00:00:00 Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording just outside of Kasan over Wisconsin. UM, in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Moments ago, I was asking my friend here, who's who's joining us today along with the honest but tell us that was a confusing sentence. I'm joined right now by j Honest to tell us and Doug Dern. And moments ago I was asking Doug Dern if he had heard the term driftless area of Wisconsin as a child or if it was just some kind of new marketing scam. And the answer is yes, but it really has become more prevalent in the last you know, ten to fifteen years. Yeah. So the word that term comes from is, you know, during the Ice Ages, glaciers leveled the Midwest. That's why it looks the way it does, flat and homogeneous. Um. But the glaciers missed this spot. They're like spread apart and split apart. They saw Doug standing there in all his hugeness, and the glaciers just didn't want to tangle with him and went around the driftless area and left it. Much topography like we're pissing distance from brick trout stream, beautiful brick trout Stream. We're a thousand yards if from where we just killed a turkey this morning. Oh, I would say we're five yards from there from where we killed a turkey this mor We're way closer where Doug is downed a lot of nice bucks. Well yeah, in fact, I one eye down that's hanging on the wall over there, which probably doesn't work on a podcast, but uh, it actually died right down here by the barn. I know that story. So yeah, we're we're in Doug. Like Doug Derren's family for several generations has had this farm here, um going way back hundred fifty years. In this final that's what we're recording, this old farmhouse. It's just what they called the buck check. Knox is full of giant bull ucks. Um, we're gonna talk a bunch about that. Oh. I was gonna tell you about the Driftless Area though. I was up and up on Lake Superior, Ashland, Wisconsin, and the guy up there has got a sugar shack. This guy named Bill Hart, hell of a nice guy. He's got a sugar shack up there, and he in response to the Driftless Area and all of its coolness, he has on his bottles of maple syrup. He writes from the famed drifted area of Well, that's a great thing. When you get getting something in some kind of label or marketing thing going, you can try to take you down. Trying to take you down. But yeah, this part of Wisconsin doesn't look like the normal Middle I mean there's a ton of topography around here, in rock out croppings. This used to be like Indians used to hide out here when they're trying to hide from the army. That's a great area. And in the honest else the Latvian lover and hunter. You guys got a Latvian camp not far from here, talk about that. Why do the Latvians like this place? As far as I know, they settled here when they all came over during the Second Well, some of them came over before the Second World War, but most of them emigrated during the Second World War. But it was very similar to Latvia's topography and landscape, so it felt like home. Yeah, there's only about three million Latvians alive today, something like that. One million in Latvia, two million in the US. Is that right, I think too in Latvia and then million worldwide. So explain that place you hunt on if you don't need to give like the GPS coordinates. But no, it's very similar topography to hear. You know, just beautiful oak ridges, you know oak flats. You know a lot of little bowls that just kind of, you know, peel off the main ridge. And uh, there's no agg. A lot of the neighbors have agg around us, but the country that we hunt, it's all just basically big oak forest. Yeah. It's a bunch of Latvian mugs who all bought property by each other to be by each other. And there's a Latin all owned once by maybe like one main Latvian guy, and over the years it got divided up, but it stayed in the Latvian communey and there's a Latvian pagan church camp Yep. It's spent a lot of time they're growing up. Is there is there a lot of Is there a lot of instruction involved with turning someone into a pagan? No, not much at all, really, you just kind of go with what seems very natural. They teach you a lot about nature, yes, Like, um, what's the word I'm looking for? I think we were talking about this word the other day. Yeah, it's definitely do you find God in nature? It's like, what's that? What was the word for it? Not like polytheism, multi goods, there's like a word for finding God in the land. Yeah, so there's evidence. There's like the wind mother, and there's you know, the um uh, like the god that takes care of farm animals, and then there's like the God that watches over wild animals and the like. There's just like kind of you know, God's kind of do their own little thing all about you in life. You know, I think animism might be the word I'm looking for. I can't believe Dug the fact checker during is a fact checking that. So, yeah, Yanni hunts turkeys here totally coincidentally, we came out the way Wisconsin runs are turkey seasons is and some dudes were complaining about this last night. I gave a talk at the university last night, and afterwards, instead of waiting in line to meet me and shake my hand, Janice went to a bar um and got to yapp with some guys in the bar and never complaining about the Wisconsin runs their turkey seasons. But Wisconsin Divide has a not doesn't have a long Turkey season, but has many short Turkey seasons that make up a long stretch of time. Yeah, I think you guys got like a B, C, D F and G season. I think there's an E in there also and a youth C. I don't know you said six. I counted to six, but I thought, but you didn't say. Oh, yeah, you just want to think number seven. It does go F to G the alphabet you went, you skip d um minor issue. Yeah, I'm not. I'm confident in my ability to say the alphabet. So when you put in when you apply to hunt turkeys Wisconsin, you gotta pick a zone. What's Tommy zones at State? But I think there's only three or four Now, I'd have to look at the man Zone one. Yeah, we're zone one and that's pretty much the whole southwest corner. Um, I don't remember. And if you're a nonresident and you don't have any bonus points saved up, and you put in for zone one in season A, you will not draw the tag as I now understand. Like I didn't draw it. You might have a chance to draw it. Yeah, but I didn't get it. That's to get the first crack. But you don't just get the first crack, because there's a youth season that's get the first crack. But that's almost like too early of the first crack. They're not like hot Well yeah, I guess, but um ah, I know the people have pretty good success in it. And certainly the birds have been active the last two or three weeks. There's not a leaf on the trees, right, I mean, there's like buds. They'll be probably the two weeks it will look leafed out. Oh no, no, no, we're two weeks probably from well some of them will be like the soft woods, the willows and red maples. Will you be getting there, But you know, we're still waiting for that most here size that you found the when the morals will be up. So it's a couple of weeks off. Yet we went out this morning, just walked out of Doug's farmhouse up the main valley here um to the end of the field. Heard one freaking gobbler And that was a long ways off. And I wasn't even sure it was a gobbler when I first when I first heard so far away, but I mean it certainly was. But he didn't do anything by fly down time. He had shut up, and we hunted our took uses off. Yeah, hunter our asses. I can't say the hunter asks off. We listened around a fair bit and eventually called in two towns. It didn't make a peep. We got one half gobble out of one after we were staring at for twenty minutes. Yeah. These I was sitting there trying to get comfortable and taking nap. It was like getting that time of day nine in the morning, and I was like, couldn't get my head quite how I wanted it, you know, to sleep. And also I noticed like the top of a tail fan maybe seventy yards eighty yards away and there's two gobblers out there strutting that just never made a sound. You know. We had a decoy out and we had to said it a little crossroad what you guys called the big woods, right, Um has said a little crossroad. And those times come in saw the head must of it just set to Stratton and then we kind of toyo Raulphi for long time. Adventually they came in. It was a great They were convinced. Man, they were he was ready to make love today there. Yeah, he was ready to make love to the decoy. Him and his body. That was just the great twenty minutes or half an hour of observing turkeys and watching them do what they want to