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 nineteen in Today. In the show, Dan and I are breaking down our two thousand nineteen rut hunts, my first success on the back forty, our efforts to better balance hunting and family, and are hard learned lessons from another rut hunting grind. Okay, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. This is for me, the episode where I breathe this big sigh of relief, like rut cation has passed. The grind for me has come to an end. I've slept in an hour or two later than I have been for most of the last three weeks. I finally don't feel like a zombie. I imagine you might be in the same place. Dan, I am exactly the opposite, my friend, Like you're waking up earlier. No, I'm not waking up earlier. I'm just getting more sleep on my rout vacation because the kids kids. Yes, when I was out hunting, you know, I'm spending time at my mom's or at my my family home. That's where my camp is, my you know, deer camp is. And so when you go to bed at nine ten o'clock and then you wake up at four every morning, uh, you get seven to six hours of continuous sleep. Last night, I went to bed at like ten and was woken up multiple times and I had to wait. You know, it's just it's crazy. But I I am now back into zombie mode here at my house. I guess I'm lucky. My son sleeps right through the night, and so I'll be you usually get you know, he'll usual sleep till seven in the morning, he'll go down to like eight, sleep till seven. So you don't ever say that to me within striking distance, because I'll probably punch your right in your mouth. I hate it when other parents are like, oh what your kids don't sleep to the night and mind does it sounds like a parenting issue. That's gotta be it, dude, I would doubt it. I wouldn't doubt it. Uh So I will avoid making that comment anymore. But the game plan for today, other than making you feel really bad about not getting sleep, is uh talking about what we've just been doing over the last two or three weeks because we haven't gotten to check in since that whole rut period began. So I wanted to walk through, you know, our rut, talk through what went right, what went wrong, what we learned from it, UM, tell the stories of of the the exciting moments that you and I had. UM. It's always fun for me to kind of do this debrief, to take some time to really kind of try to or process what happened, because, at least for me, the rut is this like I don't know, it's a marathon, but it's like a million miles of minutes, go go, go, go, go, go go. I always need something like this where I can sit back, think it through, digest it, and and even appreciate it a little bit. Sometimes just having a conversation like this helps me appreciate what just happened. So that's what I'm thinking. If you're up for it, I'm down, dude. So on a one to ten scale, how would you rate your two thousand nineteen rut cation. I'm telling you this right now. I had so much fun it should be illegal, Like I had such an absolute blast going Sure, your wife's not listening to this. I don't want to want you to get in trouble. No, we already had the argument about it, so oh, you know, just like, well, you know, I hope you had fun, but I was here with the kids and blah blah blah blah blah. You know, I'm just like, hey, whatever, Like you just at some point you just stopped listening to him and you just say, hey, this is this is what I'm gonna do. So you go back this trip, come back to the trip like, oh, it was horrible, honey, it was really awful. I'm I can't do that though. It's I can't do that because I walk into the house and I'm like, hey, everybody, how's it going. I'm refreshed, I'm being happy dad. You know, let's do this, let's be a parent, let's go play, let's color and all this. Uh and then here she is, you know, she while we were on the rut or while I was hunting, she you know, got sick, so she got like a sore throat and just felt really crappy and and all this stuff. And here I am. You know, it's like I'm out ever my balls off, but I got I'm doing it with a big smile on my face, you know, So I don't know. Well, yeah, that's a that's a tricky one. We'll have to talk about that a little bit more later too, because I definitely had some of some of that same balance issue that I had to think about too. But but sorry, you were talking about how awesome it was and you were at the time of your life. Dude. I needed a rut like this though, because the last three years I went into, UM, I felt like I got off easy, you know, every the stars kind of a line the last three years where see two thousand and sixteen. Um, you know, I hunted one day and then a huge, like twenty four hour rain storm came through. I'm like, ah, I know what I need to do. I got some trail out camera intel. I'm gonna pop into this fence row. I'm gonna climb up. Uh. I saw a buck stand out of his bed, grunted, came in shot him right that. That was two thousand sixteen. Two thousand seventeen, went into a new farm that I had hunted one or two times in early October. UH went into a run and gun I wanted to set up in this terrain feature that was leading to a really big crp field. As I'm walking in, see a ton of scrapes set up inside the timber, you know, outside of this betting area. Deer walks through. He's at a range one grunt rat. He turns around, comes in. I shoot him. Two thousand eighteen, set up in another terrain feature inside of basically this pinch point slash corridor behind a standing cornfield, not on the food edge or not on the field edge. Um it rained all day, waited for the rain to stop. The second the last rain drop hit the ground, I was already in the tree. But comes out shoot him. Three years in a row, right, pretty much just you know, I think, uh, three days, three days right, make us sound really easy, And I wan, man, what I'm getting at is, you know it's not. It's not easy, right. I mean, it's not like I just walked into a fresh property and killed these deer. You know, this is this is seven eight nine years of knowing this property, knowing where the rain features are, scouting all this stuff, and putting myself in the best possible position. This year was a little bit different. Not only was I going into a rut where I had my mindset on just a handful of deer or a certain caliber of deer. Um. I also was fighting things, like I would say, within a half a mile of this farm, there was close to a thousand acres of standing corn right, and