speaker 1: put money on it, I would say, in fifty years,
Speaker 1: we're still gonna be excited about deer hunting, We're still
Speaker 1: gonna be excited about big box. But but when you
Speaker 1: sort of put on this like theoretical what could possibly happen,
Speaker 1: it winds up being a little more entertaining to to
Speaker 1: to to to think about the dark side of things,
Speaker 1: and it just does the rea lity that my maternal
Speaker 1: grandfather liked to hunt deer. My paternal grandfather liked to
Speaker 1: hunt deer. My father liked to hunt deer. I like
Speaker 1: to hunt deer. My kids already excited about hunting deer.
Speaker 1: I feel that there's like a pretty good momentum there
Speaker 1: that that my kids, kids kids will be all fired
Speaker 1: up about deer hunting. So I mean to sound like
Speaker 1: a big old nas there. You know, I think as
Speaker 1: long as we as hunters do our part and making
Speaker 1: sure that's going to be possible in the future, make
Speaker 1: sure there's places to do it in healthy wildlife to
Speaker 1: to pursue. I agree, it's probably what's gonna happen. America
Speaker 1: will probably continue to be a really great country for
Speaker 1: a long time. But there's some shing I got my
Speaker 1: eye out for. Yeah, that's true. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: things I'm watching so yeah, um, yunny thing you want
Speaker 1: to add in wedge in there and the end. Man,
Speaker 1: I got a couple things I wanted to talk or
Speaker 1: ask Mark about or comment on. Um. I feel like
Speaker 1: with the antlers and the inches, it's sort of like this,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a it's a little bit of a
Speaker 1: negative by product right of that scoring system, that it's
Speaker 1: allowed some maybe like uber competitive people to sort of
Speaker 1: make hunting into a contest. And I really don't like that.
Speaker 1: The golf, the golf, the golf if occasion heart set word,
Speaker 1: the galification of hunting. Yeah, where it's like it's just
Speaker 1: not it's just like this personal experience journey, Like you
Speaker 1: were explaining good the other day, we're hunting teas just
Speaker 1: sort of this lifelong thing that you're involved in, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know I've mentioned this before. I have friends
Speaker 1: have quit scoring animals because they realized how much it
Speaker 1: affected the way they felt about it, Like they would
Speaker 1: harvest this animal. It was a great trip, it was
Speaker 1: everything was awesome about it, and they got home, put
Speaker 1: the tape on it, and it changed it somehow. And
Speaker 1: that's like, that's like it's a it's a bad byproduct,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it started with I think such good intentions,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just want to be clear. I
Speaker 1: spent again to like the martian or the outsider looking
Speaker 1: in when we talk abo, Yeah, when we talk about
Speaker 1: like seeing the hundred deer, yes, we're using that as
Speaker 1: in another efficient way to talk about what we know
Speaker 1: is a great big buck um, but it's um. It's
Speaker 1: again because it is that rarity and anomaly. It's like
Speaker 1: going to see a you know, five hundred foot waterfall
Speaker 1: somewhere or seeing like the triple rainbow. Yeah. I agree
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, but it's just like it's not a contest,
Speaker 1: and I feel like, yeah, we need to just you know,
Speaker 1: monitor ourselves on that. And uh, yeah, I always remember
Speaker 1: that there's more to that. But my question to you, Mark,
Speaker 1: was you talked a lot about um, like picking your
Speaker 1: times to not hunting certain properties a lot. We talked
Speaker 1: about this the other day. Yeah, and you mentioned I
Speaker 1: think in the last hour as well. Right, Like you're
Speaker 1: just like real selective, you know about when you're gonna
Speaker 1: go hunt this bucket. It might only be three or
Speaker 1: four days in a season, right, So does that limit
Speaker 1: you're hunting to the point where because I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like listening, I'm like, man, I want to get out
Speaker 1: and hunt more. Or do you have other properties where
Speaker 1: you're still getting You're like, I'm not lacking hunting time
Speaker 1: because I'm sitting there waiting for the time to strike.
