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, this episode number three and three and saying the show, we are analyzing a series of stories for you in which we'll hear from four hunters about five hunts with three bucks killed, two tags left unpunched, and a whole bunch of lessons learned. All right, welcome to the Wired don podcast, brought to you by on X. We're here today to talk about several hunts. We've got four people on the show total, but at different times. Right now it's me and Dan, and then a little bit later will be me and Tony Peterson, and then a little bit later will be me and Andy May. And we all have been out hunting this month so far, and some of us have had success, some of us did not. I want us to break down these four sets of hunts and what went right, what went wrong, and what we can learn from them. So first up, I got nine fingered wonder Dan Johnson here from fresh off of the Colorado Hunt. UM, I want to hear about what's what's you know, how they went? We haven't got talk. I mean we texted a little bit around it, but we haven't actually got talk. So I haven't even like texted you in a while right now, since your last day of the hunt? Right, how is the how's the fam doing? First and foremost fans? Good? I have some news on that front, by the way, which which you don't know. Uh, we had our ultrasound and baby number two is another boy, so we got another another pack of boys over here. So Knox and Mac will have a couple of buddies here in Michigan. Yeah. I hope that they're just as ornery as my kids, just so you know, Like I don't know why, but I just envision your children being very polite, me being very you know. Okay, it's time to go to bed. Yes, father, I will go to bed, and they go to bed like for me, I have to get out like the hog taser and like get them into their rooms. Yeah. My my son already keeps his hands folded neatly behind his back. He carries he balances a book on his head, and then he walked slowly and quietly to bed, puts himself to sleep, and then sets an alarm. Yeah, not what my kids do. I'll tell you what. It's so funny, Like every month, probably at least once a month, I find myself Yeah, Dan was right about this, the Dan. It's been funny seeing all these things come to fruition that you warned me about for years. So yeah, it'll be it'll be a whole new adventure with the second one coming. And it would have been you know, I just was hoping for a healthy, happy baby, but having another boy. You know, I always wanted a brother growing up. So it's kind of cool to know that Ever will have a brother and they'll be able to you know, adventure of the world together and be best friends and worst enemies and you know all that brother stuff. So I'm excited sister Ever getting like big fights, you know, not super bad. There was a like we're great, we're kids. And then when I was in like late junior high and she was just about to start junior high, we had a period where I was like just like an asshole to her. Um just I knew how to push her buttons to really irritate her all the time, and I got a lot of joy out of that. So that was that was a period I just I found it really funny to make her cry and we're like driving to school or whatever, because I knew I could like but she'd get mad at the stupidest thing that I was breathing too loud, or I was eating my food too loud or stuff like that, and so of course I saw opportunity there and milked it. So right, one of the biggest fights that me and my brother ever got in was, I don't know, did you ever have a sega growing up? I never? Well, yes I had the sega. Was there a dream something? Um that was the Nintendo Dreamcast or something like that, Right, yes, I had. That was the first one I got, and then it was gotcha. Okay, Well, anyway, me and my brother, um, he's closer to your age than he than to me. My brothers like five years younger than me. So we would play college football on the sega, and he was always better than me. But I didn't want to ever have my record show on the stats on the game. So with like one or two seconds left, if I was ever down, I would kick the I would I would kick the plug in out of the wall so that stat would never show up. And he would get so mad, like he would charge me and try to fight me. That's great. Yeah, it's like when I play Xbox of my when he was like a ten year old my nephew, that's what he would do. And so that's eighteen year old Dan did well. That was like that was earlier. I mean by the time I graduated, by the time I graduated high school, I think the first PlayStation was out maybe or maybe my first year in college. Anyway, Yeah, we've gotten some knockdown, drag out fights over Bill Walsh's college football siblings. Good times, good times. Um, Yeah, that's funny. That was a piece of news, the family piece of news. And then there's a whole other, big piece of news that I want to talk to you about. Um that I don't know if we should lead with us or if we should dive into your hunt? What what are you most passionate about right now? Dan, Like, do you just need to release the story of your Colorado el hunt and your thoughts and your frustrations or do you want to simmer on that while hearing a little story from me and then get into it. Where's your where's that your emotional state? This is completely up to you, because the more I simmer, the more raw the actual Colorado trip and my thoughts on um, all the other stuff that kind of goes along with it while flipping through Instagram and Facebook will come out. So we can have uh a somewhat censored version, or we can get like the Eddie Murphy raw uh raw type addition to share your story. Okay, I want Eddie Murphy. I want Eddie Murphy, so so share a mark. Alright, So um, we'll talk about my North Dakota public land hunt maybe after your outcome. But I do need to talk a little bit because on the last episode of the podcast, I shared an announcement, but you and I have not talked about this yet because I'm waiting to talk about it an air. So as maybe you saw on social media, we dropped a new project here that I'm working on with media in which we bought a farm. Yeah, and I haven't got to tell you about this because we've been keeping a pretty hush hush and working on this thing behind the scenes. But all of the bullshit I've been doing this summer when I was talking about being frustrated, this thing is not working. This thing is not working this is breaking, this is failing. It was mostly all happening on this new place that we are trying to trying to use like a showcase for private land conservation and small land management and stuff like that, and it's been kind of a disaster. But I haven't been able to fully share that with you and and articulate why it's even more stressful. So so now it's this huge weight off my shoulders that you know, we have this sixty four acres of land here in Michigan that we are trying to turn to a cool little hunting property. But we are also trying to use as like a as an education tool or almost even like an inspiration tool to show like, hey, we can do some really cool things for the local area, for the local wildlife, for the water and the soil. There's a lot more you can do than just try to shoot boone and cracker bucks on it. Um. So it's like an exciting project that I'm excited for and and it's been fun. But man, there have already been some epic fail stories Dan that I haven't got to fully flesh out. So it's just it's exciting that it's out there, and um, there's gonna be much more to come on that front. You're gonna have to You're gonna have to if ever you decide to fulfill and act. What's the word to to to God, I'm having a brain fart here. If you ever decided to come to Michigan like you promised you would, you're gonna have to come and check this place out. Okay, I will. It's uh, it's maybe not gonna impress you from a buck standpoint. Um, up to this point, Dan, I still I don't know if there's gonna be anything like serious for me to ut out there. It's not. It's not looking good right now. So if I have to knock on a door to get permission to that piece, is that you? Or is that Ronella? Yeah? You know, go knock on Ronilla's door? Um, yeah, it's it's gonna be a challenge. I thought. You know, I looked at a whole lot of things when we are going through this process of trying to find this property and trying to find the right little piece that would you know, both be a great hunting property but then also have the potential to experiment with a lot of these things. Um, and I think it has that but right now on the deer side, like we are struggling. I don't have anything decent on trail camera yet. Um. Now, to be fair, we've been out there filming stuff like a ton, so that has not helped them. Sure, But moral of the story is hunting season opens and like a week and a half or something like that, and it's little unnerving. I don't know what we're gonna have there, So it might be a real slow Michigan season for me if if half of my hunts or whatever are are out there and if it's not improving, well, you had the guys from Landing Legacy on right. Those guys are some hardcore habitat experts. I'm going to say. Now, one thing from following along on their podcast that you learn is that this there's no overnight solution to increasing like quality deer on your property overnight, and this is this is something that takes potentially years to accomplish. It's definitely a long term project, that's for sure. And UM, and I really like their philosophy on land management in general and the definitely taking a lot of things that they talk about into account as we're thinking through this. You know, I think they're one of the few resources out there these days in the deer hunting world that they're doing a really nice job of looking at this holistically, you know, not just big bucks there. I love the fact they talk about pollinators and they talk about native ecosystems, and they talk about everything upland birds, dear, the whole, the whole gambit. So, um, so I might even try to I haven't asked them this, but I might try to see a thing come out and take a look at the property someday and share the thoughts and knock out some some cool content while we're at it too. So they'll they seem to be a good fit for what we're trying to trying to achieve here. Absolutely smart, smart guys. Yeah, so that's that's the farm news. Um, you can win a hunt. You want to win a hunt to come on with me? So I was I was thinking about this, you know, like you guys were talking about, Hey, you could win a hunt with Mark kennyon and just do you Ronella or whatever, And I'm just like, um, like, been there done? How bad does your hunting situation have to be in order to apply for this hunt? When you just admitted that there's hardly any deer were shooting on this part. It's hey, that hunt's gonna happen next season, so it's gonna be really good bye then, yes, so yeah, it's all about you know, if if we got this thing and it was loaded with big box rough out the gate, then where do we have to go from there? Right right, there's there's no story if that's the case. So I would just want to win the hunt so I could see you in person again. And how like you're slowly becoming a man every time I see a picture. Every time I see a picture of you, your goatee just looks better and better and better. Well, you know, I just keep on rubbing rog gain and pixie dust on it every morning when I wake up, so better be amen. Uh yeah, So so that's that's my Michigan private land stuff. Still knocking out a bunch of public land stuff this year, and I know you are too. So let's let's get into our hunt breakdown. I guess, of sorts, we'll start with our two hunts. We'll move on to the other guys. You had big Colorado elk hunt You've been talking about all year, You've been dreaming about all year, been working your tail off leading up to it all year. Um, before we hear the step by step play by play of it, Just what is your what like when you get back, When you got back from the trip and your wife was like, well, how did it go? Like what was your initial like vomit of how you were feeling about this thing? Yeah? Man, I'll tell you what. You go into every one of these trips knowing that the odds are stacked against you. Right in that particular unit. I think the success rate on and this this is a whole that is guns and archery combined and public and private combined, the average is in eleven percent success rate. Now, if I had to guess where we were hunting, you cut that success rate in half and I would put it at about five of a success rate based off the terrain we were hunting, the the the part of the unit that we were hunting, and just all the combination things. Uh, the odds are just waste act against us. Right. So you look at something like that and based off statistics and odds, which I'm you know, I'm a numbers kind of guy. You you almost come to the realization that based off those stats you're not going to kill an elk for you know, you're gonna kill one elk every ten years, right, and so at that point it kind of just the statistics alone take a load off your shoulders and you can enjoy the experience a little bit more. And yes, you're focused on going out and trying to kill an elk, but at the same time, you're you're you're working hard, but you kind of you kind of understand that you know it's it's probably not gonna happen, but regardless, you work hard. So what does that mean? That? That means that when I got home, my wife said, how is your trip? Um? I said, it was tough, but I had fun. That's that's what I That's what I said. Okay, that that that is a good way to wrap a hunt. If you can have that attitude at the end of an outcome, that's that's that's pretty good. If you're gonna come home without killing something, that's about the best you could ask for. I love like, I love going hiking, and someday my goal is to like hike some fourteen ers out in Colorado. But so we did a lot of hiking on this trip, and we got to experience some really cool things like these views at eleven thousand five feet eleven thousand, I think the highest we got one day was eleven six right, and the elk were still above us. Yeah, so we were we were up pretty high. And when you get that high, you can see a long waist off some of these um off some of these mountains, and just sitting there eating your snack or your lunch what looking at these views, you just kind of forget about what you're actually there to do, and you're just you just become this sponge of energy. I don't know. This is kind of some hippie talk, but I love it when you get hippie. Yeah, I know, but but like you just all the stress in life just kind of goes away. You don't even realize what you're doing anymore. You're just kind of staring off your You're you're able to the vision. You have just become so much more crisp and you can see the details in nature as opposed to you know, right now, I'm doing this podcast. Later on, I gotta do some work. I look out my window, I see a tree. But when you're up there and you get the time to slow down and observe. You don't just see a tree. You see the leaves, you see the branches, you see the bark, you see the bird that's living in it, you see the grass that's growing up around it. You you see the whole picture, but in much more detail. Yeah, and and then and then another thing that I know you and I have talked about this in the past when recounting other adventures. But another thing I like about that kind of landscape when you get up into a big wild place like that, especially when you get up high, is you really realize how small you are, Like the Sale, the scale of everything is just so vast when you can see miles and miles and miles and miles and and you're just this tiny, little insignificant dot in a massive ball of life and rock and dirt and trees, and that is that's a huge That's a I don't know, it's it's a special thing to experience. So I absolutely know what you're talking about up there. And then people some people really like the feeling of being big and in charge and and having power. Like for me, I almost enjoy the opposite feeling when what unprofessional I forgot to rookie move but anyway, like just feeling like you're nothing, I get off. I get off on that. Man, I don't know, it's something amazing. And I gotta believe that not only does a big mountain landscape make you feel powerless, but probably elk in general do too, as they often don't follow our