close to five acres of it were bordering the farm that I hunt. So it was just I knew I had some obstacles in front of me, but I knew I also needed to fall into the routine like I always do and and just get at it. It just took longer this year, but that's what I needed. I didn't want really an easy season. I wanted because there's something happens to me anyway when you when you go and you start to do you hunt that first week right and you're just like, you know, I'm having fun. I'm seeing some deer, not really what I want, but I'm seeing them. And then there's a moment where the grind kicks in and then some people bitch auld complain about it. But for me, I really like to embrace it because I love it. I love that point where you're just you know, the first week you don't want to sleep in, you're happy. The second week you're like, oh, man, I could, I would really love to teen more minutes. Or it's the one day it was negative ten with wind chill and I'm walking in and I know I gotta, you know, climb up in this stand and sit there an hour before the sun comes up and I'm freezing my balls off. But I loved it, you know what I mean. Like you can bitch and complain or you can embrace it. And I did a little bitch, and but I also embraced it. And that's when you start to really For me, I like, really enjoyed myself. So if I would have tagged out in the first week of this season, it would have just been, oh, I had fun. But I hit that that grind point. I hit that the point where you just you start to feel, I don't know, there's something different about me when I get to that point, and I I just am able to enjoy everything that much more. Hopefully that makes sense. Well, I can't claim to ever really understand your Dan, but but I can't say that I get what you're saying in this case, and and uh and and for me, I definitely appreciate and end result much more when there had to be struggled to lead up to it, and so I've always said, like, I don't I don't want to have that hunt where I killed a buck on the first day. Of course, you know, if it happens, it happens, that's great. But I always my favorite hunts are the ones where you struggle for seven days or something like that and you think it's not gonna happen, and you've almost lost hope and then boom it comes through. Or you had hike and hike and hike and hike and hike and you were miserable and tired and the grind was wearing you down, and then it finally pays off. Like that is the payoff that's always the most meaningful. Um. So yeah, at that point this year, yes, in a different kind of way. Um. I mean, I mean absolutely, I definitely hit the grind um and definitely was wearing and dogging down because my kind of my marathon started earlier this year. Um because basically it was basically from October, I think from October until November fift I hunted all but four days. I think, um, because I did like that mentor hunt for a weekend and then I was home for a day and then I left for the seven days of hunting in the Boundary waters, and then I was Then I immediately started hunting for Tran for like three days, and then I immediately started filming an episode of the Back forty for three days. And then I got back and immediately started hunting in that late October time period for Train again, and then went straight back to the Back forty for a week and then straight back for Tran, and so I didn't stop. I mean, it took just a couple of days in between that whole basically a month long period. I hunted I think twenty five or twenty six days. So, um, so you were just the hunter too, you were you also had to play guide for a little bit. Yeah, So I mean there was two days of me guiding a new hunter on that mentor hunt field the Hork event, and then hunted myself in Minnesota, and then hunted for a few days. And then on the Back forty I hunted with Doug during and I hunted those days, but also was was helping him get set up and giving them the tour of the place and doing things like that, and we hunted together one day and then hunted it again on my own for a while, and then later in the back forty I took my dad out and we'll talk about this in some more detail later, but I kind of guided my dad for a few days hunting and just sat with him um and and tried to get him a buck too. So that was really cool. But yes, so it was. It was kind of a mixture of me hunting and me taking other folks around, me showing other folks around, which was which is fun for a change, but it definitely added up to a lot of days in the field, which is which is great. I can't complain about it, but I mean, if we're being honest, it does wear you down too. So by the time by the time the fourteenth, the evening of the fourteenth came and I was I was ready to sleep in and just kind of recenter myself, which is what I was able to do this past weekend. So yeah, yeah, so there's a lot to cover. Though. In between all that that we just talked about, I hit I hit that point where it was like, oh man, I've been at it a while, and I did take it. I did take some time to go back home for you know, a more afternoon in a morning hunt just to kind of help the wife out because she had some plans. But I started hitting that point within the grind where it's just like, man, I'm a dad in a husband too. I got I got things I probably should be doing. You know, you start to second guess where you actually need to be. Is that in the tree stand? Where is that back at home? So yeah, I'm definitely starting to get that more. There's definitely a change happening for me with the family and everything. And you know, we've got a toddler now he's almost two, and my wife's pregnant with our second and and so yes, that's absolutely coming up. And and I took a couple I did take a couple of days off that I normally wouldn't have. That I'm so glad I did. And that's kind of changing my thoughts on on the Rutton Marathon for me a little bit. I think in the future I will probably do. In the past, it was like, you have to hunt every single day. This is it. You got to make ky when the sun shines, go go go go go, don't be weak, be strong, go go, go go go. This year, um, two things happened. Number One, I realized what you just said there are some things more important than killing a deer, and I need to try to do better job of fulfilling those obligations to so taking some time off another thing I did different this year when I was hunting my closer to home spot. UM. I didn't hunt