Speaker 1: So the way I do kind of real quick. So
Speaker 1: I'm feeling awful about something. You know, people used to
Speaker 1: pay to see beard ladies and old circus. It was
Speaker 1: a joke. I was making a joke about how people
Speaker 1: used to pay money in the old Barnum and Bailey days,
Speaker 1: like you pay money to go see a bearded lady. Oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I had heard I had heard
Speaker 1: of that. I have not. It was like a part
Speaker 1: of the circus anyways, to your question, because I thought
Speaker 1: that that could potentially feel a little lot of feeling
Speaker 1: because I was making an old circus joke. It just
Speaker 1: of the landed plate, right. But so to Yanni's question, Um,
Speaker 1: so yes, it would be the latter. So I have
Speaker 1: I tried to have as many different places as I
Speaker 1: can hunt as possible, so I can spread that hunting
Speaker 1: pressure across a number of different areas. So in this
Speaker 1: case with this buck, I know there's certain times of
Speaker 1: the year, based on my analysis over the years, that
Speaker 1: he's more vulnerable. So I'll be looking for certain factors
Speaker 1: such as temperature and wind direction, etcetera, etcetera. If those
Speaker 1: things look right the first couple of days of the season,
Speaker 1: that's one of my best opportunities. First shot him. So
Speaker 1: I'm hunt the first day or two this season. If
Speaker 1: the conditions are right after that, I'm going to stay
Speaker 1: out because he just does not moved in daylight on
Speaker 1: the property. I can hunt from like from the first
Speaker 1: week of October through around like the um for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: he's a little more careful during that time and lots
Speaker 1: of times. What people have found in what I've seen too,
Speaker 1: is that deer have relatively consistent annual patterns, so where
Speaker 1: you can see that a buck is going to be
Speaker 1: using a certain area, or he becomes more daylight active
Speaker 1: in a certain area year after year around the same
Speaker 1: general time frame. So this buck around, he all of
Speaker 1: a sudden a light switch for him in particular switches.
Speaker 1: So I had a shot at him on the twenty
Speaker 1: four and two fifteen, and I had a shot him
Speaker 1: on the twenty two the exact same place, and I
Speaker 1: started picking more trail camera pictures in the exact same
Speaker 1: place at that same time. From So for that like
Speaker 1: two and a half week period, I'll have I'll be
Speaker 1: hunting some public land, I'll be hunting in Ohio, I'll
Speaker 1: be hunting my family's little property up in northern Michigan.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think in a perfect world you'd like
Speaker 1: to have permission or public access to keep hunting a lot,
Speaker 1: But just any one particular place is going to have
Speaker 1: a smaller number of hunts. Um. It's just picking, picking
Speaker 1: the right times, and then you know, trying to have
Speaker 1: a concise kind of surgical rich when you go on there.
Speaker 1: But you're getting enough hunting hunting days in to keep
Speaker 1: yourself happy, because you know you're gonna apply a certain
Speaker 1: amount of pressure, so you need places to apply that
Speaker 1: apply that pressure. So you just in that case, you
Speaker 1: have to be willing to knock on a lot of
Speaker 1: doors or figure out how to hunt public land, or
Speaker 1: if you've got the funds to access land in some
Speaker 1: other way, do that. Um. But yeah, we get that
Speaker 1: question a lot. I want to hunt more. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to hunt this way, and you don't need to
Speaker 1: hunt that way all. I mean, that's just if you're
Speaker 1: hunting in a situation like I am, where it's heavily pressured,
Speaker 1: and if you're targeting the mature bucks, those types of
Speaker 1: tactics are most often the best way to go about it.
Speaker 1: But if you're just trying to you know, shoot any
Speaker 1: deer to fill a freezer, go ahead and hunt your
Speaker 1: heart out, um, because you can. You can shoot those
Speaker 1: and and year link bocks doing that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: I want to hit my concluders because it's a good
Speaker 1: place to wedge them in one. When you're talking about
Speaker 1: the light switches and that buck starts coming out on October,
Speaker 1: it's that's kind of literal because that has ship has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like the photo period, length
Speaker 1: of day. Um. Yeah, yeah, I'm not like, I don't
Speaker 1: need to present it as I'm telling you something you
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm it's just interesting if people are
Speaker 1: just beginning to think about animals in a detailed way.
