00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. In this episode number two and today in the show, we're diving into the story of my very first hunt for desert white tails also known as cou'se deer. All right, welcome to another episode of the Wired to Hunting podcast, brought to you by Onyx and uh we're here today. It's myself. We got my buddy Andy May, and we got further and we're talking desert white tails. I just got back from a Mexican CU's deer hunt, a really cool hunt. I was out there with the Meat Eater crew, and I thought a good way to do this would be to have a couple of people interview me, um, rather than me just kind of tell a story. And Dan couldn't be here today, so I knew that Furtz and Andy could fill in well, um, And so you know, in a second, here, I'm gonna give them the keys and we're an turn around on me and we'll kind of walk through this whole hunt. What happened, What I learned from it. Um, you know, maybe a few things that might be able to help other people out there that want to try a CU's deer hunt someday. Um and nice for those who aren't familiar, Cuz deer are basically just white tailed deer that lived down in the desert southwest um so a really really cool critter. But we'll get more into that later. Before we do that, though, I wanted to kinda shift gears a tiny bit here for just like two minutes. I had to make sure we cover this because further, last time I was hanging out with you, you and Andy, we're together. You went on the dough hunt um on on one of the properties that I usually hunt. The two of you guys went out there and had a pretty cool night. And since you're both here, I figured we should at least talk about that a little bit. Um. You guys had a pretty good time, didn't you. Man, that was a great time. That was a lot of fun that night. I don't know if Andy had any fun having to sit with me for a couple of hours, but I'm not sure I had a good time. So yeah, it was a good time. Yeah. So Josh, you were you came to this property that I hunt, You're gonna come out and try shoot a doll. And then Andy happened to be stopping by my place to pick some stuff up, and you were over my house the time before you're gonna head out to hunt, and just kind of worked out that Andy, you're gonna hunt somewhere else. I was like, well, why don't you just go hunt with Josh? And uh? So you guys, did, do you want to walk us through that that hunt? Josh and Andy? Sure? Yeah. I mean so I was actually out there the uh the night before at your at the place you're hunting, and unfortunately missed one. I'm not sure what happened, but didn't come didn't come together for me. So I came back the next night, just as I was about ready to go out and started getting around to head out and hunt, Andy showed up and um, yeah, I just worked out perfect to her. We went out and sat together, and you know it was just what was that like the seven or something like that, Andy, I don't know, December there and the late late this season and I hadn't filled a tag yet all year, so I was I was feeling the pressure to to put some meat in the freezer on the last couple of days of the season, and um, luckily enough, it kind of all came together and worked out for both of us to get a shot. You know, we were talking leading up to you know, prime time, like, all right, what are we gonna do? We're gonna do a one two three shoot? Are we gonna you know? Am I going to shoot one and then you shoot one? So we kind of had it worked out where if it if it, if it, if it happened, Um, I was going to take the first shot and then ah, but if we could make it happen where we could do the one to three shoot, would give it a try. And you know, as soon as deer started piling out, that just went to that all went out the window, just a little bit of chaos for a few minutes, figuring out which one we get to shoot and all that stuff. But well, how did that? I don't even remember hearing me. I know you, I know you, I know you shot first, Josh, And I guess that's all I really know. I saw, I saw a little Instagram video you guys too, But but how did that all turn out? I gotta remember back to this, how it all happened, and you may have to help me out. But if I if I recall, the first group that came out was like one mature dough and a couple of yearlings. Um, I mean one of them was a button buck, and uh, there may have been two two mature doughs that came out, and with how we were set up in the blind, Andy had a pretty good shot at them, but they were behind some some brush and some limbs for me, So it was kind of just a waiting game for them to to get to clear those those limbs for me. And finally they did, and we were trying to communicate back and forth, all right, should we do the one two three shoot? And I just kind of blacked out. I think I don't remember that thing. I just shoot one as soon as to get a shot, and pretty much what I did, and then you dropped yours. And what was it maybe an hour later, Andy that your dog came out. Yeah, yeah, Josh put a great shot on his, and UH pretty much thought that was kind of the end, because you know, there there was actually when Josh shot his a couple another big group of uh Antler list deer had entered the food plots, so there was several um and a few mature uh mature does and and I was gonna let him shoot first and then me try to get a quick second shot a second shot off. But um, when he shot, they all kind of ran back into the cover, you know, a big group of them. So I thought that that caused enough commotion where you know, it was probably over for the night. But then yeah, probably in that last twenty minutes of light or so, um, we see another you know, small group of antler lists come out and they enter the food plot right there, much closer, and uh gave Josh the camera and and he was able, I was able to video him, and he was able to video me and put a good shot on her, and she went, she went a little ways, but you know, a pretty easy track job. So it was cool. It was it was really like, at least for me, a low stress kind of just fun hunt. You know, we're giggling in there like a couple of kids and just you know, just having fun, you know, just enjoying each other's company. And you know, it's kind of a nice change of pace. Sometimes when you're after you know, after a buck all the time, it's usually kind of like a solitary you know, endeavor. But it's I really enjoy kind of you know, partnering up once in a while like that and sharing a hunt. Yeah, me too, and that spot is particularly good for it. Yeah. It may have been most stressed for Andy, but I'll tell you what, it's pretty stressful for me sitting there. I was like, Man, I'm sitting Andy here just too, just like gets it done every time, and I don't want to screw up. I can't do anything stupid like I usually do. And it's pretty low stressed with marking the blind. I know I'm not the only one who will make a dumb mistake then, but when I'm when I'm with Andy is like I had to I had to bring it up a notch. So I was a little nervous. Yeah. Man, it's like when I'm on this mediator hunt with the with Stephen those guys, That's exactly how I feel. Don't do anything stupid, mark Um. So I was gonna ask then further, Um, this is your first hunt with the machine, Andy, may uh did you have a takeaway any like lesson learned or or anything from this experience? I mean, he is like a machine. I mean, it's just like the moment of truth. Man just like just gets it done and uh, there's no like wavering at all. Just went into that, you know, that that mode and man when that when he had that shot opportunity, he made a count. So that's uh, you know, I always try to get into that, like the autopilot, you know, just muscle memory, you know, just kind of when the time arises to to be present and just you know kind of let every everything take over and not not get lost in the caught up in the moment. And that's probably my biggest takeaway just watching him kind of go through that and what he does is pretty cool to watch. Yeah, he's automatic and uh and Andy, this is probably your first time ever hunting with an icon in the hunting industry who just goes by a single name. Just further um and he he takeaways from that, oh man, Yeah, it was he was just you know, we he was. I couldn't tell that he was you know, feeling pressure. He was. He seemed pretty laid back and we were laughing and having fun and um, I don't know, he just seemed like a really like fun guy to hunt with, you know, like you'd have a lot of laughs. Um, and you know, the whole time leading up to the two kills, you know, we were just having a good time. So I know he's someone definitely someone that I would like to share a hunt with. You know, doesn't take himself too serious. Um, can can laugh and have fun. And uh, man, I'll tell you when when his dog came out and he had that shot, he sure looked like a machine to me. Put her down right in the plot. Yeah, Well, I've enjoyed hunting with both of you, so I figured you guys and get along, would get along just fine. That was fun for me. I'll take that, Andy, I'll take that as an invite to Nebraska next year with you too. Then there you go. Yeah, that was that was a heckular trip. Draft you would have you would have enjoyed that. Yeah, alright, So speaking heck of the trips, though we do, we probably should focus on the main event here. Um, I just got back from this couise dear hunt. It's quite a trip. Um, but