all day on most of those hunts. Some of them I did, but I realized that I could come in and help out with my son a little bit and give my wife a little break. And I decided to know what, Yeah, the midday hunt can be good. I've had some encounters. I like to do it because it's you know, I like to always be able to check that box which says I did everything I possibly could. Um. But this year I realized, sometimes you gotta make sure your priorities are right. So I came in mid day and helped out more. I took a few days off the middle to help out. And I think that moving forward, I'm going to continue to do that and maybe do it a little more. UM. Because you you always say it, and I've always given you a hard time about it, but this is a selfish thing we do, and I think there's an interesting balance you have to find as a as a dad between giving it your all. If this is something that matters you, you want to give it your all and work hard, but at the same time balancing it with your family and uh and so yeah, that was that was something for me. And I will tell you though, that taking that break. I took a couple of days one weekend off and stayed home with the family. That little break was a huge help with the grind, Like giving myself a little break also revitalized me and maybe maybe a more effective hunter over the final five six days, um, because I wasn't so tired. So there might be something to you know, saying all right, it's okay to sleep in today, because if you sleep in that one day, maybe it gives you that boost that gets you that much more confident, that much stronger, that more more focused for the rest of your trip. Um. I don't know. That's something I started to think more and more about. I was usually like hunt all fourteen days NonStop. Maybe I'm maybe I'm just getting old, or maybe I'm getting smarter or something. I'm not sure, but there might be something to keeping your edge um being more important than just being there every spare second. I don't know, maybe you could make there and the other way too. But yeah, these are things I've been thinking about. Yeah, I mean, it's it's just what part of life you're in, right Like for me, I got three kids and I got a wife, and um, their life doesn't stop when I go and when I go away. So I did the same thing, you know, I took a afternoon in a morning off and during the snowstorm that happened, came back up here. Um, let my wife go and do the event that she needed to go do next morning, got the kids ready for school, took you know, took the wife and the youngest son out for dinner or out for breakfast. And then I came back and started up again. And I think not only did she appreciate it, but I you know, you start you start talking about checking boxes. I feel like I felt good then going back and saying I checked the box. I showed her that she and the family are more important than hunting at that time right there, right And now I can go back and I feel confident that she's not gonna be near as upset with me when you know, for week number two going into week number two, and I don't know, I felt I felt good about myself at that point. Yeah, I mean I think it's I think you mean you hit the nail on the head. It's a new phase in life for us. Um, I'm a little bit behind you, but getting getting there and starting to understand where you're coming from more and more often. And um, it's a transition. It's something different, a whole new wrench that's thrown into to RUT plans and RUT strategies and and all that. But it's for the best possible reason, right, I mean, I wouldn't like to have my rut hunt screwed up for anything more than forgetting to see my family. So that's that's a pretty good reason to change the plans. But let's let's start back at the beginning. Let's break down how the hunts actually went. Um, because you and I both found some success, but we both had some struggles along the way. Uh. Let's talk through the highlights of your rut caation first, maybe and uh and break down some some things you have figured out along the way that you learn some things that led to your success and all that. Yeah, So it's kind of funny, remember me talking to you this summer and earlier in the fall where I was like, man, I'm not even gonna start hunting until week number two of November because you're because of that buck, right, because of that buck. Yeah, well, I thought all that went out the window right November one, the evening of November one, I woke up, you know, here at home, got ready left. November one was day one of my rep vacation. And if anything, this year solidified that next year. And I know there's a whole bunch of different variables that go into this decision. But next year, I I know for a fact that as hard as it's gonna be, I I need to stay out of the woods, like November one through the fourth and and and just I would rather have those four days on the back end to try to catch one of these giant zombies that are walking you know that, you know, walking through the timber, not even paying attention. Then have a fresh you know, just watch a two year old praade basically like what I did this year. Interesting. Yeah, So I really do think that next year it's probably not even gonna start for me until my birthday November and grind it out until Thanksgiving and and and go put the time on the back end of the rut instead of the front end. It's an interesting situation you guys have there in Iowa because you don't have a gun season opens until December, so you get to hunt that whole rut um. I've always been really jealous of that because here it ends September four for US gun season opens, and then you know, you can of course hunt through that. But it's very, very it's totally different. The normal dear behavior ends on the fifteenth and then it just becomes deer reacting to seven thousand hunters or whatever it is. So I've never got to experience that kind of that period of the year hunting here in Michigan like you have. And I've heard and I've hunted in Ohio a little bit during that time period and seen that it can be pretty darn good. Um, So it makes sense from that perspective what you're saying. Yeah, but it was cool to go see, you know, to to just have encounters because the very first evening I went into I had a perfect wind to go into the best possible what what I'm gonna call, you know, one A one B. It's it's the one A betting area. It's one of the best betting areas on the properties