00:00:00 Speaker 1: I'm Casey and I'm Tyler, and you're listening to the Element Podcast. 00:00:11 Speaker 2: What's happening, y'all. It's Casey Smith, It's Tyler Jones. This is the Element Podcast, brought to you by First Light Gear. 00:00:20 Speaker 3: It is Element season. I don't know if y'all know that right now, but we. 00:00:22 Speaker 2: Out there in the elements. That's right, dude, getting it on on the size on over here, man, Like it is a high time of year. I want y'all to understand that, between Tyler and I, a number of deer have gone down already this year. I can't quite tell you what number yet. We're gonna get into that, but it's been quite a few. And it's fun, man. It's it's a good time. Y'all know this because I've been saying it's. 00:00:49 Speaker 3: Getting close, dear season for like four or five months now. 00:00:52 Speaker 2: I say it a lot because I just anticipate this time of year so much, and I kind of look forward, honestly to maybe a time when I can look forward to more stuff, Like I have a blessed life right now, don't get me wrong, But like I kind of mis anticipating fishing season a little bit. I don't really get to do that anymore. It's just like I get to fish when I can breathe, you know. But I hope to do that a little bit. But right now I ain't worried about it because this is like, if you're listening to the Element podcast, there's a high likelihood that you plan out parts of your life for the next three months that we are in right now. 00:01:36 Speaker 1: What about you, Tyler, I mean, I would say it's almost time for our annual It's the most Wonderful time of the year podcast, Like it's very close, right, but I almost have this kind of debate going on in my mind right now, is this the most wonderful time of the year because the anticipation is pretty much as good to me. I almost like the anticipation better than just doing the thing. Like I don't know, there's something about like, as you're doing something, think about this. If you ever hunted a target buck on a private piece, say and you you hunt him for two years, maybe in that second year, about November fourth, he runs through you. Griunt, stop him, smoke him, watch him fall. There's there's an awesome excitement, but there's also this weird like, oh, it's over. Kind of hurts to think about, like, now what you know, this kind of lost feeling and weird thing. You know, well, that's the way it is on November fourth, either way, a little bit as far as the season goes, you start getting to like, man, you know, it's the end of November fourth, tomorrow's the fifth. This thing's flying by on me, and then you just kind of had this like sad feeling and and so like late October is almost the best. It's the most wonderful time of year. You know, maybe like cause you're it's still ahead of you. You still have the anticipation, you still have the target bucks that are showing up every day, and that might be bigger and bigger every day. So it's just like I almost would say that it's the most wonderful time of the year. But that's uh, that's just a little thing I was thinking as we were wanting to you know, the rut is the most wonderful time of the year. It's what we anticipate. But I think the anticipation should not be looked overlooked. 00:03:15 Speaker 2: You know, no man deer in the woods all the time, too, so that als also helps. We are looking forward to some good times because we found a way to get us an old Texas dear lease, right, which is something I haven't had since. I'm gonna say, let me do a little math. The fall of two thousand and four, I think it is the last time I was. 00:03:42 Speaker 3: On a deer lease. 00:03:43 Speaker 1: Michael was four. 00:03:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, barely he looked one back then. Yeah he looks young, you know. Yeah. 00:03:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, So UH went out and did a little prep for that this past week, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But that's one of those things that we are anticipating a lot because we're gonna get to do the whole Like, we didn't call it deer camp growing up. It's kind of like how you know, you talk about this a lot where you didn't call them white tails growing up, you just call them deer. We didn't call it deer camp. Deer camp. It was just like a thing that we did. You never acknowledged the fact that you were at deer camp. I never thought about it when I was a kid. 00:04:20 Speaker 3: It was like a the practicalities of it was a thing. 00:04:24 Speaker 1: You gotta have a place to stay. 00:04:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, the place that we went to whenever we had that deer lease and Eldareda. It was an old goat milk and barn, and we pulled our pop up camper that was not weatherproof into this goat milking barn and set it up in there, and that was that was deer camp. But we never acknowledged that it was a thing. It was just the place we slept when we were at the deer lease, you know what I mean. But that's at the same time, it's where all the fun and stuff happened, you know, like there's a lot of good. 00:04:50 Speaker 3: Memories down there. 00:04:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're we're gonna do a lot of that this fall, and so it's gonna be kind of a just more insight for y'all into what we do, like kind of how do you say it? Just make sure that there's some fun involved with some of the stuff we put out on YouTube and stuff like that. 00:05:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, let's see, it's probably been so I've been. I've been on deer leases that like my dad's friend had or something in college when when I was in college shot my second buck on one of his one of that guy's near leases, but we weren't on the lease necessarily, was just like open standing invite to come whenever we wanted, so we go a few times a year. It was really fun. But as far as like a lease that me or my dad has paid for for Texas for a Texas place, or found a way to hunt, right, like I like to get the permission. It has been since I was like junior high maybe, I mean, it's been a long time, so they just kind of, I don't know, it just got that. That was probably about the time that things really started to change economic glee, uh for Texans maybe, and people were doing well and the way that they were businesses were spending money was on deer leases and those kind of things. 00:06:09 Speaker 3: Yeah, we got priced out. That was like that's why we didn't have dear lease anymore. 00:06:13 Speaker 2: And then it was like football kind of ramped up for me because I can remember that was me too. 00:06:19 Speaker 3: That fall, the last fall we had that lease. 