I wasn't surely what's the right way to to kind of walk through the story should we talk to just like kind of strategy focus? Like what did I learn? What did I do? How did it go? Or was just the story of the adventure most interesting? I don't know. I don't want to make these decisions, so I just thought I would I would take my my host hat off and give you guys the host seat and controls. You guys are now the host of the wire Hunt podcast. I'm your guest. I'm here to talk about hunting desert white tails further you can. Maybe I'll let you you you kick things off if you want. Do you want me to just talk about something from the beginning? Walk you through the story? Do you have any initial questions? What do you want to Well, yeah, I guess I'd kind of like to know kind of what all led up to the hunt, and like it just seems like quite the undertaking to plan that type of a trip um So I'd love to hear some of the just from the start kind of everything that went into it, the uh, you know, packing or the planning, you know, what what can you bring, what can't you bring? A crossing the border and kind of how how do you how did you prepare to be gone for you know, however long you're gone for on a trip like that. Yeah, that's a great That's a great question, because that was a lot of the uncertainty, Like there was a lot of uncertainty around the trip leading up to it, for sure. UM just having never you know, I've never even hunted deer of any kind in the mountains like this. I've never muled here hunted, never cous deer hunted. UM really almost never rifle hunted for deer at all, other than you know, when you and me take our rifles up to deer camp up north. But that's like a forty yard shot, Max. Um, nothing long distance. I've never done any kind of long distance deer hunting like this. So there are a lot of different things coming to this one. UM. As far as planning though, the logistics of the trip, admittedly, this one was was not too hard for me because it was with the guys from met Eat so it was planned by them to film for a TV show basically, UM, so Janice and Seth and those guys handled most of the logistics. UM. Janni has got a buddy, Jay Scott, whom who Yanni used to be a guide for, and Jay sets up hunters down in Mexico with ranches to hunt on, so he helps organized logistics of getting focused across the border and finding places that they can hunt. Um, and then just kind of gives you the gives you access to this place, and then you go out and do your thing. So that was kind of our situation. I basically just needed to have all the gear I needed. I needed to be able to shoot, and um just needed to be able to fall instructions as far as getting down to Arizona, and um, you know, we got done there and I met up with Janice and Steve and cameraman Chris Rick and Seth and uh Ryan Callahan and then um a couple of other guys. So we all met up there in Arizona. We all flew in from our various places, got a rental vehicles. When you got that many guys, I have to say, they're so much luggage, so many groceries. I don't know how much money we spent the grocery store, but we had three vehicles just loaded down to the absolute brim. So we just we crossed the border with a lot of stuff. You had sent that picture just before you guys lanted like holy cow, like man, that is some gear that they got going across the border right there. Yeah, man, and that kind of made me a little bit. I don't want to stay nervous, but it was just a little bit unsettling because you kind of hear some horror stories a little bit about crossing the border, and you know, there's just been a whole lot of stuff in the media lately about some some rough stuff going on um on along the border in Mexico and kind of drug cartel related violence and stuff like that. So like that was like a little bit of a shadow that hung over all of this. Um Janice and the guys had all said, Hey, we've done this trip a bunch of times. We crossed the border many times. It's a it's a it's a pretty darn easy process. There's nothing to be worried about. It's very safe. So um, I felt pretty comfortable coming into it, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the little, tiny part was a little voice in the back of my mind that was thinking, Man, you're gonna roll over the border and these pickup trucks with like who knows how many dollars worth of camera equipment and like twenty yetti cooler sticking out the back and all this stuff. There was a lot of money rolling over the border there. Um, if there was someone who you know, was into some shady dealings, we certainly would have been a good target. So there was just this small little bit of apprehension as we went into it. But uh, but it ended up being not bad at all. We went through the border, Um, it was a long process, like a whole bunch of different customs things. I don't We're probably there for several or as they dealt with tourist visas and gun permits and vehicle permits and I mean a lot of paperwork. But again Jay and Janice really made that pretty easy. So a couple hours of custom stuff and then we rolled through and basically you know this, we we came into this little border town on the Mexico side. We drove through it for five minutes and then it's like you're in the middle of nowhere. You went from like this this kind of admittedly kind of rough town into then this like wide open, beautiful landscape. Um, you know, it just looks like southern Arizona, maybe some parts of southern Texas um cactus and akatillo plants and maybe some mesquites and places and desert grasses and these big rolling hills, um, and it was just it was just gorgeous and uh, and then made our way to the ranch. But I think, you know, other than those things that just laid out, the other biggest piece preparation for me, Josh, was when it came to shooting, um, because as you know, as I mentioned, I just don't do very much long range shooting, mostly bow hunting. And then when I do pick up a firearm, it's usually a shotgun or muzzleloader. I'm usually shot, not shooting much past a hundred yards UM. But these guys are saying, hey, you know, we're probably have to be taking shots at three hundred yards UM. It's really hard to get close to this deer and this kind of terrain, and and that's kind of something you to be prepared for. So leading up to the trip, I shot my my rifle quite a bit. Um. But I was using to make a long story short, I've gotten very late notice about needing to get these guys information on what gun I was gonna take. Like, they need to send in this paperwork and they needed it today from me. They said, hey, we need to know the serial number of whatever rifle you're gonna take on the trip. And this is a long time back, like back in the spring or summer, and the only rifle I have is my grandpa's old deer gun. It's like a night remming to in semi automatic rifle. UM. Probably never been shot past hundred yards, and that's all I had. So it's like, well that's all I've got. Here's the serial number, UM, and that's kind of what I've stuck taking. So I'm shooting that leading up to this trip. And is when I go past you know, two yards, I mean, it is all over the place. I mean you I sent you some pictures of the group's Josh. I was like, man, I mean, I'm getting it in the kill zone, but past two yards, I mean, it was not something I felt really comfortable with. So when I was driving out that morning to the airport, in my head, I'm just thinking, man, I'm just not gonna shoot past two hundred yards. These guys are gonna think I'm crazy. They're gonna give me a hard time about it, but I'm just not gonna do it. I'm gonna keep it close. UM. But as I'm driving, I kept thinking, Wow, you know, maybe UM Janice had mentioned to me he was going to bring a gun and hopefully hunt if everybody else felt attacks. And then I thought, well, maybe maybe I could just use the Honest gun because I use the honest As rifle on our Carabot hunt last year, so well, maybe you know, I should just use his. And that's dialed in and a good bolt action, accurate gun. And long story short in that I gave him a call and started chatting about the situations like, yeah, yeah, man, just use mine. Um, it's dialed in. It'll be great. And I'm so glad I did because when we got there that first day, we all went out and checked the zeros on the rifles, and it was just a night and day difference. I mean, my groups went from being embarrassing past two yards to being like dead nuts inch inch and a half groups. Um, So I felt good that I wasn't as horrible as of a shot as us thinking after shooting earlier. So I don't know. I think that's the biggest part as far as preparation was, was making sure I can shoot at those distances. Um. You know, I had all my basic hunting equipment that I would take like on an elk hunt. Um, same kind of close, same kind of temperatures, was like a September elk hunt kind of weather. Um. You know. The one interesting or a unique set of gear that I did brain that was different than maybe another Western hunt that I've done, was just longer range glass and equipment that was going to be UM. I was told a huge part of what we're doing is just glassing hillsides at a very long range for a very long time. So I brought not just my regular ten by forty two buyos, but I also brought a pair of eighteen power by nos. I brought a spotting scope, and I brought a tripod for all of those UM and that