plans, right, right, is that the story of what happened on this hunt? Did that just not turn out the way that you guys had seen in previous years. So last year, every day was cold enough to where we would come in and it was it rained a little bit more throughout the hunt. So last year, um, we were cold and we were wet, so we'd come in, we dry our clothes, we'd start a fire, we'd warm up. This year, we didn't even need a fire, right, It wasn't it wasn't cold there. It rained once a day maybe, um, while we were out, but then you know, by the time we got back to the cabin, we uh, you know, it was hot. It was warm throughout the day. We'd go out and we'd do an evening hunt and you know, just warm. So I think, what what happened? And I'll walk through the first day here of the hunt and then the rest of the you know, four or five days is kind of just one big giant day. So I'll we wake up the first day of the hunt. You know you're excited, right, I had all this energy. I'm just like, oh man, we're gonna hear a bugle today. It's gonna be awesome. Me, my buddy Ryan, and my new friend John uh walk out of the cabin walk you know, we're we're We started at about ten to Okay, can I ask you one thing before you wrap this or before you get going to the first day? How long had Ryan been hunting before this? Yeah? Right, So he'd been hunting a whole week and he wasn't in a cabin. He was in a tent, right. And was he hunting the same area or a different area? Um? He was. He wasn't hunting the exact same area, but he was hunting. I would say, you know that there's a million acres of public land in this area. It's huge. So he was hunting about two miles west of where we're at on day on my day one different yeah, different elk. He had an encounter him and a guy shot the same elk, but like they never found it. Yeah, which yeah, which sucks. So um, they had a couple encounters for two days, but then they experienced the same thing that I'm about to talk about, right, But but anyway, so day one, right, get out of the cabin. Um this year, we waited just a little bit longer. We weren't tromping through this deadfall in pitch black dark with our head lamps right we were. Um, we waited a little bit for a little bit of light just so it was easier maneuvering, and I think that really helped us get to our place faster. Right, So it's almost like we arrived at the same time that we would have last year, because last year it took us longer. But this year, because of we had more light, we were able to navigate this. So we dropped down to about ten thousand into a creek. We walk up this creek about three quarters of a mile maybe a mile, and then we get out of the creek. So we're talking about from the time we leave the cabin to the time we get out of the creek is about an hour. Then we have to climb up a real big bench, so it's almost like straight up, just probably a hundred feet straight up just to get to the place where we can start calling these these benches and and these avalanche shoots and these meadows that are up there where they typically hang out. So we set up just kind of a fact, My buddy Ryan had a watch and on this watch a calculated calorie loss calories burned based off heart rate, and so every day that we walk there, you know, you're forcing yourself to eat breakfast, so you have some start to the day. You're burning five d seven hundred calories just on the hike up two where we start calling. And so that just kind of of an idea of the terrain and how brutal some of these hikes can be, just to just to start hunting. So we get in position, we make a couple of calls, nothing answers. Um, we're starting off with some very light cow calling. We start off with maybe one bugle, and then we work our way a little closer to the meadow. We set up and boom, we hear a bugle. A bull, a bull bugling probably about three yards away from us. So we're like, what we learned last year was you go straight to them, you set up, you get in their face, and that's kind of how we found success last year and how Ryan and John had success earlier in the week. Right, you get up into where they're at and you make it feel like there's another bull encroaching on their territory and this is what's this is what's worked for us. Right, So we move in slowly, bugle again. He bugles back, he starts to chuckle, and he's going back and forth with us. We get close and then we're probably a hundred yards too yards set up away from this bowl, but he's straight up onto another bench that's above us, probably fet above us, right, So he's got the advantage. We have the wind, but he's got the advantage as far as terrain. Right, it's still the morning and the the wind, the thermals are coming down out of the off the mountain, and I get a chance to look at him, and this is the biggest bowl that I have ever seen. I'm not gonna say like on TV, but he was giant. I would put him and I'm I don't know anything about Elk, but I'm just comparing him to what my buddy Adam shot a couple of years ago, and his bowl was three twelve. You could have set that ball inside of this bull's rack. So we're talking about like I'm gonna say, somewhere around a three fifty class bowl, which is gigantic. He had big whale tails. His body is what was so impressive to me. He had that typical two tone elk look right where like the front of him is this dark brown and then the back end of him is kind of this lighter tannish color. Right, just an absolutely gorgeous animal. Uh. He turned sideways and his his beams just go all the way back, all the way back to his hind legs. I mean, just this very impressive bull. And he starts going crazy, right, He's just bugling and chuckling, and and then we're working in on him. We set up and we think like there was a period of time where I thought he was coming down right towards me, so I was getting fired up, and then all of a sudden, he just shuts off, and so we're like, so we wait there probably another thirty minutes just to kind of observe. These guys. Come back over to where I'm at because I was flanking hard to the right and we see this meadow and I said, okay, if me and the guys started talking, Okay, well, here he is, let's follow the terrain. Let's try to get above him before the wind switches, because it was a bright and sunny day and um, you know, we we needed to get above him before the wind switch so then we could call back down and work our way down to him. So we come out of this little thicket and we're now at the bottom of this avalanche shoot. It's like a meadow slash avalanche shoot from this past year. Huge avalanches were all over there because of the snow, and so we start working our way up, winds blowing right in her face, working our way up, and I look up into a shoot and there's another bowl, a smaller one, but I feel like these guys were all kind of in the same gang, and not too far from where we saw the big dog. So we we're climbing up look at him and I said, okay, we gotta go in case he sees us. He's probably yards away. But but straight up this this smaller avalanche shoot with a whole bunch of grass that they could eat, and some pine trees were well, long story short, they're betting up in there. So we flank around. We go up this this another shoot that paralleled it. We start calling a little bit nothing, nothing, nothing, And so we work our way back down. And as we're working our way back down, we see three, three or four cows pop out of that original shoot that we were that we saw this bull in and they run out. So I'm thinking to myself, maybe the bull went out first because while we were climbing we couldn't see him, or maybe he's still up there but left the opposite way. So we climbed back down. We I think we we had we stopped for a snack at about like eleven three or eleven four, you know, really high up there, and come back down and we're like, okay, well when this wind switches and starts going up, uh, we'll just we'll just sit here and we'll glass and maybe they'll they'll work their way through. Well, this is now, this now becomes the story of the entire entire week. Right. We had this is a a north facing slope of the mountain Range. Okay, so we're on the we're on the north facing slope. We had a north front come coming in that week, so the wind was predominantly out of the north, which was fighting the down wind thermals in the morning. So I'm sitting there, we're glassing, and I'm watching this piece of fuzz come off this drainage. It must have been a tree that had like little seeds on it or something, and it just comes floating all the way down the mountain and connects at the bottom of this drainage that we were in to the shoots that we're going up to where the elk were. And I watched this. I watched this piece of fuzz float all the way down to where these shoots and then it takes a hard right and go straight up that shoot. So I turned around to the two guys that we were with, I go, hey, guys, I just watched this. These elk, no we're here, and they're not responding. They caught our scent. They're either gone or they're just done right. They're not gonna respond to it, especially when they're getting a huge nose full of us. So the reason that they were there is because they could just smell everything in the area. I mean, the wind was just going crazy, and to be honest, that was the story of the entire hunt. Right we were fighting shifting winds, the thermals were consistent last year, the thermals were up, they were coming down. At ten thirty, ten o'clock, they would switch and go straight up. And that is the That's what it did every single day this year. Well, there's one morning it was still somewhat dark out, the wind was coming down off the mountain. I'm I'm gonna go sit out of wallow or climb up so I could glass this bottom of this meadow. But at about seven o'clock the wind shifted and started coming back up because the prevailing wind was pushing those thermals, the downward downward thermals away, and so you couldn't even you couldn't fight it. You couldn't. You couldn't fight these winds because it was just like a pendulum, just whoop up and down all day, up and down. There was no consistent wind all day long, and it's hard to set up on an elk or try to get into a calling sequence um when you know when you're fighting that. And there was a full moon that week too, so it's almost like the the odds were stacked against us. Inconsistent winds, hot weather, and a full moon. Just it just seemed like they were quiet. The quiet and very high, so they got your wind after that encounter, And what happened the rest of the trip though, did you ever see out here him again? Nope. We didn't see another elk. We didn't hear another elk. Um. We we found some fresh sign, we found some good bed like good betting areas, um in some different meadows. We hiked up to different parts of the mountain, you know, searching this this vast expanse of uh Land and they were quiet. Um. My buddy Adam and his brother uh they peeled off a different day and they had an encounter with three uh, five by five or six by fives, I can't remember. Three or six by sixes came out of this one little thicket and a guy drew on them. But I think that was more of hey, we got we happened to just get straight lucky on being here. They came in dead quiet, there was no bugling or anything. And that was an evening hunt. So they saw some bowls but didn't get an opportunity on them. And I mean, I wish I had some more. I mean I saw two bear dens. That was kind of cool. Didn't see a bear, but saw two bear dens. Um, I saw these gigantic avalanche paths that where the avalanche broke away from the mountain, it just flattened like hundreds of acres of trees. Um. But as far as the hunt was concerned, it just became a hiking expedition at that point. You know. So did you have like a plan B. Did you have like a another area you considered moving to, or or was it like this is our spot and we gotta I don't know, was there any alters? Yeah, we moved, I mean we moved around. We went to that place two miles west. We went to different, you know, two different drainages within that big so like there's there's one big drainage and off these drainage there's several small drainages. So we worked all those right, and then we would head west and we would go high and then we would work some lows. But so I had guys hitting me up on Instagram and they're just like, man, we're out in the same unit as you are, and there is nothing happening, like nothing, So it's very hard to call in number one in this this dark timber deadfall. You can get in there and you can try to sit and quietly call him in, But you can't call him in if this wind is swirling all the time. There there's no way that you can set up on an animal like that that relies on its nose for survival when the wind is one minute blowing towards them, one minute blowing away, and then it's left and then it's right. It was just it was nasty. Yeah, that's frustrating. Was there was there anything then, like in your post mortem, like when you're hunt ended, you're driving home and you're like, you know, I'm sure you're like me, and you're stewing on it to some degree. At some point in that drive you were thinking there, what happened? Was there anything that you look back on, or like, man, I wish I did this differently, or I wish I hadn't done that, or like, was there a mistake or something you could point to that you would have changed if you could. You know, not really, And I'll tell you why. It's because this wind. You know, of all the things that you can control, I could control my physical fitness, I can control where I hike and how far I hike in but I cannot control the wind. And when the wind is like you're just at the mercy of nature at that point, right, I feel like I prepared good for this hunt. We we did everything we could to put ourselves in position. I mean we were dropping out of one drainage, going over peaks, and I think the highest we got was probably eleven five or six maybe one day where we dropped down into this creek went almost straight up the other way. I mean, if people want to go look at the pictures on my Instagram page to see how steep of terrain we were we were at. I mean we were damn near to tree line some days and just and I'm telling you the hiking was brutal. But we did everything that I feel we could to put ourselves in position. But when that end position where you're calling is just swirling with wind and they're not responding, I mean we weren't even hearing bugles several miles away. So yeah, that's that's not only is that just hard to hunt coming from knowing that experience, it's also just very disheartening because a big part of what you dream about and look forward to when you're thinking about an elk hunt. Tell me if you're different, but for me, like so much of what you're excited about is to hear the bugle, Like that's the thing, is to like be out there in the woods and hear these bugles and be chasing them down. And when that's not happening, and when it's just a quiet hiking trip, just because the expectations are so off that itself can like kind of put a real damper on things. Um like, dang it, I really wish they were talking. Why aren't they talking? God was neither one? Like, I'm sure that was popping in your head like it does too. Yeah, yeah, I mean if we heard one bugle at least that would allow us to go out and think of a strategy to try to, you know, intercept that bowl. But we didn't tell I tell you, I take it back. There is one thing that I wish I would have done different, and that was that first encounter on that first day. We knew where this elk was for about thirty minutes, right, we had this this thirty minute exchange with him. I didn't do it because I didn't want to screw up the other two guys that were in my group. But if I wish I would have just flanked even harder and went up the mountain and cut cut off, cut him off silent, and then let those guys continue to call. And maybe he would have went down to them, or maybe he would have done what he did and went somewhere else, But at least I would have been up at his same level to where maybe I could have got a shot at him, or I could have did like a soft cow call and change his mind to come maybe back to my direction. Right, so put him in the middle of us. And I didn't do that because I didn't wanna. I couldn't communicate with the other guys because I was probably seventy yards away from where they're at eight yards away, and I didn't want