00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you, shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. Is there anyone here? Raise your hand? If I haven't told you about a my buddy's brother who was carrying the d Iraq on his backpack, I haven't told you about this? No? No, okay, raise your hand. If I haven't told you about this man eating tiger and uh, this man eating tiger in India. I told you guys all about it. Can you can we act like I didn't tell you? Okay? My buddy's brother, he doesn't want me to say who it is, but it's a guy that's been on this podcast, and I've met his brother. I fished purchased his brother. Um kills of Columbia blacktail in Washington State, and I haven't spoke with him directly about it, but he kills a blacktail in Washington State and he affixes the rack, the skull and antlers to his backpack. And this is one of those things that you hear about it being a no no, like it will even tie orange flagging or tie a game vest or whatever around antlers when you're doing it, but you're always like, man, what are the chances that that would happen? That being, what are the chances that someone would mistake it for a live animal? Well, he got shot at so it was such a close call that the guy shot a hole through his backpack? Whoa dude too close? The game warden hauled. This dude often handcuffs as he should. Jeez shot a hole through his backpack with a high powered rifle thinking not only thinking that it was a live buck, but also that he was aiming at its lungs, or he didn't get that far into the thinking horrifying. What does anybody else have a story like themselves or someone they know closely that's happened to you, like when someone shot at a sound or I know people that got shot in Pennsylvania turkey hunting. Really, I know there's three guys standing together talking after working a bird and all three of them got hit. What what did the person think he was shooting at a turkey? I guess mistook three mugs for a turkey and knew it was a gobbler, not him. That's what. I don't know what he was thinking, but that's what I don't get it. I don't. I don't think there's a mistaking. It's a it's a there's movement. I'm gonna shoot and figure out it out later. Is it that? Or is it like buck fever sort of thing where you're just like so keyed in, Like anytime you see like a rack or movement and you're like, oh, I gotta shoot because that's what I'm out here for. That's just too In this case, you've got a rack that's pointed the wrong direction. What's moving to? If it's on a backpack walking away Buck of lifetime man inverted? It was an inverted buck. It's just still blows my mind that stuff happened. Disgusting. What are they thinking? There's more lury details about this individual, but I don't want to give him away. Not lury details about the victim, but lurd details about the perpetrator. He had some other things going on. Mm hmm. What does the victim say, I've only I'm friends with the victim's brother, and I've fished with the victim, the near victim. No, the victim. I fished with the victim, but I'm not tight with him. Um okay, the man eating tiger. This is kind of amazing. Man. If a bear, if if a grizzly here scratches someone else, that's a dead bear. Quick. This tiger in India killed thirteen people before they were able to kill the tiger whittled away at thirteen people, and they finally they got it to expose itself and lured it in use an obsession clone no people. Yeah, old obsession had like an extract, had some kind of like civic extract or something in it, and they find that it works really good as a tiger lure. Obsession obsession. Tell me you know more about this and we can take this one one step far. I was just reading about this. I've heard that tigers have like a vengeance for people. They will remember people scent, they'll remember like they'll have it out and they'll do you speak up Orange. Yeah, you guys gotta get you guys gotta get trying to share the mike, but we're doing the two finger things. But you're selling a dude yelling at up at a seminar. Alright, Well, I'm gonna get real uncomfortably close to Chris and tell you that I believe that what I've heard is that tiger's hold vengeance against people. I think that comes from one book called Tiger. The Tiger. Yeah, but John valent Yeah, who wrote one of the really you know what, you want to read a real book, read his book The Golden Spruce. That's it right in some bit right there. Man, he's good. But there's certain books that come out. It's like Malcolm Gladwell writes a book, then for the next six months you gotta have people tell you. They tell you stuff that they read there and act like that they didn't read it there. But you know what, Actually the way to think about that is and you learn later like where it's all coming from. But since that book came out, I've had fifty people tell me that about tigers. Not to take away from because he's a hell of a writer. Was his name again, John Villante? I think yeah, we've emailed the a I L. L Anti, dude. The Golden Spruce is about a giant golden spruce and the man who sawed it down and why he sawed it down and he did not saw it down for the reasons you think he would have saught it down. It's about an act of like eco terrorism. Mm hmmm. It's a goodass book. Uh, in Florida. Guy, you know about this seven sevent ft python. Dude just got a one twenty pound seventeen ft five inch long python. He paid for it too. You didn't he didn't bite him several times when he was wrastling with it. Bait him up a little bit awesome. I can't even wrap my head around on a snake that big. He can wrap his head around. You, God, I can't wrap my head around. Why you would want to catch it? I catch it after I shot its head off. The bounties on them, I guess not alive. I don't know why he wanted to catch it live. Just a lot cooler to roll in with the snake that's alive. It makes more of a statement man, to have a hy pound of live snake. Just giant pythons. Man, kind of getting sick of those pythons. Imagine the tree stands you were sitting in. You'd go from the top of that tree stands to the bottom. That is that's so scary in way as much as ridge founder, it's just about what are they eating? Just anything, small mammals. They've eliminated a size class of mammals in the everglades. That's what our buddy Robert Abernathey who worked on some Python projects and whatnot. He's a he's a biologist. A couple of interesting things he's telling us about is they have like eliminated like everything, like grinners, raccoons, like a whole size class of like mid sized mammal. They just wipe them out anybody. They're working on this stuff to try to test how far north pythons can go and that they can't penetrate the frost line. So like if you live in you know, yeah, man, they're not gonna They're not gonna be up in the Carolinas. They're not gonna be up in Alabama. Our squirrel populations, in our cottental populations would be in danger. There's no safe place to be a grinner anymore. Chase, we chased after grinner last night, didn't we We did? We didn't come up and gave us a slip. Does everybody know what a grinner is? That's a possum, that's a dug During calls them grinners. Speaking of getting mauled up. Now, this is something we don't know. We just tried to fact check it, but it seems like there's something here that where we got in a we got in a mix up with a with a brown bear on a fog neck about a year ago. And I guess some I just got mauled up pretty good. We've been hearing all kinds of rumors from one dude. One of these rumors, I don't know if it's sure or not, is he was sporting a stone glacier backpack and that his backpack got mauled About that, seth, you believe it? He tried to fact check it in. Yeah, we tried you what do you feel safe adding here he was a hiker? Yeah, we don't know what that means. We don't know. We don't know if he's scouting type hiker or an ari I type. What if he was what he was hiking around hunting? Yeah, I just wait to say that. I don't know either way. We love him the same Ron Bam wrote in all worked up about Remember the other day we were talking about dogs and like, and I was talking about the cake theory. Okay, that got a lot of people, I've noticed to a lot of letters came in about the cake theory. Um, they're saying that A that was a bad analogy. One guy didn't. He was talking about when he smells shrimp scampy that he smells all that. He said, I smell the butter and the shrimp, but it's just easier to say scampy. So I'm like, whatever, Okay, well let's give this guy a haul of pass. You got something to add well, yeah, because yeah, sure shrimp scampy. You can smell butter and shrimp. All good on you and you don't have a broken nose. Ron Dame Rolds. We're talking about what does like what is a dog? But this isn't why Ron wrote in though round was over right in conversation about the what hunting dog like? What dogs smell? Like? How is it different than what we smell? Um? We got team about like different uh climactic not climax climactic. Uh climatic climactic. Yeah, that's right. You know what I'm talking about climate that the different situation sations can influence a dog. And so Ron, who you might know from the Hunting Dog Podcast, which is all about all things that hunting dogs. Um, he's been judging pointing dogs for the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association for twenty years and he's hung out with a guy who's spent twenty years running dogs from Michigan to Montana to Arizona. And here's what these guys think. He says. For for tracking ability on a dog, he says humility, humidity, humility levels. Humidity levels are a major factor. He thinks when you get below ten percent humidity, it becomes tough for a dog to detect game. And you get much higher than sixty and it starts to have a negative effect. He says that wind speed is also a crippler. Anything over say, fifteen miles per hour in the scent just gets too deluded and spread out too thin too quickly. He says, you get wins in the twenty just dirty range. It becomes very hard for dogs to sort it out. He's talking about primarily bird dogs becomes very hard from to sort it out. He says, bara metric pressure matters too, but it matters for a weird reason. If a front is coming in, birds just sit tight and they don't feed, so you don't have a lot of bird feet water all over the place leaving odor. So you could you could have this front coming in and think that somehow it's affecting your dog his ability to smell birds. What's going on is birds just aren't out leading are out leaving scent. M Most birds walk to their food source. When they're feeding, they're leaving smell. When they're leaving smell, your dog can find it. And he talks about when. When he talks about when you're judging a dog or buying a dog, there's a scorecard category called use of nose, and he says this should not be confused with quality of ohs. A dog has to have a desire to find game. He can't just like to just run around looking for it. You can have, he says. He he winds it. He says, it's a lot like people needing to stay at the task at hand. He says, compared to hunters that get tired or uncomfortable, saying the rain and their desire to continue starts to slip a bit. They get distracted thinking about things like hoping the weather gets better, instead of pushing through it and blocking out those thoughts. Dogs are very much the same way. The nose that is tied or matched to its level of desire will produce the best results. Some skills can be taught, but desire will always win. The day. Just think about that Ron Bam Hunting Dog podcast. Another dude, real quick road in saying like, um, we get this a lot too, saying like, hey, does does copper ammal work? And the thing about it? Go ahead, Jannie, I didn't have anything to add. You just piqued my interesting up up not just listening. You perked up. Here. Here's the way I would put it more. I think the copper ammal is having a high rate of adoption because of efficacy, like so many loaders use it. You're honest. I agree, like serious shooters switching for no other reason than efficacy. I feel like the effic accuracy accurately. Well, yeah, I'm I'm rolling that in. I think for a while what happened with in fact check me on this. You're honest because you follow the stuff perhaps tighter than I do. I think for a while, and people first started using monolithic or copper bullets, it was they were using because they were very accurate, but they had there was like early on performance issues because there's a lot to get right where the thing has to expand but not break apart. And I think it took some years to get it developed. Yeah, it seemed like there was early critiques of uh, when the bullets didn't hit bone, it hit some mass that they would The term was used pencil through animals, like taking an arrow with a field tip and just pushing it through the lungs and not getting the upset and the damage that you're looking for out of a bullet. And I don't know if that was coincidence or if they did make better technology. I know that Federal with their new you know, trophy copper line, I know that they have made like a deeper cavity up front that's supposed to help, you know, initiate that expansion and make that those pedals come out more, you know, so you can get the get the damage. Yeah, if people try different tricks, like even like cutting them to try to get them to pedal and break into four pieces. But I'm telling you, man, I have We've been shooting a bunch of the Federal trophy copper and it comes out looking like uh, it comes out looking like if you had a magazine picture of like the perfectly expanded bullet mm hmm, like opens right up, turns into nice slug. I mean they advertise up the weight retention, so like good penetration and it doesn't bust all up and they put like a tip there's like a like a cavity in there, but then it's got a polymer tip on it that helps it expanding. The other problem with it would be that, like, here's the thing to think about when when you're talking about this stuff is when people talk about a long range bullet, you might hear it and think like, oh, that means it's like accurate long range. It's probably true, probably has like a like a good like a high ballistic or what's that word, ballistic coefficiency. But the other thing when we talk about long range bullet would be that it will still mushroom. It will still expand at a low velocity. So if it's coming out of your if it's coming out of your muzzle, let's say three feet per second, if it were to hit something at that speed, if it's a poorly constructed bullet and it hits something at that speed, he might rough to do a bunch of pieces. But then it slows down and it loses half of its velocity and hits something and it doesn't happen. There's not enough there's not enough force there to cause it to expand. So if you see a long