ended up being very very important. UM. So that that's kind of what got us there. We all that stuff happened. Got to the ranch is huge, huge property, untouched, I mean really beautiful other than cattle being ran there and cowboys working the ranch and stuff, but a very cool place. And when I got there and checked the zero on the rifle and got unpacked, it was kind of you know, here we go, all right, we need to take a quick break here to think our partners at Onyx, they are the creators of the Onyx Hunt App is a very very handy tool for whatever you might be doing during the hunting season. And right now we are on the precipice really of shed hunting season. I usually like to get kicked off in mid February, and I'm using Onyx a lot during shed season for a couple of reasons. Number One, if you're out there walking around with your Onyx Hunt App, you can see exactly where you are in relation to property borders. So if you know you can only hunt this one property, you're walking around looking for sheds, you want to make sure you know where those lines are. You can see private property lines on the Onyx Hunt app, and you can see public property lines very handy. Another thing I'm using the Onyx Hunt ap during shed season four is getting property owner information so that if I want to get permission on another piece. Maybe I'm walking around somewhere and I see that, Oh man, all the deer sign kind of looks like it's in the hillside next to the corn field. I wish I could walk over there. Well, you can get that person's address, show up at their house, knock on the door, whatever it might be, try to get permission there. And this is going to give you all the information you need, so highly recommended, very handy for a lot of different situations. You can find the Onyx Hunt app on any mobile app store or by going to onyx maps dot com. Mark I got a question, Um, One of my favorite parts of like Steve Shows is that he sometimes like dives into like the history of a certain species. Did he did he do any of that in regards to the Couz deer? Did he did he talk to you guys about that at all? Yeah, that's a great point, um, you know, a little bit the probably the the most interesting thing, or a couple of the interesting things would be number one, articulating the fact that Cus deer are in fact white tailed deer. There's a lot of people other questions because it's a different species of deer. You know, is this same thing? Why does it look so different? And yes, CU's deer are white tailed deer um. But they they're kind of subspecies of white tailed deer, and so basically they just have some morphological differences. Morphological differences being just some things of their appearance that have have adapted over time to their surroundings. So they're they're much smaller body body sized compared to deer up by us. I mean like a buck down there could be like eighty pounds, ninety pounds maybe something like that body size. Um. And then of course the antlers are smaller too. They are also much more adapted to living in mountainous environments. They're moving up and down. I wouldn't say like rocky craggy peaks in this area, but they certainly weren't afraid of some elevation. Um. And then I guess the one other interesting thing that Steve had talked about was this guy who had given the name Cou's Deer to these guys, Elliott cous Um. But I mean, if I'm going to get this story wrong, I think his name is Elliott Cows. And so that's why some people believe they're supposed to be called cows deer because this biologist or whatever it was. Um, I'm I'm gonna butcher this store, so just forget me. I'm trying to remember this from a late night podcast that we did with Steve Um. But I think his name was Elliott Cows and that's how they originally got their name. And then over the years, hunters kept calling coups and so now there's this debate. Are the cou's deer cows? Deer supposedly the proper pronunciation of cows, but everybody says cous. So that's that's why they are what they are. But but you know, probably one of the biggest thing that took away from the whole trip was the fact that these are still white tails. Like, they looked a lot different in some ways. The terrain was super different in a lot of ways. Um, but I saw a lot of things that were really similar, like the running behavior, this is the rut down there. Um. I mean, it was just like watching white tails up by us, which was pretty cool to see bucks chasing does the sea bucks making scrapes, sea bucks cruising down a ridge line, just like you might see in Iowa or here in Michigan or something. Um but I was seeing it, you know, with cactus in the background. That kind of contrast of the familiar in the in the unknown was maybe one of my favorite things about the whole deal. Did you get a sense of like, I know, probably tough as you you know, hunted them for a short time, But did you get a sense if you thought they were, you know, more weary than you know, your typical Midwest white tail less weary or is it more related to the terrain they live and it's more open they can see a long way. I think they are much more dependent on site because of that kind of terrain. So definitely site was the biggest thing. Like we were just worried about being seen. Um. Hardly ever thought about winding direction at all. Um. Now that was probably partly because we were just so far almost all the time, even when you're you know, sneaking in your long long distances still um, but you know, the guys there were talking about how they're so weary and how you know they are. There's a lot of predators coming after. There's a lot of mountain lions, coyotes could definitely take down a deer this size. Um. Supposedly there even have been jaguars in the general area too, which is pretty cool. Um or a jaguar, I guess. Um, So a lot of predators, But man, I still think that these deer they're not getting messed with by humans anywhere near as much as dear by us are. So so no, they don't. I don't think they're nearly is is you know, on a string like our deer are up here. Um, there's there's cowboys, you know, riding around on horses, pushing cattle and stuff like that. But I just I just don't think it's like what we have here. So um, they seem to be in, you know, a very natural behavior. They seem to be just doing the thing, doing what dear do. UM not nearly the level of I don't don't apprehension or or just general paranoia that I feel like our deer have. Um. But you know, like you said, it's hard to say just having watched them for seven or eight days or whatever. But we got out there that first morning, and then for the next seven days, all I did was watched these deer. I mean literally every day all day. You we drove in through the ranch to an area where we want to hunt. We hiked up to the top of a mountain or a big glassing peak or something. You sit down, you put a pad down on the ground, You pull out your tripod and your buying binoculars, and then you would just glass. You would just scour, going left or right or up and down, over and over and over and over and over again with other binoculars for for like ten hours. Eleven hours just staring through your binoculars. A lot of time watching these things. I guess it would be more accurate to say I spent a lot of time watching hillsides occasionally watching these things. Um, because that was Bryan. Another thing that stood up was just how hard it was to see these animals. Um. You'd think, with how open the country looked, you'd be seeing deer all over the place. But Cusier been called the great ghost. I've been I've heard they've been called, and I think they definitely lived up to that reputation. Um. You would you know, you'd be scouring the hillside, you would maybe watched it for two hours and there haven't been a single deer, and then all of a sudden, go over one more time, and then boom, there's a deer right there, like out in the wide open. You can't believe you missed it two seconds ago, but here's this deer. And within two seconds, maybe you blink your eyes or you look over to the person next to you and say, hey, I got one, And then the next second you look back and the deer's gone. I mean that happened to me so many times, Um, I mean that very first morning, we went up to the top of this mountain, did what I just said, set up glass glass glass, And that whole first day was basically what I just mentioned. You We would spot a couple of deer, would see him for a few seconds, a couple of minutes maybe, and then they passed behind one bush and then you never see him again. Um. It was pretty bizarre. And that really was was kind of how the first two days went. Um. Just a big crew of us hiking out glassing a lot, seen a few deer and then washing the same disappear um. And we saw you know, not a huge number of deer um, maybe maybe ten deer day, a couple of bucks in that group a day spread out of the course that ten hours um. But it was definitely you know, it required a lot of patients, like a different kind of patients than we have in a tree stand, I think, um, because you know, when you're a tree stand waiting for a white tail to come through like home, you know, if they come, you feel pretty certain and you see something and you feel pretty certain. In most cases you can see something that's gonna be kind of close, like you're gonna get to really experience it. Here you know, you could search for