to. Um, I don't know blow an opportunity that these guys have been working at real hard all week as well. So uh, if I would that ever happened again, I probably would have just snuck in to his level and maybe tried to backdoor him while he's focused on their calling. But at the same time, there was another bowl up there, There was another cow up there. So what I've learned is you have to be aggressive, but aggressive can bite you if you're not, if you if you're a little bit too aggressive. Yeah, I mean it's just like white tail hunting, right, Like there's a there's a fine line in between being aggressive and being too passive, and you need to know how to strike that balancing act and when to push it one way or the other. And I'm sure that's something and I've I've experienced it too when it comes to elk hunting. You that that whole balancing act is something you have to relearn when moving from white tail's elk, right, And that's the thing, I mean, you can't glass. I picked up my binoculars two times in in five days. That was it. Just so it's so thick, it's it's dead, it's it's dark, timber, dead, all with a couple of shoots, and you don't necessarily I wasn't looking to pick out a specific bowl. I was gonna shoot any legal elk, cow calf. You know a bowl that had I think it's a four by four or it's a four by four or it had like eight inch brows, right, so it could have been a spike with eight inch brows. Those are illegal animal. I was gonna shoot the first legal animal that stepped out and never got never got that, do you feel like you're physical prep was on point, you know, I think it was. Um, I was still the caboose out of the trip, out of the out of the group. Right, every train needs a caboose, right. I was a couple of steps. I mean, these guys were out here to uh you know, six days before I even showed up, So they had already been acclimated. They'd already you know, they're getting used to it. They're they're legs or um. You know. For for me, it was the first three days, three and a half days, my legs were toast. But then day five hit and it's just the last day of the hunt. I felt like a mountain goat. I felt really good climbing up and down the mountains. Uh. I was recovering quickly. My legs weren't tired. But uh, you know that altitude still gets you, right, and uh, I didn't get I didn't. I was recovering quickly. It's just you can't beat the mountain. You can't beat the mountain man. You can't beat the air at that at that elevation. Yeah. Yeah, that's uh, that is always a big challenge every time you take on a hunt like that. But I think the cool thing about this was I don't know how you act, but you get nervous almost before this. Hunt's like driving out there, I was nervous. I was just like, oh man, this is gonna suck. This is gonna this is gonna suck. It's on my legs are gonna be toast. I'm gonna be breathing heavy. But what that did mentally to me was it was preparing my body for the worst possible conditions. So when I actually got out there, it still sucked, but it it sucked less compared to what my mind was telling my body was going to happen to it right. So but but overall, man, like I said, I can't complain because I don't get to see those views. I don't get to experience that every single year or every day. And I was happy with what happened. I got to see some good friends, I got to, you know, go hike in the mountain. I got to chase elk and I got to at least here a couple of bugles here some chuckles. The only thing that this has me thinking about is I'm not to the point where I'm only after a a bull. I'm after an elk. So this terrain that we're hunting at is brutal. It's I mean it is. It's thick. When you're when you're having to climb over three or four tree stacked on top of each other type of dead fall, and you're doing that while trying to hike, I mean, it is. It's not it's not cool, it's it sucks. So it has me thinking about if I put this same amount of energy in in a different unit or a different state, or a different area or whatever, will that increase my odds of getting an elk? Like maybe a little bit less terrain, but I put in the same amount of energy, will it? Will it? I don't know. It has me thinking about things like maybe this area in this unit isn't the best unit I need to be in right now, because yeah, there's some big bulls out there, but I don't care about the big bulls. I want to kill an elk. And when an elk is already feet above you every morning, I got no problem hiking that. But then when you're hiking over deadfall and you're you know, it's just like every step you take to get higher puts them at it an advantage because it's almost like they know you're coming. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we need to return to our old spot in uh in Idaho where there was there were elk the terrain. I mean, it's challenging in a different way, but at least I'm assuming based on what you're talking about Colorado comparing that to this one. Um, I don't know. I've been, I've been. I've been thinking that same question though. It's like, Okay, I want to elkhoun again. Do I go back to the old faithful spot or do I keep exploring new areas and trying to find something that that's better. Um, I don't know. I don't know. The answer is now you you uh, you talked about going Eddie Murphy. You haven't gone Eddie Murphy. You see you seem so calm and placid and a piece with how your hunt went. Uh, where's the rage? What are you angry about? Did you come down? This is? This is? This is you know we all have kind of hip side of us, right, we also we all kind of have this little asshole side of us, right. I mean maybe you don't. Yeah, I know, I know I do. I'm like so and I know you get people get bone envy, right, you get envy. You're flipping through Instagram. You're you're looking at the success other people have had, and I'm I don't know who who I'm following or not necessarily, but you know, I'm, Oh, my god, this guy slammed a giant bowl. That's awesome. And then I'm I'm I start to read the story right of the text in the Instagram post, I'm like, oh, this bowl, you know, huge shout out to this outfitter or this guy's service, and I'm just like, I busted my fucking balls physically and mentally for five straight days and didn't I saw I had the closest in elk was to me was seventy eight yards, right, And so the asshole part of means like, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna justify to myself why I didn't get this done, you know, like I don't know, just just just being a creep, I guess. So I go to the outfitter that I go to their website and I see that this these people killed an elk and they also killed a mule deer while they're out there, right, I think they might have taken away two mule deer actually, and so a mule deer hunt cost like thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars and elk hunt was more like seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars. So just for those two people to harvest this buck, and I don't know what their business dealings were, but it would have cost me or anybody listening to go to that outfit ter. It would have cost them thirty thousand dollars to kill one mule deer and one elk or not even kill, but just go on that hunt thirty thousand dollars. And you know the people that do do that, that go on that. Now, I don't want to say those people because I don't want to generalize too much, but it's reasonable to think, like, if TV personality goes and does that kind of hunt, they're probably also the TV personality that's booked seven more hunts like that across the rest of the country for other stuff too. So imagine that time seven right, right. So now you're looking at right and I'm sure they flex their their popularity muscle, right and they say, well, hey man, this will do this. Will you give me these hunts and I'll promote your your company wherever I go this year or whatever. Right, so maybe they get an additional you know, some selections because of what they do. I mean, that's what we do, right, So that's where I become a hypocrite, is um, I don't know, I just it's it really, it's really hard for me to congratulate someone when yeah, they probably still had to get out of a truck and walk to this. But it's like it's everything set up. They have people watching these elk all year round. They have people watching these mudle there. They already knew when these people came into camp where they were going to go, what animal they were going to go target. And um, again, this is me just being a prick, you know, bitch and bitching about this. But uh so whenever I see a guy on public land who gets it done just like what I was doing, kudos to them, man, because they're I know, they're grinding just like I'm grinding. And uh, you know, if you're you know, an East Coast guy or you actually live out west, I don't know. It's just I I lose any type of interest. You know, it's about experience and it's about the story. So as soon as I hear that that in their story that we had to use this service then, and I and it cost it would cost me this much money to have to go experience what they experienced. I lose interest in it. And I say, I can't relate to that. And I just I don't even care anymore. Yeah, man, And and I will just add without even commenting or critiquing what the other people that you know choosing to do that, it just to me seems like it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the experience that it wouldn't be the same experience. The experience that you had even without killing bull, I would argue, is a richer, more fulfilling experience even than those folks that did shoot one right now, not I don't want to you know, this isn't a blanket statement, but um, keep on. I'm always gonna want to just keep on grinding doing it on your own, because I think when it does, every once in a while come together, it's just that much more powerful. Right. And here's where it because him like you start to walk this gray line at some point because I hunt public land or I hunt private ground in Iowa. But I'm knock on the door, I get permission. Right now, if I go out west and I get permission on a piece of property, Let's say, do I become a hypocrite at that point because you know, I'm not not necessarily paying for a guide service, or I'm not necessarily paying for something. Let's say I pay a trust pass fee because a lot of places out west say, yeah, you can hunt my property, but you gotta pay me a trust passing fee to to go out there. I don't care what you shoot, but you're gonna pay to be on my property. Is that the same thing or is it different? You know, I don't know. I don't even think we need to like be trying to like rank order. What's the most way, you know, like who are my brain? But I would say, like I at least for what I'm interested in, I'm always going to I don't care if it's public or private, if it's if it's whatever. But I'm all always going to just want to do it myself. Like I don't care where it is. I just want to be the person doing it. I just don't like the idea of someone else tell me, oh, you gotta hunt here, or I put the stand here, hunt this, or we know the bucks here, go there. I just want to figure it out myself. That's for me. That's what I get the enjoyment out of, and I get the fulfillment after having completed a hunt, whether it's successful or not. I just want to do it. I want to struggle through it. I wanted to be a challenge. I wanted to that is the experience that I don't know for me, it's just you need that struggle and like that work to make it a real experience. Right. And the more I get into this style of hunting, right because this I got this South Dakota muliteer hunt coming up, the less I give a ship about any type of antlers, any type of antlers. I don't know. I I think that the hunting community as a whole has been brainwashed over the years to think that in some way, shape or form, antler size matters in some for some reason. Don't get me wrong, Mark, I'll be the first to admit I like big bucks, like big ailer bucks. They're rare. But at the same time, I don't give a ship about a score. I don't give a ship about you know, like if a if a guy goes out and he kills a spike buck. Dude, kudos to that guy who went out and harvested the meat off that animal. He went out, he had fun. It's just I don't know, man, I just see it every day now. It's like the more I get into the Instagram and the more I get into the business of the hunting industry, it's just it's almost like it's poison here. You I so much more, at least for myself. It's it's coming down to like the experience I want and so are you having fun or not? Yeah? Like are you having fun? Like setting goals? I love having goals, so you know, like here on a Michigan property, I'm hunting. You know, my goal is I'd like to wait out for an older buck, but I'm looking at age. I really want to shoot a four year old. Like that's the challenge and the experience I'm pushing for. But then I'm gonna go up to Minnesota on a public land canoe and hunt and I'll shoot a spike or whatever is legal, Like i will shoot the first legal deer I see up there because I'm looking for an experience up there that you know, it's very different from the experience I could get in Michigan, which is very different than experience if I had drawn Iowa tag next year. You know, maybe I'll be super picky next year an now, because it's the one time I'm gonna hunt Iowa in five years and I want to extend and fully you know, experience that. So I think we get too hung up. But I'm right there with you, Like I'm just as guilty as sometimes. You know, you see a big buck and you get excited about it. I mean we can talk about that here in a minute. Like my North Dakota hunt, I very much saw a big buck and got my heart set on it and you know, made a this aasion that maybe it was a mistake because of that. Yeah. Um, So I don't think there's anything wrong to like, like you said, like appreciate, get excited about have fun looking at and chasing them and dreaming about big bucks. But it's I mean, we've for years on the podcast, we've talked about this. It's just like you can't let it go too far, right, you can't let that become a poison. Yeah. I have one last thing to say about this Colorado trip, tell me, and it is I got to experience this with my dad and he we drove. When I told him about this Colorado trip and that we were staying in the cabin and all this stuff, he goes, may mind if I tag along? He's retired, and I said absolutely, So he drove out with me. We shared the responsibilities of driving out right. We um just get to experience this crazy hail storm coming out of Denver where it sounded like his truck was getting shot at. The hail was like the size of all you know, a little bit smaller than a golf ball, a little bit bigger than a marble. He came and he stayed at camp for two days, uh, two nights, and he was the camp cook for the group of guys that was there. Yeah. He then he got to go do some experience some things that he hadn't done in his life. While I was hunting, he went to maceon Verde and checked out the cliff dwellings down there from the ancient Native American civilization that was down there. Um. He went to Arches National Park and he got to see the you know, the stone configurations there, and then you know, he got to go meet a high school buddy that he hadn't seen in a while on on the way back to Nebraska. So and just experiencing this with him, and my dad's not necessarily he's not a hunter or he's an outdoors but he loves to camp and hike and stuff. But I don't know, I just I I loved that part of the trip more than just about anything else. That is really really cool. To be able to share that with him. It's awesome. Yea. Yeah, So let's talk about you now, buddy, about North Dakota. Yeah, further right, No, solo, further solo, solo, Yeah, solo. So drove out at the end of August, solo. It's about a two day trip out there. It's like nineteen or so hours, um. And so I left in time to be able to get there the night before the season opened to try to do a little scouting. Yeah. So, I I had hunted, sort of hunted this place once before. We talked about last year, Like I showed up after Josh had been there hunting for like four days, and I showed up and scouted one night in one morning, and based off what Josh had been seeing and what I saw during that day of scouting, I decided we should pull the plug and go somewhere else. So that's my only hunting