00:06:22 Speaker 2: I believe I was an eighth grader and so we would be down there and this is silly like middle school stuff to do, right, but I was like, I have to work out while I'm here. 00:06:32 Speaker 3: I can't like I can't miss anything, you know. 00:06:35 Speaker 2: So I would put a fifty pounds back of corner my back and do push ups right, and like squat with that thing and stuff. 00:06:43 Speaker 1: I mean when I was twenty two, I don't think I could have done that. 00:06:46 Speaker 3: I was I was a unique eighth grader. 00:06:48 Speaker 2: The people were talking to me about d one stuff as an eighth grader, and ends up I barely got to start whenever I was a senior. 00:06:56 Speaker 3: And then you really kind of inverse of that. 00:06:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a baby boy look like Michael. 00:07:04 Speaker 3: Man. 00:07:04 Speaker 1: But anyway, that's uh, yeah, it's been a while and I'm actually real stoked about it now. You you went out there recently and kind of got things going for us out there, just kind of the the thing that you do when you have least in Texas. Man, you went out, got some feeders, put some feeders up, these these big old four hundred fifty pound Ratch series feeders, right, yeah, from Moultrie. Yeah. 00:07:27 Speaker 3: They're pretty pretty legit, man. 00:07:29 Speaker 2: They're like, I don't know, it's actually the biggest feeder I've ever put out. I always grew up just putting up you know, fifty gallon barrel feeders. Yeap, And uh it's like you put that thing in there and the timers cool because it tells you you put in like your feed times as far as like the length of spin, you know, and how many times you do it, and you know, twice a day pretty much is what we do. Nothing, nothing fancy, And then it tells you how much how many feed days you have remaining on your feet, which is pretty nice. Yeah, seventy five days is what we have from yesterday, which covers the extent of deer season, which is really Yeah, as long as there's no coons or anything in there, and they've got a big old. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: Councagefle season will go on past that. Right. 00:08:14 Speaker 3: Well, probably I feel. 00:08:16 Speaker 1: Like like it's the longest riffle season in the entire history of the world. 00:08:19 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:08:19 Speaker 2: I'm probably not gonna go try to shoot a spike though in Texas on January fourth or anything like that. 00:08:24 Speaker 3: Ain't too worried about that went on some public land, Yeah I have, I have been known to. 00:08:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, just for me though. 00:08:32 Speaker 2: That has a decent amount of deer, a decent amount of pigs. I mean, it still remains to be seen. Uh, it's on a pretty good drainage, so it should it should have some some bucks around. We hunt cameras cell cameras out there, which is real handy whenever it's a long way from the house and then. 00:08:50 Speaker 1: Give you that fomo. 00:08:51 Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, it's like, well, how fast can I drive? 00:08:54 Speaker 3: Seven hours or whatever it. 00:08:56 Speaker 2: Is, you know, Like, but uh, there's a lot of turnurkeys, like a lot of turkeys, Turkey full place, a whole bunch of turkeys. So I'm already kind of you know that anticipation you're talking about, Yeah, looking forward to a little turkla action, you know what I mean. 00:09:11 Speaker 1: A little fly fishing, little turky colin. Yeah, So that's a that's kind of something we've been working on this year really hard. We we uh, we've been wanting to do that for forever and just finding a place that's either well, it's got to have two attributes. It's got to be decent country for us to want to spend some money on it, and it's got to be somewhat affordable, you know, so and to find the two things that match up as it can be difficult. So because those places are typically like I'm telling you, these guys will get ten twenty year leases on those things, and it's it's hard to find them when they come up available. 00:09:51 Speaker 2: So yeah, there's uh, I'll be doing some pretty cool stuff. As far as video stuff goes from out there as well, we're gonna emphasis have some emphasis on you know, the camp. 00:10:01 Speaker 3: Side of stuff. 00:10:03 Speaker 2: Might even have a celebrity guest out and not from like the media career anything. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: No, that's not. 00:10:11 Speaker 2: Uh, some of you, some of you in's out there might be in tune with some of the stuff going on in the Major League Baseball world right now. 00:10:21 Speaker 3: The Rangers and the Astros. 00:10:22 Speaker 2: Are uh doing some some battling out there. That's all I'm gonna say. There might there might be someone involved with some of that. 00:10:31 Speaker 1: We're gonna try it. Man. It's hard to match up schedules with them, dudes, I know, you know, but you're talking about Wong and Zales. 00:10:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, Rusty Greer versus Wang and Zales. That's what we're gonna do out there. 00:10:42 Speaker 1: But it would be like dream come true. Man, come on, punch if you listen to this thing, come home a man. 00:10:48 Speaker 2: It's funny how like you pick your like major League Baseball. He rose when you're a kid because like, you know, anything against pudges wasn't a punch guy. 00:10:56 Speaker 3: He's cool whatever. Catching of all time. Yeah, supposedly. I don't know, I don't remember. But how the hell they determine that? 00:11:02 Speaker 1: Stats like what? 00:11:04 Speaker 3: Stats like past average? 00:11:06 Speaker 2: Oh so his offense all goes into that, gotcha? 00:11:10 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's cool. 00:11:11 Speaker 1: Of course. You know there's always arguments, right, it's the m J. Lebron thing like different eras. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that our redheaded camera guy will have something to say about that. 00:11:20 Speaker 1: Probably. 00:11:21 Speaker 2: I think he's got some obscure Cardinals player from whenever they're out there. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: But YACHTI for sure, would you know, maybe be legit contender, I think. But for Eric, you know, there probably is nobody better in this entire nobody. And I don't know if you know he'd rather meet anybody. 00:11:40 Speaker 3: I don't know. Man, definitely not a girl. 00:11:43 Speaker 1: No, I'm kidding. 00:11:45 Speaker 3: I'm kidding, not kidding. I love you. You just gotta get up there and talk to him, that's all. Man, he's gonna hate me. 00:11:52 Speaker 2: An anyways, Eric Is he can't meet him because he spends so much time in the. 00:12:01 Speaker 3: Woods hunting rider. 00:12:02 Speaker 1: Man. He's such a good hunter. 00:12:03 Speaker 3: He is. Man, he's getting afric hard hunter. He saw him some bucks today. 00:12:06 Speaker 1: He did he had a he had a toad at ten yards. 