Speaker 1: It's so much of animal activity is really triggered by
Speaker 1: if you see consistency, like to the calendar day consistency
Speaker 1: with animals, What's what you're seeing is effects of changing
Speaker 1: day length, which triggers many things. Yeah, change like photo
Speaker 1: periods create windows of time, and then within those windows
Speaker 1: of time, there are many other factors that contribute. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's a nice thing to keep your eye on
Speaker 1: when you start to when you really want to get
Speaker 1: detailed about learning about wildlife. But the thing and you
Speaker 1: kind of touched in this a minute ago, but it
Speaker 1: struck me the r day as we're having this like
Speaker 1: age old argument where someone would be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: you're like the best time to hunt is when you can,
Speaker 1: And I was presenting that because I was talking about
Speaker 1: we're talking about people who don't who think that moon
Speaker 1: phase affects dear movements and they won't hunt if the
Speaker 1: moon's not right, And we were discussing a counter argument
Speaker 1: would be like, if you can be out in the woods,
Speaker 1: be out in the woods. And Mark was like, well, no,
Speaker 1: not really, and just reiterate again why why maybe not
Speaker 1: when you can be out in the woods, be out
Speaker 1: in the woods. So again, if you're trying to kill
Speaker 1: an old buck, these bucks are very savvy to human intrusion,
Speaker 1: So every time you go into a property, you increase
Speaker 1: the odds of that buck learning about your presence. So
Speaker 1: you're educating that buck and or the larger deer herd
Speaker 1: every time you step foot in there, whether it's to
Speaker 1: tinker with a tree stand or move a trail camera
Speaker 1: or to hunt. Every time you go in there, you
Speaker 1: are educating deer. So you're leaving sen creating visual disturbance etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So your odds for success in the future decrease some
Speaker 1: percentage points every time you go in there. So my
Speaker 1: thought processes, if I'm trying to kill the mature buck,
Speaker 1: I want the odds of reward to be as high
Speaker 1: as possible, because I know that there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: some level of risk every time, So I want to
Speaker 1: find the lowest risk and the highest reward days. Strike
Speaker 1: on those days, minimize the number of intrusions so that
Speaker 1: I don't educate more dear because you can educate that buck,
Speaker 1: or if you educate the dough herd, and you know,
Speaker 1: let's say in a situation where a mature dough or
Speaker 1: a handful mature dough starts picking up on the fact
Speaker 1: that I'm rolling into this little corner of the property
Speaker 1: every couple of days, then she doesn't come around anymore,
Speaker 1: or when she comes in, she looks right at the
Speaker 1: tree stand. If that happens, and the buck happened, buck
Speaker 1: I'm after happening to be happens to be a hundred
Speaker 1: yards behind him, sees her spook, or maybe that buck
Speaker 1: would have followed her in towards a tree stand. On
Speaker 1: November one, but because now those doughs know not to
Speaker 1: move in there during daylight, Now he won't follow her
Speaker 1: in there. I always need to be thinking about the
Speaker 1: impacts of hunting pressure, human intrusion, and then yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's an odds thing. I'm constantly the scale
Speaker 1: every single hunt I go into, I just have these
Speaker 1: two hands. I like, Okay, what are the things in
Speaker 1: favor of reward? So what do I have going for me?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the time of year, Maybe it's the conditions,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an up. Maybe I saw him in daylight
Speaker 1: recently moving. Maybe I know that a certain food source
Speaker 1: is going to be particularly palatable starting now. Um, so
Speaker 1: those are all the things will tell me how high
Speaker 1: or low that chance of reward will be. And then
Speaker 1: I look at the chances of risk. So what things
Speaker 1: could lead to me being you know, spotted, or what
Speaker 1: could lead to me blow on my cover? So maybe
Speaker 1: it's wind, Maybe it's how many times I've been in there.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the time of year. Maybe it's you know,
Speaker 1: how the neighbors are are hunting or doing something like that.
Speaker 1: So all those things factor into every single hunt. Um
Speaker 1: for me, at least, you know, you talked about white tail.
Speaker 1: Guys will invent moves that kind of reminiscent of professional
Speaker 1: wrestling moves like you talked about, like the bumping dump
Speaker 1: bumping dump. I would if I was you, I would
Speaker 1: think of a move called the canyon. So what's then?