experience. Here's basically glassing a night in the morning and then we spot. Yes, we shed hunted and scouted one spring. So I came into this with a couple pockets picked out that I thought would be worth exploring, and um, I'm worth hunting, and I wanted to. You know, this is an area you can get up high and you can glass down on these river bottoms and you can you can see a lot, or at least you think you should be able to see a lot. So I got there the first night, went to the first pocket I've hiked into this big bluff on top of bluff, looked down into this bowl alongside of a river with a bunch of cedars and cover in there. It looks great, and I saw a decent number deer. I saw more deer that night than I saw all of the scouting that I had been out there the year before, so I was feeling pretty good about it. I was excited, but I didn't see like a mature buck. So for the next morning, opening morning, I thought, all right, I'm gonna move to another area, another one of the spots I had picked out. I'll glass that in the morning, just see if that's any better, and then i'll be I'll know that I've seen these two areas, I can pick whichever seems like more promising and then hunt opening night. So the next morning, I'm up on a different bluff several miles away from this original spot and seeing deer, seeing deer, and then I don't know, like an hour and a half, maybe after daylight, I spot like a deer silhouetted in a strip of cottonwood trees, and I zoom in with a spotting scope and I see it's a good buck. Like it's a really good buck. Definite shooter um, definite mature buck, big tight, tall, ten pointer, still in full velvet um. I don't know, one forties, maybe high one forties. Awesome. I mean like just everything was like amazing public lam buck. Yeah, so I'm really excited. I watched him for I don't know, half hour. He's kind of milling around this little area and then walks off and beds down. So right away I'm like, okay, I this is this is where I'm hunting. I'm gonna try to kill that buck like I found a target. That's all I needed. And uh now it's just about playing this game, trying to get this buck. And I'm looking at Onyx though, and I see he has betted on private land. There is a it'll strip, a private that went into the middle of this public and his little tree line that he's better than just so happens to be in that strip of private public land butts up to like yards of him on either side. But there's like a hundred and fifty two yard wide strip that he's in that I can't hunt. So that's where I'm at the first evening. So that was the morning I'm you know, shot my bow, got all organized, got all cleaned up, got ready for that first evening hunt. Slipped down into the river bottom, trekked in through a river, across the river, follow the river for a way, is hopped up, and then just slowly worked my way. And my game plan was based off the wind. The wind was blowing from the betting area to the to the north. It was like a southerly wind. And I basically said, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna. Yeah, I can't get right on him, so I'm just gonna get as close as I possibly can with the wind being safe, and watch how he comes out of there, and then hopefully like, Okay, I'm gonna see how he comes out of there. I assumed he'd becoming the way he came from in the morning going that way, but I couldn't, like I couldn't get on the intersept path because of the private land, so I couldn't hunt him doing exactly what he did that morning. So I thought the best case scenarioly watch get a better idea of how he leaves here just in the morning. So I get set up, climb up into a tree that gets me as close as I think I can get without him seeing me. Because basically this is like relatively open grassy stuff with these little strips of cotton woods, and he was in one strip of cotton woods and I'm in then there's then an open grassy meadow and then another strip of cotton woods. So I got to that other strip of cotton woods. I didn't want to get to the very outside edge of it because I was afraid if he was just better there watching, he could see me. So I tried to keep just enough covering the way, and I actually almost crawled up to this tree, got up in the tree, and I'm up there, and I realized there's way more there's there's one set of trees in front of me, and I just could not see where he was betted well enough from there. I just I wouldn't be able to see right where here is better. I could see one side of it if he came out that way, but if he stood up and headed directly the opposite direction, I would never know it. So I'm all set, though I'm sitting up there them for five minutes, I'm like, oh my god, Like it really looked like it was gonna be a lot better than this, and it's not. It wasn't even. It was just like, I'm having a hard time remember exactly why I thought this about would work. But I think maybe I thought I could get higher, maybe to get above. Like there's one tree in front of a small shrubby tree that I thought i'd be able see through or passed. And it definitely wasn't too high, if anything, that was too low, and I didn't have enough another climbing stick. So for whatever reason, I just could not see this angle I need well enough. So after a couple of minutes, I decided, you know what, forget it. What's the point of being here if I can't see that spot. So I pulled everything down, got back on the ground, and was going to move up to one more tree. And then I realized, you know what, I can actually see best just right from the ground. Um, and all I really care about. I don't really think I'm gonna kill that buck here to I really just need to observe, like this is more scouting session with hopefully an opportunity. I got lucky, but really just gotta be seeing it. So I found a little knob of grass and some shrubs on either side, and I tucked myself into this tall grass with a shrub on either side and behind me, and just got hunkered down the ground. Great spot I could. I was able because there was this knob, I was shelt. I could crawl up to it from behind it, and if that buck was you know, eight yards away in front of me, he'd never see me. And then I could just stay right behind that knob. But I can slowly rise up and see everything. So that's my scenario. Wins great. I can see a great area. I know exactly where this buck was betted. UM and I set up for the evening, sat there, sat there, saw Dolan Phon come out and she leaves. If you imagine, like I've talked to these two strips of cotton words, there's a strip of trees that he's in, and then my strip of trees kind of meets at a V at the bottom. And in that v where those two strips of cotton woods come together is like a grove of aspen trees and shrubs and a real little thicket area. So these deer are all popping out of that. So don't A fond pops out of that, enters the meadow in between me and him, and runs across the meadow right at me, stops right in front of me, like thirty yards and then kind of feed on some kind of forbe that's in front of me about thirty yards. So Dolan Fond does that, and then a little buck does that, and then another small buck does I'm like, oh man, all these deer leaving this betting here and coming right to me. Um. And when I say, it was probably between thirty and forty yards away. Um. And then here comes a buck like running right at me, and I look at him. I'm thinking decent buck. And then I'm thinking, is it the big buck? And that's no, it's not. It's a small eight pointer. So then I, you know, I let myself down and it's okay. What's behind him? Is that big buck coming? Like this is? This has gotta be a big batchelor group. That's gotta be the guy. So this eight pointer runs in front of me, stops like thirty five yards, starts feeding. He's in really tall grass, like up to his head. Um. I can still see him, like I said, probably thirty five yards or so. But I'm just watching for the other ten point, not watching, watching, look at the eight. He's still there, watching for the ten, watching the ten. Look at the eighth. My god, that's not a bad buck. Um, Paul, I'm bin occulus. I'm looking at him, like jeez, he looks like he's probably three or four. Um. I turned back look for the ten, and I look back at the eight and like, man, I probably shoot that buck any other time. And I look back for the ten, and I look at the eight and like, should I try to shoot this buck? Like he's in range? If I stood up, it took a couple of steps around the shrub. I could probably get a shot at him, um, and then look back for the other buck. And then I just kind of saw, you know what, it's the very first night of the hunt. It's there's still like an hour and a half a day like left. I'm right here. This buck should be standing up any minute now and coming my way. Um, we're coming somewhere. Then I can adjust. So I decided not to try to shoot this nice eight point. He was a nice eight point, like really he'd be he'd be a good public lamb buck any other day shows not to try shoot them. Wait out the rest of the night. Another couple of hunters show up. Now they're above me, up on the hillside, but their glass in the same area I'm glassing, and uh. Then they disappearedly move off somewhere else. But there's another couple of hunters in the zone now, and I'm like, crap, are they gonna spook this buck? What's gonna happen? Fast forward, though I don't know what happened. The Big ten never showed up. The Big eight walked away, and I saw no other deer. And that was my first day of the hunt. I saw the Big ten in the morning, saw a nice eight in the evening. Uh passed on him now kind of like your hunt. The next four days all were kind of like one big day. From that point on, I was just bouncing as the wind changed. I would try to hunt around this zone where these two bucks came out of as wind would allow, and they just nothing. I never saw the good bucks again. I saw a couple of deer here and there, little bucks, you know, passed on little year and a half old, little two and a half year old, some does um, But never could see a decent buck again. After that point I was working a river inside great access. I would walk into the river and literally walk for an hour and a half following a riverbed in the water, and then just hop up a bank, climb into a tree right there. I mean I had a really good in and out um, a good wind like I don't think I was busting these deer and there was just just could not find him again. So I don't know if those other hunters were in there in this basin with me hunting too and had spooked the deer, if if they caught my scent, or if they had walked past me past war I've been walking and caught my caught my scent or what. I don't know, But the next couple of days I could not find him again. I in the mornings since I wasn't on them. I just glassed in the morning from observation spots, couldn't find them. I eventually on day four went over to a plan B went back to that other spot I scouted hunted there, found that there was another couple of guys camped out hunting that zone to one day. To get to that spot took me a two hour hike to get into it. Yeah, the longest hi I've ever taken. In It wasn't like distance as it wasn't two hours long as far as like it wasn't walking full speed for two hours, but it was the fact that you'd get into the river and I had to slowly wade through the river forever to try to get to the spot without spooking deer. Um. That was very demoralizing when I saw only one deer that whole night for like two seconds. Um. And so I moved, moved, pivoted around, you know, for five days and just could not find a single good deer again. Could not establish any kind of pattern like these deer it's it's much thicker than it looks from up high. From up high, it looks like, oh, it should be pretty open, But when you get down at ground level, the covers all the way up to the top of the deer's heads. In many cases, um, there's not a ton of deer. There's no established food source, just kind of betting everywhere. So like every deer I did see, you'd see it pop up and it would kind of miller round and then just move off in a random direction. There was never like an establishment. Okay, these deer betted in this little pocket, and they leave that pocket and they head west towards the food source. No, it was like one deer come out from the pocket and he'd head west. Then I'd see another deer pop out like behind me from some other random little patch of grass, and he'd head north. And then I'd see one other deer pop off from the river an hour later, and he'd head south. And that was the case for five days. You'd see like two dear day. They do different things, and they're just never ended up being something I could key in on. There was no pattern, there was no consistency. Wasn't like the herd had a pattern. It was almost like individual deer at that point had their own pattern. Yeah, and and it was there was just never anything I can latch onto and never say that one of those good bucks again. And so by the time it got to day five, it's been four days about seeing the decent buck um. I had one other plan c pocket that I thought I was gonna hunt, and there end up being other hunters there too. I saw truck driving in and out, So now I'm thinking, man, does it even make sense to try to even go fiddle around with that? And then checking with a wife here that Everett's sick and not feeling good, She's not getting work done, that's not going well, and I'm sitting here thinking, man, I have nothing to work with. My next plan for this next ton is I'm just gonna go in and like still hunt. I was thinking at this point maybe I should just walk around and try to bump something get lucky, or go to way completely different area, like pull up camp and drive an hour and go somewhere completely different where the ideas I was considering for the last day. So I had this really stressful like hour in my truck where I'm thinking, like back and forth. What should I do? Do I stick it out as long as I originally thought I should another day, try something off the wall, and just like keep trying because I hate the idea of packing up and leaving. On the other side of me, I'm thinking, man, you had two days of travel, get out here, You've hunted five days. You've got another two days of travel. That's being away from the family for nine days. You have no real hopes of killing something. It'd be just a blind it would be simply just persevering because you want to persevere. It's not like you really, really really think you're gonna get it done. And so I had like this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and I ended up designing to go home shows trying to get back for family. But I, to be honest, like I had I felt crappy about that. I feel probably crappy about either decision I made, But I felt like, am I giving up on the hunt and my quitting on this before I should like I need to push through the advert. If I pushed through it and hunted that one more day maybe would have came together. And so the whole drive home I was like back and forth, back and forth, Like on one side, I felt good, like you're prioritizing my family and getting back and it's already a long hunt. Didn't feel like a long hunt because I didn't get to hunt that much, but the travel made it so long. Um. And I just like I just felt like the place beat me again. And the biggest thing is like I felt the place beat me last time because I couldn't figure it out and Josh couldn't figure it out. I really believed that I could figure it out this time and it and it didn't happen. Um. So that was like my conundrum, my conundrum coming out of this hunt. I had two things to like question marks or or lessons learned or debates, internal debates. The one debate was the decision at the end, like the decision of pack of camp. It it's like this decision between I always talked about the importance of pushing through the adversity and keeping at it. You want to leave it all on the field, That's something I really believe in. And and so one part of me said, like you kind of bailed, like you didn't, you didn't go to the very end. The fact lady wasn't quite seeing you could have stayed another half day or three cours of a day or whatever. So one part of me says, like, dang it, Mark. The other side of me says, no, you put your family through this. You know it was the right decision. Even though it didn't turn out from a hunt standpoint, You made the right decision to get back