seven hours and not see anything, but if you did, it might be yards away and you're just watching like a little speck on the other side. So it was different for me, Like these these guests had all done those kind of hunts. This is like a little different, like a mental shift to be able to like be in it in that kind of way. Um, so that's something to keep mind Andy for. I know, I know you've wanted to do a cous dere on someday. Um, that would be one thing I would recommend to, like anyone who's gonna try something like this is just be prepared for for a very different experience and go into it, like realizing there has to be a tremendous amount of patients associated with this kind of hunt and just willingness to sit behind the glass and in search and search and search. Yeah, how much how much time did you guys spend Like like let's say you guys set up you know, you find out, uh, you know, a high knob, a good glassing point in your glass, and say you're there for an hour or two hours? Like when did those guys or when did you guys have the inclination to move and change positions or did you just stay patient and trust in the spot that you were in. Yeah, that was one of the big questions I had coming into the whole thing too, um And it seemed to vary by person um. When we first got there, j Um, the guy that j Honest had worked with the past, he you know, took us out to the to the property and drove up to one of the hillsides with us and kind of pointed out some different areas that he thought might be good. And his thoughts were, um, you know, don't feel you know, don't get tied to anyone area for too much, you know, move around to find some deer um. But you know, cal Ryan definitely was of the mind like he found a spot and he found some deer and then he kind of wanted to stick with it. And he has a ton of experience with you know, hunting mule deer and sick of deer and blacktail deer and all sort of stuff like that, so he definitely has a system that works, and he kind of found an area that he felt confident there's there word deer. He'd seen some and it's just a matter of just eventually seeing the right one, And that was kind of the That was kind of the trick, was that you could watch a hillside for hours and not see anything. But you know, the guys that had hunted here before in different places in Mexico always said, there's deer here, Like they're there, you just can't see them. They're so small, they're so well hidden into these hillsides, these little juniper bushes and little trees and scrub oaks and stuff. All you need is the deer to take two steps and all of a sudden you realize that they're so I think we're constantly dealing with that bouncing at like do we bounce around from place to place or do we just sit here long enough and then wait till one steps out? Um? For me, I found myself like wanting to move to different places just because I needed the change of scenery. Um. But you know, Steve, Steve and Janice and me kind of were on like a half a day kind of system. In most cases, we usually kind of stuck it out in the same general region for two or three hours and then maybe just move over one little knob or look at the other side of the ridge for the next couple of hours and then by the time afternoon rolled around, if nothing had been going then we would shift. Um, But definitely as the trip progressed, as the as the week progressed, we started kind of zero in. Like we found a few zones where we started having some confidence that there were deer and they were going to be dear. And once we had that zone in mind, then we did stick around in some some certain spots for for a little bit longer. Um. I don't know if we ever did figure out what the right answer was, but I think if anything, confidence has something to do with it. Um. You know, no different than when you know, any of us go out and hunt a spot during the rut or something. If you feel confident in why you're there and what's going on, it feels a whole lot better sitting there all day, you don't mind it. But if you're really uneasy about the decision you made or you don't have that confidence, um, you know, it's a whole lot harder. So that proved to be true here too. Yeah, that was one of the things that I struggled with myself when I was hunting mule deer in Wyoming, just how long to give each glassing position. And I think I was probably, like you, not quite as patient as yeah, not quite as patient as I should have been. You know, in a lot of instances, I kept wanting to, you know, see the next canyon, and you know, I'm sure I missed some deer doing that. Yeah, it's kind of funny, like you hear like Western guys talk about white tail hunters sitting in tree stands, like, oh, I don't know how you can do that. That's gonna be so were sitting in a tree all day. I could never do it, um, And that's what you and me do all the time. But then when I go out west and I'm sitting on a hillside for a while, I get impatient, you know, after a few hours, and I think it's I think it's probably just because I know I can move, Like the possibility is there to move while sitting in a tree. You just know you're locked there and you're you're gonna stick it out for however long you decided to um. But for whatever reason, it definitely definitely was different from me. I definitely had this wander lust um boiling up in me early on. And uh, yeah, it's kind of funny those first two days it was that kind of situation where sat most of the morning one spot mostly even another spot glass glass glass soft you you dear. Um. The third morning, though, we had up to another hillside glass glass glass. I spot a pretty nice buck, thinking he might be a shooter. He goes over the hill. Um, decide we're not gonna go because it's like a mile away. Keep lasting. Maybe an hour later we spot some deer on this other ridge not too far away now I think a thousand yards away, and UM, glass up another nice buck and I'm like, man, that's that's probably that's probably a shooter. And one that was one of the hard things leading into this was knowing how to determine, like, what's what's the shooter buck here in this area? Um, because these deer are so much smaller than than a lot of like mature white tails would be elsewhere. But what was kind of easy for me was that a decent, a good cuse deer buck is kind of the equivalent to like the buck in Michigan that guys would shoot. So I just said, like, if somebody in Michigan would shoot that deer, it's probably a shooter here. So basically anything that was like ninety inches or bigger. Maybe it was like, okay, that's that's probably one that we should chase. UM. So we saw a deer kind of like that, I don't know, nine hundred inches, like it's just a nice solid eight pointer. Um. And that's when I got to enjoy that. My wanderlust gotta come out. Then, because we saw this deer, I decided the shooter and then that's when I got to actually stock and move. So me and Janice and Seth took off after this deer. So Janice was running the main camera, Seth was running what they called the long lens camera, like a big zoom in camera. UM. And then I was hunting. Steve stayed up on the ridge to glass from his position and um if if I got down to the bottomless ridge, and I looked back at him and in the deer and moved somewhere. He was gonna wave an orange bandana at me to kind of indicate where that deer went. Um. And so I just kind of ran down this big hillside all the way down to the bottom. There was a little creek drainage. Follow this creek drainage and in the bottom of the valley separating the ridge we were sitting on from the ridge where this buck was. There was a little knob um kind of like a mini ridge that maybe went up one third as high as the others, and it kind of was was perfectly position to put ourselves within range of that deer. So to make this as fast as possible, snuck up to the top of this rise. Didn't see anything. We thought maybe the deer had gone lower down the ridge that we've We've seen this one tree with a white spot on it, and that was the last spot we saw this buck. And from our position, I could just see that white tree. But if the deer had gone any far farther beneath it, we wouldn't have been in sight. So we belly crawled another like seventy yards, well, we kind of stalked in on foot, and then Bailly crawled to this final little lip and uh. And then from that point I could see this dough up there, watching the dough, and then I see a buck. Glass at the buck, and I see that he's wide, but then he turns his head and he's kind of got shorter times and I'm thinking, man, is that the same one? Um? I don't know, but it's got to be that same buck. There was no other bucks in there with that dough. Um. He moves into another spot. He's in this big, shady, brushy patch. I get my binos on him, I get my range finder on him. He's in shooting range. Janice and Seth are all set up. They can film it. Um the bucks. You know, there's a there's a lane to this deer. He's a two hund thirty yards, so he's like within the range. I felt pretty comfortable with it all kind of lined up perfect, um, but I was pretty you know, pretty excited at this point. Even though two or thirty yards is really long. It's it's it's a it's a it's a significant distance between me and the animal compared to most of the encounters, right like twenty yard encounters, thirty yard en counters when you're bow hunting. So you