00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Casey, I'm Tyler, and I'm Jack, and you're listening to the Element podcast. What's happening on my woods? People? It is a beautiful day in Kansas. It's eighty one degrees out right now. The White Tell weather Man had given you the report here. Do not forget who I am Casey. You're driving, I am driving. That was not a good decision, ah man. Lots of lots of bad decisions and good decisions have been made in the past eight or nine days. So let me just say this. Casey is a very responsible driver. He he follows the speed limits and puts uh puts the crews on at the speed limit, like all the time, all the time. Uh. I don't know if it's because we're an on your truck and you have don't have Navvy because your Navvy usually tells you what speed limon is right, it does. And we ended up going a little bit fast in the spot and those heels did you come down off the hills and sometimes don't realize over actually it's eleven over and Jack's calling you out. It wasn't just a little bit to let the air out of his tires. When you get on silver bullet will not be a bullet. Yeah, but we were pulled over from multiple violations. Yeah we were. We were, so I bore the brunt of that situation. And uh, well, now either accused um Kansas Department of Transportation of giving me COVID or pay a ticket. I haven't decided which wanted to do yet. I think the COVID thing is a good idea for sure. Man. Mr guy did not observe social distancing or wear a mask whenever he came and ticketed. He did not. I made a joke about running ninety the rest of the way home, and he kind to laugh. He wanted to so real mad at himself, he wanted to laugh for real bad. He doesn't understand, is Casey, you can break them them all, break them all, dude. That's why he left so quickly after that. He's like, Yeah, these guys are too cool. That's it. That it anyways, Um, what are we gonna try to start it like day eight and go backwards or what? Man? No, we're so we're Here's the thing while we're in Kansas is because we're heading back from South Dakota. It's a long ways. Um we actually, um, we hunted in Nebraska this morning. We'll talk more about that here in a second, but I just wanted to kind of uh talk about while we are. We are where we are. We're hoping to make it in tonight in a decent time. It looks like we will. And we have been in South Dakota since Tuesday. Tuesday, No, it was, it was just tuesday. Yeah, so we left on Monday. Okay, correct, So yeah, we uh we got there on Tuesday and we um, we have had a blast, man, I mean, it's it was so much fun. We are plan was I mean, this is a place. This, first of all, is the state we've never need, neither one of us, all three of us have been to and part of the country in a type of habitat that neither of the three of us, none of the three of us have seen. So there's uh pretty cool mystique to that and like adventure to it and everything. Um, but there's also a big challenge, right learning curve which is one of your favorite words that we need to uh in true South Dakota forum, you gotta call it a challenge since we've been up there. First of all, one of the first things that we learned in South Dakota is that they speak a very different version of English than we do. I think it's actually a I think it's an English version of German. I think that might be it. Yeah, it was. I guess it depends on who the person is, because some of the people didn't have that thick of an accent. But was it lady at that cafe, she's the one that was like the you couldn't understand it. Wh but y'all, y'all missed the first lady that was the the pizza place. Yes, man, she was behind the counter and she was only in there for a brief minute. I don't know, like it's kind of weird. I feel like just random residents of the town work that community still, like um, it's like they're on the honor system to where everybody kind of maybe they have the communism thing kind of like the reservation does, where it's like everybody kind of has part ownership of that communion story and just all take turns working it and there it's like if you can make however much profit you can make, why you work it is what you make. So I think that is probably how it goes because they're all friendly, so which means they're trying to make it the most profits that the code is a very friendly state to hunters. Yeah, yeah, you know, I hate to be the way, but when you're traveling around, you don't always just be like, I'm up, you're hunting, you know, because some people might just spink your food or whatever. Nobody wants to eat spit, you know. But even if it's for y'all but Germans. Uh, but like they were like, y'all hunting, like yeah, which is weird. None of it's had camo on or anything. Did you well the first time, maybe I had on extrat on. Oh well, they don't know what that is, but it says hunt hunt. That's good braining on ex guys. Maybe we should name an element. Oh that's a good idea, Yeah, the element hunt. Yeah, but let's not say that because they might make a shut of it. Somebody else might still that night. In fact, let's just stop recording now because anything forward will be stolen. Um. Anyways, I got some pizza and then harvested our first animal. Shortly, they're yeah, definitely it was a harvest. I would say, I'm telling out of that town, that particular that particular town. It became sharp tail Mecca shill grouse. So we had to do a little research on this. Our friend Brian Coke from Ultimate upland that, Brian, that's the only plug you're ever going to get from me ever again? Uh? Is he told me here, told us or whatever that like he was going to be in North Dakota this time of year this summer. He was telling us this and he was like, you know, telling us how there's a much sharp tails all up and through that area. And I was like, it's some kind of weird bird I've never heard of, you know, but it sounds like a you know how it is when when bird hunters tell you there's a bunch of birds, sometimes it means just five, you know, like especially him because he doesn't posting pictures of birds as achillium. It's like the limit on pheasants and some taps is three. So when somebody says there's a bunch of birds, what what does that mean? Yeah? Yeah, so um but I looked up sharp tails this summer and I was like, oh, those are pretty cool, man. Like the males have some kind of orangeish yellow and like purple eyelids or something or or another whatever I don't remember exactly what they look like because we didn't get any up close looks at any of them doing their leg thing or whatever. But um, they are a chicken sized bird, kind of about like a pheasant with a short, shorter tail. Um. They are very closely related to the lesser prairie chicken. I think, and um are actually considered via the South Dadakota's Game and Parks website. They're like considered is a part of like an aggregate when you look at them with a limit and stuff like that. I think it's like when you shoot ducks. You can shoot five ducks, but they can be a combination of different ducks, right, you could shoot or you could shoot say six ducks. Five of them could be mallards, or you could have to you know, pintails or whatever it might be. These are the same way. It's like the limits five or whatever it is. And um, I guess because they resemble each other so closely and their heart to the difference, they just decide, Yeah, you can shoot five prairie chickens, or you can shoot five sharp tails or three and two or whatever. You ever figure out if there was a limit on partridge. Yeah, there's hungarian partridge up there that don't do we ever see any I don't know that. Do you know what they look like? No, i'd like those other birds. I don't know. I don't know. I don't either, Like I mean, if you got them up closet and should they look different? But I was thinking it was a chucker. Is that not? Is that chucker? Like Chucker's different street name for it or something. Now, chucker is a different deal, Okay, I think hungary partridge. Uh, you buy that and fly shops to tie certain flies with, you know. And it's like a really modeled brown looking jack's pulling up a picture of it. It's very much looks very much like a trucker, right, No, it looks more like the truck tail on the back. Yeah, but the head kind of looks like a chucker gray on it kind of yeah, yeah, but it didn't have the mask or whatever though, who knows, dude. Yeah, there there's some weird, uh small medium sized birds that are exotic in America. There is but a native bird that was harvested right right back, right back to the story, right, So yes, we uh, we started seeing these birds everywhere and they're like in the ditches. It's getting kind of like golden now or you know, and so like, I guess they're coming out to like, uh kind of feed on grit and stuff by the roads. And they're everywhere, dude, in case he keeps pointing them out. It's, oh my goodness, what are these? We're like it's like they're sharp deels, you know, they're prety checking something whatever, and so like we're seeing them, we're seeing them like, uh, finally, I'm like, man, I hope I don't hit one or something, you know. And uh, all of a sudden, this group of like seven gets up and starts flying. The wind is cooking by the way, and of course they get up into the wind right well, the wind happens to be pushing across the road. And how ain't saying I try to hit one. But I ain't saying I try to get out of the way either, Dude. We smoked one straight on. It. It wasn't like a poof it was. I thought it broke my truck, which I still haven't checked on listen, But yeah, it like smoked it straight on, dude, And we flipped out because, to be honest, we wanted to hit one. Uh, we wanted to eat one. We wanted to eat one. And so I'm not sure if we've eaten it or we kept it or not, I can't really say. But we did want to like at least see one, you know. So it was it was pretty pretty interesting. We stopped turn around and got some pictures of it and stuff. But yeah, we figured out it was a sharp tail grouse and we continued seeing a bunch of them. It's up there's hundreds up there. I mean they're around and you have to South Dakota very friendly to hunters in like personally and then also like just as a state when it comes to licensing and stuff, except for the bird stuff. They know got birds, yeah, they want they want bird hunters, right, So they managed for having a bunch of it in southa coast known as the pheasants state, right, and it's got so many different Well, the thing is you can go there and you can kill five pheasants. You can kill five praye chickens or sharp tail a day, and then you can keep three times that is a bag limit, like you can rack it up. Yeah, so they're small game. License of what you have to have is a hundred and twenty one bucks as a non resident and our big game tag does not include that made us so sad because we did bring a shotgun. Yes we we weren't going to spend a hundred and twenty dollars with the one shell between the three of us because we had one shell. So uh, you know, we definitely could have probably found some gone and bought some shells somewhere. But I will say this, that's some remote country it is. There's a lot of South Dakota that doesn't have uh, anything more than what you were saying as a gas station town. Dude, I'm telling you from the Nebraska lying north, it was just gas station towns. That's it. Yeah, yeah, so and and so we uh anyway, we ended up hitting that that sharp tail. I can't even figure out what to call them, like, I've called them all kinds of things on this trip. We uh, we hit it. And anyway, we made it up to our spot, the spot that we had picked on the way up as being the spot we wanted to end up for the first evening, and we got there with like maybe an hour daylight left. This is our scouting day. We wanted to be there a little bit earlier, but ends up It's just a long way to South Dakota, especially if you're gonna go anywhere further than the state line right, so it's you there's actually no straight lines in South Dakota. You have to zig and act to get places too. So it just takes a quite a while. And we got there pretty much in just in time to Glass Golden Hour, which, for all intents and purposes, was the most uh effective. It would have been nice to drive around more and get an aisland smag and different stuff in the area, but um, we figured out some of that stuff just driving up. Uh. But we had picked a spot on public land that we could go up glass across some private to some other public that we thought would be good habitat for deer. Is that legal? A glass across airspace a private man, You're you're talking. You're gonna have to call the Department of Interior and see what they have to say about Um. Personally, I feel like I'm outside the statute limitations one bend seven days or more. Son's I did it, so it's fine, definitely, Yeah, And there weren't they corners involved. It was across you know, core across it's bad. Just across on the side, it's fine. Yeah, definitely don't do not take legal advice from the element. Were on top of a pretty good hill though. So how far does the airspace go up at their own? You know? Well, that's a that's a good question. Is it from the uh, is it from like the lower deck or is it from a certain elevation? At what point does it airspace become international or what? I don't know. It's a good quot. You're gonna have to call the international authority on that. I think I know who that is. Okay, he's a fellow podcaster. Oh man, Well, uh, we're a glass in a mile and a half away pretty much too. Um, a belt of habitat that was near some agriculture and uh actually, um, maybe had sent us a new spot in scope. It's like this was the STN or something like I don't remember. Maybe that's too. That's too. Yeah, So that thing was super handy. It wasn't a it's not like a super powerful one, but it's a um super handy. Yeah. SUPERD is a local gas station for from but it's uh, it was slightly outgunned at the mile and a half could you could definitely still tell stuff, you know. Um, no fault of the scope, it's just it's it was like a big sizeable buck target buck, which we saw three the first night exactly. There's target bug target that sucker. But like anyways, that scope was bad to boone and a half, Like it was just it's a game changer because you you all were looking through binoculars. I was looking