do. And I kept thinking, can they see that decoy? And from where we were, we thought, well, maybe they couldn't see the decoy. So after we killed the one, UM, I walked up where they had been while they could clearly see the decoy, and they just they just they just waited. They were waiting for her to come and and um, giving full credit to Steve Ronella and the calling job, he was so subtle and so quiet. That's how I talked a lady, even though I was talking about smooth like butter and uh. And then he stopped because they wouldn't. They didn't move for twenty minutes. They just were in full struck because I overcalled. My specialty is getting turkeys attention. And then once they once I got it, I feel like I'm like the puppeteer man, it's so hard to shut up. Well, if they had been gobbling, it would have been impossible to shut up. He's like this, I can make him goblin. And it was just one short It didn't even wasn't even a full gobble no, and then they and then you shout. If you around the woods listening, you'd heard that and been like, I don't know what was that. Yeah, it was just like a half ask gobble, but there were mature birds, you know. Give give a recap on your morning, man. I played hard to get on our second set up this morning and it did not work. It did not pan out. I was very confident because hard to get worked for me about four days ago in California, and he kind of cruised on the opposite side of the ridge that we were set up on. I heard him gobble four or five times as he went by. Well, we never heard we. I would have thought we could hear your birds, but never heard that any of that. Yeah, there's a little bit of wind. I think it's actually blowing from you guys to us, so that would oh, it was quiet. If there would have been birds goblin, we would have heard him. Well that's not true because they go within half a mile of us. But anyways, he gobbles. I've been calling every ten or fifteen minutes, just you know, one little set of helps and I can hear him gobbile by us and kind of goes away, and I'm thinking, man, we're gonna we'll give him one more call. If we can't turn him, we got to go chase him. And the next time he gobbles, he's like, come up on top of the ridge, and then he gobbles again. He's a little bit closer. You're probably thinking you're gonna kill the bird. Oh yeah. At that point, I'm like, I'm gonna give one more soft little call, and I'm gonna set the call down. And the next thing is gonna happen is you know, Tie is gonna pull the trigger and set that call down. And thirty minutes later, it was as quiet as it had been at that moment, And so it didn't work, you know, And I don't know if I if I had called more, had I pulled him in an hour later? I think we end up spooking that bird with either another gobbler or with a hand, maybe had two hands. I don't know. We spooked three birds not far from where we last heard. Did you see the bird? Not when we're not when I was working him. I saw him an hour later when we but when you quit calling, you didn't see. But when he gobbled, I was like, he is at a hundred or less and he's closing the dish alone. I'm just gonna set the call down. It's nice when a gobbler has the courtesy to gobble a lot when he loses interest. But let you know, because then you can gauge like this is going the other way, and then you know, just to like no holds barred, like any you know, it's like, what's the lose now, I'll just make insane noise, you know, I'll be like I'll do my hand dying noise, you know, like anything, because but when they just shut up, you're thinking, he shut up. He's coming to you like, you know, here fifty misses, like it's gotta because he's walking over here, you know. But then like you know, when nothing happens, you stand up and he's just gone. Every thing that happens turkey hut. We're talking with us the other day. Is we used to hold out west You can sneak up on turkeys. You know, we used to get where you knew the round the other side of the ridge. You call and call and call, and nothing happens, like oh they must have wandered off, and you stand up. They're still standing there, but like you just suck at calling. It's a pro this just don't care. Before we get onto farther turkey stories. Let's just take a quick break to our sponsors. Very smooth. My other morning set up, I just got very lucky. We heard birds goblin on a classic like point off of a field. They were up above us. You had like a season is worth of turkey hunt this morning, and we gotta had a lot of good turkey hunt this morning. And we got in right underneath them at the bottom, and I think they flew down into the field kind of a way from us, and we had time to drop a decoy in sitting against a tree, and I looked back up on the horizon. I could see, you know, them moving, and I made one little scratch and they were walking down the hill and it just happened to be that they were gonna come right down that How do you know that, I don't, but it just seemed like, you know, they were very confidently coming down that hill, and I don't They couldn't see the decoy at that point. You only there. Well, you just never know. You never know. That's the problem too with hunt hunting, lots of hunting turkeys, like you're always doing stuff you don't know, Like today, I could say, well, once those two that were I don't want to say they were hung up because they weren't like suspicious. They were just strutting the odd of range. Once I started being like, Okay, that's gonna scratch the leaves and purr, right, and eventually they came in. So now do you sit and go like, oh the trick, the trick is scratched leaves and purr or was it just that they came in even though I was doing that? You know, it's so hard to You gotta see things happen again and again and again and again and again before you start formulating an idea. But I'm coming to see that shutting up when you got a bird, it's just he's responding. He likes what he hears. It's in your best as as fun as it is just to get him to keep him talking. It's just give it ten minutes, give it fifteen minutes now and then and see if that doesn't move that bird way in your direction. And that ten minutes when we sat there was both really short and really long. It's just like and I did without having to watch. You can't tell. Yeah, you can't tell I have how long is this going on? But it was, you know, just to watch him. I mean that was the visual on that was, you know, kept your interest in the numbness of my leg and shoulder and my neck up against the tree. It all went away. Checking those birds out man. Yeah, I was saying after that was over, if you're like hunting turkeys, man, yeah, I can't tell you what I said, but I said, if you don't like turkeys, you can expletive deleted exactly you can. Yeah. Um, so yeah, during's farm. Now, tell these guys, tell listeners about like when you were a kid, about the deer situation out here. I remember that. This is a way ass interesting story. Wow, that's uh uh, it's a big deal. When I was a kid, you saw a deer out in the field, I mean you got a car and drove. I mean somebody said, hey, it were some deer out on mcglenn's Ridge or Cunningham Ridge or something like that. You drove out there and checked it out. Um, the deer in this area, we're over in the Bearable Bluffs, the Barable Hills. Um. Prior to that, I remember my brother David did a speech conservation speech when he was in seventh or eighth grade about the management of the white tailed deer. Is he an expert? No, he was doing one of those you know, competitions at school or whatever. And uh, he did a great job of it, as I recall, under some very difficult circumstances. Should I tell you what that was. He had kicked in the growing and was all swollen up and and the night that he gave that speech was in incredible pain. Yeah, and he did a great job of it. I think he got second place. I'm sure he'd have wanted had he not not taking a blow too. Yeah. But through the uh management program of the of the Department Natural Resources. Um. And when I was a kid, you would you'd have to if you want to shoot a dough, you'd have to have get four guys together, like months ahead of time and sent in for a party permit. So one guy or you would get one dough tag for four guys, so your deer tag was a buck tag. Um, and then there would be this one tag for four guys to be able to shoot a doll. Let me dre up because I'm doing a bad job of hosting right now, because just for people who live in all their areas or who don't follow this kind of thing. This area right now, like right now is the good old days on deer or maybe a couple of years ago is the good ol days. No, no, I would say, right. It's