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, and this is episode number three and nine, and today's show, we're chatting with a Wired to Hunt listener named Luke Brewster, who just so happened to kill the largest deer ever killed by a hunter last year, and we find out what happens when everyday average hunter gets struck by whitetail lightning. While I got you here, before we start the main show, I just want to give you a little heads up. We've got a long introduction today. It's almost a two part podcast. Part two is with Luke Brewster and we're talking about this experience he had. Part one is getting a chat with my co was Dan about his South Dakota meal there hunt and a little bit about an upcoming hunt of mine. So if you want to get just to the Luke Brewster portion, you can fast forward about an hour, But if you want to hear our stories, stick around. It's a good one, but a long one, all right. Welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X and I'm here with my good buddy, my brother from another mother, the man with a bigger beard than me and one less finger, Dan Johnson. I just trimmed my beard too. Does it look sharp? It looks good. My wife actually walked by me and said, you don't look so disgusting anymore. That's good. I had a big one, you know, like the the upper lip. The mustache part of it was coming way down over top of the over my lips, so I was getting food in it all the time, you know, just like the It was a man's beard. It was awesome, but I had to trim. I understand that when are you when are you gonna drop your hammer? Yeah? Oh, I totally understand that. Dan, I got a man's beard. What are you talking about? When you when are you dropping the hammer? Though? Um? Are you going to drop the hammer? I don't know. I didn't drop the hammer last year, for those that For those that don't know, Dan drops the hammer usually right around the rut each year by by by trimming his beard into a food man shoe of sorts, right right. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna drop it or not this year. I usually drop it once a year, and I can't remember if I already dropped it this year. I think I did I drop it on my old cunt. I can't even remember. I don't think, So Okay, no you didn't. Someone someone I'll drop it on November one. Yeah, someone told me I should drop the hammer this year. Do you want to do matching foom hand shoes for the right? Um? Maybe it depends on uh, Like, I don't know. I like it, but now I'm starting to get old. Right, so I have white hair in just one side of the hammer, so it just looks really it just looks really weird. Well guarantee, if I did it, the whole thing will look really weird. So you don't need to feel bad. Yeah, so Dan today, Um, I want to do a bunch of stuff today. Um, we are gonna talk about a little bit about your South Dcota meal, their hunt. We're gonna talk a little bit about my Boundary waters back country white to Hunt, which I'm leaving for tomorrow. But we also have like a main guest on the show too. And that part is it's a different kind of show than we've done the past. Typically, Um, we usually don't ever talk about like world record deer. We're usually not like chasing interviews with people who killed some huge high scoring deer, like we've never never done that on the wire and Huntbot guest um. And so this show is different because we're not typically talking about that kind of thing, but today we we sort of are. Um. You know, in a lot of past episodes, we talked with people who maybe have you know, they've got pursuits for certain sized deer, and like you and Idean, of course, we enjoy chasing big Old Bucks, and we talked about that, and we've got our own goals sometimes and sometimes we talk about size of deer. Sometimes we talk age of deer. Sometimes we're talking about just the circumstances of the situation. UM. But we've never really gotten to the whole scoring hysteria other than talking about sometimes the concerns around it, potentially negative, referencing negative aspects of that um and how it can all go too far, you know. UM. So that said, though, right, I mean, there's nothing wrong with big Bucks. They're exciting, they're cool. We would we get geeked out about it. You get a big Buck on trail camera, you're excited. I'm excited. Um, that's just not what we've been mostly focused on here. But last year, a hunter a guy in him, Luke Brewster, he killed a giant buck out in Illinois and the pictures were going all over the internet. I remember seeing it and thinking, wow, that is a crazy looking deer. Um. Well, in January, news broke that this deer was the new world record, the highest scoring biggest deer ever killed by deer hunter ever in the world. Yes, he killed it with a bow, but this is bigger than any buck even killed with the gun too. Um non typical. And I remember hearing that story and someone like, I can't remember it might have been I was going to Mexico for that cou'se deer hunt and one of my buddies like the news came through. It was like the day the news went live at the A T A show or something something like, oh man, you gotta get that guy in the Wired Hunt podcast and I was like, man, that's not really our thing. Um. But like a week or two later, Spencer new Hearth got in touch with me and said, hey, I ran into Luke at the show and he came up and talked to me and said like he's a huge Wired Hunt podcast listener and basically learned in part how to hunt from listening to this podcast, And so that got me interest is like, wow, that's that's really interesting. So I reached out to the guy and just like just kind of like, Hey, what's what's the deal? I heard that you've been finding you know, the podcast helpful and everything, And he basically explained that, yeah, he's a new hunter and he kind of figured it out by checking out resources like this, listening to you and me talk about deer and all of our guests and stuff. And then he kind of got struck by lightning and ended up killing this once in a lifetime dear. So that got me intrigued. You know what happens in that situation? What happens when a normal unsuspecting hunter, a new hunter, uh, a member of the wire hunt community, someone just like you or me or listeners. What happens when that person heads into the woods one day and ended up killing the biggest deer of all time? You know, how does that change your next week? How does that change your next hunting season? How does that change your life? Um? I don't know. Is that a cool thing? Is that awesome or does that become a negative thing. I mean, I can imagine all sorts of scenarios. Um. I mean, all that attention, all the social media hysteria, is that overwhelming or is that fun? Is killing the biggest deer of all time? And that is that like an uplifting experience or is that toxic? Um? Especially Yeah, so especially in today's society where on social media people are only reading headlines. Right, so you come across the world's largest buck killed in Illinois, then automatically people go high fence. Oh yeah, right, you know, they're like poached whatever, must be nice to be rich or whatever, and they're not. They don't they don't want to hear the story. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's very easy for that stuff to get nasty. And I mean I think you and I have even experienced some of that on a on a micro level, you know, with our own things going on in the negativity around it. Um So, I was just that's what I've always wondered, like, what what happens when your buddy to this dear, when the normal guy next door has this thing happened gets struck by white tail lightning? Um So that's what we're gonna talk about with him. You know this isn't gonna be about glorifying a lawrenches Um. You know we say it all time, Dan, This we're all about hunting your own hunt, having a great experience, chasing your own personal goals. Um. But what happens with something crazy like this walks into your life. That's that's what I want to get into with Luke. But before that, though, I do want to talk about what happens when crazy things happen in your life or my life, like our recent hunts. Um. So before setting the stage from my boundary waters hunt, I guess you just got back from South Dakota. Um. I enjoyed your Instagram stories. I like to following along and seeing what was going on there. From the outside looking in, it looked like it was like an action packed hunt. Um. And I know you've got a podcast it's either out right now, I think it's out or coming out soon that goes into all sorts of detail on this. But but can you give us at least like a cliff note scoop on on how it Yeah, So, if you want to check out the full story of uh, let's see part one launched Monday. Part two launched Wednesday, So if you want the long version, go to nine Finger Chronicles podcast and it's called Sodak Mule Deer Hunt. Right, it's pretty pretty simple. But here's what I will say that I was looking forward to my elk hunting trip, but I was really really looking forward to the South Dakota trip. Um. I don't know what it is about that type of terrain and me and you, we've discussed this before. Right, You're a mountain guy. I'm I'm this prairie guy with a rolling hill Like. I don't know what it is. Yeah, well, yeah, I wish I could say that, but it's there was a lot of up and down on this hunt. Um. But man, we we went out there. My buddy drove from New York. He spent the night at my house. We got up at four ray am on what this was two weekends ago now, and UH got in the car on a on a Saturday morning, drove out to South Dakota. Uh hopped out of the truck, pitched a tent and uh that's you know, that's that's how we got there. And just the drive in. I don't know, whenever you go to a new place mark. It was probably unsafe for both of us to be in a vehicle at that point because we're not even paying attention to the road. We're just looking out the window, you know, like, oh, there's an antalope, Oh there's a deer. Oh, you know, and just watching the terrain change. Once you get a little closer to like the Missouri River. I love it. Once you start crossing that, you can see the habitat transition right absolutely, and like just the terrain coming down into the into the valley of the river and then coming back up and it's all these flat tops with these big dugout drainages and and um, and it's just amazing. So I was I was so amped. I I just could not even relax. I was just boom boom boom, you know, like fired up, beating the internal drums, so to speak. And we get out there, and uh, we get to the parking spot at the at this thirty three thousand acre public land spot, and sure enough, there's two more vehicles there, and I'm just like, oh man, we have all the places we decided to park. We park. But as we're as we're getting ready and packing up our packs to hike in and set up camp. Four people came out of there and they were just these day hikers. I guess they're just up there taking pictures. So we hike up. Um. We hike in about a mile and a half, set up camp, and by that time it's getting dark, so we eat and go to bed. Now here comes one of the most spectacular parts of this in tire trip, and it is the fact that I saw I woke We woke up Sunday morning, and not really knowing what to expect, we were gonna hike to the top of this mountain or this uh this it's not a mountain, but it's the highest point in the area, right, but yeah, kind of um, just a big hill, right, So just take the rockies and shrink them down is kind of what it felt like, you know, a different scale. So we climb up about a hundred feet and that's where we're gonna glass for the morning. As we're getting ready, I see a little shooting star go across the sky and I'm just like, oh man, this is this is awesome. I just saw a shooting star. Kind of a good luck that'sting around a little bit. Look back up in the sky. Just because the stars were so brilliant. And I don't know if you've ever seen one of these types of shooting stars, but it was. It must have been closer to the ground. It looked like a missile going through the air. It was like you could see not just a white streak, but the color of the shooting star. I could see it. I could see the bright white upfront, I could see the smoke trail, and I could see the illumination like orange and red of the fire that was coming off behind it. And it just went across the entire sky. It was like it was like a gigantic firework that just went and I swear for a second I could have I heard it. That's how it was. It was bananas. I I literally geeked out and lost my mind. Was like, oh my god, did you see that? Oh my god? But did you consider certain whether or not that was a UFO. Yeah, I don't know. It could have been a UFO. It could have been, but man, uh it was. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen out in nature. So I don't know why I'm geeking out about it so much. It's just I can't even explain to you what what I don't know. It just it just got me geeked for that that entire trip, it was like the starting start. It's a very good start. So we climb up and we started glassing that morning. Um, both of us are pretty jacked up, and you know, we start were glassing a little bit. Um, we see a couple of mule deer does way off in the distance. Um, we saw some white tail does way off in the distance. And we were in a kind of an area where the it was next to a big like a river system that kind of lad there are some cricks that led up into these big drainages and valleys, and so we were seeing a mixture of white tails and mule deer, So that that was kind of cool. And and just to talk about our expectations real quick, Um, we went into this trip just for the experience, right. We we had this talk like what are your expectations, Like what do you want to do? And both me and the guy went with her like if I get a shot at a dough, I'm taking it. And uh, that's the same with me. You know, I go on this elk hunting trip, walk away with nothing. I wanted to walk away with something on this trip, whether it was a buck, a dough anything. But we we both realized that this is a completely different environment and a completely different strategy for hunting. Uh So we kinda we were like, you know what if we can learn something, takeaway and then come back next year and capitalize, that would be awesome. But we're here to have fun. We're here for the new experience and um. So that we we didn't really have any expectations going into this hunt other than to learn and have fun and uh um. But we were seeing dear that first morning, so it was like, okay, we have five days left, let's let's get the you know, this is a good start. At least we know where they're at and we know where we need to be, you know, at some point throughout throughout this trip. So we're glassing for a couple of hours. Nothing, nothing real close. Everything was like a mile out. Uh you know, we'd notice it through the binoculars and then we would set up the spotting scope to identify a little closer and um, let's say, okay, well let's wait for him to bed down. That was our that was our thing, find them, try to locate where they were bedded down and then go make a move on them. Right, So we saw these doughs way in the distance, and I said, well, let's go around um, this big hill and get to another big hill that's blocking off another part of this valley and see if we can't see if we can't see a little bit more of this this big, big drainage. So we're walking and this is a lot of the the terrain out there is this this waist high grass. It's almost like tumbleweed that you're walking through. So it's real dry, it's real brittle. Um, there's some there's some green grass, but it's about waist high. And then what's not grass is this imagine putting drywall plaster over top of popcorn, and that is what you're trying to walk on to go up and down some of these hills. And it got to a point where we we kind of had to have a talk with each other and say, we can't walk up this stuff anymore because we're slipping and sliding and falling down. And uh, we had to learn how to take the long way, the long route sometimes just because some of this, uh, this this ground was unsafe to walk on. Yeah, just really really weird. I've never experienced anything like that before. Uh. And even though the drop wasn't like falling off a mountain mountain Colorado, it would have been significant and you would have slid all the way down, And like we slid a couple of times to where we were gaining speed and we couldn't really stop ourselves on our butts, right, and so we had to kind of lay our packs down and put our arms out, and we each had a trekking poll that we were digging into the ground. So we kind of let's, uh, let's stay away from that. So we look up there, um, and then we started we start hearing voices, so we we watched two hunters come out of one part of this valley, so we just kind of assumed that that part of the valley is trashed for the day. We stay in. We glass a couple of a couple more mule doughs, We wait for them to walk by, and then we dropped down and walk another mile and a half into this big plateau. Basically that's in the middle of these two drainages and uh, it's high points that we had identified on on X say Okay, well, these look like two high points that we can go and glass you know, these drainages. So we long story short, we walk in. We identified a water source like a seat in the uh in the ground, which was good because we used that multiple times throughout this trip to get water. That way, we didn't have to go back to the truck. Yeah. Uh that's big because if we didn't find that, we were going to have to spend a lot of time walking back to camp, then back to the truck, then back out for evening uh for evening hunts. And uh that that actually played a huge role in allowing us to do what we did because there was a day where I took my pack off, I laid it down and you kind of you know, you lean on your pack while you're glassing, and my uh port, my water port got pressed against the ground and all my water in my bladder leaked out. So I'm like, I did not drink three liters of water today. And uh it was long story, stort, just glad that we we've found that water so we could pump it up and treat it. Almost stepped on a rattlesnake, uh I was. We walked up to one of these classing points. Walk up to the edge. There's like this rock configuration, this rock formation. Put my boot down on it and I hear. I looked down and about a foot from my boot is a rattlesnake. And it was. It was intense because it was a big rattlesnake. But I don't know. Yeah, it's um. It's rattle was longer than my pinky finger. It was. It was a big fat one and uh, but it didn't want anything to do with us. It rattle a couple of times and went back down into this uh into this uh crack. We sat there, took a little nap, uh, glass, walked across the plateau, did some more glassing. Uh, and I'm accelerating this of course. Uh these glass Every time we stopped to glass, we were glassing. Oh, I would say two hours at a time, if not more. Just relaxing, you know, getting a lay of the terrain. Which we we found out in the long run is there's so many cracks and um, the terrain is so there's so many variations in it that if you go a hundred yards a different direction and look at the same area, you're finding more cracks. So you're it's awesome to have on X and I and I'll say this and this is a good plug for one of your partners here. I don't know what we would have done without it, because it allowed us to mark what we saw. It allowed us to take, you know, mark trails in and out. It allowed us to and this is the big one, look at a map and identify, you know, here's camp. We need to get here, but we need to do it in the dark, right, So I'm I'm basically instead of looking at the ground, I'm looking at the ground in the dark, but I'm also got my phone out trying to take the path at least resistance to the morning scout, you know, the next scouting point in the dark, and it is. It was one of the biggest helps for the entire trip, hands down. So yeah, it comes very handy for that kind of strip, absolutely so. And then we get back and here's this is this is a cool part. You know, we're we're all focused on on mule deer on the right out, but then we learned you know, hey, there's white tails here too, and they're down in this river bottom. There are a handful of crop circles and we pop up over this ridge to glass to see if we could see any meal they're coming off these hills into the fields below. But we get there and there's already like white tails in this crop circle when we get there. But we're still a long ways away, right there's we didn't have enough time to make a stock uh to go to go there. And we were like, well, we can shoot a white tailed deer at home. Maybe we'll just wait a couple of days and you know, and see. But then a big white tail buck popped out of the river bottom and it was too it would have been too late to go stock. And he was on private ground when we saw him, but it was right on that line, just kind of like your uh, your hunt. Yeah, So he was right on the line, and we're like, hey man, maybe the next day will uh well, we'll set up tomorrow evening and go check him out. Well, I would, I would put him. He was a mile away. I could see him through the spotting scope, but I would do. He had a big body. His body was bigger than every other deer in the field, you know, rightfully so as a buck. But his his rack was noticeable in the spotting scope like big I would I would have if he was If he was an eight pointer, he would have been one forty. If he was a ten pointer, he probably would have been closer to one. So yeah, a really good, a really good white tail that got got us both excited. Sun went down, We walked back to camp, got put the game playing together, and said, okay, well we're gonna go back to that big plateau where we were, you know, where we were the next day. And so, like I said, got out the put put a path together on on X, got out of camp, walked all the way in the dark a mile and a half to this glassing point and uh got there just you know, right before gray light. It was perfect. We dropped down off the hill a little way so we weren't skylined, and just kind of waited for the sun to come up. And right away we started seeing white tail does. And what they were doing is they were coming off the tops and then going back down into these drainages to bed throughout the day. And so here's a white tail, a mule deer do over here. Oh man, there's four mule deer dough over there. Okay, cool. So I turned around, I started making some coffee and uh. My guy was with like, hey man, that that that one looks like a buck. Put the buy nose up. Sure enough, it was a really wide, big two by two, just a really cool deer. And we're like, well, let's follow him, right, So we we watch him grays for a little bit up top, drops down out of the um, you know, off the top down end. We lose him, and now we start putting a game playing together. Right. I'm I'm finishing up coffee. We're still seeing some doze up there, you know. Okay, here's how we're gonna do this. We're gonna go here, We're gonna do this, blah blah blah. Put an approach. And as I'm turning around to hand him his coffee, he's he's got his buyos up. He's like, hey man, there's there's four more. There's four more uh deer coming off the top. Look it up, put up, pull up the spotting scope and it was four mule deer bucks altogether. Still yeah, and there was a i want to say, a three by three, a real young one, and then two four by four's that were medium range. And granted, I'm just I'm telling you this their size and their age, because just as a reference, we were going to shoot whatever was available right away. I mean, if if a dough popped up at you know, twenty yards, we were going to shoot a dough at twenty yards, right. So we watched these four bucks and they were they were hustling down because this was about eight o'clock in the morning, so they were it was almost like they were coming off later than all the other animals. Maybe they were bumped, maybe they don't whatever, or maybe they just to eight too long. And you know, I decided, hey, we gotta we gotta hustle down. Watched them drop into this drainage. Uh and uh. The last one that came through, who was noticeably bigger in size and antlers than all of the other ones. So we're just like, hell, if we're gonna go do a stock on something, let's do it on this big one, right. So he drops down, um, goes behind a couple of rock formations, are like, okay, we lost him. This is this is what really impressed me about these animals. They are they're smart. This buck pops out around a rock formation, walks closer to us. And when I mean closer to us, we're I mean he's still a mile away, right, but he's walking out around this rock formation and he's it's like he's checking out the area before he goes to bed. He goes back down the trail that he came out in, comes up another rock formation. He's looking all around, taking his time. Then he goes disappears again, walks around backtracks where he came, then drops down into another cut, and then he disappears. So it told me that they're thinking differently than what how you think, right, You think of a deer, and you think or an animal. They can't think like us. When they're hungry, they eat, when they're tired, they bed down. When they're scared, they run away, right. But this guy was saying, I need to check out my surroundings before I go to bed down because I want to make sure that there's nothing there. So that that thought process kind of intrigued me. Yeah. So, um so this big buck drops down and um I'm like, okay, let's do this. So we talked about how we're going to do this. We identified certain parts, certain terrain features between us and where he was betting, so that we could creep up behind him without any of these other deer seeing us, because they eventually all laid down or they all disappeared behind things too. We identified the cut, We identified a certain is to hide behind or glassing points. Um, we identified what we you know, the path that we needed to take before we headed over there. We needed to drop down, we needed some more water, we needed to use the restroom and then make our make our stock up into this area. So we get to it. We dropped down off the side of the valley that we were on, across the creek, come back up the other side, hit hit all those identifiable points so we could glass going into it. But what we found out was that he's deep in this cut, or or so we thought he was deep in this cut. And it started getting warmer that day. You know, it was like thirty degrees in the morning, but it slowly starts to warm up to about seventy you know, seventy degrees. We saw him at eight o'clock. Now just remember that we saw him at eight o'clock, come down, disappear about eight thirty. We get to a point, uh this rock for nation where it's like, okay, let's this is where we need to drop our bags. And I said I'm going to go up and I'm going to, um, I'm gonna do some glassing. He needed to treat some of his water. Um, so he's treating his water. I'm doing some glass and I'm like, hey, look at this. I said, grab your boat, let's go. So I just you know, we were going to do paper rock scissors for um to see who was gonna shoot first. But it just kind of worked out that that I said, dude, let's grab your boat, let's go. And then he was going to be the shooter on this and I was gonna take lead as far as creeping around the corners. I was going to be working the binoculars. He was going to be the shooter, you know. And and also one thing that I really found out about this particular hunt was the teamwork aspect. I really, I really, UM, it's it's awesome to see a guy go out and do it all by themselves, but it's it's so awesome to have another guy to bounce ide he is off of. And two for you know, like as a shooter, you got a guy running the kind of running the uh buyos for you Okay, I don't see him. I don't see him. And then as the buyo guy, you know that you're you're not a shooter. So it's like we each had these roles going into it and into the stock that it was like, okay, here we are, Um, this is this is my role, this is your role. And so I would go up and take the lead. I would creep around corners and I would use the buyos and whatever, and he would then I would gesture him and he