through the scope. I've got a cactus needle in my leg on field from that spot. Probably, Um, you also sat on the Oh my god, Kylie, but boy got up quick, dude. Um. The way we had found this spot is you know, we were looking on on X pretty hard before we hit it up there, and it was I mean, guys, you've heard us talk about it a good bit, but on X is just super integral to what we do all the time, and probably never more than this trip, honestly, because it's a place we've never been, no one's been there, we don't know anything about it, and we're trying to figure out what's private, what's public. Were there's deer and all that kind of stuff. I mean, And let's talk about this a little bit while we're on the subject. We we had, um, you know, and we'll kind of go into this, but like the next several days, we had to do a lot of driving to find properties and stuff, and we were pretty much on on X for six days straight or whatever, you know, And and that was what we did. And so it's a huge deal for us. You know, um when we go out of state. And I'll just say this, speaking of out of state, Um, we just released a releasing tonight as this podcast releases a uh map Scout Challenge, Yes for the state of Illinois, which is aweso known as I was sometimes apparently because there's some giant bucks. I mean that Missouri buck that we got on camera was really big. Um, this dude's just gnarly. I can't help but use the word aggregate again because it's a fun word to say we got two big bucks when this sucker one of them being like, I don't know, kind of like a once in lifetime top deer for a he's heavy, got double hooks man on G two's Big Dear. You'll see me in the thumbnail. But it's worth watching the whole thing to see. It's all about some stuff. Yeah, and uh, just a real quick shout out to our buddy zekle Um. He helped us out getting that camera and stuff. So appreciate Zack. Thanks for for going and doing that for us. So if you see a new guy in the UH in the video, it's him, just don't be wigged out like you all of a sudden got to a different video or something. We might do some more stuff with him in the future. He made a really cool like UM hunting rig that we might try to talk about us at some point in time. But yeah, So anyways, in South Dakota, we got there in glass and as Jack said, I was using the spot or y'all were using the binos, and um, y'all could tell stuff we're deer, but only I could really see what they were and what was going on. And we also couldn't tell sometimes that there was a deer there until you had pointed it out there. And you know, at that distance, black dots can be about near anything, so it's kind of hard to tell. Um. But either way, that spot that we found on the map really worked out well because we were nowhere near those deer. It was the only place that you could get to see them moving from their band it's to the food you know, you couldn't even if you would have been on the other side of the food, you wouldn't been able to see because of the rolling in. So you know, having the uh topographical lines laid over uh, you know, the aerial or whatever like a hybrid mode was super handy. But um, like Jack said back to that, we spotted three bucks coming out of one particular particular little drainage, uh, and they like very intently walked to two groups of trees what ended up being you know, kind of saplings or whatever once we got there later in the hunt, but we knew that they were just walking these two trees, and at that moment we knew it was like, Okay, well that's the bed defeat pattern. If we can get in there and get on that, we can kill deer, we can we can see bucks. And it was a huge confidence booster. First night in there. We talked about the first twenty four hours quite a bit. We did a podcast on it last year about a year ago, and the first twenty four hour it was like looking good at this point, yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, And then we looked at the next seven days of weather and wind and the wind it was hysterical. Literally, I mean and when I say hysterical, I don't necessarily mean in the laughing scene. Yeah, that's the full sense of the word hysterical. Pull your hair out. It was like, uh, the wind switched every twelve hours and it was whatever that basically these deer on the north and south pattern from bed to feed and whatever pattern that was in say the morning, it would be the opposite wind of what we needed, and then that afternoon a northern would blow in and we would get the opposite or whatever, you know what whatever would The deer had the wind in their face every day, every day, every evening, every morning, and they were pretty much and we we thought this, but we we couldn't. We have confirmed it since these deer we're going to move in the same direction pretty much on the same trails no matter what the wind was, so like could be super effective if you just had the right wind. And literally for the next four days it was just like ridiculous, man, the wind would switch, you know, we'd get uh, we'd get a front come in at night and blow the wrong way and then we get you know, they would settle and it would you know, because they are all just many fronts there or whatever. I guess they weren't like you know, those big cold fronts that last two days months and months months because it's South Dakota, right, Yeah, but so they were and you know, it was just consistently cold the whole time too. Man. We had freezing temps every night except for the last night freezing Jack's too, freezing Jack's Man. I was cold. Hey you speaking of I got a pro tip for people. Um, so we camped just to be uh completely honest here. Uh, and we'll talk more about that later on, I think, but uh, just a quick pro tip. I slept the first night in a fifteen of greef sleeping bag, and I got kind of cold in the early morning or late morning hours, you know, before I woke up. And then the next several nights in a row, I took my down jackets and I put them in my bag with me, and I put one of them underneath me because I wasn't necessarily cold, just spots on me or cold, so I put them underneath me and or one of them underneath me, and it's like it takes away because you're down, sleeping bag crushes underneath you, and then you're you know, your bug gets cold. Yeah, so you add that little down jacket underneath you and you're loft. Uh Am. I was warm, super warm, and that's the trip so pro pro tip. And when you put your jacket on in the morning, it's warm exactly. Yeah. I put my pants in my jacket in my sleeping bag. My my socks take quite a bit. Like I did my socks. As soon as the alarm and go off, I would just grab my clothes and stick them in the bag for the while, and it heated him up pretty quick. Yeah. It's one of the nice things about a down bag is that man, for about thirty seconds, it's kind of cold in your bag, but they heat up growing. Dude. It's crazy, man crazy. But it's anyway, so back sweets camping spot too. Yeah, so anyway back to the kind of the storyline. Here we are we uh we we kind of it gets dark, We find that these deer moving we were in the direction we need them too, and everything. We're really excited. We're gonna get back up in the morning and and uh glass him again because it's the next day's opening day. But we don't have a great plan of what to do. I think we we know, we knew the we knew the win would be good for that opening day. We really hadn't like thought out like extensively what the wind is gonna do the next few days. So we decided to get up in glass again. And that's I think that's when I really got cactus raised. Is that next morning. I don't know for sure. I got cactus raised a few times, UM, but still just kind of confirmed that that's where the deer were. I mean, that's the spot. And we got to thinking about it and got to look at it on the map and then you realize, man, this thing is like over a mile from a county road. Yeah, you know, it's way back there. And I mean, and that's that's uh, you know, in a place that doesn't get hunted super hard, rural South Dakota, UM, hunting pressure is relative. We talked to actually, uh Spencer new Heart the Meater, We talked to him a little bit before we hit up here, because he's from South Dakota, and uh Spincers like, yeah, man, you know, you might have quite a bit of pressure there might well, I can't remember, that was quite a bit of pressure out in the road. I can't do Spencer very good. Uh, that little retster is just hard to hit. But he was like something about it might be a madhouse or something like that. I was like, bro, if this is a madhouse to you, I can't I can't wait see what's like on a slow dad, you know. But there were some guys around a lot of Spencer to everything he said was right on. He knew. He gave us lots of good information and tips and thoughts and it was all around on on point. Yeah, So thanks for that, Spencer. Our idea of pressure and his idea of pressure a lot, and that's okay. There's no right or wrong to it was. I thought it was awesome, you know, like as far as how much pressure was. We saw some guys, uh maybe like two different groups of of hunters that we knew were probably deer hunters. Outside of that, it was a love wunters, mostly lots of bird hunters. Yeah, that's true. But that first morning, um, I kind of figure out that's where we wanted to be, and from there decided to pack up our camp and try to head and camp closer to where the deer work. Um, wasn't that our first objective didn't we go and set up camp and then decided to go try to look around and find like playing bs and stuff like that and that kind of the idea. Yeah, I think that's right. So we went to set up camp, and like Jack said, we had a really sweet spot and we found a windmill that wasn't working and it had like a little corral or something right beside it, and it was kind of had grown up some time waiting stuff inside of it. And so it gave us a good north wind block, which we had a lot of north winds there, and um, it was pretty much our camp for the next several five days or whatever it was. It was good, man, it was good goodness for the cold because there was no prairie rattlers. Yeah that you saw. Casey actually saw bears and I saw prairie rattlers. Yes, I saw what had to be evidence of black bears. Had to be. There's no other thing it could have been. I mean, there's just so many things that duke like a bear, that's bears. A song man, Yeah, it can be like a bear. I have one thing that that way you can like a bear, you can like a bear. I think it's a faver hair you can like a bear. Yeah, but there had to be black bears around, not by our camp, but definitely something going on in some of the places, which makes sense because there's our culture, it's endemic habitat for a black bear, and it was super close to Montana at that point, you know, so yeah, yeah for sure. Um. But anyways, got that camp set up and I think from there, didn't we drive around? We had established that we weren't really going to be able to hunt there That night at the dear Spot, having a hard time remembering yeah, no, the so you know, we could make a long story short here and say that the next several days were uh, kind of hard to remember because it was all the same of us just driving and desperately trying to find places to hunt and talking each other out of going and hunting the honey hoole. Yes, you know that was really what was going on. It's like, man, this is like seriously, there was There was one afternoon where I talked to Casey into hunting it and then out of it in the same like you know what I mean that happened. I was like, gosh, I just can't we like you want to go in there, so back as you know, it's just buck fest. And we did have um, I think maybe day day three of hunting. I think we had morning where we were able to barely intrude, right or something like that. Yeah, I got to go in there, um and be pretty close, but uh not like danger close. Really is that? Well, what you do the day that Jack and I hunted on top of the hay bals um? What was that? That was like the first morning to Yeah, so it wasn't opening day. It was the morning after the first morning we hunted, hunted that dead cotton. Yeah, you pushed in barely. Yeah, I was just still almost shot a deer. Yeah, I had Uh, I had two does come to twenty five yards. I didn't think I was gonna hardly see anything. I mean, I thought I might see a few, But it's observations. It was definitely observationist. But I had, I had two doughs. I didn't even get a stand set up. I got eight foot up on a limb. I was kind of running late and we we Uh, I got y'all dropped off in time. But it's a long way back over to where which is another problem. We had the whole time was like we had to hunt close to each other, but out there, dude, close is a very another relative term. It's like dad coming. Some of these places are far from that. You know. What's funny. Closest we ever hunted together was I guess that day three or four spot where we all walked in with Jack and I walked in like one eight a mile and a eighth and you walked into mile in a quarter and we're pretty close. That's right, man. Yeah so uh but yeah, we um anyway, I had I had a buck that morning as well, like sixty yards, but he wasn't super big. Is just a little one and a half year old people. And uh so we ended up um over the next of course the next few days, um just really struggling to find what we were calling buck holes, not to be confused with other things, uh, but the places that bucks lived, right, So like you're looking for in a lot of states, you're looking for a bachelor group of bucks on a property, we're looking for a place that holds like several bachelor groups, you know what I mean, because that's it's a big country, right, and so these buck holes are similar to the place we found the first night. Um, just small plate or patches of habitat that are far from the road and hold bucks. And here's the thing is it sounds simple, right, like go to the map, look at a place that's three quarters to a mile and a half end that has good timber and that hasn't been molested much and it's gonna have bucks in it, right. But no, because like you just mentioned, we hunted. You hunted a mile and eighth or whatever. I hunted a mile and a quarterback in and these two drainages leading up to like alfalfa on one side and planted wheat on the other, like good stuff, man, um super