00:12:09 Speaker 2: They've been doing some deer camp stuff elsewhere, and you thought she's gonna do a little deer camp stuff stuff yourself. 00:12:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, Well recently we're gonna do a little public land expedition. 00:12:18 Speaker 1: But it was expedited and things went crazy, Tyler, what's been going on? What's going on? We we went and did a little uh, like I said, little expedition, trying to travel around and do some different things, uh every year and hunt some different stuff in Texas. Uh, just you know, not necessarily places I haven't been, because we've been to a lot of places, and we for that public stuff. 00:13:06 Speaker 3: And we still check stuff off the list. 00:13:07 Speaker 2: But if you have listened to the element or followed what we do for very long, you know, sometimes between like twenty eighteen and twenty twenty that we did our best to go to every piece of public ground that we could find in the state. So if you ever send us a message and you're like, hey, if you ever checked this out, the answers yes, But I'm probably not going to tell you a lot about it because that's just not the right thing to do. Man, Like I mean, I can here's the deal, guys. This transitions into something pretty good for us. We've been doing some Q and A podcasts here lately and it's a great place for us to all hang out and chat about like some tactics stuff and some maybe logistics type things, you know, camping rut tactics is the one that's coming up soon if you have any rut tactics questions that you want to talk about, especially maybe some of the southern type stuff. Or we' frounded the north and the rut to And actually Tyler and I were just talking about maybe a little bit of more northern rut hunting this year. Who knows, you never know what we might just get into. But Mufflo County. 00:14:14 Speaker 3: Uh the where was I going with that? 00:14:18 Speaker 2: Oh, it's not It's just not the thing to do to talk about specific. 00:14:25 Speaker 3: Pieces of public land. 00:14:27 Speaker 1: And we've done it. People didn't like it. Yeah. 00:14:31 Speaker 3: Map Scout Challenge, Yeah, Mapscout Challenge was interesting. Learn a lot. You can learn a lot from that too if you go watch it. So if you want to see me. 00:14:39 Speaker 2: Look a lot younger that Wow went crazy in that house? 00:14:46 Speaker 3: A twenty two pistol off in. 00:14:48 Speaker 1: Here from or something. 00:14:50 Speaker 3: Probably Yeah, it did sound like a broom falling. Yeah, man, you're pretty. 00:14:55 Speaker 1: Son here for real? 00:14:59 Speaker 3: U frequent Tyler. There are a lot of ruts in Texas. 00:15:05 Speaker 1: Uh. 00:15:06 Speaker 2: They We talked about this on rutfresh well ago. If you haven't figured it out yet, we're hosting the RT Fresh radio podcast over on the wire and Hunt Feed. Go listen to that if you need to get some up to the minute information about where you're at in the country first, what the bucks are doing in your area. Tyler held it down this week because I was on the road going to the deer Leaves and doing a bunch of stuff. 00:15:31 Speaker 3: So uh. He had some really cool guests, actually, Tyler Jerdens on. 00:15:34 Speaker 1: There, mm hmm, some other from Mike Huntsucker. 00:15:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, man, big hitters. 00:15:38 Speaker 1: Guys don't know what it is Michael hunt Sucker. I don't know. I always see people calling Michael a lot, but you know, Mike's just way easier to say. Yeah, you know, I don't call ours Michael either. He wants to be called Michael, and I call him Mike. Sometimes I feel bad about it. 00:15:54 Speaker 3: He's all right. 00:15:55 Speaker 1: If people call me ty it's not a big deal. Oh yeah, No, I've calls me Tyle. People call me Casey, people call me osnagleties, and all kinds of stuff. So I mean, if you go to YouTube comments you can find all. You know, that's a good way to feel bad about yourself. Yeah, So Tyler did a great job on rough fish this week. Go listen to it if you haven't. That all ties into the fact that Texas is a huge state. 00:16:21 Speaker 2: We are the second biggest land mass as far as states go, right, California's right there close, but right behind us. We have way more whitetails than they do. So that's while we're cooler amongst other things. But there are white tail doughs getting bread in September, and there are white tail doos in Texas that will be bred in February. And that is something that makes the hunting landscape in this state very unique because we have a lot of different ecoregions and a lot of different things going on. And if you play your cards right and you figure out some stuff about deer in different areas of the state, you can find some rut action and some unique time periods that doesn't interfere with some of your other stuff. And so that's something that we've been trying to target the last few years in Tyler, what it you got figured out? 00:17:13 Speaker 1: Well, if you've ever been to California, it's much different in San Diego than it is in Redwood and State Park, you know what I mean. 00:17:24 Speaker 3: I don't even know those things even close together. 00:17:26 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:17:27 Speaker 3: I've never been to California. 00:17:28 Speaker 1: Redwoods are up north in the northern part of the state. San Diego is down south, where'sus Sequoia is at Giant Sequoias are like central eastern California. I think something like that. So college this is one thing that case, uh, this is this. This is the thing when you talk about California, Alaska, Texas. It's okay to be like central Eastern, but ca C does not like it. When Eric says central eastern Illinois because that entire state fits in the nine oh three area code here in Texas, probably you. 00:18:03 Speaker 3: Know, so true. 00:18:06 Speaker 1: Anyway, it's you know, I think what I'm my point is that it's okay to divvy up Texas. If you've never been here, you don't understand. Maybe, but this place is huge. I mean, it takes thirteen hours to get to El Paso from here, you know, So essentially what you have to do is keep in mind that when we say Texas is diverse, it's because it's like going to different states, you know, and so even within your own state, if you think there's diversity, then you can imagine what I'm saying makes sense. 00:18:38 Speaker 2: And so there's kind of two ways to get diversity on a landscape. 00:18:42 Speaker 3: You can either gain elevation, or you can go. 00:18:47 Speaker 2: North and south or south east west, and so like you know, the further you go west in most of the continental US, the more area it becomes, until you get across the Sierra Nevadas, and the same thing goes from north and south. 