00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Hunt Collective. I've been and Brian. Today I am joined by Hunter Jordan's Mark the crew. Hello, back forty. Hello, You're gonna hear a lot of things coming up. A lot of things about the Back forty, a lot of things about how we feel about it, a lot of things about Michigan, a lot of things about Mark Kenyon, good and bad. But before we get to any of that, we also joined by Phil the Engineer. We're gonna do. We have nots of sharp moments. We have the first ever Dr Phil segment from from our boy Phil. So look forward to that. I'm calling it Dr Phil Medicine Woman. But nobody, Nobody's going with me on that one. We got that and then we got Back forty talks, so stick around to that. But before we get to that, we're gonna talk about something very important, and that is a book called That Wild Country by my friend and colleague Marcus Aurelius Kenyon. Could you be an esquire? Sure? Why not? So We're gonna take some time before we get to the show to tell you about this book because this book is about a lot of things now, but it's mostly about our public lands. Is that right market? It is, and it's an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the conversation, which is about private lands and which interestingly illustrates the two sides of my life. My life too. I think all hunters have this duplicity in their life. I definitely do. And people can buy let's just before we get to what what's inside the book. People can buy it where well, it is gonna be held most anywhere. Eventually on December one, it will be available most anywhere. You can buy books between November one in December one. I'm not sure when this is coming out, but between November one and December one, it's only available on Amazon to Amazon port of Amazon's First Read program. Somebody told me a special promotional program where they release a book a month early. Yeah, that's a very prestigious honor for Mr Mark Kenyon in that Wild Country to be included in Amazon First Reads. Amazon, if you don't know as big as shit and they sell lots of things, um, so go shopping a whole Foods and go buy Marx books. In inside the book you did, um basically a field studying and a study in and of itself of the history of public lands, your feelings about public lands. Give us a couple of quotes or a couple of feelings that are in in the pages of your book. Well, I think at the high level how this all came about is, you know, back in two thousand and fourteen, fifteen sixteen, everything around the land transfer movement was starting to pick up steam. Within the hunting community. We're really starting to hear about it. Um, Folks like Randy Newburg and Steve ron Ella and Beck County Runters and Anglers and Fielding Stream and Outdoor Life, all these different media outlets were starting to toot the horn of Hey, this is a thing that's picking up steam. There's a lot of people that are advocating that we should be transferring our federal public lands to states, and that's not a good idea. And I had for you know, some portion of well, growing up, I'd experienced some public land. I lived in Michigan, but we went and visits national parks, we did a lot of state parks, that kind of thing. Um. Once I graduated college, my wife and I started heading out west and spending a lot of time in these bigger, wilder Western landscapes, and so had had developed a really strong affinity for these places, and eventually, with as my career started becoming more flexible, we started spending two to four months a year living out west just exploring public lands. Um So, at this point I had a lot of love for these places, and as I started learning more about them being threatened, I realized, I don't know how we got to this point. I don't know how we got to have all these locations. How we have six forties some million acres of public land, How we have Grand Teton National Park, How we have these national forests? How we have these places that have been so special and impactful on me. So somewhere on the way, I've realized, is there something I can do? Is there some way I can try to help bring some attention to these places? Because around me in Michigan, all my friends and family, he had no idea there was this kind of thing going on. They had no idea that all this public land was was possibly threatened, or that we even had these places. A lot of my friends had no idea. I heard of the Yosemite, they heard of Yellowstone. Um. But it's different than when you live in Montana, when you live in Wyoming. Um, just a kind of a different world. I can attest to that. I've lived in Illinois and Montana and Texas and Maryland. Yeah, so much different. So basically came to the realization that there's a lot of folks in America that don't know this story. They don't even know it's it's available to them. So I thought, maybe I can tell that story. UM. So I decided to study the history of our public lands and study what's happening right now and what that might mean for the future, and tell that story through a series of my own adventures in these places. So over the course of a couple of years, as I spent months living out on public lands, camped out in my camper, backpacking, back rafting, hunting, fly fishing, climbing, back that all sorts of different things, canoeing, um, trying to experience these places, understand what's at risk, what's up for grabs here, and overlay that with the lessons I learned along the way, as I researched and studied and read and talked to people about how we got to this point and that's what that's what wild that wild country is. Well, every writer wants to pen a book. Every hunter wants to tell stories. Uh, and I love public lands, so I think this book is awesome. Now there's a quote that you reference in there by a fellow named Wallace Stegner. I'll just read it. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in before. It can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope. And if you want to read more, just like that. Those ideas, those ideologies, those philosophies, go to Amazon right now, between now and December one, right Mark, Yeah, that's the one place to get it, between now and December one, and you go and pick up that wild Country. It is not so much money for the amount of perspective, So go and do it. Thank you, Mark Kenyan, Thank you Ben. Now this episode of The Hunting Collective enjoy. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedil do the medal. I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new closes a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up fast. I guess I grew up. I mean, they have a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted to a real bad dream of being a lack. I'm coming a part of the scenes, but thank you Jack Daniel. Hey, everybody, welcome Episode seven. I'm here with Phil the Engineer. I am here in bows Man, Montana for another week of the Hunting collect So this week is all about you. Well, it's not all about you. It's mostly about you. It's also about the Back forty. As you'll hear coming up in the interview signal of the show, we have ah behind the scenes of the Back forty, which is our white Tail property, which you should already know. If you don't know, go to the Meteor YouTube check it out the Back forty. But I've been I spent I just flew back from the Back forty, Phil, and I spent the whole flight back reading your emails. I was a bit backed up on the THHD inbox, and so I spent a good better part of about three hours hopefully answering most of your emails. And I created a folder in my email called show Keepers, because I normally would just reply and then forget them. But there's so much good stuff happening in the THHD inbox, I felt like I needed to highlight some of the best ones. So this this little intro, it's going to be all about you, mostly about you. Are you referring to me the listener? Okay? Got it? You? You, the collective listener out there, have done a fantastic job of emailing your thoughts, feelings, opinions. All very constructive, all very positive, and even when they're um seemingly negative, you you do a great job of keeping the perspective. So I just want to say thank you, because I did spend, like I said, quite a long time looking at emails. We got some segments to get to. We're gonna get to those pretty quickly, and then we're gonna get a bunch a pile of emails. But um, we've got to get to a couple of things. But first, the work sharp not a sharp moment, phil play the jingle not so sharp moment you don't have Okay, this one is quick and dirty. It comes to us from Seth Bustby. Thank you, Seth, you have been selected ready for the story film can't Wait. About three years ago, when I still believe that you couldn't piss in the woods while deer hunting. I use an empty sent away bottle that I had my pack tracking got it so far naturally, the next year, I didn't remember that I used that specific bottle and sprayed myself with my year old piss. You can smell it now in case you just pick your Seth in the morning. Spring. You probably woke up on the right side of the bed. It's gonna have a great day the spring spring. Piss all over himself, year old piss all over himself. I imagine that many deer hunters have done this, Maybe not many, a few, it seems this could be maybe not. How many people are pissing in their scent away bottles? Maybe not. This is embarrassing. And to make it worse, that was the first time my wife went hunting with me. Oh no, y'all, take care, Seth. There's a short but sweet This is why I didn't mention if they were still together. I laughed out loud. He said he didn't say X wife. Okay, So the good point So for all that that was a brief one, but very impactful to me. So Seth, thank you for your not so sharp moment. Hopefully you got to wash those piste drenched hunting clothes. And for all your troubles, we're gonna send you a work sharp field sharpener and you're gonna love it. They'll play not a Sharp Moment so you don't have all right, well, listen, um, I wanted that to be a brief not so sharp moment because we have rather long email about the nots of sharp moments to read. Now this is one. This is one of the best emails we've ever gotten. Is one of the most clever emails I've ever read. And so Andrew Lennard's is going to get a THHC hat. We're gonna send him a hat, all right, Phil, and I will personally will write a personal letter to you as well, thanking you for your contribution to the show. And Andrew said this, He said, good morning, this isn't an email with a not so sharp moment. I've had a few of them in my time, but not sure they are worthy of competing with some of the others. I felt obligated to write this email in regards to the jingle for the work Sharp not a Sharp Moment segment of the show. The first time you guys played it. I thought that myself off. Well, isn't that a funny little song. Now weeks have passed, I can't get it out of my head. I'm literally singing it as I type this email. Thank you for that. The jingle has done its job, and I'm now addicted to the words like the finest crack cocaine on the market. I believe by the end of the week my children will also be addicted and will spread the virus that is this catchy tune to all their friends at school. Well done, Skimpy micweek Stash, I applaud you on this marvelous creation. I'm a new subscriber to the show, and I'm I'm disappointed I didn't find it sooner. Reheaded to rehab soon, Andrew, Thanks Phil, Hey, you're welcome my pleasure. Thanks Phil. You're ruining lives. Yeah, well, I mean you're a scourge upon the land. You should have known that this would have happened eventually. Yeah, I should have. I should have known that you would be wrecking the brains or loyal and new listeners like Andrew. So what do you have to save for yourself? Uh? Not a whole lot. I mean I'm glad that the jingle seems to be effective in some way. Um, and yeah, I hope hopefully I can. We can see what what what other things I can I can bring to the table. Maybe I'll do a jingle for your segment coming up. Okay, can you teach me how to play the piano? Sure if someone else teaches me first. Okay, yeah, uh that'll be It might take a while, but I could do like a doctor Phil medicine woman theme song. Okay, it's gonna be great. Um, but that's I thought, Andrew Man, well done, well done in many ways. You made me laugh. And so you get a hat. And that's the threshold for getting a hat around here. Just write a funny email. Funny funny email, make me laugh for that. I forwarded it that around the office because it made me laugh. Now, Phil, your mustache is gone. Yeah, sorry to break it. Break it to the listeners. It is no more. I shaved it off first thing in the morning after all the ween what. Um. Oh, listen, I told you that I wasn't a big fan of it. Listen, it didn't look great. Okay, thank you for this, uh skimpy mcweekstash you Um you live, you burned brightly. You're a shining star. Goodbye. Seemed to me that you lived your life like a candle in the wind. Um, Skimpy, Why the mango? Okay, yeah, I it's it's gone, and I feel great. Honestly, I'm sorry. It was it was a blonde angel sent from heaven. Yeah, and now it's returned, returned home, homecoming anyway. Yeah, I I don't I don't miss it. Did your wife miss it? Not at all? No. I My son noticed that I shaved it. He said, Dad, did you shave your mustache off? I said yes, he said yay. So I think the only people who wanted it around were you and several listeners. And that's that's about it. And I'm not gonna cater to you or like I'd like to have a pretty eulogy for Skimpy mcweekstash. Skimpy Skimpy, you were here for a very short time. When I first met you, I thought you had no chance of climbing into my heart and taking a piece of it. But over time you grew on me and on Phil You and you were able to make a mark on us all with your blonde, shadowy figure and you're gentle but firm presence. Mm hmm, thank you. It's Skimpy. Rest in peace. Wow that was great timing. Yeah, I didn't playing that time. Thanks Skimpy make aweek stash. We didn't have people right in. We had some people right in that Gary should have won. Um. I have a little regret that we didn't name Skimpy Gary. In fact, I think we I think Gary was a close second. It was a seriously close second. Bryant Lumen wrote in always a buncher people's names. I feel l u h m a n would that be Lumen l A l a U l u h Probably Lemon Lemon. He wrote in that his dad's name was Gary, his dad's here's here's Gary Phil and he had an awesome mustache And unfortunately his dad passed way. And you know what I will say this, I there's some like some health issues going on in my family. When I read Brian's emails, like my dad helped me get going. My dad's not sick, he's fine, But um, that kind of hit me a little bit that his dad's name is Gary, his dad had a kick ass mustache. His dad taught him to hone he's now a biologist in the land Steward u W Medicine. So it's a great story. Um, but I think it's probably good that Gary wasn't remembered in the form of my mustache. I think he is probably deserved something a little bit and more robust. Yeah, he had three sons taught him all how to hunt. So the emotions while I read all your emails, the emotions went up, they went down, they went all over the place. That was Brian's email was another person that struck me. It's just a cool story. And it's funny how we make jokes about mustaches and somehow that can become weirdly meaningful. Uh. And we got a lot of more stuff to get you. But before we get to that, Phil, I promised you something. Yes, I made you a promise, and I keep my promises, Phil, keep them. The promise that I made you was that you could have a segment on the show. And now we would call that segment. Dr Phil. Did you write any music? Uh, not music, but a little intro A little intro sound? Okay, right here, go for it, Dr Phil. This person needs surgery. Now, don't worry. I'm on it. My work here is done. All right, Phil, what have you prepared for us today? I don't know anything about what's coming. I'm seating my hosting duties to you for the moment. Take it away, Phil, Okay, well listen, I didn't want to overthink this. Um I tried to think about what I could bring to the table, and I, uh yeah, I didn't come up with a lot, but sounds promising already. One of the one of the one of the favorite things that we that you have done on on the show since I've been here were the top five lists with Sam Soholt and Maggie Smith. Remember Spencer new Hearth and not not me because you cut me out of the voting. Didn't do that. You got honorable mention on all of the votes. Um So, anyway, as a sort of way to get my revenge, um this is revenge is a strong word. See. I could see you like in your room, toiling waiting for your revenge. I've decided that the segment is going to be uh dr Phil Medicine Woman, Colin Phil's Picks, Phil's Picks play the jingle we already did. It was a sound effect. Um, I don only have jingles for everything. Now, well, it's going to be a sort of jingle perfect. There might be some ominous drones in the back yells Picks phils Um. So I decided that anytime you listen, this might be the only time we do the segment until decide it was a horrible idea. You're on thin ice. I'm on thin ice. But if if this will become a recurring thing, every segment will just be me um. Maybe it'll be putting things in listen. I love lists, listics, listicals. They're they're useless, usually