remote and we both go in there and hunt. Y'all didn't have a very good hunt at all, and I saw a couple of mueled your does. The wind was just real terrible. The thermals were bad that day, and our stand was just perfectly terrible for thermal's years was a little bit of better set up. I had that probably the hardest treat to get in possible for Casey, and it was well, mine was pretty easy. Jack work, help boots, and it really made that's that's a thing, it wasn't it wasn't an easy hang. But by the way, you'll get ready because Jack's about to create a Kawie Jack's Cokaway Boots Instagram profile, so you'll need to go follow that. Um anyway, and you know they're still apparently getting used even though apparently for some reason, like skis so, but I I had a pretty good hunt there and I saw thirteen does It's like, man, if you see that many deer, how is it that you see no bucks? You know, man, I feel like, um, mule deer or just to touch more like a herd animal too. Yeah. So it's almost as if you take that bachelor group dope family group thing and like, uh grow it exponentially, you know what I mean? Like, well, I mean that's true. I only saw three different groups a dear for all thirteen so um, and then I think that, um, that was part of our journey and trying to learn and understand what would hold mule deer versus white tail. But that's not something we're will really have figured out. Great, we have tough to do in that country, man, and we haven't completely figured out that. What why wire bucks there? You know? Um? Because like pretty much anywhere there was some habitat that you would say there's probably deer in there. There was deer, but not all of them. All of them had those, not all of them had bucks, you know what I mean. So it's kind of a weird thing. Habitat's the limiting factor up there. It's kind of funny because I feel like where we live in Hunt, a lot of times food is a limiting factor. Um, but up there there's food everywhere pretty much. I mean, yeah, you've got some grassland stuff and some great stuff. It's not that great, but like there's an egg around, there's gonna be food. It's just is there a spot for a deer to find a whole to live in? You know? That's that's what limits it. So that's you're driving around all the time. Man, deer would eat that so much. But can they find a place to napture in the day in the shade? You know, That's that's kind of what you're trying to find to hunt exactly. And that's that's what we did. We drove, I men, I mean one day we drove at least six hours probably most of you know, it's mostly my fault too. So this is a couple of days there was. There was lots of driving, maybe two or three days there. There was a lot of driving in the middle of the day, and we're trying to desperately find somewhere that um has a bed defeed pattern essentially like you said, because I mean there's plenty of you can look at plenty of spots um at least where we were at that have cover or or habitat like you said, or not have to uh, agriculture like you said. But if it doesn't have cover this time of year, it can get pretty warm up there, you know, so like other than a pronghorn, things are gonna need some shade. And so we were able to find both those two different things, but we weren't able to match them up very well and find a place to get between. And we honestly we wanted to hunt out a tree stands. I mean, people go up there, they want to stalk meal deer and stuff like that, and that's cool, and I'm I want to do that too sometime, But um, I was going up there to kill a good white tail, you know what I mean, up to kill kill a good deer, and um, Yeah, we talked about this a lot, and it's It's like, you know, we can use this as an opportunity to do something completely new and different and probably not kill anything, or we can do it we know how to do and adapted to our situation and maybe have a pretty good chance, you know. And ambush hunting is something that we know. It's something that uh, I don't want to say we're good at, but we do a whole bunch of it, you know, so experience. Yeah, why not just take what you know and apply to the situation and I'll understand you need to be adaptive. And we definitely adapted in certain scenarios. But like dude sitting back a mile and glassing up a whole bunch of badland stuff and trying to find a mule deer in a hole and sneak up and shooting. We I tried it once, right, found that a little a little forky and uh what, Ill didn't glass him up, just walked up, saw him and bent down, drew my bow and stood up and he was gone. You know, that would happen thirty times before I got to shoot. You know, Like, I don't want to do that. I want to put myself in high scenarios. So that's why well. And another thing about hunting from the ground or stalk and spotting stalk type stuff is like, um, and I've killed deer off the ground, man, uh spotting stalk that kind of thing. But like dude, a lot of the time, especially with the light winds we had early in the trip, you're gonna be shooting a shot that is either through grass, through brush uh iffy angle, or um, you know, at a deer that pretty much knows you're there. You know, like that, the shots are just not nearly as effective a lot of times, and like dude, you can these you know, people are thinking, you know, well, so and so does that, you know whatever, But like the thing is they yeah, and they do, but they they also probably uh bump a lot of deer and how a lot of eyes out there looking for the deer, and they also probably mess up some shots. And don't put it on video, you know what I mean, because that's just ground hunting unless somebody else kills it later in the season, then it's okay to yea video you can definitely do. I think one of the things too with on the ground is that for the most part, you're gonna have much further shots and you going back to put yourself in high situations. Um, I had some particular things happened later in the hunt that were, you know, some close stuff, but mostly from the ground. Your encounters are like forty yards usually. That's a good point about that. Like last year and on the Texas public Land buck that I shot, he was like seven yards. Yeah, you don't get that shot off on the ground. How many times where you like teen yards are less from deer this week? You know a couple of times five of them were at five yards y'all see the video. It's freaking crazy. Jack and I had um two bucks at like nine yards, right, And because there's just you don't get nine yards from you very often on the ground out of a tree, standing can happen pretty We don't get drawn on them in nine yards. They will see you, you know. I mean obviously if they look the other way, you can get lucky. But man, it's uh, they see everything ground level. It's it's just anyway. We're kind of justifying what we were doing. But like we definitely these are the reasons why we wanted to be between deer and their food source in a tree, you know what I mean? So Um. Anyway, we we um ended up uh maybe day four or five we ended up I guess five we ended up on the trip, we ended up um going and trying some new stuff. Okay, yeah, let's talk about that new stuff for a second though. Um, because day four we looked at one of those places and decided it wasn't worth honey, And I think that's the day we had our just road trip looking for public land. Ended up not hunting at all that evening, which was just a we were all kind of just blo after the end of that day. It was just not a great day. But um, it's interesting that we weren't paying hard enough attention or or asking the right questions. Um. And then on day five we were kind of in desperation because we've given ourselves a deadline of like what time we needed to make a decision as to where and how to hunt. And that's kind of what made us hunt there, because like, Okay, we don't want to end up hanging stands at five pm trying to you know, kill deer within the hour or whatever. We want to get in there in plenty of time. So we end up in this area and we had found a spot for Tyler and night of both hunts. That was from ten miles apart or something like that, fairly close right. And um, the place that Jack and I hung um was a place that we kind of turned our nose up at previously because we had seen a drainage that lad to agriculture. We pulled up and scattered the agriculture and we thought it was like some type of millet or like dookie milow or something in it. It looked like a baby milow. Yeah, and it had like a little head on it, but it wasn't like council, looked like big blue stem or something. It kind of looked like a just hay grazers that didn't work out or something. Well. Um, the next day we said, all right, whatever, we're gonna go hunt it. Just see what's there, you know, because it's a great drainage with a good creek and some trees. Uh. Well ends up. This stuff that we're thinking is the milo that we're like, well, that's dumb. Is a wildlife mix that is planted by the farmer. They plant some of it on some property that people can hunt, and some of that people can't. And this stuff is the food source there deer moving at four or thirty to go to this stuff to eat, you know, like three hours before dark. And I found that out because you hunted it. Yeah, it's tried, and we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't hunted it. Now, under further examination we figure out, oh, what this is is there's some type of milowish type stuff in there for birds, but there's also two different types of braskas in there for deer. There's a big old turnip and then like a horse reddish or something like that. You either way, they're they're eating the green stuff out of there. And dude, I think we should leave that one in there. Dude, Jack and I saw deer all evening long right there. There were mule deer doos. There were a little white toe bucks. There was a little white toebucks chasing mule deer dos. It was kind of crazy. It's all talk about a cross break hybridization, mam, and't it weird that people like to rage about that like that. It's just a mule here, um. But you didn't have quite as good a hunt and you thought you were going to hunt the at her spot And we're kind of feeling Yeah, that's going over there, and it was vice versa. U an idiot, you thought you were hunting alfalfa or something, right, Yeah, we we were. We had decided there was an alfalfa field and then I was gonna be hunting a creek system real close to it. And the thing is what we had been kind of dealing with, where are these Latin variable winds, which I'll try to call l v wins from now on, so in case you uh you know, are listening now, you can catch on it that later. Does that mean the raiders one this weekend? I don't know. Maybe, uh yeah, that's right. Um. So, anyway, we're having these lv wins and what they were what was happening is especially about at dark, you're talking about almost a zero uh mile per hour wind, and when you're hunting in these creek systems, are these little draws the thermalsum as the sun goes down, when big bucks come out, are gonna work down the draw They're going to suck your suck your wind, and you're sent down the draw um as the thermal sink down those draws. So what we're having issues with is that a lot of these draws head out at the at the agg, you know, the agg would be planted up high and the and the draws you know obviously working down to the low ground where all of the brush and stuff is that deer bed in. So we're having to trouble in the evenings hunting um, you know, dear heading to agg because they've got to win in their face with these ELV winds. So we found this place that actually I was able to hunt um like like almost like a spider web of these head headed out draws that were like four draws that headed out in this particular public and then came down into the main system and then another two d yards or so down. I was able to hunt uh deer that we're moving from that to what we assumed was in alfalfa field A little turns out as I'm walking in, and we didn't This was a day we drove a lot, obviously, and we were just baked, and we just couldn't assess very accurately that this was not actually how falfa was some kind of a hay grazer that had been recently cut. And I talked about this in the video a little bit. Um I had had a bad hunt. I saw five white tail deer, and none of them came from where I projected that they would come from, wh which is where all these had these drawls head out, and so um my thoughts were that the hay grazer was had been recently cut and so it had new growth coming up and the deer were eating it. But that because it was a hay grazer, there was no like summertime food source in there that was there all summer. That created a big draw for all that here in the area to be there. So I just had like a few of those white tail dolls that were around going towards that that hay field essentially just eat some of the fresh green stuff that had come up, you know. And what we were finding is when we had alfalfa or something like that that it was that had been planted all summer and been getting cut and stuff like that, it's like a big draw for a lot of deer, you know. So I had a pretty bad hunt. Um and I say that, you know, five year in East Texas on public land, We're like, oh my goodness, we had the greatest time ever. Spend an hour telling you while we saw some does you know a dope style right there. Man. But well, uh, yeah, that that was a tough night for you. Uh, but y'all had a good hunt. We had a good hunt, man. We saw a lot of deer. Um. The next day is when things got real interesting. Day six of the hunts. How appropriate, man. Uh, finally the evening of day six, we get our wind. We've been waiting that morning. Do you remember, I think we glassed around a little bit. Uh, spent some time walking around midday and uh, we were just kind of biding our time. Yeah, to that evening. I think Joe biden our time. Yeah, yeah, for sure, forgot what we're doing. Really, Uh, Jack, don't say anything about how you're voting for him. You always have to day you always have to say. Um. But Spencer new Heart just texted me he wants to know what I killed. You don't get to know either, be on the inside, which you probably just dropped a little teaser in the podcast. How about it you did, Dan, I didn't think about that. Days Well, we kind of we're leading up to the day six. We're pretty much here here pretty much