00:18:58 Speaker 3: The further you go north, the more lush it gets. 00:19:00 Speaker 2: The further go south and gets a little more arid, until you end up kind of pushing through like this an orange desert area, and you get, you know, further south than the US, you get to tropical zones. But either way, Texas has a lot of north and south and east and west and some topography change the you know, everybody talks about Dinver being the Maha city, but Amarilla is like forty seven hundred feet it ain't far behind it. 00:19:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, So with that, we do have a lot of different ruts and different deer herds and those kind of things. So we yeah, we we can run into depending on just kind of weather, you know, some pretty good rut action at certain times of the year, and so we we try to travel around and hit some of those. Doesn't always work, and sometimes we can't just go hit or rut. You know, we're gonna go hunt a place that we hunt a lot this year. We're gonna hunt this year again, and it's gonna berobably not the peak of the rout when we're there, just because we probably be other places, you know. So it just happens that way a lot of times. But we like to travel around and find places where Dearie will move around and stuff. So anyway, I made it expedition. Oh ht h decided to come hang out with me as well and hunt, and so he was actually gonna bring like some camping stuff for us to to, you know, pop up and go to camping. And anyway, so we we meet and I took young Michael as a camera guy with me, and we decide to go out. We had some cameras that were running on this place, and I think we had seen an increase in movement like the day before, so on these cameras, but I think we kind of we had tested that too. Mainly was this cooler weather and so you'll hear on up Fresh if you listen to it, a lot of the same sentiments from across the country where there was a good, nice cold front that had a bunch of the country and it not just in on most of the country. It just made the deer like daylight that weren't daylight, and or it made them just a little more just on their feet in the day, and it made deer that were closer to ruts do a little more ruddy type stuff. But well, when we were when we were going to this place that day, there was a you know, there was raccoons moving everywhere. There were deer out. Even that night. We saw tons of deer out on the road and stuff. But I didn't see any chasing. I didn't see any doze hanging out with bucks on camera that made me think that they were getting trailed or anything like that. But I just know it's getting close and with that cold front things things are happening in Testosterone is still increasing and so anyway, well. 00:22:00 Speaker 2: The one of the things that people don't always think about with rut and This is actually one of the great things about the RT Fresh podcast that we do, one of the few great things. 00:22:10 Speaker 3: Mark don't get give yourself too much. 00:22:12 Speaker 2: Credit, But uh, is that like, yeah, there's this thing that's like the breeding of dose. But white tails go through a large cycle in the fall pretty much from like velvet off until antler drop you. And this is why the rout fresh gnomer makes sense. It's like there's something kind of going on right in like scrapes starting to pop up or when deer are making rubs out of aggression. 00:22:46 Speaker 3: That's that starts pretty early and we're starting to see. 00:22:48 Speaker 1: Some of that already well. And we see in the South especially, we see these We'll see you know, second cycle dose getting bread and stuff like I mean, you'll see you'll see deer every year fawns that are like big with another family group that comes in on your trail camera. This would be like September October with one that has spots on it. And it's like those were like at least a month or two apart, you know, at least, and so you know, that's that's what I guess what I'm saying is things are weird and different in the South. Because they don't need to hit that window, that short window to survive as a species really. So anyway, we we were feeling good about this. This trip's it's just you see a couple of raccoons, like well, walking around in the daylight. It's like something's happening, you know what I mean. And anyway, the wind is blowing good, it's a pretty good directions. We've got a north northerly wind and it's blowing like fifteen so good for noise, you know, covering your noise going in and even your just movement as you go in. And we walk in and like we start getting pretty close to where we've got this camera set and we're wanting to hang right in there, and we bust two deer over the course of like ten minutes, but we only had moved like thirty forty yards total. Yeah, because we were working on what tree to get into. 00:24:17 Speaker 2: We did some hog hunting the week before, and we're kind of under the impression that it wasn't going to be a good Acren year, that the hard mask was not going to be a thing. And suddenly we start walking around and figuring out that there are some. 00:24:31 Speaker 3: Pockets, yeah, that are holding a lot of acrons. 00:24:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's like one of the big things in certain parts of this stage is if you can get on that hot mast, it's rocking and rolling because it becomes like a deer hub and like what you're saying, they have everything they need in that one place pretty much, and you got deer they're betting just right where they're going to eat and hang out all night and all kinds of stuff. 00:24:53 Speaker 1: Well, that's and what's weird is so one thing that makes me think of that is that camera that I didn't have a lot of faith in that I hung. There was some there was some overcups dropping in there that were hammered, and that was like, that was about the only acrons I saw. You know. There was a few other little pockets like you said, but like that was that was a place where I was like, oh, there's a bunch. 00:25:15 Speaker 3: Since then, there's been pigs like every. 00:25:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're vacuuming it up, you know. And then when we go in and we spooked these two deer in there, I find out later that afternoon watching deer that uh, they're browsing some sort of like forbeen there. I can I can see them. I don't know what it is either, because there's that I guess. Uh. The the stuff that I'm real allergic to is that blood weed, which. 