range bullet, what that will mean is that can still expand. One of the things that means is it can still expand at low velocities. And I think that these are all things that have taken a while to get sorted out, which I feel like now they've just got that sorted out. Where you have like solid copper stuff that has a polymer tip and a boattail design and has you know, a good downrange velocity, like it's still cooking and still opens up, right. I just don't think you can really right now. I don't think there's really any from an efficacy standpoint. I just don't see there's any argument that there's any argument against it. No, was did this guy have a specific question? You're just saying he's always hearing about it, but he hears different things about whether it works or not. This dude just rote into that. I've yet to have a bad, uh experience with him. I had a bad experience with a different kind long time ago, and it was still in its infancy. This is like seven years ago, not in its infancy, but it was I was using like an unproven manufacturers offerings and had a penciling incident at a long range four hundred plus yards. Good Mark Kenyon. Yeah, Uh, tell me about sitting in the tree. Uh, tell me what happens in your mind when you're sitting, when you're doing twelve hours sits. We're just we're just finishing up a white tail deer hunt, a white tailed deer bowl hunt, peak rut and marksman sitting all damn day. Yeah, for the last three days, at least all day, twelve hour days. It's a long haul. I mean, me and Lauren we're talking. When we got out of the tree every day. You wouldn't think after just sitting for twelve hours that you'd be physically exhausted. But when you get out of there, I mean you are worn down. Well, you're in the saddle today. I was in the saddle the two days before that, I was in the stand. He was in the saddle every day. Um. But yeah, yeah, I mean you're look can a lot, you're searching a lot. But then there there's a lot of downtime. There's a lot of periods of time where there's nothing going on. And the biggest thing for me on all day sits is it is it's of course partly physical, but I think the mental side is the bigger part of it. Being able to stay mentally engaged as much as you possibly can over the course that whole day, and knowing knowing that even though things have been dead for two hours, that at any time it could all change. So I've had my fair share of mistakes over the years where I lost focused in the middle of an all days sitting. It cost me. I told you guys a story last year about holy Field, and does eleven o'clock in the afternoon, and I've lost focus. And then there is at twenty yards um sending text messages. I was reading a book on my phone. Reading the book on your phone. Yeah, you're sitting for twelve hours. Everyone. You need a little something to kind of buy the time. And so I would like, look at I look at the phone for twenty seconds, Scan all around me. Look at the phone for twenty seconds, scan all around I got, you're reading high cous What were you reading? I was reading, Uh, it's a book called the Name of the Wind. For a second, I thought, I've never heard of a book called high cous. Dear, I'd read that book by high Country Cus. Is that Duncan go christop No Duncan's Bill Duncan Gil Chris's best book. His best book has an unfortunate title of Hunt High. And I think a lot of people read that. A lot of people read that, and they get to think in one thing he saw about unting the high country, not hunting high go on sitting all day, man, I think nothing of going out, Like if we're you know, regular spot star hunting anything, Oh, well, you know, I leave knowing them. No way I'm coming back. Why would I come back, Because let's take a big old nap out where I am. I'll eat my lunch for I am. There you go. But sitting in the damn tree, it wears on you. The same scene for twelve hours, the same trail, the same trees, the same creek. It's all there. You don't get to do anything. It definitely gets worse, the tighter to the space and the shorter like if you if you yeah, where you can glass every five minutes? Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just a matter of toughen it out, having snacks, having water, and then yes, I think that is better to be in the tree and be slightly distratched on occasion by your phone or a book or something that than not being in the tree at all. Yeah, give me the main argument, Like people can picture what it is, but tell me why you sit all damn day. So the reason why you sit all day during the rut is because bucks specifically get up some number of them on a relatively consistent basis in our cruising for os from let's say ten or eleven till one or two in the afternoon, especially older, dear, Now you're not going to see the same number of deer as you might in the typical um early morning or late evening hours, right, dear, a crepuscular, so they are most active at first light and last light, so that no matter what, you're the most activity then. But there's a disproportionate amount of activity, especially for mature bucks, middle of the day during the rut. So people, you better tuck into crepuscular. They're a little bit Yeah. Yeah, So crepuscular just describes an animal that's most active at that dawn or dusk time period. So dear, many many mammals, right are most active the first hour or two, last hour or two. But for the small time period, these bucks know where does will be in the middle of the day, right they're bedded down, so they have a great opportunity that time period to go from dough bedding area to dope sitting air into dope betting air to find females that are ready to breed. So if you're willing to tough it out, it's a great time to get those bucks on their feet. And we saw it. You think he's going around to betting areas just to sniff all the dos out and see who's who's That's exactly what they're doing. I want to say, who's ripe? Yes, that's not the right word. Hot hot hot dough. Ripe doesn't sound quite ripe, sounds like something my wife would be like, Really, it's a little bit too misera um, I feel like she would say, because there's gonna be another word for that ready hot dough. Yeah. Yeah. And because they're normally like the big coming to our breeding cycle. You guys knew that, yes, yes, uh, because they're normally so paranoid. Yeah, this time you're the throw caution to the wind to a degree, you know, for love, and I think we can all relate. I think we definitely witnessed it several times. There was, uh, you know, your closest call came into eleven. You called it out before that. He said, this is my favorite hour, eleven o'clock, and here comes the one that was the closest, right buck. But there were several other opportunities during that time. Yeah. Two of our last three days of doing the all day six we saw potential shooters in the middle of the day, um. And and lots of other bucks, younger bucks. Um. And I've seen at least every year now for a good number of years, I've had at least one mature buck encounter mid day. Um. And the thing is, if you talk to guys who take this really seriously. I've got a buddy who always always hunts all day and he consistently killed mature bucks. And if you look at the number of mature bucks that he's killed, I think he's taken seventeen or eighteen or nineteen of them during the middle of the day. Um. You look at the number of hours compared to hours hunted across the ward by other guys, Right, there's many more hours spent in the tree evening or morning, but there's a significant percentage killed midday by the fewer people that are actually hunting that time period. Yeah, like no one's there, but they're getting them. But they're getting them. Um, but it's tough. I mean, it's it's not necessarily fun now, Lauren, when you're up filming Mark Kenyon being in a tree all day, what's your perception of what's going on? Are you like, dude, this job sucks or do you feel like you're hunting? I think any time you're out there, you're kind of feeling like you're hunting. You're part of the hunt. You know. It definitely isn't the greatest deal sitting in a tree stand all day, especially a sling or a saddle or you know, it's not comfortable, so but you're definitely engaged looking for that one bucker, any deer, any movement the whole time. So it's kind of just like an assist, you know. That's how I feel about it. Are you periodically filming or do you let hours go by and not film anything? Well? I think that hours went by without filming for sure. Uh. You know, you're stuck in one place, so shot options become pretty limited. You get as creative as you can, but you know in retrospect, you're always like, oh, I should have done more, I should have done this or that. But you know, you can only shoot the same angle, same depth, same focal length so many times, so you're and too. We had a lot of opportunities on on does and fawns and not moving and lots of getting pinned down. Uh. So there's only so much dough footage you're going to shoot, so only so much of the interaction. Oh, I got a close up of the fawn eating. You know, I think I've got twelve of those, So do I need any more. I'm gonna stop filming that. We're going to not move, like what? How does I think At one point we were discussing, did he say what the are you doing? But then when we reviewed the footage and he he didn't say that, he said, what are you doing? What was I doing? I think I moved or you can't move like that? Yeah, you know, Ridge Poder were like an old We're like an old couple. Yeah, I'm like an old abusive husband. He was pretty gentle. He didn't really yell at me, but I get it. I think it's definitely, uh gets intense enough where you don't want to screw anything up, especially if you're on a you know, pretty high end hunt where you know you're the camera guy. If you messed this guy's hunt up, you're gonna hear about it, you know, And uh, that's the last thing you want to do is mess up somebody's hunt. So you're definitely part of the hunt. You're a hunter at that point because you're looking for the shot. I feel I felt bad a couple times. I think I apologized to once and I was like, I'm sorry. I think I get a little bossy up in the tree. I have like hunting turettes, were like, I can't help myself. I have to say, don't move, stop moving, Why are you moving? You can't move like that. A couple of times I'm like, oh, that you're six o'clock. We had our system down for sure, And and that happens real quick. The first day was brutal. The wind was blowing, it was twenty five degrees. We're both shivering, you know. At one point your teeth are chattering. You're like, oh my god, are we ever gonna be done with this? Uh? But then time goes on and dope pins you down or whatever happens I think we had you know, we got lucky because there were a lot of deer and a lot of stuff going on the whole time, so it kind of kept us busy in that respect. And then after three days, the third day flew by twelve hours. Was no big deal. What time of the day when you're doing a twelve hour mega sit? Got his twelve hours too, it's almost maybe longer than twelve bars. Well, we got in it getting the stand around six twelve bars, get out just after six. At what time of the day do you hit where you're like, oh, we made it three Yeah, I mean there's that point where ten o'clock rolls around You're like, oh god, it's a double shift. Well, yeah, So it was the first day we did I think it was we sat and then we went to this new spot and there was bucks chasing does all over the place. It was like it was a good morning, and it was probably around ten o'clock and I look at Laura. I'm like, I've got good news and bad news for it. Which do you want? And then he guessed. He's like, is the bad news that we're sitting all day? Yep, we're sitting all day with a good news because the love. Yeah, there was sons of deer. We counted yesterday. I think we saw thirty five that last count after that keeps you busy, and there was enough to do up there. Though it is totally uncomfortable. I mean, your feet go numb and I don't know. It's not not the greatest deal, but this is my first time ever bow hunting for white tails or any kind of deer um bow hunting on like a private managed property, where do you have a chance to grow old and to like be there. Knowing that you could see one of these bucks come by. It's four years old, keeps you, keeps you wanting to sit there because these are things you just read about. No them to be like that they actually might show up. You think it's gonna be easy, but it's not easy. It's still not easy. There's still too many things that could go wrong. But like no one they're out there is makes it intriguing. Man, no one they could roll around the corner. How many opportunities did you have mark on two and a half year olds? Oh, we could have killed a lot two and a half year olds, a good handful of them, lots of year and a half olds, a couple three year olds, one three year old, maybe two three ye olds. I can't remember, dude. That's where you're screwed up. Man Like, like, explain to people what you talk about. You talk about a mature buck because you always use the word mature buck. You don't put like a number to it. Yeah, so I I would typically call four or older mature. Some people will say three year older. In Michigan, the three year old is if it's everything's relative, right in Michigan, a three year old in most places is the most the most mature buck you might have around. But you don't mean sexually mature, because they're sexually sexually mature at one and a half correct? Correct? So what do is mature? Yeah? You know, why not to say big as bucks in the eye of beholder, Right, it's in the eye behold. It's all relative. But when you get to four or five, four plus, you were at that top percentile of age and most populations and in any state really, um, you know, I think people would look at year and a half old bucks being like your I don't know, like a ten year old, like a young child. The way they act, the way they think, the way they operate. You get to a two year old, you've got like a young teenage type deer. You know, you got your fifteen year old boy running around being crazy. You get two three year old that's like your college kid. That's dude out of the bar. Yeah, he's like they're hitting the bars. But they're there. They can be like the big boy in town in some places, like they can walk around their chest out. They were pretty good and strong, but they still don't quite have it. But when you reach four, that's like you're I think a four year old is like a thirty one year old. He's in the PC of everything. Um wow, okay, so yeah, four or five, six, you're getting to they've they've they've achieved whatever whatever. Bodies structurally skeletally mature. That's what I've missed. That's a good point. Yet they have a weird way. They look different. When