so um at this point in time, I'm gonna kind of hunt slightly more conservative than y'all are y'all are gonna push in pretty hard that day. So Jack went with you. He had been with me most of the time, and he went with you to go film, and um, I stayed up kind of high, but I ended up setting up on that little clump trees that we saw bucks going to. But you and Jack had pushed into kind of like the buck hole. Yeah, the buck hole. We had pushed into. The buck hole wasn't gonna say it, but you did say it. So yeah, we uh, we did push into the buck hole and it was scary, man. I could dude. This is how I just live for this stuff. You know. It's like game day, man. It's like when I played football, is game day man, and you just you just got this like butterfly in your stomach all day, you know. And it was the same day for the same thing for me. On that day, We're like the whole day, I knew the weather, the wind was gonna do what I needed to that evening. So the whole day I'm just like, like the day before, I'm like, oh, we're gonna kill And then what we should talk about mid day a little bit more a party mid day. So yeah, so that the day before, I'm like I see the wind, the wind prediction, and I'm like, oh, I would like tell my wife. I'm like, oh, we're you're we're killing tomorrow and I you know, like just so you know, we're coming home, you know, and um and then of course Sunday gets there and I'm like, I don't know, you know, they couldn't might not having you know, and so uh but like something happened and we all like turned this swag switch on about we turned on radio. We turned on radio and that's what got us going. Dude. They had a double header of of Michael Jackson. It was just after that. Yeah, we were bumping out on the planes. Dude. The wind was like it is a nice you know, it's a warm day finally because we had been having like degree days, which people are listening to Michigan right now are laughing at us. But like if it ain't seventy in the middle of the day, like we are bundled, you know jack it. Yeah, so uh we had we we did h our first, like bath, We took our five gallon water deal and uh, you know, some sent sent no scent shampoo and just took bath. Pretty much underneath that thing, and we felt fresh. We took our boots off. We're basically out there, Like I know this sounds bad. We're out there in our underwears on the planes, get some Vitamin D, you know, just getting sunshine and um and just thinking about buck holes, you know, I mean, we just it reminded me a little bit. If you've ever seen the movie Gone in sixty Seconds, Um, like they have this like thing they do before, like they're big highest of the cars. They all sit around and listen to it's like a specific song. I felt like that's what we were doing. We were like we were getting into our mindset of like it's time to go get it done. Yeah, when bon Jovi came on and made us feel like real men, you know, we were like, man, this guy's like five ft you know or whatever, So we're actually man, you know. We made us feel good and so and we only say that because bon Jovi's you know, got way more money than us. But uh, anyway, so we decided to go into the buck hole and uh, we know that's about to happen. We party, We go in and uh we kind of like walk in together. It's pretty good. Hall it's like when you said it was like a mile or so, probably probably a mile from where we had to park the truck for us or whatever. And so we, uh, we dropped k C off. Essentially we go to this like there's this one big draw that comes out of kind of this the buck hole pretty much in heads up to the egg, and so we dropped KC off of the head of this straw um kind of to the west of where we're going in, and then we just worked down this just draw and it is super steep. Its way steeper than I thought. I knew once I was steep, the other side was even steeper than I thought. And um, we worked down in there, and it's like, it's weird because we we have one of the confidence things that we had going on was that it wasn't just the right wind. It was like attend to fifteen all afternoon, and so we're like, oh, this is perfect, no thermals, you're gonna have sound cover and that kind of thing. Well, we walk into this canyon so deep there's no wind down in the canyon and so and like I said, it's been freezing every night there. It's fall in South Dakota, right now. I mean it's like there are hardly any leaves on the trees right now, all the ash and hackberry and drop leaves, and so we're just crunching, dude, and all of a sudden, this thing busts in front of us, and it's the biggest contel you've ever seen, and like which the next day, by the way, did you saw that? Gosh, dude, he did it. He kept He would bust and run like twenty yards, disappeared. Then you'd forget about him and you walk real slow for the next like minute and a half, and then it would bust again, and it would scare you every time it did like five times. Me and Jack are in there, and dude, I'll give props to Jack old squeaky pack Jack. He was super quiet and the cowboy boots did you wear boots into the canyon And I don't know how he was not sliding because this thing was steep, but he wasn't sliding in. He was being quiet, dude, he's been He was doing a hill toe stepping over stuff with his toe, I mean, being accurate. But anyway, we get in there pretty quiet. We uh, we get into the very bottom of this canyon and it and um, it opens up into our buck hole and the the I didn't know exactly where I was gonna hang but the tree that I thought I was gonna hang in on the aerial was not in my favorite spot. And so once we got down in there, and so we're like walking and all of a sudden, we get to this main crossing trail that's heading perpendicular to the canyon and and it's running along this belt of timber that you talked about that's in our buck hole there, and I told I turned around, I told Jack, I said, this is him. This is the main trail right here. And we still had probably sixty or seventy yards of timber in front of us, and I just had to I just had a good feel. It's one of those things like I don't consider myself an expert, but I have enough experience that I'm blessed to have to get to go on these trips. We've talked about it on this trip, you know, and so like when I see that, I have a very very good feeling that that's the main trail. And so at that point, I was like, when we crossed this thing, keep your hands up don't touch anything. We're not trying to lay the ground sent down, but we need to cross it because I need to be able to shoot back into this belt a little bit further. And so we end up setting up like five seven yards from this trail, but it gave us an opportunity to get a good window for like forty yards the other direction kind of, so we had shots back that way. So anyway, we get, uh, we get to going up this tree and um, it's a what do we de sign? There's some kind of ash, right, They're not like your typical like river swamp ash that we've seen down on the bottom of you know, Texas or whatever stuff, but like it looks like an ash tree or they kind of look like hickories a little bit the hickories. Man. But anyway, this weird tree might have been like a beach or something like something we don't have around the house. That was definitely something different you know that we have I've never seen. And it has to have a tun of limbs on them, little bitty limbs, not big ones, and so kind of difficult, you know, Like I'm not saying, um, you know that we were doing any habitat manipulation necessarily, but like if you bumped a dead one, it was gonna break off, you know, kind of would remind you a little bit like a black Jack oak, that kind of limb streep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we wake our way up there and finally get up in the tree, or I do get up in the tree. I'm set, I set Jack's platform, and I'm starting to pull like camera stuff up and then I see something out a corner of my eye and We've got a buck at forty five yards and I'm like, oh man, So I tell Jack, you know, hey buck, He's like, is it big? And said, no, no, it's little. Just be still. You know, Jack's real good. This is one thing Jack does really going you say, be still, Jack will be still for the next eternity. Like he will not move. I mean, if he's looking up and he's gotta creek in his neck, he's just gonna keep looking up, you know. And uh so, like I realized that, you know, he needs to be still. But then but but that the buck doesn't have a clue that we're here. He's not looking at us. So in that buck kind of like noses down. I tell him he just relaxed, but be still, and so he does. Buck goes on by finally, and then we get up in the tree quick after that because it feels like it's getting Golden hour because it's kind of down in there, you know, and um, and so I get I tell him just to hurry up and get up here, and we get. We get everything up in the tree except from my bow, and um, we're kind of you know, putting the camera arm on and everything. And I didn't realize how loose I made Jack stand up, but it was pretty wallably. And so anyway, get up in there. Um, and we start seeing some dear moving out in the the native grass stuff like out kind of behind our buck hole timber, and um, they're they're so slow poking like that. I see three bucks working together, uh, and they're just it's taking them forever to to to do anything. And then we see two does and we're just having good conversation, kind of talking real quiet, you know, obviously whispering or whatever, but um, um, anyway, we are just hanging out talking and all of a sudden we hear something walking and it's pretty much I mean, we looked at each other and we pretty much both. I could tell new it was a it was a deer, you know what I mean, you could tell it was a deer walking, and so like I kind of turned my head and how the corner of my eye, I can kind of see that the buck is not a giant and so I told Jack, I think it's just a little buck, and I kinda he kind of came out. I mean, he's pretty close at this point, and he kind of comes out from behind the stick stuff, and I'm like, I just said, I'm gonna shoot this deer, and Jack like went into immediate shake mode. That's something I've noticed about Jack too. If it any in time there's a buck that like or there's gonna be a shot opportunity Jack, he gets a little buck fever. Not bad enough to call these problems, but it's just kind of fun, you know. I. Um, I'm the same way. Like I can't tell you how bad I was shaking in the HeLa when that bowl is staring man. Yeah, but I mean even deer and stuff. Dude, I shake hard when when you shoot deer. And uh anyway, so uh I got to grab my bow and this the this buck is coming down the main trail but he's coming from a different direction than we expected from And now that we've been in there, I I know why I think, um, because there's definitely dear bedded down there, but I didn't know for sure what I did know there was dear bedded to the east, but not necessarily to the west. And so he's, UM, he's kind of coming the wrong direction. So we're not completely set up to do anything that way. And UM, he pretty quickly walks into what I assume is our wind was what he's having trouble with. UM, But I had set up close enough to that trail that I thought, with the stiff enough wind that we had, that I would blow over the top of that trail possibly. And so UM, I think that truly is what what ended up helping us out in this situation, because he started stopping a little bit. I could hear him stopping, you know, when he got down wind of us, and then very quickly stopped and kind of relaxed, and souper got super relaxed. Man, it was weird like and I think it was just a matter of like he either caught our ground sent from where we walked in or just some kind of weird like quick thermal drifted down or something into him for just a brief second, but like he didn't uh, the wind was blown over the top of him. I have to think, you know, that's one of the fun things though, about going somewhere and heaven. Now, what's about words? Just not really trying to shoot the giantest buck you can. It's a good trump word day, but huge you just buck, you know, just having lower standards, get to hunt deer that just aren't quite as sharp as the big old daddies, and you can get away with stuff like well and and like you said, pressure is a relative term, you know, and so like a buck when in East Texas woods Man, you're probably not gonna see that buck for a while. It's that And that's weird because like in e t X, even the little baby Spiky's they know, it's like you ain't even seen a deer season. How do you know what's going on? It's like mom taught him, you know, or whatever. It's weird. But anyway, so he relaxes and goes back to kind of just poking and feeding, doing his thing, and um works kind of down off the main trail. At this point, I think you know, um, I don't know if it may have been to ground center, but he kind of pushes off the main trail, but he's still go in the same direction as the trail kind of. And he gets before we can get like get the camera finally set up, and he's like relaxed enough for us to move a little bit more and stuff. And I get my bow kind of around to get squared up to him and everything. He's probably like twenty yards or so, maybe a little bit under twenty yards and Jack gets a camera on him. Then he goes over, um and he's behind this this big tree limb stuff that I don't have a whole lot of shots or any shots really in um if he and he goes over to this tree and he's kind of faced by this tree, and I'm thinking, man, I told Jack, if he takes three more steps, I can I can half squat and shoot him through this gap. He went backwards too, Yeah, or didn't like we were hoping he would come more out in front of me pretty much, which you wouldn't have had to squaw. Well, No, I was gonna have to squat that direction to Yeah, that was that was what I was talking about. Is I had a window if he had kept going towards your direction kind of, I had a window that I could squat and shoot him. So I told Jack three more steps, I can shoot him. And I said, are you on him? I couldn't really hear him, but he was on him. And UM, he ends up kind of seeing this little tree and kind of turning away from us and just raking this tree for like probably a good minute or so. Mad. He got mad, that's right. He knew it was an alpha in the in the woods, you