not full of any um like you know, good information. They're not enlightening in any way. It's just a way for you to to get mad at somebody else's opinion. Said about someone else's opinion on the Internet. Top five things that I ranked that I don't know about. So anyway, I'm excited though. Okay, so I figured for this first Phil's Picks list ranking order, I've decided to come out, come out hot I'm coming in hot um, I'm coming in with with the I ranked the the current ten films in the Star Wars and as we know, no one has an opinion about Star Wars on the Internet. In fact, most people write it. I had at least three emails or four emails of people that were hoping that you would do this with your segment Star Wars. But Marvel, what's the c Yeah, Medical Center Unit? Was it close? Marvel Cinematic Universe m CU was thrown out there. A lot people are suggesting what you might do with this. Oh no, I don't. I don't. I don't care about the MC as much as I do about as much about hit them hard. Okay, coming in uh number ten, We're gonna start from the bottom. This includes the all the films, the Cannon films in the Skywalker saga. There's ten is there ten total? There's tent total? And then this Christmas number eleven, Rise of Skywalker the final film. Because here's the thing, there's that can't be the final It will be final film until like fifteen years from the final film of the Skywalker saga. Man um because there are currently eight of like the main movies, and there's two anthology movies Solo a Star Wars story and Rogue one a Star Wars story. Here's where I watch these things on a plane and then I fall asleep halfway through them. Then you're gonna love this. Number ten. I had a tough time picking between two films, Attack of the Clones or The Phantom Menace. Those are episodes two and one, respectively. Yeah, those were the second time they started coming out with them, right, Yes, Phantom Menace came out in I remember thinking how has all this time passed? And it looks like because they were that was a prequel, right, the prequel. I remember thinking, how is this a prequel? But the spaceships look more advanced. Uh, well the Republic fell, then that's what these films are about. Continue, So number ten, Attack the Clones may I I many consider this the worst of the Star Wars films, as do I. Um, it's Hayden a lot of it got a lot of flak for the performance of Anakin Skywalker by Hayden Christensen, who does a little bit better in Revenge of the Sith. But he comes in strong, comes in like a little whiney brat right out of the gate. You hate him. Um, But I I brought up some dialogue from this movie that I would like to I would like to read you're reading dialogue, um this this music doesn't fit the dialogue, and I'm going to read, Uh, so it was panned a lot for Also it's it's just it's horrible representation of the love story between Anakin and pad May and featuring some dialogue such as this Anakin, from the moment I met you all those years ago. Not a day has gunn by when I haven't thought of you, And now that I'm with you again, I'm I'm in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets the thought of not being with you. I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that the kiss will not become a scar. You're in my very soul, tormenting me. What can I do? I will do anything you ask. If you are self suffering as much as I am, please tell me anyway. Horrible number nine. The Phantom Menace Episode one h features two pretty great sequences, the pod race and the final lightsaber duel with Darth Maul and Obi Wan and Quigon. Other than that, um, it's pretty stilted and boring and has to do about tax taxes, Oh boy, Star war taxes a long time ago and far far away taxes. There are tax issues tariffs not exciting, and George George Lucas says, these films are for kids. Number eight, it's like Texas. Yeah, Revenge of the Sith three, that's what the dude had, the double sided lightsaber. That was Phantom Menace episode one. What's that guy's name, Darth Maul. He got cut in half, somehow survived. That's fine. It's Revenge of the Sith and again becomes Darth Vader. Everything goes to ship. The Jedi are all executed except for Yoda and Obi one. Um, it's okay. It has its moments, but overall it's still poorly written and directed. My take, are you gonna play this the entire time? I'm planning on it? Okay? Um? This up the actual listen, do you want me to have the second Let me give me a time. Lis've been going. We haven't even going for twenty minutes. Okay. Uh. The the actual story of the prequels is good. Okay. Do you have Chancellor Palpatine working in the shadows as Darth Sidious nobody knows is it the sixth Air Rising? And he's kind of pulling the strings. When is Samuel L. Jackson coming in the Senate. He gets killed in this movie. He does, he does. He gets arms chopped off the building, Mace windew He gets arms chopped off and then thrown out of a building. That seems a little excessive. It is very You could just throw him right out of the building, let his arms attached, and well he was holding a lightsaber with one of those arms, so just kind of disarming him. Okay. Number seven Uh, Anyway, the story of the prequels is good. They are just poorly executed. Number seven Solo a Star Wars story. This is the Hans Solo origin film that came out year or two ago recently. I saw in theaters, was not very impressed. Watched it again the other night. Better than I remembered. He has fun. Donald Glover is Lando Um, Donald Glover, He's he's fun. Uh. Woody Harrelson plays a like a gangster, like a it's it's it's good. It's better than you think it is. Number six Force Awakens. This was the first, the first sequel movie that came out a few years ago. This is the first one with Oh Yeah, Daisy Ridley is Ray Adam Driver. It's Kyler Wren, Harrison Ford and carry Fisher returning. Yeah, yeah, old Harrison for old Harrison Ford. He dies in this one. He is murdered by his son. Um. It was a lot of It was a blast after the prequels because it just kind of was a nostalgia hit. But it just retread everything. There was another death start pretty much another random kid on a sand plant. Everybody who gets the Force, everybody gets like cut up by their father or son. Yeah. See that's it's it's there's too much family stuff, which, um, we got enough family issues. It's fun, but it doesn't do anything new. It's just kind of like you like Star Wars. Here's more of it, but it's okay. Number five, Return of the Jedi. This is the episode six, the final of the original three films, um where Darth Vader fulfills the prophecy and brings balance to the Force by murdering the Emperor. Which one is the one with the e walks? That's this one? This one? Yeah, dude, the killer Teddy Bears from the Forest's great. They're fun. A lot of people hate on him. They're great again. They live in these movies there for children. Number four, the Last Jedi. This might be a hot take a lot of people thought that this was the most recent film that came out. Oh yeah, everyone said that they ruined Star Wars because it but listen, they were trying new things. And I think that because the Luke Skywalker has turned his back on the Jedi, and for good reason. He's living on an island. He's living on an island by himself with like some weird creatures. Caretakers, caretakers um. This film brought in a lot of new ideas that had never been talked about in Stars before, Like maybe the Jedi aren't that good because they, like the whole prequel films are about how they just sat on their ass while the Sith like rose to power. The Jedi had no idea, and Luke mentioned that this movie it's like, yeah, the Jedi actually kind of suck. Yeah, he's switching to good point, Luke. Uh, Laura Dern is good, but she's kind of out of place in this movie. So it's Benicio del Toro. You don't even remember this, do you do. He's kind of like a he's like a smuggler, code breaker. I don't know, he's just he's a he ends up betraying people anyway. Last Jedi overall very it's good. But the Luke Kylo Ray stuff is great, the best stuff Star Wars has ever done. Number three Rogue One? Whoa Rogue One? This is the other anthology movie. This is This takes place literally minutes before a New Hope, the first Star Wars movie. It's about taking the plans for the Death Star and getting them to Princess Leiah so she can bring them to the rebellion. Um did you see this film? No? Okay, it's very good. It's kind of explores the more, kind of like scummy, weird, underground Star Wars universe. Um, it's great. There's a really cool sequence of Darth Vader at the end that is just it gives me chills every time. But it's kind of cool because it takes place literally minutes before the first film starts. Uh and spoiler alert, everyone dies, which is kind of fun. All the main characters. Jeez man, they get blown up. It's a game of Thrones. I'm like, why do more people got well going into it? You know they're all they're all gonna die because they're not in any of the other movies, and because you know they're toast. But they sacrifice themself for the greater good. Number two A New Hope, the first Star Wars movie. It's just great. It's just it holds up. It's all New Hope. It's all told from the perspective of these two weird droids. Um, and it's just you know, it's the hero's journey. It's Joseph Joseph Campbell. It's good and evil. It's just fun. It's a blast. Hairson Ford brings a lot of needed like swagger and coolness to this really weird, dumb universe that kind of set the tone for the rest of the most movies. Number one Empire Strikes Back. Of course, it's great. It's it's it's great. It's cliche, but everything about it is perfect. Um. Harrison Ford is somehow even cooler in this movie than the first one, the you know classic I Am Your Father. Um, it's just it's really well shot, cinematography is beautiful, Mark Hamill, Fisher, Billy d Williams. Yep. Anyway, that is the official th HC. Dark Hannon list of Star Wars ranking of all the things I've done to you, this is like your dream to have a you want to have like Star Wars so how long? How long did that go? That went for about ten minutes? I could have easily I mean I was rushing, you rushed through it. I could run under a way that more detail. For those of you that are still with us, uh, welcome back to the Honey Collective. That was Dr Phil's Medicine Woman's top ten list. Um right in with your thoughts about that. Uh, listen, I can change my mind about this in five minutes. But also it's cannon and it's irrefutable, so don't even don't even don't refute Phil's top This is the list of ten. Empire strikes back number one. If you have a different opinion, it's wrong. This is the right one. Welcome to the Internet. That's how that's how it goes here on the internet. Okay, Phil, you did a great job. I'm proud of you. You have lived your dream. You want to have a Star Wars podcast, don't you? Not necessarily? I just maybe like you want to talk about not like a multi episode podcast. Well, thank you to everyone listening for giving Phil his dream, Phil Mango, the whole family. Thanks you. You seem defeated. You seem deflated right now. You seem like you regret every decision that led to this moment. I don't. That was not believable. That like every time you're like, yeah, I love just be on this show. All right? Moving on that great? Thanks Phil, that was one of the best times ever. You're welcome. Um, I'm sure everyone is still on board. Thanks, So we're gonna move on. Do you have any um Britain like sound effects, like maybe a song that speaks to the United Kingdom? What's the when they play when the queen Boks in the room? Pay one play that. Now we're gonna do a little international portion of the show and we're gonna get to our talk with Mark Kenyon on the back forty about the back forty before that, we've got a couple of really good emails from people living over Yonder. The first one it's entitled how Lucky you Are? And this one struck me. It's a long one so I won't read it all. But this guy's names John. He lives in the UK and he's got some perspective for us. Um, I'm from the UK and over here are our model of hunting is extremely different. We have no public lands, we were able to hunt, We're not able to hunt with a bow at all. Almost everything land wise is private and require people to pay the odds just for the experience of a rifle hunt. At the very least, we are a nation that has almost but forgotten our rich hunting heritage, and there are absolutely no predators to keep the spiraling deer populations and check other than us. The issue is always finding permission to use any of the private land to hunt on. It's ridiculously difficult. Our country is currently looking at banning all trophy imports and this could spill over into importing harvested meat, making international trips where hunting is supported almost worthless too. I personally don't condone hunting animals for sport. I yearned a hunt for me, for food and to provide my family and do Due to misinformation and the rise of social media outrage, small pockets of people are controlling how hunters are perceived in the media and viewed by those who maybe have no opinion. Fox hunting is flashpoint for our anti hunters, but this year our government and a knee jerk reaction to a very very few local folks have even stop the hunting of wood pigeons and Corvid's for a time. Two birds that decimate crops and lambs we can fish, but unless you're on the coast or in the mountains of Scotland, it's probably best you don't eat them due to the very bad river pollution. We can hunt ducks, pheasants and goose, along with other smaller wild game again if you can get the seemingly unattainable permission. If you do manage to hunt these game birds, there are animal rights groups that actively head out to sabotage your day and stop your hunts. Hunting for food is alien. Hunting for conservation is an unspoken subject, and as I've learned more hunting about hunting, it makes me feel frustrated, restricted and totally hollow. We are pretty much a nation of supermarket users. Our children have no idea where their food comes from, and what small amount of hunting culture we have is severely under threat, and regardless of what type of hunting you for take in, you are demonized. Regardless of any hunting issues you may come to face in the u S. Please always remember how lucky you are and that you have a system that supports you. For the most part. In this solemn story, you can you can hunt our native deer here in the UK if you're willing to pay. Of course, some places are more reasonable price wise, so it's possible to fill the freezer. So it's not all doom and gloom. Kindness regards John. That's that's it's a lot of doom and gloom though, say I just felt in reading that. We feel as though we had a podcast recently a lot of people wrote in about Clay Nucom's feeling that we shouldn't give an inch, right, we shouldn't give anything anything up to this shifting culture. We should we should hold the ground. What was his term, guard the gate? Guard the gate, We should guard the gate. Now, if you want to find a good argument for guarding the gate, this would be one of them. Now, there's a lot of different things happening within the culture of Britain, the UK, Scotland, the British ailes in total. But this just tells you there's there's one guy over there's feeling real, real depressed about it, Phil real depressed about it. So good perspective for all of us who enjoy our hunting heritage here in the United States, Oh America. Now moving on to Scotland, back in episode what the hell ever? Number maybe eighty five was whiskey and ethics l eighty four, eighty four was whisky and ethics doesn't really matter. In episode eighty four, we'll call it we did a whiskey and ethics on the gripping granted in that we talked about a young lady who went to Scotland um shot some animals and stirred up an outrage. Uh Ian Henderson wrote in from over There, he's a Scott living in the US, and he wanted to help paint the picture of why Scotland hated this young lady and why the backlash occurred. He said, I feel that Steve talking about Steve Rinella totally missed the culture points related to why the lady who shot the goat got such a backlash in Skytle. It's not just because she was wearing a tweed suit. Scott's love fairness and hard work. They hate elitists. If someone spends a bunch of money to pay someone to do their dirty work, if they don't need to work hard and they somehow look clean when everyone else is dirty and wet, they're going to be labeled as a twat, a tube, a wanker, a ball bag, or some other creative insults. I can think of one that I thought. I thought you were filling in that game. No I was not. He this is I'm still reading from got it, just reading from it, he said, Let me paint a picture of the American equivalent scenario and see how you might feel. Chester Framingham the third is a wealthy stockbroker from New York City. He flies to a high fence operation in Texas and ghost hunting. This particular high fence operation is small, a couple of hundred acres at most. It has a lot of easements across it, so the animals are highly habituated to people. He chooses Texas because it's quaint and authentic. He has paid a hundred thousand dollars for this hunt and lets everyone know about it. He's dressed from head to toe in Patagonia gear in various pastel shades. He uses a four h and h double