Speaker 1: It would be that you sneak onto all the neighboring
Speaker 1: properties after dark and just make life hell for those deer,
Speaker 1: thinking that they will naturally congregate on thee where you
Speaker 1: have permission. What were we just talking about that whole
Speaker 1: deal crossing the line. So every night you're just going
Speaker 1: through core feeding and betting areas just like raising Holy hell,
Speaker 1: now here's okay. This is that made me that I'm
Speaker 1: joking because Matt, that's what Mark does and it is
Speaker 1: called the Kend. Definitely not what to do. But one
Speaker 1: thing I do I do do um is I kind
Speaker 1: of call it like my guns season sanctuary strategy. So
Speaker 1: I think about, like if there's a property that I
Speaker 1: have sould access to, So again this if we keep
Speaker 1: referring to this ninety acres, this is like the one
Speaker 1: place I have that nobody else hans, so I have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do things there that otherwise you know,
Speaker 1: if other guys are coming in out, I wouldn't. So
Speaker 1: my thought process is that November, you know, in Michigan,
Speaker 1: the Orange Rimy comes out, hundreds and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of deer hunters in the woods. It's a dramatic increase
Speaker 1: in hunting pressure. Most of the deer in Michigan killed
Speaker 1: during the first day of guns season, and then over
Speaker 1: the course of the next couple of weeks. I choose
Speaker 1: not to hunt this property at all during gun season
Speaker 1: because my thoughts are that I create a sanctuary if
Speaker 1: vacuuman's vacuums and deer from all the surrounding properties during
Speaker 1: that time period. So dozens and dozens of hunters are
Speaker 1: all around, they're all hunting with the guns. All these
Speaker 1: deer are looking for somewhere there's not hunters. That's what
Speaker 1: happens to be this property. All these deer flood in there.
Speaker 1: This achieves two things for me. Number One, it pulls
Speaker 1: in deer in the short term. So if there is
Speaker 1: a mature buck that I'm after, it's more likely that
Speaker 1: he'll survive through gun season than I can continue to
Speaker 1: target him the late season or under the future. And
Speaker 1: then number two, in the long term, a lot of
Speaker 1: year and a half old bucks come pouring, or two
Speaker 1: and a half year old bucks bucks I'd like to
Speaker 1: see make it to an older age class. I'd like
Speaker 1: to see a more balanced age structure. So I think
Speaker 1: I can have a disproportionate impact on the deer herd
Speaker 1: a general area, even though I'm only hunting a little
Speaker 1: piece of it. I can have a disproportionate impact because
Speaker 1: I create a safe place during the most dangerous time.
Speaker 1: More deer can make it through um And I can't
Speaker 1: quantify the impact that's had, but anecdotally, I do believe
Speaker 1: it has made it positive impact. I've seen mature bucks
Speaker 1: that I don't think would have made it if I
Speaker 1: was in there mucking around all the time. I would
Speaker 1: call that the crowdsourced canyon. Do you monitor that property
Speaker 1: then during the gun season so that the guy next door,
Speaker 1: the guy on the other side, because that small property,
Speaker 1: like that dude just walks on the edge of Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only you're like talking about something a quarter Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: You wait till the packers are playing and then go
Speaker 1: on the neighbors legs. You know, damn sure, he's not
Speaker 1: out in the woods yeah, so so yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's always that risk, right, But I've tried to establish
Speaker 1: positive relationships with the neighbors, so I'm I'm trusting Number two.
Speaker 1: I do have trail cameras all over the place that
Speaker 1: are monitoring edges and stuff, and I think I try
Speaker 1: to make that known. There's posted signs all around the
Speaker 1: explicitly say that there are you know, trail cameras monitoring
Speaker 1: this property really, um so that if you if you
Speaker 1: were to come on there, you know there's a good
Speaker 1: risk that, um you're gonna get spotted and prosecuted. So
Speaker 1: I try to manage that as possible, and I'll even
Speaker 1: try to. I try to. I try to be nearby.
Speaker 1: It is often, and I go through that. You gotta
Speaker 1: make your presence. Yeah. I throw at the guy in
Speaker 1: the bar every once in a while, I just walks it.
Speaker 1: Ramy beats up a guy and announces to everyone that
Speaker 1: he has a picture of him on his property. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't disbelieve that. Because today we walked into
Speaker 1: a restaurant and Doug's afraid to sit down with his
Speaker 1: back towards the group because he's the words some of
Speaker 1: might come up and clock he's got gunfighters. Doug got
Speaker 1: any concluders, Uh yes, but one of the would we
Speaker 1: would go on for a long time, so I gotta
Speaker 1: skip that one. Skip that one well, but it is
Speaker 1: something I'd like to talk to you about in the future,
Speaker 1: and that is about how you gain access to property.