just this place produces tons of deer, and it's famous and becoming for gigantic bucks, and we should be able to produce more of them. And I don't know how hop on a soapbox I want to get about, you know, deer management. We have too many deer in my opinion, and where I hunt and what I you guys are in the these This area is also part of the c w D, the chronic wasting disease on the northern edge of it. Chronic wasting disease goes hand in hand with shiploads of deer. Oh, you don't get c w D in the area that doesn't have a lot of deer, that's right. High deer density makes a big difference. And and then to control the diseases, you want fewer deer. And um, there are a lot of reasons to to have fewer deer in this area. And and again you know, I don't know what other guys experiences are in various parts of the state and all that I just know around here and on the land that i'm hunting, which is our farming a little bit in the area around it. I'm not hunting that, but seeing it, we have way more dearer than than what we should have. And from a forestry perspective, from well, it depends if what you want to see as a ton of deer, I guess you should be happy as a clamp. But uh, if you want to have deer in the future, then we should have fewer deer. Now we're gonna I mean, it's possible that we'd have a crash of the of the deer here heard here, because because our habitat will be depleted. Um, I'm sure there are guys who are gonna, you know, from around here, got each other over discussion. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it's a heated discussion. And I still think, say, I'm old enough. I'm fifty six years old, and I'm old enough that there are in my generation won't shoot a doll and you know it's just that way. You don't do that. Oh, I know tons of old guys like that because they come from the day when they were any well, right, but the mentality, I mean you have to shift that mentality. A lot of a lot has changed about deer hunting, and one of the things is the numbers. But if I want to back up, yeah, yeah, I know, because I was just trying to set the stage that right now there's a ton of deer, giant box for this area right now is the good old days of deer hunt now I was, But yeah, I mean look at this. I wish you could see this room like I'm staring eye to eye right now with the buck known as the standard. I don't know, I want to talk about the standard, because that's that to me in the story of this area, like the standard at for YouTube like that deer sort of like is this like sort of the epitome. Yeah, it's like this really important moment in this area. So dogs growing up, it would be a big deal to cut a deer track. You now live like your family lives. And I mean, if you're gonna sit down and list like top and white tail locations in the u S, you probably wanted them to be around here. And you're a man always drove north the year. Yeah, Dad always went up north. He hunted. They're still guys in this area that go up there for the tradition of it. Uh. He went and hunted up in Phillips. They lived in a tent for you know, a week or ten days. Um. And then when I was a kid twelve years old, we uh hunted up in that area, and then we hunted by red granite. Um. And because Dad want us to have that North Woods you know experience and all that, like pulp wood yeah yeah, and alder swamps and that kind of stuff and cedar swamps and uh, I think the first three years that I deer hunted, I saw three deer. And then I started playing high school basketball. Yeah dug, big tall bastard anyway, Wait around anyway, So I started playing high school basketball, and so you had to be here. And then sudden we started hunting the farm and I'm on out opening day, shot first buck in the fourteen years old Bang there was a buck? What the hell are you going up there for? Um? And I you know, and as I say, I appreciated that that experience and everything, but you know, in terms of just really getting to hunt deer, this is the place to do it and that, but that was like a little surprising. Then you were like, oh wow, there was deer here all along. It was like coming. It was all happening at the same time I was getting it was that uh seventy mid seventies, early seventies, seventy three and seventy round. No, no, it had a horn on it, you shot it. But it was still the party tag thing. So all you could shoot we're bucks because you know, unless you had the party tag um. And you know I got involved with that with some other guys. Um. And if those guys are listening right now, they're chuckling about it. But um, so anything with antler on it, you shot. And really that was the mentality here for a long time, and in the eighties when the deer herd really started to explode. And I didn't live here from nineteen eighty five until h n nineties, so there was I lived in New England for a few years and it actually did in deer Hunt for five years. Uh So then um came back in the nineties and you know, um a you know, two and a half year old um six point or eight point or maybe it was a year and a half old buck. UM probably couldn't have been but that was a hundred ten inches or something like that. And for those of you know what how big that is. That was a big deal. That's at that same time, late eighties, early nineties, like when I started hunting. I guess I did my first league. I killed my first deer and I was thirteen. Um, you shot. This is West Michigan, so just across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee. You shot. If you saw a buck, you shot that thing. Oh yeah, and that was something. Tell it here to my old man killed a two and a half year old buck, like a nice eight point two and a half years old. That's something. That deal was in the newspaper. You It's like you did not bucks didn't live. I think that the year and a half old bucks will do it all the we're breeding all the dogs because there were It's just you just shot. You would sit there and you see does come out at dusk. You sit there just like hallucinating, spike antlers on him behind the ears. It's like you just shot bucks. And I understand, I'm not even down on it, man, I understand it's like super complicated. But if you saw a buck, if you kill the forky, you had a fantastic year. First bucket shot had one antler and I was on cloud nine. That's a bucket shot when you started basketball? Yeah, where'd you start hunting? Just forty and worth of here? Oh that's your deer hunting too. Well. We hunted in southwest Michigan and over here. Um, I think in Michigan we can start hunting in twelve and here it was fourteen fourteen with a gun. Twelve of the bow Michigan to Michigan's four team was fourteen with the gun. Oh, so I had it mixed up because I killed my first deer of the gun before I was supposed to. Ye, statue of limitations has run out on that violation, I hope. Plus they changed the rules now they it wasn't my fault. At that age, you're like, you're sort of an instrument of your father. You're not like a I think the Bible says when you're old enough to like not butter bread, But like, at what age are you capable of reason? I don't know anyhow if I had murdered someone and I'd be out of jail long time ago. With about how you know? So you're when you're thirteen is not held responsible. Um, you guys, you guys just shoot teeny bucks. Then, you know what I was gonna say. It's interesting because that time period two so I started hunting probably round like late eighties, early nineties to must have been so two eight two. I think I killed like a little crotch warner my first year. But those early years and the five years before I actually started holding the carrying a gun, just coming out here with my dad. I remember those memories. Finally, of driving in. We'd always come in it would be late nine pm, and every big field within like the last five miles of getting to camp, we would swing the headlights onto the field and just start counting. You know. That was like I look forward to that. You know, that was like so exciting because and we'd count. Often times you'd hit over twenty you know on one field. You know, just deer everywhere. And as the years went on, it got to be less and less and less and less, and right now, I mean I haven't been back in probably four or five years. The last couple of times I've gone back, I had one hunt. I went back and hunted three and a half days hard and did not see a deer. Yeah, like five years ago, and they're having tough hunting right now up there, right now, and a lot of them are blaming it on the you know, being in that t zone. They had some tough weather too. And again, these guys only haunt the opening weekend. I think I want to say, last year, right, if