they get that will for sure everything about them. You see them from hundreds of yards away, and you know what you're looking at. Definitely where they carry their head, the neck, the chest, it's all. It's it's almost a different animal. And just how deliberate they almost look like in their head they're gone they seem like old men, is what they seemed like a day. How old are you, Steve Man? So I'd say a four year old plus kind of like a forty four year old person. Damn it, halfway to eighty eight man. But here's the deal. Let's say he snapped both of his antlers off. You wouldn't shoot him even though he's four and a half. You know, I had an interesting scenario like that two years ago with not to bring up the same deer again every time I ever talked to you, but holy Field broke off part of his main beam. I like hearing about this deer and I thought him to be four years old that year, and he snapped out half his antler, and I was faced with this question. I was like, well, it's the buck OFT been hunting forever at that point, I've been two years. He's mature. But he lost half his antler. What would a lot of people are asking what here gonna do? What are gonna do? And I said, I'm still gonna shoot him. But if he had knocked off both of his antlers, in my thought, it would be if I were to take that deer, I want to take that deer, like as I knew him, if that makes sense at all, So come on, it makes sense. But come one part of it, part of that how do I describe it? Mental masturbation? You kill it, you kill a deer, and you take it, and you take the meat, you consume the meat, but then you also have some kind of a mento to remember that animal body. So that antler, his antlers, the mountain. That would be an important part of that hunt for me to be able look at that, remember that, see that, and it would just feel it just be a just be a bummer to kill him and not be able to see him in all his glory again. And why I wouldn't want to kill something and then feel like a bummer about it afterwards. Let me put it this, let me do this to you. Let's say you found it. Let's say you had him because you found where he snapped him off. I guess in that case then yeah, because you could you could just the tax dumers could could fix it. Um. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Now holy Field was the uh you think that buck's dead? I think so I found a shed in February thinking still like found Zandler. So that mean as he made it into the winter. Figured he'd be back this year, but have gotten zero pictures, zero sightings. None of the neighbors I talked to have seen him or gotten pictures. So what do you think he's where? Where do you where do you think he's dead from? Well, we found I found his shed early, So I found it at the very beginning of February, late January. So as an early drop, lots of times early antler drop is indicative of health issues, nutrition, something like that. So my theory is that maybe he got shot by someone in gun Seas he had injured in some way, So he had an injury, dropped his antler early, and he's to come to die off over the winter, wouldn't kill or something like that. I was bear hunting one time at May and saw a bull elk still packing his antlers around? Is that pretty unusually? Honest? I've seen quite a few. I had some of my best elk. I don't do a lot of it, but elk shed picking days um late in May. We on my birthday still dropping. Well just you know when you go there and they're all on top of the grass, nothing's going over him, They're all just brown laying there. You know like it just recently happened. I'm with you, m to what degree if you like to, if you're if you're a guy that wants to kill mature white tail box, I mean one, they got to be there, absolutely in many places. That's the biggest thing keeping to them killing them is that they're not there. Yeah, they didn't exist when I was a kid and I grew up ninety miles from here, they really did. I mean, I don't want you think that's to find him a point out. Okay, We hunted uh public land north of us a little bit, and we hunted some large farms. We hunted some large farms very near our house, within an eight mile All the honey we did, unless we went out to Baldwin so on public land, all the honey we deal was an eight mile radius less than eight mile radius of our house. Okay, and unt some large farms, two farms, and my people, my my father knew from church families. My father knew from church and let us hunt out there where these were like three and four acre dairy operations where they were running dairy and they were growing corn and raised alfalfa to feed cows. And they had river bottoms, thickets like the whole picture, okay, And these two farms were virtually up against one another over the entirety of over the entire I ready of my until I moved to Montana. I and my old man's one shot and shot with his bow. One time of all those years of everyone hunting in the farmers kids hunting and us hunting, and everyone hunting and then surrounding, only one time that a buck that I now recognized to have been the three and a half ye old buck ever come off anywhere. I never laid eyes on one, dead or alive. I do not think you could read. I do not think they could reach three and a half years of age unless they lived in some deep, dark swamp hole that nobody went to. Ever, the one my dad killed, you killed on the edge of a pine plantation, small little thing called the pines. We ain't mark. You think years ago Michigan had any big box or are they just not around? I think that Steve's right for them to like to to a degree, there were definitely fewer of them. There were there were mature bucks around, but there are few and far between. And then number two, I do also think that years ago people weren't as tuned into how to kill mature bucks too, So it's much people are much more savvy now and the things you need to be doing to see and kill mature bucks. Back then, it was kind of head out of the most people head out in the woods next to a tree trunk or something like that, or get up and sit on a tree branch and shoot something over a carrot pile, because you weren't running cameras either, so you didn't know if you didn't know. If you knew one was out there, then you'd like change everything to go get them, but you didn't know they were out there. The one my old man killed, he didn't know what exists until it walked under the tree, right. Yeah, But I do think culture has changed so much that allows a lot more dear to to reach that age. So probably the biggest thing is just that the number of mature bucks around, it's just higher now. I remember being in high school and one of the farms we hunted on and one of the kids, Tim, who was still a big time hunter to day and and does a really good job. He's got a small property now but does a very good job with wildlife. Habitat on his place. He was the first guy. And I was in high school and I heard Tim's are a lot had passed on multiple bucks, and I remember thinking like, something must be wrong with that dude's head. But he was a revolute he was like a pioneer man. He was a revolutionary at the time. It's like passing on bucks you crazy. And he had gotten good enough where he could do it. We used to think a big buck a big buck was just a year and a half old buck. To put more times on. My brother Danny shot with his bowl one time. He shot an eight point and got it stuffed. It's still hanging in my mom's house. It's a year and a half old buck. In our head. It was a giant. I remember he shot it and put a hole right through its heart. It took three steps and fell over it on itself, and he got a mount it and we you wouldn't believe we went through the drag dead deer ahole because the last you'd ever do was cut a buck off in the woods because you want to go show everybody. And it was like Danny killed the eight point. Danny killed eight point. But there was no perception it's just the same thing. It's just the same year and a half old buck. We thought that the points, yeah, exactly on those points. I think that puts it in perspective. I didn't growing up. I was taught that like Spiker far Horn was one year old, and then if he's the six point, he's probably two years old at eight points three, and Ted it's probably four years old, no matter the size. You know, in our family, we didn't even talk about age at all. It was just the points. It was like, oh, he's a spike, he's a six point. Never once did say it was probably three or five. It was the same much. My first buck was an eight pointer and I got it mounted and I thought it was the biggest damn buck ever. But it's well under a hundred inches. When when I shot a thing, I was like and disbelieve A thought it was a giant because someone getting an eight point got everyone's attention. But now you look at him, you're like, yeah, it's just like a he just a year and a half old. So point being, I don't think that they were around and then culture changed. I think that a couple of things that led to it. In a handful of places like information about what it required to grow a big box. And I think kind of a changing people. This is like some old man ship here, but but a lot has changed around the way people handle permissions and stuff on their properties. And I think that at the like when I was coming into the world, there were a lot of properties around us, farms and stuff around us where the farmer wasn't even exactly clear on who was hunting there. People just hunt, you know, if someone gave you permission years ago, you just kept going on until they told you not to go any more. And so I think that there was more. I think that later, when people started to recognize the value of dear more, they started to kind of like wanting to know who was out there, and it just it wasn't like such a free for all, you know, I had I would have hunting permission on farms where every person that asked had hunting permission. No rhyme reads to it. I just like that kind of stuff has just come to an end. It's tough to come by. I was sitting next to the the there, and I I was sitting at dinner with you have met or heard of Shane Mahoney. Everyone here so he's kind of a preeminent expert on the North American model wildlife conservation. He's kind of like a conservationist philosopher type figure. So how you describe me like that? He saw him about just the way it's become hard for new hunters. The way it's become hard for young hunters is those days are kind of done when you could just wander around hunting on people's land, on neighbor's land, and you know the farms where everyone can just kind of go where you take your twenty two and ride out on your bike and go. And he said, there's all these programs now they're like meant to sort of like recreate that, because that you're not going to recreate it, and and and if there's an upside to this, the upside of this is I think there's a lot more big bucks running around now as people like exercise more control over their stuff. And I don't know what good big bucks really are. Besides they look cool, they represent something. They represent an ecosystem, well at least a species of population that is in balance in a natural state. If you looked at the deer herd in Michigan in nineteen seventy or something like that or whenever you get are hunting around or whatever this was. Um it looks like, um, that was a very askew deer herd. Heavy heavy on the dos, very light on any type of mature bucks. Just tons and tons of year natural bucks. That's not a natural herd of deer as as it would be in you know, several hundred years ago when it wasn't as impacted by what we're doing. But now you are finding some places where you have a more natural herd, which is which is beneficial, not just for hunters I'd like to see big bucks, but having a relatively balanced age structure that's good for the whole herd. And what way is that good for the herd? So, for example, if you have more mature bucks and you have a balanced kind of structure of the different ages and things and balanced with the does, you're gonna have a more tight rut. If you have a tight rut, if you have a well timed rut happens consistently in a small window, you gonna have a better fawn dropping, tight fawn drop, a well placed fawn drop that is conducive for the females and the fawns to be most healthy grown up the next year. So if you get um, let me describe the opposite scenario. If you have a scenario where you've got lots and lots of does, not many mature bucks, just a bunch of year and affle bucks, you're gonna get does coming into heat and bread at all different times of the year in the fall, so we're gonna say a very spread out trickle run does and getting bread in mid October all the way to mid December, scattered all around. So you've got fawns dropping in March, you got fawns dropping and may not March. You got them dropping in late April, mid May, early in June. You want to have a tight drop if you have fawns dropping all the same time, less coyote predation. If you have them dropping at the right time that's not too early that they're freezing and not having nutrition available, but not so late that they're getting a late start on being able to go in the winter. Small exactly, Um, So that that I mean, there's a whole bunch of different things on those lines that lay a couple of things in here. Real quick. No, you're not rambling at all. But I remember in those in that era, it was common to hear that you had bucked to dough ratios of twenty or thirty does to every buck. And I remember when I learned that they were born basically one to one ratio. It's kind of shocking to see that that level of of harvest on the bucks. But it's a thing that like, and I've talked about this before. I don't know if I talked about it here, but when we had like largely kind of eliminated deer really knocked deer back bad. You know, even coming up into the into the nineteen thirties nineteen forties, just weren't that any deer around. Um, people became very like like it was, it became culturally taboo to shoot. Does I remember, like in this era we're talking about when I was a kid, there were a lot of old timers that would like disparage someone who shot a dough And because you wanted to get a deer, you just shot the box and you shot every damn buck anyone ever laid eyes on got shot, and you'd wind up with these situations where you had, like I said, twenty to thirty dolls for every book and the box were all most books were not living in to see their second December. Even relatively recently, that was still the case in a lot of states. So, for example, in Michigan, and I'm gonna get the numbers not quite right, um, but some number of years ago, maybe it's ten years ago, give a take the percentage of the buck harvest in Michigan. If I remember right, someone's gonna email you and say I'm wrong, but it's somewhere in this ball park, something like