rifle to kill a steer from twenty five yards. Chester poses for his photos. Chester likes to kill stuff for fun, and they don't have cows in New York City. Chester is sparkling clean despite their being a tornado and driving rain. Everyone nearby is cold, wet, and wind blown, but Chester the Third and his people keep him out of the elements so he looks perfect for the photo. He leaves the cow to the ranch owner to clean up. That won't fit in his private jet, and New York won't allow the meat to be imported anyway. Nothing illegal or necessarily an ethical about Chester's hunt. The cow was soon to be slaughtered anyway, and died extremely quickly. But everything about that seems out of place, elitist and frankly, you're thinking Chester framed in the third is a prick. I'm all right? Is still still read an email checking in on that. Hunting is already a highly elite activity in the United Kingdom due to the nature of private property and game laws. On top of that, right to rome and the small size of the property, combined with almost zero hunter pressure means wild isn't what you think it is, and isn't an American. All that baggage and context was piled onto the grip and Grind controversy. It was about a rich foreign asshole abusing the privilege, wasting meat and killing for fun. It was little to do with hunting, whether the meat was ultimately waste. It doesn't matter. It was clear she wasn't eating it at all. She was killing more than she needed. She was a local lass and a wool sweater, grimly cutting the throat of a lamb for Sunday lunch with no joy or fanfare. Then no controversy would have been had. Also, it's pronounced ila. The s and the y in Ila are silent cheers like that little jab at the end. Now, if you want to go back and listen to our conversation, we did talk about the young lady that went over to Scotland and created this by killing a goat on the island that obviously routes people up. And so when I read that on our first it's extremely well written, So thank you for that. Ian. I will remember our our new friend Chester Framington's third as long as I might live. So it's good to have some real perspective, uh well written perspective from the folks over there. So thanks to our international contingent Phil play the music, uh the UK music. I like that you bookend every do. I just kinda do it at the beginning and the end. That's it. If that's my new strategy, it seems to be working. People are into it maybe, so that's it. I got a lot of other emails that came in from a lot of other very uh smart individuals that listen to the show. So thank you. I enjoy the discourse. I enjoy reading what you have to say. It's a big part of why I do this. UM. Even though the social media contings you can sometimes be a little bit, how we say, dick ish, the emails that come into TC at the meetator dot com are always enlightening and always well crafted. So thank you so much for that. It makes this a lot easier, makes it worth and so we'll keep reading those, keep sending the th HC at the meat Eator dot com. T HC at the meat Eator dot com feeling good, philm being great. Let's see one more thing before we go to the back for you, speaking of social media dick ishness, I feel I need to address something quickly, and we'll do it quickly. There's a lot of people saying out there on the internet. I've read a few people saying and then I've had a couple of people mentioned this to me that it has been UM. It has been positive that I and one guy wrote swinging on the nuts of Stephen Ronnella, swinging on the nuts Stephen Ronella, riding the coattails what other things that people say, Um, whatever, we got it, we got it drafting Steven. A lot of people saying that, I feel like that's a little bit, that's a kind of a pot shot, bullshit way of ah high school insults, And I get it. That's what the internet it's all about. I'm I'm with you. But here's what I'll say to you. I joined a company run by Stephen Rinella, moved my family to Bozeman, Montana to follow his ideas and his company, and so absolutely I'm riding his coattails that, there's no doubt about that, Like, that's part of this company. We wanted to come together under his leadership and under the idea that Meat Eater could be more than just Steve and would be more than just Steve. So for those of you that are leveling that criticism, I hear you, and you're wrong. Well, actually I hear you, and you're right. You're right, but for the wrong reason, right, but for the wrong reasons. I absolutely am riding his coattails. And I was very clear about that in the beginning, and so I will be clear again that I absolutely am looking forward to continually riding the coattails of what he created with our company, making it better, expanding it, and expanding the ideas and what we stand for. So I'll just address that there in case you were wondering, in case you were leveling those high school bully type of bullshit insults. You keep doing it, but just know that I agree with you, and so take that for what it is. Now we're going to the back forty enjoy. I guess I grew up on an older road. Hey, we're here in mark, kenyans in laws camper. Yes, sir, it's a unique environment. I find you. You keep acting like this is some bizarre thing. I no, no, I'm not acting. It's four dudes, one camper. It's turned out to ye, it's about after this releases four dudes, one camper. But yeah, I mean, it's it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. I just find that it's nice. It's nice to make light of sleeping in your in laws camper. Thanks to Tim and Lisa what's your last name? Bernst Bernstein, very very letting you racious of them borrow the sun Dance camper. Right, campers underselling it's a big fifth wheel. It's big. I think I think Bend is maybe just a little jaded towards it because of a sleeping arrangement the last couple of nights. Let me describe. We're here on the back forty. Uh. If you watch the show or listen to this podcast, you may hear the sounds of cars drive by. It's very annoying to me. There's a road right where we sleep on the back forty, and there's this is like a rule. There's like four houses on this whole road, and then it's like the belt way out there. People tear through it. What's going on? Mark, I don't understand it. You don't have no answer, all right, but people definitely use a lot more than you'd expect. Yeah, So if you've watched the show and you hear, wow, that's what's going down. If you're here to here too. But the back forty provides it? Does? It's sure? Ship does? Um? Tim and Lisa gave you this fifth wheel camper and it has you know, you give me a tour of it. But it has a bedroom which you as like a king bed. Is that a temper. It's a full size bed, a full size bed, same size as your mattress. Is it temperate, We'll get to that. It's definitely. It's not tempting, but it's very comfortable. It's gotta quilt that's and then you sleep there. It's kind of like like the Master Sweet and does the Master Sweet and uh. Attached to that is the bathroom, Yes, which tends to get when you turn the furnace on, gets hot. Hot box, the hot the hot air pipes in the rooms were pooped in just a hot room. This eth it. And then when you're done pooping, what do you do? Mark? What's the process? Well, because we're out here and it's very cold, Um, we can't have you know, the plumbing working in a camper like this right now, so we have to flush the toilet with a jug of anti freeze. So we've just got a black tank on the camper that's full of our stuff and anti freeze keep it from freezing up. Nice. Nice, You've never you've not lived until you've woken up in the morning to the smell of human feces and anti freeze. Just heat it up like a hot pocket. Yes, the Sweet Sweet smell of November. So but we're here. We're here also with with Hunter, who just woke up from a nap. Hey, Hunter, Hey, how's it going? Just woke up? Sleep, creezes still fresh in his face, very fresh. We'll make lots of moaning noises. And then we have Jordan's Hello. They're both with Captured Creative, the creative element behind the back forty all the wonderful filming, the wonderful editing, the music at tension, the resolution, the conflict, all of that. It's all these guys. It's all Jordan's Hunter and Taylor Taylor. Yeah, shout out to Taylor's back. Probably right now, just in a dark room with headphones on, listening to market. So anyway, continue. There's a nice little kitchen at here, a little stove, a microwave is in a freezer, all very nicely adorned. There's a little table. We're sitting at a little table um where Jordan's would sleep. The table turns into a bed, very short bed. It's the shortest bed I've ever seen. Can't stretch out. The bed is about four and a half feet long. Very it's long. It's very compact. How have you been doing that? Do you sleep diagonally or do you curl? No, well, yeah, diagonally, but I end up curling because okay, so it's not perfectly like a child anyway. That's where Jordan's sleeps. Uh. And then if you go over to the other side of the fifth wheel, there's a nice uh it looks like it was it a couch that turns into a blow up bed. That's where Connor was just sleeping. He's woken up still a bit groggy apparently. Apparently it's pretty comfy. It's comfy apparently. And then that's that's all the beds that this comes with. But there's one extra person. That's me, the last person to show up. Last person to show up. I slept on an air mattress purchased at probably Walmart. I think it probably was probably Royal Wall and we'll get get to that soon. I slept on it the first night. I blew it up and I had a little sleeping bag and a couple of pillows. It was actually really comfortable. Problem is the furnace. Event for the furnace is that basically my level when I lay down on the ground. The other problem with that is that there was a hole in the air mattress somewhere that we've got to determine. So my wife told me that she thinks that it is used your air. She says she was having this issue and there's two valves and she wasn't closing one of them. There's two of them, yeah, the other I know it. I trust me, sure, trust me. I'm not sure. No, that is there's no way to be a hunter. But I'm gonna be sleeping on it tonight, so I'm gonna fiddle with it some more. It'll probably, I'm sure, but I there is two valves, right, There's a main valve and then little cap that screws in. So I was screwing both those in and clicking them in slowly, I mean slowly. I would go to sleep with a full air mattress, just pretty comfortable and then warm from the furnace, like it was going to sleep in a very comfortable position, and I would wake up like I was in some kind of burrito or something of sadness with this like deflated now air mattress, and then I would be it would be like a hundred degrees on the floor, so I'd be just sweaty and I'd be laying basically laying at this point on the Lenolian floor of the kitchen. It was struggling. This stands, yeah, help me understand it. What rate this is happening? So what time do you wake up in this state of affairs? Well, I'm so tired, I'm so tired from this hunting that we do that I don't really know. It would be like three in the morning, probably going to be the first time I went to bed at midnight, woke up at three, and I was completely on the floor covered in sweat. So I was trying to like you ever seen the ace Ventura or he's trying to crawl out of the rhino. It's kind of what I was like, Yeah, that's what I was like, Jordan knows exactly what you're talking about. It was like that. And then the second morning was basically the same. I had confidence every time it must be a user air. If I just fiddle with this valve, if I just turned this valve with all my might and I talked to it and I tell it to not let any air out, it'll be fine. Each night though the best part wasn't it didn't deflate like completely. There was like a depression where you were. So it's just enough to make a struggle to get outside. It was like the han Ever, it's like the saddest hammock ever, as as are you doing all right? Hunter? You wake it? Yeah, I'm getting there. You're getting there. He's feeling it. That gets me to like, so I somehow I'm up in chipper and I'm having back problems probably for the rest of my life. You need coffee. I do need coffee, but I don't drink it, never had it. I don't even care. I'm just gonna keep on, keep on pushing it though. All right, Well, the point of this podcast was not to make fun or point fingers at any kind of air, mattress or camper. But we're gonna go back in time and tell the whole story. I have a property called the Back forty and as a de side, you can hear the furnaces turned on in the fifth wheel. You can imagine if hopefully you can hear that, I hope that's audible. That's air that would have been blowing on me each night and sweating me out my sleeping bag. Good thing. It was a fifteen degree bag and it wasn't like a negative degree bag. Well, the first night we didn't run the furnace in that fifteen degree bag or zero to green bag would have come in handy because it's pretty cold. Hunter forgot to bring a sleeping bag, so he just tried to find every blank he could find and up into a ball and hibernated underneath it as best as could. Yeah, I mean, we're four men who have not showered in some time, we have very little sleep, and we've been eating all kinds of like just terrible foods. It says it's it's tough out here. It's the rut, it's tough out here at the back forty. It's no joke. Back forty is a me as I said one time. Um, so we gotta go back and tell the whole story the back forty because if you don't know what the back forty is, you're missing out. So stop now. You're not allowed to go any further than this podcast. Until you stop. You go to the Mediator YouTube and you watch all the episodes. It's gonna be three episodes. I believe four episodes will be up in live by the time This Coast live, So there's four episodes for your viewing. Pleasure that we're uh that feature Mark Kenyon, Steve Nnelly, Ones tell us myself and a fellow named Luke McCauley in the latest episode over there at the meeting. YouTube's edited and filmed by Capture Creative. We're joined by yes, Yes, and here we all are. Here we are, and so you go over there and you watch. Uh. Briefly, Mark described the Back forty project as it stands right now. So the Back forty is a project in which we have sought out and then purchased a small piece of land in Michigan, and our goal for that piece of property is to learn about this piece of land, learn about private land conservation, learn about how you can manage a property like that for biodiversity, for wildlife, plant life, native species, all these things, and trying to figure out can you do that which entails a whole lot and also manage it for and enjoy great hunting. Um. There's a whole lot of folks out there that talk about how to find a property or how to hunt a property, but there's a whole lot less that dive into trying to balance those two things and what you can learn along the way. So that's what we're trying to do. So that's a back for it. It's a big project from either who ever thought a company that you worked for by a property for you to manage? Mark Kenyon, did you ever believe it to be true? Uh? No, I would have never guessed it, imagined it ahead of time. Um. But it was an exciting thing, big, big undertaking, exciting opportunity, fun challenge, stressful challenge, scary times. Yeah, I want to get a phone call from Ben at eleven o'clock at night or something like, oh no, what has happening now? What has gone wrong? So attached to the back forty is a contest that you've probably heard about here on the show sometimes, and that is a contest where you can go right now to the Meteor dot com slashback forty and enter to win a hunt with Steve and Ronella. You'll know that guy and then also Mark here on the back forty next November. So if you already stopped, and you wouldn't you watch all for those episodes, stop again and go to the media dot Com find that enter the wind page, fill out all the details. An enter to win will pause to make sure you've done it, and you don't just win the hunt. We're also gearing you up right. Yeah, we're gonna gear you up. We're gonna give you stuff. But it's not about stuff. It's about experiences, not about commercialism. Parent meat eater, Peter whiskey. I knew something like that was coming. Meet whisky. We actually have some meetor whiskey over there. We should get it out in the corn. Go get some hunter that will stretch your stretch your bones out. Take your headphones off, don't fall over. They do work you. Just these ones. You can't hear yourself, but we can hear you. Oh nice, all right, we got some Metator whiskey here. We'll break that out while we're while we're filming. Do you want to get class or something. Yeah, we should get glad. We're just passed the bottle around. It's like this is a fine bourbon whiskey. We can't drink it out of the bottle. Yeah, shot class, that would be nice. I'll tell you what we're celebrating when Hunter gets the glasses over here. We're celebrating the end of an episode, but also the end of the life of the Wide eight, the Wide eight, Goodbye Wide eight. We're gonna get to that later. This is like a non linear podcast where you love those kind of stories. I love non linear stories. This mark I can tell you. But anyway, the back forty when do we? When do we first like convinced the powers that be at Meat