would come behind me, and we'd get behind rock formations or trees, work our way closer up in these cuts, and uh, you know, take a look at what's you know, Okay, I can see the shade. Let's look at where he potentially could be betting right, and you know all this stuff. Well, as we're working our way up the cut that he disappeared and we're getting even now with where he dropped where we saw him drop down off of this rock formation, and all of a sudden we're here boom boom boom, and it sounded like something got up and ran. Well what happened was he was actually down lower, bedded under a tree, not up in the cut. Oh and but the cool thing was that he our wind was in our favor. We were higher than him, and it was blowing down the drainage, so he never did catch our wind, which I think was our saving grace because I can't see him at this point. And Dan, the other guy that was with me, he said, there he is, there, he is. I'm like, how far is he? He gets his range finder out, ranges range, range, range, can't get a range, stands up a little bit, gets a range fifty eight yards, fifty eight yards, perfectly broadside, and he's just staring at us, and we're head to toe camo right Hoodi's on masks up over our face and he's just looking at us like or he's looking the other guy like I said, I'm between a tree, so I can't see any of this go down. And so he gets his err already draws back and and he lets it go, and I hear the arrow go and then the sound disappears for a split second. And at this point I'm like, oh, dude, he missed him, but it was and you could hear it just drill him, and he's Dan starts to lose his mind. He's like, oh my god, like hit right where I was aiming. I hit right where I was aiming and I pop out around this tree and I'm watching him jump and it just you know, you know, when a deer is dead, right like just gosh and blood coming out of his nose. He tries to go back up the same incline, pretty steep incline that he came out, and uh, and he didn't make it. Gravity was his worst enemy at that point. Back legs got wide and he just tumbled off off the back and it was the big buck that we watched drop off that the top and we were both in shock, like I can't believe that just happened. This was my first ever spot in stock and his first ever spot in Stock. Un really any animal, right, we're tree stand hunters, and you know, I've done it in Nebraska before, but not at you know, it's just different terrain, different scenarios, and you know, yeah, we we put a plan together, but we also got lucky. Right this this deer popped up and stood and decided to watch us and sit and run away. And he waited around too long and the guy drilled him at fifty eight yards and um, you walk up on this animal and it's it's it's between three fifty and four hundred pounds. It is a absolute gigantic bodied animal. Uh, ridiculous um. And he's walking up on it and the guy, this is why I like this dude. He goes, He goes, I'm gonna get so much meat out of this deer. Like he was so jacked that he's gonna be able to get a lot of meat off of this off this animal, and then he commented on its antlers. But it was real cool because it was about the experience. It was about the meat he was getting off of this um. And then you fast forward man, and we're we clean it and we pack it out. Uh. It was I'm still in shock over how how it all went down. It was amazing. It's a gorgeous buck. Oh yeah, it's a it's a it's a gorgeous buck. Taxidermis. Taxidermist did a tooth tooth analysis or not like a full analysis, but did a tooth comparison on it. Said it was a six and a half year old buck and it scored like one fifty one something. We're a meal there, yeah, and first ever pack out three and a half miles And granted this isn't the Rocky Mountains. Each of us had over a hundred pounds in our pack, and uh, I don't. I got to we were walking, you know, we dropped down off this drainage hit the creeks, had to go up and down a couple you know. For the most part it was flat once we got out of the hills. But we followed this old rancher rancher trail back to the truck three and a half miles and I got to the end and I was so physically drained that I was getting emotional. It sounds like our first cutting down. I know, I know it was. It was. It's like every step I took, I could feel more energy draining out of my body. It was. It was crazy. It was crazy that that emotion. I take the pack off of me and I could not I couldn't stand up. I had to lay down because you're you're you have so much weight on for that long time in that distance that your body is now compensating for that way. And I had to lay down and like re establish new balance out of out of it all. And I want to say that that it We didn't really celebrate. We didn't celebrate the hunt until we got the meat back into the cooler in the truck, and that is when we celebrated. I mean when he when he walked up. You know, we had this big old bro hug. We gave each other high fives. But then we instantly knew we got to get this meat out because we got a lot of work to do. And uh we did it. We did it all in one trip. And uh because we were debating going back and making two trips, you know, for some additional equipment like just our bows and a spotting scope and a couple other things. But we're like, dude, we have to do it because I don't want to come back in the middle of the night for this stuff, come back and potentially ruin this area again for anything. So we uh made it one trip man, And Uh, I want to say it is probably one of the most rewarding hunting experiences that I've had to date. Just just adding that pack out alone, I think the entire experience would have been different if we were able to load it on a four wheel or a truck. It's that much that as the is the best type too fun you can ask for. It's so painful in the moment when you're done, it's such a great feeling to know you did that, and that meat tastes real good after all that work. Oh man, I've already I made child with it already. And because he gave me, He's like, dude, you helped me pack this out. You help me on this trip we did. We did this together. He gave me almost half of the meat, and I was like, dude, you know, like, hey, I don't need all the meat or half of meat. Just give me what you want. He wanted to give me half, so I'm not gonna turn it down. So we I did. I made one of the best pots of chili I ever made U yesterday. Uh, dude, I don't know. I'm just geeked. I'm geeked about this trip. And uh and I really haven't even shared my experience with my buck. I mean, I Okay. So we went into town. We needed ice. We stayed in a hotel that night. UM, so the first thing in the morning, we could uh, you know, the first thing in the morning, we're gonna take it to the processor and then take the head to the taxidermist. So we did all those things. UM came back out to we had to go back to camp, and we made the decision that we're we're gonna try to cut these deer off. And the reason that we're gonna go back to camp, tear it down, come back to the truck, drive around the entire thirty three acre, and hit it from the back side is because the weather forecast changed on us while we were out there, and we're talking this gigantic cold front coming through that was gonna dump eight inches of snow, sixty mile winds and a um, the real temperature was like twenty eight and the wind show would have been below zero, and we did not have the proper equipment for those kind of conditions. So I said, man, we have to we have to make a game plan on how we're going to adjust to this. And the game plan was we're gonna stick this out as long as we possibly can, and then we're gonna leave because we these are dirt roads to get back into some of this stuff. We identified where the deer were at, and walking up some of this terrain in snow or rain or whatever just really wasn't an option. And you know, we we each have family leans and I don't want to hear that story about a guy who necessarily gets lost, but you know, tries to tries to do something and be tough but then loses the toe because of frost bite or you know, we just how fitting though, would that be? That'd be a kick ass story, though, wouldn't it? Would you? Would you feel like more on balance if you had nine fingers and nine toes. If I lost let's see, it would have to be on my left foot. If I lost the toe on my left foot, it might balance me out a little bit. Oh maybe you should have done it, dude. That could have been. That could have been really what major career, right, but you know what I mean, Like, we don't know if you've ever had to back out because of weather, but it was it was a fifty it was it was gonna be a fifty plus degree temperature shift. It was a huge storm pushing through there. Right Montana got smoked, Coda got smoked, and uh, Western m Western South Dakota where we were at got smoked, and and we just were like, Okay, we're gonna hunt as long as we possibly can. And uh sure enough where you know, uh we when we ended up having to back out, but so later that night, uh for the day that we dropped all the stuff off at the taxidermists, and you know, loaded up on some more water, took down camp to move. We're like, okay, let's just sleep in the back of the truck tonight. So we drive in uh to the back side of this uh, this public ground, find the spot to where we could drive the furthest and then we were gonna walk up to where these deer were coming off. And it was a warm day two days in a row, so and this front was moving in overnight, and we said, okay, let's see, let's get in there a ways and find a way to where or find a spot to glass to see maybe we can see these deer coming out of these drainages to feed at night, and then maybe back doorm find a way to get in between them and the drainage for for the morning hunt, so that way I can shoot one coming down back into bed. Well, we start, we pack up, you know, I shoot my bow a couple of times, start walking towards the hills, get up in the hills a little bit. We bump a couple meal your dough. We coup bump a couple of white tail dough and UH go about another half a mile in and out of the corner of my eye, I see like just this white flicker like a deer a bug landing on a deer's ear, and it just flipped his ear. That's it. And I look over in the shadows of one of these hills, which was about a hundred yards away, and I just I knew. I just had this gut feeling. I knew what it was. I'm like, that's a meal there. I didn't know what it was, you know there, And I just said to the guy, keep walking, just keep walking. And what we found out is that if if these deer see you and you top, they'll run, but if they see you and you keep walking, they will stay there. As you know, they feel that if they're still, you're not gonna identify them. And so what we did was I just quick put the buyos up while I was walking, and it was a muletor buck sitting right there, and I said, just keep walking, keep walking. So we walked out of his line of sight, and then I started my spot or my stock. I had him kind of in a position to where he could see the hill that he was betted on the top of it, and uh he was, and he could see if I like, if he was going to run away. He would be able to see that uh if I if I did something wrong in the stock. Uh. So so we get we get there, uh, and I'm just like, I need to loop all the way around to the back side because the wind was coming over top of this hill to where he could smell anything coming over the top up the hill. So I had approach approach it from this at an angle and not come at the tippy top of the hill, but come at an angle. And I walked all the way around. I started ranging like bushes and the side of the hills and just breaking the entire stock down into like ten thirty yard increments, like okay, I need to take my time. I need to go ten yards, start walking real close. And the closer I got, the more um, the more careful I was with every step, to the point where I was just slowly setting my foot down, not taking a step, but just basically balancing on one leg and just slowly putting all the pressure down on my foot, just like, not all at one time, just slow. And that grass was still really dry and the wind was blowing pretty good. And I get within I get to the op where I'm just about able to peek over, and the wind just stops, stops, and I could start hearing and it was this buck breathing. I could hear him panting almost. It was like seventy five degrees. And I'm just like, no, what what is that noise? And then as I'm creeping up over the top I had, I dropped my binose, I dropped my The only thing I had was my range finder and my bow. So I was and I'm creeping over just like an inch at a time, inch at a time, coming up over top of this ridge. And I see his antlers right, and he's he's facing he's kind of at an angle, but I'm above him. Probably I ranged his head at thirty seven yards, okay, And I get up and I get to the top, and now I take a little bit more of a step, and now I can start. I can see his neck and take a little bit more of a step. Now I can see his body right, he's bedded down still, and he's looking away and his ears are pinned straight back. He's looking forward. He has no clue I'm there. So I'm adjusting my feet ever so slightly, just so I get a good base so I can draw my bow right and as I adjust my feet, there's this little crack or two rocks clicking together, and he kind of perks up. He doesn't stand yet, but he's perked up, so it's like something got his attention. And I'm like, I am so screwed now, right, I'm gonna have to make this happen now, So I draw back and I um he said like I said, his head was at thirty seven yards stood up right. So he stands up and he's kind of glassen, but his body goes back to relax. Right. I draw back and at that angle you can't get a double lung shot, right because I'm straight above him, right, So my goal is to blow out one lung. That's that was what I was. That's what I'm thinking. So at this angle, you're aiming higher on the body, but you're imagining that the arrow is gonna come out right between his two front legs, you know what I mean. So at that angle, I'm drawn back and it's like behind the shoulder, but up higher on the body. And as