Speaker 1: That would be good. I got a lot of say
Speaker 1: a lot about yeah, yeah, and one thing, and I
Speaker 1: want to do a whole episode called permissions. Will you
Speaker 1: come back on for that? I think that's really uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course on my place, if you're
Speaker 1: famous guy, you get to come and hunt and fiddle
Speaker 1: around the roof that song. Traditions, Yeah, traditions do permisitions. Um,
Speaker 1: So okay. I never know how much you guys sing either.
Speaker 1: That was something I learned on this trail. We sing
Speaker 1: a lot, especially when we all know the song. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's something for another time, you know. I guess
Speaker 1: the other thing that I would say is that the
Speaker 1: most uh interesting part and and enjoyable part of all
Speaker 1: this for me is Um. And I know why you
Speaker 1: two guys are getting along so well in Yanni too
Speaker 1: with is that there's the passion that you have for um.
Speaker 1: What it is that you do. Uh. I mean it's
Speaker 1: almost as if you came to this um in in
Speaker 1: both of your where you know, where you're making your living,
Speaker 1: because first you are passionate about hunting in animals and
Speaker 1: conservation and all of that, and then the rest of
Speaker 1: it followed as opposed to I'm gonna I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: a TV guy or I'm gonna be a podcast guy
Speaker 1: or whatever, and so then god, what am I gonna
Speaker 1: do it about? Um? And I just don't think that
Speaker 1: you can create that authenticity without that passion and sincerity.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really um, I think that's really important.
Speaker 1: And uh, the thing that ties it all together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned that in tenth grade from my teacher Robert Heaton,
Speaker 1: who said what many writing teachers say and others should say,
Speaker 1: is I'm right what you know? Yeah, well that's cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's it's wonderful know about Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: sospeare that excuses me from that assignment. Um, you already
Speaker 1: did my concluder. You're good on yours. Doc. I'm good
Speaker 1: too good And I like to do thanks, um, And
Speaker 1: I do like your suggestion for the way asked bigger
Speaker 1: one just permissions, um mark concluders. You got your wedding
Speaker 1: ring off. Slowly he lost his shoes. Now he lost
Speaker 1: his wedding ring. I hope your wife not list. We're
Speaker 1: laying in bed. It's real quick. You're like a ring fiddler.
Speaker 1: I'm a ring fiddler. I've I've lost it, and like
Speaker 1: car seat cushion or like you know, down in the
Speaker 1: cracks and stuff. Many times I would be, but my
Speaker 1: fingers have changed. They've become more powerful to where I
Speaker 1: can't get mine off. I'll tell you a story, though,
Speaker 1: even though it's your turn for a concluder. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, we were butchering a snap and turtle
Speaker 1: and my old man somehow in the process lost his
Speaker 1: wedding ring, and my mother was devastated. He was all
Speaker 1: upset and search and search, and eventually he got to
Speaker 1: where he remembered that he had rinsed all the turtle
Speaker 1: meat in this big tub and then pulled the turtle
Speaker 1: meat out, and then later took the tub and it
Speaker 1: dumped it in the garden just like water, and went
Speaker 1: out and was looking around the garden and found the
Speaker 1: wedding ring where he dumped after like running it through
Speaker 1: in his head like what could have possibly happened in
Speaker 1: that ring and eventually occurred to him and there it
Speaker 1: wasn't the gal I don't remember. How was a little
Speaker 1: we found a few in gup piles. We'd be back
Speaker 1: at camp and the guy, you know, all of a a
Speaker 1: sudden go oh oh no. A few twice it happened
Speaker 1: that I can remember. We go back and you know,
Speaker 1: because it gets that bloods can be slick, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have those, you know, ever powerful
Speaker 1: fingers that continue to grow. And you know, my father
Speaker 1: livering baby pigs found at the pig Bacon years later. Uh.
Speaker 1: One time I was out we're floating um fishing and
Speaker 1: and uh I saw where a bunch of ravens were
Speaker 1: dicking around in the trees off the off the river.
Speaker 1: And we started going over and it's just bear trails,
Speaker 1: like new bear trails leaning this area, and someone had
Speaker 1: butchered to moose and so it's an area the size
Speaker 1: of this hotel room. It's just matted down grass. You know,
Speaker 1: they're just in there really heavy, like feeding on the
Speaker 1: carcase is totally gone and laying in the middle of
Speaker 1: this room sized piece of matted ground is a leather
Speaker 1: man that looks licked clean, just like glistening in the
Speaker 1: sun lander and you can tell that some dude like
Speaker 1: lost it. Butcher and his moose, and eventually all the
Speaker 1: ship that was obscuring it from his view has been
Speaker 1: mopped up and then cleaned. The part of this thing
Speaker 1: looked like off the factory floor laying in there. I
Speaker 1: still have that thing. I still have that was over
Speaker 1: a decade ago. I keep it kind of a special place.