Eater that this was a good idea. Well, I was starting to pitch it internally in folks last November one year ago, I was pitching it to some folks and there was some interest in it. And then by December we were talking to more people, and by January was kind of like, Okay, this is something we think we should do. And I think by February I was on the search trying to find a piece of ground. And that's actually I feel. How long was that two months that you were looking for? The two months give or take three? Yeah, just three. I'll take a drink out of the bottle. All right, we got shots, all right, just three of us. Okay, cheers, cheers with the with the cheers with your thing. Cheers boys taking a shot of meatia or whiskey here live on the show. I haven't tried. I haven't tried to punging a roma, hot stings, stings, the nostrils. It's got I think it's got bits of real elk one side. Oh bam, this is uh, that'll do it. Alcohol by vall shop out of your naprol. Good hunt. It's gonna put me back too bad Meatia straper will see pear as well with just about anything, but we prefer it with freshly prepared wild game. There you go, or in a trailer with your friends. Either that's let's I don't get us going feeling good? Hunter? You wake now? Yeah, you're still working those sleep creases pretty good. I like it. I like what you're bringing to the table. A's far you. I haven't said much, but what you said is impactful. Well you gave me like a whole twenty seconds to prepare. Yeah, that's all right, don't worry about it. Marks getting his social doing this social media anyway, back to the story of the back forty. Mark had this idea that we would buy a property, right, so, uh, we did buy a property, which I was always shocked at because I've been in the industry a while and I've always thought every place i've been I've made a suggestion like, hey, how about we buy a hunting property and I'll help you with it, hunt it, and it'll be like ours together corporation. And the corporation never said yes until Stephen Ronnella gave us the thumbs up to do this. But but he had some very strict, what I would say is very strict stipulations Mark about doing this. Yeah, and it was. It was. It was a good h balance at it was just good and put. It was good and put to help make sure that we were looking at this thing from the big picture, which was make sure this isn't just about big bucks and deer hunting. Mark him talking about me, he knows I'm really into white tail hunting. I get excited about chasing those big old bucks, which is great. A lot of people are interested in that. But there's also a lot more going on. And we wanted to take a unique look at this place. So how can we tell the story of a small property and hunting a small property, but also look at what else is going on out there, the birds and the bees and the small mammals and watersheds, turkeys and all the things going on on these places. How do we tell that story too? And Uh, And that was kind of the impetus for making the back forty what it is, which is not just another deer hunting show. Yeah, I think behind the scenes wise, it came down to we we decided to buy the property, and we had purchased the property right we You had said, I got this property, here's what it looks like, and we all talked about it and we said, hey, we dig it. But I think I want to say that Steve talked to his brother Matt Ronella about the idea, and I was like, we're gonna buy this property. We're gonna hunt it for white tails, we're gonna film and make content, and then we're gonna give the property away. We're gonna a hunt away, but also at the very end of the whole thing, give away the properties some lucky meat eater fan, audience member, whatever. We're gonna give it away to something like the idea was, we're just going to give it away. Right. We hadn't decided on and still really haven't decided on what exactly we're gonna do, but we know we're gonna we'ren do it this year and next year and give it away. That's the plan of it stands right now. You can't hold us to that because we might change tomorrow. But that's that's what we had talked about. And matt Ronelle came back and said, well, listen, don't be everyone else be meat eater and talked to Steve about it, and they and See came back and they at hatched some ideas about it. And I remember thinking how challenging it would be to both film a show around a concept of deer hunting but also a concept of like the greater ecosystem that it's a part of, and then that marries up into the private lands portion of the conversation, and on and on we go. I remember thinking, oh my god, that's gonna be tough, um, you know, to to put together. And it it turns out I was right, it is tough to put together. And that's where I think, uh, capture creative comes in. We you know, to take you a little bit further behind the scenes. We don't like to talk about this kind of stuff, but it is part of the story. We bought the property in what month, closed at the very end of April, right, so marketized conversation and I'm you know, helping lead the project marks of course the center point of it. Ah, We're like, yeah, let's get started, start filming. We're just gonna go. Let's go, let's go. We gotta do stuff. We've run that time. If there was anything done, we wait, we don't have any money for this, no budget, no plan, no nothing, no content, business plan, nobody to document it. So we were ready to go. It turns out we were way off because it took us a while to get things lined up and in the biggest thing was just getting everybody a line on what we had to do, what we wanted to do, what we felt like was necessary. Right. So once we all got a line that had to be about biodiversity, it had to be about everything, not just bucks um. Then we set about like making a plan to make the content right. And so that's where we hatched the idea of seasonal episodes, which you've watched. Hopefully you've watched four. If you haven't stopped, now welcome back. You've now watched four episodes of the back forty. That's what we had planned to do about that more. Yeah, Mark, it's good, we'll get to that mark because we'll get to that. We got a long way to go after they just watched those four ms. Yeah, you've now watched all four episodes. Wait, we'll wait, go back and watch them again. Wait, okay, welcome back for the second time. You've now watched about an hour of Mark Kenyon floundering about the back already doing everything. But then you know, so we had those challenges. We had have meetings and meetings and talk and talk and talk. It's a big project for a company like ours, so you know, in efforts to just kind of give you guys all behind the scenes of how this content comes to be, we had a lot of stress. Like Mark and I had a lot of conversations about like, what is going on. We're never going to do this. We bought this property and it is sitting. It's sitting, and it's useless until we can actually make all moves on. Yeah, it is not as if we just bought a place and then just start going doing on things and then someone's gonna foll around and record everything and then just magically happens. There's a whole planning and writing and thinking and debating and changing and how many power point presentations do we make focus a bunch of power points ten thousand word documents. I can't tell you how many times plans and episodes and many plans, so many treatments, so many everything. But we want to do this right. We want to do this the met either way, and that's where we are. But there was a lot of market I spent a lot of time on the phone in July going like, um, what we've got nothing done two and a half months after we bought the property, and we have done all of nothing, not for like a trying, no, certainly trying, just all these logistical things. Yeah, I mean, we finally marshal the resources, which is a big undertaking, and we finally got a plan for what we wanted to do. And then we've we called Jordan and Taylor Captured Creative and they said, oh my god, what are you talking about. That is a terrible idea. No one will ever be able to do that word for word for word for word. But we convinced, eventually convinced them that our insanity was worth their work. Um, which couldn't have done it without them to this point or at any point. And what it was like the end of July, early August, by the time we had we had figured all of it out and got everything aligned, and that by that time, anybody who manages their properties for any for any part of wildlife, let alone dear knows that August is the time where you're normally just making your little refinements, little changes, maybe a hinge cut this, maybe oh little late season, we'll put some book forward. Judge right there, you do you let you do your your fall food plots, if you're into that kind of thing. That's auguste checking trail cameras, we were like, oh crap, what can we do between now in the beginning of of deer season, which is two months away, to get things where they need to be. And that's where Georgian commanded Jordan, you can just tell us very quickly what you thought about this whole idea when we first gave it, when we first ran it by you, Yeah, that was be honest, there was a lot. I mean, we so we come from like a white tail hunting background, both Taylor and I so it was a super relatable project for us. But also, I mean we were a two man team at that point, and usually our fall is pretty solidified by end of spring, like May, we're pretty much like, yeah, we've got a lot to do this fall. Luckily, last spring we reached out to hunter just trying to kind of branching out, you know, if we need if we would have needed help, or you know, just kind of growing, growing what we were doing, and you know, kind of let it rest. We kind of kept in kept in contact with him for a little bit there, and then all of a sudden, the middle of July got there and we're like, yeah, Howter, We're gonna need you a whole bunch in the next few months. What are you doing? What are you doing for say, the rest of the year. Yes, what are you busy? And Hunter? What did you think when you first heard about this idea that is the back forty Oh uh, I mean it seemed like a lot to do in a short amount of time. But filling up the shot glasses again, I mean right, Mark, it sounds like a great idea from the get go. You were totally into it. Oh yeah, Like I'm I'm a twenty three year old man. You were twenty two at the time. He spent his birthday in the trailer. There's a little piece of classic Yeah, the other day was your birthday. In the trailer, we did have like some oh my gosh, I got him, I got him caramel ganash brownies. All those things, like you know, it was the most insulting thing about them was that it was like this giant chunk of chocolate with more chocolate spread on top of it. And then just as an insult to everyone, they had taken chunks of brownie and sprinkled on top of the brownie that had icing on top of the brownie. It was just like, it was very insulting to me, like, yes, I'm gonna eat this, but I'm going to enjoy it, and I might like it's gonna be hard to breathe. For about two hours after Welcome to the Midwest, I got a lot of comments, we're gonna get to the days in in We're gonna have a lot of stuff here briefly in this tale. But so we signed on and capture creative in the linear timeline of the back for you and Mark knows. I don't like linear timelines. It's not a good way to tell a story. Wayne, for you to keep love the show This is Us. I don't know if anybody out there listens to This is Us. I love it. It's great. When you first brought that up to make out what if we did this like this is Us? I had to go watch some of that ship like this it's so good man. I'll be in there just like watching this is using my wife and I'd be like, oh my gosh, this this is so touching. Kevin Fire. Yeah, don't play, don't don't give anything away. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. You guys got to watch all three season This is Us coming back? All right, welcome back. You've now watched about seventeen hours of This is Us. How about that more? Yeah? How about that's a non linear way to go about it. Anyway. We are we greenly. We green lit this thing in August with the idea that we would have about eight or nine episodes that show. We would launch them in the kind of a semi live um every two weeks fashion. Now. We had about seventeen different plans that were thwarted by reality. Um. But in early August we went to work, right. We started looking at the property making a plan. And when I say we, I say, Mark, Um, so like described the first the first time when we let you loose on the property. What you were thinking, Mark, Well, when I first got let loose in the property was after we quote well, even before we closed on it because I found it. Do you want to hear the story of how I founded or just skip right to we bought it? And what do they think once we are Oh? Non, literally we go back in time. That's perfect. This is us. Would definitely do this. I will try to make it clip in time. You know, search and search visited I think twelve different properties I visited in person. Spent a lot of time looking online at all these different properties, and I had a certain set of criteria that are harder to come by than I've realized. I always assumed that, oh, someday, when you have the resources, you can get your dream far would be awesome, and so I thought, Okay, we have the ability to get a farm, now just pick it. There'll be all such great options. But that was not the case. Had several properties got sold underneath us, had several that you know, it's like weird backup offers and etcetera, ETCETERA. Long story short. Ended up stumbling on this one when driving to another property. I drove by and saw the sign in front of it and thought, huh, it looks good from the road. Pulled up on X, looked at the map and said, that's what happened loaded free acres. No, dear, I wish it was up front advertising like that. Um but no. But I looked at the map and said, that's what I've been looking for, and found the agent and got permission to walk it. And sixty four acres rolling hills. There's about six fields old fields, old fields. Most of it is like remnant, like really just brushy cover like golden Rod and Marristale and things like that. There's a swamp in the center that that mark affectionally calls the sanctuary. There. There's more rolling hills than I expect there to be, and there's there's a ridge in the far what southeast corner of the property that really we think whole deer that's called the Honey Hoole. So there's there's a lot about this property to like, especially in in the spot where it does in Michigan. It's close to your place, it's close close to really the origins of meat eater in our company. So there's a lot of reasons why you would want to buy a property like this. And I will say one inspired me about this piece of ground is it's it's just unassuming. It's it's in a world where everybody on TV has to kill some giant buck, and every property has to be pristine and thought through. This is a chance for people to see the guts of a thing, like what it takes to build something from. It's not nothing, but it's it's really close to nothing. Yeah, this is very much the everyman's property. I mean it's it's small, it's raw, doesn't have a whole bunch of special stuff on it yet, it's just it just had the potential I thought, And it was in a good area for my research. It's it's not in the middle of nowhere. There's developed men around it, there's towns around it, there's encroaching you know, industrial parks and all that kind of thing going, like super high roads. So so me and me and Doug were talking like what we have here is kind of like the potential dug during UM five. You'll see that coming up soon, exactly right. This this kind of little oasis that we could protect in some way and nurture in some little conservation oasis of sorts, um chucked in the middle of a whole lot of other stuff. So so yeah, it was when I first got to walk out there and see it on you know first when I looked before we purchased it, and after purchasing it, it was just excitement, anticipation. I have very high expectations though, Um, in Michigan it's it's very different expectations even have in say Iowa or Kansas, these renowned deer hunting places. Um, But for Michigan. From everything I've I know, and I've spent a lot of time hunting a lot of places around here talking to a lot of people, Um, this is in one of the better areas we're hunting in the state. Um, and had the pieces that had the swamp. It's got good neighbors. So I was like, this is gonna be awesome. Yeah, it's pretty excited. Yeah, I was to just I'm not I don't live I mean, you live pretty close to where we sit right now. This is your country man, Like you know this place, this is your game, right, that's wish you've kind of developed for your livelihood and your lifestyle and the way that you live and what you dedicate yourself too. So this is your thing. But for me, it was a chance to tell a story, right, to tell a story not only about this property, but about every small property like this one not only about uh land, but private land and how much private land there is, how much that private land means the conservation, how private land is important, if not more important in public lands, and how those two things can work together to do what we need them to do for for