I'm going through my shot process, hold hold, squeeze, And as I squeezed the trigger, he takes a backwards step I watched his whole body shift in my sight casing, and I drill him complete passed through, not where I was aiming, but a little bit up higher on the boddie, and and he drops down. He drops pops back up on the other side of the drainage. Complete passed through, and I see blood start to pump out of his of his of his shoulder. It's like up on the shoulder, and um, let's see up if if you're looking at a deer shoulder broadside, it would have been if you took the leg kind of right up. But the at that angle, I thought, dude, I got one lung. And he was bleeding really good. So I run up to the and then he disappears. I run up to the top of the hill and I'm glass at him and uh. The other guy gets his binos and grabs the spotting scope, runs to a different point and we're watching him run away, and he runs a really long way, and I'm like, dude, I got I feel like I got one lung on this buck. I feel like I got one lung. And so he drops down into this coolie. I guess you would call it or this this another little drainage. We see him. Oh he's probably he's not. He's probably not quite a mile half a mile uh away, and his tails flipper in his back legs are getting wide. I'm just like, he's gonna bed down right there. He's gonna he's gonna lay down right there, and we're not gonna move. And then it was almost like he was shaking it off, like he starts to shake his head, and then he takes he trots up a little ways and he starts to get wobbly, shakes his head, wobbles, gets up on the flats again, the plateaus again, and he starts trotting away. I'm like, what the hell, you know, Like I feel like I got a really good shot. And by this time he's a good chunk away. But his entire body is red, like from the blood, Like his whole side is red. And you don't need to it's not you don't need a rocket scientists to say he's hurt. And while he's on this flat, you know, his tail he's taking these wider, like left right, wider steps, and his back ends seems to be going down. His head's going down, and then he shakes his head and he's like it's almost like he's get pumping himself up to make it further, and make it further, make it further. And uh, he goes across this flat top, drops back down into another drainage and that's where we lose sight at him. And what we then me and Dan meet back up and he's like, dude, you got good blood. Man, he's he's you know, dropping. But what you have to realize is it's hard to follow a blood trail in this this waist high grass. Right, you've probably killed a deer before in CRP or something like that, and it's it's I don't care unless you smoke him, and it's just spraying out like a super soaker. It's hard to find blood in this And and I shot him high so so you know it was coming up and then draining down his side. But I and I wasn't a percent sure of where the exit wound was at, but I was assuming, oh ship man, you know I passed through. He's gonna bleed, he's gonna leak. And uh, the last thing I remember is him wobbling going down into a drainage. I said, that's where we're gonna find him. Man, he's gonna go lay down right in there and we're gonna find him. Well, it's starting to get dark at this point, and so I'm like, hey, let's hustle up. Let's go to this drainage. So, um, I want to get a good idea. He stopped in this one area. That's just this one area where there was hardly any grass, real low grass. So we make it to that point, I find a big pile of blood and uh. And then we you know, through through marking a uh, I guess a location through my blocies. I'm like, okay, we gotta make it to that tree. Well, in Iowa, if you shoot an animal and it jumps on to private ground, you have the right to go do that. In South Dakota, you do not have the right to do that. You have to have landowner permission to hop the fence and go find this animal. Well, this buck ends up crossing a fence and that's where the track job stopped. And so from this point I started to get freaked out. I'm I'm like, okay, I gotta find landowners. We're looking at our phones. Landowner, landowner, landowner, uh, landowner camp you know, and and obviously nobody lives around the where these ranches are at right, all they are is crop ground or like these circles, but there's nobody that lives on them. So I'm texting. We're looking looking for phone numbers, and it's hard to find a phone number. So we're like, okay, let's go back to the truck. Let's wait overnight and then start up. First thing the morning, we go back. Um, the first thing we do when we wake up is knock on a couple of doors. Nobody's home. It's like it's almost like there's summer houses for people when they're doing when they're working cattle. And so then we go down this another couple of miles. Finally we get ahold of a guy and he's like, yeah, okay, well that's not my property, but I have his phone number. I will call him and I will let him know that you're gonna be on his property looking for the deer. If you run into anybody, you tell him. I I said it was cool. I'm like, hey man, that's good enough for me, okay. And because this dude's property bordered another guy's property, he said he was gonna make a phone call for us. So we go back to the drainage that we saw him in. Start the very top and we're each on both sides. We can't find blood because it's that waist tie, tumbleweed grass. Again, hop the fence and there's some blood and we're following his tracks, fresh tracks, following his blood and come to a point where we see it looks like his knee went down into the dirt like he was getting ready to lay down. All right. One thing I did not tell you is at as we're cooking supper at the truck, coyotes start going off and they're going off close to where we left the blood trail. They were going off. I bet you there was one yards from the truck going off and they were going off for a while and we could hear him move, um go back there. And then you know, long story short, we started grid searching lots and setting up in binoculars. We we did that for seven over seven hours looking for this thing. Could not find him. And I just was like, are you kidding me? Like I felt like I drilled this animal and I should find him. You know, did the did we go into aggressive to this drainage? And even though he was on public or private ground, he saw us coming, or did the coyotes bump him? You know, you start having that doubt and like, what did I did I screw up my shot? What what happened? And I don't I still honestly don't know what kind of what what went wrong in this whole scenario. I think it was just a kind of a combination of everything not being able to track him right away, coyotes came through. Um maybe when he shifted his body weight backwards he took It's like, so he stood up, but he was still in abedded stance, so that so to get more of a comfortable stance he took a backwards to I don't know, And it all kind of happened while I was pulling the trigger. I shot maybe higher up on the body, but I felt like, dude, that's still lung, one lung I got. You know, deer can die on one lung, and you know, and then here we are with no meal there just absolute you know, and then you're just in doubt the whole You think about it over and over and over and over and over and over, like every day. I still think about it. The entire ride home, I was thinking about it and just it sucks, man, because it was a really good buck. I mean it was not. It wasn't as big as the other guys, but it was a four by four really big body from what I could tell. And I was completely calm. And I'll tell you why. In the stock is because in a stock like this, it's not like in a tree stand where a deer comes by and you have to draw and shoot it. I'm not even thinking about I'm not even thinking about the the the shooting the deer at this point because my mind is and you can't even shoot the deer until you get to it, until you can see it. So I'm thinking about every step, I'm cognizant of my wind direction, right, You're all these other things you're thinking about except the shot until you need to make the shot. So you know, I drew back and I wasn't even nervous. It was like I was practicing, you know. I wasn't even thinking that this was the very first buck meal here I was ever gonna shoot. I wasn't even thinking about that. I was thinking about like the steps, and it was like I was practicing. That's how calm I was. So I don't want to I didn't even have buck fever. And I don't know, I just I don't know, just ship. So so would you do anything different? No, Like that's what I'm saying, Like, you know, I'm looking back at this, you know, I said, I was looking back at this, and I was saying, Okay, so I put a I put a marginal shot on my white till last year, right, but eventually I found him. Right. I did not want that to happen to this year. So I was and I was, I was practicing good. You know, my boat was tuned in. I think, if anything, I may have took a little bit of a higher angle try to get up the hill just a little bit more on him to where I to where I was even shooting more straight down on him and not I don't know. There was an angle, but not like a straight down angle. So if I would have hit the same place that I hit with this deer, it just would have went almost straight down into his body, you know what I mean. So I was like shooting straight down. So you think back at that, and I don't think I did anything wrong. I honestly don't think I did anything wrong other than that buck shifting while I was pulling while I was going through my my trigger squeeze process. Animals, wild animals you can never you can never know for sure what they're gonna do, how they react to things. I mean, that is the always unknown variable that can that can screw up the best leag plans. It really sucks because I've had some critics in the past, you know what. I know we talked about it once about you know that someone when you asked me on my white tail hunt, Dan, would you take that shot again? I said, yeah, dude, I'd take that shot again on a on a hard quartering away shot. And I had some critics, you know, leave comments about that, and I didn't. I don't want to think about it, but it made me think about, like, Jesus, I'm gonna get shipped on for this because there it's a deer I didn't find and I shouldn't have taken the shot. But I'm just like, I don't think I did anything wrong. Uh, you know, this is my first ever spot in stock so this is a completely new experience for me. I felt I did everything that I was supposed to do. Maybe at the moment of truth, I should have just chilled for one more second. But with that, with that the rock making a noise and he perked up. I thought, oh my in he's he's tense, but he's kind of body language kind of calmed down a little bit. Again. I just don't want him to bolt out of there and and lose an opportunity. So it's right here in front of me and I took it. What do you take from this moving forward? Then? For your next hunt? Do you is there anything different that you're Are you gonna practice in any kind of way differently? Are you gonna think about things differently? Or or is it you know what like you just said, you know, like I did everything I could have, I'm just going to try to get better in all facets and try again. Yeah, I will definitely be practicing different between now and next year, because I'm definitely going on the sun again. Um, I'm gonna I'm going to practice shooting out of my treehouse straight down on targets or on my deck or even out of a tree stand or something to simulate these really steep, awkward angles that you know you put yourself in. Not every not everything's broadside I mean, And to be honest with you, uh, I think that that's how most of the deer are shot out there, or or you know, yeah, locate them, let them get to bed, and then shoot them in their beds. Yeah, get above them and shoot them in their beds. So I guess just more practice in that type of scenario, right, Yeah, that's as a unique kind of shot compared to you know what you typically plan on for elk obviously not elk, and for deer white tailed there too. So yeah, that's a good thing to be thinking about. So what about this next year? Let's say you don't rack up enough Brownie points or works busy, or you've got a sixth kid or something like that, and you only can pick one Western hunt for next year? Do you go elk hunting again? Or are you gonna do this meal their hunt again? That's a tough one, man, Um, I'm not getting any younger, so I should probably do an elk hunt just from physical from a physical standpoint, but there's better odds I feel going after meal here. Now, I honestly think that we had an exceptional trip out there. Uh. You know, I've had a lot of guys reach out to me and say, hey, dude, congratulations on your trip. It sounds like you guys got into them. It doesn't happen like that every year, so be thankful for that. And I and I kind of put it all into perspective where you know, you're right, we ran into it, so we shouldn't be expecting the same thing to happen next year. Um. But what I will say is this was a very fun hunt. And I if I had to, if you were to ask me right now and then ask me again, I think this summer it would probably change. But as of right now I'd probably go on this mule of your hunt again. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you had a good experience. I am sorry that the the end moments did not go as we would all want them to. But I trust that you will. You'll you'll come out of it learn something and on the next year. Yeah yeah, buddy, Hi, Uh, I don't know, man, I'm I'm jacked up. Uh Like now now I just turned the page to white tails onward upward. Uh. I will keep I will keep my update real short. Um, because you gave you can't you give me more than I was expecting on the cliff notes. But it's good stuff, so I will take it. Um as a hell of a hunt. Um, I will simply just set the stage then and then our next episode you'll get to hear from us after the hunt how the whole thing goes. But but yeah, tomorrow night, me and Further and our buddy Andy are taken off for northern northern northern northern Minnesota, right there on the Canadian border, into the Boundary Waters Willerness area, and we're driving through the night Tuesday night. We're gonna get there Wednesday morning, get our rental canoes and our wall tent and our wood burning stove and a few other pieces of equipment, and then driving to our entry point. We're gonna load up the canoes all of our gear for a week, and we're gonna paddle a river for something like four to five miles, and then we're gonna get to a lake, and then there's a chain of lakes from there that we can either set up camp on the first one, hunt around there, or portage to another lake. Explore that portage to another lake, check that out, and um, and we're gonna see if we can survive it. We're gonna see if we can find dead deer. Um. Anything legal is our goal. So I think it's gonna be tough to find any deer, So we're gonna have realistic expectations on that front. Have you talked or looked at any information about success rates in this area with archer equipment. Basically it's relatively unheard of. Like anyone we've talked to is like, oh, you're gonna go in bow season. Um, it's a very low success rate during gun season and UM. But the only people we've found that actually do this often they do it during rifle. UM. So we're expecting zero pressure with the bow. Um. But you know it's it's something like three to four deer per square mile or something like that. Four or five deer square mile is like the estimated deer density, So very low deer numbers. Um, Andy May you're going with no, Andy Bradley. UM. So you know we're gonna try and find anything, and we're gonna fish in the morning and try to try to feed ourselves with walleye for dinner or whatever we can catch, and uh, scouting hunt in the afternoons and maybe even shoot a grouse or two or your a small game license and kind of do a a cast blast and white tail hunt. So it is going to be a full sweet experience, that's for sure. So how many acres are you gonna be tooling around in? Oh? Man? I mean it's like a I think it's a. It's a one point one million acre wilderness area and like wilderness with the capital W. So it's like an official wilderness, which means no mechanized travel, So you can't take motorized boats, you can't drive into it, you can't even take a mountain bike into it. Um, you gotta go by foot or canoe and um so rugged terrain. It's it's you know, deep deep big woods and rocky kind of terrain. It's this Precambrian Canadian shield rock features down in that area. So you've got these rocky islands and rocky shorelines and beautiful glacial lakes, lots of fish and uh a few deer strolling around inside of it all. There's lots of moose and bears and wolves. Um. So we'll be right in the middle of it and just trying to just trying to figure it out as we go. So big, big, big cold front snow and stuff came through over the weekend, and I think it's gonna be petering out just about the time we get there. So we're not sure if it's gonna be really wet and nasty or if we'll be able to get out of there just afterwards and it'll clear up and be nice. But it's gonna be cold, I know that. So we got a wall tent and wood burning stove that will be all set up in there and try to try to stay warm and try to stay dry. We gotta be careful getting in and out of our canoes, and if you shoot something loading up the canoe with all your hunting gear and a deer, that'll be different. Um, So it's gonna be Trev, be safe and um get out of there in one piece and withal ton of our toes. Yeah, absolutely, Man, is this uh? Is there any uh cell coverage out there or it's all going to be like in the dark. Maybe a satellite phone. Well I think pretty sure there's no cell service, so it's just gonna be with our UM. I've got one of those in reach explorers so I can like send out a text message to just let my wife know I'm safe. And then I've got has one of s O S button and stuff. The ship really hits the fan and we need some kind of emergency help. We can we can radio for that essentially, but pretty much on our own. So we let me give you some advice. This is you probably already have thought about this, but if you need to transfer something from one canoe to it next, take the extra time and go to the shore to do it, even if it's something simple, because I've been on a lot of canoe trips in the day, not for hunting, but you know, just for recreation, and even something as simple as handing somebody something could drop and then you lose that. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna be safe. I think we're not gonna try to take any chances of that because the temperatures we're gonna have. You know, if you get wet and then it's degrees or thirty degrees or whatever, it's gonna be. Um, that's not a good situation. You build fires. Yeah, so we're gonna we can build a fire and we can have that wood burning stove piping in our in our wall time, so we'll bill get dry. Um. But you just you don't want to put yourself in that position either way. So we'll do the full scoop. Um In the next podcast, we'll explain the research we've done, all the work that went into putting this together, and our game plan and our strategy and how we're doing it. We'll cover all that. Um, I'll get a shout out right now to further he did a wonderful job. I kinda with all the other things I got going on, I kind of asked him if he would be willing to play point on on doing a lot of research and talking to people and lining up our gear and everything, and did a wonderful job. So kudos to my buddy Josh, and UM, hopefully have a really good story for you in a week. And I'm jack for you. Man. These are the kind of trips that I really like you're because you're essentially disappearing. It's gonna be good just to get back into nature and not have to worry about the phone, not have to worry about social media, just gonna very fully experienced this play in these animals and uh, in our pursuit for him. So it's gonna be a very Oh it's Ted Nugent likes to say it will cleanse the soul, So that's the game plan. Good job, man. Well, I'm Jack for you. Thank you, sir, and I think this might be our longest intro ever, so thanks for sticking with us, folks. This is a long podcast here, but it's a good one, we gotta really it's almost a two part you can almost split it up in two podcasts, really, but um, I'm gonna stick them together. We'll get that great meal dere store in the front. We're gonna get a really interesting kind of almost a human interest piece here on the back half as we hear how Luke dealt with this once in a lifetime experience and um, and then we'll get back at you next week. So let's shut this down here. Let's jump over to my chat with Luke Brewster and uh I'll chat with you all soon on the Boundary Waters front. All right with me on the line now is Luke Brewster. Welcome to the show. Luke, Hey, thanks for having me on. Hey, I'm glad that we can have this chat. Um. It's it's a unique chat for me even today because what I'm most when I don't know if i'm most excited, but what makes you such an interesting guest to me is what you just told me a couple of minutes ago before we started recording this whole thing, which was that you listened to Wired to Hunt as one of the first things that helped you figure out how to how to get into bow hunting and stuff, and and that is like the coolest thing I can hear. Anytime I get to meet someone who can point to Wired to Hunt as something that's helped them or that kept them excited through the through the season or whatever, that is like the best thing for me. So I'm just stoked that this has been a helpful thing for you in the past. And uh, and glad that now it's kind of led to you having some cool hunting experiences. That's that's awesome. So thank you for for doing that, for listening and for kind of following along with what I've got going on. Yeah, definitely, I mean, I gotta thank you for putting all the information and doing everything you do, uh for us, Uh, some of the newer guys that are looking to get into it. I mean, uh, So it started when I got out of the marine corps um it was getting too cold to fish. I'm an avid fisherman, so uh, I started hunting with the buddy and I was looking for more information you know, after I picked up a bow, um kind of gather more information on on how to really get into it, and it stumbled up across your podcast, and uh, I just listened to as moon as I could head out to uh Illinois, and uh I started un out there. So the rest is history. Huh Um. So you were were messaging on Instagram at one point and you said that you were you were even following along with my whole holy field saga. Uh's familiar with that? Anything I did wrong? Do you have any advice for me? Because you obviously have figured out how to get it done with a buck after multiple years? What did I do wrong on that one? So? Man, to be honest, I pretty much just got lucky. I mean I had you know, I did everything right there best to do. But in terms of kind of patterning him, honestly, I just got kind of lucky. And he wasn't He wasn't close to where I mean, it was pretty close, but probably like a mile away from where we had pictures overnight. So that's amazing. Let's let's get into Let's set the stage for this whole thing first. So, so you you got into bow hunting after the marine corps. So you're an adult kind of onset bow hunter, right, and you're picking up stuff from podcasts and learning things as you go. Um, when did you when did you decide to start traveling out of state to go to Illinois because you you're you're from for in your right, right right, and so you start heading the Illinois just looking for a different experience. You're hoping to see more mature bucks or what's what led to you starting to make that trip? Okay, So, um, the first year I went hunting, my dad used to when I was a kid. Um, I never went with them. Kind of too young, I guess, but so my dad kind of helped me out. Uh. We we have a farm land out in Illinois, and I have about forty acres of wooden and then uh, the family that does my dad's farming, he has about a hundred and sixty acres wooded and it's the agriculture country out you know, in Illinois where I hunt. So it's pretty much hunting a lot of wind breaks and stuff out there. But after the question, Um, I hunted here in Virginia like late season with my dad's rifle and kind of trying to figure out you know, ways I can hunt other places and uh plays of access more and more places to hunt, so I can go out and try to figure things out, you know, less pressured. And so I started looking at the archery and I went to a few shops and picked up a few bows and shot a shot a bunch and kind of got some tips from the archery shop on you know, for him and everything. And uh so I ended up buying one late season that year, and then the next year, you know, the old summer leading up to the next season, UM, I had been talking to my dad about wanting to go up to Illinois to hunt the family land, and so I started playing that out and talked to the farmer's family and uh set that up to go out there for um for that season. And ended up going out there and meeting the guys that at home with out there now, and we just hit it off and really quick right off the bat. And they say kind of took me under their wing because my dad had given them permission to to hunt our land way back in a little so they it was right too, kind of invite me in and and uh let me hump hump with him. That's great. So was the How many years did you go to Illinois before you killed this buck? Or was it is it that first year you got to go down there? Um? It was actually I've been there twice before, h this previous season. So the first year I went out there, I ended up getting a good lesson on U on archery and you know your angle through your shot. Um. I had a nice buck coming in on me. I got, uh, got a little bit of buck fever going on when he came in and the way that uh he came in, he kind of came like a right under the stand pretty much, and I didn't think about the exit of the arrow, and I ended up one longing um. And uh so that was my first bad experience, uh with bow hunting, which taught me a valuable lesson and one that I think about every time, you know, I go back on a on a deer. Yeah. So what did you do from that point on? Then? I kind of looking into a little bit of your background and stuff. It seems like you take archery pretty serious now, a lot of practice. I saw you talking about practicing even out to a hundred yards. Um. It sounds like you really put a lot of work into into figuring that all out, Is that right? Yeah? So another you know, another outlet that I really got into was John Dudley has not gone t d um. He's like, you know, he's the guru of archery real world. I feel like, um, so, yeah, I'd paid a lot of sense to him and watched a lot of his stuff, and uh, me and my buddies a big challenging ourselves out, you know, shooting at different distances, just having fun and and that's where I got no kind of longer range shooting and and uh and just having fun with it, honestly. Yeah, gotta believe, right, I've I've always imagined and thought from my experience that if you get competent shooting extremely long ranges while just practicing, it makes those closer thirty forty yard shots or even twenty yard shots, makes those so easy or easier at least in the moment when you know you can stretch it out in practice, right, it just prepares you even That's that's my whole philosophy is you know, you shoot out father, I feel a lot easier about the other shots. Yeah. So you you start heading to Illinois, You've got some new friends now that they are hunting that farm with you, and this massive buck shows up on trail camera and as I don't understand it, it was for several years they were getting some pictures. He was a giant, so you knew this this giant buck was out there. He's back and he's obviously next level. What we're thinking, what were you and your buddies thinking when you saw this buck on trail camera and you knew that you might be hunting him. Was this something that was exciting? Was it stressful? I'm wondering because like just for me, you know, in Michigan, I had the biggest buck I've ever been able to hunt