know, so maybe too even uh So then he he like rakes this tree for a while and then ends up going kind of away from us. And I had ranged this like muleteer looking trail up the canyon that we came in on up the other side. Um, and I actually I guess I missed the trail, but um where I was ranging, um was not where like I've ranged at twenty five yards And I guess I didn't know exactly where the trail was because of the grass and stuff. But I just was like it was an open spot that I ranged. So it's twenty five yards. I knew that. So he starts heading up the hill up the up the drainage up the canyon and I'm like, I'm gonna get a shot here, and um, he gets going up the hill and he's not in my range spot, but I figured on five yards. More so, I figured him at thirty yards and I had to steal squat to shoot over there too, So I kind of squatted down and uh put it on him and uh, I'll let it go rip, show my girl. And it was so it was in the crease. He was quartered away pretty heavy, but it was crease and uh and UM got you know front, all the front of the lungs and all the arteries up there in the front kind of you know, it came out like basically the point of the shoulder on the opposite side or whatever, and so um, anyway, it was like butter dude, it was. It was insane in um still shooting those days six and I shot last year man, the whole setups to day six, arrows set up and broadhead and it made that I can't wait to listen to it actually on the video because I can remember exactly how it sounded. But it was just the like those heavy arrows make my bow quiet. And then you also like hit a spot that's a pretty soft spot behind the shoulder, and it's just like it sounds like a hot hot butter butter knife threw butter, you know, or whatever hot knife threw butter. Whatever to say, it's like, you know, it's just like and so it was. It was really cool though. But the the arrow, I couldn't see the arrow when I glassed it. But he ran off up the hill and when he gets to the top and like cress over into the next part of the canyon. I could have swore I saw this blood shoot out the right side of him, which he I hit him on the left side, and so, um, I didn't say anything to Jack about it. And we're sitting there just partying and Jack starts shaking and we're laughing at inside and we're hitting each other and stuff, you know, and uh, I actually knocked him out of the stand almost just passed out, o ye, because he was like corner I looking the whole time, you know, and just he was like, he goes, I'm almost passed out, dude. And so anyway, we're partying and stuff, and then Jack goes, I'm pretty sure I saw blood shoot out of the side there, and I was like, dude, me too, you know. So that was when you hear that and you didn't say anything about it, and you thought the same thing. You're like, oh, this is good. You know, this is a good sign. So we were pretty sure he was gonna be dead somewhere, not too far um. And so these deer were still out in this are in this c RP field, you know, out through all the timber, and I could see I'm kind of all out there still if I glass a few of them, and I knew they were probably still in the same groups together. So I ended up um saying, okay, let's just calm down, do a little post shot interview, do some beer roll breakdown real quick but super quiet, and get out of here before it gets too dark so that Casey can come in here, because the next morning was a super good wind to hunt big bucks on down in there, and I was like, we can get out of here, and Casey, you know, these big bucks will be the last one. So even if we did spook a deer, it probably wouldn't be a big buck. We can get out of here, go up to the hill and there was a place that we could sit where we wouldn't be able to see over into the canyon where my bucket run off, so hopefully it wouldn't bust him if he was you know, still uh bedded up or something like that. And then where I thought we might be able to kind of see what was going on your side, and so we we uh break down, get out of there real quick, hop up the hill. We're sitting there and we're just we're just having a good time and we're just having good conversation talking, watching the sun go down man kind of your direction and uh and basically you know, just having a good time, you know, and excited that we were pretty sure we got a deer on the ground, you know, and so uh, I don't want to like we kind of could watch your hunt a little bit. Uh So, like I don't want to steal any details from you, so you can go ahead and talk about on y'all said, you kind of dropped me off. We all walked in on the same trail, and then y'all continued on whenever I stopped. Um, I hunted pretty much the same drainage all did, but I was hunting deer that we're coming from a different direction. For the most part, I intentionally, or initially intended hanging it saddle up in a tree. Um, that was kind of sparse, but I thought I could make it happen. Then I got there and realized there's like no strategic advantage to being in a tree, because it's one of those situations that you run into in country where the terrain, especially an open country terrain, where sometimes you're hanging a tree but your eye level with the deer, and it's like, man, um, what am I doing here? You know what I mean? Like all I knew it is making it harder on myself to be because I'm up in a tree. Not to mention that tree was like the size of two baseball bats. Yeah, I've hung in smaller trees, but it's been a while. Um, I thought maybe I could get a little cover. But I got up there, it's like, man, if this thing was fiftet above the deer, I'd hang in it all day and there's no leaves on that tree, no leaves at all. If but being eye level or barely above the deer like they're gonna see you there. I got down on a tree within like five minutes and decided to go sit in those clumps of bushes that the deer we'd seen like six days earlier, walked to the bucks well ends up those bushes are American plums. I think they're different than our little chickasaws that we have at home. They're kind of thicker and the leaves a little bit different, but kind of the same principle where it creates like this little habitat pocket. Right. So the one I I set up in is probably um, I don't know, fifteen by fifteen clump of trees. And in the inside there there's like kind of tunnels or trails or whatever. Deer you spend a lot of time in there, and there's rubs on these things, so you you kind of can tell, especially on like a bed to food pattern. I haven't done this a ton because they don't get to hunt that the type of pattern a lot. But it seems like bucks will have a spot they like to stop and kinda uh do their gregarious things that they do, where like they want to like leave sand and rub on trees and like to see what other bucks are around. It's like, and once I walked over there was like, man, this is gonna be the spot. But the tree I wanted to hang in was like twenty yards from there, and I was gonna have you yards shots being right here setting up in this thing. I might have a deer on top of my head, you know, and that's cool. But you don't always want to shoot every deer that you encounter. So if that happens, like you might end up with a dough or a buck on top of you that you don't want to shoot, and you don't know what to do about. Um and lo and behold the deer. Even though it's one day, we're moving pretty early and like it, I don't know five o'clock or so. Um here comes four does in a little buck um? I say, a little he was, He's decent buck um. They kind of surprised me at like fifty yards. That's the other thing was where I'm sitting is I'm kind of still in the draw just a little bit, so I can only see like fifty yards in any direction, which seems like quite a bit. But whenever you're in big open country, it feels like you are just in a room, you know what I mean, Like it just feels like you can't see nothing. So here I am, and these deer are walking directly at me. I'm actually standing up because I just started to put on my jacket, which um or natural gear during this little uh hunt. You know, we're quite a bit of natural gear work. Some sick of stuff too this week and advertising. This is not this is just personal experience. Um that natural gear stuff money on the ground, dude, it's really good. Uh So, uh put on my jacket. These deer catch me standing up. I kind of slink down whenever they're kind of like halfway not looking. They never were like spooked or like really aware. They're just kind of look in my direction. I think de you're expected there to be other deer in that spot anyways where I was sitting, so like seeing a little movement or whatever probably wasn't the biggest thing. And I think they always looked that direction just to see who's over there. Um So I kind of slunk down, um slunk slunked it lunk um and uh let these deer. Try to let these deer go past. Well the does don't pay me hardly any mind. They walked by twenty yards. Well the buck that's falling them has to just really investigate. I think that Um, I had my camera arm strapped to like twelve of these little uh bushes, sapling plums and kind of just all strapped it up together. And and I was filming in the deer of course, you know, well the cameras looking straight down the pope at the sun, at the deer, and I think he might have seen a reflection, might have saw a reflection. I don't know what the scene might have seen, um off the camera. And that's really what got because I really wasn't moving too much, um so being a curious buck like he was, well, what is going on over there? Oh? He ends up walking like nine yards away trying to get my wind, and it's stays six of the hunt. I don't know if I'm making great decisions at this point in time or not. Um, but I made the decision to, uh say, I don't want this dear to smell me. I think that's the worst thing. That's how he's gonna be the most spooked is if he smells me. So I go but right and kind of grunt at him to try to get him to stop, and then maybe like get scared that I'm a big buck or something and run off. Well he just freezes and then I snort, we'se at him, and he runs off and takes the dose with him and they go back down the drainage. Dad comes. If those dear mess up my whole evening because they blew out from where I was, I'm gonna be so sad I was. I was in a bad spot, uh mentally at that point in time. Um, well, not really that bad. I was just I was kind of like really, I was like, well, whatever it is, what it is. Um. Anyways, about h thirty or forty five minutes later, I see more dear and my spirits are lifted and ends up for the next Our dear kind of pile past me if anywhere from twenty to sixty or eighty yards, um, I actually end up letting a shooter or maybe even two shooter bucks get past me. Um that Uh. I really would have liked to have an opportunity at one of them was like a three year old eight point. I didn't see him until he was quite a ways passed. Uh. Yeah, and it was up at the X source. A three year old was big, he was outside, his ears had gum it. Yeah, I didn't know about this. He was like an e t a kind of thing. Man. Yeah. A video of him. I don't, Yes, I did, I didn't. I need to go see that. Um. And um, let's see, our friend Tony P had mentioned to you, and then you had mentioned to me, and then Jack and I had had some experience with this. We didn't really talk about earlier, but we had grunt it in some little bucks that almost made it to us that I was gonna shoot and then they got wigged out. This is a different day. But anyways, the fact that grunt calls actually do work on these deer from this you know, area of the country kind of earlier in the season. Yeah, Tony, Tony, I was talking to him in Nebraska bunch, Yeah, and he was trying to help me out, you know, and he was like, make sure you have a grone call because I've grown him in before. Yeah. And it's just something that deer just like to see other deer if they're kind of well Gregorius in nature. Um, Gregory is. Yeah. But I've learned through the years that in these Texas grunt calls don't work at all. But like anywhere else you go, Um, it's real hard to grunt out a deer who's already gone past you. So I couldn't grown up this eight point and six point. Uh, they weren't gonna come. They were like sixty yards away, and if I did grund them, they were definitely gonna get my win before they or before I got a shot. So they just got pasted. Well, watch more does go by, and then it starts to really get good, like it's that time of day, you know, And I was thinking, like, you know, other day, those big bucks came out after sunset and they started filtering by these trees and sitting where I was, I had kind of decided, like I had a shifting scale the whole trip of like what I wanted to shoot depending on the set up and where we are where we were, and I knew that the next morning it was a good wind for that place too, So I was kind of like, uh, I don't really want to shoot at one point five here, you know what I mean, Like I kind of want to shoot wait on a bigger buck. I think I can go back and shoot a dough tomorrow if I need to, uh that sort of thing. So um, I was waiting, and my patience was rewarded with a big bucking counter. I had learned from actually my mess up where those dose caught me standing that if I would stand up, I could see a little bit further, and I could see dear start to crest the little knoll in front of me. I could see the top of their ears, of their antlers, and then I could kind of get down and get in position and know to be ready. Um, that's exactly what happened. I saw antler tips quite big crest over the uh knoll, just the tips. Um. Actually, the brow times were probably one of the first things I saw this movie with the brow times. Here, this deer has like at least six inch brow times on each side, maybe bigger. One of them is like super long, and they're real wide. It's some dear half this. It's not very common. There's near my parents neighborhood this way, but like the brow times are ten inches apart. It's strange but real cool. Um. But I see that this buck is not really on my trajectory. He's actually going to kind of follow the crest of this knoll and stay about sixty yards away. So I get down, get for sure out of sight, and hit just a couple of bet on that grunt call uh, and then grab Mabo and get ready to get the camera ready. Well I don't see him come for like um and in turn