you hunted only opening weekend last year, you didn't see any deer. I fog the whole time. It was. Yeah, I remember I was texting you rain, rain, fog, snow, and I mean driving snow the first three day days on this farm. You know how many deer there around here. I'm sitting up there comfortably in a box, blind, comfortably sunrise to sunset, and I saw six deer in the first three days. And I didn't think anything of it. They're just not out. It's not happening. Uh. After Thanksgiving Day, killed the dough on Thanksgiving Day, killed two bucks. On the next day we saw hunts of deer. And then when we hunted, I had a bunch of friends come out over the holiday hunts people all famous people from Kazanovia. Uh, certainly the my favorite some of my favorite peo, not all of my favorite people from Kazanovia of but but certainly some of them and their kids. And in the course of three hours, no joke, deer, we killed only two. But um uh, but that that amount of deer there's so you know, you're just talking about how his deer hunting changed, and you know and all that. So the numbers are different. But the other part of it is you can hunt a lot of different places. And I control this land, you know. I mean I've had last year and over thirty people deer hunts out here over the course of the seasons. Yeah, you know, different veries. You know. That's nice. And they weren't all famous. Dog got accused of only that famous people filmed out here and had some famous people out hunting here, and Dog got a cues on letting famous people hunt his land. And then the guy down the bar stool comment that just the other day Dog had ten people out there and he sure was hell an't famous. So now you got me. Uh No, I'm glad I got you because I want to I want to change this drag. I don't want to change the subject. I have a quick question though, for you. I do you feel like just forty miles north of here. It could be a big difference of what is going on here because you are kind of micromanaging just you know, I don't think it's me micromanaging this spot. So yes, I feel like that could happen, especially when you said, well there's egg around. I don't know what's going on up there. Um. I think there's been some good changes to dear management. I think some of the bad changes have been. Um, you know, they took away the rbuk uh from the biologists to you know, to uh to help manage the herd. I want to explain the earn a buck all right? To encourage people to encourage hunters to shoot does right if you're trying to reduce the population and also take pressure off of box. You know, wildlife managers use a tool called earn a buck where, um, you can't shoot a buck unless you shoot a dough first, that's right. So if you just think about I don't want to dwell on this subject too long, but deer are born basically like like humans, a one to one sex ratio. Okay, for every dough that drops or every dough fon that drops out of a dough, a buck fon is gonna drop out of one or humans are female deers somewhere right in there. And when you're sitting out there and you see five does and one buck you're looking at, you're not seeing a natural population dynamic. If what you're seeing is actually representative of what's there, you're not seeing a natural dynamic. There would be a healthy Most people who understand why it's hill deer would say that a healthy population of dear the racial is not that skewed high buckeddoor ratio. Yeah, it's never gonna be. It's never gonna be one to one because they just have They just have an easier time dying and they don't live as long bucks don't. But it should be substantial. Well it was anyways. I don't want to, I don't want I just want to explain, like earn abut people are gonna be like, what the hells that means? They got rid to earn a bux And I understand why they did, because there's places like I don't even talking about that where that was what maybe the blame was placed on. Why there are fewer deer. Uh. I even though I've hunted with some DNR guys, I've never seen a d n R guy kill a deer. Hunters killed deer. So at the end of the day, it's always the hunters who are going to be managing the deer. And that's you know, it's and and that's the mentality that I have here. I do what I think is right for our property, um, based on the guidelines, are based on the seasons and the structure that that those uh, that the the deer managers have. I thought arnerbuck was a good thing. We still have it here. I mean, we shoot more goals and we shoot bucks here. Um. And and the liberal uh and I mean liberal lots of dough tags certainly could be a reason for it, whether there's a reason for it, um. But that's you know, management within a particular area, I guess is the way I feel that, you know, the hunters are way more in control of that. And I think some of the changes that have happened in the deer management have been good. But UM, I still have an awful lot of faith in in UH that was that's an apartment of natural resources, big game managers and how they put you know, season structures together. I like the fact that we've shrunk it used to be really big zone serve like it is a Turkey with much bigger zones. Now it's going much more on the county to county basis, and I think that's going to take into account more of that. You know. You you get an area like where you're hunting up there, where there are a fewer here. Well, why is that? Well I'm not exactly sure because I don't I don't hump there, but you guys should have a better feeling for that. That's the thing these Eastern states, Like what the state. I grew up in zone one to three, So all in Michigan, right, you got the whole state, eighty three counties. They would break it up into three units. Basically divide the lower peninsula a half and make the up its own unit. You go out west, they draw units by watersheds. Yeah, you're look at to say and be like, there's units in the state because you're fine tune in your management plan in a way that allows you to account for all these little micro things like you take the arias Tom about me, like, well you know what, that spot doesn't have any dear. It's a great management tool if you can be like, okay, so let's talk about that spot and not talk about this whole half of the damn state. Yea, you know, because it just really allows you to get into it. There's a guy, I think it was Frederick Jackson Turner, there was some environmental historian. He went back and argued, if we really wanted this way off topic, but he went argued, if we want, we really wanted to govern the country in a better way, we'd get rid of the state lines we have now and draw our states according to watersheds, talking about government that way, you know, and give people a sense than having these arbitrary straight lines cutting through things that shouldn't be cut through. Like you you live in a it wasn't always watersheds, but you live in like a specific like geo region. Yeah, you know, Well think about it. The back of our farm, the uh where my cabin is, and the pond up there, that's in a different county. That's an different deer management zone. Now, yeah, the pond is essentially the that that runs north south, that's the Richland Stock County line. So that's in a different management zone. No, Well, there's always gonna be some art. You're always gonna draw a line. Like when you draw that line it's gonna cut through a damn deer. Right, It's like half the deer is gonna be there's probably d right now, half of them. Then one man's But if you took your premise and said the watershed, well, hell, we're talking about the same little valley there, and uh that's where they draw a lot of managing. But again, I'm trying to pry and narrative out a dog here, and I keep um teasing it out and then stomping on it when he gets into it. I kind of want to. I want to get into the whole like better next year. Nice next year, So nice bug next year. It sounds very interesting. And to keep these podcasts coming to you for free, we're gonna take thirty seconds to listen to our sixty seconds. Sixty seconds. It's an infro from our supporters, all right, so they're back in time. There weren't shipped for deer around here. Then they started to be getting a lot of deer here in the driftless area, and everyone shot every buck they saw on site, right, and then we went to the dogs late brother Matthew, Matthew, Oh really yeah, I just my my new son's named Matthew, did you make that connection? Doug's late brother says, what Doug so out at the milk part. So, yeah, this deer that I was telling you that I killed within a stone's throw this this died, I should say, within a stone throw of the of the house here was. You can't