in Michigan showed up last year and it was really exciting. But at the same time, I was like, oh my gosh, it was like a whole new level of pressure. This like kind of once in a lifetime opportunity for me here in Michigan. And that was a very different experience for me. Did that feel and you know, different at all for you when you're have that kind of buck around? Yeah, so I'm more excited, you know, it's kind of like almost I thought that about it, like kind of winning the lottery, Like all these thoughts run through my head like what if I did this? You know what, you know, what would happen? Like, you know it would it be life changing or whatever. I wasn't really nervous because honestly, I didn't really think i'd ever see him pretty much. Uh stayed nocturnal of the previous years, and my buddy justin yet a shot at him the previous year, but there deflected off the branch and he didn't he didn't sell up anymore. But yeah, I was honestly just more excited and just the thought of you know, being able to put a tag on him um kept me up quite a few nights, Yeah, I bet especially the days leading too. But it wasn't really too nervous because you know, I just it's one of those things that if he comes around, he comes around. If he doesn't, and you know, I'm still enjoying the outdoors, that's a good attitude to have. Well, then it happens, right the two eighteen seasons there. Let's start, like, you make your trip out there. Walk me through what happened once you arrived in Illinois for trip um, walk me through the story? All right? So I headed out there is November one and Uh, it was pretty much right in the whole entire drive out there. It's about an hour drive from where I'm at in Virginia too to eastern Illinois, and uh, so it's right in the whole time. And I was thinking, in my head, I'll actually listen to your podcast US on the way out there, like I do every year. And then UM, I get Uh, I'm thinking in my head, you know you're talking to I forget what podcasts you're um, but uh, what guests you had on what was going on? But I just remember, you know, you know, there's gonna be a lot of deer coming around restening scrapes, so uh, you know, after the frame, and so I was hoping it would continue raining up until the next day when I could actually get out on and uh, I get to Illinois, it's still like kind of drizzling. Um. I meet up with Justin he got off of work, and we right around uh and uh pulled some cards from the cameras and just talked about a lot of things, mainly about my fassa and and how the weather is going to be um for the next week or so. And then we were talking about stand locations and everything and we head back to the house he went, He went to his house. I stayed at the off his uh his father the law's house. So later on that evening, UM he checked some of the He checked some of the cameras. UM. I believe he had some more pictures to move faster on them from the last time he checked. When we first got pictures of them were picking up stands. That night, I chose to stay on my forty acres. They sat closer to where they had pictures of them. Justin Ron, there's the two uh sun and laws of the farmer. They chose to sit pretty close to where they had pictures of them. Um. I decided to say on my forty acres just because they had been you know, I didn't want to put any pressure on them, but you know, so like their spots, like they've been the ones running the cameras and hanging stands and cutting steed and lanes and everything, you know, while I'm here in Virginia. So I just thought it was right that uh, you know, I don't try to intrude, you know that makes sense. Um, But I out on my forty acres and I was I had a few days come in that morning. What was that spot? Like, by the way, what was the spot you picked? What was the setup? So the morning I shot him in the evening, but the morning where I sat, it was just um. It was actually um, pretty quarly a dough bed, um pretty much almost I don't know, maybe thirty yards from a big dough bed, a bought over of a grown drafs and um kind of some immature trees. I had a few days, about like four or five days, come in that morning, coming coming to bed, and no box was trailing them. So it's a nice spot. It's like it's gotten nice to creak that run through. It makes the uge shape and um, a lot of fear will cross the creek and come over and come up this embankment and come in check the dough bed. So quite addistance from where you know M. Fassa his area was. But yeah, I I just figured i'd sit there. You know, if good sized buck came to, like I had in my head that you know, I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to. I didn't think I was gonna be putting eyes on my fasta. I was just gonna shoot the first mixture buck I saw. And uh so that morning. I didn't you know, I just saw the days, Um about four or five days come into the bedding area and and uh uh settle in in there, and about like ten o'clock in the morning's in thirty we decided to get down and and uh, we'll get some breakfast and discuss some more stands and meet up with Ron and and uh talk with him and Justin. So we go. We go to breakfast. Um, then at a cafe it's kind of about like twenty minutes away, and uh, I forget what Ron and uh and uh and Justin how to do? I think that would be something out their houses or something, and so, um, well we'll go back to at breakfast. So we're discussing FADI locations and um, Justin had pointed one out to me on the map that I didn't have marked on my on my GPS, and uh he said, the stand has been there for about five years, and uh, they haven't moved it and they're talking about taking it down, but nobody stating about five years or so. So um that one kind of stuck out to me. Had good win for that day or that evening sit. Um. I kept that in the back of my mind. So after that, after breakfast, um I headed back to uh back back to the farmer's house and was getting ready for the evenings it and we're all techning each other with which stands we're gonna go to. Believe, Ron says, first he wanted to sit push to where we had pictures of them, like camera where move faster was moving. Then UM I picked next, and I would pick the same standard Ron pick because I was confused on what Standy was talking about, and Justin said, hey, uh Ron, you know Ron it says that one. So I I was thinking about what my next move was, and I told the guys, ay, I'm gonna go sitting that standard had been sat in in five years, and it's like a mile south of where they are at. They had good wind. It was like a northwest wind, kind of a creek bottom, perfect wind for for movement golden uh west to east, east to west. Yeah, I told him I was gonna sit in that stand there. They're fine with that, Justin says another stand that was kind of close to where Ron was sitting. I get out there a little bit earlier than them, like about an hour hour hour and a half or so, so I pull up the access road. I parked my truck, I get dressed, start making my way towards the kind of across the corn field, making a bee line straight for the woods. And uh, because I hadn't been to that stand before, I was kind of confused as the way it was at. And I'm looking at my GPS. I'm looking up in the trees and there was actually hit and in this beautiful offsade orange tree that was just wicked. It had vines everywhere's awesome concealment. And uh. I actually walked across the tail at n Fossil came in on um quite a few times, just looking for the stand and uh so, so I found the stand. I get up in there and I'm getting saddled and I ain't my bow up and just getting saddles, and I started range and everything around me, trying to get an idea of like, uh, you know, the just different ranges so that I keep that in the back of my head. And while I'm doing that, I noticed a scrape um like right off the deer trail um and I ranged that at twenty six yards. I kept that in the back of my head and started ranging other things and um, so I got an idea of you know, what what yard is? M be seeing that from that in that chief stand, and so uh sit there for about, um probably about three or four hours, and I started catching some movement off to the east. And it's about two days. They're coming in and they're acting a little weird. Um. I thought maybe either wind was swirling a little bit down. Then maybe they caught wind to me, and that's why they're kind of high stepping and bobbing their heads, you know, kind of cautiously walking, you know, towards me from from east to west. And then uh, so I lose them in the thicket. I'm watching them through my binders. I'm loving I lost them in the thicket. Um, so I bring down my binders. I look all. I catch some more movement to my left. It's like, I don't know, thirty yards from me, and it's New Fasila. He's coming in and he's walking on the trail that just trudged all over, um get looking for the stand and he's making his way over to the scrape that I ranged that twenty six yards and I'm like in my head, I'm like, oh my god, it's him, and I'm like I just kind of frozen. I snapped out of it, and I was like, all right, I gotta do something. I gotta do something. And I look at his rack and I was like, all right, I can't look at his rack anymore. I got to focus on his body. I picked a point. I picked a spot on this body that I wanted to shoot at, and I just focused on that. So by then he by the time he gets to this great if I've already hugged up my bindings. I grabbed um, grabbed my bow, and I'm being really smooth and you know, very cautious about every movement I make. And uh so he bought up that there at about a couple of times, three or four times. And by then I get the full draw and I'm still going I'm going through all everything my checklist in my head of how I need to make the shot, um, you know, everything that I need to do to make a good shot. And uh so I get the full jaw and I've got my pen settled on him. You know, my bubbles is good, I got my anchor points. Everything's perfect. I've looked at uh made sure my hair is gonna clear. Anybody answers or any limbs that made the fleck my arrow and he starts splinking the branch above him and that's when I I squeezed my release and some similarity, and uh it hit him and it made a pretty loud noise. Um. I thought I had actually hit his shoulder blade, and uh, it looked like a good stop. But that noise is kind of got in the back of my mind, like because I shoot an expandable mechanical and I I was just nervous. I was nervous about it, but at the same time, the shot looked good. It felt good, so it was in the back of my mind. He takes off and uh crosses this creek and I hear uh. He runs through the thicket, past the thicket and hear loud trash. And I didn't know if he had run into, you know, a log or something made it, maybe fell all got up, walked off whatever. So I sit there and I'm, you know, thinking about everything in my head that just happened, trying to calm myself down, and I'm texting the guys telling him what happened, you know, and just shot me fasta. UM. Everyone's in disbelief, and like, are you serious. Are you sure? So I'm open to tree. I just shot me fasta Um. I pulled up my binders and I'm like second for blood, looking for blood anywhere around that scrape that he was just that and I'm not seeing anything. Um when he took Oh yeah, when he took off, the air was pin wheeling. Um. And that actually the air penetrated penetrated all the way through him. But when he took off, he snapped the arrow in half in front of him, and the broad headside went flying somewhere. And I saw the knock into the air spinning doing a pin wheel as he took off, And so that kind of made me a little uneasy, um seeing that. So what a few things just before you go any further? Yeah, how how did you keep so dang collected when he was coming in like that? And you were able to stay focused and like think through your checklist and making sure those things are all spot on before taking the shot. Um. I mean that's that's a hard thing to do with any buck, let alone this buck. Did you have to We're doing a lot of self talk. Did you have to ever like control your breathing? I mean, I don't know what could be going on physically, But I gotta believe maybe some shakes or some seriously fast heart pumping. Was that a thing or were you just like, for whatever reason, you were in that zen mode and just worked out perfectly. Yeah, it's uh the thing, I didn't have to watch him come in. If I had to watch him come in, my arrow would probably be in the next cop. So when I first saw him, here was that thirty yards So I didn't really have time to watch him. You know, I didn't have time for all that nervousness. It's a good point, you know, just kind of cloud my mind. Um so yeah, I just kind of went in autopilot mode, just focused on his body, and uh, I pull myself. I have to make this happen. I have to make this happen. That's great, man. I wish I could be that cool. I'm still trying to figure out how to get better at that myself. So so you get the shot, you're a little nervous about it. Um, you text your buddies. What's your mental state at this point? Did you now lose it? Did you lose your cool, con collectedness and freak out or were you just nervous or how at this point, Like, are you allowing yourself to be happy? What are you thinking? Yeah? Yeah, So I did a few fish pumps, you know, I still have that nervousness it And there'd a few fish pumps, and uh I texted the buddy my buddies and kind of asked him, you know, what what next step should I do? Should I I'm getting down in half an hour and kind of checking out the scene like where I saw him, Or should I go to the truck and come back in like an hour or two, you know, give him some time. Um Hey, they said they're gonna come down to me here shortly. So I was just like, all right, we'll just oh waiting the tree for a half an hour and get down head of the truck and maybe meet them there and get down from the the tree. I couldn't take it. I had to go and check them out and check out the area. Yeah. So I snuck up over there and I'm looking for blood. I'm not seeing anything, and uh it made me just feel back to the same sick feel and I have when after I saw my arrow been wheeling, you know, been wheeling