and help your wife and and all of that. So that was like a thing that I kept debating about in my head, my two sides of the family side of me and on the hunter side of me, and and and I think ultimately it was the right decision because I do need to prioritize my family that I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I came home. I'm glad I was able to help out. But then there was the other side of me, like the hunter side of me, it was like, damn it, Mark, you didn't leave one. I feel he left ninety six or whatever it was. And so that still had that little whispering down in my head. That was my canundra number one. And then my conundrum number two was the first night hunt I've never had. This happened before, where you get a shot at a deer on the first night of a hunt and you're left with that dreaded situation where you're like, do you pass on something on the first night that you would shoot in the last day. And it happened to me this time. I passed on a buck that I would have shot the last day. And you know, I don't know if I'm happy about there or not. If I part of me says, I wish i'd shot it now looking back, because then I would have had that buck, and you know, would have had a successful public land hunt and it could have you know, I kind of did figure it out. I guess it was a little bit lucky or it was a good hunt whatever. Um. But then part of me says, it was the first night you didn't know was coming. You know, you wanted to have the full experience out here. You knew there was a really good, definitely mature ten point buck that you know, you want to see what what might have been possible. And so those are the two things. On that drive home, we're bouncing back and forth my head over and over and over again. UM. I think that with any out of state hunt, when you're hunting a time frame, the end of the hunt there's this window, right, it's like a gray area. Right, It's like there is the back end of that window, which is I cannot hunt any time past this because if I cute something past this, then I have to process it, I have to clean it, and it's just gonna take an entire another day for me to get home. And then at the beginning of that window is the is this man, is it even worth me staying here anymore because the conditions are bad or there's no animals, you know what I mean. So there's this window at the tail end of every out of state hunt that really almost tricks us, I feel, because I probably could have hunted another another evening, potentially another morning, but the weather conditions were gonna do the same exact thing that they were doing the previous five days, right, So um, I backed down. I got home. Right, It sounds like you did. You did something similar. It's just you know more than anybody else that the weather, the weather conditions dictate more than anything, whether or not some of these or in time of year, right, the movement. Right, So if it's hot as balls and these deer aren't moving until thirty minutes before light, or you can't find them. What's what's to say that they're going to do that on the fifth day or the sixth day of the hunt, when you you know you could get home. Uh. I'm all about reading that the scenario and making a decision based off that. And I think that for me in the elk hunt, Uh, we decided to leave because it was just going to be more of the same for the next day or two. And you did the same thing because it was more more of the same. Now, anything can happen at any time in hunting, right, It's just that you at that point it would be less strategy and skill and more luck. Yeah. So do you think I made the right decision? Oh? Absolutely absolutely, I think you did. Now what about the buck the first night? Did you see by chance the Instagram story or the picture? Yeah? I saw it, great deer um, And that's why I said to you, I didn't know he was kind of bouncing back and forth between private and public. Yeah, you're talking of the original one I spotted, Yeah, the one that you set up originally for right, yea, just that strip. I mean it's a narrow strip that fingered into the larger trunk of public and he just happened to be in that little strip, um. And so I was right on the edge of it. Um. See when I when I heard that story, I didn't know who was but button up against private So I was like, dude, you you have to go in there and make an aggressive move on him right now. Um. And but you know, when you you know that there's that scenario, he was on private ground, you didn't have access to it. There's nothing you could do about it. You did the best thing that you could other than that. It's just like when when you're hunting a piece of property that you really don't know where you're you're kind of learning about, um, especially when you have limited time. I'm I'm the kind of guys like dude, just be aggressive, um and try to try to get the job done, like as soon as humanly possible. Because as we we talked about on this podcast all the time, first time in best time in Oh yeah, So would you have shot that a pointer? Probably? Yeah? Probably? Um. It just depends, man, because you can be people can become blinded almost and I was blinded for like seven years when I was chasing that ship wreck buck right or five years or whatever. You become blinded that the end goal is something and you're willing to do whatever it takes to get to that end goal. And whether it's oh man, the rut is cracking here, I just know I'm gonna see this I've seen or not necessarily the rut, just like dear movement in general. Right You're you're seeing tons of good sign you're seeing dear movement, You're seeing all those things, and then it just shuts off and then you all you're left with his questions whether or not you made the right decision or not. When when it's hard for anybody to determine what what's going to happen in the next minute or five minutes or five days, you know, it's it's funny though, right, Like, there's like the end goal you want, so it's like, yeah, I want to kill mature buck. That's the goal. Let's say, and I could have killed that buck and he was probably three or four, and I could have said I killed mature buck, and I could have left there achieving my goal. But at the same time, back to what we were talking about earlier, this isn't necessarily like I wouldn't have necessarily stated this as the goal on the front. But when I think about it, my goal is also to have a certain experience, and like killing a buck on the very first hunt, like an hour into the very first hunt out there, I think would be like a little bit of a disappointing experience to like, well, now what do I do? Like I came all the way out here. I didn't I didn't have to do anything. I just watched a couple of times and walked in here an hour and killed a buck, and now I'm gonna turn and go home. I probably would have been a little disappointed, and to degree was stoked I killed the buck. I got the buck, but it would have also felt a little bit hollow in some way, maybe like what I really want is what I really wanted? Was I wanted a hunt for four days and on the fourth night, after going back and forth, you figure it out and you kill your buck four days in or five days or whatever. It's like, that's what I really want. Let's say the ideal scenario. Um So somehow I got. I got the end outcome that I wanted, but it arrived before the experience I wanted because they didn't match up. I didn't take advantage of it. And now I'm left wondering, like I got the experience, I got the five days of grinding it out and trying to figure out I just didn't get the the end outcome that was given me too soon. It's a weird thing. I've never I've never had that happen. You always here about it happen, But is the first time I've experienced that. And I still don't know, you know what, um, what the right call for me would have been. I made the call I made, so yeah, It's it's funny on a scenario like that. It has me thinking of are we like, are we really hunters? Because I think of a hunter as a bobcat or a mountain lion or a lion or something like that, right, and they don't give a shit about anything except I'm gonna feed myself with that. And here we are out in nature with our bows saying, okay, you get the past tonight. But you know, at the end of the week, if you come by again, I'm gonna kill you. Or hey, hey, hey, dog group, you know you're lucky this time. You know I'm not gonna shoot you this time. I just almost, yeah, I almost feel like I'm moving away from like I'm still gonna go out and try to shoot some mature deer or you know something with some good amimers whatever. But at the same time, I feel like I want to become this like ultimate predator, like this guy down in Louisiana who has killed like eight hundred deer in his life, Like he doesn't care about maturity. He just shoots deer. Yeah, I mean it's a fine line. It's like like we of course we want to have kill the animal, get the meat. But if all we care about is just killing ship, then we could just go to the farm and like put a bolt through Coyle's head fifty times a year or whatever. You know? Did that? Like the meat is is once you like, once you fill and once you put enough meat in the freezer to feed your family. Um, And you know you can do that every year by killing a few does um like the only reason to hunt in a different way. Then if you've established you've got the baseline, it's then okay, I want my meat, but I want my meat to have a deeper experience attached to it. And and that's the thing is the experience, yea, And my experience is different than everybody else's experience in your experience and whatever, and everyone's got different thoughts on what they want the experience to be and how it impacts them and how they go about it. And I guess, you know, it's like you said, it's different for everyone, and and that's what you know makes this sole hunting thing kind of cool. I guess. So I don't know, that is what happened to me, That is what happened to you. Um, listening to your story, having processed my story, UM, there's a few things already that that that kind of stand out to me as takeaways. What I want to do next is I want to chat with Tony and chat with Andy here how their hunts went and they had the experience with the exclamation point at the end, and I'm interested to hear what we can take from those two hunts and then kind of compare all the notes. So I'm gonna do at the end of this is kind of do a post mortem of our four hunts and what the big takeaway one or two things. If there's like a common common moral of the story from everything here, I'm gonna see if I can unpackage that, and we'll wrap up the episode of that. So, do you have any final thing you want to leave with Dan before before I cut to that. Yeah, I wish you would do this in two different podcasts because it really sucks being on the same podcast with Andy May who's like like Mr Automatic, Like the guy goes into any piece of property and kills something, you know what I mean. Like, and then there's Hey, Dan Johnson, he looks at flowers and oh cool a bear den. You know nobody gave Nobody gives a ship, right. Well, you know what they say is that if you're in if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So I think they can apply to like, if you're the best hunter on the podcast, you should be on a different podcast. You need to surround ourselves with better hunters to push us Dan. That's that's what we're trying to do here. So so I feel good about that I'm in the same boat as you. All right, So now we are going to transition to the successful side of this podcast, and the first very successful hunter that I want to chat with here is Tony Peterson. Tony, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me, buddy. I love the fact that we're able to talk relatively frequently now, um, increasingly more this time of year, because every time it seems like I get on the phone with it, you've got another buck on the ground. So we're we're counting on you, Tony, to show us how to get it done, because we just heard from myself and Dan, who both did not fill a tag on our September hunts. You, on the other hand, have filled enough tags for the both of us. Um, you killed the buck Nebraska, right and then just recently minnesot It was that opening day in Minnesota, the second of this season. They were both perfect. So let's start in Nebraska. This was public land, I think, can you can you set us up, like, what was your thought process going into it, how did you prep for that hunting, and how did it all end up going down? Sure? Man, So with Nebraska, you know, I found this spot that I hunted two years ago turkey hunting, and we just we ended up just we were driving on through and saw a couple of birds on this property, turned around, started hunting it. You know, I saw some deer sign until this spring, a buddy and I went down there to turkey hunt again and get a better feel for the properties that were there and found some stuff and found some really nice cattle tanks and you know, water hole situations, and so I was kind of banking on that for you know, I was down there the last couple of days of August and then into the first first of the September or so, you know, the first of the day of the season, and so you know, you're kind of banking on it. Me in ninety degrees every day, I wasn't banking on you know, typhoons all summer long, putting water everywhere. And it changed the entire pattern. I mean, I I had talked to a buddy who lives down in southern Nebraska before we went, and I knew the water program was probably a no go. But after getting down there to scout for two days, I realized it was going to be food or nothing. And so it was it was a matter of switching gears from my primary plan to back up. And you know it's you're you're talking the beginning of September, you're gonna be talking food anyway. I mean, it's such a such a driver that time of year, and I just happened to I do there was a one tucked away field on a walk in ranch down there that had good potential if it was gonna be beans or alfalfa. And as soon as we got there at lasted, there was beans. And so I knew, you know, you've got several hundred acres with no food on it, you know, no destination food sources, and then you've got this bean field tucked in there. You knew there's gonna be deer coming in there, and so that was kind of what kicked off our strategy down in Nebraska. So you found the beans, and you mentioned something that was interesting me, how you showed up in late August and the opener wasn't until one September one. So we got um two fold days. So I knew I would have preferred a couple more, and I just couldn't swing it. But we had two fold days to you know, glass mornings, glass evenings, and then hike in the spots in the middle of the day. And if you kind of divide and conquer like my buddy and I did, you can you can figure a lot of stuff out. And so we we did that. And I mean that you know you talked about unsuccessful hunts. I mean so much of that scouting is just eliminating places you're not gonna hunt, you know. I mean that's everybody since you walk in and you figured out, okay, well I was on on X, I found this spot and it's gonna be money, and you walk in there, and for me, probably I don't know, sixty or seventy percent of time, it's just not right for some reason. And so it's it's just a matter of seeing a lot of those spots to market, going Okay, this one's no good, this one's no good, this one's got potential, and we just we got lucky getting to that beating field before anyone else. And we found one other spot that I had turkey hunted. When we we walked in there, there was a fresh stand and the camera there that somebody had driven in. But we also had a like a hundred thirty five in ten point across the trail in front of us and just beat away while we were walking out at ten in the morning, So our backup spot, even though there was somebody using it, somebody had been in there recently. I mean, we had, you know, seventy five yards away. We had visual confirmation of a great public land here in that spot. So we did have you know, the scouting paid off. We did find what we needed, but we looked at a lot of stuff that was not good. And was it so you you located the spot that was best. Were there any challenges with actually executing the kill itself or was it kind of just textbook at that point? Um. The challenge was the amount of brain that they had down