at he but it's probably forty five seconds, so I decided to go ahead and make sure, and I hit a series of three kind of with a longer one in the middle, UM grunts, and then he crests and he is looking for me. So I don't know because I couldn't see the deer UM what was going on. He may or may not have heard me the first time, but he for sure heard me the second time, and he was looking. You know, maybe if I hadn't done that second series of grunts, he might have just would have just moseyed on over, but he was intentionally coming over to see what was going on, which worked either way. UM. At this point in time, he comes through my first window at probably I'm guessing thirty five yards UM, and it's really just looking right down the pipe at me. I don't really have an opportunity to draw my bow kind of further than what I would like to have to shoot. I definitely would have taken that shot if it was presented, but uh. He then proceeds to try to get my wind, which is going to work out well for me. UM. Because he has to go pretty much a hundred and eighty degrees around me to win me. Right. So um, he goes behind a clump of these plums, and that really gives me a great opportunity to kind of set up and he um, because I mean such a thick spot and my camos working so weil Um at any point in time that he is not double eyeing me, you know what I mean, like straight up looking at me, I can get away with moving a little bit, not like doing a jumping jack, but kind of shift him away, moving the camera arm, kind of getting rid of more of a sleep jack. Yeah, exactly. Un oak mail jack for sure. Um no, no flapjacks. Cannot flapjack in there. But uh um, I have a second window this this place, it's like a hunting blind. Right, there's like a two ft hole here, two ft hole on the right, two ft hold my left, you know. And um he's walking to the hole on the right, and which really sets up good for for me as a hunter, because my shoulders can turn that way pretty good. At this position I was shooting from my knees. Um, he makes it to the right, to the edge of that thing, and he's trying to look and see me just a little bit more. Um. The one of the bad things about that scheeting window is that it starts to get to the point where my camera arm is getting in the way of my shot. So I have to adjust the camera. The deer moose or I'm sorry, the deer move forward a little bit to a spot where I could take a shot at him. I just move the camera arm over just slightly. Oh, by the way, I changed it from auto to manual focus before this. That way I can make sure the deer was in focus. Um. And did that. Uh. The deer was pretty much looking at me, I think as I drew my bow. Uh. But I felt that it was dark enough and that he was trying to see movements so bad in there that he wasn't gonna spook. He just he was. He was not in the spooking mode. He was trying to find the deer that was in there, right, but he was on alert. Uh, drama bow and do my best to really not rushed my shot. Uh. I don't think I rushed it, but I could have definitely taken longer. It's just man, when you're holding your bow back on an animal, milliseconds feel like, you know, a forty time, you know what I mean. Like it's just like it literally probably was like a two second draw, but it felt like thirty you know. It's just it's crazy how time slows down. But my pen was steady. I checked my cam, I checked my bubble everything. I mean, it was just it was a great shot execution. Not give myself a ping back, but just like it was a good shot. It felt good, you know. Um, I held for what I thought. I thought he was at twenty three. I had my single pin set at twenty. I put that right at the top of his heart and squeeze the trigger. And I knew as soon as I shot that my arrow was doing good stuff. I mean, he was flying true right. I knew the deer was gonna duck because that's what white tail do, especially at closer ranges, UM, when they're on alert. And uh, he ducked into my shot. I thought I'd smoked him. And then as he turned, because he he wheeled out, I thought for some reason that he would go keep going straight, but he wheeled out to go back to where he came from. Um, and on the wheel out, I saw that I just did not have good penetration at all. It was very bad. Um. But I guess just because I thought the shot was was a good shot, I was very optimistic about um where i'd you know, where I'd hit him. And I was like, okay, that didn't look great. It did. I was hoping it would just be a pass through. But um, it's a good it's a good spot on the deer, Like there's vitals where I hit right. So but I also knew that it was higher than what I wanted. Um, but left or right it was, it was right where I wanted it. Um, Then you grab the camera. I grabbed the camera because this deer quickly crested the hill and I couldn't seem anymore. So I grabbed the camera. Run up as fast as I can top of the hill. The deer is like running off real heart right, So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna run up there. See if I can see him fall or see where he goes. That way I can track him better. I knew because the arrow was high, uh, not high, but higher than where I wanted. It was above mid bodyline, there wouldn't be a ton of blood. And especially because there's probably not an exit hole, right, So I wanted to make sure that if it took this guy a while to get to pumping, that I had a decent bearing on where he went well ends up. I wasn't able to do that. I ran out there, didn't seem And that actually felt good because like, bang, new did he fall out there? You know, like you see out there right now? And I'm kind of having a freak out, kind of not sure how to feel about things because it just I didn't seem die. You never feel good if you don't see him drop, and that's just kind of how I am right now. And um I turned around and there's two brown blobs about three yards away on the side of the hill, and I'm like, I didn't scream, but it was like, look, did y'all see that? Like, because I just thought I experienced this awesome moment by myself and y'all got to see it. Jack was we were sitting there talking up on that hill after we had shot our deer, watched the two doughs go past you, and we weren't sure if you had child him or what is happening, And then all of a sudden, Jack goes there's a big buck, big buck. I was like, where it's like over there, going towards k C. He goes, maybe it's a mildier. I put my buying those up and I was like, no, you're right, it's a big buck. And so we watched that big buck and filmed that big buck just skyline going across at you for like four minutes. Man, And the whole time, I'm thinking he's either seeing you or he's seeing doze that had just come by and gotten weird. But he was like real alert. He would stop, you know, he'd take a few steps and then he'd stop, and he'd looked for thirty seconds and he'd take a few more steps. But um, as he got closer to you, I didn't realize how close he was. And then all of a sudden, he just takes off running about the same time I hear this weird noise and I told Jack Casey just shot him, just shot him, And so we're like I followed him out as far as I could until we lost him. And then I looked over and this dude standing on the skyline over there like celebrating, you know, I mean not celebrating, but like when you saw this, you put your hands up, like man, I got shot off and I was like, man, this is insane. And so anyway, I um was real pumped, and Jack and I started giving high fives and like I'm talking about like a real high fives dude, like m m a style. You know, we were we were all pretty hot about it. Seemed like it took y'all forever to get to me because I was like, you know, kind of uh, hypervent lighting a little bit because I'm gonna be honest, guys, this is the bigges to year I've ever shot, you know, like this is a big buck um eight points but long times good main beams, good mass you know, giant bright towns, brod twnes. Um. I don't really get the shakes or get super nervous while the shot is being executed or while I'm drawn back, um, but after it happens, I kind of lose it a little bit sometimes. And that's kind of where I was very emotional, very very like I don't know what to think, you know, very excited to just overjoyed. UM. And then y'all got there and of course we're we're excited. Congratulations. I figured out, I mean, I knew pretty quick. When I saw y'all was like, they shot something too. That's the only reason they're up there. You know, it's too good of a night for them to just ditch. So I knew y'all shot something. Um, so we're getting each other high fives and stuff. UM, but I said something to you like it's not perfect, but I feel pretty good about it. Um. And uh so we look back at the footage and sure enough, you can just tell the penetration isn't great. And that's when we're like, okay, uh, we're gonna have to wait and see on this deal. So what we decided to do is go back to the truck and then actually go back to camp because we're looking for rubber gloves V bracket rubber gloves. And I had to put my danners on. I had to put your dinners on. We decided to eat danners and nanners. That's what we needed. Uh yeah, decided because we knew it was gonna be kind of late night, especially dealing with two deer. Um. And uh so we made us some some road witches and uh came back, watched computer video and UH really kind of established that it was a good idea to let my buck chill for a little bit. So we went and got yours taken care of. That was awesome, Just fun to have all three guys on the recovery of your buck. He was way down in a hole. He had to like put the ratchets trap on his to get over that deep side of the canyon. I told you about the everygning that is, that's where he landed. And so we were there at a ratchet trap him up the hill. There was blood spots up the hill where he tried to go up and just couldn't make it, just kicked the bucket. It would have been really good footage, man, if we could have seen it. Oh, I know, you know he took a tumble down that thing. You know, that's crazy. But he ended up in the bottom. But we got him out. Tyler may have pulled a muscle in his back just a little bit, but he got some pacy powder and took care of that, uh and got that deer out and got him back to the truck and got to take some pictures and stuff. It was a lot of fun, man, Really cool deal. Pictures turned out great man. Jack killed it on some pictures. Man. He did a good job on that deal. Um, then it was time to go try to recover my buck. Um after we took a pole. Um, Like, how confident we were that the deer was dead? I was an eight percent, Tyler was at sixty percent. Jack, I don't remember what you were at. Yeah, Jack. Jack's kind of a zero to one hundred kind of guy. He's just like, oh or nothing, um, which I love the positivity. Um. So between all that, we all were feeling pretty good about this thing. And um, Tyler is by no means a pessimist, but he's like he does his best to be as realistic as possible. And for him to say sixty that made me feel pretty good. You know that you're above that. She thought the deer was dead, um, and I mean quite frank. The shot wasn't in a bad spot, you know. Um, it's just didn't get a lot of penetration. Uh. So we go in and started to try to make a recovery on this deer. We we wield the deer cardian to about where I was sitting, line things up, and go out to where um the deer was standing. And of course there's no blood. I didn't expect her to be. I didn't see any um. You know, like I said, I shot over mid body. The blood has to pump out the top as opposed to just running out. So I thought it'd be a little while before he he went to bleeding. Um. But we went to grid searching and looking, and we weren't finding any blood. Um. So we did some directional stuff and just went to the different draws that we thought he would have bailed off in. And this is not I'm saying this in about thirty seconds, but we're talking about probably an hour of looking and doing stuff and us all spreading out with head lamps and looking for stuff. Um, and we uh start walking around. We're shining down the hill trying to find and see if we see a deer or anything. I aren't seeing nothing. We don't see any evidence of blood going down to any of the little ditches that would have led down to the bottom of the hill. Um. So suddenly things are like as every minute passes the you start to just your mind just starts to get worse and worse as far as like your expectations of finding the deer. UM. I still had hope, but I was really coming to grips with the idea like, man, this shop in mine, I'd be as good as what I thought it was. Um. And then we start to grid some more along the side of the hill there, and Jack finds quite a bit of blood on one gopher mountain in particular, and it's like, oh, okay, we're back to be impossitive about the situation. This is a good bit of blood. What's going on here? Um? But we can't find anymore. And we're all sitting there thinking, if there's this much blood right here, where is this deer? Like where's the blood trail too? And from this spot cannot find it, cannot find it at all, and it's just like it's a head scratcher. Man. We're looking and looking, I mean down on hands and knees, of course, you know, just trying to find anything and just cannot find anything. And it's about eleven forty five at this point in time. We've been up a long time looking for deer. I mean for us, bedtime out there is like nine or note thirty, because A it gets dark real early, and B we're getting up at four or a really taller and our rolling around a three thirty just because we're old, old man. Um. But Anyways, we're getting tired. It's getting the point where it's like, Okay, we're gonna be much better versions of ourselves in the morning. We're gonna make more more coherent decisions and see so much better. Um, hopefully just be able to pick up blood and just go find him. So we kind of take a pole. Tyler and I out voted Jack. Jack was ready to go find this year, and I said, appreciate the enthusiasm and the positivity. Um, but we decided to go back and go to sleep. And I'm gonna be quite honest, I'm not the kind of guy to lose sleep in a situation like this. I I can sleep, It's honestly, I don't know. I think I get some some peace from God about things a lot, you know. I mean not think I know that I do right. I mean it's um, God's will be inactive