wouldn't think, at least I wouldn't have thought leading into this that would be like an intense moment. But it definitely still was, like, it definitely was still a rush. It was definitely definitely just had me amped. Um. And I don't know if that was just you know, like it would be with any hunt, or maybe a little more pressure given like how different this was from anything I've done, or the fact there's a camera crew. I mean, all those things definitely ramped it up, probably, but um, but yeah, it was it was. It was a situation that didn't think I could pass up. So squeeze the trigger and and the buck basically rolled. He ran like five yards and was dead and um, and that was very exciting. And then like twenty minutes later, twenty minutes later, Steve comes walking on the hillside. He walks up to me. He's like, what happened, man? You shot the wrong buck. I'm like, what, I shot the wrong buck? He's like, yeah, I'm about my spotting scope on the buck. All of a sudden, here gunshot and another deer comes running into my view with blood coming out of his chest. Classic classic canyon. Oh yeah, three, you said, Mark, I'm day three. Yeah, day three of actually hunting. Um, kind of day four or five of the trip. But yeah, I mean they're had another bucket went in there, and it was a different, smaller buck than the original one we spotted. So um, it was kind of I don't know, it wasn't too disappointing. It was kind of like a little bit bummed, especially because like five minutes later, another nice buck, possibly the same original nice buck, came walking back through and I'm watching like, oh wow, that is a nice buck. Um. But in the end I was like, man, this is just too cool. Like first, cuise dear, I can't complain at all. It was just kind of a nice little six pointer, beautiful little deer. Um. We went walking up to it a little bit later, and I mean beautiful, beautiful coat on the just this like gray and white modeled coat. Um, but it looks like a white tail otherwise, just really small. I could literally pick it up by all four legs and just lifted up and you know, throw it over my shoulder if I wanted. And you guys know, I'm no Cameron Haynes, but I could have. I could have thrown this buck over my shoulder. Um. See, yeah, man, I killed my first couisier and uh I managed to kind of screw things up just enough to make it interesting. But I was it wouldn't have been right if you didn't. Yeah, I was just glad the shot was good. You know, there was no fiasco with a shot or anything. That was the I just wanted a good, clean, quick kill, no issues, didn't want to embarrass myself, didn't want to mess anything up with it with a deer or anything. And so that was, you know, huge relief. I mean you, I think you remember, Josh, I told you my story about last year in the caribra hunt, how that was. That was nerve racking for me in that situation too. And I had to take two shots on that caribou um and that you know, bummed me out. And so this situation, it was a nice kind of uh, what's the word not retribution, but oh gosh, I'm having a brain fart. Whatever it was, it felt good. So that's how my part of the heart end are part, my part of the hunt ended, got my got my buck core amount. You could literal really fit all of the meat from the deer, all four quarters, backstraps, tenner loins, roasts, scraps, all everything, and the skull, nandler's everything into one backpack. Packed the whole thing out in myself one load. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. How much you think the live weight would have been on that, I don't know. Estimate eighty pounds, ninety pounds something like that, not very big difficult. So you hunting him with a rifle, and I'll say you went back with a bow, How difficult would it be to get one down with a bow. Yeah, So that's the big question that I had coming out of this too, because by the end of the trip, by the end of my part of the hunt, and then you know, I stuck around and still went out and hunted with Steve and Ryan as they were hunting, and I kind of helped out with glassing. Um. The one thing I kept craving the whole time was just closer encounters. Like I wanted to you to be here the deer. I wanted to feel like the deer might be all seen me if I did something wrong. I wanted you know, I kind of wanted that bow hunting experience again as far as being close. Um, and even you know, even gun hunting in Michigan or somewhere in the Midwest, you still get deer close to you. We never had deer close to us, at least not to me. I know Steve had a couple of times and Ryan did. Um were some deerer close, but I never saw a deer closer than probably just under twos. So that was the one thing I missed, like that close engagement with the animal. Um. So bow hunting. If I were going to go back and do it again, I would want to try bow hunting. I think it is possible if you had kind of low standards, at least for someone with my skill level and experience. UM, in a good area, I think you'd go in there with a reasonable opportunity to shoot a deer possibly. UM. I think what you'd have to do is you would need to spend a bunch of time in the glass to identify a couple of these zones. UM, kind of like where these little rough parties are. Like we ended up finding a spot where I killed my buck, and then one other spot where Steve and Janice end up killing their bucks. Um, where there's this little pocket of rutting activity. You know, just like when you're hunting white tails up by s, you'll sometimes find this little section of a property where there's a ton of rutting activity going on today and tomorrow or something. You know, Um, there'll be a hot do in the area, a couple hot doughs in the area, and there's a bunch of deer activity. I think The way I would try doing it is I would glass and glass and glass from a distance until I found one of these little rut spots where there was a hot do in the area, and then I would sneak in there with a bow and put myself in a position where i'd have some opportunities to move up and down a ridge, you know, like I could I could kind of hunker down the top of a ridge and watch, and if I saw some deer approaching, I could see where they're headed, because there's definitely like bucks cruising just like they do by us. There was definitely bucks following does just like around us. And I think if you could see one of those deer heading your way from a distance, and maybe you were like in a little crevice on a ridge, or maybe you're you know, near a little bend in the ridge or something where you could just get behind some cover and move into range of where that spot would be, I think you could have a chance. Um. But it definitely wasn't at least in what I was seeing. It wasn't like the archery mule hunt early season type things you see where you watch a mule deer feeding all day and then you watch whee beds and then you sneak into where he was bedded and shoot him out of his bed. I'd never we never, at least I didn't see that kind of behavior. I didn't see a buck of beds somewhere that you could actually see and then stalking on him. Um. I would kind of think I'd be trying to take advantage of a rut movement as I see it happening and sneak in. Um. But man, it would be a it would be a serious challenge. Like I said, the deer hard to see, um, big big country and uh, I mean it was a challenge for all of us just to get you know, within rifle range that didn't come easy. So trying to get within bow range that would be you'd have to go into with a little bit of like a oh, I don't know, a suffer complex, like you want to suffer a little bit. You have to be willing to really go through some crap and probably not have it work out, but be okay with that. That's probably the mindset I would take if I was gonna try, you know, hunting these deer in that kind of way. M hm. Do they have a um, do they have a tendency to be I think I've read before that they have a tendency to be pretty aggressive towards each other. You know, I Are they an aggressive species? I don't know. I hadn't read one way or another there any more aggressive than any other white tail. Um, but I definitely saw aggressive running behavior. Uh So on our fifth day, I think it was, Um, We're coming into one of these zones of good activity that we noticed the night before, and we spot a couple of nice bucks on this hillside and turns out there's a hot dough and the nicest buck is locked onto that hot dough. Steve and the crew go chase the necklace buck. I stayed back on the spotting scope, um, just glassing it, just keeping an eye on the buck, and if somehow it ran off, they could come back to me and I could tell him, Hey, I saw go over the ridge or whatever. Um, So, while I'm watching this whole thing go down, that buck stayed with the dough. But had it was either four or five other different but I think four different bucks, no, maybe five different bucks over the course of a couple hour period came in trying to make a move on that dough. And every time that big buck would like charge them, he'd run them off. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if there was like some snort, wheezing and stuff going on. It was that kind of behavior. So he would run after this buck, scare that buck off, and then run all the way right back to the dough, standard of the dough, and then another buck would come slinking up from the other side. He'd charged that buck, run at fifty yards off, then come running back to his dough. And he did that for for a long time. So definitely that kind of terrialtorial running behavior that we see here too. Um. You know, when they want to breed, they do not want anyone messing it up. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's some fighting. I'm sure there's some fighting. Um, I didn't see it, but I gotta believe it happens. I'm just gonna ask you about these little running zones that you're talking about. What was there anything like specific, but maybe like a different terrain feature or something that maybe cause that little area to be a a hot zone of activity, Like did any of these different areas have anything in common? Yeah, that's a really good question. I I'm not sure, but if I had to go off of like the couple of things that stood out to me, most all of the best activities saw was kind of in the upper third of all the ridges on the mountains, so most of the activity was kind of high up on the mountain top third. And then always again, this is just like white tails anywhere else near some of the best cover in the area. So if you had like a big thick patch of junipers up on that upper slope, there's a good chance that that was gonna be one of those spots that might have some some running activity. So where I found my buck was like the thickest strip of junipers, like a hundred yard wide swath of junipers that came along this ridge, And these deer were up on the upper slope chasing around and stuff, and eventually they moved down lower once that buck locked onto the dough um. But it was a very similar habitat to where Steve end up killing his a lot of junipers in the saddest ridge. And then there's a tiny bench at the right about two thirds of the way up the hill, and right on that bench is where the dough was bedded and the buck was there, and then all these bucks are kind of cruising along the bottom of the cover right beneath them. UM. So I think these deer operate a lot like white tails by us do. And the fact that they if possible, they'd like to be in cover or near cover, so they've got that safety close by. UM. And then I definitely saw them, you know, working ridgelines kind of similar of the two white tails by us when they're cruising, cruising two thirds up the ridge. UM. I don't know if they, you know, are sent checking the same way. I kind of assumed they'd be sent checking the same way. But I don't know enough about how these dear bed to tell you where these doughs are bettered, if if there was a component of like elevation or or what. Um. But but it seems like they're doing similar things. So that's that's my guess. Did you get a sense of you know, when they were on the side of the ridge, was the it seemed like they were on that leeward side, that downwind side more often, or were they sometimes even on the windward side. You know, that's funny you asked that because at one point when I was out there, I asked myself the same question, and I realized that I had no idea, you know, what the wind was doing. There was no cell phone service to ever check what the wind was doing throughout the day, and we just never thought about the wind enough to even stick your finger in the air and think about them. Um So, I don't know. It was kind of weird in the way that really, this is like a wind irrelevant hunt. Um And and the wind probably was very shifty from one era to another, like we're watching deer thousand yards away. The thermals were probably doing something completely different there than they might have been doing, you know, with the wind direction coming from our direction mixing with the thermal's coming up. Um So, I just don't know how that all worked. I wish I've been thinking about it more at the time, but it just wasn't like on our radar at all for whatever reason. So that was kind of unique, and I didn't think about too much. Now that I'm here, I wish I had, did you? So, I know you probably ate really well with with that crew. What was the the taste of the cus deer compared to you know, a Midwest white tells you notice any differences. That's a good question. I don't think so. I think that just tasted like a deer um. The only stuff we ate from Cou's deer. We we made um. On our last day there, we made venison tomali so cooked up. We grounded up corn into like a flour mix, added lard and water and baking soda and made this. I don't know if you has ever heard tomalls before, but make this kind of corn paste of sorts that gets wrapped up into a corn husk with this pulled venison um that cooks in this uh chili Colorado spices, really really good um, but some strong flavors in there. So it wasn't like, you know, I could really differentiate. You know, you could have put elkin there, or deer or anything. I probably would have told you it was great and couldn't tell the difference between anything. But I did, I guess I did pull some some straight venison off the big chunk that we got cooked, just cooked in water for six hours, and that just tasted like any other deer um. But good, I mean really good, nice and tender and tasty um. And let me tell you, venison tomales are very very good. We did. We did eat very well. Um. We actually had um who was a lady I think who maybe lived on the ranch that we were able to hire to help us with some of the cooking because we were out the entire day. UM. But living in this we stayed at this old ranch house on the farm and UM. So she made a couple of dinners with us that were really really really authentic recipes of her own. So she made chili chili Colorado I think, um one night, and made thereiso um another night, and we had like breakfast burritos with that. And we ate ate so many beans. I was in the I was in the bathroom like seven times a day, so many beans over the trip. But it was it was really good. I mean, I ate Mexican breakfast, lunch, and dinner for eight days. This is good. She sounds like a much better camp manager than the last camp manager you had. She definitely cooks better than you, jobh. But but it was it was cool. All right, we need to take one more break here to think our partners at Morton Buildings. And I'm excited about this one because I've for a long time looked at Morton buildings out there on folks properties and been very very jealous Morton. They're the builders of very high quality steel pull barns and steel buildings. Um you know, they can be used just as storage for your tractor and your hunting gear. I've seen others where they're full born Paul Barn houses where you have a large storage area for your truck and your tractor and your forward, but then also maybe half of it is a living area. Um Man. I've kind of dreamed of having my own little hunting properties someday and a Paul Barn house on it. That is is what I'm hoping to someday have And it's kind of neat to be able to talk about on the podcast here, and it kind of tell you about my dreams. Maybe someday it will happen. But from what I understand, Morten is the place to get this done. They have over a hundred years of experience. They're fully customizable. Like I mentioned, you can have a Paul Barn house, you can have a huge storage stility, whatever you want. They have several different features that make these particularly high quality, like their energy performer installation. They have high ribs steel, It's very low maintenance and right now there are some special promotional prices going on that are running through February. So if you are in the market for a new barn or Paul barn house or or a little living space on your property, you can head over to Morton Buildings dot com to learn more. Alright, so, so and he had bounced, But Josh, I mean great food, beautiful beautiful, beautiful country. Um. I think a few things stood out to me though, and and feel free to happen here if you've got some other questions. But looking back on it now, I thought it would be helpful to mention like a couple of big takeaways for me. I guess if I was gonna do this again. Um, you know, I got to watch, you know, my hunt go down. I got to see Steve's hunt go down. Um, Ryan's buck we kind that looked into we're just walking to another glass and knob and bumped this deer. Um, and Ryan got shot at him at just under two hundred yards. And then Janice's deer was kind of a little bit luck too, because that deer that Steve killed. Um. After Steve's buck got shot, one of those other four bucks I was telling you about that was kind of trying to get his dough. He just stayed right there. He stayed right in the area. Steve went up and looked at his buck, checked it out, and that buck stayed within like forty yards, like just stood there stock still. And Janice and Ryan were a couple hundred yards away watching all this happen, and they're just watching this buck standing next to Steve, not caring. And finally they said, well, if we can get Steve out of there, we can maybe get a shot. And so they end up just yelling at Steve, told Steve, hey, Steve moved two hundred yards down the other way, and that buck did not move. Steve walked two hundred yards away, he was forty yards in the buck. He walked the other way a long ways until he was far far away, and then you got a shot at that buck. I mean, just the craziest thing, um, But that hunting kills hunt him and kales sounds kind of unorthodox, but I think you know me and Steve's hunts, the way those kind of played out, um, kind of to