there. Everything was so tall that you're you would look at a chunk of ground and you'd think, okay, well, you know, if I hung a stand in that grove oaks or something, you know, I can see a long ways and I can shoot, and then you walk out into it, you know, and I'm I'm six too, and I would walk out into that stuff and in some places to be over my head. And then when I was glass in that bean field because I glass the beans for two nights, those deer would walk out and if they were in even like a slight depression or if they had their head down and eating, they disappeared, so you couldn't see them. And so I never I couldn't like I couldn't see the spot we killed in, but I could see some of the some of the places they were coming in to get there, and so I never I never actually got to like lay eyes on the spot I killed my buck and my buddy killed this buck. Until I walked in there knowing that the deer were gravitating there and knowing that it was kind of one of those parts of the field that was closest to the best woods, and it kind of fell away, so it was it just wasn't visible. You just knew like that was the corner. And I did see the big one that my buddy killed. I watched him go in there twice, and so I knew that there were deer gravitating towards that spot that we couldn't see. And was there anything about the tree that you ended up picking at that point, Like you knew there was the right corner to being, but when you had actually had to make the decision of where exactly you were going to hunt, why did you pick that tree? Was just the only option? Um? So when I when I went in there opening night, I went in way early. And I should say this, you know, we when I was glass in there. When I was going in the second night, two guys from Michigan drove in and stopped and talk to me, and they were super nice, and they said, and we want to hunt in there too, but if you're in there, we'll just wait till you're gone. And so they went to hundred other stuff. It didn't go in until we tagged out, which was awesome because you know, it's public land. They could have went in there. But when I went in opening night, I went in early and it was hot. It was eighty degrees, real strong south wind blowing, and I got to the spot I kind of snuck into where I knew I wanted to set up. Uh. I could see that there was the fence was down in a specific spot there, and it was pounded going through that crossing, and so I started looking around for a tree there, and there was a couple of little ones, but they were right on top of that crossing. And then there was one that was about thirty yards away but would give you a real good shot in the beans. And that one had tons of cover. It was a multi trunk, multi limb, and but it was set up well. So that was it was just it was a gift to have a good tree in that spot. So you got the tree. You If I remember, and I can't remember, if I heard this in in your chat with Spencer and Refresh Radio, or if it's just you met, you and I talking individually. But as you were getting set up in that tree, your bucks showed up feeding the beans as you were actually getting set up, right, Yeah, so I should tell the whole story about getting set up. I uh, you know, I took this this tree and I'm using uh, you know, climbing sticks and a little lightweight stand, and it's my first sit of the year, you know, and you know how that is. It feels like you're kind of like relearning what you're doing even though you got Yeah, you always forget something. He screw up. So I'm you know, I get my first two sticks on, and I'm kind of hooking the third one on in the way I wanted to face the stand. Uh. It's like I gotta be a little killful with the sticks the way I mound them, because you know, they weren't they weren't blocking in great and so I knew when I stepped on it, I knew right away I screwed up. And I had my lineman felt around the tree, and I slipped off that lineman spelt and it just instinctively grabbed the tree trunk with my arms because I was reaching around it anyway, and I ended up, um, you know, my lineman's belt caught me. So I ended up only falling like six or eight inches, but I had a big bruise on my arm I had. I had bruises where I actually grabbed my right arm with my left hand so hard that I left the hand print bruise on my arm. Yeah, just just a dumb move on my part. But you know, the safety gear saved me. And so anyway I do that, I get myself, you know, really situated, and I hang the stand and I was using a little millennium and they have a kin for the seat that that holds the seat in place, you know, so you can you can fold it down out of the way when you're transporting it, but when you get in the tree, you gotta put that in there to hold it up. Well, I get up in the tree and then my kin's gone. So I'm like, now I've got to seek that's worthless, and so I'm like trying to use my So I get a life line up and I get always safety stuff squared away. So then I had my linement. Felt like well, maybe I'll loot my lineman felt through this tree and around the trunk and try to support it because I'm like, I got five hours still dark, and I'm like messing around with this. And I looked behind me in fifty two yards away of the beet field. It's a ten point of feeding full velvet, and I go, oh, Like I looked down my bows on the ground. I don't have like an honest way to sit down, and so I'm like, I gotta I gotta get to that bow. And so I climbed down the tree. And what helped me was it was super windy. It was probably winds and I just had a ton of cover around that tree. So I shimmy down the steps and hooked up my tow rope to my bow, shimmy back up while he was feeding there, and he couldn't hear me. It was way too windy, and if he looked in the woods, I was in the middle of just a bunch of blowing branches and stuff. And so I got back into the stand, pulled my bow up, you know, got him ranged again, and you know, too far away. So I'm like, he's gonna walk, He's gonna walk, right down that road and give me a phenomenal shot, and he betted down. So then I'm like, Okay, now I can't see him, but I know he's there, and I have time to actually get myself situated. So I figured out my seat I had. I had an old bow hook in the bottom of my pack, and I could frown that through the seat so I could actually support the seat and sit down. And then I got situated, and in that process, another buck stood up out of the beans and started seating a similar sized eight pointer. And so I'm like these deer with with the bugs that were down there because of the mosquitoes, I think they were just like, we're gonna live in this bean field, and if we're here, nobody can see us in this corner, less are on top of us, and that winds blowing all the way across this wide open field and pushing all those mosquitoes off of them. So I think that that was one of those little micro climate deals where those bucks were just like, this is the best place for me to be right now, man, And then you got your shot. The next day. Sorry, we're going to continue, Yeah, So I should I should say, you know, he he got up and bedded down a couple more times, and then I got my shot as he as he worked his way closer, and then I sent my buddy, I got out quit and then sent my body in the next day because it was there was still lots of potential there. Yeah, So what did that next day's hunt? How did that play out? Did a play out just like you were thinking the original night was gonna going to based off of the scouting you had. Um, it went different than I expected and better than I expected. Um. He you know, it was hot in ninety degrees, miserable hot conditions when he went in, and he didn't have any early movement, but he had a buck come in, uh, you know later in the evening when the shadows we're getting there. That was he thought was like a close to pope and young type eight pointer, really nice buck, and he was trying to get a shot at that buck. It worked its way down the beans, but it was like she hs outside his range he felt comfortable with. And so as he was trying, you know, wondering if this buck is going to get there, he saw he saw a different buck come out on that trail through the down sense and so he switched gears. He said, I'm gonna shoot that one. That one walked out and it was that big one that I'd go after the last two nights, And it came right down the bean row the edge of the beans at twenty yards and he stumped it. Wow. So do you do you think now, having like two bucks into the first two nights of the season on this public land, do as as I listened to your story, if I were to pick what I what seems to be like the most important thing you guys did, right, my guests would be that it is the fact that you had the scouting. It was the having looked at this area earlier in the year and then showing up several days early glass and glassing glassing, picked the right spot and winning then killed. Is that right? Or do you think there was some other crux of the hunt? No? That was it. I mean I I had pinned my hopes on some areas that were unhuntable, and I had really got high hopes over this different walking ranch I found, and we spent some time on that scouting in a midday and it was worthless. There was there weren't any deer in there, and so being able to glass for two nights on that bean field. Put us on those deer. And you know that buck that you know I killed a good one. That buck my body killed was awesome, you know. You know I watched that deer going there two nights in a row, and that buck I I scored it when I was home here in Minnesota a little bit ago. That was a hundred deer, you know, I mean on public triple Brow time like special. And all it was was we we saw him in there coming into a certain corner of that field, and we were the first ones in there. You know, I'm sure if you went down there now and try to play that program, it would be too late. Yeah. So so fast forward a week or whatever it was. We can have two weeks from then to Minnesota. It's opening day in Minnesota and you going for hunt. Now, in the case of the public land, you shot a couple of days earlier, you glassed. What did you're scouting entail leading up to the opener in Minnesota? Oh? Man, um, you know some random weekends all summer long. This is this is a private dairy farm that I have permission to hunt. Uh and it's it gets a lot of traffic, but it's it's a cool place. And you know, I went down there. I try to make it down there like once a month to hang stand the glass and check cameras. And that's like my traditional you know. I can hang stand the trim shooting lanes and I can run cameras and and do the whole thing. And that's that's like the place I have to do the entire process. It's different on public, you know. And so I had stands up and I had a plan in mind, and I had a buck that I really want the case, which is I think he's a legit typical booner in there, and I went after him opening morning, uh in in kind of a it's kind of a year long or a season long pinch point where a washout is on the hillside, and I thought he might be in there, and I got in there super early. And it's the entrance route that I made to get in there follows this washout and it's like American Ninja bow hunter going down through there. It's wet rocks and hugs and it's like to not fall down. Getting in there is a huge wind. And I got in there and got set up. It was awesome conditions were right when he was right, And at like seven thirty in the morning, I heard voices in the woods, and I'm going, what is how is it possible that I can hear somebody in here? And then I heard a chainsaw fire up like a hundred fifty yards away from me, and so my hunt got blown up there because they were between what me and what I expected the deer to come from, and there was no deer coming through there. So I bailed made my plan from the evening, and in the process I entered to talking to another bow hunter on the farm, which took out one spot I could hunt it. And then I saw a Facebook post from this girl I graduated with her husband with a hunting their squirrel hung with their kid. They were so that's the other end where that bonner was living. And so I'm like, all right, you know, I mean that's just how it is. Well, you don't have control of it, so yeah, the standard I kind of had limited options. After the scorel hunters and the other bow hunter and the woodcutters, I had hung one uh one field that stand and another part of the farm where you know there's usually some good books. At some point in the season and usually they back up in there and that in the woods when it's they go hard antlers. I figured somebody would be in there that was good size, and so I, you know, it was partially I had limited options because of the other intrusions by people, and partially because the conditions were right, you know, the wind again with south southwest smoking, same kind of conditions as Nebraska, but they were they were good for that stand that that was intentional, and so I went in there early opening night. Uh, just just partially because it was all mostly what I had going on, and because I knew there would be something in there, and you know, dear started moving pretty early. Had one solid three year old type buck come out feed with some does, and everything was like real it was feeling really good. And then I heard a side by side on the minimum maintenance road going real slow and probably you know the roads by five yards in the stand. I can't see it, but I can cure it. And those deer that they were in the field at that time, they heard that side by side and they all bolted out of the field and so at at you know, this was probably about a half hour till the end of the legal shooting light. The whole elf helfone field cleared out, and I'm sitting here, going, man, what's going on up here? Whether here's these here this spooky on opening nights and I don't I don't know if somebody's been shining in there or you know, off road or what. So you know, either way, you know, what are you gonna do? So I'm sitting there and it's still a half hour left, and I had had one bill come out of the trail that I was really hoping they'd follow, because it takes some eighteen yards around that stand and it dumps him into the field in just a perfect spot. And I was sitting there and heard something behind me and had three little raccoons go by, and I was watching them, but I heard something else and I'm like, man, I wonder if that's another raccoon. And I looked back and I saw this rack going to the brush or this this antler times and as soon as the buck cleared, you know, the trail twenty yards away, and I got a good look at him on like, oh man, I know what dear this is. And if he comes out, he's can be eighteen yards broadside and he's worth filling my tag opening night, and that's exactly what he did. And he walked out and it was just like a gift. It was just a beautiful shot opportunity. What do you think he's doing? I mean, he was heading out to feed, But why did he come through there? Do you think? Like? What made that be the spot? On the spot? So there's a behind me and there's a sort of an oak flat, and then there's there's an old fence throw through the woods and just two ridges that they liked to bet on. It's it's just thicker. It's kind of this, you know. I guess you can call it a soft edge in there between two types of cover, like the more open oak flats and a little more brushy stuff. And so somebody big usually claims that spot, and so the closest route to play the wind in their favor and get to the field is out of that trail. So he just you know, when he went hard antler and he backed up into that spot started betting there, and it was opening night, so he just came out a little bit early instead of waiting for it to get dark, and he just that that that was just like the perfect field that gimme on opening night. You know, like even the same thing in Nebraska, if it would have been I wouldn't set that stand a week later, probably because I know people would have been in there and that beer is probably not going to make that mistake. Yeah, it's interesting both of these situations, your Nebraska hunt and your Minnesota hunt. It was you saw these bucks using a food source with long distance observation, and then you hunted the very first time you could in there, and they made that mistake on the first night. I mean, is the moral of the story for you as you're looking back on these two hunts simply that the value of long distance