se of all the bucks, maybe more of all the bucks killed in Michigan were year and a half olds. Now it has dropped down to so significantly improved, but still one of the highest in the country, something like fifty five percent or fifty some percent now, I think is the number of the bucks killed in Michigan annually are year and a half old, um, And that's still like the top five in the country. But now across the entire country several years ago, for the first time, an age class different than year and a half olds is a higher percentage of the buck harvests than year and a halfl So yeah, so now bucks over three comprise overt of the harvest. If you look at across the country, and this has changed over the last fifteen and twenty years, has just been dropping down. So why don't why don't guys that are big into white tail management? Why don't they let I know, the answer to this is Poe using it. Why don't if you want balanced age structure, why don't they let the once they hit four? Why don't they become hands off? Why be like, oh, we want to make older box, we wanna make older bucks, but then systematically kill off every buck that gets to be that same threshold age. Why is there not a movement to or or like a management strategy be like to get to be like post trophy and say like, oh yeah, man, if he hits four and a half, what one in a hundred bucks or whatever it is will be four in half. So as big as they're gonna get, then we let those go because we're gonna create five year old, six year old, seven year old. But instead they get that big and people just get so lusty for him they want them dead. So it makes it hard to argue that you're really trying to have these like age classes in places it seems like you're just walking What you're really trying to do is have big box because you want to shoot big bucks, and and you're trying to like act like there's some biology or or a college or conservation at work when it's like, oh, how convenient, I think. I mean, I don't think anyone's gonna argue the fact that anyone who is managing deer also wants to hunt deer. They want to take some deer. So yes, so there's gonna each person is going to set a different goal that is going to hopefully achieve something beneficial for the her, but also they've got to have a goal as far as what they want to try to hunt in harvest. And if you start saying that, you know, I want to wait for six or seven or eight or nine year old bucks, you're simply never gonna shoot you bucks then, because it's really really hard to get bucks over four, let alone over five um. Even on big managed properties. It's just not an easy thing to do because even if you have a large property, these deers still go all over the place. UM. So it's no guaranteed thing that if you pass on a four year old he's gonna make to five um. Whether you're on a hunt ac or property or a thousand maker property that's not a guarantee, So that just kind of wants up being about as old. Like, there's so fewer five or year olds and four year olds even yeahs, I don't know of anyone. Even the folks that take management to the highest level have great, big properties. Um, they can control a lot of acreage. I don't know anyone that really looks at targeting anything over five. Five is kind of like that. If it's over five, it is fully mature, it has has kind of reached the pinnacle as far as body size, antler size. It's it's it's it's um expressed whatever genetic potential there. It is. What he's gonna be is what he's gonna be, and that's a fully mature deer that's gonna do everything that the mature dear is gonna do. And if you can get them older than that, great, but that's hard to ask for. UM, So five year olds or what most people kind of set as that top end. During this week, tell me about the or I can start the encounters you had with with um, the closest encounters you had with mature bucks and what what went wrong? Yeah, well I had one. I had one encounter on the ture buck for sure, mature buck? Do you wanna tell my story? Do you want to start with yours? You go ahead? No, dude, whatever you decide, Mark, you should go first. Okay, they had it began and ended so fast like they do. So I'm I'm perched up in a really shitty tree powder. I don't think I'm gonna talk about the one that you screwed up, because I don't think he was four and a half. I think he was like three and a half or something like that. What do you think he was? Mark? So I that's not the deer I saw. The deer I saw? Was that the one that you screwed up? The big one? The other one that's a mature buck. I didn't see the big, big one, but I'm talking with the other one. But did you screw that up? No? I screwed up? Well, I in that I'm a person that has an order to him, not an unusual order. In fact, my wife comments, I'm not a smell uh in fact, not a smelly person. But uh, okay, can we talk about the one you screwed up? Sure? Man, it's a story. So first of all, I'd like to preface the story by saying that this is never in the history of mediator ever happened to me before, as far as i'm you're embarrassed about it, but you don't need terrible. So Lauren was talking about the pressure of like being a camera dude on a hunt like that. To me, that interaction that happened is worse than any like anything either one of the hunters could have done. No, you gotta tell it now, Okay, if killing uh killing the mature buck mark? What percentage harder does it become when you have a camera person? It is harder. I think it's it's half as likely something significant. Sure, it's twice as hard, a little less, twice less, twice hard, but there's is a lot, there's already a lot that can go wrong, and you're just making it's it's not quantifiable because there's twice as much older, there's twice as much movement, there's twice as many weird there's twice as many weird blobs up in the tree, there's twice as much sound, and and I found that that, Um, the best camera guys. I don't know why this is, but the best camera guys don't have this is this is not a fair statement. We have some phenomenal camera guys who don't have a strong hunting background, which is a plus, but they tend to not know how to read a critter. They don't know how to read a critter, and they don't know when. Is this fair? Probably No, it's totally fair. I think I've I've been learning how to a lot better taking its temperature. I take a critter's temperature now, I feel maybe not to the extent of pro but I'm close. I think when is it appropriate to move? Yes, taking his temperature? A deer standing there, uh, who's kind of like waving his nose through the air and kind of almost wanting to like stop his front hoof don't move, then that's yeah. Okay, so yeah, you're taking this temperature and you're like, this is not an appropriate time for movement because this deer is like I don't like something. I don't know what I don't like, but I don't like it a deer, this guy his nose of the arts of another dear Time to move man still slowly? Yeah, so you get it. Yeah, that's good. A turkey who's got his fan up and his fan is between its head and you you can do it. That's time to move. Um. So we're sitting there and and we're in a weird setup where we're actually differ. Thinks I'm gonna tree stand up in a shitty tree, and Chris is in like a little outhouse. What do you call us? That's like a box. Chris is up a little miniature plastic bad box blind. It was less than the desirable filming location. But it wasn't That wasn't the problem. The problem was about ten am. I get a text from Chris. I'm looking at Chris. Can hear me? So? So we were I were him because we're filming. So I have a mic and I can whisper to Chris. I can be like six o'clock do or whatever. But he can't communicate to me. Um. We have one thing where there's a stick that he can hang out of his blind and that conveys a certain message to me. What What did that convey? That conveys? Because this is the problem we have. That conveys I see it, dear, that you don't see. And I'll tell you that this stick does not come into play very often, but it did one time. But one time the stick came into play. Yeah it's damn Yeah. We met Pounders mom and uh and this pounder and miss Founder and she was telling us about a great cook Pounder so and she made a bunch of cookies. So around ten I get a text, Is that what happened? Yeah, and you needed to go down because you had left your camera battery at the base of the blind. So I had my backpack. But then I had like a little go bag that I had made, and I was stoked on it because I was gonna have it all like folded in and silent, and if I needed to like quickly change a battery, I would just reach into this bag. No zippers, no velcrow, nothing, grabbed the battery. Still noisy ass bag. Yeah, well until it's until it's in its right zone, then it's then it's it's it's not the greatest bag, But I was stoked on the idea. But then I stupidly forgot to put the battery in that bag and left it in my bag at the bottom of this ladder. And you didn't have a pea bottle and I didn't have a pea bottle, and you can't really sneak her up out over the window ledge a little too high, and you could have sneaked her out the door, but you had to get a battery anyway. So he says, is it okay if I climbed down? It's ten am? Is it okay if I climbed down and get me a battery and take a leak. I see you at the door open, I see him come down. I see him turn away from me, presumably, Yeah, you sneaked her out. And I looked past you and down the hill, and I'm not kiddey man. We've been sitting there all morning. And he hits the ground, starts taking a whiz, and in the direction he's whizzing, I just like, here's a buck, and he's coming, and he's close, he's coming. It was like you ever have a dream where like like when you wake up from the dream, you and you realize that it was the dream, you're like so relieved that it wasn't real life. Yes, that's what it was, except it was real life. Oh that was like the worst case scenario. And I'm saying to you, like I do, I'm like Chris, Chris. Then I realized he can't hear. He had to unhook. So you eventually turned around and I give you a frantic like down on the ground, and I see him good out of his phone, like he's gonna fil him with his phone and aim it. It's my only instinct. And it's a nice buck. It's a nice like I'm like very interested in shooting his buck. And this buck comes up and I think he's gonna come right up the edge you're on and when be perfect And I'm like, he's gonna pass and buy ten ft away about it, like he probably not gonna he's probably not gonna see because you're hunker down in tall grass. But then he cuts and comes in and picks up your smell. And here's the difference between like an older buck and a not older buck. When he hits that smell, it's he turned like like you watch deer hits smell all the time, and a lot of your hits smell. They hit human odor and they get this like oh my gosh, and they wave their nose in the air and they're like they're gonna run. Maybe not. They stop their footy, they take three bounds and stop again and and blow and whatever they do. They and then they drift off raising all kind of fanfare and tail in the air and all piste off and letting everybody know. And you know, but it took him like a full minute to like come to the conclusion this is what they want to do. This buck hits that like that wall of scent, and he he doesn't like his attitude doesn't change really, but he just stops, turns around and lowers his profile. M hm, like he sees like slink into the earth more and just go back the same direction. Very often that you describe that wall of scent. I feel like it's they hit a wall. They literally you can physically see it as if they smash their head into it and then bam, it's all different after that. And he's like not he doesn't desire to draw any attention to himself. No pause. It's like that's how they get, that's how they live. Like that's the difference in the buck that dies in a buck that lives. It's like you bump a big meal to your buck, you know, like muled your famous for like you bump amulder buck and they run and they're gonna vanish. They're gonna get where He's not gonna be able to he's gonna vanish over the edge, but he stops and looks back. Like the big ones when you bust a group of them. He doesn't go the way the dolls go. He goes a different way, and he ever stops, he doesn't stop and do that. What was that? And this buck man? It was kind of magical to watch him just be like not killing me today, sons of bites and just slunk out. Now the other one go ahead. I was just gonna ask, this wasn't the short time one, or was the short time one he had? He had one of his sides, one of his sides had noticeably shorter times than the other side. Now, the one that was my not the one that was not I don't want to say it was my fault, but the one that was not Chris's fault. All day were watching deer that are like following a certain line of traffic. They're they're they're coming into our zone and they're like coming along the same edge and some break some go straight, and some break left and come up past us, eat some dry leaves or laying on top of the snow. They're like that little spot m hm. He just watched deer They're like doing this all daylong. And there's one spot I can't see really clearly, and it's kind of like a ridgeline that comes up to where we are, and late in the morning, like you're saying, late in the morning, here comes one and I look and he's already it's too it's happening too fast, already coming against the flow of traffic. Walking the ridge just has that dead on, like paranoid look to him, but traveling like with a sense of purpose. And it's a ten, it's a nice ten. And he comes up and I'm like, oh my god, like he's gonna pass ten yards way, He's gonna pass sen yards away. I get my bow. He's behind some brush. I'm not even only have a chance to start pulling back and hits the wall of scent and not even I mean, he's so close to me and I've been there for hours, and the winds like not the kind of wind that flushes everything away, but just to kind of wind it's like very steady in the direction and you've pooled up I don't know how much stink at ten yards away, and he hits it and just gone vanished. Was that one of the bigger white tail bucks you've seen while honey at least yeah, right, yeah, probably a pretty nice one, super nice one. It was the kind of buck, and I was glad. I was kind of like reviewing in my mind. I was kind of glad and have time to dwell on how nice he was. But I finally I could do everything better when I have time. If I have time. Um, you see something, you get excited. When you have time, the excitement goes down and you start remembering the important things. This would have been one of those great shots to screw up, because um, it would have happened too fast. Do you think is there anything like if you I always trying to do