what I've been talking all along about. Just like a tremendous amount of patience behind the glass and the importance of how you glass. Um. Probably the most important thing was was having a tripod. I mean, I would never ever hunt the tripod for binoculars when you're white tail hunting. But in this kind of situation where you're sitting on a mountain for ten hours, when you're hand holding him, you don't realize it. At that distance, it's so hard to keep it steady. But when you're a tripod and you're looking for this little tiny thing in your view, it made like a world of difference, Like you could just see so so much better. You could pan across the hillside so much more smoothly. Um. I mean it was the difference between seeing zero dear and being able to see ten deer day. Um. And then that almost tho seems like an absolute necessity. Yeah, I would say, absolutely must have. And then the other nice thing is that you know, if you spotted a deer and you looked away nine times attend, you probably never will find it again. Like they're they're they're that hard to spot. He might not have moved at all, but you wouldn't be able to find him again. So what you would do is you see this deer and then you spot it and then I got one. And then you can lock the tripod in place that had the tripod head, so you can just you lock your binoculars right at that view so that you know, so you don't need to rEFInd the deer. It's locked on to where the deer is and you can see it otherwise. I mean I had a couple of times where my hat knocked the binoculars and knocked it off. Yeah, I could not find him again. So just crazy. We'd have times when like I would spot one or Steven spot one, but nobody else has and so then you have to try to walk the other people into that deer, so they try to describe to them where the deer is so they can find it themselves. And that was that was a whole challenge of its own, trying to verbally convey where this tiny dot is a hillside yards away. Um. That that's another takeaway probably too, is like if you're there with friends and you are trying to do that, and it's very helpful if you can do that, because the more people you can have on the deer, the better chance that is that you're not gonna lose him, especially if one of you is going to go stocking and try to hunt him. Um, so like being able to simply and accurately describe the the landmarks that you're seeing and then a direction from it. So it was like, Okay, do you see that highest peak in front of us with the two rocky bowlers on the very top, And then you wait your free your partner and he says, yeah, I see that. Okay, Now go to the six o'clock from that, so the peak is the center of the clock. Go to six o'clock from that, keep going until you see the yellow strip of rocks that go across in straight line. Okay, yeah, I see that. Okay, now go three o'clock from that line of rocks until you see the juniper tree that has two branches on the left and five branches in the right. I've got that. It was that kind of was like that was how you had to get people to see this deer. Otherwise it was just you couldn't you couldn't point him and say hey, right there. And then the same challenge applied to like when you tried to stalk and close to find him again. You know, when I had to move in to try to get close to my dear to shoot it. Same thing, you know, Stephen, I had seen the deer to the distance, but then when he had to try to close the distance to get a shot, it's so much harder to find him again when you're close because the angles are different, or the deer might have moved twenty yards or a hundred yards or whatever. Um. So the biggest takeaway in that front I had was when you make your move. And this could probably apply to any kind of hunt like this mulder hunt or whatever. UM find like a very very specific reference point as to where you last saw that deer. Um Like I got. I had a reference point in my head when I took off, but it was a little bit too general. I said, Okay, it's bottom third of the super wide strip of junipers. I remember seeing him enter that that part of it. But Seth, the other guy with me, he had identified a specific tree with a white circle on it, and that was huge because then we knew exactly where on that lower third within that strip of junior verse we had to wait to look. That helped a lot. So, man, that's another thing I would definitely keep in mind. I think it's just patience glassing. Having the right gear being very detailed oriented when it comes to planning your stocks into these deer and how you're going to spot them, um and patience. Again, I think it was just it's different. It was really really different. Very cool, but very different. And like I said, I did find myself wishing I could I wish I could get closer to him. That's probably the only my only regret is that I didn't get to have a close call with him. There was something kind of hunting the man. Would you ever do hunt like that? Oh for sure, I'd love to do something like that. It's just you know, followed along over your Instagram storyline as a couple of days and you've kind of been putting some small states on a man, I just look so awesome, just so different, you know, than what you're used to. And and even hunting like white tails, like we've done a little bit out west. It's it's just so much different even than that, and hunting the river bottoms and stuff like that. It's just totally different world. It seems like, Yeah, well, I've definitely found over the years that, I mean, I love white tails, and I've got to hunt a bunch of different things now and I still just keep coming back to white tails, like, for whatever reason, they're just the coolest um. But I definitely have found um a growing desire to experience different kind of white tail hunts. You know, like I love my Midwest tree stand thing. But it's been a lot of fun to go out west and hunt the river bottoms, and it was a ton of fun to go to Nebraska and hunt the sandhill type terrains. And you know, I'm wanting to go do like a northeast hunt here maybe this year and try to track one down, and you know, just trying these different places that I mean, I'm sure you experienced it this year when you went to North Dakota, right, Just that different kind of a different kind of terrain, slightly different behavior, but still the white tail we love. Like, I don't know, it's just a really cool way to engage in this critic, isn't it. And it's just so crazy as you go up to all these different places, how how adaptive they are to the you know, the landscape that they're in or the terrain that they're in, just you know, from Florida to Canada to Mexicota to the Northeast to the what I mean, it's just it's just crazy how they can just adapt so well and thrive wherever they're at. I might be biased, man, but I think there. I think they're the number one champions of the outdoor world. I think white tailed deer have just like they're so adaptable they can survive anywhere. Like you said, I mean, they're they're all over this continent. Um. So for that reason, I think white tail hunters are the best to um. You know, sort of related to the fact that these deer are seen all over the place though. That kind of was something I was thinking a lot about when it came to like the landscape we were hunting, and I mean it was stunning down there. I mean beautiful, beautiful sunsets, really interesting different types of plant life, like I said, all sorts of different cactus plants and um agave plants and century plants like big palmy bushes aka tillo, which are like these long I don't even know how to describe. It looks like something almost like I would get Dr. Seuss book, like, like imagine just like big sticks coming out of a single bush at the bottom, but they stand like eight feet tall and they have huge like two inch long spines all over each stick, kind of like our pricker bushes here, multiplied by ten um but just stunning, really really cool. Um. But almost every night I'd be sitting on a hill looking at these just dropped dead gorgeous hills and sunsets, and this does and I kept falling back in my mind to thinking about home in America and thinking about the fact that we have places like this too, literally just like that or other beautiful landscapes like that. Um. But they're you know, they're open to all of us. We have public lands like that that are open and available for everybody to hunt, to camp, to fish, to do whatever. And they're just are not many opportunities. From what I gather, there are not many opportunities like that down in Mexico. Like it's people. Not many people, from what I understand, hunt down there because it's really hard to have guns. It's really hard to find places to hunt. Um. I just think that I, I, personally, and probably a lot of other people probably take what we have in America for granted. And this is a this is a big time reminder for me, um, just how good we have it. Incredible lands, incredible, you know, whether it be the rights to public lands, the right to bear arms. I mean, we've got a lot of things going for us them very thankful for. And and probably the timing that you're down there right now too, with everything going on, probably just makes you realize that you know even more, you know what I mean, just with all the stuff going on with with the southern border right now, it makes it really appreciate, you know, what