that I hunt, and Um, I got what you would call kind of down wind of it, UM, and just wanted to see what was working in It's it's this giant rectangle that sits on the top of a ridge with a couple of other smaller, smaller ridges leading up to it, right and Uh, that's where I wanted to start off, and instantly I got in that night. UM, and I just wanna reiterate how important and how much focus I put on exit and entry stray. You know, access was so key to the encounters that I had this year and the success that I had this year. You know, having to go out of your way, taking your time, really thinking through uh kind of led me to put my stands in the right spot because I had you know, I paid attention to the access. You've got to go take that extra step and go around or jay hook in or walk through some nasty creek bottom or whatever just to get to these spots. I think that is one of the key factors into the success that I've had in the last four years, is just access and not just blowing through the timber and taking the long way if needed. You know what I mean. Yeah, so how do you How did you access this betting air? Yeah? So this is kind of foreshadowing too, because eventually it's the tree that I shot the deer out of this year. And so I park um in this little grass field, A walk a fence line in dropped down to the lowest point um basically a drainage between two ridges, and I walk that drainage in and then take a hard ninety degree basically left up and walk straight to my tree stand. And it's a southwest wind, so my wind is kind of blowing down into the drainage and I have this I don't know if you follow my Instagram story, but uh, the title of that stand was kind of like risk verse reward. And as my scent would drop down into this the lower spot of this drainage, the deer would kind of work that top third of the ridge and come into this betting area from kind of from both sides. So I was hunting the the I guess the north side of it, the top side of this betting area. And what's cool about this betting area, it's it's this giant rectangle, right, So I want you to take that rectangle and I want you to chop it into you know, chop it into three equal pieces. The centerpiece of this betting area is almost hollow. There's two big oak trees that canopy out, so there's not a lot of growth um on the forest floor there. So it kind of opens up and it's it becomes this staging area for the deer before they work their way through the bottom part of the betting area and head to uh, you know, out for the night. You know, they go to an egg field. And once I found this spot, I was just like, oh my god, now it's just a waiting game, right. The deer are there. And the first night that I set up in this tree, I saw seven bucks ranging from one years old to possibly a four year old. It was hard for me to tell, but he was a big nine pointer and and there was you know, a handful of doze in there. And the first night is just a bunch of two and three year old snort weeason at each other. It was awesome way to kick off the rut. Uh and the deer would just work through, you know, they'd work through the area, they'd go to that staging area. They mill around a little bit, leave some scent you know, they do some scrapes scent check. These does posture up on each other and then as the evening starts to fade away, they work their way out, which was awesome because then I didn't have to worry about staying in the tree stand longer because these deer were, um, you know, these deer were coming sticking around right. And that's why I love hunting staging areas because if you're hunting a field edge at dark, as you're getting down out of the tree, here comes the deer. Right, I'm off the field edge into this, you know, through a betting area, already into this staging area, like this staging area within a betting area, and the deer are working their way. So all I have to do is drop down out of my tree, go back to the bottom that I walked in, walk the bottom all the way out to my truck, and it's just it's like it's just the perfect access entry and exit, you know what I mean. So so that tree stand stayed there because I had to take the sticks down, but that tree stands stayed there because I was like, this is money. If they come through. Uh, it's kind of fun. It kind of pinches in tight where this opening is under this big canopy of this oak, and uh, my shot is going to arrange anywhere from fifteen to thirty two yards. And that's where I was like, okay, perfect, perfect, And I hunted the backside of that a different angle on a different wind of that betting area and saw some good activity too, but not as good as that particular that particular spot. So and then from there that first night was awesome, and I had really high expectations going into that the rest of the week. But what happened was is then you realize how much of a factor that standing grain played on the rest of it, and it just became doze and two year olds. I mean, that's all I saw. For I had a couple encounters with some three year olds that I decided I didn't want to pass, but uh or that I that I did want to pass because I had a long time to Oh my god, there's a big buck. Okay, okay, cool? What is he? What is he? Do I know him? Do I recognize him? What is he? What is he doing? Okay? Man, he looks good. Okay, it looks like a three year old. His legs are long, legs look long. You know that I had the opportunity to really observe some of these deer um through the buyos. And then when they did work their way through, I was like, Okay, well I don't you know. You know, you know how we talked about it. He didn't make me go whoa, Yeah, you know what I mean? So um. Other than and other than that, there was hardly any sign on the property. I mean, I didn't run into hardly any scrapes at all on this property. I mean I did, but not like previous years. Man. Uh on the bottom, this was a corn ear on the farm, and on the farm the corn was gone. They combined it and I saw a ton of deer in the picked corn fields. But I'll tell you this, there was hardly any sign along the the field edges this year, which blew my mind. So another kind of man, what is going on? And I think a lot of it had to do with the deer were in the corn a lot, a lot. I gotta believe a lot of people had similar experiences with that standing corn. We had the same issue here still have it. Uh so much moisture, so wet, so much rain that kept farmers from me get that corn out. I still have standing corn all around most of my spots right now. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, based off of people responding to my Instagram story, you nailed it. They especially here in Iowa, and I think at one point they said only forty of the cry ops were out or the corn was out in the state. And I think that was last week, early last week. So I'm sure some some more's come out since then. But I mean, it can really affect and I'm talking about guys from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and northern Missouri, you know, saying saying this, and that's for the most part, similar terrain throughout you know, throughout all that, so um a lot of people were fighting standing crops and um. Other than that, you know, I just I started a I started my routine. Right I started. I had a truck full of tree stands, and so when I would do in my running guns, I would throw a tree stand up and what I thought was a really good area, really good access, really good stand location, and then I would leave it up, tear down the sticks, and move to the next spot right and really try to hone in on where the majority of the deer were moving, and and most of it was up high where my shooters, my quote unquote hitlisters had been historically moving last year, right. And so I go through this routine of checking trail cameras and there is nothing on trail cameras, right. And I hate to put a lot of weight on trail camera data, but historically, if I'm catching, I got I got some decent pinch points on the farm. So if they're not on one of these trail cameras throughout a four or five day period, they're not on the farm, right now, that's just how I that's how I feel, right, And so it just wasn't So I decided to I need to give this part of the farm a break. This was like three or four days into it. Five days into it, and then I decided to go down to a different part of the problem pretty just to see what was moving. And it was another one of the best betting areas on the farm, and just sat up and kind of in it's a crick crossing, but I can I can see a long ways on both sides. It's not a field edge set, but it's a it's like a it's like a staging area on on top of a betting area that I can see into one of the betting areas, And sure enough, this is where all the deer we're at there, all in the in the picked picked corn. This is where I passed to three year olds. This is where I passed or um a really small antword four year old. This is where I saw the first shooter of the year. But it was like a thousand yards out and I only saw him through my nose, and so I just, you know, decided I needed to give that, give that a shot before I counted everything else, because you got to know on the properties that you're hunting, you kind of you got you gotta kind of know what is going on on everything, right. But but I realized that the caliber of the deer we're not really what I wanted. So I had to then focus back on. So basically I hunted off. I hunted off of the east side of the farm through some attention on the south side of the farm, you know, a morning and afternoon another afternoon, just to see what the deer movement was doing. A lot of does but also a lot of two year olds and a couple of three year olds. Saw one four year old out in the distance, not necessarily the caliber that I was looking for, And then I could then I knew, you know, okay, I'm doing the right thing by staying on the east side of the farm because the caliber of the deer that I want to go after are not on the west side of the farm either. So then it just kind of became it's it's time to just wait him out. Right. You've you've kind of gone through your stand rotation. Uh, You've looked for that deer movement, You've got your stands in the best location. And then now I can chop my farm in half and go into the east side of the farm and only really pay attention. So now basically what I've done is just cut the acreage in half almost and hold on. I want to make sure I got this right. The side that you decided to focus on was the side where the picked corn fields was nearest to, or the side of the standing corn, the side with the standing corn, right, So do you think that most of the deer activity was over by the picked corn, but you we're seeing the mature bucks on the standing corn because that was just better cover over there. They felt more comfortable on that in that area. So I had at this point, I had yet to see any mature bucks on the standing corn side, but the caliber of the deer that I saw on the picked corn side were not what what I was going at, even though they were a four year old. Like I passed the one four year old, and I think he was like one. He had a really huge body, but just not really what I was, you know. He didn't make me go up right, you know. So so it all kind of leads into this one moment where I I'm like, all right, I need this. So I go through this the six days and this is all kind of happen. You know. I'm telling this story and I'm not going through it day by day because there are days where there there there are mornings where I'm not seeing any deer. Where there's an afternoon where I'm sitting and I didn't see a deer. Maybe I saw a spike come through or a two year old come through. But I'm I'm starting to you know, I'm starting to hone in on the deer movement on the where my headlisters have been historically right, and I set up on the you know, I'm like, okay, I need an observation sit tonight. We got some fresh you know, we got some snow coming in tonight. Um, and I'm gonna get a tree stand in here, because historically the snow comes knocks a ton of leaves off. And if there's snow on the ground, you can see forever in the timber, right, you can. Movement is really easy to spot out when you have a brown dot walking across the white background. Yeah, so I set up a stand that Um, that evening, I am, you know, watching you know, a couple two year olds chase, a couple of young doughs around, probably weren't hot. Um, still seeing dough groups, you know, maybe one or two individual uh, you know, stand alone does go back home, turn around, and and this is the coldest morning of everything. And I'm I'm I walk into the tree stand. It's already set up, and I'm literally I get there an hour before daylight. I'm bundled up with all of my gear, I was wearing everything. Uh, and it's so cold that I pulled my stocking cap over my face. And I'm