around him. I'm like, all right, well, let me at least find the area. I'm watch about like ten yards from where I saw him directtionally went and I find the aero It snapped in half. I was missing a good I don't know, nine inches ten inches of the arrow, and uh he's got about twelve inches of blood on it on the arrow and I'm seeing a little bit of blood um on the on the folly, on the on the ground, and uh, I started following that a little bit. Um. It wasn't very big, wasn't wasn't too much. I walked about another I don't know five yards to the creek they jumped across, and I see his hoopprint there and uh I picked my head up and I'm just kind of glass and left the right, and uh, I see a big rack sticking up and I'm like, there's no way, there's no way that's him. And I was just like infantly pulled out my phone text of the guys. I got eyes on them and they're all told me congratulations and everything. And uh, I put my phone back in my pocket and I knocked another arrow and I started creeping my way over to him, um, being as quiet as I can. Uh, then if he was you know, if he was just bedded down because he was injured or something, I didn't want to they don't want to jump him, or if if I did, I'd wanna follow up stide. So I did, uh start making my way over to him and and confirmed he was down for good, and did my celebration and and sat down with him and just check them out and thank them for for everything good you know, done for me and the guy is only excitement over the two years, and you know the me well, it was provided to my me and my family. So what was that like? Was that was it Was it any different than any other deer you killed? Or was it the same? Like you described the gratitude, um, excitement, I'm sure, but what all was going through your mind at that point? I was honestly in disbelief. I was just I don't know, it was just it was it was weird. It was it was kind of a weird feeling. It was, um it was who's something else? Um? Yeah, trying to describe it was it was kind of sad. You know, my buddies have been chasing too. I kind of felt bad for them. Uh Uh. I was kind of sad that you know, this kind of this mythical creature that you know, it's been so hard to to put a tag on. Um, he's not gonna be chasing him more. And I was pumped, you know, I was excited. Though you know I was excited, I kind of felt a little drunk right after I walked upon him. I was thinking when I picked up, as when I was checking him out, looking at the rack and everything, and there's a fresh break and um, so I was kind of thinking about that as well, like, all right, well I noticed this and I'm pretty sure he had something right here and it was it was pretty fresh. So I decided to retrace my steps and by by the time he jumped over the creek is uh the inshurts and next when really opened up and it was just like a huge red carpet all the way to him, from the creek to him. So he started uh backtracking and following his trail um about like I don't know, five yards ten yards from him was a tree that he ran into. That was a loud crash I heard, and he had broken off that that it was that big club jop time. Uh, he had snapped that off when he crashed. So I ended up finding that at the base of the tree, and it matched up perfectly with the fresh break, and so I was able to keep that and poping you on as able to count that on the score, which definitely benefited. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's for anyone who's not seen pictures of the deer, it is. It's a wildly unique animal. I mean, how do you even try to how do you even try to describe that to someone and into someone like what it looked like, Yeah, it looked like a tree roots system. Yeah, yeah, a root ball. Um. It's just, uh, it's unreal. He put on over a hundred inches this year. I don't know if it's because they switched from in the theater from corn to beans, because there has been from corn to beans because there's been corn like the previous two years, or something like that. I don't know what it was, but he obviously he had the genetics. He was showing the potential last year. He had some non typical um points coming off. But I mean he just blew up. Yeah, crazy, crazy, unique animal and beautiful, I mean, just a really really special creature. Yeah, what happens after this? That's something that like I I understand what it feels like to see a big animal come in that you've been thinking about for years or weeks and weeks and weeks. I know what that excitement is like. I know what it's like to walk up on a deer and put your hand on his chest and have that gratitude and that sorrow and that excitement. I know what that feels like. Um, what I don't know about is what happens after you have an experience like that with such a rare, like a world class animal that no one has ever seen before, killed before like this? What starts happening next? I mean, do people show up at your door that night where there were there? I mean, what what happened over the next day or the next couple of hours described to me the what I'm guessing was maybe some hysteria of some kind. Did that happen? Yeah, like the first of media outrage and yeah, what what goes on? Yeah? So I don't have Facebook kind of deleted that like a year two years before, um this had all happened. It's just been on Instagram. Really, So I sent the pictures to my buddy after it happened, um here in Virginia, and he presented on the page and it's just made its round. So pretty much every archery or you know, every hunting page or a lot of the hunting pages, and um, I guess the game warden was getting a lot of emails, uh saying you need to get to check the deer. I'll check this out. So bad night I went to bed. Well, one of my Justin's buddies, you know, he'd been telling Justin, hey, you guys need to keep that deal locked up and keep it secured. Uh. It's kind of like there's a few crazy people out there and you just don't want something you you know, like that getting you know, stolen or or destroyed or something because of jus like that. So we ended up blocking them up and I went bed. I went to bed that night, well tried too, probably only slept about like maybe two hours. Um, just so excitement everything that had just happened, and just kept replay and everything over in my head. Um. So the next day or next morning, um, just when I asked me if I wanted to have one of his uh his buddies come out, his dad, his dad buddy come out and play some good photos with his with his camera. And I said, yeah, let's do that let's go ahead and uh get that plan. Um, so we put some pictures around like nine o'clock and we're getting, uh getting some good field pictures or the make some good hero pictures. Some of the field pictures. I guess there's a lot of people complaining about being too much blood and stuff like that. So I got some good uh good hero picks, and um, uh the next thing I know, the game warns pull him down the driveway and uh, I just got done taking some pixtures with them and started talking to the game board and he's checking everything out and makes everything is you know, I'm the up and up and everything was and uh make sure everything was good. And after that, uh, I started trying to figure out, you know, where are I getting next? To get a taxi bar miss and get them takes and and ready for that and get them to the processor. Was this throughout that process? Was that? Was it still fun or did it start getting stressful? Like when the game? Was that a stressful situation? Yeah? Even though you're you know, you know, you're you did everything expressed to and you're all cleared. He checked on everything. You know, Um, you're still nervous. I mean, you know, It's just one of those things that, uh, no matter if you're in the right, still gonna feel like there's something that you can do wrong, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. You hear all these horror stories about people and you know things that you know, some game warrings, games that they might play or something. But oh no, I had a great experience with the game warnings out there. They're all nice and they're they're fair, they're good, good guys. So you got you got all checked out of the game war and everything's clear. Yeah, that was That was probably the best thing matter happened, because you know, everyone on social media, not everyone, but there's a handful of people on social media saying he's a highpense dere and this and that, and the game warring came by and took pictures of them and got the story and took pictures of his ears because if there's a you know, if there's a hole in his ear, then that would mean he get attack and he's you know, highpense came from a high sense place, so he got his person that he needed to form to put it out a statement to the public saying, hey, it's a free range beer. That's great. That's great. It must have been just a nice relief so that you didn't have to have that criticism. And I gotta believe your situation is so interesting to me, um because just in doing what I do, like just sharing my stories and my pictures and everything through social media for Weird Hunt, and telling stories on the podcast and everything, just putting myself out there to that degree, I get so much flak for stuff. There's so many comments for people nitpick what I did or disagree with what I did, or question what I did. And a big thing for me over the last few years that happens more and more is I've had to learn how to deal with like public critique. And I've had to in some cases like just stop listening to stuff, Like there's certain places I know if someone shares my video on I don't know, certain places I know, there's gonna be people in that audience who don't like me as much or whatever, and they're gonna critique me for this thing or that thing. And I've I've had to just start to not look at stuff because because it impacts me, like it negatively influences my mood for a couple of hours, it ruins my night and I don't need that, so I've had to try to find ways to avoid that. Did you have to deal with that at all? Did did the social media stress and comments and public opinion? Did that ever get to a point that it was negatively impacting you? Stressing you out? Like? How do you deal with that? Because I gotta believe there's a whole lot of talk going on around this, right Yeah, So at first I was like, I didn't care at all. I was like, whatever this means I did something good and people are jealous and hating. You know, people are gonna hate or you know, try to downplay, you know, something awesome that happened. I get. I mean I get the people questioning things because if I, if I was in there of shoes, I would have been like that probably would have been the first I thought that had popped into my head without reading or hearing the story or anything or knowing anything about it. It's like, is that a hyphenser So I get that some people, But I mean even after the story is out, you know the game one David, you know his thumbs up and and everything that, you know, all the proof that's out there, you know, I figured it would sut shut a lot of people up. But you know, you still get it, or I still get it every now and then. But I guess it's just one of those things. And yeah, at first it didn't bother me at all, but then after a little while, and kept hearing it and kept getting this, and there's been a lot of people that have had my back and you know, pretty much vouched for me and shouts for the deer and everything. So it's nice to have that that support. But yeah, it kind of it kind of bothered me a little bit. But now it's just like whatever, I just keep on scrolling passes, keep on keeping Yeah, I think they're pretty much this one um one attention or something. I don't know. Yeah, that's a very good point. Now, what about the regular media, not social media, but actual reporters magazines, I don't know, I mean podcasters like me. Did that start happening right away where people reaching out to you or what? What's that look like? What happens in that kind of situation. So I guess like the first few weeks is kind of heavy, a little bit um people wanted to get ahold of me from magazines and stuff like that. Different publications. U, um, just a you know, a handful of people and get a hold of me about everything, and uh kind of put it on hold for a little bit because it's wanted to kind of settle in and figured things out, put a lot of it on pause, just figure I'd just take it slow. I don't really do want to do too much until after the score. Um. So yeah, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I figured it is, you know, I would have everyone and their mother coming out after me for something or other. But it really wasn't too bad. I guess that a lot of people that I've been talking to me recently, they kind of said they wanted to wait until the dust settled to get a hold of me. So I kind of got like a second wave, like quite a few months later. It was just like, okay, here's another wave of coming in of of uh, you know, people that want to get some information or do a story or or whatever. Yeah, So did you did you find out pretty quickly that hey, this is probably the largest, the highest scoring deer ever killed. Like, was that something that you knew pretty quickly when someone scored it? And did that? Did that sink into you? What did that mean to you? Did that? Was that like a thing like, oh, well, that's cool. But either way it's a massive, like amazing experience and deer or was it like did that change things somehow in your head? And this became like a holy ship moment? Like what was that? Like? Yeah? So I think because I'm you know, I'm fairly new to hunting. Um, I mean, I grew up around it, but I didn't really get into hunting until like, I don't know, five or six years ago, so I'm still kind of new to it. And it didn't really think in like, you know, benches didn't really matter to me. I guess it was more about like the majority of the deer by the time I shot him. So, I mean I was just happy to put like a buck of that caliber down. You know, I didn't really care about benches or if he was a world rectord or anything. And and so I didn't really, I don't know, I