observation and then striking before hunting pressure changes things. Is that the takeaway here it's a big one, man. You know, there's there's so much value to that long range scouting if you get away with it. But you know, I think my takeaway for it, or a different takeaway, would just be that the scouting gives you options and if you you know, if you pin your hopes down one stand or one setup, or one food plot or one idea, you know, if you're hunting places with lots of people and so many variables, that are out of your control. You're you're gonna like Plan A is gonna blow up, Plan b's gonna blow up, like you gotta have, you gotta have some good options to fall back on, so you don't push a dead program or you don't just not go. And so I think I think the scouting, you know, it obviously plays into ways you should be and when you should be there, but it also just gives you more places to be. And I just think that matters a lot. Yeah, that's a great point, and that that was the situation I guess with both of those two hunts as well. So interesting how such similar situations could play out in in very separate states, in in unique ways in their own right, but with such similar court truths, and you're able to take advantage of it. So I think we can all take something away from that and learn from those experiences. Um, I hope, So, I hope you're gonna You're gonna continue the trend. And in three p here with a kill in in Colorado. Man, I am going into Colorado with low standard and I have an either sex out take, and I have a bear tag, and I have a small game take. I fully intend to try to take advantage of every opportunity that I'm given and to come away so Colorado with some kind of meat at the back of my truck. So I hope, so, I hope so too. And I hope some of the some of your good juju and you're you're smart hunting will rub off on me and help me get my season back on track after tough September hunt. So thank you Tony for for sharing. Thank you man, you just got you gotta come to North Dakota with me. Then, I know your your timing keeps on, it keeps on not lining up with mind. But I need to get out there. It sounds like it sounds like a little different time of year and make a difference. Uh, it would give you a different respective. But there's always so much going on out there that you just part of. This is just a lot, man, it is. And I yeah, I mean, as folks just heard me describe a little while ago, and as you and I talked about the phone a week or two ago. You know, I had my chance at a great buck and I just got greedy. So that's a lesson to be learned, I guess to it. It does all right, man, we'll drive safe and I can't wait to hear how it goes awesome smart. All right, So now we are here with Andy May and Andy, you wrapped up in early September hunt in Kentucky successfully. So what I'm hoping you can do here to help kind of round out what we've done in this episode so far is kind of here the cliff notes of your hunt, how it ended up going down, and and then I want to spend some time in the back end breaking down like your big takeaway from this what the crux of the hunt was. But I guess first me through real fast, how this Kentucky hunt came together? Okay, um, I actually was not planning on taking a early September hunt this year. That that time of year has quickly become like one of my favorite times to hunt. But this year I had an elk hunt planned in late September, and I just wasn't going to try to squeeze an early season uh September hunting. It just seemed like too much going on. But some things came together and I had a lead and made a couple of phone calls and I got permission to hunt a small I don't know, medium sized piece of private land. UM on the map, it looked very interesting because it was near town um kind of you know, sort of suburban style, but it was a decent sized piece for being near a town. Um. It clearly had some crops, had a river bottom through it, and it just looked like it had a ton of potential. And I decided last minute. It was it was a Wednesday evening that I decided, you know what, I'm gonna go do this for the weekend. Um, I only could squeeze in the weekend, and the opener was on a Saturday, and I just decided to go for it. So I made the decision Wednesday night, left Thursday UM and drove, you know, drove straight through to get there Thursday evening and glass and my my plan was to just long range scout this property and just lay eyes on a shooter. That was the goal. You know, if I knew if I could just lay eyes on a shooter, then I had a chance. And you know, that's always a long shot. But it's a good part of Kentucky, great genetics. Not that particularly how to find decent books. That time of year, they're pretty active, especially if you got some some good food, which this place did, and the pressure was relatively low. There were some hunters around, but this isn't like a highly pressured public land piece. It's a you know, it was a private piece and relatively low pressure. So the animals were pretty relaxed, as they are that time of year anyway. So UM, I'll just jump into you know how that first night of scouting went. UM. I set up the spotting scope and I glassed. I got I got on a high spot and I was able to glass this giant river bottom in a really big bean field, and I felt really good about the spot, except for my the number one spot that jumped out on me on the map that I wanted to scout in glass. Um, I couldn't see from the spot and the reason that spot jumped out to me was was were t two reasons. Um, it looked like the best type of betting or security cover was down in that part of the river bottom. It was a little wider, there were some points and some low spots in the field, and I just couldn't see it from that vantish point, but I could see the property from where I was, and I, you know, I just went with it that night. Two days before the season, I glassed a couple of bucks like a year and a half year old deer and a dough and a fawn. So it didn't pan out like I hoped. So the next morning did the same thing, glass from the same spot, and I did see a small bachelor group of bucks, probably two year old deer, you know, hundred inches to one fifteen type. It's dear, nice dear, but not really what I was looking for. And then I for for Friday. Uh. For Friday evening, I was kind of up in the air what I wanted to do. I was contemplating driving an hour or two an area that I hunted before that I know quite well, um, and just trying that. And then the other part of me was trying to decide is it worth maneuvering and glassing that last five of this property that I couldn't see from the previous Spanish point and in my opinion on the map look to be like the best. So I decided to just stick it out, and I basically, uh, I forego all the property, and I set up just so I could see that low spot that five left of the beans and that thicker part of the river bottom, and I set up for the evening and had some deer come out, had a really cool encounter. I was just set up in the beans, I like tucked down in the beans. They were about waist high, and two young bucks, probably a year and a half year old, came out and they ended up coming within like seven yards of me in the beans. I got some really neat video and they had no idea. I was there and right before dark, well about probably about twenty five minutes before dark, I see two deer come out of this point that comes out into the field right out of that river bottom and a glass and it's two good bucks, two shooters, the one in the back a little bit bigger than the one in front. And that's all. That's all I wanted to see. I wanted to lay eyes. Now I had something to go off of. Um they were kind of working my way, so I just hunched down and I got the heck out of there. I didn't bother too much with with videoing or anything like that. I just wanted to get out undetected. So that goes that takes us to opening evening and I went in with the saddle and it was kind of you know, sneaking my way in. I knew kind of roughly where I want to set up, but I just didn't have the tree picked out, and wind was a little if he I guess you could say it was not perfect for me, but it wasn't what I would say dead wrong. It was kind of like a just off wind, which is something that I do often, you know, when I'm being I guess a little more aggressive, and on this hunt, because it was such a short term hunt two days, I was definitely leaning on that more aggressive side. Um So you know, if if I had five days to hunt here, truthfully, I probably wouldn't have pushed it that first evening because Sunday's forecast was the perfect wind, but I try, you know, I decided to roll with it and I found a tree that was perfect, and judging by the travel line of these two bucks, you know they would have came within forty yards of this tree the night before. I felt pretty good about the city. If the wind would hold true and I got up there, it was it was really hot, really humid, just swept my butt off, and the wind was decent. It wasn't great, but it wasn't decent. I should be able to shoot these deer if they come out before they win me well about an hour into the hunter. So as you know, it starts kind of switching back and forth. You know, it doesn't always blow from the north. It's you know, it's a little northeast, it's a little northwest. And then all of a sudden, you know it, it gets a couple of times through the night where it's just blowing me dead right into their bedding area and I'm within I'm within a hundred and ten yards maybe a hundred yards of where these where I think these deer are betted. And I was like, oh, man, that's not good. So maybe once maybe you can get away with that. Um you know, I thought maybe maybe it missed them. But then you know, two or three more times throughout the night, it just keeps blowing right in there, and I'm like, this is this is not good. So, needless to say, they didn't show up that first night, and I kind of thought I shot myself in the foot with with that first hunt. So but knowing what I know about Kentucky, I've hunted their early season and their opener several times now. It's low pressure, you know, even in the even in the public land I've hunted down there. To me, it's it's really really low pressure that time of year. Now they might think it's higher, but it's just not high compared to what I'm used to. And even in this scenario on the piece of private, it was really low. So I felt like there's a there's a good chance that I didn't screw things up completely. And I looked poured over the map, and I was really going back and forth, and I want to sit in the same tree, or don't want to adjust, and that the two the two adjustments that I was considering was moving closer to the betting area, which probably eight times out of ten is something I would do. But given this set up in the way I thought these deer were betting on this point, I didn't feel like that was a really good option because if I moved closer, I literally have to I have to go across the beans and kind of get into that point. And the way dear bed often in farm country is when the wind is at their back, they will they will face the feeding area. So you know, vegetation was high. There's a chance I could have got in there. It's really thick. There's a chance I could have got in there, maybe got up set up undetected. They couldn't see clearly out into the beans just because of all the tangle on the vegetation. But it was really really risky. They could have been. They could have been bedded, you know, twenty yards inside, or they could have been bedded seventy yards inside. But I knew there was a general area where they were and it just like a way too you know, risky situation. So what I did was I said, Okay, what are what's my other option? My other option is to kind of hunt on the pattern. Then I saw that night before the opener, but I did think that they were going to adjust, and I felt like they got, you know, several nose full of my scent the night before. I just didn't feel confident that we're going to go by the tree that I was in. So what I did was I knew where they were going, I knew the direction they wanted to go, and I just rolled the dice, hoping that they would still move before dark. But what I did is I actually moved farther away. And I know I've told this to a couple of people and they're like, what you move farther away. Well, I moved farther away, um in anticipation, anticipation that they would skirt the tree that I was in before, so I knew the direction and the travel they wanted to go. I moved farther down the line so that if they took that same sort of angle but skirted that tree, eventually, if they moved far enough before dark, they would still get to where I was. Does that make sense? It does, But it also does seem like a decent leap, like a leap of faith, to think like that they'll come out again and then that yes, they'll skirt it, but they'll make it far enough, even though they have previously had humans scent now in their nose, but to believe they would skirt that edge and still make it to you during daylight. So what I'm wondering is what percent, like how confident were you in this? Did you go in there thinking, well, is the best idea I've got but probably chance or ten percent chance? Or you're do you going thinking this is going to happen? No? I would say I definitely didn't think it was gonna happen. So you and I and a lot of listeners out here that hunt, you know, higher pressure deer. That's the way we think. We know we typically only get one chance, and if they get they get your scent, it's usually over. You're usually not going to kill him in that location again, So we we know that we have to make that first time count. This isn't that scenario. And a lot of times I hunt out of state, it's not that scenario. You you can often get more than one chance, but they may adjust. Now I'm not saying you can get eight chances, but you might be able to get to and um. So when I adjusted, it was it was I literally sitting in the same tree. I I got rid of that option. I just didn't think that was going to pan out because I just felt like they knew something of danger was there and just going off you know, past hunts and past experiences. I just didn't. I felt like I could have seen them from there, but I felt like they were gonna skirt me. So my two choices were moving tight to betting, or move farther away down their travel route, you know, on the way to where they were going. They were heading towards this river crossing to some some other crop fields. They were kind of just browsing through the beans when I saw him moving at a fairly decent you know clip, So I just choose the ladder, and I would say, yeah, probably roughly. I thought for sure i'd see them maybe at last light. Will they get to me? That's the that's the the question. So I was left with those two options, and I chose not to skewed in tight to the bedding because I had a pretty darn good idea where they were, and I knew I couldn't get I really couldn't get any closer without busting him. I was, I was sure of that. So I I guess I took the lesser of two evils and hoped for the best. So you got up in your tree, what happened? Yep? So I get up in my tree and wind is perfect. Things are, things are looking good, things are feeling good. And you know, these dear the day before season, moved twenty minutes before dark for last shooting light. The day of the opener, they got a whiff of me. So I'm expecting last minute shooting and then I'm sitting there kind of just you know, be impatient. Some deer starting to kind of filter out in the beans, and all of a sudden I look up and these two these two bucks, these same two bucks are exiting the betting area about an hour before dark, so even earlier, which which shocked me. But they did exactly what I anticipated. They didn't come off that point, off the tip of the point. They came off fifty yards away from the tip of the point, still out of the point, but fifty yards further from where I was set up the night before, totally skirting that original stand location. And I could tell that they were on alert because they came out and they spent that first five ten minutes staring over in that direction of the old tree, so they knew I was there, they knew I had been there. But they adjusted and they still came out. It's still an early season, early September pattern, unrelaxed, unpressured deer, and you know, a September early September deer are far different than our opener October one. They act completely different. You know, they're still a bachelor groups, they're still deer moving uh, you know, very early into um. The food sources and the deer just feel more comfortable moving when they're in groups and when when other deer are out in the food source already unbothered. And that's what I think happened here. There were several deer already out in the beans, unbothered. These deer popped up, they came out and there they're kind of looking in that direction of the old tree. And after I don't know about ten minutes, they just forgot about it, start munching on the beans and slowly start making their way right in my direction. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is actually gonna happen. I knew right then I was going to get a crack at this as long as the wind held true. Yeah, it was. It was pretty wild. And like I said, I told the story to some friends and I was like, what you did? What? But but I hopefully I explained it in a way that the listeners can understand why I made that choice. And I'm not saying I knew this was the right choice. I felt super confident. I didn't. I just I made the less risky choice. Yeah. So when you look at this, and I guess your story ends when you get a shot at a great buck and you killed a nice ten pointer. Um, when you look back on it, what do you think was the crux of this or your big takeaway. Was it the fact that you observed, observed, observed until you saw what you need and then struck um, Or was it that you struck and then it wasn't quite right and you knew how to adjust? Or like where's your where's your that? When you try to analyze, like what came over this and what you take from it? Yeah, probably a couple of things, um exactly that you know. One thing is again early September. These deer are a different animal. If you can lay your eyes on a shooter, you have a really good chance. And if you're in a state like Kentucky or maybe a slightly lower pressure state where you got that early September opener, you can be really aggressive and you can move in on these deer. Um there their ultra relaxed. They're usually hitting the crop fields really hard, easy to pattern. The tricky part is just finding a good one to go after. And that's where I got lucky and and luckily um on my glassing. You know, instead of walking away after I observed of the property and didn't see a shooter, I zoned in on that five percent of the property that looked to be really good and looked to be like it had the spetting, the lowest point in the field where a lot of times these big geer like to enter, and that's exactly where they came out. So I would say that would be one. And yeah, you know that that time of year, Um, if you're in type of farm country or or maybe more like western plains, the play, in my opinion, is to sit back in glass. I had I devoted four days to this hunt, but only two days to hunt. I devoted those first two days to just scout, and and that that that if I if I didn't do that, then I'm then I'm just playing that guessing game. Yeah, I can probably pick out on a map. Yeah, this looks like the best spot. This is the low spot. This is probably where a good one pop out, but I don't know if a good one is there. So that that time of year, that that scouting, that glassing in that type of habitat, that type of country I think is hugely important. I'd rather do that three days in hunt one. You know, It's definitely something that every year I try more and more of that type of this type of hunt. I'm learning that the importance of that scouting, like you said, matters almost more in the actual hunt itself. The intel get informed than strike. That's right. And then one more thing too, you know, I I take a lot of these two to four day trips. I've been on the podcast enough. Everybody knows I don't get vacation time. I work at a school. Um, So what I do is I often take weekend trips or a long weekend like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday something like that, and just drive all night. And a lot of guys, I don't think that that's worth it, and I understand that, like you know, we all have in our mind that the hunts should be a week you know, five days, seven days, that should be your hunt. Well, I've never been able to do that. Um It's always been the kind of that weekend warrior type type hunt for me. But what I what I tell guys is it's totally worth it, because yeah, you mightn't be able to hunt two or three days, but if you do that two or three years in a row, that's a seven to nine day hunt. It's just spread out, and not only that, you're learning the area better. So every year you go back to that state or that type of habitat or or even maybe that property. You're learning it more and more, you're becoming more efficient, and also on those short hunts, I I think it's really kind of shaped my style to be more aggressive and to be more attentive and to pick out the exact kill spot rather than if I have five days to seven days to ten days, you know, I might kind of roll the dice. I might sit here for an observation sid or I might you know, I might sit the spot. I don't have a percent confidence in, but it looks decent. It. I think it just really uh helps you form an aggressive but thoughtful type type of approach to get it done in such a short time. And I'm not saying that you can go and kill five year six year old bucks every time on these trips, but I've been really successful on two I mean on on some three four and an occasionally even older bus than that, so it could definitely can be done. I definitely tell guys, you know, if you have the time to do it, go do it, because you're only it's only going to help you improve as a hunter. And I think a lot of guys out there like you like me, that's our goal. We just want to improve. We want to continue to grow and become better hunters. And those short trips, you know, they're not always successful, but I never, I never once have regretted one, even you know, driving all night, driving all night back I came, I drove all night Sunday night and was back to work Monday morning, and I was dog tired, But man, I had a blast deer or not, and I didn't regret it. Yeah, And I think you made a great point about even though their short trips, taking like making sure you soak every bit out of it with that learning experience. And it's kind of like the more the whole moral of the story of this whole podcast we've done with you know, before you we talked to Tony Peterson, we talked to Dan and then I all three of us now you we've kind of done a post mortem on each of our hunts. And we we had the hunt, but it's not enough just to have the hunt, and then you need to take a little time. Maybe it's on the drive home, maybe it's the next night, maybe it's you know, with a buddy talk through what happened, what did I do right? What do I do wrong? What can I learn from this? And I just think like that little step, that final step, can make a big difference. It's so easy to just like continue on with life and life just flies by, and all of a sudden it's, you know, weeks and months later, and you never really stood on it a little bit, taking this time to just I know you do this. You look at your journals and you look at the numbers. You look at Yeah, I know you're a thinker on these things and think back and replay and try to figure out why things happened and why this worked or why it didn't. And uh, I think that's why you're able to have this us now. And it's I think it's uh. I think it's a good This isn't the ultimate lesson that I thought we'd be learning from this podcast, but I think it kind of is do this, think about this break down your buddies, hunts, think about theirs. That's kind of the magic, I think, at least from my perspective, is figuring out how to get the most I've ever experienced and learned from it, figure out more for the next time. So thank you Andy for helping us do that. And taking a little time here. I know we went longer than we originally talked about doing. So always always really helpful stuff. Alright, man, no problem, my pleasure. All right. So you've heard a whole lot here so far. You had the story of Dan's outcome, you had the story of my North Dakota hunt. You had Tony's couple hunts over there in Nebraska and Minnesota, and finally we wrapped it up with Andy down in Kentucky. A lot of distance covered here, but if I had to sit back and drilled down to a couple core things. It's a little bit harder on Dan's hunt because it was an elk hunt, but I can still even find something in coming here. The big things drilled down to two points, I think Number one the importance of scouting, in particular watching deer from afar, watching animals from a far, long distance observation. We talked about it right there at the end of Andy, and we talked about for sure with Tony, and I of course is doing it in North Dakota. It's so much better in most cases to watch, to learn, to become informed before you go diving in trying to hunt those deer, right away. This can be applicable in early September. This could be as applicable in mid October. Many times of the year, Getting the info first and then striking is better than diving right in, because if you go in there without knowing what you're doing, you can blow a place up real quick. Now, of course, this is gonna work better in certain situations like pre opening day, like it was for Tony, like it was for Andy. You can see a deer doing something in his is you know, bed to feed pattern that he's doing pre hunting season that first night, you've got a great chance to take advantage of it. So in the case of folks that still have hunting seasons opening October one, you can still take advantage of this. These deer are still relatively on a bed to feed pattern. It might not be the same thing they're doing the summer, but you can take advantage of what they're doing right now if you can watch them afar and then strike now fast forward into late October, things will be different, of course, but still there's something to be said about watching. If you already don't have some kind of great intel, if you don't have trail camera patriots telling you what to do if you don't have historical knowledge of the area and you know that at certain times of the year you need to be at this little spot. If you don't have that, if you're going in blind somewhere, really you need to consider the idea of observation stands. Of course, certain terrain types, certain regions aren't going to give you good sight lines. But if you can find some way to work from the outside in many, many times, that is a smart way to do it. That is a big takeaway from this converse station here for me today. Secondly, I think everybody here had to pivot. Everyone came into their hunts with some certain set of ideas. Whether it was you know, Andy thinking he was going to see bucks on the beans right away and then moving in, and then he screwed it up, and then he had to pivot off of that original idea. He thought he could set up right there by that betting area, and the wind messed him up. The next day. He could have done one of two things. He could have went right back to what he had done before, that's the easy option, or you could pivot and adjust. He took a look at what the impact was and adjusted moved in a different direction than most people would have and he killed a buck. Look at Tony. He headed into his main spot. He thought he was gonna shoot one of the biggest box of his life, and then there's some guys in there moen or not, mowing, cutting down trees and stuff. He had to pivot, He had to adjust. He had to have a plan B that he could fall back on. He had to have a plan see, because the squirrel hunting thing messings up further. In my case, I had it into an area. Now you know, my hunt didn't have the happy ending that others had. But I had three different chunks located with options. Ended up being that one of them had other guys hunting. It went to the other option there was someone else hunting that one too. Fell back on the one and that's where I found those bucks. And I No, I didn't kill one, but I could have killed one that first night. I do think there's a little bit of that pivot option there. Now, maybe I could have done an even better job of that. Maybe I should have had a spot number four and a spot number five, and maybe I should have moved to one of those new regions sooner after things have gotten so tough. I still have lots to learn, but I do think having that plan be in place is so important. Same thing with Dan. They hunted that first area, realized it wasn't happening. He moved across to another base and moved a couple of miles to the west. If you go into a hunt, whether it's locally where you hunt you know every month of the season, or if it's a trip, if you go into it was just one idea, one game plan, you're gonna be left hung out to dry as soon as something goes wrong because inevitably a will I mean nine times out of ten, what you want to have happened will not happen flawlessly. There's gonna be some kind of wrench thrown into your plan. So you need to plan for that. Go into your hunts, go into your season assuming that option A probably is gonna get messed up, so you better have a plan B. And really you need to have a plan C, in the plan D and a plan E. Try to account for all these different possibilities, because the better you think about it now, the better you'll be able to handle that situation in the moment and in the moment. That's when stuff is tough, if you're trying to figure it all out brand new ideas in the moment, with the stress of the fact that you've got you know, two hours left a daylight, or with the fact that you've got one day left to your hunt and you're sitting there, crap, what am I gonna do? That's when mistakes get made. That's when frustration flares up. That's when hunts get quit on early. But if you've got a plan B, R, C R D already ready, that's already been vetted, that's already you know, has got some possibilities behind it, you can quickly then flip the switch say Okay, this isn't happening, moving to Plan B, execute on it. That right there, that extra four thought you put in maybe a month beforehand or a week beforehand, that can make all the difference. So a couple things for you to think about here over the weekend and coming into the next week. I hope this is interesting. Hope by listening to all these different stories and yeah, there's some bs and some bologna and some fun in there too, But I do hope you're able to take something from each one of our stories, both the successes and the failures that can help you in your hunt's coming up here and Jay's for a lot of us in the coming days, if not weeks. It is upon us. Hunting season is here. That is that's music to my ears. I know that I mentioned this with Dan a couple of episodes ago, but just a reminder from both he and I are two pieces of advice to you that were true then and they're just as true now as Number one, have fun and number two, when the going gets tough, keep on pushing through it, fall back on plan B or C or D, and just keep on getting after because that's type too fun. And when you push through it, when you make it happen, or when you at least have that feeling fulfillment that you tried hard and you gave it everything you have, that's an amazing feeling too. So just a couple quick reminders before we shut this down. Number one, the Back forty Project has launched. Our first episode of the series is up. It's online for you to watch. You can check it out at the meat Eator YouTube channel, or if you go to the meat eater dot com you will see the page for the back forty. You can go there, you can watch the video, you can see other content articles, how to videos, see maps the property, check it all out, follow along on social media of course as well, and if you want to win that hunt. If you want to win a hunt to join me and Steven hunt on the back forty, go to the meat eater dot com slash win a hunt. And finally, last, if not least, we haven't asked for us in a while, but if you're enjoying this podcast, and if you've got thirty extra seconds, going over to Apple, iTunes or the podcast app leave a rating or review for this podcast. It's a huge help. We have been just blessed with so many great supporters and I appreciate that very much. So thank you in advance, and until next time, stay wired to her. H