see it, but it's that one with the black velvet up there on the and that was the biggest buck that I had killed to date. You know, at that point, little Palm made it eight point um, like, you know, that's gotta be Yeah, like a lot of guys, I mean it should I be. I mean it's like a cool buck. I shot it across the road. It jumps to crack ky lung, shot jumps the creek, goes through the gate that we walked through this morning. There was no gate at the bottom of the hill. Then crosses the road, come up, comes up through these pines. Matthew is sleeping upstairs because he already got his buck, and he looks out the window thinks I'm like messing with him because where I shouted over anyway, it ran down through here, and he he thinks, I'm messing No, and did not. There was a very there was some very quick but correct decisions made about the shots that were taken. And uh, he looked out the window of the upstairs bedroom and saw that deer coming up through the pine trees outside of here. Comes down the stairs, grabs his deer rifle and hands and he's got his long John's on. Grabs his deer rifle and his orange jacket, so he's legal. Comes out the door. That hole that's in that porch door out there was from that day, which is twenty years ago, one years ago. That deer goes over, goes in between the silos over there and lays down and but it's still alive. It's you know, it wasn't hard shot. It was long shot. So and so we go around and, you know, safety conscious as we were, we're trying to finish it off. And my dad is walking across the top of the hill and he wonders, what the hell is going on? Comes down the hill. Uh, Matt and I are, you know, trying to get the deer out of there. And it gets up and it goes down by the milk house and kind of collapses again, and and you know it's we're thinking, well we should slit its throat. We gotta be safe here. My dad walks up to it, blam, shooting through the neck. Stuff's getting, you know, thinking when we were doing the right thing. He look for God's sakes, you know. So anyway, there was quite a lot of excitement had uh boy, you know, so we're all congratulating each other and talking about how this whole thing went down and grabbing the deer and I'm looking at it. I'm going, man, what a great buck. And I'm dean and Dad's like, well, that's terrific. And Matt, who's the quietest of all of us, kind of looks at it and goes, yeah, but that had been a nice buck next year, and that really, that conversation that came from that ended up being really where we started doing bigger buck management here. Um just let him slide. Well, It's what I started thinking then, was well, Okay, that's the biggest buck I've shot to date. The next one is gonna be bigger than that. And we started talking about it. Unfortunately, he died three months later in a car accident just right down here on the on the highway. But we started talking about that was what we had been planning that whole winter. It was more of our management at that point. And uh in two thousand and three, after um, some changes in the group that hunted here. Uh, after I had instituted some rules. Um, everything that you see and here has been shot other than that buck has been shot since two thousand and three, plus four or five others. And I know you go, well, sorry, I guess describing it very well, but you can see the progression. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. To give you an idea, that the one of the black velvet that Doug shot there twenty one years ago out in the backyard here, he might be a hundred inches right, most people call a basket rack, although he's a little bit wider than your average basket rack. But uh yeah, in our camp in Michigan, we would have been tickled to shoot a buck like that. I never shot a buck like that in Michigan. Yeah. And then every good, every good numbers go around the room and just shout out numbers. Uh. There's a couple of others that are like in that one, like twenty type class, but not many. Everything else that jumps significantly significantly up into the one thirties, one forties, right, I mean there might be a couple are like the upper row over there, it's like one, you know, mid one thirties. Uh, and then there's just some gigant or bucks. And then of course the standard. Are we to talk about him yet? No, what's talk about staying in a minute. But I want to point out here because this is an important fact to point out. All this talk about big box and age structure, right demographics, Like I almost forget to bring this something that really needs to be stressed. The poundage of of venison, the poundage of meat coming off to property is increasing through all this. It's not like you're going like, oh, we you know, we used to shoot deer and eat some venison, but then we decided piste on that, and now we just shoot a giant buck. Now on that you're still talking about like all the dear meat you want because you're shooting does more than more than we've had. I mean, I have friends who non hunting friends who are like, hey, if you get an extra deer, if you have, you know, I'd like to get some venison as well. You know, I'll drop I'll drop on off at the at the the butcher for you. I got it out right down there, and and and so I do that. Um, like I said in the late season, I had you know, friends out here. I told those guys that day, let's shoot six or eight dolls, and we only got two. But um that wasn't because there wasn't some other shooting done. Ah, and those left. I mean, yeah, I mean I have all the venice, and I want all the time. That's what I'm saying. Like, in simplified terms, you might look at it that when I when I was growing up, you'd sit there and see a bazillion dolls, praying that you'd see a buck, any buck any one saw, they'd kill. Another way of looking at it, I mean to the point where you'd have twenty dolls for every buck running around. Another way looking at it would be shoot dos. Let a lot of those small bucks walk. You're still filling your freezer after a couple of years. I mean, this is grossly simplified, But after a couple of years you might be that you're still shooting dolls and putting me in the freezer. And now and then bam, you shoot a buck. That's like the old days, a buck that just got old, you know, that was allowed to reach maturity three or four year old dominant bark. Yeah. And the interesting thing, UH to me is that that the buck that I shot on Friday of last year that measures in a nine pointer measures about a hundred and fifty inches, was aged by an expert at two and a half years And when I looked at the teeth, and knowing what I know about it, I said, yeah, I can't disagree with you. So what's happening there? Well, maybe genetic selection, but also um, well, I think that's a part of it, but I think there's a herd health component. I meant to tell you this earlier that I talked with Keith Warnicky. I hope I'm pronouncing his right. Who's one of the big game managers. He's in fact, he's UM I think he said ahead of it, UH for d n R. And we were talking. I was talking with him about that, and UH he was explaining to me that statistics show that there in in especially in southwest Wisconsin, that the average size of the buck increases, buck's taken increases dramatically with the UH number of dose taken in the same area. Yeah, it makes sense to me. We had a bit of an infamous character I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but it's bit him an infamous character who was uh lives south of us here. That's the only people I like to speak ill of us the dead, because you don't gotta worry, all right, was his name? We don't worry about him coming back? Yeah, well anyway, Yeah, his name was Randy Hanko and a guy that I grew up with, and and he, as I said, he was a bit of an infamous character. But he uh on the farm just to the south of us here and got a bunch of egg tags and he shot twenty one drop damage checks. Yeah, thank you. Uh, he shot twenty one deer antler this deer one winner. And the next year is when that top row over there, which is the hundred thirty deer started showing up. And I told that to Keith last night, and he goes, that's what we're seeing. And I believe. I mean, so he has the the data, the scientific data that shows that I'm telling you, I've got the anecdotal uh stories that that's what happened here too, So you know, I believe that, and and I believe that in in my situation in the surrounding area. Um, there's a road on the back side of the farm. It's about three miles long. You can take a h it's a talent road. And you can take that drive in the in the late winter or the early spring in the evening and see a hundred deer And that's just