00:25:38 Speaker 3: Is what I call blood okay, And it's not. 00:25:42 Speaker 2: Like it ain't putting off the Pallen hardcore yet, but at some point in time it really starts dumping palling, and it's bad. 00:25:48 Speaker 1: The worst. It's the worst. I will I will just seize up pretty much. But anyway, they're not eating that. No, no, and I haven't seen them eete it. I've seen touch that. It's the worst, dude. It probably tastes like if you were to a swede suit or something. You know, yeah, I hadn't been washed in ten years. But that they're picking through stuff in there, and I cannot tell what it is because you know, there's like that, like a lot of you see it in like floodplains and stuff sometimes around creeks or whatever. But there's this grass it's like a foot tall that maybe sixteen eighteen inches tall, and it's just like this fibrous grass. They ain't eating that either, and so I don't know what it is. I could not figure it out, but I could see them picking through as they as he does walk through. So they they make their way, right, those deers survive every year, whether there's acrens or not. Acrons are what they want, that's primary. But they're making their they're making a living in there somehow. And so anyway, we go in there, we get in this tree. It's the world's loudest tree. It's like a it's like an elm with like a shag bark. I mean, it's it's weird. It's got like it's not you know, quite as shaggy as a as a shag bark hickory, but like it's it's not good. I mean, just sticks are sliding up and down it crunching everything. Michael's down the ground just trying to figure out how to get out of the rainstorm of bark, you. 00:27:16 Speaker 2: Know, and any it cracks me up to like look down when you're because the way we do stuff is the hunter pretty much does all the hanging and the camera guy just gets to come up the tree. Yeah, but I'll look down sometimes and that camera guys just looking right up the tree. 00:27:33 Speaker 3: It's like, dude, I know, stuffs falling you in your eyes. What are you doing? 00:27:37 Speaker 1: I know? But anyway, so I get this thing hung. It's a pretty good tree really. Once we get up there, like it's got a little a couple of little limbs that are setting pretty good places that aren't going to block me off. I got a good I got good shots. One thing that you don't want to do in a lot of in a lot of places is have a big, old bushy tree right beside you because it's walking. You know, it may only be ten foot across on the crown, but it's at that point it's blocking like eighty degrees of your field of view. You know, yeah, you can't you can't do that, so if you can make it work anyway, we spend a long time picking this tree, and it was good. We get up probably like sixteen foot and I mean, I'm like almost done setting up and I hear something walking, and I'm telling Michael, I'm like, hey, someone's walking. I hear something walking. It starts. I start hearing it again, and I'm looking. I'm like, look in this direction or whatever kind of out to my left, and I keep hearing it and it's getting closer, and I'm like, maybe it's not coming from that direction. I turned around and it's one hundred and eighty degrees the other direction, which happens a lot though. 00:28:42 Speaker 2: That's right, man, the one eighty at the back of your head is it's hard to determine. 00:28:46 Speaker 3: That's why it's good to like elk hunt or turkey on with a few people. 00:28:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So anyway, it was a nubbing buck comes in, comes through and doesn't spend a whole lot of time in the area, but browses around a little bit and whatever that forb is and he's through. And then I was able to get my jacket on after that because it was it was starting to get kind of cold, you know, and I'm I'm kind of a whist when it comes to cold now, so I usually layer up pretty early on, so don to do it when deer around, you know. Well that deer comes back with a with a dough like a mama dough later on, and they start coming through and all of a sudden, where I mean, it's starting to get pretty prime time, right And I told Michael after that first one came there, I was like, hey, forty five minutes, we're fixing to kill that buck in here, and that we've been seeing on camera, and uh, you know, I'm just kind of hopping and it feels like the right day. And so all of a sudden, those deer coming through and they're at like twenty five yards and I see I see the fawn like go alert and looking up to some thick stuff to the kind of the north of me, and I was like, is that deer looking at another deer on a windy day? They do that quite a bit, you know, and then they'll just shake it off. Look, but I was like, I think it's pretty intent. And it's been sitting there for a few, like for ten seconds doing that. And so as I'm sitting there thinking that, all of a sudden, Michael goes, there's a buck. And I was like, I said, a buck. He goes, well, I can't see it's handlers, but it's body looks like a buck. And I was like, oh, that's a good sign, you know, I mean, because you know, it's not just a small buck at that point, probably like this deer's probably three or bigger. So I'm getting excited, you know, and I don't get my bow because he's deer close to me. I look back at and now the dough is alert to and I'm like, oh, this is this is good, you know. So it's coming. And turns out Michael had heard a grunt. That's why I looked that direction. Really yeah, and so and I never heard it. Well then he's like he's like, I started a grunt or this something something like that, you know. And I was like and all of a sudden, by by I was like, oh my, don't freaking loud. Yeah it was loud, and and I couldn't see it. I mean, this typical East Texas we talk about all the time. But like you want to you want to film in East Texas, Dude, you can't get footage? 00:31:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, oh he needs twenty four to seventy. Yeah, that's it. 00:31:21 Speaker 1: I'm this deer is at like forty five yards and I cannot see it. And I probably about thirty five to forty. It was the first time I saw it. And uh, he's he's coming in. I can't see him still, And all of a sudden, he kind of breaks out at like thirty five and just by loud. I was like, oh my goodness. And it was a toad. It was a deer that I had some experience with and had actually passed the year before. And I passed him because not because I didn't want to shoot him, not because he was too small, but because because I didn't think he would make the antler restrictions that we have, and so I didn't think he would go thirteen inches. They have to be thirteen inches wide in a lot of the counties in Texas to be to be legal to be shot. So it's helped our bucks be bigger and older in our herd, but it also prevents you from being really excited and being able to shoot deer sometimes. And so in that case, I decided to pass him. When you film your stuff, you can't get away with things. And not that I want to anyway, but I'm just saying you pretty much are incriminating yourself by filming what you do. 00:32:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is kind of the insight that makes things weird for us sometimes. But there's this aspect of like, you waste a lot of resources if you shoot a deer that's twelve and seven eighths and you can't hear that footage. Yeah, you know, like you would like not only likely get us outeation, but then like, well you can't put the footage out because you did something that's supposedly wrong. You know. 00:33:06 Speaker 3: So it's like there's a lot of pressure. 