not even looking at this point. Yeah, the sun's just coming up, and I'm I peek out every once in a while, I'm looking around, and I was I started to shiver. So I'm like, this is typically what happens in in uh other years, where if I rattle, I'll warm up a little bit. So I did this. So I did this blind rattling sequence just to just to kind of warm up, get the blood moving again, stood up, cracked the antlers together, and um this like two year old one class comes in and he just kind of mills around a little bit and hangs out, and then he works his way up the ridge. And this is here's the cool part. You know. For every time that me and you talk about how dear you terrain, we talk about how dear um you know, use the wind to their advantage and all this stuff. For every time that we say that, I can show you an example like this, in an example like what I'm about to say of deer having the wind to their back, you know what I mean. So, yes, it's it's good to know that. You know, hey, deer like to quarter into the wind, or they walk to the top third of a of a ridge, or they do all these different things. And that's a good start. It's a tendency. It's a tendency, right, not right, exactly exactly. And these the deer, we're working these ridges with the wind to their back, so as they're going up there, they're relying on their eyes to see what's in front of them. But there so I'm sitting on the on a south on a let's see a north facing ridge at this point with a north wind. So I'm looking at my topple map right here, and it's blowing into a drainage right So at some point this deer is gonna cross my sense stream, but it's gonna be so far down that, you know, hopefully, you know, with help from the osonics and with help from him just being a long ways away. If he does catch my set, he's not gonna go bananas. He's just gonna, you know, trot off or whatever. And the reason I sat in this particular ridge was they logged the tops. That has been a couple of years ago, three years ago, I think it was. And now we have this growth in here. It's about head high, six ft high of just thorns, and and what it's done is it's created edge, this giant edge on the top of this ridge, and the deer all stay down because they don't want to walk on the top and they don't want to walk through this thickness. It's created, created this edge where it's almost just like a hallway that they walk through. And that's what this two year old did, and that's what I'm hoping that as they're coming out of the north side to check this south side of the farm where all the standing corns at, I'm hoping that they use this, this ridge and this travel system. Well this and you've been on the farm before. It's just a bunch of ridges, big, just big timber and big timber yep. And so I'm hoping that this is where a majority of the movement has gone. I'm or has been over the years, and and this year I'm gonna sit on this ridge. So I'm bundled up. That deer works by, and all of a sudden I hear something raking, a tree like not a squirrel jumping around. And it's about seven thirty in the morning. Sun's coming up, shining right, it's bright day, you know, one of those no cloud mornings. And I hear raking, and I stand up and I make my way around and put the binos up, and the there's gnarly Charlie on on the second ridge, and I got a about a thirty second look at him before he started walking up the ridge towards uh, towards the standing cornfield. And this is a morning hunt, right, so you're you're thinking that maybe, and my my thought was that hopefully I'm gonna catch these deer coming out of the cornfield down back to a betting area. And that's why I'm hunting the north wind. So the they're gonna come, they're gonna come at a different angle and still have still have the wind to their advantage, but they're coming the opposite way. All the deer were coming from the north to the south on a morning hunt. And Gnarlie, Charlie is working his way up that the next ridge to me, and he's working his way. Um, let's see here working his way up up this ridge, which is he's walking south with the north wind. And I got binos on him, so I'm like, Okay, that puts a dot on a map that's a physical location. Now I can't go in there. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Before you go any further, you need to tell me about this moment because you've been talking about Narlie Charlie for two years now you've been looking at these pictures of this pretty darn cool. Dear. You talked about this year even last year for a moment you said it might be this kind of year, and then this year you said it's gonna be hard to you know, maybe I'm gonna have a year or I really chase this one buck um to a degree. At least now you finally see him in person. Yeah, that's the first time you've seen in person, right, yep, first time I've ever seen that, dear. And what was that like? It was? I'll be honest, I was so cold that my brain. My brain wasn't thinking like yippie, I got him. My brain my brain was just like strategy mode. Right. I think I texted you and I said I saw him, right, And then I think I was more excited you were than maybe because I was exclamation points. Yes, yeah, dude, it was fun. I mean, it was awesome seeing a deer of that caliber um. And of course I couldn't rattle at him or I couldn't call to him because he was he was down WINDO me. If he would have came, if I would have done that, he would have came all the way around you know he would have had to come all the way around and eventually would have crossed through my um my sent stream, and I didn't want to risk it. I didn't want to risk blowing him out of the farm, right, So I watched him disappear, and I stand there for another five minutes basically just eg lying my ridge, hoping, hoping he circles around the drainage and comes back down, maybe just on a cruise, or to see if he pops up on the second, the third ridge over and and I'm just trying to just trying to observe everything to see if he's kicking a dough up, if he's following a dough whatever. But it looked like he was alone, right, So my mind goes to strategy mode. And now I'm accents and I'm thinking, I'm looking on my phone. Um you know, I'm looking at on X about Okay, where can I set every Every little ridge top or spur ridge in this area is now getting uh, basically a test run on it. Okay, tomorrow's too. This afternoon's wind is going to be here Tomorrow. Tomorrow's wind is gonna be here. And