too many deer. And those are all living on my farm. I mean they're living all over the place, you know, but too many? Like like, define what me, each man, because here's the thing, here's the thing I often catch myself saying. I catch myself saying, here's the thing. I purposefully say now, and now someone talks about like, oh, deer are overpopulated, I'd like, from whose perspective? Car insurance companies sure overpopulated. Agricultural interests, sure overpopulated. Car insures they don't want to pay out premiums to people who are yeah, busting their car upon deer egg interest because they're losing crop damage, or insurers who are ensuring crops and you know someone's paying, right. So I'd be like, from my perspective, how can I say, dear overpopular? In fact, there is a thing. From a hunter's perspective, there is such thing as overpopulation. We touched on this earlier, but it just has to do with forest quality, has to do with other species. Like explained a little bit that like and I want to get talk about the state. We've got too much to talk about. I want to talk about the standard. Would talk a little bit about like you're we're trying to bring back certain native trees on your property and how that ties into like rough grouse, how that ties into forest health, white tails, turkeys, all that bs. So Uh, our woods here is predominantly the hardwoods, but our predominant species are red and red and white oak. And you have seen the popa stands out there as well or aspen stands. Uh, they're shag bark, hickory, and a few others. But in the driftless area, the biggest component of the woods that we're in danger of losing is the red and white oak because we don't have the fires and some of the things that brought that on um years ago. So as a part of our management planing of our woods, we're cutting in a shelter woods called the shelterwood harvest. It's a particular method of of managing the woods. Uh. Up in our big woods were cutting the trees that were little trees when my great grandfather bought this place. And you know that I wanted her up saying, Doug, besides me, dog, besides doing land manage on your own land. As a profession, Doug does land management. So this isn't just he says anecdotal. But I just want you the audience to realize that Doug is a it's very studied, a professional land manager. So so take as he's talking, keep that in mind. But this isn't just some dude talk about what he's seen on his hunted acres. He's down selling, he's down selling what his role in this and his background of this. Well, but I've also I relied greatly on um foresters and ecologists and and you know, I think the thing that I know more than anything is to be able to take information from different people and understand it. But anyway, red oaks going to ship red oaks going, yeah, we're losing red oak. Well, so deer hunters and turkey hunters know that that dear love white oak acorns and they loved to browse on red oak seedlings. So uh, we did a plan to up on fourteen acres up here behind the buildings where we planted and it was a uh crp planting every other row red red oak, white pine. And the idea was that the white pine would train the red oak to grow tall and straight and become quality hardwood. Well what happened, yeah, for competition for some sunlight and it would you know, train them. And so what ended up happening is we created almost the perfect scenario for white tailed deer. We've got bed and and the oak trees are in a row that they're just walking down like oh, there's a lollipop. There's a lollipop. There's a lollipop, and and and so we had these little bushes up there. So that failed. We planted uh six hundred oaks to the acre I think in six hundred or maybe it was a thousand oaks the acre and a thousand pines to the acre. Um up where we're doing that cut up on on top up in the big woods. The shelterwood harvest, which is this is natural regeneration receding um and there's some techniques involved with that. We have places up there that we have ten thousand seedlings breaker I mean, it's a carpet of them in the fall up there. Um, so you know the premise there is that well, even with deer population and all of that, some enough of them are going to survive to get up to that point where they're going to be above the brows line of the deer. But along with that is that we need to shoot a lot of deer to you know, keep to discourage them or to or to keep monitor, which is a part of why I bring other people in and I'm always encouraging people to shoot does or young bucksy. Yeah, what I like. I I was out here on a couple of years ago and you had kind of a number in your head of what you were hoping to see the trail, cammages, our things, what you're hoping to see them off in does? I said, it doesn't for trying to get some red oaks to get enough to grow up. And uh we were everything was all our crop land was in uh production at that time. So um it's now in crp um And so you know it's a really it's you know, sort of a constant balance of uh science and feel an art um. But that you know, that's a big part of what's driving me. So from a from a deer hunting perspective. Of course I want good hunting, and of course I want to see a certain amount of deer, but I also want to balance that ecosystem and balance the you know, I want to grow those oaks. A hundred years from now, this family, this farm is going to be in my family. And a hundred years from now, those oaks that are up there now that we're cutting are going to be replaced if we do this correctly, um by the seedlings that are ten thousand of the acre up there, and a hundred years from now, there will be deer in tier crazy and it will be fifty or sixty those trees left, the best ones. Um And so that's a part of my management strategy. So when I say there are too many deer, that's what my perspective is on it. Um M. I know hunters, and I know I have a couple of clients that all they want is more dear And you know the truth is they don't have the deer that we have. I mean, yeah, I I go with I understand they're feeling there. Yeah, I want to see more deer, and why it's because they don't see that many. You know, maybe like honest is talking about where where he's at up there, and so we do things that we can, you know, to encourage that. But the cool thing to me about good forest management and good woodland management I like gold woods rather than forest, uh, is that it really is compatible with good wildlife habitat um. Turkey hunting, I mean, it's just beautiful up there. Squirrel hunting is still great up there. Um when you you know, you open up those clear cuts and there's a lot of brush, there's rabbits in there, you clear cut those aspen stands and we didn't. I hadn't seen a rough grouse or heard a rough grouse here for years. And two thousand and one when we did the first couple of clear cuts and we did have aspen. Two years later, boom bump, we heard the John Deer tractor up there. Rough grouse. I love that noise. And I always say, there's some guy trying to get his lawnmower started. Yeah. Well, so the interesting thing to me I was having a conversation with one of the wildlife biology students last night. Um, you know the Wild Turkey Federation pheasants forever uh trout unlimited, Um, those are the three that I can think of, what what's the number one thing? All of those organizations do habitat. M white tails live anywhere. Those other species have to have habitat a specific kind of habitat. And you know, pheasants forever say says build it and they will come. And I don't care that much about pheasants. I would if there was a way to uh to um. I wish I could stock grousse. I mean, it's just not you know, rough grouse. It's not possible. So the thing that I can do is to try to do things about the in the habitat. And it's good forest management, and quite honestly, it's good economic forest management too. We took that popple off at you know, fifty or sixty years and we were getting nice pulp wood out of it. We were getting nice bolt logs out of it. Um and uh oh. And woodcock is the other thing, of course that we have go through here. And I'm working with the Fishing US Fish and Wildlife Service on a on a plan for our bottom in there too to make that less mature, because the woodcock like that better. Woodcock and grouse kind of like the same habitat so white tails. On the other hand, hell, he'll live in your backyard, you know. So and so that seems to be one of the differences. And that was pointed out not only from you last night that I learned a few things, but um from talking with those folks, uh the wildlife biology student and then the big game manager and uh so those are