this at least any kind of mature bucking counter that doesn't end the way I wanted to try? Self analyzed little bit when you look back in that, Is there anything you would have done differently? Is there any other Yeah? I would be after all this time we've and spending in trees and and just having things like that happened and then not work out. I think that, Um, it's hard to do it. But the balance of shooting lanes and cover, Yeah, because here you have here here I'm in a tree where of the stuff around me, there's no possible way to take a shot. You're also not that high in that tree either. That's a pretty low stand. It's a horrible tree. Yeah, that from that angle you got plenty of cover. You can't it's impossible to shoot the years own. You cannot shoot now. Though, if we assume that we're stuck with that stand where it is, if the back had been trimmed out, you know how much worse we would have been, like hung out to dry them. That's the thing, because if you could like I actually was sitting there tonight thinking about um, I was actually sitting there to night thinking about this problem and the cover you and I think if I hunted up, if I hunted up a spot where I was really like putting in multiple years in hunting there, I would I would probably like my contribution to white tail hunting would be that I would become very detail focused around selecting spots not just for their location, not just to take advantage of pinch points and travel routes, but I would put a lot of energy into places that had good cover and and so that if I looked around me, if I like spun in the degree circle, I'd be going to like cover shooting lane, cover shooting lane, cover shooting lane, even if I had to have someone come out, if I had to like take my woman out and give her a pulse, give her a pulse, all with a thirty foot handle. I'm sorry I have to interrupt, but I don't think you're bringing up anything new here. I think that you're explaining what most people go out there and try to achieve, not when you doing not when you're running around making snap decisions about stuff. Yeah, I think you do. We used to when I when I was younger, my old man put a ton of focus on it. Not covered, but shooting lanes. If you have the preset stands that you're putting up the four season and stuff, Yeah, absolutely, but not like we're doing the running gun hanging hunt. And I think I think the issue here, right, both your situation and my situation, we ran to the same problem. Um, But I think I think what we have here is we've got a property that we are trying to get stands up this summer, and a lot of stands up across a bunch of places, and they're simply wasn't time to get every single one perfect right guy, and nobody haunted it. Yeah, you guys were the first ones. Right. Um, So I think what we have this year, now we're getting us first run through like all the stands we've we've hung all the spots that got trimmed out. I think now this next spring and summer, we're gonna know, Okay, this one we gotta fix a, B and C, this one, we gotta trim out this, this and this and and we'll have time to go back to a lot of these other stands that we just barely had time to get up this year. Now it's now we can try to get things a little bit more fine tuned. You don't have a back background as an arburst, is there? Right? So this is especially sensitive subject, right, I can I can feel that you stewed on it. I have stuped on it as well because it it hurt me too. But that's something okay, talking about getting screwed by big bucks, getting screwed by big Bucks, the anatomy of getting screwed by a big Buck. Well this that same day that you had your big giant Buck come by and be stuck behind brush, I get this text message from you saying I had a giant at ten yards couldn't get a shot because of brush. I told you I could have jumped on him. Yeah, yeah, I should have jumped on him. Why wasn't that your your change? You would have made um. So that morning, like I said, me and Lauren had um, we've been seeing handle, not even hand a good number of bucks running through, chasing does around a lot of activity. So I gave him the good news bad news speech, told him we're gonna sit all day and um, as you alluded to. Around eleven o'clock, I turned around, Hey, Lauren, this is the beginning of what I think is the best stretch of the day oftentimes for like that one solo mature buck to come through, just notorious eleven to one, big bucks, big old mature bucks are gonna come cruising through checking these doe betting ears. And the spot we were in was a really cool little bench on a ridge, and there's great betting behind us, great betting sort of in front of us a little ways and then around the corner of this ridge. It just seemed like a spot that a mature buck with cruise midday. So we even said a bet. We're like, okay, I'm betting, Like, let's put money, Like, I have one dollar bill in my wallet. I bet you that we will see a mature but a deer. I think we just said a deer. I bet like eleven thirty five we see the first deer between eleven and one. You walk around with a one dollar bill in your wallet. Yes, in this situation, I have been have a one dollar billon. Was it? Um? I lost? You did loose and then later we double or nothing to that one again? Um? But it actually I wasn't quite right because we saw the dough at eleven thirty. The buck we saw one hour later. So twelve thirty rolls around. We've seen a few doughs coming through. Midday twelve thirty, I am looking off to my right, kind of doing my skin, and I noticed a dark shape moving along the side of this ridge. And there's snow over everything. It's snowed overnight, so you can see these bodies or lists right away. Pull my bannocks, get eyes on him. And at first I saw the buck and I'm like, Lauren Buck coming in whatever six o'clock or whatever it was, and um, he gets turned around and I'm like, usually the first thing to say if it's a buck or dough and then right away there's used a quick snap judgment like little buck or shooter or something like that, just so he knows like yeah. And first I was like buck, big buck. And then I'm wasna looking at him again, and and I'm trying to look at his body and trying to like see what's coming my way. And for the first time this trip, I was like, I think that's a shooter. Um. I just remember noticing obviously bigger body. And then when you looked up as antlers, I saw heaviness. There was a heaviness to it. And I remember looking at the main beam and seeing like something funky going on, another thing of indicative, like you're not gonna see a year and a half old or two and a half year a buck. That's gonna be some kind of unique funkiness to the rack. Um, So he's coming down the ridge, and earlier, maybe ten minutes before that sounds rout right, maybe five minutes before, we had seen a couple of deer running or moving across the opposite ridge, and so I grunted a couple of times just on the off chance that one was a buck. We occasionally do like a hail Mary grunt. So I grunted. Now this about comes in. We didn't know if he was coming in just because he was cruising, or if he was coming into the ground. But make your grunt noise. Well, I usually as a grunt tube. Just guys, zuck, you can probably do it all right, all right, all right, do your turkey call with no turkey call. Check this out. This guy with no turkey calling his mouth. Do the p Yeah, that's where he makes his magic. Good. That's good, man, Yeah, that's real good. So there you are, Matt nice. Just buck we got on camera. Yeah, well, well you're you're stealing my thunder. So the next thing I know, um, he is coming up. He comes over the rise at this point like full blown. This is absolutely buck, I'm gonna shoot. I grabbed my bow. I turned into position. He's worked his way across and at this point in an encounter with the mature buck, I'm usually holding my bow and then I'm gonna grab my release and have it clipped on and ready to go. So I go to clip on my release and I don't have a release on my hand because you were changing your clothes. Because just a minute like minutes something before I had added another layer put a vest on. So I took everything off, put the vest on, and I take off my release. Well, I put my release in my pocket and forgot to put my release on. Downfall of a twelve hour sit. Yeah, I kind of want to put a layer on, take a layer off. Whatever. So this is the most terrified I've probably ever been in my entire hunting life. When I've got this great, big mature about coming in and I don't have a release on, and I said a bad word on camera. I'm like, I blanked up. I said that. He's walking in and I'm like scrambling trying to get my release. I found it and I'm trying to get it in my hand and he's just slowly walking across. Fortunately, the area he's walking across is all limbs, like there's zero zero Could you drawn back? Uh No, because he was so far from being from being able to be in a shotline that I'd be holding back for three minutes. So I remember getting the release on and my hands started to shake while I was trying to get it on so badly I could not get the strap through the buckle like I was sitting there like, oh my gosh, this bux that was shaking from the release, from freaking out about trying to get the release, that's what threw me. Um Like. I was like, I gotta get this thing on, and I couldn't. And I'm just imagining he's standing right in the open and I can't shoot him right now. He wasn't, but in my mind I was sticking as it. But finally I remember telling myself, don't think about going fast, just just pull it through. Just so, I like slowed it down and I got the release on, and I looked back up and he's still behind all these tree limbs, slowly working his way. I'm okay, he's right there, he's moving in. He's like thirty yards, he's twenty five yards. Question about the release? Do you ever practice fingers so that just in case you release, said falling into the snow, you just had to let him walk. You couldn't shoot fingers. I don't. I don't think I would shoot fingers. Can you shoot a short limb bow with fingers? Fingers? Why, there's a certain there's a minimum actle to actually you have to have so you don't get like a real bad pinch from the bow stream and my grip is so strong I can just grab the loop. Oh yeah, pinchinger and thumb. That's very impressive. I do train that. Put it in your teeth. Thank you. Mark. Yeah, no, no release snow go, no release snow go. But in this case, I was able to get the release on time, and it was a huge relief. He's still there. I clicked on, like, all right, that's great. But then I'm looking at him and there's just no shoot there's no holes I can get a shot, I can't thread it through anywhere. I'm looking at him like trying to see, and he's just knew me, knew him his way along, kind of just and sniffing around, walking along just perfect. I was twenty yards broadside Lawrence, felling him gray, and he's a beautiful buck. And then I look, okay, no shooting lands, no shootlings. I'm seeing, Okay, he's gotta walk another ten yards or so, and then there's there's no reason for a buck to be lingering around that long without hitting the shooting lane. But he's moving anyway. Yeah, and I agree there should have been a shooting land here there, just there just wasn't Um, there's shooting lanes in the other three directions. This was just the one spot that we didn't get yet. And but he's moving, so it wouldn't do you any good slowly moving, And unfortunately he slowly moved in the direction that our wind was blowing, the one direction we didn't want him to go, and there was no openings before he hit that wind. So just like you described, he's walking along and he hits the wall, and as soon as he hits the wall, it's like someone spanked him. Like he just jumped and bounced off. It's different than your buck the slank away. He hit it and immediately jumped, ran off ten fifteen yards, stopped really yeah, looked back one time and then slunk a laugh, And then after that I just melted down because then I realized that was the big brow buck. The big brow buck was the buck that I got on camera in September August, the biggest deer we've seen in the farm, really really really cool deer. He has um he was the obviously most mature buck that we had seen yet huge body. Um. I remember, we we got the picture like that's a no brainer. That's the only real one we got that wasn't them, and then he has this really unique like at least twelve inch brow time, just huge brow time. Um, so really really really cool buck. And he was the one. I was like, Man, if there's any deer I could happen to get a chance that, he was the one. I would really like to get a chance that. And there was a twenty yards and I couldn't shoot him, and he bounces off and and that was it. So I was, you know, he had that these moments, especially in Michigan. An opportunity to mature buck is so so so rare. An opportunity to mature buck like that in Michigan is is infinitely more rare. Um to have that right there in your hands after hours, so many hours, miss is you know, I've been going aft for quite a long time here in Michigan for I don't know if that was like the tenth day in arrow or something like that, that I've been hunting um in the rut and um. To have it right there and not have to come together it was a little frustrating, even like it doesn't even need to be big huge giants, man, because I had like a like I loosed an arrow I don't know. It's like a eight point, you know, like a little like a two and a half year old type eight point buck. But this trip like like a screw up for me. And it's like all of a sudden, this there he is, out of nowhere, no sound, nothing like. There he is, and he's gonna be gone in no time. And I have a great shooting window. And he stopped, and I go to drawback, so I'm ready when he hits the shooting window, and if I need to, I'm gonna say something to stop him. Even though you said that with these bocks don't do that. We did have a phone call before this night. We talked about it right how they jumped the string, marks saying, there's so like they're too high strung and too nervous all the time, and when you stop him with a with a grunt, they stense up so bad that when they hear the string, they're gonna bolt. They're gonna jump the string. So you don't like to alert them if you don't have to. Yeah, well, I go to drawback and not go to a drawback so that I'm ready for the lane when it's a nice big shooting lane. But he stopped shy the lane, and as I'm looking, I realized, oh wow, there's actually like most of his rib cage is actually open. And I become so fixated on the fact that like, what are the chances and and can you do this? And oh my gosh, you can and should you ensure it's open? And I'm like running this in my head and and as I'm like, as my brain is sending the signal to to hit the release, he steps