00:33:07 Speaker 1: We have to air pretty on the side of doing things way right. Yeah, you know what I mean, you should be like close. It's got to be. We try to do things very by the book because there's just nothing. I mean, this is what we've wanted to do our whole lives. We don't want to have me s that up. 00:33:21 Speaker 2: By the way, I got pulled over last night. Really yeah, how about that? Yeah, trailer one of the lights set on the trailer. Oh yeah, think fun gave me a warning, so it's nice. Yeah, nice guy, I guess. Yeah, he just mislid, that's all. But he also was like, hey, you're you're one of your I don't remember, like registration lamps or something. I don't know when the license plate lights was out, and like, don't you just have to have one of those? 00:33:51 Speaker 3: He's like, no, you have to both of them. 00:33:52 Speaker 2: So that's a law that's made to just be able to give you a ticket or give you reasona pull somebody over, because if your license plate is illuminated, I don't care, what's the matter if you got one line or ten lights. 00:34:03 Speaker 3: It's just a way to yeah, pull people over. 00:34:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, oppression, yep. Anyway, so this bug is grunting the back of the buck. Uh. 00:34:14 Speaker 3: You know what I'm really good at is distracting. 00:34:19 Speaker 1: It's good. It's good. The people need to know. Man. Uh So the the buck is coming in and and and I recognize him. He's a very recognizable rack because he's got it's kind of weird. It's not like he doesn't have like smooth curves to his rack. He's all kind of like, you know, disjointed, like it like he grew straight this way and then kind of curved up and went this way and then back that way. 00:34:45 Speaker 3: And he's a unique animal. 00:34:46 Speaker 2: It's like you see a person that's like got some you know, how do you say that? 00:34:53 Speaker 3: That's gonna sound rude? Their fingers. 00:34:56 Speaker 1: There's people with. 00:34:57 Speaker 2: Facial features that they're not unattractive people, but they're like you yeah, you know what I mean, Like you see somebody like that, then you're like, oh, wow, that's what that buck is kind of. 00:35:05 Speaker 1: Like, right, yeah, I'm trying to think of a good example of a person that's like that. 00:35:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, like. 00:35:12 Speaker 2: This is probably in the great standard, but like Vin Diesel, Yeah, all right, he is like a recognizable person still looks like a person. 00:35:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, but like they know a lot of people look like him. 00:35:23 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So this buck is very unique and he's got a he's got the same like ten point rack that he had the year before. He's got long g fours like he did the year before. He's got long like forward facing main beams to go way out to his nose, just like last year. And he's fairly narrow, but he's going to make the the rule this year, and so passing the deer work, you know what I mean, Right, it made him bigger and for sure legal, you know, but he's like just I guess what I'm saying, He's not narrow necessarily. He's narrow for what he is. He's a monster, but he's just you know, I mean, I think I've said this on the podcast before when the rule was a lot more new. One of my buddies and I had a lease up in Oklahoma in college and he shot at ten point that went one eight. This is a big deer, right, he was twelve and six eighths wide or something like that. He did not make the thirteen inch rule, you know what I mean? 00:36:29 Speaker 3: Wild? 00:36:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, But what it is interesting about that too, is that, Like I was talking about this with Greg yesterday or the day before, deer don't change a ton antler wise, Like I have some friends, we'll just leave him an autos who think that, like a deer can be a tight eight point this year in a wide ten next year. 00:36:45 Speaker 1: And it just that just hardly everything that it doesn't. I mean, they carry characteristics. 00:36:49 Speaker 2: Usually, yeah, I mean you look at places like in South Texas, I hear I had never been there, but I hear that kerr like at their headquarters down there, you know where that they have like a bunch of pin deer and they keep up with all the ships, like they have just walls of just deer through the years, you know, like a deer one to seven or something, and they look almost the same all the way through. 00:37:12 Speaker 3: So like to what I was getting at is that you could have. 00:37:17 Speaker 2: A deer potentially that is just that twelve to fourteen inch wide deer his whole life. If he gains too much mass, he's going to dip down below. 00:37:28 Speaker 3: Again. 00:37:28 Speaker 2: That's where it gets kind of scary, you know, Like he was like borderline and then all of a sudden, as a five year old, he kind of gets more massive and he's like twelve and seven eights. 00:37:37 Speaker 3: Now, you know, it's very weird. 00:37:38 Speaker 1: And on that note, On that note, this deer is is a thin deer, like he just has thin He had thin antlers last year and he's thin this year. I mean, so you guys might get to see this footage pretty soon, and you'll get this. I'm gonna put some of the footage of him from last year in there too, so that you can see how recognizably is And so anyway he's grunting, he's walking in these does get freaked out. They're like this boss buck is coming in here to do things that I don't want to do right now, you know what I mean. And they take off, dude, well guess which way they take off? Right to my feet, That's where they go. And they come out there and literally come to like probably seven yards I would say. I mean, they're just righting my lap and they're right underneath me. Michael, I think is losing his mind, and I clip on because I'm getting ready to shoot him. Right well, there's like a on like where they were at there's like a little scrape tree looking thing. I think there's a scrape on it. It looks like there's a scrape in the whole of this underneath one of these branches, and then all these like forbes or whatever that they've been feeding on run there. So this deer comes to what I'm calling the scrape tree and sticks his nose down and like basically just got his shoulder closed off to me for quite some time and goes to feeding in this four be grassy stuff. At some point, and five minutes later, I still have not shot, and so it's pre roll city, dude. He's still just closed off to me. The whole time. Nobody's