wildlife. And I know we've talked about this a bunch, but that's just a big part of the storyline. So when we were first starting all this, we're like, we got this brawl farm. We know we want to give it away. We know we want to bring people into hunt and tell the story of this place as we work on it. We know we want Captured to be a big part of that, and helped push that forward. And that gets us to August when we're like, Okay, well what are we gonna do now? We wanna And it'sn't it like for most for those who don't know, most hunting TV that you watch, even hunting stuff on the Internet, most of it that's well produced or produced at at all at any level, is shot the year prior to the air, right, So it's the idea is we'll shoot at this fall at next fall on the outdoor channel of Sporceman channel or even stuff you see on the internet that's not vlog style format like those of Hushing and other folks like that. The production is not so ambitious to say like we're gonna do it this year. Most of these things are done many months prior to when the air, so there's lots of time to put them together. We just sided that we still we wanted to try to meet the standard of what Steve had done and what media had done in some way while also delivering the content the same year that it that it happened. So tracking this thing not live, not really semi live, but within the context of the season in which it was happening, which can you can follow pretty damn close to live, because we're not telling this story just with the YouTube se it's also being told on the wire done podcast pretty much weekly. It's on my social media accounts very much weekly, almost daily since August um. So for those that have expressed interest and want to follow on with what's going on, you can see what's happening right now, and then you get to hear about it a week later in the podcast, and you get to watch it two or three weeks later, So you really have a pretty cool way to experience this in different mediums, um And I think that's that's been fun for me to be able to share it in those different ways, and hopefully for the audience has been fun to engage with it in those ways. So all the times I've been here a couple of times out, I've had fun when I'm here too, um And we'll get to that, but we should get to the first shoot. When we had Jordan Hunter come out here, they were looking for hotels there where's the place where you know? We were in an undisclosed location in Michigan. It's a pretty rural and rural Michigan. Rural Michigan. There's some towns around, small stuff, small towns, but there's just not like there's not the Hilton anywhere near. There's no Marriotts, there's no Marriers. But what there is, what happens to be here is the days in. And if you've ever stated the days in, it's a lovely place. They're usually at least for me, like, Okay, I've pulled up a commercial about the days in. It's just gonna play that for everybody. Do you hear that? Oh? Yeah, who you don't know? Oh they got a pool? Oh, it's a child. We could, yeah, look at things, the lights, how family didners wherever we like delicious? Okay, it is sez the days sees the days, so I would love to stay at the place like this sounds lovely, it's lovely. It's uh they got pools, happy children. That one child looked like he didn't have a pink eye in either of his eyes. You look, now, Jordan's hunter decided, there's only in the proximity of the days in the days prior to their being a camper here, there was only a few spots to stay. Now, I luckily I found a place around here, uh close that had a little bit of rooms. But Jordan's tell us a little bit about your experience at the days in now. Disclaimer, days In is not a sponsor the program. I don't think they will be after we talk about this. It's gonna be after this, it's gonna be tough. Admittedly, admittedly it's gonna be difficult to reel them in, but we may be able to save it. But just Jordan tell us, yeah, give us a brief description of this in like marketing and you know that's sort of industry and what they do and all these companies that have people that do that. I think I take issue with that ad that you just played, because there's not not too much that happened to be true with our experience at this facility, and you just you were just trying to get a place that was relatively inexpensive, close to the back forty comfortable, had to bed in it, you could sprawl out your camera gear because you guys were doing shoots their last five six days, and there's multiple of them, so you're gonna be here forty fifty days throughout the fall. You'd like a nice place, clean up, take a shower. You don't need much. You guys are pretty simple. Expectations are low or fancy people. You don't need a maitre d or a valet or anything like that. You just need bed, a shower, and no chance of hepatitis. That's there's the kicker. That's that's it. That's it right there, because upon sliding the card, that side note had to be like remagnetized every day because I quit working. Okay, you're welcome to the days. It didn't take long for their and to take hold days in back fort you adjacent won't call it. They didn't care either, Like they didn't ask for an I d to give you a new card. They're like, oh, room one nineteen, here you go. That's the cool part about it. You know, you feel like getting into a new room. You could just pick a number and just go to the front desk and if you're gonna get probably two keys. Usually, it was described to the proprietor of this day's in she's a nice lady, nice lady. Um, maybe you know, i'd call her rough around the edges, probably caring, carrying, carrying, caring. Ah, I thought carrying a child or a gun. No, No, I mean, well you could have been carrying a child and God at the same time. No one would have known. So it's carrying individual. Nice person. Yeah, yeah, I mean her name is Kay. Her name was Kay Lady. She's not right, she's she's definitely a hunting collective. Listener was talking about me. There's no offense to me. I don't take issue with we like, Okay was not. She gave us room keys every day every day. Question describe describe the rooms. What did the rooms look like at the day? Son? Oh gosh, just imagine like a Friday night in your college dorm. Yeah, like that debauchery. I'd say it's more like the Saturday morning after that. Yeah, that's that probably that probably is there particular. I believe he told me there's like a door that didn't work. There was the various stains throughout that. Yeah. I mean if you've watched like Dateline or or whatever those like, it was perhaps filmed in this very location. There's there's an instance where our our door and mind you, like we're taking all of our production equipment back in there at night. So like lots of money, lots of money being locked up in this place every night, and the door lock seemed to be held on by a piece of scrap would keeping it closed, keeping keeping you safe from the quarter inch gap between the frame of the door and the door itself, which proved to be handy because you could if people are walking by, you could see from the shadows slick security system. Nice. They could literally just like take one of their fingers, pop that off and they were in. I mean maybe a little bit more small than a finger, but they could. They could check in on us if they stuck their face to the door, if if they hear like distress coming from the room, they could easily get it to help you. Yeah, I think that's what happened in the past. It was kicked in at one out of that door being kicked in. Did you bring a black light? No good, you don't want that. I just you don't want that. You just ignorance is bliss? Yeah? Did you sleep in in the bed or in a sleeping bag on top of the sheets. Now we committed, we committed to the shop. Do you get rid of you know, the top comforter? Oh that's gone, that's on the floor. Did you check for bedbugs in under the in the mattress? I did give it a once. Actually, yeah, so there was there was a time there was some mysterious hair within oh gosh, within the sheets. I met the bullet on that one. And then there was more hair too that was coming up the bathroom drain. Oh yeah. And then if you looked and the ceiling of the bathtub, there's also hair accurate yeah, uh huh, hair everywhere. Yeah. Well, so other than the human hair the lack of security, were there any other will say, maybe people there that were interesting sides Ka there was a picnic table off the back door. That's nice that they have a picnic table for families. The back door that was always propped open with the rock. That's fine. That rock here needs to be used for something that and this this picnic table is probably there for. What we heard about in the commercial was the families that we're looking forward to the new day. More like single dudes smoking darts and uh having a beer. Yeah, yeah, single dudes. There's yeah. There's an individual. We named him Scannered based on only his appearance. Appearances, he could have been a great guy. His perm mullet was fabulous. The only thing this one was like an I roxy parked in the parking spot that needs to totally do the permed mullet. He thinks, what's the guy? I'm blanking on the guy's name right now? He did Danny McBride. No, yes, Danny McBride. You could totally look like Danny McBride. He had the perm mullet. Dude, I would if I got girl mullet. If I let it go, I get a natural rat tail. Yes, all I have to do is perm. I don't know what that takes anymore. Have to track back season two of Back forty. Don't have to be there, just sidle up, on the picking table next to next to Skinner. He'll he'll be like like he past that dart. Let me pol you don't have to have a two Leader of PEPSI DoD you. Wasn't that what it was? I totally forgot about the lady sitting on the pick a table drinking the two Leader cola. This wasn't just one morning and the morning, but this was we were more here for ten days. Shoot, did she drink the same Leader of cola full every morning? Full every morning, every single morning? Can you imagine? Hydration is key? I mean right, so is the beat ist the diabetes? Yes, Wow, wasn't It wasn't die either. And she was just pulling on that thing in the plastic Leader bottle. For her, it was like smoking SIGs at bay. It's a six smoking table. That's what they had it there for. And then these people are staying at the days in Are they just hanging out at the table? I mean there, I don't know, not to stereotype of crowd that stays at that day same but they definitely spit the mold there just like you like, all right, well we want I wanted to make sure we covered that shout out the days in if you would like the sponsor the program. Um, we need to get we need some comped uh, we need some coupons for the days in Back forty adjacent. I don't think that's a problem because I think we stayed here for We stayed here for ten days and the total was like less than your room for two nights that you never did come to the buffet O thank you well. Shout out to to that day's in Back forty adjacent. We'll call it um. It really added to the experience I felt the first time I came, you guys were like, yeah, we're staying in the fifth circle. Hell, two more circles to go. I'm glad, glad we did it. You guys didn't have any You didn't get any rashes, no bug bites, not from the days in. We did bring uger bites back from the Back forty went to the days in. We're getting to that now. This is where it becomes a nightmare for everybody. Now when I say the Back forty is a mean mother, I'm not. I'm not. I think all of Michigan is a mean mother. In August. I mean, it is like walking into a microwave is different than Montana. That's Montana's crisp air. And you come here and it's like walking into just the inside of someone's sweatpants after a marathon, very sticky, sticky, just like you're just sticking to everything. And here we are hustling to make a program about this property. We are stuck with like no time, the worst weather ever and uh tall, task ahead. Take it from there, Mark what happened? Well? I think the first step was that even before we could do work on the property, and we had so much stuff that I had envisioned doing, before we could do any of that, we also wanted to bring a whole slate of different people out to offer perspectives and ideas first, and so that was a whole thing, trying to find people, schedule people, get people to come on out that would match up with when we could film it and everything. So we eventually we're able to get a slate of folks to come out, and we'd spent a whole bunch of days showing them around, getting their thoughts on the property, talking through ideas, etcetera, etcetera. So we had a couple of different folks from the Natural Resources Conservation Service come out, one of those being um, the state biologists for Michigan for the NRCS. Here he came and provided an ecologist perspective of dan Z. Danny's a. Now, dan Z looked like looks like an ecologist. Yes, he had the vest. He had a vest. He was wearing like a khaki vest, like a mesh backing. He looked very much like an ecologist, had the feeling of an ecologist. It was perfect. He got excited about some prairie remnants that were on the property, um, which again is very a very ecologist type of thing to do. He's all about the plants. Um. So yeah, we had we had in the colleges out there, we had a burder come out. His name was I forget Pat Hogan, Pat Hogan. He was cool though. Man, he had like a beard and uh you know, had like a high top fade. Man. They were like picking off bird and he was from like Birds and Blooms. I remember thinking, we're making a hunting show and we got a guy from Birds and Blooms looking at blue jays. Where this is going to be a failure. No hunter is ever gonna want to watch this content at all. But luck it was interesting. It was interesting, very interesting. And that's what like I found from those first episodes. And of course, uh, speak up, Mark if I'm going off track, is that there there's interesting elements to the outdoors. And my dad taught me this growing up. My dad can pick a bird off and tell you exactly what it is by sight, by like any anything he hears or sees, he can tell you can tell you what kind of tree that you're standing under. So my dad kind of taught me this. And and Mediator is about this. But like the knowledge of the place, right that the empowerment of knowing what what the mass crops are, what the cover is, what the trees are, what birds are here, what bees are here, what pollinators here? And on and on. But I don't think I haven't seen I'm not I'm not tooting our own horn here, but you just don't really see that in our space. And an episodic, you know, show like this, we'll call it, we can call a TV show because this show. Yeah, UM, so that that I was worried about that. I'm like, how are we going to make this exciting? Um? But I think in and of itself it is. Yeah. And and I It was a great impetus for me to dive into that stuff because I I love to learn, like I'm a book nerd, I read voraciously. I just love learning new things. And I've spent a whole lot of time when it comes to the hunting side of things, really really learning a lot um. But admittedly I have not been good at being able to identify birds or identify plants. Unless I knew a deer aid it or something like that, I wasn't paying attention. Um. So this is a great push for me to open my eyes to some new things. Not all hunters have developed a myopic view of the pursuit, but a lot have right and that's only natural right. But this isn't a thing we would force upon anybody. We hoped it would be interesting. We had hopes that people would take it on as a very interesting way to look at the world. But there is this derivative of hunting that's that you're a part of, that's like q d M A big Bucks. This is what we're after and it can be not always, not always, but it can be all encompassing in a way that you kind of put blinders onto some things that are around. Um. And I think this show is is definitely not done that, but but taught me a lot about how to think about it, how to think about managing a property, you know, for white tails. Because we learned from our our buddy from UC Berkeley, Luke McCauley, that there are three fifty six million acres of land owner at least for hunting in the US, that the contiguous land area in the US combined. It is, that's a pretty large piece of this country that's all kind of being managed for hunting, which has a certain set of values, a certain set of principles, conservation being one of them obviously, But um, what's often missing from that is is biodiversity as a key component of it, at least outwardly. So yeah, and so what we did is we brought in a bunch of different diverse perspectives to help us do them. So we had the NRCS guys come in. We had a birder come in. We had a gentleman who focuses on bees. We talked about pollinators and pollinator habitat. We had um and then we had people that are focused on deer. We had two different deer focused habitat folks come out. So we got a deer hunting focus, we got an ecologist perspective, birds bees, all that and all that helped inform then okay, where is this thing going to go? Steve came out and took a look and share with it. We'll share with this what he thought. So we got all these different ideas and by this time it's not middle of August and I've got two weeks left before what's usually my line in the sand date