no matter what in any situation. Is it God's will that I kill or don't kill a deer? I don't know that, but either way, He's going to work through whatever the situation he is so that kind of helps me a lot. Um. So went back went sleep. We actually ate a second supper that night of Snickers and pop tarts, I believe, uh missing some pops it man. Uh, dude, I know what you're gonna do. You're gonna go home and eat some cereal. That's what you're gonna do. Boy, call you. I feel like it did luck at choms honey bunches of stuff. So we go home, or not home. We went back to camp. I'm I'm bad about calling wherever I'm sleeping that night at home. It was home for a week. It was home, and I'd go back there and make a home again. Get home. But we slipped into like six um and got up kind of took our time a little bit in the morning, let the sun get hig. You don't want to get out there when it's too early and you can't see great anyways, you know, So we uh got out probably started looking about seven. Uh maybe a little bit later, I don't I don't remember for sure, a little bit later and Jack had to make old mel again that morning. Not that it matters really, but yeah, we sometimes got light enough for us to feel good about it. So we go out and we go to that blood spot and start gritting again and cannot find more blood. And we thought for sure that we'd go back and find more blood and it just does not happen. So from there, um, I think people start trickling over to the kit to the side of the hill edge there and start looking around down in the bottom. I'm still looking for blood, because that's just kind of my take on things. Um, But I think you and Jack both were kind of looking around and you end up spotting a deer. Do you want to talk about a heart attack? Dead deer? Dead deer on the ground, white belly dude, Like, you know, a hundred yards from me down the hill. I see it, that dear, and I'm like, well there is Kyle runs off. I saw baldi go and tree right above it, and I'm like, that's it. And I'm thinking, thank you, finally we found this thing. You know. Pull my binos up. I can't see antlers on it. I'm like, man, I think I would see antlers. Kind of say something to Casey and and Jack, and then I kind of walked down there a little bit down, not towards it, but closer along the edge of the hill there, and I can see horns and they are small horns. They're not big horns. I didn't shoot a small horn deer, and so I guess the blood on the gopher mound? What's that dearest blood? That's all we can figure. And to me, I'm not gonna brag on myself because there's plenty of things to criticize me about on this deal. But like when we found that blood, I was questioning how old it was. Yeah, it didn't look fresh enough to me, um, but I kind of was like, yeah, I don't know if this was it was an hour and a half ago. Yeah, it's kind of weird. But at the same time, when when blood falls on on dirt, it can do weird things, right, And there was uh different types of blood there too. There's like a kind of a thick red spot and there's like some kind of some thinner stuff. It's like, well, I don't I don't have a clue, you know, But in the dark, how are you gonna be like, Okay, this isn't my dear's blood. This is a different deer. You know. It's just not how it works. But all we can figure is that somehow, some way, that little buck um got shot by somebody, or had coyotes get after it, or something, maybe got hit by a car or I don't who knows, but that had to be either the blood from that dear or maybe something freaky happened where like a hawk at another bird or something or whatever, you know. But like, for all intense purpose, as we can tell that that was or we think that that was that dear's blood and not my dear's blood. So at that point in time, we're like, well, crap, dude, we just found this golden nugget of blood and now that's no longer a piece to our puzzle. So this thing's blown wide open again. Who knows, Maybe we've looked in the wrong drainage the whole time, and there's a good blood trail from my dear somewhere else. You know. We're like, who knows. So what we decided to do instead is to go walk that belt of timber spread out three wide, and just get the wind in our face and kind of just mos your way through there looking for a dead deer looking for blood or looking for him get up or something. And uh, we jumped a bunch of deer out of this thing. It's definitely where the deer living there was dear bedded all over. Actually, we walked up like forty yards from a little buck and just he just looked at us because he felt so good about where he's sitting that he didn't think that anybody would mess with him. I jumped a deer that was fifteen yards or less from me. I'm talking. She was getting out so quick, she was tripping over everything. She had to have been closer than that to Jack when he passed by. Probably, yeah, but um, Jack's cowboy boots don't slow down very well. That day, he was think that that's why, because he dude, he gripped to walt things. Also jumped a spike. Did you down the drainage? Jack? And out ran us. I think he's got long legs, so he got got up in front of us. Little ways. Um, but we were um walking along doing our thing, jumping a few deer here and there. And I'm always like looking on their heads, just seeing, just checking, well sure enough, um, we're doing this thing. Tyler and I Connor in eye contact with each other, and I see a big frame run down the edge of the belt of timber, and I said, big buck, can I just take off sprinting Because at this point in time, if my DearS is on his feet, he's fine. You know, we talked about this earlier in the trip or that evening before that. If you shoot a deer like in the liver or something, then um, he's gonna die, but who knows how long. Whereas the shot that I made, the deer is either dead on the ground or he's fine because you just didn't get to anything vital because he just stopped in his shoulder. Um, I don't have anything conclusive just by that glimpse. I just know there's a big buck running. So I run as fast as I can and did not pull a hamstring, which I cannot believe because I'm a hamstring pulling full um. But I get up to where I can see and I kind of catch up to him sort of. He's like fifty yards away, but he slows up because I think he feels pretty comfortable and he probably couldn't hear me running because I was in real soft grass and it was kind of windy. Um. But I think he might have saw or heard Jack further down, so he stopped, turned around, came back towards me, actually came to like thirty five yards and stopped. Never knew I was there, but I like wasn't drawing my bow and trying to shoot the deer because I wanted to make sure I wasn't um, you know, culling. I didn't want to I stick this thing. I wanted to make sure that this was my dear before I took a shot at it. Right and then from that thirty five yards spot, I'm like, okay, big frame eight point looks like my buck. I'm looking for those brow times to make sure, um or what's the other words? People? Brow times? What brow ties? Brout ties? Yea, I'm trying. It's from a certain archery shop, brown ties, from a person that you wouldn't think would do that, but it is what it is. Anyway, Um, that buck turns degrees from me and actually runs right past the base of the tree that y'all were sitting in the evening before. UM up this little drainage and I see him turned seemed run away And I can tell this dearest sizeable browd times now he uhrow ties. Yeah, time wasn't um wasn't super I'm sorry it wasn't super detailed because when I was looking at him the night before, he was sky liat so I could see every d hill of the handler this, you know, it's got brush and stuff around. But after looking at it at that moment, I was eight percent sure that was my dear alive. Not even I didn't even hadn't even slowed the step, you know what I mean. Like when I saw him running down the side of the hill or the side of the timber belt, I mean, um, he had the whole I'm gonna sneak out of here, and I'm a big mature buck kind of thing going on. If you ever jumped a deer, you know, like the different types of runs that deer have or whatever. Like he had his head held high, his his butt was kind of low, and he was kind of he was going fast but trying to stay still, kind of stealthy and look for a hole, you know what I mean. And he wasn't hurt at all. Um, which was the weirdest feeling to me, because I was so sad that my dear was alive, but I was so happy that my dear was alive. It's a it's a weird thing. And now, like I was eight percent sure in that moment, and now after thinking about it, thinking about how many deer we saw that size, that would be one on the whole trip like, it's just I'm almost positive that's him and he's fine. He was he went. I jumped him from where we thought he would have ended up. You know, actually that night we didn't tell this detail, but that night you and Jack heard a deer get up and kind of run down that direction exactly where that dear said it could have been him. You know. Um, this deer had no blood on any side of him, but on his right side, which is where I would have hit him. His hair was kind of messed up a little bit, So I mean, I'm pretty much saying that that's him and I'll live and die by and he's fine. Uh. It just stinks, man, It stinks so bad because I just thought that I thought I had him, you know, I thought he was mine. And um, maybe I'm just too greedy about things. I don't know, But it was just I hit this deer in the perfectly wrong spot because with the setup a shoot, I can punch through about near anything except for that ridge. If you when you when you deep on a deer, you'll know this on the front shoulder. If you haven't done this, you need to do it from time to time just so you can kind of understand stuff about dear anatomy. But the shoulder blade isn't just a flat blade. It's not like a moose antler. It's got a ridge about three quarters the way onto one side that sticks straight up, and you actually have two roasts that come off of that called blade roast um. And if you happen to hit your arrow, no matter what you're shooting, if it's a if it's with a bow, right on that ridge, you're not going to get through there. And you can look on our foot on the footage that I have this deer, my arrow goes and it stops and it twangs. Now, whenever I shot the deer and then re re review footage, I was being optimistic and thinking that I had shot through one shoulder blade and that happened on the opposite shoulder blade. But in retrospect looking at how much arrow is hanging out of the deer and how much penetration I got, and then seeing that it's just almost a definite that I just squared up on a shoulder of a deer as hard as you possibly can and he barely even has a flesh wound. You know, it's just straight into muscle. I mean straight through a little bit of muscle right into bone. And uh, there's a good chance I could shoot it that deer next year in South Dakota as long as somebody didn't smoke him with a rifle. So, um, really really stinks. Uh hate it. But at least he's not even hardly wounded. You know, there's a good chance that deer eats at that alpha filled tonight, you know, like he's it's not like he's like shot, I'm gonna have to recover for a long time, so I don't have that like same type of remorse that I've had in the pass where if I lost a deer, Like you know, we talked about this too, like this is kind of a bad run for me because um, last year, end of my season on a white tail buck that I hit and lost and he died for sure, Um, which is not fun. But at least this one didn't die. But it's still like crap, dude, bow hunting is hard, That's what I have to say. Stuff. Yeah, especially from the ground. I'm not making excuses for myself, but I mean I've done some hard stuff and making you and killing deer with the bow is top of the list. Maybe White tells with a bow from the ground has gotta be up there is one of the top tough things. Man. It's hard, you know, especially with a big bodied buck like that thing. You know, like we're not talking just a dough that you're trying to break through, Like this is the biggest bone structure you're gonna find up there pretty much, you know, like he's about topped out all as far as bone structure goes. I don't know. That's a that's it. That's my that's my story. I can go on for everybody, but that kind of uh, that day seven look for that deer concluded our hunt. We tagged out. I wasn't gonna hunt anymore after that. I had my shot at a big deer. We kind of blew out the spot looking for him, and then uh we to Nebraska shortly thereafter, picked up camp and headed in Nebraska, and uh, you know, bone the deer out and everything makes sure we're legal and all that, but uh, CPD makes it hard to hunted state nowadays, man. Um. But yeah, we had to Nebraska. We hunted this morning Jack and I did, and you can barely call it that. It was more of just a bow hike. We we had. It was a beautiful morning. It was good morning to get out and do some stuff. But we left. We actually left, um you know, the we met you at the gate at eight a m. Two basically go home because I was just like I told you, you know, if I don't have service, eight o'clock is good. Um, if if I do have service, and we can adjust it from there, and I texted you and that's assess it. Let's make it eight. Because we couldn't get up into a tree. There was some giant cotton woods and then some of the smaller trees had a ton of leaves. Um. You know, South Dakota is not Nebraska. It's a it's still still kind of early fall in Nebraska. It is uh for real fall out there in South Dakota. So there's a lot of lads in the trees this morning, and we just you know, we were just trying to kind of make something happen this morning. Just it was a lot of crops standing in Nebraska too, Yeah, lots of crops stand and and I just, uh, you know, we just gave it one glass little try to see if something could happen this morning, to make something special happen and it didn't. Uh So anyway, we had um but had a bunch of concepts that we wanted to kind of talk about. And we can do this pretty quickly because I know this podcasts getting pretty long. Um, but we have some kind of things that we wanted to kind of talk about in wraps for this podcast, um Jack. First thing I want to talk about is are you taking a shotgun to South Dakota next year? I am on a PC and are you going