wasn't too hung up on that that whole thing. Um, I was just pumped to have you know, a good material. Buck Down is my second honestly, my second book, Buck with a Bow, Believe it or not. So It's a great way to get started. Yeah. Yeah. Where do I go from now? Though? Yeah? Well that is that is the question, like how how did this? So you you kill this once in a lifetime for all of us buck? Where do you go from now? Did you? Like? What are your where's your head at? For two thousand nineties? I've got a bunch of more questions that I want to still get tackled about what happened right after the buck? But since you brought that up, where's your head at? Leading into this season? Um, I don't know how do you follow that up? What are you trying? What do you do? You want to shoot a mature buck? Do you want to shoot a big buck? Do you? I don't know. I have no idea. What's got to be going through your mind? So pretty much? Um yeah, I gotta fill the frazer first and foremost. Um, I don't really buy meat at the store ever, really, I just need you know what I what I get from the field. Um, So first as still a fraser um tag A few days, Um, go out to Illinois and uh try to put it my sure back down. Um, I got a few good ones on camera now, I mean, if it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen, but I plan on kind of. I want to go out west, you know, not this year because I pretty much um used up all my vacation from work, you know, doing things with my fasta, going on a few shots and whatnot, so getting scored. I've just been back and forth across the country so much this year, probably put about twenty miles on my truck so far, and burned burned through a lot of vacations. So my plan for you know, next year, after this season, the following season is I want to go to Idaho and you know, go go hunting out west, get that experience, because to me, hunting is more about like the experience, um uh than me. I love Sason White Shills, but there's there's so much more, you know, I want to experience. I love it. I love it. I think you're I think you're right on, and I'm really glad that someone with that perspective is who killed a buck like like the one you did. Um, that's pretty cool. How do you how is this this inside look that you've gotten to get at the at the you've heard if you've listened to podcast you first talked about this, like the kind of big buck media frenzy around high scoring antlers. Right, Sometimes you talk about like does it go overboard? Is there a negative side to this at all? You have now gotten thrust right into the middle of that as a relatively new bow hunter. All of a sudden, you kill the highest scoring deer that's ever been killed by hunter. You're surrounded by media. People are wanting your picture, people are wanting your interviews, They're doing stories about you. People. I'm sure they want, you know, shooting their ball or using this thing or using that thing. What Now that you've lived in how do you feel about it? Do you feel like it's is it cool? Do you feel like there's a negative side to it? Do you feel like it's just a great positive thing. I'm just kind of curious about coming out of this how it feels to you. Oh, there's several things. It's it's kind of like picking up a second job. So I'm kind of kind of a little bit overwhelmed with the everything right now. Um. But on another thing is it's awesome to be able to share this beer with so many other people. I love going to shows and just talking to you know, regular people, regular hunters that just like to get out there, and you know, I love conversating with them and meeting new people. That's That's probably one of the most positive things I've gotten out of the experience, you know, since since putting the tag on him, is going out and just talking to people and and uh just staring the experience and let them enjoy, you know, what God has put on this earth for us to enjoy. You know, God's great. So oh yeah, that's awesome. Probably big positive right there is just being able to be the guy that gets to share such a So it's an awesome, awesome creature. That's a that's amazing privilege. Now, has there been any downsides to it other than it just taking up a lot of your time? Um, anything that you experienced, like man, that that was kind of icky anything like that. Um No, not really. Um, just it picks up a lot of time. Um yeah, just so yeah, it's pretty much. This sucks a lot of time time away from family and and uh might put a little bit of short in my hunting season this year, but I mean it's worth it. Yea plenty more years to come, So that's true. I guess you this is this probably isn't gonna happen again, so you might as well, uh soak it all in and really cherish this whole experience. I gotta believe. Yeah, but you know, you never know, I mean I thought you never thought. Nobody thought, you know, the beaty bug is gonna get broken so or even the talk about so. I mean, it could happen to anybody, you know. Yeah that's the truth. Do you feel like do you feel like you've changed it all coming out of this? Did this force you to change to grow to I mean maybe in hunting or maybe even outside of that. I just gotta believe this is this is probably a life changing experience. I'm just curious it has changed your life. Um. I learned that I need to get more comfortable with being on the camera or just I don't know, just um dealing with media type things. I don't know, kind of a little bit overwhelming effort because I'm just some you know, some nobody you know from Virginia, and then I get thrust it into the big limelight and cameras pointing at me everywhere and doing all this other stuff. Yeah overwhelming, Um yeah, I mean more more time, you know, I'm around it the more comfortable I'll get. But it was one of those things I learned that you know, I needed that that I need to grow to, uh to deal with. I guess do you feel like this is something now? Having gotten all this attention? I guess around this year and this experience, do you are you? Are? You? Do you want more of that? Like do you hope that, hey, you know, I'm gonna get another big buck, I'll get to share that story and like you you you express that you enjoy getting to share that experience and share that buck with other people, Like that was a cool thing for you? So excited for more of that? Or are you feeling like, you know what, I'm kind of looking forward to eventually, just like fading back in the shadows and getting my privacy back, Like where are you on that one? Yeah? I mean I think about that from time to time, just like kind of flying back into the satus and just going out and hunting, you know, just provide, you know, my own piece and I'm just doing my own thing. But at the same time, I'm like, whoa, you know, if I thought about maybe filming some hunts in the teachers just for if not, you know, to share on with other people or just to have for myself, you know, just to share with buddies and and stuff like that. So I don't know, it's kind of up in the air, like where what I want to do now? I don't know. Yeah, it's a good position to be and you can try new things, and I gotta believe some cool opportunities have come out of this too, um, which which has gotta be fun. Yeah. So what about from a hunting standpoint? Um, Like you said, kind of lightning struck and this crazy thing happened to you, But you obviously made some right decisions along the way to someone's luck. Someone's being prepared for that luck to arrive. Um. But now when you look back on the hunt itself and you look back on the situation in a couple of years you've been going out there, did you learn anything from this experience from a hunting standpoint that now in two thousand nineteen you're going to be putting into action in some kind of way with your future hunts. Um. I haven't really thought about that. Um Uh, do you ever think about why? Do you ever think about why he was there? Like what what led him to want to be there? Because I'm always kind of interested, Like I'll shoot a buck and then I'll sit back and say okay, and it doesn't happen till long afterwards, because then when it just happens, I'm just excited and happy it happened. But long afterwards I'll sit back and say, why did that happen? You know, I set my stand there, I decided to hunt there because I thought something would happen, but what actually ended up being the case? And then I'll kinda sit there and bs with myself and try to think, well, he was coming from this direction. I bet you he was trying to do this or that Bill walked in and that's why he was there. Did you ever get a couple of quiet minutes to think back on that and kind of say, you know, I think he ended up coming in here because he was moving here to I don't know, wind Betting area, or do you think he was just on scrapeline or what do you think? So he Um, he doesn't ever so up. We don't have any summer pictures of him. He doesn't. We don't know where he summers at. Um. He always say is up late. It starts up late October, and that's when we start getting pictures of him on camera. Um, so this shows up pretty much for the rut, and then after the fever he disappears and you know, we don't see him again until next next next, uh next season, right before the rut. So it's kind of, uh, one of those things. He's just he lives somewhere else and comes over to stay some days around on the property and and gets out of there. So I think what he was doing is he was betted down. We actually got pictures of him the morning that I, um, the morning of the day I saw him. So he's headed down from where the guys were sitting. Um, they passed a few cameras. He was actually walking the field edge, um outing the open around like eight or nine in the morning. Eight He's like right below where the guys were at. And uh, he was headed down towards well, headed towards me where I sat that evening, and uh, I guess he was going down to going somewhere he felt safe to bed down. It was close to where you know, some other days were at and so I think he betted down on this point kind of close to where I was sitting. I must have passed passed them on the way to the stand. And when I got to the stand, Um, a few hours went by. He got up and started making his rounds two different scrapes, and and uh, just freshening things up, freshen and is getting thiss sent back out there? And then there you were. Man, what uh what a hunt? What I just I just can't amend. What What an interesting experience must have been for you. Now, now you're almost a year out from it. You've experienced the hunt itself, You've experienced the media hysteria around it, You've experienced all these additional events and things you've been going to and travel in the country and sharing the story with people. Um, it sounds like there was some good stuff. There were some things that were stressful at moments too. Looking back on that part of things, is there anything you wish you'd done differently? Is there anything you wish you could go back and change or redo or anything, or did it all go the way you kind of hoped? Um, it's all pretty much gone with that I hoped. I mean, yeah, I really can't complain. Um, that's great. Working with the deer companies or the you know, some of the products that I've used. Um, yeah, I mean there's a luckily you know some of the the companies, you know, the products that I use, they have been pretty awesome me helped me out with the few things so help mail for the future of season. So that's great, that's terrific. Definitely burn to it. Oh yeah. So so then my last question for you, it's probably an easy one, but I don't know, maybe not. If you are sitting in a tree. Let's say you're in a double ladder stand, and just just just roll with this with me. Let's say you're in a double ladder stand. You and your best friend are sitting in that ladder stand together. Your buddy he's hunting, he's got the bow. You don't have a bow, you're not gonna shoot. You're just sitting with him for the night. And a buck shows up half an hour before the end of shooting. Light comes walking in and he stands in front of your buddy at twenty yards and this buck is obviously the largest white tail that's ever been seen in the wild before. It's bigger than the buck you killed. And your buddy turns to you and he says, hey, Luke, should I shoot him? What would you say would you say no, all the craziness, the stress, all the time, it's gonna take away from your family and friends, it's not worth it. Or will you say yes, this is gonna be the coolest thing that ever happened. Shoot, hell yeah, shoot that yeah nice? All right, definitely don't don't turn down that opportunity. Very cool, awesome. Well, uh, Luke, I appreciate you taking the time to to share this whole experience. It's it's really cool that that someone who just loves to be out there hunting, wants to meet, wants to have a great experience, wants to, you know, every once while get a mature buck, that that someone like that was able to capture lightning in a bottle and and have a have a life changing experience like this and and share that store with people. So so thanks for doing that, Luke, and for sharing it with us. Yeah, thank you, Mark, thanks for having me on. And I guess the only thing I want to know is, uh, next time you've got one of these mega Bucks in Illinois, you just let me know about it so I can come down and check it out. Alright, look, good luck this season. I hope you have just as much fun in the coming weeks as you did last year. Thank you, good luck to you this season. I appreciate it and that is a rap. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this one long episode, two different unique topics, but we covered a whole suite of different things that hopefully can be helpful, maybe insightful, and definitely interesting. Good luck to all of you out there hunting. Stay tuned to the Media YouTube channel for another episode of the Back Forward coming soon, and over on the wire one Instagram, I'll have lots of updates from my Boundary waters hunt and all the other good stuff we got going on, so check it out and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

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