but I still like hit the release, and I and and like reviewing my head, I almost had the desire like reach back and grab my arrow, but he stepped in lunge, like stepped or was already like stepping, like he's scared. He saw me pull back and like freaked them lifted up and stepped, and then his step as the as I'm releasing the movement, his step turns into a leap and it was gone for the arrow. It's amazing how quick they can drop. Dude, this is one of those old crazy ones. This is the teenager. So how did you feel after that missed opportunity? Like, how do you take that? Well? At first I felt pretty sick because I'm afraid I hit it. Yeah, but we have, you know, one of the luxuries we have. We had two luxuries, one a camera so you can review, and to snow. So I waited a while and got down and followed his tracks for long ways not to drop of blood, and then I catch up to him chasing a dough. Yeah, and then went back. We watched the footage a ton of times more and you it's not there. And I couldn't find the air because I went into snowy high grass. But like I said, I tracked. I tracked him for over a hundred yards. How based off the film, how much do you think he dropped? He doesn't drop. He goes forward because he was already going forward. But you don't think he went down. I know exactly what Tom about, but no, he doesn't seem to go down. He seems to go forward. He was already getting He was already getting going. And I even like, as my arrows leaving, I'm like, I'm saying, like what do you oh? Chris? And I reviewed it too, I would say for sure that he did the classic ductor ductor strange. You felt he went down more than forward, Yeah, because when they before they can go forward to to make that they bring up, they have to load their legs and the what looks like a duck is when they load their legs and they're loading their lowering to basically get their legs into us to a compressed spring so they can then push off rather than you guys sit here having like knowing glances. Ah, we're talking about this. He was already stepping forward. No, he was. He was walking. So he was walking forward as you released. When he heard your string, your bow go off, he did what's called ducking the string where he crunches his legs underneath him, his body drops and then he and then he goes forward. Okay, where were we remarked, Um, we're just talking about how we both had our opportunity to slip through our fingers like that. I can be frustrating, super frustrating man. So yeah, I spun the camera over to Mark. After that buck hit the wall and ran off. It was a day. It's twenty five degrees and he's shaken like a leaf. Yeah, And I asked, I was like, are you cold or what's going on? Like? No, man, that buck tore me up. It was he was shaken in his boots like full of emotion. Obviously big, big opportunity slipped through his fingers. But I was upset and excited and all that kind of stuff, you know, it was that would have I mean, well, it was the best buck on this property. And if we're talking, I've I've killed mature box in Michigan, but that for sure would have been the biggest buck I've ever would have gotten a shot at in Michigan. So it was it's a really big deal for the state. Um. So that was an opportunity that I would have loved to have seen it go a different way. So I was just I don't know, It's just it's something when it's so close for some reason, it just slips through your fingers. It hurts just a little bit more like and I knew and I knew it too in my head, think that was my opportunity. Like you're you're, yeah, there's a chance, but especially here in this state, you get maybe one opportunity mature buck, even if you hunt really smart in most places. These most places I hunt, I don't hunt. This is an abnormally good property for me, um, But most years you've got that one chance. And if that one chance doesn't go the way that you want to you're kind of s ol so I was like, that was it? And you were so so close twenty yards Uh. Two observations. One was Ridge pounders. But it's interesting, is it? You know you're up here in the right knocks. There's so much dear movie. You're having all these like adrenaline moments, and Ridge was noticing. And then and once you brought this up, I realized it's true adrenaline moments. Uh. Make it that you get cold on the come down? Yeah, you feel your body temperature drop in the minutes after adrenaline rushes. Yeah, which if you'd asked me prior, if you without thinking about it, if you'd asked me, I'd be like, I'm guessing that it makes you feel hotter now when I like when it's real cold and you're camping and you gotta go take a growler. My brother used just call it taking the heater because he'd always mysteriously come away feeling warmer, like just the activity or something. You know. He'd be like cold relief. Yeah, and he'd go dig a hole and come back and be like, dude, I'm warmed up. I don't know why. It doesn't make sense if I got warmed up. But having a bucking counter or just a deer encounter, even just like something exciting happened. Five minutes later, you realize you got cold. I'd be shivering. I'd be fine before a big buck would come in close, and then as soon as he walks away, then I'd start shivering. I'm like, wait, what, but it's nothing's changed, feel a chill. As the adrenaline goes away, it leaves you feeling a chill. Uh. My other observations this and this is harder articulate, harder to articulate. Uh. I spent a great many years lusting for and trying to figure out and crack the code on how to get how to just like locate big mule deer, you know, and it took a long time to start. A lot of it was location, but also just strategy, um like how to figure it out? For for years, we just walk hunted, walked likely territory, thinking you'd kick him up, like they're just like how we went about it, just like you'd kick him up, right. And over time I learned like, uh that not just that you need to sit and observe, like where are you sitting observing? When you sitting observe and what you're actually looking for and all that, and it's you know, gradually like finding nicer ones. But the the years of frustration around it made me want to learn it more and more and more. A weird thing. I think it's because I have a long background of what we thought we were serious deer hunters, but we didn't do the stuff that you do, but we felt like we were serious deer hunters from the time, you know, for a good decade I did that between becoming old enough to legally hunt and then moving away from the Midwest. Um, like that's what we did and thought we were, you know, into it. But um, I don't know, Like I totally respect him, but I just don't, like I'm not getting where I feel the lust form. Yeah, no, And I don't know why I think they're so hard, but I just don't feel the lust. I think you just haven't. This is too much of you were dropped into a thing. You're just kind of along for the ride here right now. I think that, at least for me, what gives me this like insatiabill craving to keep learning about these animals and hunt them and try to figure them out. Is the chess match element of it, the the just the constant tinkering and rethinking and observing and adjusting and learning more. And that's something that in this situation, you know, you showed up to new property, we're kind of saying, well, try this, try this, try this. I think that if you had to move back to Michigan for a year or something like that, and you had to dive in and fare all the stuff out, you start get lost. I think you get lusty when you start dating to that start putting that puzzles together for yourself. That's when things start getting really really interesting. And this is an interesting scenario here because um, you know, I'm learning it too, and and and you're learning it and and guy, you're learning it into a degree. And this is kind of the first year this property is being hunted in this kind of way, so's lots of new elements. Were kind of figuring things out as we go. Um. I feel like we it a lot just this week. UM, all sorts of stuff I already know I wanted to do differently next time around. Um, but all those mistakes that in the moment are like a painful mistake or something that just reinvigorates and re excites me for well, I want to do this differently, and I wanna do this differently. I try that differently, and I think already I I'm I was telling you the other night, Like I'm sitting in my bed at night for half hour to an hour look at maps and thinking about how we shouldn't move to camera there, we should move a stand there, and we should get it back in there, because I think that these mature white tailed deer um, they don't live in the most rugged, rough country. They don't get the biggest antlers of any ungulate. They don't um. They're not gonna put as much meat in the freezer as a moose. They're not gonna take you to a mountain peak like a mountain goat. But I don't think there's a more savvy, weary, tricky smart critter out there than a mature whitetail buck. Like they deal with a whole lot of humans, and these deer that make it to that age are just survivors. And to consistently get on them and to learn them and be in a position to sometimes get a shot at you like that requires a lot of mind power, Like thinking and that just gets me. I see it get you. I love it that it gets you. And and and I'm not like down on it, just like it just uh yeah, I don't know. Did you have a good time? Phenomenal time? I feel really bad a lot of stuff. You feel bad. I feel really bad that like you just didn't you didn't get a shot of him. I mean you did get a shot of one, but I just felt like I let you down. Who cares? I had a phenomenal time, a great time, um, and I loved every second of it. But I don't like, uh yeah, man, I'm just I just like this meal deer and stuff like that. This is I get that, you know, I love it. I would do it all the time. But I think for me, it's I think for me that i've that that a thing that like some kind of strength that I have in hunting is just um like can just go and go and go. And sometimes it's a hindrance, but sometimes it's the strength. It's like going, going going. I'd like to sit and just watch and watch and watch and and like be out and and I and I think that I struggle. I think that I I struggle a little bit with them. The stationary, the very stationary aspect, because even if you're sitting there glass and from me older your glass and for cousi or whatever you're doing, and you're in one spot, there's there's like this kinetic energy that builds because you know that all of a sudden there's gonna be your chance and you're gonna go, even if you wait all day. You might wait all day, but there's still this idea that like, go time, now, we're gonna go. And to be strapped into that tree watching things and it would never work to go after him. They're just not gonna put up with that. But watching things and feeling that and it's going the wrong direction, and you're like, you don't have that that, you don't have that um, that autonomy, or you don't have that a lack of control. You can't make it move the agents, you don't have the agency to and it like, really, I don't know. I feel like I'd have to get better at it, you know, I'd have to get better at it. I used to not have the ability, like what I was sawing about earlier, trying to learn how to kill Multier. I didn't have the ability at the time. If you just said, oh, the key to kill muliteer is sitting and observing, I wouldn't have had it in me. I developed it. I would have to develop the ability to sitting these damn trees. I think I wind up cursing the tree. I don't wind up loving the tree. I get that. It's like, it's like I feel like I'm chained to it. You know that if you had sat in that same tree that you sat when you had those two encounters described, you would have had another nice big buck in front of this morning. You know why he was there because he weren't there because I wasn't there exactly. That's the funny thing like hunting this stuff now, Like you'd be like, oh, a big buck passed by that tree. Stand like the big buck pass that tree stancause you're not in it. It's not like he would have been. It's not like you would have been there anyway. Yeah, it can be frustrating. Yeah, I do feel like the interesting thing about a Western style hunt is that a lot of the actual hunting is the hunt is happening right then, right The decisions you're making that are going to impact that hunt are happening right now. It's like do I go up that ridge or that ridge, or do we make the stock now or do we wait? Many times, the actions that dictate the success or failure of a white tail hunt are not the actions taken right now as that deers in front of you. It's the actions you took two months ago or four months ago, when you made the decision to put a stand here, when you thought through all the things, all the assumptions you have about a deer, you think through all the behaviors that are gonna happen. No, No, not November eight, all that stuff that's leading to what you're seeing on November eight. The reason that happens because the decisions made on August first, and what limbs to cut, what limbs not to cut, which trails coming through here? Why did I want to access the tree stand from this way and exit that way? Um? So, so much of the hunt actually takes place many many, many weeks beforehand, because the hunt really is in setting up the ambush location. We have. The decisions we can make now in the moment, are do we hunt A or B or C or do it which place? For the what we have today? And then how you actually conduct yourself in the tree. But a big piece of the hunt you missed out on. UM, So that can I can. I would imagine that maybe that might um change your experience a little bit too. Yeah. Uh. A reason I like to hunt turkey so much is because it's so responsive, physically responsive. Yeah, he does this, you do that, he does this, micro movements little, it's just like I like it. Speaking of turkeys, we called in a lot of deer this week. They were very responsive, called lunch your tonight. Well he did, called in a bunch of doughs. They didn't want to leave. Why didn't you shoot it, doll? Yeah, I just didn't. Man. We had a lot of opportunities to shoot at doughs, a lot of them. I don't know why. That's a good question. I wanted the same thing, just because we were kind of like hunting bucks. And I'm not hurting for meat. I'm sitting pretty good. Actually, if I was meat, Christis, it would have been a whole different situation. Yeah, we would have solved that problem quick. All right, man, thanks for coming out and chasing white tails. I'll come to it again. I hope it. I hope it goes a little different. I had a great time. Man, I don't care if I got one. I honestly don't care. Good if you could like probe into my brain and see if I'm telling the truth or not, I'd be telling the truth, all right. I really don't give a ship all right, good? Yeah, thanks for sharing. It was fun to listen to you all week, learn and learn a lot from you. Well. Thank you to the two Guy and Matt for allowing us to to hunt this location and sure what you guys to come back. It was a good time. Do that turkey prayer again. We heard that a whole bunch. They didn't. We found her. We had turkeys up close. And that's the thing I remember that you don't realize how much noise they make. They're all making noise all the time. When you get that close to them, they're cool man getting in their winter flaw. Yeah, we're ten from him, and they didn't care about us all making noise. We were moving. I was like filming them moving. They were like, I don't care, bro, we're eating corn. I think of you have said something to him. They had to move, yeah, And I was like, eight turks, you guys need to get a Turkey tag next year. Put in from oh Man today, I was really regretting I have more, Lauren, you got any final thoughts? Man? Just thanks for having me along. I learned a lot from Mark. Sitting in tree stands forty eight hours. It's a good time. I was definitely a part of the hunt. Yeah, not just here to take pictures, not just here chasing dollars. He lost dollars actually, yeah lost? Oh yes, that cut into the bottom line. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. You know, obviously, sitting in the tree that long is not anyone's favorite thing. Maybe it maybe it's Mark's favorite thing. I admire it. I admire it. Man, sitting in a tree like that for that long, it's tough. I think it comes with age to the ability to not necessarily the ability, but just the just the downright appreciation of it. It only comes with age of sitting there for a long time just smelling the roses. It only comes with with a long you know you're never gonna meet at five year old. It's like, oh, yeah, I disagree, you do, yeah, yeah, I disagree to alright, eighteen whatever the cut off data cut off ages. Yeah, there's there is an age. I just think, if you tore up with it enough, you'll sit all that. If you love it enough, you'll do it. So there's like, so you'll sit all day, but will you enjoy it? That is different? Probably. I think that even even the thirty one year old me, sometimes it's like, God, why aren't they moving? Why isn't this happening? Exactly? And I just think for me at forty now of it just in the last few years sort of been like, you know what, what else? What the else? Is actually better? Yeah than just sitting here and why and waiting for the next woodpecker to come by or the next chickadee to come by or whatever. Yeah, it is a rare opportunity to just slow down and embrace Oh it's not existing thing. Yeah, it's easy to get caught up in everything else. My brother hunts by himself. He's a few years older me, so I don't know what the age part. He hunts by himself, and he hunts by himself in the mountains, bow hunting for elk. And he said that every day it's part of his day to talk himself out of going home mhm. Because he hates it, hates it and has every day talk himself out of quitn What is he hating the grind of it? Yeah? I get that, but he likes in the elks so much. In the end, it's worth it. But he says, every day I gotta just be like, you can't just don't let yourself. You can't go home. I don't give in. Don't let yourself go home. I have moments like that every day, doing these all day sets too. It's so much of of hunting. The rut in particular is like is mental. It's mental toughness. So every year leading is the point I have like a little self pep talk. It is all about mentally being in it. Are you gonna grind it out? Are you going to simply make the decision that no matter what goes wrong, no matter how tired you are every morning, every morning you wake up at four or four or thirty or whatever, He's like, jeez, all I wanna do is hit snooze and keep sleeping. But are you going to dedicate yourself to say no, I'm not going to give into that. You're gonna go out there, You're gonna do what you know you need to do. You're in a tough adout you're in a you know, it's just every single year when I look at the rut, we kind of call the white tail Worls kind of the rut marathon, because there's like two to three weeks where everyone who really loves of stuff, he's using all the vacation time or whatever. I'm sitting in the tree all day for two weeks straight or whatever. And that definitely wears on you mentally and physically, and um, and there's something to be said about coming out of that, and you can look back and it is it's not like climbing a mountain physically, it's not that kind of physical challenge, but it's a mental challenge. And that I was telling Lauren today, like, as long as I come out of Hunt like this, knowing that I gave it everything I could, Like I didn't leave anything on the field, or I left it on the field, I'm not I'm not in any way sports sports, sport ball, analogy forest you, Um, you don't cut any corners. If if as long as I can know that in my head, I can drive home tonight or tomorrow morning feel okay about the song. I think that one of the things that gives people discipline in all aspects. This isn't just hunting advice. But one of the things that I've starting to think gives people discipline is it comes as much from it comes as much from self hatred and self loathing as it does any kind of of for something in particular, because what you wounded, what you oftentimes wind up getting driven by, is hatred for the version of yourself that would quit. So it's not that you love the woodpeckers and chicken ea so much, and you do. I'm sure everyone does, or you know, anyone that gets into this game does, but it winds up being that you are like, I recognize that the smart thing to do would be be able to sit here all day or stay out overnight right now, or like sit up on this hill and keep glassing, or you name it, take one more cast right, go over the next hill and do one more shot gobble. You're like, I recognize that that's the way to be successful at this thing that I care about, And I hate myself for wanting to do otherwise other than what I recognized to be the best thing. And you're motivated by You're you're motivated by that as much as you are by uh, the positive end of things. I hear this from a lot of people. I have it, and my brother has it. Yeah, even like writing a book, you know, like I I hate the guy inside of me that wouldn't finish this. To Yanny's point earlier about how this might change with age, have you seen that change with age? Do you feel that way less than you used to or is it still just just as much. It's only different now because I recognize it more. I used to just be like driven to do some things, but I didn't really think about it very much, you know, Like here, here's here's an example. Uh, when I was brought up. My mother still lives in the house I was brought up in, and my room was on the second floor of a house and that overlook the lake, and there was these large oaks still are large um oaks in the backyard between my bedroom window in the lake. And I knew my mornings that we were supposed to go bolt wake up and go bowl hunting early in the morning. Um, I knew that it feels super rain and rainy and super wendy. We probably wouldn't go. And I would wake up and I would look out and would hope to see tons of rain and the limbs just going nuts because it meant we didn't have to go, And how guilty I would feel for hoping to see that. Yeah, this is the guilt, ship man. The self loathing and the guilt is a powerful, powerful force in life for me. Yeah, that's really interesting. And Quentin hunting or quit and fishing that kind of stuff. There. Day I took my daughter, my five year old daughter, We're all duck hunt and she's crying. She's laying inner waiters on the bank of a pond, crying. And there was a real part of me that like that. There's a real part of me that wanted to push against that very heavily. And I let her, made her do that for quite a while, because in the end, when she's my age, I think that's just gonna do her a lot more. That's gonna do a lot more for her than the other than anything else you could have done. Not I don't want to be sound statistic, and it probably does no I understand her getting She's definitely gonna love duck hunt. You know what, I spent most of my childhood cryings. My feet were cold, man, Not most of it but not just I don't want exaggerate. I spent a lot of days crying because I was cold to no one caring. No, man, I wonder about that too those days too, huh. But I look back on it now and I go, why did I become a hunter? Because I was yelled at for my nose running and sniffling my nose and I was cold. I was yelled at for this, that and the other, and it was just something inside of me that just like, like, no matter how much that was shitty, there was some other part, the chicken eas and the woodpeckers that I loved, and it kept me out there. But I feel like I've heard just as many stories now because I pay attention to it about raising kids in the outdoors and the kids are like fuck that. I just got pushed and pushed and pushed, and I'm not really into hunting. I think you got to weed them out. Those are the ones that gotta be weeded out. Maybe Rich you got any final thoughts? Um, Yeah, I do. Well, it's more of a question. I had a bunch and then I kind of got that was a good little comment. Man. I got kind of caught up in it. Um, One of the questions that I had earlier was like, do you think I don't know if mastery is the white word, but when you mark when you were saying that, like you got all these ideas about like what to do next and the next hunt, and you're like a really good white tail hunter, do you, like, do you feel like you'll ever get to a point where you like are mastering this kind of hunting? And I like that can't that's not like, you know, there's there's so many variables when it comes to animals that it's like that's not really like a fair word. But do you think you'll get to the point where you just like have it just like you'll know where something's gonna be when? Or I think that anyone who is really really good at white tail hunting will always believe that they have not yet mastered it, because I think that's a good answer, dude. I think that the I think you're constantly learning it isn't always evolving. I keep saying chess match, but it is. There's so many new lessons learned I get every single year. I mean, certainly people achieve levels of consistent quote unquote success that are on a different level than a lot of people. Um, but there's always more and that's the fun of it. That's why I think that we keep coming back to your in your near out never it's never the same. I love that. Yeah, you're nineteen. More things you wanted to bring up? No, uh no, oh, the age thing about sitting in a tree, I would say that I did have a thought today or past couple of days that if the pressure of filming and not screwing up a hunt because of the filming presence, Like if if I was just sitting in a tree for twelve hours, I think I'd be into it, Like I wouldn't be bombed distressed. You'd like it, I'd like it. Hold you, will you take me up on the hunt invitation? Which at your place? Yeah? Definitely, dude, definitely. All right. I have a new freezer that I don't have anything that's empty. Alright, I have a whole fridge that has nothing in it. Then you gotta make a trip up to Michigan. I'll do it. I'll do it. Let's do it, Seth. Have you said anything yet? Yeah? Early, okay? Um, I shot my first bucket twelve o'clock noon, and I just remember not wanting to be there. And I was twelve years old, but now what time? And you have been up there since, David, Yes, since it was it was an all day sit. So you were sitting till noon at twelve years of age because my dad was like, you're sitting all day and and that was the last, very last day of the rifle season and you were a hunter trapper. Yeah, I could. I love sitting all day now seven. Yeah, so you got it's a little a little tough to do, like first week of the season. I mean, I don't I don't see. So you you came from school hard knockers. Yeah, you like it. I love it. You're glad now, I'm glad. Now I'd do the same with my kids if I ever do that. That's what That's what you wind up struggling with, man, because there was so much stuff that I hate it about my dad. And the older I get, the more I'm like, man, I kind of see now where he was coming from, A kind of see where he's coming from. And one of the biggest things he had is he was not interested in being friends with his kids. And I used to be just baffled by that. And now I'm like, I kind of see what you're getting at. It's kind of see because he's dead anyway. Yeah, he's like, I'm gonna die. I think you're doing to be good friends of me, couple be friends with your friends. That's yeah, Mark, any concluders, Um, you know, I'm lacking any kind of terribly poignant concluder today except for I'm really glad you guys got to come up here and do this when it was fun to get to share my passion with you guys a little bit um and you know, teach you guys about sund control, which I appreciate the effort, but it was it was subpar. Still, I saw you saw some major I saw some major infractions. Yeah, well, he's okay, can we bring this up next time we talk major infractions? You pay for him, and you pay for him, and Mark is Mark has a lot of things he does, and Mark admits I don't know, uh what they all work. But if I do all of them and it makes a ten percent chance, I'll just keep doing them all. Yeah, that's that's a big enough Yeah, exactly, that's enough help. I was skeptical at the beginning of the week. Now after seeing all these deer hit that wall. I'm like, I get it, dude. Then we had I was going to okay. So we had a number of different incidents where we got winded, even though I was doing a lot of things that I try to do. But it was definitely a compromise scent control regimen, just it wasn't perfect given all the different things going on. Twice as much smell, twice as much smell. Um, I'm just a really smelly guy. I think that was it. Lauren might be a smelly guy wears very loud jackets. Uh no, but you're not gonna get away with with your sent all the time. But just last week I had a five and a half year buck go down wind of me and not hit a wall at all. So sometimes taking all of these precautions does help. Um, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but I'm willing to do it all the time to get those few times where it does. I'm all for it, dude. Nothing you're doing, there's nothing you're doing about saying control that. That was like something I hadn't heard of or I mean it's all like pretty much industry not industry standard, but like you don't have like what you don't have weird like magical things you think. No, I mean you have things that like are