so what I did, just like I did last year, I was like, Okay, I found his shed here, I had a sighting of him here, I got trail camera pictures of him here, and I basically drew a line between where the last trail camera pictures that I've had of him, which was November thirty one or excuse me, uh October thirty one, in the middle of the night, and to where he was, and looked at these travel like the travel patterns between there, and instead of decide, you know, instead of deciding, hey, I want to hunt right here where he's at currently, I kind of thought, I'm gonna sloop all the way around and I'm gonna hunt now the south facing ridge in hopes that I'll see him on the north side again. And not necessarily, you know, potentially I could kill him in the in a spot like this, but I just want to get a secondary sighting of him and know where these other little travel corridors are and and um and and in having this, uh what am I trying to say here? Uh? Where my buck was traveling last year, predict where he was going to be exactly trying to write And as we all know, that doesn't work so uh every time. So I'm just trying to think of where this is moving, because um, there's another little farm on top of this ridge, um, in between these standing corn fields. And I thought to myself, Man, I don't think he's gonna go out there in the morning in broad daylight and expose himself, right, I think he's just gonna hug these ridges on on these the edge of the timber where it meets the standing corn in this egg fields, and he's just gonna cruise around looking for a dough to come back to, you know, to go or come back or whatever. So I stayed in there for quite a while, and then finally I got down, went back to my truck, went back home, and just studied the area. And then basically the next uh that afternoon, I dropped down in on the opposite side of the ridge, further east on a really main travel corridor, hoping to get him, you know, get a sighting of him, or have him work where all these doughs were coming through on on a different set that I saw oh three days previous. Right, I didn't see him, but I you know, all these do as we're working through, And I said, okay, I'm gonna get in shooting lane with all these shooting range of where all these does are at. And basically I dropped down off the south facing ridge and caught them coming out of the corn field working their way through. Well that worked. A whole bunch of does came through. A couple of bucks came through that night going to food. And then the next morning I hunted that again and they were coming away from food and no other sightings. So that time of year, anything could happen, right, he could hook up with a dough. He just was cruising in that area and he decided to go. You know, he zigged when I zagged, and and now it just becomes, you know, hunt that location again. Well now we're talking. Now we're going back to that uh, that betting area that we discussed earlier where I left the tree stand at right A one A, right betting area one A. So now I'm just like, Okay, I saw him. Now I can even chop more area off this farm because historically he doesn't go through the main pinch on the farm. So now I'm just chopping hundred more acres off the farm. And I'm like, okay, now I'm I can really focus on this. I want to say acres and really focus on it, check trail cameras, bring more. I brought more trail cameras in, and hopefully get to a point where, um, I'm just you know, uh, Bill Winkie talks about casting a net with trail cameras and then bringing all these other trail cameras in and and and basically just tightening down on this bucks area and hopefully you start, even though it's the rut, you can still see a pattern of where these deer moving and that that's kind of what I was hoping to do. And I think, I know we've talked about this in the past, but studies have shown that that is true that tip of these bucks will have a handful of hot spots, usually doe betting areas or doe feating areas that they will kind of rotate through as they're checking for hot doughs during the rut. So it might not be as clear as an early season bed defeating pattern where they're going from A to B, A to B, but during the rut they do kind of circle, sometimes in varying ways, but they'll go to A to B, two C, two D too E, then from A to B two C, D to E and they'll kind of slowly work in that kind of way. At least I've I've come to see that, right, Yeah, absolutely absolutely, they go through this, you know, they it's almost like they they're doing the same thing that I'm doing there, except their locations are the betting areas within or the dough groups within this range. So they're walking in a big circle basically until they find a dough and they decide to chase the dough reader, come offer, and then go back into that rotation again until they find the next one. And that that's what I was hoping that he was gonna start to do because last year, um, I got him on a handful of trail cameras in somewhat of a circle. Right, He hits a trail camera, and then a couple of days later he it's another one, and then maybe a day later it's another one. It's all all within there. And so that was that triangle that I talked about, right, Uh, Remember I said I had this triangle that I feel I'm gonna kill him. He's gonna be within there. And now I'm in this triangle, right, And so I just really wanted to focus on the ridges, the travel corridors, the staging areas, the betting areas within this triangle, the zone zone YEP so on betting Area one A, I hunted the south side one morning and one afternoon and within this time frame, and he didn't show up. A couple other deer came through, and then I'd see it was November, and I'm just like, Okay, maybe he's gonna I had had a big wind shift. We had like two days of uh northwest winds which prevented me from hunting the north side of this betting area, betting Area one A that I talked about, right, and it had been and it had been like five or six days since I had hunted that stand because I had other winds or I decided to check out different parts of the farm. And now this wind shifted to a south southwest, which opened the door for betting the north side of betting Area one A. And I'm like, I got I'm going in there. I gotta see if he's working in there. And so same part my truck, same access route in and I get and get to the base of my stand. I only put three sticks high, so I'm sitting at about