you got, especially when you're right there in the moment at this point in time. For sure, a lot of talk about the border, a lot of talk about people that want to be in America. Um And and yeah, I think my overarching take home message from this trip for me was just just how thankful I am to be a hunter in the United States of America, with the places we have to hunt, in the animals we have to hunt, and the tools and the rights and the opportunities that we have in the management system we have in place. Um Man, there's just a lot of things going for us here that um I suppose is just just another reminder for us of the importance of trying to make sure we keep it that way right. We gotta try to keep republic lands public, gotta try to keep them, you know, as as wild and as intact as POSSI disturbed. Yeah, at the same time, we got to also fight for you know, our rights to hunt, our rights to have firearms. There's just a whole lot of stuff these days that makes you wonder. I don't know. There's a lot of folks coming for the things we want, and we just need to make sure that we stand up for those things that are important to us. And it's not easy, it's not convenient, it's not always comfortable. As my friend is Randy Newberger always likes to talk about when it comes to public lands, I think he always says, it's not easy, it's not comfortable, it's not convenient, but it's always worth it. And um and after that week in Mexico, that's that's something that's gonna be top of mind from you. So that's my Mexico cuz deer hunt dude. That is what I took away from it. It looked awesome. Congratulations, that was an awesome buckets really cool to see what do you guys have Four guys end up hanging out four well, no, five guys. Because the four of us, four of us um killed and then our CEO of Meteor Inc. Kevin He killed one earlier in the trip. I had to leave, so he wasn't in that fugle Um, but we filled five tags at six that we had. Wow, that's great, That's what a cool trip. Then I gotta ask, I feel like we'd be leaving, leaving this out if we didn't, if we didn't touch on it. What are these guys like in camp? Man? You gotta it didn't look like no hotel Beachmont that we said, what's the what's the vibe in camp with those guys? It looks like you're probably laughing the whole time. Yeah, that's a good ess. That's a good point to make. Um, it's probably probably what most people are interesting. They don't care about if I shot a deer anything. They're more like, what's like to hang out in camp with Steve Rinella? Um, it's fun, it's cool. I mean it's very competitive. I'll say, is one thing like Steve, Ryan Janice all these guys like super competitive. If so, there's a lot of like one upsmanship going on, like like I bet you I could beat you in a arm wrestle, and then we're doing arm wrestle competitions. Um that it'll be like push up competitions. Then it will be how many pull ups can you do? Um? So knowing me, Josh, you knew, I wasn't clear, although I'll tell you after my caribou hunt and then like hunting turkeys and in the spring and deer in the fall, I kind of I kind of knew what was what it was getting myself into. So I've been working my way into it. Like there's this thing they called the Century Club. So every day you want to do a hundred push ups a day, and so it's kind of like a group thing. Like someone's like, all right, where are you at? And like someone's like, I'm at forty alright, bust out twenty five more. And then one person will get down start doing push ups, and then whoever you know needs to get some more for the day. They all hop in and so. And when they first started doing it this spring, in my head, I'm so shitty at push ups. I'm like, oh God, I can't hang with him. I'm not gonna do it. Well, it's gonna embarrass myself. I do so a few push ups. Um. So this time around was like, no, I'm going to be in the Century Club. I can easily do that, So I just started doing a handful every day and work my way to the point now where I can I can hang with them. So I felt good about doing knee pushups. Yeah, is that not right, Josh? I think it was. I think it was Ben. I think it was watching like Ben O'Brien's Instagram story or something that I heard. I think it was said, I gotta show Kenny how to do push ups or something like that, right for him dogging on you a little bit. Yeah, it's true. He said that my stance on my pushups is too wide with my arms, so they forced me to pull my elbows and my hands in closer to do my pushups. But I can't. I have to do my push ups on like clenched fists because I don't know if you remember this back in high school. Um, but I got like, yeah, man, so I can't remember. So I had to doing with fists. Um. So for whatever reason, I usually do him wider, but now I'm doing him tighter. Doing those, we had to do a push up or not push up, but a pull up, not not pull ups. Arm wrestle competition on the last day and I came in second, um sort of, I guess third technically, because Steve was kicking everyone's butt like Steve was. Steve's got it pretty well handled on most of these things, and um, so he was whooping on the cameraman and everything, and I'm like, well, screw it, I'll try. And I at least like gave him a run for his money, like he gave his big push town towards the end and everyone's like, oh, here it goes just like everybody else. And then I was kind of in my hand like no, I'm not I'm not going down without a fight, and I was able to hold him for a while. He like, you know, at least made him think that this could be interesting. So I felt good about that. But then, uh, but then Beeto, I don't know if you saw the video that Steve post on Instagram, is pretty funny. Um, but Beeto was one of the guys that helped us to the border crossing and everything. It was just sticks. So he was there on the last day and so we pulled him in and he kicked Steve's butt. So that's pretty funny. Um. Yeah. Otherwise, otherwise it's just like a lot of stories, a lot of laughing, a lot of giving each other ship, you know, just like any other hunting camp, except for this camp has got you know, nine people in it, and um everyone, everyone likes to talk. Everyone's good at talking everyone. Um. So there's lots of debates and arguments and stuff like that, which is which is fun. So I'm sure it's hard to get in a word, it can be for sure. And if you get a word in, if you get a worden and it's a debate, you better be very well prepared to defend it because you'll get jumped out. So I'd try to sit in the corner of that crew and just listen. You gotta be prepared to be told you're wrong and try to try to fight that. But yeah, man, it's cool. I mean all those guys, I mean, both the folks are wrong can like Stephen Kle and Yanni or the guys behind the camera like Chris and Rick and Seth. I mean, just super funny, cool people. Uh, we had a We had a good time, I will say. You know. The only thing else I would add about it. The only downside of the whole trip it was just how long it was. It was a long trip. I mean I was gone for twelve days from home, and um, that was tough, being away from being away from Everett and Kylie. You know, after a trip we took this Spirit or not Spring this uh September. How long were you? Well, I was gone longer new But I think I was gone for eleven days for that white Tail hunt. Yeah, I think I was gone seven Yeah, seven or eight something like that. Yeah, And after that one, I kind of told myself, kind of made a plan in my head that I didn't want to do any trips that long anymore. I wanted to try to keep future trips like seven days or less. Just you know, so it's not quite as tough on Kylie. And it's just, you know, it's just hard. It's it's surprisingly difficult to be Like back when I, before I had kids, I was always thinking that it wouldn't be that big of a deal, But now I'm realizing that it is. Um And so in this case, you know, it was a trip that I was delonged for. I didn't have the ability to really control the scheduling, and twelve days definitely had me missing, missing my family. So yeah, and as Peter said our group chat, died without you being around too to spark like that. So your family and your group chat. I guess, uh, I guess I'm more important to some folks than I realized. Something. Something's like shocking me. I can't believe Peter wouldn't have some kind of odd picture to share with the group or something to keep the group text. The things that got very good at that, oh man, Yeah, welcome home, congratulations looked like just an incredible trip, incredible hunt. And uh, glad that everything went well for you getting across the border and getting home. And no horror stories, so that's always good, right, Yes, no horror stories. I'm back, glad him back and um so all right, well I think we should wrap it up. Man. Thank you for hopping on here and playing host. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you having me on. And since I'm hosting, I feel like I should maybe get to do the sign off. Yeah, go ahead, take it, take it away. Well, let' let's see how I can do that. You might have to hire hear me. Thank you everyone for tuning in this week. Uh, if you haven't done so already, please leave a comment review on our iTunes helps everyone else see it. Leave five stars and uh until next time, stay Wire very well to Lay. Yeah, that was that was pretty good.

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