August. I never stepped foot in the deer Woods again until October one, which is the opening day and the minimum thirty days to let a property sit. Yeah, now Jordan and a hunter like you guys were filming all this. Like the first couple episodes, it was a lot of just walking around the operating and looking at stuff, which is generally not how people like to create content around. They like action and things. Are you guys ever worried about like what what's this going to be? I mean definitely at first. But the thing that got me is, even though I was behind the scenes and filming the whole thing is there was more than once where I just kind of would step back after, you know, like when Jake ealing I was here, for instance, like I love deer hunting, and I was super interested in what he had to say. And there was more than one time that day where I just kind of like sat back and like, Okay, first of all, make sure you're still recording, the frame is still on. But also, man, what he just said is, you know, that's a really cool take, and and that's kind of when I knew, like, Okay, I'm very interested in this and I'm the one filming it, so I think that should translate to you know, the viewers. And I think the biggest shame is that we had all these great tours of these folks and got all their ideas, and they saw all the properties, and we had to distill all that down hours of these people looking at the property and sharing their ideas, and we had to distill down to three minutes per person or something like that. Like we only at the time, like you watching these episodes got the tiniest little snippet of what's out there. And when we're trying to get some podcasts with some of these people, we've already had some um trying to provide some deeper dives into some of the there's extended cuts of the pollen air discussion that's on the Mediator website. Um, things like that, but amazing, amazing insights. So we got from these guests and you often find that, you know, with a burder or an apiarist or whatever the case. My fancy name for beekeeper. Um what Yeah, I've learned a lot. I learned a lot of those words too. I learned this. We're another word called verite. You know it's a very days Hey, I love one of my favorites. You guys will look that up and figure out that is. Um. But we're learning things right. So so when we were creating this content or are working on the back ford, I mean, this is also real world work. We're not just autu to create content. We gotta do the work right to make this thing what it needs to be. We're learning along the way. That's why the it's presented the way it is. We're bringing a bunch of people into help teach us these things that we don't necessarily mark me, Steve, we don't necessarily have experience in you. Not to mention too that there's not really any other examples of shows like this to even reference from. It's completely different than anything that's been done. So yeah, that's the big challenge. And then and then in the timeline we get to the actual work and on the property. Finally, it felt felt like there was a long times and Mark you can take us through how that got go on us there? Do you had a little challenges here? There a little things happen. Yeah. I mean the short version of it is that by the time the middle of August arrived, we had, you know, eight nine days of the camera crew left to try to get something done. And so I wanted to say, Okay, what's like the most impactful short term thing we can do to try to make this farm huntable Because at this point of the seven thousand different ideas we got from all these different experts, most of these things we can't do yet. Most of these things have to wait till the winter or the following spring. But is there anything we can do right now that at least might help us with the short term hunting side, and maybe we'll help in the long term as we refine them. So we had to try to look at what that might be, and of course we then also had to prepare the property to hunt it, which is what we were doing coming up in a month. So we had all the trees and tree stands to prep and spots to hang with the saddle way to put cameras up. We had clear trails, we had to scout the property and put ground linds up. And then the one short term thing that seemed to be possible in the small amount of time we had was to get some food plots in. Any hunter deer hunter knows the importance of food. It's it's one of those main drivers of deer activity. So if we could get some food on this farm, which right now it did not have any kind of super duper high quality food. There's of course native vegetation the deer feeding on them, but surrounded by agricultural crops, and so if we want a deer to spend some extra time on our farm, we would need to be able to compete with that a little bit. So I thought, okay, we can get a little bit of food plots in. That's gonna help us in the short term. To do that, though, you need equipment, you need all sorts of things within that equipment. You bought the mower at more. Yes, that's where this music comes in. Where you're trying to get gas trying to pull the mower. What happened? Tell us what happened. So what happened is that the one, one big piece of equipment we picked up was a big trail mower that we could pull behind our UTV, because, as we noted earlier, this property is comprised of a lot of old brushy fields, and so if we want to do anything, whether it be make trails or put in some kind of food or whatever, we need to cut that somehow. Um. At one point it contemplated taking my John Deere lawnmower over here and tried it behind my house in some similar stuff and got stuck and had had my wife come out with my son, and she had to sit in the front and try to drive it while I was trying to push it out of the mud. And I was like, hey, this isn't gonna work. Um, So fast forward. We get this mower, I get it a pick it up at the store. They drop it on our trailer with a skid steer or whatever forklift, And when I go to arrive and pick it up, I went, wow, this is a lot bigger than I thought it's gonna be. How am I going to get this off the trailer. There's no way we're picking this thing up. So the forklift drops on the trailer. I bring it over. We get here and the dilemma unfolds. First, how do we get the mower off the trailer? Watching the I'm watching the show and can talk, so we had struggles. I eventually found I could use the winch on the UTV to pull it off of the trailer. It was enclosed in this big wooden palette box that I had to then try to break apart. I had no good tools, so I had like had a miniature tool set in the back of my truck with like a baby hammer, and so I'm trying to like wrench it off with a hammer, and that didn't work at all. We finally got that to break off. I think we did that by using the winch again to break the palette stuff apart, and then the mow were sitting there beneath me, and I'm I'm not good with mechanical things, and mind you. Up to this point, there are three of us behind the scenes. It's watching me, myself hunter, and then Sam the producer, just watching him, offering no assistance. Struggle unfold in front of us, and so I hate this stuff. Like I'm really good at talking and ideas and reading and concepts and stuff like that. I am not good at tools. I'm not good at building things. My mind's not I don't have good spatial awareness. I can't do legos. I can't Like that's just not how my main legos or whatever your house to build that all that stuff just is not my thing. Letting falcon I got so like when we get something, let's say we buy a bookshelf, my wife is the one who goes through and like figures out how to put together, and she's like, okay, just hammer that. Okay, now do that. Like I'll get so frustrated trying to figure it all out. So then this goes to a point where that I made earlier, this whole back forward the experiment. It's just kind of like putting Mark in a maze like a rat with cheese at the end, and then we introduce a lot of different stimuli throughout and just see what happens. Yeah, this is my ever seen throughout the whole show. Yeah, so you know I struggled to put the thing together. There's all sorts of channels trying to put it together and finally got that done though, and then it was okay, I think it's together. Now we just need to start it. That can't be that hard. So pull the choke out, remember to put gas in it, and then started to pull on the whatever the hell you call it, and it wouldn't start. I pull, it wouldn't start. Pull it wouldn't start. Pull it wouldn't start. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? Is there jokes? Good? Is there? Do I need to press one of those little air bubbles to work gas? Little line? No, I can't find anything like that. We've got a very simple single page instruction book or instruction sheet. In the thing I'm reading that, I don't see anything that I'm doing wrong. Fast forward over the course of I don't know what it was, an hour or two hours. Um, we could not get the more to start. Do you remember this sound? That would be the pole count up to eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, And there were so many more. Yeah, that's seventeen. I'm really like admires eighteen nineteen twenty. That's probably about a half dozen clips like that. Did you flood it? Like? No, No, it was nothing like that. Um, nothing would work this. So then at some point I'm like, okay, it's a wait. At some point during this, our camera crew figures out what's wrong. Yes, so well you're you're just skipping a important At one point I realized, okay, screw the fourth wall or fifth wall, or over the freak that is, I need to talk to my camera crew and get their help. Because Hunter, one of these guys, was like a small engine mechanic of sorts, did a lot of stuff within that Relso I said, Hunter, I don't know what the hell is going on here. You need to help me. So he comes and starts fiddling, and he knows this stuff, and he starts checking spark plugs and checking gas lines and popping gas lines off and sucking fuel through the line and all these things, and nothing works. He takes it all part, finds the flywheels, sees that there's a little bit of ust in the flywheel, We clean the flywheel, all these things. At one point, how to screw driver in the spark plug. We figured out there was no spark. So all this stuff happens and we don't know what's going on. I am stressed out. I'm trying to think who else can we call Hunter's calling his dad. I'm wondering, like, I gotta I got a brother in law who's used to be a mechanic, maybe he's got to come over here. And very stressed and upset. And this is pretty far into it. And if we don't get this damn more to work, we can't get any of the projects that we need to get done. And we've got three days to get this part of the stuff done. Um. So I'm stressed, frustrated, frazzled. And then a guy shows up, pulls on the driveway. I start chatting with him. While I'm chatting with this guy in the parking lot, were in the driveway. Uh, Jordan, do you want to describe what happened next? So we were to describe the scene more Hunter at this point, how the motor pretty well disassembled and torn apart, and he was adjusting something. And I'm the same as Mark, I've got no intuition when it comes to you, like engines or anything that I'm just not from my head, and the ring as me too. Yeah, yeah, it's just not good. So Sam, Sam, the producer, and I were leaning up in the against the bed of the side by side and in the bed of the side by side was the I don't know what you'd call it, like the the engage lever for the MORE. It's on a chord probably what ten ft long something like that that you know, he's sitting the back of the side by side so you can engage and disengage the MORE. And it was just sitting there and I looked down and Marcus talking to the guy that had showed shown up there, and it's like, man, that almost looks like an ignition switch for a key. And then the light bulblent on somewhere along the process. And we had even looked for like some kind of ignition on the more buttons. They're switches or something red the instruction, instruction, instruction, And it all came down to you putting a key in that little switch and twisting it sideways. So well, Mark was finishing up this conversation we called Hunter over. The light bulb went off in his head. He went and got the key, put the key in and flipped it and we got ready to film again. We're like Mark, if we feel like Hunters pretty confident this is we think we think he got it. So he put the cat back on the moor and he's like, yeah, I think. I think what I did we will work, hopefully, And so the guy leaves. I'm like, okay, God, damn it. If this doesn't work, I don't know what we're gonna do. Literally, we are shipped out of luck. If this doesn't work, I'm done. We'll try one more time. So I stand over it and I take a deep breath and then in my head like sweet baby Jesus, please work, and I crank that cord and the sucker ran like a charm and I lost my ship. I was very, very excited. The reaction that was shown in the episode was the happiest human being. Yeah, it's it's it was, it was. It's a beautiful time. It's very excited Chris Mark. Yeah. And then he just jumps in the cannon and takes off and we're just like, I guess we'll meet you down there to work well, Mark, Yeah, but we did not tell him about the key, right, Yeah, that's the other things. They didn't tell me why it worked. I just thought that Hunter had fixed it somehow. And then Hunter was telling me today in the tree stand that you were nervous about it's shutting off so you would just keep the mower on. Well, it never I didn't know how to turn off. I don't know I didn't know how. I don't know how it turned on, So how would I know it turned her off? So another guy shows up the property I'm mowing, and then another guy shows up and I go to talk to him, and I'm like, how do I turn this mower off? And then it dawns and me like, oh, I don't know how. So I just like dialed it down and went over walked and talked to him while the mower still kind of running. And I don't want to I don't want to sit there like show him that I don't know what I'm doing. So then I come back to it. And then did you guys tell me at that point I kept his secrets. The only one he turned off is I would run until it ran out of gas. You probably got it started around like noon or something like that, and it was it had to been after six by the time that we were like wrapped, and that whole time you just I still have no idea, And then you told me he come over to talk to us, and he just idled it down. Man, We got their action on camera, which is pretty good. Was good. It was a good part Episode two. And then and then really like briefly after all that commotion, I show up. We got a hank, some tree stands and do some ground blind stuff, some basic hunting prop. And I show up and it's boy, it's a hundred and fifteen degrees with a humidity something like that. You step literally step out of the vehicle and you start sweating. Is there's it's involuntary at this point. And I come to find out that everybody is covering chicker bites, everybody's covered in garbytes, everybody's pulling ticks off themselves. There's just it's an air of desperation on the back. Stuff that can get you. Yeah, And then I come and start sweating, and then realized that there are things that are out to get me, including bees. I got. We were we didn't have the tools. As Doug durn Well here in a future episode he says that we have what do you say? He said, you don't have equipment, you have toys. We have toys. That's how he described the toys whacking. I was had a sickle and I was like whacking trails, sweating, and I whacked myself right into a bee hive, a little whacking. Yeah, I whacked off. I'll take you there, I'll take you there. So I got stung by bees. We sweated it out, but we did get a lot done. We hang tree stands, hung ground binds, plepped ground blinds, prepped everything, so food plots you got in there in that very short time we filmed it all. We like pulled the rabbit out of the hat somehow got this place semi prepared for the hunting season to come. Would definitely say semi. Even when it was done, I still felt like, oh, there's so many things we could have done, we couldn't do. But we did learn a lot about the property. We learned about what we could do, and then got as much done as we could before Mark as his his tradition in Michigan to leave a property rest for about thirty days prior to the October one opening this year, which is about a month ago. I had to show you how it's how how quick we turned this stuff around, um and on. Before the opener, Steve had said this a bunch and I'm looking at a pine squirrel. Pine squirrel out the window right now now that's out of the road. Steven talked about hunting the squirrel opener a bunch when he was here. He had talked to me about it. He very much wanted to film a show around squirrel hunting. And from the very beginning, you said no, I can't do it. Well, it didn't say no, I said, Look, I told me like, uh no, I said, I know this isn't my decision to make, but I strongly would suggest we consider the implications of that because and no one still knowing takes me seriously on this, but everyone still thinks them full of ship. Unless you are a serious deer hunter in an area of high hunting pressure, then you get it six d and fifteen thousand deer