moved except for the dose that barely started walking towards me, which is great. And I'm at this point it's like, okay, towards you from your feet, like more yards and you'll be so far underneath me that you can't see me draw, you know what I mean. And so because they're like five yards now and one of them is right with me, like right even with me on like a nighty to my wind, well, the other one starts going to the down wind side and it's not good. She goes under this like leaned over tree, which is a feed tree. Now, this is a really interesting tree. It's a hackberry and it's completely leaned over, touching the ground on one side. It's a small tree, so it's like it's like bent like a bow down towards the ground, and it has It was the first thing I noticed in this area this year when I walked in. There's a massive browse line all the way around it, and they like hackberry leaves. That deer just that's a thing at least, you know in most of the eastern half of texas well. These this tree is browsed all the way around, and then it has the top of it where they can't reach. It has a bunch of hackberry leaves still, So this dough goes under this browse tree and she starts kind of browsing some of this stuff and messing around or whatever. And meanwhile she can't see me really because there's so many leaves. So like, I pretty much knew that this scrape was like twenty eight yards or whatever, but I wanted to make sure because you just start questioning yourself when things are happening. So the little deer gets real close to me. The dough is underneath this thing, so I like grab my range front her. I had him twenty eight. Oh okay, perfect. Now I'm like, how do I shoot this thing? Because you don't want to shoot high. They're going to jump the stream because they're tiny, just Texas jack rabbits, you know, or whatever. And they're amped up because they're public land deer, which you know, we found to be a definite thing a lot of times is that there does public deer just they see a lot of people usually, and so they're amped up. Well, I clip back on and I'm thinking about how do I shoot the sand? And I didn't want a pen gap, and I was like, I was thinking, okay, I'm just gonna hold my twenty like mid body, and I think that at you know, twenty eight is not I'm not dropping too much from twenty to twenty eight, but I'm dropping enough that I'm gonna smoke this deer like when he jumps the string. And so long story short, he finally opens up, takes a couple of steps, and gives me He kind of finally pulls his shoulder forward. He takes like a step forward with his right and then also kind of broad sides out a little bit and I look down and this dough is like, I don't know, she's getting real close to my wind, but she's kind of come out from the tree and I was just like she looked at her and she was kind of facing away a little bit. I was like, okay, it's now or never. I draw back and I and I go to settle on him, and I put my twenty kind of like mid body, and I look at my thirty and it's like off his body, and so I was like, oh, that's kind of weird. Yeah, So then I pin gapped him. Didn't want I didn't want to, you know, And I was like, okay, I pin gapped him. So my twenty ends up probably like on the spine maybe and when and this is like the anatomical spine, not like the very top of his body. It's where it actually is, which is like, you know, high in the body. And I look at it and I was like, I really, I'm like I've only focused a few times on deer this well. And so I pulled I pulled it closer to the shoulder just I touch, because I still felt like he was maybe slightly quartered to me, and I pulled it really close to the shoulder and pin gap was like mid body maybe just under the mid line. I pulled the trigger and it happens quick. But the first thing I said, as soon as I mean, you can probably hear me in the footage, I go, oh, he jumped the string or he ducked or whatever I said, because he did. He ducked it pretty good. And then he turns and peels out and goes the other way, and the hole on the other side is like just massive, and it's like probably midbody, maybe a little bit under, but pretty much midbody, and that's a massive hole. And I'm just like, oh, well, he's done for sure. 00:43:23 Speaker 3: You know. 00:43:24 Speaker 1: It kind of hit him high on this side of the other side is pretty good, you know. It was probably sixteen foot up twenty eight yards, like there's a good little downhill there. And he goes running out probably like forty fifty yards and then he kind of like he looked kind of like, you know, he might have been getting weak or wildly, but I didn't know. He kind of disappears behind this tree, and I'm watching and I'm thinking, I disappeared. I'll have to go track him, you know, but I'm listening for the crash, and then all of a sudden, he just like side runs across this gap where I last lost him, just like sideway stomach blend and smokes this like. I don't know what it was. I couldn't see it, but it was a loud crash, and I was like, no way, dude. And I looked over Michael, and Michael like I thought he was gonna cry. 00:44:10 Speaker 3: He was. 00:44:11 Speaker 1: He was laughing his head off so hard that I thought he was gonna cry. Dude. He thought it was like he couldn't believe that we pulled it off, you know. And uh, and that deer crashed right there, and we went and recovered him in the daylight, you know, in the last minutes of daylight. A few minutes later, we pull everything down, went over there and didn't even really need recovery lights. So I mean, it was it was just a great night, dude. And uh, it's it sounds hideous, but I started thinking about it, and I set two mornings in Nebraska. You'll see it. I'm fixing it. We're fixing a release of video from this on the Element channel, so y'all you'll be looking for it. But I set two mornings that were in the backyard of our airbnb, and so Casey and I decided not to count those as sets. If you don't count those sets, I have sat four times and shot three bucks this year, which is absolutely ridiculous efficiency. That's spoiled, dude, Collee, Man, like I need to. I don't really actually want to, but I kind of I need to make sure that I don't just think that it's easy, man, you know, because I guarantee you I hate And that's why I don't feel that bad about it, because I was like, dude, that Antelopum was a ridiculous man, you know, So I, uh, I don't know. I'm just super super blast man for sure. I mean I kind of was a little bit speechless because, uh for a second at least when I recover the deer, because I was just like, man, I don't know if I can honestly say like that you know that that I've hunted three four times and killed three deer. It feels like I just like bragging on myself. But I and so I didn't really, I don't know. It's just a weird thing to try to figure out, like you know, how to. I was shocked too, Like I just I was ready to camp and spend some time like figuring this stuff out, and it just like went back into where I I'd seen this deer last year and lo and behold his homebody and he's sitting in there. So, I mean, I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen it on Instagram. But that's the story, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 00:46:10 Speaker 2: It's pretty cool, man. They come Texas Public Landier. Last one of those I shot was a meat buck. 00:46:16 Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a long been time three years for me too. Twenty twenty I think was the last year time I shot one. They are hard to come by, man. Yeah, you almost killed them monster last year. I mean, I've had some close encounters. He was running, you know, if you'd have been able to get him stopped, he was in range. 