like very practical things you don't have, Like, um, I find that if I, you know, eat celery three days before and then do a cleanse, you know, it's just good stuff. Like it's very similar to what fur trappers would do fox trappers. I was surprised, though, no sense of any sort you're saying like a cover cent or yeah or attract incent. No. It's illegal though now in Michigan to use any kind of natural um yearine based center or anything. So that's I never used them before. But really you can't buy what you can. You can you can, and I think still can't use it because of chronic wasting disease. Really can I get my concluding thought? My concluding thought is if one wanted to go find all kinds of um awesome merchandise, mediator podcast stuff, soon to be wired to hunt merchandise, all kinds of T shirts, Um, your blout shirt. We got some amazing other new stuff coming out, and then a uh and if you've been watching the new episodes of the show on Netflix and you see like cool ship there first light apparel. We have all this stuff for sale. Um, go to the meater dot com and going to the store and check it out. That's my first concluder. Second concluded was I thought that was pretty good deep fried turkey, very good deep fried turkey, deep fried turkey nuggets. Where's that turkey from? He's wild turkey There two rests, two lobes like that man, two lobes. Deep fried turkey chunks, hard to beat, sweet sweet chili sauce, birthday Birthday dinner A hundred and seventy. That's why you can make that turkey calls huhdy halfa to ninety six halfway. That's a rough way to position oldest guy in the room. That's it. Does that turkey purer again? I've got my hair. Just give me one more turkey purer. I love that ship. Thanks for asking, so you never get to me, big, big room of people. UM. I was thinking, if you wanted to become better white tele deer hunter, you should go check out Wired to Hunt because anything anything you ever want to know about white tales and more, it's all there. That's why I wanted to bring I meant to bring that up. I'm glad you brought that up because Mark talks about this ship all the time. Yes, and all that stuff now is actually on the meat either dot com website though, Yanni. So you go to the media dot com and you're see all my new content with the word Hunt podcast is available and where you find pod The word on podcast is available anywhere you find podcasts. My video series is on the website and on our YouTube channel. Regular blog posts and the Wired Hunt merchandise is not soon to be available on the store. It is actually on the store as of right now. It is. So you got Wired Hun hats, word on t shirts and there'll be some new things come down the coome. I don't have one of those. It's where you've never given me one. I didn't Well, I don't know you'd be like, I feel like you should present one to me. What the hell? Mark, what on word to Hunt podcast? What would you say? Like, what percent of the time you guys talking about like white tail stuff? Oh, nineties seven percent? Three? Like one one episode of a year, I'll go on an elkhon or something one episode a year. We'll talk turkeys, um no merrill, marrit soul advice. Well, there's little bits of marital advice and family advice sprinkled within each episode. Usually give me a piece of marital advice. Oh gosh, I'll only been married. Uh uh advice to every one. Know you're I got married chosen thirteen, so just over five years. Give me, yeah, my best piece of marriage rate. All right, and I stole this from someone else, but it is uh piece before justice. You still have, Randy Newberg. Yeah, I told you I stole it from someone. But that's the best advice I avergant. I stole my piece from be honest, what's that. It's a good one. My best piece of merril advice. Okay, when you're fighting with the mrs or the early mister, Okay, let's say you're in the fight. Let's say you're like you're fighting over give me something. People fight about whether you how to load the dishwasher. Who fights about that, Steve? Yeah, well, not how to load it, but whether it should be loaded at all. There's a book about marriage. It's called marriage. It's it's got a name. It's like it's about it's a plemt because it's like it's about marriage. It's marriage worth it. And there's a line in the book where the author says, marriage is an institution that makes it so you cannot load the dishwasher in the way that makes the most sense to you. The cynical right. However, Okay, let's say you're fighting about, uh, the dishwasher. Here's another example of the color of the paint that you're gonna put in the newly remold bathroom. Yeah, fighting about the color paint in the bathroom because you got you've always pictured in your head and it's just gonna like that white. Everybody paints your bathroom white. And maybe it's not necessarily a fight, but it's like a heated discussion, and it's getting towards being a fight just because someone might be tired, someone else might be thinking about hunting. You are you feeling to get the paint and you're kind of sitting there like, I think it should be white? And because of managing your relationship, do you want to give the advice because you're the one who gave it to me? No, I I just know I just want to co host this place. He's the color comments. So you're like it should be white, you know, because that's what I that's what I got in my head is white and and um, your partner is so I was thinking to be blue, and then pretty soon you're like you're in it and you're fighting about it. Your honestest thing is you then need to say your break to fight for a second, and you rate on a one to ten, not how much you care to win, but you rate on one to ten how much the issue actually matters to you? And is this a verbal like you say to each other, Hey, time out, how much does this actually matter to you? Your wife? Yeah, and you say how much matter to you? You'd be like, you know, so you just throw the number out before you even asked. You just say that's to be my wife right now. We've been using this a great effect, and I don't need to say. I'll just say like this is this is a seven for me man, And she's like, this is a seven for you. This is like a three for me. That means you win, and you wind up because I wind up being in these I wind up being in these fights with my wife about things that once I stop and think about it, it's I'm fighting about things that are twos and threes because you just get so wrapped up and like that, you get so wrapped up just like winning battles very interesting and I have in their day, like there's this there's this rug that doesn't oh it doesn't Like every kid that runs through the house gets laid up by this trip and on this ruck this like skidder across the floor and smashed into the wall. And one day like roll the rug up. My wife's like into the ruck, like I got rugs gone, and she wants the ruck back, and I'm like, dude, this is like a way I'm going inspired to say, this is the seven or eight. This is a seven or eight on me. And she's like, it's like a one. I'm annoyed that you took my rug, But really, when I think about it, I really don't. It's a one. I don't know why I'm arguing with you, Bob. If you hate the rock, you hate the rug. Cool. Wow, that seems like a life good marriage advice. Man, it's quite simple. I like that a lot. Noted. It's gonna get me another five more years of marriage? Can I give you one more? Um, When there's like a large decision that that needs to be made, and the decision is made of a big great bundling of interests, say buying a house. I have found my wife and I have found that it works really good. If I say, here's the parts of this that I care about. I care about this element of this, and I care about this element of this. You run the project. Everything that I'm not mentioning right now is you. But do not screw me on these two things. And then you run and go and assigning ownership of something and in clarifying like, but you own it. But here's the deal. And this is an instance where the other person wants as much ownership as possible. M hmm, yeah, and you don't want to relinquish it because you don't want to get screwed on a couple of points. Clarify the points, and then give the person autonomy to go do what they needed to do. It's a big old vacation. Vacation vacage would be like, listen, man, I want to be able to spearfish. That's all. That's all. That's all I need to have. That's like relatively good access to some spear fishing. Other than that, I'm out Google Walt Disney World slash to the two come together. That's good stuff. Yeah, guy, you've been married a long time twenty three years, give me a hot marriage advice. Shut up and listen. Married to the best woman on the planet, and she's put up with a lot for me, but a lover to death. I'm sure she trade me in, but I wouldn't trade her for nothing. And uh, yes, marriage just work. It's hard work. It's hard work. But when you truly work at it. You know. We have kids, but we love our kids to death. But uh, we're really growing to love each other too. No, women are awesome, awesome, you know my sorry, I don't mean to jump on the rest of your advice. That's just it. When before my wife and I got married, she had I can't remember, I guess it's a bridle shower or something like that. And um, everyone was asked to write down there like their best piece of advice, what marriage advice or something on a note and you put the notes in the thing. And then after we got married, she got to open up the box and read everybody's marital advice. And I think I either saw some er she showed me some of them, and she showed me what her grandma had wrote to her. And at the time when her grandmar wrote was it was very simple. It was just two words, three words um, And I thought, oh, like that was like the laziest answer, and at the that's all I thought, But it was like I was just like a really lazy answer. And then my wife though, took that that little post and note and she put it on the picture of her grandma Grandpa and it's still in her bathroom, like studying on the counter. And now years later, I see it, like every time I happened to be in there, I see it, and I think about it a little bit more each time. And now when I look at and I think about it, and I think about maybe what she meant by this three words, it's very poignant and it's it just simply her very best marital advice was simply giant box, No that would be good though. It was simply love each other. Yeah, just love each other and all that goes into that. So I see that, Nollie every day, and it just it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, if you're thinking about that with all the different decisions you make, that is kind of the key, like just to remind yourself too. You know what, uh, you know what I did. This is marriage advice. You know what I did. When my kids are born, for all three of them, as I UH wrote them a big long letter that explains our lives, where I think they were conceived, what the circumstances, what our lives look like, what are my sort of apprehensions about them coming into the world, what are my hopes and fears for them, what's going on in general, what their parents were like. And then I uh put my own address on them. And then on the day they were born, I dropped him so they would get postmarked, and then I took him in back and sealed them in my pro I think, bad, you sealed them, and I'll give them to him when they get married. Probably that's cool. That's amazing, big long letters. I I I almost would dread seeing what's in the letter from eight years ago. Well, that's how I was gonna say that. Do you regret anything that you wrote in these letters? Or I don't want to know because I don't want to chicken out and not give it to him because they're very telling. It would be a lot better if I was dead. They're very telling, interesting like I would want. It would be smart to read it by yourself. Where did you get this idea? This just came to you or no, I don't think I made it up. Man, I can't remember, but I don't think I made it up. I feel like if I made it up, I'd be pretty proud of having made it up. And I remember making it up. It's good. I don't know why you've never chicken it out about it. I'm not gonna, man, I got a lot of difference between you and you eight years ago. It was so different. No, because they're really like they're really really telling of what who and what were eight years ago? Yeah, just like stuff like around uh we we had two kids and that was all we wanted at the time, and we had a third and telling someone that story. I wouldn't tell him that story when he's eight, Like what was going on in our lives? What led us to the decision? I don't know, just telling stuff. Thank your kids will be smart enough to read it in the voice of you as a late thirty year as the late thirty year old, and not the sixty year old you'll be when they read it. Yeah, I hope. So it feels a good letter. They're pretty good letters. I don't doubt it. Put a lot of effort in writing them name letters. Is that it? That's it? Man, I got one more guy, thanks man for making a fantastic hunting spot. Man. I got to see a lot of deer uh activity and and what am I trying to say? Things that they do behavior behavior that in all my years in white til hunt and I had never seen, yep, all kinds of deer peeing on their tarsal glands and scrapes. I didn't see you rubs happening, but no, yeah, I saw scrapes, no rubs, the licking branch seeing multiple times you guys heard a fight, you know. I got to see a buck come up and rub its orbital gland on the licking branch, work a scrape piste down his leg. A couple of minutes later, maybe more than a couple minutes later, another buck came, didn't do his orbital gland, but worked a scrape piste down his leg, and I got two cup minutes later watch a doe coming camp out on that spot. Nice. That's seeing some dear type ship going on. Man. Grunting, I bet you I heard maybe twenty grunts this week, fighting, grunting, chasing squirrels every which one. Normally when you see, I don't care if it is November ten. In Michigan, when you see a deer running, you're like, oh, goddamn, no no, but here you're like, oh, it must be a buck coming, you know, yeah, it's running from other It's really cool. It's really cool, like the just the wildlife habitat work here and watching it like bloom and take shape. Man, we're just getting started, and I mean, it's been a pleasure having you all here, and I would like to know any and all. Thanks you guys. Think we might be able to do to make things a better experience. Cut more shooting lanes, Yeah that's yeah. Yeah, that's how you get it killed, but you're kind of focused on getting it alive. Yeah, don't don't worry. I'll be I'll be trim and lanes here soon. Alright, everybody, thanks for listening to

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