hunters, and most of that, the vast majority of that is crammed at the bottom third of the state. That bottom third of the state is smaller, probably definitely smaller than the state of Iowa. But that whole state of Iowa has sixty So you can compare, like IWA's a hunting mecca compared to what we're dealing with here in Michigan. So the the big picture here is that there aren't a lot of mature bucks here and the deer that are here are super savvy, super uh. They're on pins and needles. The hardest place I've ever hunted when it comes to any on a lot of white tails stays. No state is more difficult than here. So but that being the case, the one way to get around that is to try to approach your hunting wherever you're hunting in a way that you do everything you possibly can to keep those deer from knowing that there's human hunters around. So that is the filter that every decision I make passes through when it comes to how I approach a property in Michigan. So going in there two weeks before opening day and walking over the property, it seemed like a really good way to put every possible deer on alert, especially the mature buck that you're hoping is out there. Very rarely have I found a property with more than you know, one mature buck in Michigan that you might be a hunt. And to this point, you put out a bunch of traild cameras. We we did not say like during that we hud a bunch of trail cameras, made some mock scrapes, all the all the things that you generally do to deer season, but there wasn't like, you know, mid September, we're like, hey, we got seven or eight really nice box walking around that not a single one. It's not a single buck some doze and that's about it. Like year and a half old bucks and dozes all we got on trail camera, which is like, we're gonna, oh, we've you know, bought this property. We sink all our time, our whole fall into this, We're gonna think about this all fall in the next fall too. We're gonna give it away. We're gonna give a hunt away. Oh my god, Oh my god, this is not good. Yeah and so and so I just said, hey, we can do whatever you guys want, but just know that's not going to help our deer hunting efforts. Like it might not be the underworld might be fine, but at the same time, it's it's definitely not helping, I'll tell you that much. And if that one mature buck that we're after happens to be in the area when we walk all over and leave sent everywhere, that's probably gonna impact his daylight movement. That's probably gonna impact our chances at least early um and again guarantee. But these are the things I was concerned about. And we'll let you watch the episode you've watched already because we've paused twice, forced to do that pause again. Okay, we're back. Um, how about that more Yeah, that more pools. I mean, I was impressed by your persistence, your strength, I mean, it's it's strength was key like a man's man at that point. I hear that a lot. And so the episode three of the show, which you've already watched at least three times by now, um, is the Squirrel Hunt or Steve Comes Stephen Yanni come to Hunt. Opening day. You can watch the show to see what happened. It's pretty true to life, is exactly what happened here. But they didn't really find any squirrels on the property either, other than a few pine squirrels here and there. Um. And so at the end of that day, we did not a lot of pressure on the farm. Nothing really um crazy occurred. But also we're getting to the point where we're looking for animals. They had a way to bird survey. Of course there's lots of birds, but that's not surprising. UM saw some turkeys. Um, what even like a what else did you find, like a badger or some kind of wood chuck? Was us thinking of, we've got woodchuck, A lot of a lot of animals hanging around, But that's not necessarily the kind of animals that we like to eat um in the fall. So I couldn't find a squirrel. Don't have a picture of a deer. Mature mature deer, yeah, dear, but not the kind of deer that we would target in a place like this. And so things are kind of looking interesting we're looking for We're like, did we buy a dud of a property that no matter what we do to it, we're not going to have what we want to have? Or are we just in for a longer road that we thought? Yeah? And I always kept going back to I just I know it's got a pretty It's just it's surrounded by too many good things. It has the potential that's it's got something's gotta show up eventually. I just didn't know when, or to what degree or what a mom but something would show I just every time we checked cameras or would sit out here and Scott we sat a decent number of nights. Those nights we were working me and Jordan would come out and sit in the tree and watch the fields in the summer to try to get eyes on stuff and kept on being like repeatedly from August all the way through November. My main reaction was I don't get it, Like, there should be more. This looks too good. Why aren't we seeing more, dear, why aren't we seeing bucks? What? I've spent a lot of time and a lot of properties in a lot of places, and this one has perplexed me a lot compared to many others, which, you know, that's a nice cocktail for a lot of anxiety when you're like, we put a lot into this, we're counting on this to work. If it doesn't work, we're gonna be screwed in so many ways. And then have like the kind of mysterious lack of mature white tails and other things that we want to see here was stressful, But then you come out for opening day at by the time opening day October is only a month ago that we first hunted this place, where you first hunted this place, and that by this time there's a few bucks starting to show up on show camera. In particular, one the only buck that that you saw and you said to me this to me and others and even on the show, that you felt was like a semi resident of the property, like he was hanging in the zone, like he was of the CC four acres. He was covering a lot of him in his daily route. Like we know that deer have roughly up home range of a mile or something like that, like our sixty four acres was in his home range. Yeah, and and and it wasn't like he was super duper frequent. I'm just saying he was the most of all the bucks that we did get occasional pictures of. I mean, we might have pictures of him once once or twice a week. You know. It wasn't like you're seeing him every day passing through. And we've got a lot of cameras. I had at least ten cameras running, and I went get one picture of him on one of those cameras once or twice a week. So he was he was. He was the most common visitor though. And he's like the deer I said yesterday that he this deer that marked up the wide eight is like the perfect deer for this scenario, because if you were to look at him In fact, I think he had somebody comment, um when you when you killed him, like, shouldn't you let him walk? Shouldn't let him another years when you should have passed? And maybe in normal parlance, if you're looking at hunting magazine, a white til magazine, or you're looking watching some certain TV shows like the only deer that are killed our giant two d in hundred fifty plus inch animals, and so that could secuse your perspective. But for a property like this in a state like Michigan, the deer that we called the wide eight because of his body size and its maturity, the way they looked and what he did, he was a mature deer that you'd want to hunt and outwit and pattern and kill these Michael, those are my goals to do that with mature bucks. And where and again I don't want this to sound like humorous, but like where this property and that deer line is the fact that this is just a pretty normal property. It's sixty four acres. We didn't pay a big chunk of change for this. It was relatively inexpensive pal we got a great deal. Shopped around and get a good deal, and so we weren't like in here, just dropping millions of dollars trying to get the best thing going. We wanted to get a property that was accessible, that we could get in short order, that we knew we could make better. And the animal living on that is as normal and as typical as the property in which it lives and the one that we bought. So I always I thought, even after the fact, but even during like this isn't a a buck that's gonna play well on the Graham unless we tell his story. But that doesn't matter needed with this property if you try to try to talk about it. But it's emblematic of pretty normal deer hunting across this country. Not everybody has farm and I would have killed big bucks or been blessed the folks that do nothing bad on them. This is just a scenario that we chose to be in and found ourselves in. And that's what the hand we're playing, the Handwred dealt like most people in this kind of a lot of people that are doing that. Um. And so your first day hunting this place was like first week October, and you spooked that the wide a. Yeah, first time we ever saw him, um was our first hunt came slipping in and and I'm very O c D about everything when it comes to deer hunting, but accessing and exiting a property are usually something of I'm very keen on doing carefully so as to avoid places where you think dear will be bettered. If you're spooking deer when you go in or when you go out, they're going to very quickly change the behavior. So I planned a route to get to the tree stand we want to hunt that would be uh circuitous enough to avoid the swampy area and the honey hoole area where I expected most dear to be bedded. So it took this long, roundabout way around the outside of the property and long an area I would never expect a buck to be bedded right in the edge of our old field and a wide open piece of timber, like this is not thick timber, This is not good cover, this is just open park timber. You can see across a hundred yards a buck jumps up right off from the edge and goes running away, and I can see just a really wide, heavy buck and I'm like, holy crap, that is that buck that we got a picture of. We had one picture of a mature buck on sept And I bet you was that buck. And that buck can be known the White eight. So we spooked the White eight in the first hunt in here, and then from that point on we started getting you know, pictures of him here and there. Do you want me to keep going with the hunt? Not for you? Like, here's the deal? Well, fast forward to ways there is white sail hunting is um not physically strenuous in a lot of ways, but it's mentally it's a bit mentally. You're talking about waking up every day at four thirty am. You know, these guys are rigging camera gear. There's charging batteries there, backing up cards there too. You know, Mark is checking traill cameras, trying to figure out what each day is gonna be. And you gotta do this for usually a good while if you're dedicated enough to really get the buck you're after or at the goal that draft. So this is I mean, we're sitting November what six, November six, that's set in the middle of the rut, and by the time I got here, Douggie Derran had already been here. There have been other guests. He shot a dough off the property but there wasn't much going on, Like we had some pictures of deer and we spooked one that was kind of good, but that was it, and se nothing. But does in a couple of year in Anthle Bucks and sitting like, let alone, five or six hours, sitting twelve hours in a tree and seeing like five deer it's hard to describe how mentally and even physically because you're trying to stay warm, exhausting those things are. To do it for two or three days, it's hard enough to do it for weeks at a time with the pressure not only the pressure of I'd love to kill a deer, but the impressure of an entire show, the impressure of this entire project to pay off all the hard work of everybody at this table, everybody else that's touched this project, I would say, turned into a real stressed out Mark Kenyon and I think everybody is kind of feeling like this has to something has to come of this. If we go through all year and nothing comes of this, we're gonna be spinning a yard. That's probably bullshit, because we're gonna be disappointed and we're gonna want people to be interested. Still, so incomes the wide eight. Is that's the perfect buck to be hunting, because again, he is who he is, and he's the only one. There's other you had, like the toy Aid and a funky nine, like some other dre that we're showing up a couple of times on camera, but you just don't know. And the run you really don't know anyway. But so I got here a couple of days, three or four days ago, whatever, I don't know what the days are now. Um, you know, over the weekend and you start hunting, you've already been hunting. You guys have already been sleeping in Tim and Leese's excellent cam for not showering, sleeping for a very short time, producing this show, running ragged, doing this, not seeing your family's, not talking to your people, trapped in the back forty for the foreseeable future. Picking up there. Yeah, it's November five. What are you feeling on November five? I can tell you what. Let me just start by saying what I was feeling. I've only been here for like two days at that point, I'm already pissed. Like we've seen not much. It's the deer density is so low. You just kind of see a few deer here and there. It's not like you're sitting around watching deer all day. It's pretty hopeless when you haven't seen a buck that you'd like to draw your bow on, because you just don't have that anticipation around every corner. You kids trying to feel dead inside. You feel a little bit depressed. Thanks for me either, whiskey helped us out there a little bit. But that's that's a stressful feeling for everybody when you're trying. We're all pushing towards a goal, and it doesn't feel like like you can't even see the end zone if you don't even know what's what's there, and so we're all feeling pretty anxious. I feel about what we're doing, still having a good time, still filming, doing our thing, doing our jobs as they were, but feeling pretty pretty I was. I was like said, I was telling Hunter, we're in the tree, and like, dude, I'm feeling pissed. I don't know, Mark keeps it positive vibes about him. I'm he have been only been here two days and I'm already like, where what are we doing? Yeah, So I was flashing back and forth between these two sides where I was simultaneously really frustrated and perplexed. And then I would always constantly try to remind myself though, and it can change in a second. It can change in a second, like every year when it comes to November, regardless of all these other things that are related back forward, even on a usual hunting year, for a lot of people to take deer hunting really seriously, the rut is that's what we look forward to all year. This is the time to get it done. And so usually you're the fate of your season rests on as two week period for a lot of people, especially in Michigan, because when gun season arrives on November, everything changes. Most of the bucks get killed. Those that survive are nocturnal. Like from a lot of bow hunters, you kind of consider November fourteenth or last day unless you've got us really special property or something. Um. So that's the way I was looking at it and feeling like, wow, this is you know, every day that ticks off the calendar is well one less chance now we're running that time. We only have so many days to film here, so all that's weighing on me and and and we had been going into our very best spots. We've been saving our best spots for November. We go into our best spots, like the Honey Hoole, and it is not producing like we thought. I had all these high expectations, um, imagining deer pouring through here, funneling along this ridge, bucks coming out of the bedding, or checking the doe bedding that I thought would be there. To a degree, maybe a little bit is um. But like you said, deer density and sightings were so much lower than I expected, much lower than any other place I've hundred in southern Michigan. Um uh. We we don't need to get into all the games that might be. But um, but yeah, I was perpox, I was frustrated. I was stressed, but trying to stay optimistic because you are hunting. You can't complain about that. And number two, it can change like that. So that gets us to November five. I said, all right, screw the Honey Hoole. We gave it a shot. We're moving on to something different. We decided to set up on the edge of the swamp in the sanctuary area, and the hunt started pretty slow. That weren't seeing anything. We had a little bit excitement when we hear buck grunting in the swamp, but you couldn't see him. You can just hear some crashing in the occasional little ramp. At the same time that morning, I'm across the farm north of you guys, sitting in the field number four where I got stuck by bees not too many months before that, and we had hung a set and this good buck comes in the dark. I mean it's probably six thirty maybe still good ways until we get shooting light. This buck comes rolling right pretty much right under our tree stand at sub five yard. It's and I'm thinking, that looks like the wide eight. Market showed me a bunch of pictures of a wide eight. I've seen it on Instagram with him sharing it with us, Like it's a buck we knew about. Like it's a big body deer. He doesn't have long times and he's wide. That's all I could see in the dark. I could barely see what was going on. And uh, the morning went on. You had that