the kinds of things that are in my mind when I'm not when i'm wor on this property and thinking about how we want to manage this property, but also when I'm working with my clients. Properties are are unique, but the driftless area is still the riference, and most of my clients are in the driftless area. So all right, so tell me talk about the standard for a minute. So two thousand and five, my wife and I just built that cabin up there, and I just pop that little road that comes down through that you guys walked down, and uh, we had seen this, dear. In fact, I'm pretty sure I actually shot that deer of the year before hit him missed. Yeah, I hit him, nicked him in the back leg with a rifle, and yeah, yeah, I'm almost sure that I You know how it's easy to tell a story about the deer you killed, but the ones that bother you are the ones that that you missed or that got away. And uh, I'm almost sure it was that deer. It was certainly that gene big, wide, heavy, it's not super tall, but it's you know, twenty when it was green, it was two ft inside, you know, sixteen points, lots of stuff on it. Um. And I had seen that deer was aged at four years old, so you know, he got there pretty quick, and he got there pretty damn quick. Yeah. Anyway, Um that the year before, I nicked this buck that in my mind looked an awful lot like and it hit him in the in the back leg. Really just a horrible situation. One of those shots that you know, I think I talked about this before, um, and you can put the bullet the man I would just I've rarely I don't regret any shot that I didn't take, but that was one of those shots that I regretted taking because I I should have killed him with the first shot. And then you know, each shot after that gets more and more desperate, and I shot at that deer four times and I should have killed with the first shot. Because I had him, and then just and I just got I ran up over here. So the next year, my wife and I are driving down on that little road and this little beater jeep that I had, and this deer gets up out of the this brush alongside that road and just lumbers into the woods. And I went and my wife, who doesn't get excited about deer, she goes, oh my god, look at the size of that thing. And she's all excited about it, and you know, and I'm not. I mean, I'm just like, I couldn't even talk because it's going away minute. A two ft wide white tail going away from you. Looks like i'll moose, you know, And it's going away from me, going down this hill. We get down to the buildings and down here to the farm, and we're doing a couple of things, and I kind of came up with this idea that well, you know, I think that's where he lives, that's where he beds. So I got the old tractor out and put the brush hog on and took a ladder stand and a hanger, put that back there, and I just drove back in the valley. Nothing happening here, just a guy out doing a little brush hogging, you know. So I took a little sweep through the brush and the stuff that was back there, clearing a little trail, got near this tree that's all forty yards from where that that betting area was left, the brush hog running, left the tractor running, put it in neutral, got out, strapped that thing to this elm tree that is, you know, maybe eighteen inches in diameter. Strapped that thing to it. And I'm kind of a big guy. It's probably it's not a big enough tree. Got that hangar up there in the tree, got back down, got back in the tractor, and drove like nothing happening. Here were just you know, brush hogging. Two weeks later we had an early um or a buck uh hunt. But you could kill a buck if you had a dough tag, which I did have. And uh and sure enough I got up in that I get up in that stand, I mean, and I'm holding onto a limb, got my rifle in my other hand. I'm holding onto a limb, I mean that stand. Fifteen minutes do comes up out of the bottom and I hear and this brush comes around the corner and this his antlers. He walked up and this is the end of October and he walks up out of that bottom thirty five yards, brings his head up, shot him right in the chest, went over backwards. I mean, just like I planned it, it happened, and it was just it was crazy. So my dad was still hunting at the time, and and so that was two thousand five, ten years ago, and my nephew Sam, who hunts with us, and great kid, great hunter, very good hunter. Um on the radio goes Uncle Duck, Yeah, did you shoot? Yeah, because he can. They're they're awful ways and and so I can. He's relaying that to my father, who doesn't hear very well, pretty legical this information. He goes, Grandpa wants to know how big it is because he knew I wouldn't have pulled the trigger unless and I just told him Sam, he isn't gonna believe it. And I mean that was I mean it was the jump went from a hundred and thirty five inches too, you know, a hundred ninety two inches on that's a that's a leap. There's not a buck hunter in this country, in the world. They wouldn't want to have that. Dear, so talk, we're running out time, we're run out into our self imposed time limit. But talk about oh the what happened with the tax neervice and stuff like. So, my dad has this little white Chevy S ten pickup that he still has, and uh so this is the end of October, it's kind of a warm day. We hang the thing up in the and so I didn't get a whole lot of pictures of it. You see the one that was hanging up in the shed, and I call it. I never had a deer mountain before, So I call this taxi drumstover in Bear Valley and and I just kind of described me just how big is it. I was like, wow, I didn't measure it or anything. I said, it's I'm I have size thirteen shoe and I can put two of them inside the horns. He goes, so, you're gonna want to get that thing over here because it's warm and the skin will start to out him. He's telling me all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, okay, So we dropped that thing in the back of Dad's stend pickup. Now it looks like, you know, it's a big deer, but now it looks like a moose laying in there by the time we get over to Bear Valley, we got cars behind us, you know, the lights on it. We pull in and this guy mounts a lot of deer and we pull in. I walk up to Bill and I said, uh, so, hey, I'm the guy who called about the He goes, oh, well, let's go and take a look at it. And there's trucks lined up. You know, guys are gonna back in and they're gonna unload them, and they're because they're working on you know, he's got a whole assembly line there getting the skin off him and everything. He walks down there, take some one look at it, turns around and says, get all these other trucks the hell out of the way. We're backing that one up in here right now. So we back it up in there, and of course they've got a that they used to pull the skin off to the head, and huy, old guy there stands there it looks at me, says, you know, if I killed that dear, I didn't get the whole damn thing mount and I got a place to put it. So so they, you know, they get it scun and and uh take it in. The guy starts working on the head and so a bunch of dudes standing around, and you know, and I don't. I only know a couple of these guys. But everybody starts shouting out numbers and throwing the guys writing it down and throwing five bucks into a hat guessing how many inches it is. Guys are like one five, Oh, you're full of ship. That's way bigger than one seventy five. And it writes it down, and nobody guess two hundred, And I said, okay, I'll say two hundred. Dude was right on the green squarter. That one dude would hit it right on the head. I don't know what he wants, but it was. It was a pile of money. That was quite a night. It was, you know, it was quite quite a quite a show. Next year, Yeah, he might have had a dead buck next year. Well he was a dead buck next year. Like he's old. He was getting up there. Yeah he was four year old deer. Yeah, what would he have been like at five? We don't know, he's five year old deer. They started kind of rare. Yeah, so no, don't he would have kept getting bigger, right, Yeah, I certainly think so. Yeah, we were wondering that before. How how old did they really? How old could a deer get around here if it didn't get hit by a car or shot or you know whatever, and you know, eight or nine I think is is probably the you know, the the limit of it. But you know, but it was, I mean personally, once that happened. Um, that's that's when I said, well, okay, so the rule about having the next buck having to be bigger than the one you shot this year, that changes now, so um, you know so otherwise I would have never shot it, probably shoot another deer in the rest of my life on this place. But um, you