to hunt with a license or not? Okay, so doesn't central there. We've talked about like ways to make things happen, you know, I mean, uh, that would be real fun up there and US three having shotguns and just being able to pile out and shoot birds on public land, man, would be awesome. Here's a cool thing about South Dakota. That's a South Dakota is a road ditch state. Baby. From everything I can tell worth calling the game word from like I said, an hour ago, maybe an hour and a half ago, who knows. Don't take legal advice from the element, but from what I read in the rule book, it says you were allowed to shoot game birds of all sorts as long as you exit the vehicle, load your gun, and then shoot the bird. Yeah, so you can ride around with a shotgun not chambered, jump out of your vehicle, and then shoot birds on any road ditch. Uh in South Dakota, I'm leaving the action open. Let me tell you something. How many grouse do we see in road digits? A lot of too many? Too many? I mean, I think like that last morning we jumped like twenty one or something right there. But nuts. But anyway, bird paradise for sure, that was pretty fun. Um. You know, we talked a little bit about this um, but we wanted to kind of emphasize the patience aspect of this hunt. Uh. It makes us sound like we're glorifying ourselves, but man, we were. We worked really hard to have that patience because, like I said, we were trying to talk ourselves into it and talking each other out of it several times. But man, even on public land, if you find a spot, you know what's going on. If you're hunting private lands the same way, it's same concept. There's plenty of podcasts out there talking about the private land aspects of hunting this particular deer right and how you don't go in there until everything's right. And I think that's fine. I think that's good as long as you got other places to hunt, you know, on just hunt one time of year. But um, the same thing on on public like we were seeing is like, if you got a place that you know you can go kill in, just wait till the winds right. And we had to really, I mean it was like, you know, essentially the day the sixth day, and I think guess we worked. We waited five days of season to actually go in there pretty much, so it was like it just felt like forever, you know, so especially whenever you've got like family at home who really don't want you to be gone for nine days, if you could seal it up on day two or three, they'd be real happy. I would think a lot of times, if you know, two or three days of patients, you should be able to get the right wind, you know, or a wind. So and I think that, honestly, that's where hunting as a team helped us, because man, if I'm up there by myself, I'm going to talk myself into doing it earlier. And we had to talk each other out of it a couple of times. Right, It's just um, sometimes you don't really process things because you're just trying to be especially myself of optimistic about your chances on things, you know. But yeah, it's uh, it's definitely, definitely is a big key point for us. Um we also hit on this earlier, but mule deer versus whitetail when their ranges cross, UM, still can't really help you on that one. All I can say on that personally for what I observed this week, if there's um that breaking country kind of bad land stuff and there's not a lot of brush, it's probably just muled here. Yeah, otherwise good luck, I don't know. Yeah, So as far as like figuring out where for sure there's going to be just white tails, you can't do that. And I can't tell you where a mule deer buck really lives except on private lands, uh camping to hunt? Any thoughts, any tips there? I mean, I know, like we did lots of eating from We have food totes that we take to have all our food in it, and we did lots of eating. And the best thing about like hunting with dudes that you know, not going solo hunting, but hunt with other dudes is like, uh, if you know I don't have uh certain type of chips. You know, we can trade food, we can eat each other's food or whatever, and like you get a little more variety and in in uh working that way. And you know, if you're Jack, you get spoons and bowls and ramens and no dirty dishes duty at all. Yeah, and people get the sandwich stuff out for you and put it up for you. Um, but Jack, sorry, dude. Yeah, people bring you popped hearts. I don't know about bring me them, but I have to find them because you'll hide them. But I think that water was a serious situation for us on this trip. Um. Luckily you have on those five yallon tubs and we only had to go fill water a few times. But South Dakota is not like a mountain state where you can go filter water. Um, there's like no clear water streams anywhere. So uh yet before we were at yeah, so I don't Yeah, I don't know much about the whole site there, but um, I don't want to drink cow water too much, so we had to fill water. I think that um having to five gallon jukes would have been better, but we kind of maxed out the truck as he is. So I don't know what we could have done there, but otherwise, um, you're able to do is. Um. We took a kind of smaller ice chest for the food, and we took a large one and um use that for the deer obviously, but we you know, we were able to uh basically throw the deer in there and um put ice on it once we got kind of headed back on the road. But like, I think that maybe having like some kind of like a dropcloth or something would be would have been real nice to help clean that deer a little bit um hard to bone it out without getting dirt all over the means. So that brings up a good point though that if you and I both have killed a deer, we'd have had ample room in the ice chest. I don't think we need as much ice chest as what we brought with us, because whenever you're like dealing with CWD regulations, you have to debone your deer completely. Like meat is nowhere near as much room as hams and shoulders, you know what I mean. So I mean we can we might have been able to fit six deer in that big ice chest back there, so um, you know, maybe like especially if you're a single guy, not single, but like hunting by yourself for one tag or whatever, Like just one of those forty colors probably would hold deebone meat, you know. Um. Talk about the implications of rifle seasons and the quality of white tails and salmon in some of these areas. Uh, salmon, salmon have been decimated in the area. Um but um, yeah, it seems like to me that uh we saw a ton of year and a half old bucks. Um, like maybe one jack. We saw one two year old buck. Um. I saw, guess sitting on the ground by myself, a couple more two year old um. But that was like in dear concentration mecha over there, you know, outside of that, like there just was not a lot of age class to the deer and tyler you saw similar stuff, right, yeah. I mean I don't even know if I really said what my buck is. I can't remember that far. It's like a two year old eight or something you said, basket eight, you know whatever, and he ain't that big. But um, I'm super stoked about it, you know. It's so happy and by that point in the hunt, you know, that's a pretty pretty big achievement for me and so yeah, it's publicly and dear dude like it just there's just so many of those get killed him. You know. That's what Brian brought up was talking about earlier. Man like he was. He was like, man, he goes and Brian's a dude that's killed some big deer man, and like he doesn't. He's a guy that could very easily not care about these little deer. There's also very it could very easily rage us and not care about it too if he wants to be a tell us when he thinks, so when something he means it. Yeah, he was. He was pretty dag. I'm excited about it and so and he was. He gave me a big kudos and big big congratulations. So I thought that was cool. Um, but yeah, that that was the probably the biggest buck that I saw outside of the mile and a half classing UH stant we had the first day. But um, you know that's a direct result of UH rifle seasons being long and um having concentrated deer. Right, you're just gonna have older age class deer get shot because it's a dude, if I could kill any buck within tuner yards, I mean this week, I could have killed thirty bucks. We talked about this in Nebraska. Jack and I would have killed the buck that we had at twelve yards because Turkey called him to stop at ninety. I mean, that's just freehand, no big deal. Um. We would have killed two three four elk in Colorado as many as we had tags for, you know, um, with rifles, and then we could have killed out here with rifles several times too. And so it's a it's definitely a big advantage, you know. And I'm not trying to I'm not trying to knock rifle hunting at all. I'd love to shoot a deal with the raffles, and you're gonna try to shooting with the raffle this year actually. But I'm just saying that we have had some close calls, man, and uh, you know, it's been a little bit disappointing, but we've been we've been close, man. So but the point is is that, uh, you can go out and kill bucks with and that's why we have the age class. Well, I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's just it's kind of similar to the hats of young bucks. And I think that's just like a direct result of having longer rifle seasons, which I don't even know what the riffle season is necessarily, but I know that a lot of people get after him when rifles out there. So um, that's one of the you know, that's one of those things, uh that it just happens there and you're gonna deal with. So anyway, the last kind of thing I wanted to hit on was you've already probably talked about everyone in the concepts you're about the talk about in your story, So just hit the highlights of what you need to think about if you're hunting from the ground. Um, wind direction, Uh, the ability to see the shot distance I think is a huge one because when you're hunting from the ground, especially in grassland country, you can't range anything. Uh it's hard to range a piece of grass and know which one you hit and how far it is. So unless you've been there before, or you can put out a marker or whatever, which I don't suggest doing because then you'll send stuff up. That's a huge thing. Drawing from the grounds difficult because you gotta have some concealment they're gonna see you, and then uh, you gotta think about your shot angles because from a tree stand. If I'd hit this deer where I did, it would have gone down as opposed to end, and it would have exited out his like a lower quarter on the other side, and he'd been dead in sixty yards. But because I actually was shooting slightly uphill, um, it was even more difficult to the angle than flat. So those are probably the top ones there. Yeah, for sure. Um, these videos are gonna come out soon. Guys, I'm gonna I'm gonna work hard on. We've been gone quite a bit in the last few months. Last month essentially, especially let me say something real quick too. We never hung true tree stands. We hunted saddles the whole time, and um, saddle we none of us have ever been like, oh I just want to be a saddle hunter. Here's my saddle selfie. But um we we kind of thought it was a good idea. You've thought that you weren't that comfortable in them, and probably still think that. I'm sure, um, because you're just kind of a big guy. Not not a big but yeah, just a large framed human. Um. But it just made it super accessible, like walking in a mile and a quarter with a regular stand. We've done it plenty of times it is the worst and it's really just hockeing pretty much when you got saddle on. So they were real nice, So it was it was real nice for sure. Man. Yeah, I uh, I probably will hunt out of a tree stand some this year, but I was very happy to have a saddle man. So um. Anyway, those are definitely the high points and the thoughts that we have afterwards. Um. Like I said, videos are coming out soon, I hope. Um. If you haven't subscribed on YouTube, yo crazy, so go do it U and Colorado should be coming out real quick. I've got that second video lined up. There's some pretty cool stuff. Man. Uh uh, we do have another elk en counter get a bull on video things die. Yeah. I'm thinking you probably know that it's not an Elk but foul Fish and foul um. So yeah, yeah, we had we had some fun stuff happened and mignon. So anyway, go check you know, subscribed on the YouTube channel so you can see the videos that are gonna come out this season. We're gonna have probably looks like maybe three videos from South Dakota. All this stuff we've talked about is on video because we got Jack summers man click clack jack with us, and uh we we got some good footage, man, some good stills. Uh, so we're gonna be leaking out some of that stuff. Um, sorry for the tease. Um, if you're listening, we've already teased this out and showing everybody. Um. You know, if you were thinking that we were gonna shoot a big buck and tease it, you're wrong because we're teasing the little buck. So don't we just pointing. Don't be mad at it's hopefully we'll tease another big buck or a big buck again someday soon. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't kill a big buck, guys. I got real close and it was close. Man. It was everything you could do to get it where you were. Man, So good, good moves on your part, man, good thoughts. We really worked, all of us work together to make things happen. And it feels good to as a team do what we've done on this trip. Man. And I'm really excited because, uh, it was not hunting season in Texas when we left, and now it's dear season, my good us and uh, I gotta go put out some golden nuggets, that's right. I gotta get some corn on the ground and hopefully get something killed there. And then later this month and we get a cold front, we might have to make a flying trip to Illinois slash Iowa. So I'm looking forward to that. I think that's gonna definitely happen, and um, I'm just excited about November after that, so hopefully we can get some real experts on the podcast sometime this month. For you be checking out the Big Buck Breakdowns because there's some cool stories. There's some big bugs going down, and we're about to hop on the phone with a dude right now and do one of those. So anyway, make sure you're subscribed here on the podcast as well, and remember this is your element, living it

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