good, you know, pre hunt encounter, just enough to get you excited there's something going on, but I had you know, I wasn't going on by me. I heard the grunting, then nothing, nothing, nothing, it's it's getting later in the morning. I'm thinking, gosh, there should be something cruising along this swamp. Why isn't there something cruising along this swamp? And NT or So comes around and I decided, you know what, it's cold, it's been slow. It's snack time. So we grab our checksmiths on we start to eat our snacks and I'm constantly trying to keep my head on swivel. I spin my head turned around in the back of the field and I see a deer running across field number five and immediately can tell that this is a good buck. Grababa grunt to like telling George big buck behind big ground my grunt tube let out a big, deep grunt. That buck stops and turns and looks right at us. I instantly can tell us the white eight I say, white eighths right here. He turns and starts running right down towards us. He gets to maybe eight yards, stops and starts turning and heading towards the down wind area where our winds blowing. Now I'm thinking my head, I don't know he's gonna wind us, He's going to run away crap. But he gets to where our wind is blowing and he stops. You can you can see him hit the wind. You can see him hit it. He stops, looks again, puts his nose in the air. He sniff and he sniff and he's trying to figure out what is this? What am I smelling? And he can't figure it out. He doesn't know what it is? Marcus. Uh, he's a he is a humble bragging his sent control. It was actually a caramel caramel checks mix gusher because I love gushers. Ow. Yeah. Point being, he decided that he couldn't tell or could not discern if that was a dangerous smell, and so he continued to come in. He was so interested in that grunt came into twenty yards and I was able to get a shot, took a shot, double lunged him, wash him, run off and crash across the way, and then you filmed your social media. Completely melt up the tree literally just almost fell out of the tree. I'm shaking like crazy because I think we just killed He had to he had a breakdown. I did, why do you have a breakdown? Mark? Well, I think it's everything that we've talked about up to this point. Um, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great successful deer hunts. Um. I've've experienced that, and I get emotional, I get excited, um, But this one was different, and I didn't expect I didn't realize it was going to I didn't never thought it was going to be different. But in the moment, it was just all of these things kind of of washing over me. There were a lot of expectations, There's a lot of pressure. Um, this project has been different than anything I've done before. I just I think it put a lot on myself and how it would turn out, and a lot of worry about how it turned out, and just a lot of expectations, and I just felt like, gosh, this thing has been a disaster. Nothing's going well. It's just been prompt to problem people nitpicking this, nit picking that, saying that's not good enough, saying this thing or that thing, comments, all that and all that kind of had just like slowly been like weighing on me. And George, you were the fly on the wall. Where do you see? I mean, I just after the shot, I mean I just knew what it meant as both a hunter, and then you know from Mark and all the work that I mean, you could say that we've done a lot of work to get to this point too, but really we've been watching him struggle behind the camera, offering not much help. So I knew it. I knew what it meant to Mark, and then you know what it meant to what we're trying to do here to and kind of what that represents, and you know, just something that is so relatable for so many to happen like that. And if you sat through this story for an hour and a half, you've you're interested in its ending. Of course, it's never over. But when you think about a team of people doing something right, or even an individual doing something, there's a commitment to when no one's watching right, when people are watching, when the camera's on, there's different things. But when the camera's off, you stuff to get up At four thirty in the morning, when you don't want to move out of bed, you still have to roll over and make sure you're organized and get all your stuff together and make sure you're in the right spots and be committed to that every single morning. For many mornings when you could just accidentally sleep in, or hey, we could take a morning off. We've been working hard we're tired, we can do we can stay home. We can you know, we can have a sandwich. We don't need to go and do all these things. Um. I think that's only natural. But when you're really dedicated to something, you will work hard for it. That's the kind of sacrifices you make. You don't allow yourself to to do those things. And I think when people see this episode, um, and when they see kind of the reaction and the emotion and like talking to your family, which you don't get to see as much because you're on here doing this stuff like the balancing act of life and hunting and content and media and and all the things that we do is on display and and on displaying a pretty unique special way. I mean, we make lots of jokes on the show. We make lots of jokes here. We rarely are all that series. But like in that moment, Mark, like you expressed and displayed something that I think is relatable to some but not relatable to most because it's it's a unique experience. And that's what what we hope with the back forties, we were able to just document this experience, not that we were just gonna get you too way we want to kill big Bucks. Every show. We didn't even show a buck until if this is the first book, I think, because yeah, this is gonna be a couple episodes down the roads. You're gonna have to watch you know, a good long while here and follow along with us until you get some sort of you know, traditional payoff within the white tail space, within the hunting space itself. And so like the distillation, the distillation of honey experiences into like guy goes something, guy kills thing, or a girl goes something, girl kiss thing, um is problematic for all of us because that's it's not really representative what we do. And so hopefully um, when you watch the show that you feel that that that it's not all the glamour and it's not all um what you sometimes see. That's everything, you know, it's the hard times, the good times, it's the stress, the anxiety, it's you know, the complete euphoria that comes from all that ending in a way that you wanted it to. So it's it's pretty special. I would say, yeah, it was. It was a special It's a special moment special deers a. It was one I will not forget. Well, let's have a shot to that our second shot of meteor whiskey. Cheers, cheers to the White Eight. Thanks White eight, appreciate you. Take a little sippy sip here. Though Mark is not drinking a lot of I'm a beer guy. He's making that uh meteor bourbon whiskey will make your face look like you've never had whiskey before. Pairs well with elk tongue. This one, we don't have any elk tongue. What um that's taking a shot of whiskey. Is probably a little bit like you felt when you realized, I mean, you punched a perfect high lung shot on the White eight. He ran spring blood everywhere. It was easy to recover. We drove back here and I like that. You know, that's that's a feeling of success. It was. It was pretty cool. So one hell of a day. All of this to say, go watch the back forty. Keep hanging with us on it because we're not done yet. You know, Mark, his dad's coming in tonight. We're gonna film another episode. We got Ryan Callahan coming in later this year with a new hunter to see the place. We're gonna give away the hunt later this year. We're gonna hopefully film some mushroom hunts, turkey hunts, and some land prep next year and some white tail hunting will find new box to go chase. And we're gonna we're gonna we're getting bees. Yeah, we're gonna get bees. Mark's gonna have meat eater honey. Um hunter will maybe see his family every once in a while. Jordan's same for you. You guys might make a trip back to the day's in. Eventually when the camper goes away, maybe they'll maybe they'll apologize and give you they give the executive suite. At that point, there's a lot um I was emotionally yesterday and also I would say, um, pretty excited to tell the story. Yeah, not only the wide eight, but of of what Marks trying to do and been able to do. But when you see somebody that has the emotion that Mark had after you shot this deer, any you know, in the hunting industry, there's a lot of ego and agenda, right, A lot of people want to say that's not big enough, or that's not right, or you didn't do it the way I would do it, or even the way we do it in my place. Why did you do it that way? There's a lot of those questions, some legits, some not. But hopefully you can watch that moment when Mark shoots this buck and realized that, like, it doesn't matter what you think at that point, like just enjoy that hunting can can be this way for someone and it could be this way for you. All you gotta do is kind of work at it the way you want to work at it, and go at it in a pure way. Yeah, I think the work the work is is for me what makes hunting so special. It's it's everything that leads up to the end result. So when I shot that deer, it wasn't all that emotion wasn't because I just shot a big body, dear. It was because of everything else that it came before, and all that rushing down on you now because of that ten seconds of chaos. And I was saying that, like, I I know this happens, and I like, but I with deer like this, you project a lot of your own ship onto the deer, right, Like the deer is just still just a deer. It doesn't. It didn't morph into a unicorn. That ship hunted all our bills overnight, which would be that would be a lot more excited if we did that. If we did that, Um, it's still just a deer, right, it doesn't. It didn't do anything other than whatevery deer in that situation would probably do. But when so, we project so much of our own selves onto to these things, especially in the situation where you have a long relationship with these animals. So I realized in that moment too that you know, we do project onto these animals, but in this case, it's projection in a good way. It's the projection of our own hard work and values. It's projection of our own feeling about natural landscapes and how important they are to us, and all those things intertwined mean that end of motion. So I will say personally, I've learned more from working on this project than just about anything that I've I've done in my professional career or probably even personal life within hunting. And and I've learned a lot about myself about Mark because we did put him in a maze of a labyrinth of different scenarios to test his will. Um, I hope. I Well, I don't know if I passed yet so far approaching listen, I don't know. I probably waxing too much about our own content. You guys can watch it if you think it sucks. It sucks, but it's something that that's my personal experience, So hopefully that comes across in the content. But that's that's the way that I feel after experience against for myself. Yeah, I hope the same thing. You just never know though, But it seems like you guys all like it. Um go to the Mediator YouTube and check it out. Man, go ask us questions. We have many November five, we're gonna be's still filming and hunting here through the end of the year. Uh and and episodes will be rolling out through the end of the year, a lot of cool stuff. And then as soon as this year is over, we're gonna start planning for next year. And what we're gonna do here. We'll probably shed hunt, will probably like I said, pick mushrooms, will probably hunt turkeys. So much work. We got to work every single night I st out here hunting. A large portion of each of those nights has involved me looking across the landscape, imagining what we could do, what we should do, what will be happening in January or February or March or April. Um. So I've got a lot of big ideas and plans decided for that. Yep. So we have all four of us into this table. Have a strong relationship with the Back forty, positive or negative. And if you're a hunter and you think about why do I do this, a relationship with the land is probably a real good reason to do it. So, um, take Mark's example and really dive into these things. If you're a small property private land hunter, just dive into it the way that Mark has and the way that Steve has wished it to be. And um, hopefully you get what we've gotten, which is perspective. And uh, the White Eight, congrats, we already took a shot. We don't want to take another shot, right and I don't think I can't do anymore worked out? All right? Thank you boys. I guess I grew up. That's it. That's all. Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Hunting Collective. Thank you to Capture Creative Hunter and Jordan's thank you to Mark Kenyan for joining us. If you'd like to follow Mark Kenny, of course, you can always go to at Wired to Hunt, at Capture Creative. For those folks, everybody involved in the Back forty, thank you so much. There's countless people involved with our show and our content projects. Um. Sam Bates our producer, and Eracer our VP of production, Anton Lacata, our editor in chief. Man. The list just goes on and on and on of all the people that are involved in our project. So thank you to all those folks. Hopefully you sat and listened for an hour and a half of us talking about the back Ford, you realize that it does mean a little bit more to us after being here and working hard than just another white Tail Hunt or white Tail show. Um, it becomes meaningful because you spend a lot of time in your life working on a thing. So hopefully the more time you work on something, the more meaning it has. If it's the other way around, you're probably doing it wrong. And so watch the back Ford and go to the Metator dot com. Go to Meteator to YouTube, go to the meat Eator Instagram, the white Hunt Instagram, to my Instagram, to the Captured Creative Instagram. Am hit follow, hit subscribe, hit like. We also have the white Tail Weekly newsletter over there at the Meetor dot com. Go there, subscribe to that. Also, we have the Win a Hunt program with Mark and Steve on the back forty go and do that as well. So you got a lot to do a lot of homework around the back forty. We have planned and executed a lot of content around this idea. We are, if you cannot tell, very excited about it and wants you to go check it out. So for all of us here at the White Tail Hunting Back forty, hopefully have a good early November. Rutt, hopefully you have a good dear season altogether, and we'll see you next week on the Hunting Collective. Bye bye, Yeah, being just listened to the podcast, Joy pretty much agree you know, I mean, people been trying to eradicate it for years and years. I don't think it just somebody shooting one because they come by the deer stands, gona heard county populations or even eating people to the contad They've been trying to kill him out. They tried to kill him out of that with Obviously that's not gonna happen, but I do and I was like, you or kill other code easily. But I do think and I agree with you all that, uh pretors need to be managed and he got one like a bad apple, take it out, but paying on condemned somebody that wants to county and that she was telling my a bounty in North Carolina. I think she's that articuler. But I looked it up and that's just one county in North Carolina. As far as I've been up here that about years, we've never had a bounty. But that's news are as far so that one county. But it's like he said, the wolves used killed county's. I mean, they're gonna be a niche. They're like going to take over. They're gonna fill in that niche. But it's funny thing to me that if you meet I mean around home in it's North Carolina, about anybody you asked or safe up to about turkeys, the first thing out of or amount is the coti. Well, I got a niece for you. Texas got cuties, and I got a turkey. Counties are not killing the urchy. They might get a turkey erring out, you know, a little turkey, but coties are probably actually beneficial to turkeys because we've got coons, raccoons at the yingang like thirteen on Trail Cameron. Somebody's bait. Fine one time those get turkey nest So somebody says something like, Dad, I kind of gotta say that. You know, I don't really agree with that, because actually the county could be beneficial because the turkey hunt asked this might belie I've never really heard no studies to back it up, but I do know I have seen studies show that raccoons get a lot of turkey nests, and not all raccoons, but scumps and postums and got you take care of all them things. So I just want to throw out again. Enjoy listening to podcast. I know sometimes you'll be listening and you just kind of want the chiming, So it's kind of hard to do, but you have to kind of stop it, do it before you forget. But enjoy the podcast, y'all. Keep it up. Do long, because I can't go a week without doing run, oh without doing run, ring out, run, drinking in even so, sitting at the Boston would stop the throw roots. Feeling lagging all on our barras shoes all, tell me what is it that I sho

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