want to know what a good podcast whole sight M. I don't even give a sh about big white tills. I know you don't. I want to kill big the only thing I want to kill a big, giant one of his mulder. Well, I find it remarkable. You might I might have just shot a boon or musk ox. I didn't know that. I'm not sure yet. I might have got a boon or musk the coveted boone and Crockett muskat. Uh No, But here's the Doug and I have all. I want to wrap her up. I want to do my concluding thoughts. Doug and I have argued about this endlessly because I've had the fortune, the good fortune of I've never shot anything on this place. I don't think you haven't. And I haven't shot a turkey out here, No, you have not. I don't shoot anything on dogs property. But Doug, you haven't even shot a rabbit on this property. Yes, I have no Those rabbits run place. What about those mallards that was on my cousin's place. Yeah, every guy within thirty miles here is a during. Doug has even met live as cousins. So it was not a during place right where the mallars were and the Schmids place was that that big rabbit place. So but I had where I took a couple of for not for a second time hunters out on Doug's place, and Doug as is saying, like when people come out the hunter's place, Doug shows you the top shelf, dear, and Doug says, if you're gonna shoot a buck out my property, have it be that he'll fit in. He would fit in with those bucks. So it's not like like he doesn't tell you like, oh, it's gotta be blank inches or it's gotta be out of the ears. He just says it should have its home in this in this collection of bucks is what we're trying to do here. However, you're gracious enough where you say that people who are making their first visit to the farm, if you see a buck and you're excited about getting that buck, and that for you is like your benchmark, Like that's what you want. Go ahead the second time you come out. Screw you. Yeah, you gotta shoot off the top shelf. As I told the neighbor kid the other day or last year, I should say, uh, I'm sorry, no, But but I would say we have like I played Devil's Advocate with you a lot about the thing about like meat hunt or to shooting box, like not caring about the antlers. And I would say that over the years that I've been friends with you, you have enlightened me and move me in the direction of when it comes to white tales that like we're talking about all the Leopold said last night that a hunter is like a forester. When you pick a tree and strike it with your acts, you're making your mark on the landscape, right, And I've come to see through you about uh managing white tails. Okay, that they're not. They're not contradictory ideas. The management for for opportunity and meat harvest is not incompatible with managing for mature bucks. But we have thought about this a lot, and seeing what's happened out here and sort of the good times and fun to happen out here has been educational for me. And I've taken that and explain that to a lot of other people because I just haven't really been I moved out west, you know, when I as soon as I could, and I got out of the world of white tails a little bit, and it's just been an interesting, like sort of my lens back into white tailed culture has been here, and it's been it's been very informative. That's my concluding thought. But but I've kicked and screamed through these discussions. But I do see what you're doing, and I see what you're after, and I think that people need to make sense of it. And people who are just getting into hunting because they want to harvest throwing food and stuff, they might be like, oh, yeah, trophy hunters, blah bah blah. I think you need to take some time and and and read up on this stuff because it's not as simple as you might think it is. Dear long term, dear management, quality hunting now, quality hunting for your kids, quality hunting for your grandkids without those ten year twenty year gaps where it sucks. Isn't just it just doesn't happen on its own. And thought and science, thought, science and restraint play into that stuff. That's my concluding thoughts, Yohnny. Big antlers are magical and it's so easy to demonize them, and oftentimes I think that the whole trophy hunter thing is demonized now or people want to do that and make it a bad thing. But it's like getting all those the community together around your truck to look at those antlers. There's community going on there and it's special, you know, and it's a good thing to have that, to have everybody come around and talk about it and being excited about it. And I don't know whatever turned me on to being excited about big antlers. Obviously media has something to do with it. But Helen Show recent uh meat eater turned you know, our our associate is now a hunter, killed her first elk um. If she was asking me about antlers, didn't really get it wasn't really excited about it. Shot her elk. Was at my house for butchering up her elk and having to be out in the garage, and there's a elk head on one wall and a mule there on another wall. She got to looking at him, asked up a couple of questions. I answered him. An hour later, she's like, can we take one of those down, you know, so I can hold and feel and look at it, and she kind of admires it. Whatever. By the time she left at evening, she's like, I kind of want to shoot a buck, you know, if there's something special about that, you know, like what what is it? I don't know, but they're magical. Could I have a second concluding thought? That's my concluding thought? I want a second one. The bucks were talking about and like the standard and stuff, we're not talking about some bucks that are raised behind a fence. They bring in like some jars semen and in seven eight a bunch of does and then you go down and buy them out of deer sale. These are real bucks. You get run over by cars, shot at surviving the real damn dear, like genuine, real wild bucks. They're gorgeous they really are. And I'll tell you something, um, and I'll try to make it part of my concluding thought that it's got to be a concluding thought. My I get to just because it's my podcast, all right. The standard, AH, within a one mile radius of here, since two thousand and five, there have been at least three bucks bigger than that one killed here and within a mile of this place one mile radius. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean bigger horns. They are more inches of horns and you know, maybe not as massive or whatever, but more inches and the way they score them. Uh. Thanks once again for putting into words in a way that I struggle with. That's one of my favorite things about Steve Romello. Ah, it is you know, deer hunting is a part of what we're trying to do with our property, and I think it should be a part of ah, the overall view of an area. I think it's a big part of the future. It's been a part of the past, and it's certainly part of the present. It's gonna be a big part of the future of this area hunting in general, and it's really economically, I think it's gonna be a big part of this area. Um. And uh, I love the driftless area. I love the Cansanovia area, Westford Township, Richland County, Bearable River, Willow Creek, and I just really appreciate that we've been able to bring some attention to it and uh have a lot of fun while we're doing that. Yes, sir, Yes sir, and Doug's cohorts got a turkey tag. Still, so tomorrow's gonna be up right and early. Now, you guys, I think I had to sleep in. We didn't. I didn't get to kill this morning. So I get to go out again with Well, I'm gonna go out and sit against the tree up in the brush. Yeah, I'm gonna bring my I'm gonna bring a call. I'm just observed, all right, thanks tuning in media podcast. Oh, a couple of things. Go to um uh Yanni's T shirt website hunt to Eat dot com by a hunt to Eat T shirt. If you're single, that will solve your problems when you got one of those T shirts on, because you're the ladies are gonna look at you and they're gonna be like that man fills the freezer, that man brings home the bacon um two bucks he's always out of stock, but he's stocking up right yep. Tell him the website www dot hunt to eat dot com, not numeral hunt T O h U N T T O E A T B one y T shirts. Very important, Um Doug during loan oak interests. If you got a chunk of ground you want to talk to someone. Uh he doesn't build you on the initial phone call called Doug during talking about land whatnot. You'll be shooting Giant bucks pretty soon. Uh me either. The TV show not free, Well, it is for if you got TV. If you don't have TV, me eater dot vas dot tv, download and stream meat Eater all night and all day. Thanks for joining us. Take our