Speaker 1: Not it's not in my medicine box, but it's in
Speaker 1: a place where it could someday make its way. It
Speaker 1: hasn't been upgraded to the medicine box, but it's close.
Speaker 1: Mark your concluder. After a few delays there, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's okay. Uh Well, I guess first, I just want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for having me here for
Speaker 1: this trip and this experience and being on here in
Speaker 1: the podcast. It's been unbelievable experience. I think me and
Speaker 1: Doug have just said it over and over and over
Speaker 1: again to each other. They just look at each other
Speaker 1: and we wow, just amazing. Thank you. Um. And I
Speaker 1: guess I was just I was trying to think here
Speaker 1: about things we've talked about and things we haven't yet
Speaker 1: talked about, um and something that is worth noting. And
Speaker 1: maybe it's I think it's maybe more so it's a
Speaker 1: kind of a white tail guy thing. Is that I'm
Speaker 1: generalizing here, but I think very often we white tail
Speaker 1: guys get something that I kind of referred to as
Speaker 1: conservation tunnel vision, where we start looking at just our
Speaker 1: back forty or our little place or our property, and
Speaker 1: we're very focused on just what's happening there. I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure, I mean, these are good things.
Speaker 1: Maybe doing some habitat work or you know, killing dose
Speaker 1: because that's going to help your herd or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. You care about that little slice, and that's
Speaker 1: important and good. But what I worry sometimes within my
Speaker 1: little community is that sometimes we fail to pay attention
Speaker 1: or care about the bigger picture things as much, like
Speaker 1: public land issues or clean air, clean water, um or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. So one of the things I
Speaker 1: always try to remind my white tail brotherhood is that
Speaker 1: all these bigger picture issues they impact all of us too,
Speaker 1: um So, so try to listen and hear about all
Speaker 1: these different issues. Educate yourself, care about your back forty
Speaker 1: but also look at these bigger picture things that impact
Speaker 1: your hunting rights or the ability for us to have
Speaker 1: you know, vibrant wildlife populations across the country. Like it
Speaker 1: or not, your back is part of the earth. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so I think you know, that's all I That's all
Speaker 1: I'd add to is that we are a part of
Speaker 1: a very large, connected world, and um, let's take care
Speaker 1: of it. Have you ever heard the idea? It's a
Speaker 1: theoretical concept that Okay, like like think of your own body,
Speaker 1: like you're an organism, right, and at being an organism,
Speaker 1: you have you're made up of many organs that have
Speaker 1: all these functions. So you have circulatory system, right, you're
Speaker 1: like taking in liquids, pulling things, expelling things, and you're
Speaker 1: this part. And then you also have more cells that
Speaker 1: aren't you than that are you. When you think of
Speaker 1: all the micro organisms that comprise your gatten, that live
Speaker 1: on you as parasites or in symbiotic relationships with yourselves
Speaker 1: with yourself, Um, there's this theoretical concept that you would
Speaker 1: think of the earth as an organism, And at first
Speaker 1: it seems kind of trippy and like a little bit
Speaker 1: out there, but once you start thinking about if you
Speaker 1: imagine the earth as an organism and it has a
Speaker 1: circulatory system, and it breathes, and it has blood, and
Speaker 1: it has micro organisms within it. It's just like something
Speaker 1: when you like land about at night. It's fun to
Speaker 1: start imagining that that you you are one of those microbes,
Speaker 1: the same that you have millions and millions of microbes
Speaker 1: in you. You are one of those microbes that is
Speaker 1: part of this organism, the earth, and your concept of
Speaker 1: your world. If you imagine if those microbes in your
Speaker 1: gut had consciousness, their consciousness would lead them to think
Speaker 1: that they are the thing. They are the thing that matters,
Speaker 1: and this body that gives them life and that they
Speaker 1: exist in is just this broader other that they don't
Speaker 1: really get because they are the point of existence. And
Speaker 1: expand that outward and outward and outward, and it becomes
Speaker 1: an interesting mental exercise. And I think if we all
Speaker 1: looked at things a little bit more that way, it
Speaker 1: could lead to some positive things. Alright, man, Thanks tuning
Speaker 1: in