00:46:33 Speaker 3: See that's the thing, dude. 00:46:34 Speaker 2: You start looking at and this is kind of encouraging, I think for a lot of people. And I like to leave stuff on encouraging note since I'm such a pessimistic guy, you know, I gotta ring some encouragement back into things you start looking at, like success rates on hunts, and it can get like a real depressing sometimes, like when you start applying to like, you know, an elkhon out West or something. 00:46:55 Speaker 3: Success rate is like eighteen percent. You're like, gosh, man, you told me only one of it. Every five guys kills an elk on this hunt. 00:47:02 Speaker 2: But you have to realize how many people he might not be making the best choices in the woods, and then also how many people have the hunt of their life but don't actually kill the end. 00:47:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's a good point. 00:47:16 Speaker 2: And that's how you can look at that last year, Like I haven't killed a public land buck since twenty nineteen in Texas at least. 00:47:24 Speaker 3: But I don't think of and I'm probably just full of myself, but don't think of that. 00:47:29 Speaker 2: I've had bad years in Texas and it's just some close encounters and some things like that, you know, but like you just like what you're saying. 00:47:36 Speaker 3: I kind of forgot about that. But it's like that's the margin. 00:47:39 Speaker 2: Like that deer was in range, he's like twenty two yards, but he ran by chasing a dose so fast I couldn't shoot him. And he would have been the biggest what I shoot last year. No, he wouldn't been the biggest. He'd been the second biggest year I shot last year, probably score wise, that's wild. Yeah, if I killed him, you know, he was a toad. Yeah, I mean we had trop comming pictures of him and we were in there hunting him. 00:48:01 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:48:01 Speaker 1: But it's just and that's the Texas public land thing that we were talking about earlier, where you can literally you can't see him to the thirty five yards. You can't get them filmed at fifty yards, you know or whatever. Sometimes it's like, man, that's frustrating. 00:48:16 Speaker 2: And it's another thing too, why, Like I'm never gonna like a campaign against the rut but there's some problems in the rutea and dose are a problem early season. 00:48:25 Speaker 3: You can get on bucks and it's just bucks. 00:48:28 Speaker 2: But like in that situation, he chased that dough back near to the base of our tree, and in an effort to get around and try to set myself up for a shot, the dog. 00:48:36 Speaker 3: Wigged out and ran. 00:48:38 Speaker 1: I forgot about that, and if she. 00:48:39 Speaker 3: Hadn't ran off, he wouldn't have been running by. 00:48:41 Speaker 2: But you gotta at least you can just go into praas this mode and be like, don't move because there's a deer. Well, you're never gonna kill him. If you do that, you're gonna try to make moves. 00:48:51 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. 00:48:52 Speaker 2: Anyways, this is subtracting from what we were actually talking about, which was your big deer. 00:48:57 Speaker 3: I mean, grats on that, man, it's awesome. 00:48:59 Speaker 2: I was tied up with our family has been going through some sickness here and it's not bad, but it's still lingering and we're like over a week indo this thing and my wife has it right now. Son, Yeah, it's not so. I was dealing with that that evening, so I couldn't kind of come pow wow with y'all. It's kind of sad, but it looked like a grand old time. 00:49:23 Speaker 1: Well it is. It's a it's a hault. It's for you to come do that anyway, so I know. But it's fun to party though it is. 00:49:30 Speaker 3: Man, I just wanted the pizza. 00:49:31 Speaker 1: You know. 00:49:32 Speaker 3: Did you get pizza yet? 00:49:34 Speaker 1: I haven't. 00:49:34 Speaker 3: Gosh, we might need to get some pizza soon. 00:49:36 Speaker 2: We do. 00:49:37 Speaker 1: We need to celebrate a few of these bucks we do. Man, we ate pizza in South Dakota, but it was like four days after a kill, so we were delayed pizza eaters there. Yeah, but anyways, dpes perfect eaters. Oh. By the way, I was watching a dude perfect video of the day last night and Cody the big tall guy huh he they did a fry challenge to see if he could figure out which where these fries came from that he's eating from, like fast food or whatever. He was like fifteen and fifteen. 00:50:12 Speaker 3: Golly, it's pretty good. 00:50:13 Speaker 1: That's insane, dude. 00:50:14 Speaker 3: I'd like to try that. 00:50:15 Speaker 1: Oh, it was all. I would like for you to try it too. I think he'd be pretty good at it, but I couldn't believe he got them. All right, dude, that sounds fun. Yeah, yeah, so but anyway, that's be the. 00:50:25 Speaker 3: Hardest to discriminate between. That's right word. 00:50:29 Speaker 1: I feel like fries would be pretty tough. Like burgers, you could do pretty well, I think, Yeah, I don't know. 00:50:34 Speaker 2: I'm trying to think that, Like Brahms has a crinkle fry and then there's another one that has crinkled fried. Like I feel like Broms and culvers would be hard to figure out between. Yeah, but I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't be hard. And here's the other thing. You have to have eaten fast food recently. I haven't eaten a lot of fast food because like Burger King, fries in my mind, are. 00:50:55 Speaker 3: Different than what Burger king fries are right now. 00:50:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yep, so they changed things sometimes. 00:51:01 Speaker 3: Man, sneaky, sneaky. 00:51:02 Speaker 2: Anyways, we're kind of diving off into some stuff that we don't know that much about. 00:51:06 Speaker 3: Let's get back to them, DearS. 00:51:07 Speaker 2: I hope y'all have got a great start going to your season. Remember to have fun out there and remember this is your element.

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