twelve or thirteen feet right, But I had an awesome back cover with this pine tree, and I get too sticks up, getting ready to hang the third one, and there's a dough staring right at me, like right at me, and so I had to creep down back to the ground and she had to win. So she really couldn't tell what I was. She's, you know, trying to figure out what I am. And all of a sudden, this like one thirty class four year old just brap brab brap like starts chasing her around this betting area and and this is ground level within twenty yards of me, and kicks up another dough and they kind of work their way away, which thank god, because I was thinking I was gonna have to shoot this dough just so she wouldn't bust out like low at me. So thank god that buck came through. And I'd say, is one thirty class? I think it was a nine or ten or a A. I really couldn't tell. Um. I think I think city was an eight, but um, he could have been something different. And so I get up set up and instantly there's deer moving. I can see deer moving through through this these betting areas in the staging area. Button buck comes through, spike buck comes through, another like hundred ten point two year old starts coming, you know, coming through. They're all working their way. Dough comes through. Eventually these two doughs that this one four year old had chased out of there come back and they begin to feed under this big oak tree for an hour or so. They've just kind of playing in their flag there and and have made this home. And I'm just sitting there watching watching these doughs, uh come through. And now it's starting to get to somewhere around four o'clock, so I stand up, and the doughs are still sitting there. I feel, you know, every everything is relaxed. Another spike buck or young buck comes through and walks right in front of me, and he goes into the betting area and set checks them. He's pushing these doughs around a little bit. Eventually he leaves, and somewhere around four fifty four o'clock fift this dough on the opposite ridge just sprints. She's sprinting right at me and she jumps up onto my on the ridge that I was hunting, comes into about thirty yards and just chills and she's looking over her shoulder and looking over her shoulder and looking over her shoulder eventually exactly, and I'm just like, oh, something is right behind her. Something is right behind her. And nothing came, and I was like, what's going on here? Like that is the that is the sign of a dog getting chased. And so I she and feeds with these other two does and she's her body language changes, she calms down, she just goes into feed mode, and then she stops looking behind her. Then I hear something behind me, and so I turned around, thinking, okay, maybe this a different buck is looped and checking this, you know, this part of the betting area behind me, and I'm looking and I'm looking, and so I'm turned around in the stand at this point and it's a I think it was like a spike buck, just kind of milling around doing something behind me. And all of a sudden it's b and I hear something running in towards me, and sure enough it's this, it's the buck. I you know, I get a shot at but she's coming in and the first thing that went through my head is dork. It's dork, Like are you kidding me? Finally, like the first ever encounter I'm gonna have with this deer, and so I grabbed my bow and I then get like a one second look at him. I'm like, okay, his brows are too short. He's not dork, but he's a shooter. And drew back and he's trotting, and you know, this all happens within like a thirty second window. I drew back and he bul rushes into where the does were. Luckily he stopped right where there a little bit behind him, but right where they were at. And he stops, puts his head down, and I let the arrow go and I smoked him and just a hair back, but I knew I hit. I hit long. You know, you get some of these shots. We are just like, dude, that dear is gonna die like very You're very confident. Unlike last year where I didn't see the impact. Um I I didn't have to. I was low in the stand whatever. This was a standing, perfect form anchor. Everything took my breath, pulled the trigger, hit him, mule kicked, and and this was at about four thirty, so it's starting to get dark in the timber and he does the mule kick. He doesn't run and he starts walking away into this thick thickness, right, and then you have you know, why isn't he running right? And you're like, oh Jesus man, Hopefully I didn't really gut shoot him. But I was confident in it, right, So I'm I'm scanning, I'm scanning, I'm scanning, and I can't see him. So wait until a little bit before dark, right, and I get out of my tree. I don't even go looking for him. I just go back to the house, get dressed, get my stepdad, and I'm like, dude, this is I feel very confident. I feel I got I got double double lunged him, just back of hair, but I double lunged him and grab my stepdad. We get ready, come back out, and we start scanning and there's no blooded impact, which is kind of to be expected at this point unless you just like smoke a heart, you know, you give him a couple of jumps before they start, and we weren't finding a ton of blood within the first ten yards of this and um, and then by this time it's pitch black. So we got like five big flashlights. We're trying to scan everything, and eventually we run up on some blood and it's dark, and I'm like, maybe it was further back than I thought, and I hit liver, but still, and that might explain why he didn't take off running because historically for me, uh, if you hit liver, they just hunch up and they just creep away. Right, they don't. They don't run unless you you double on them, or you you spook them somehow. And and I mean, here's the short of it. And in another fifteen yards there he was laying dead and I had this huge mile on my face. And long story short, the way he came in, he was just a hair quartering towards me. So I hit front side long backside liver. But and then he started to open up and he was he was dead from in twenty yards from where I shot him, and um, I really didn't know what he was at the time. And as I walk up to him, I'm like, ah, I shot a three year old. And that's what even I mean, if even if you look at the pictures, you're like, dude, that that looks like a three year old deer. But this was here's what was amazing of this. Um he didn't look like he had a huge body. And then I walk up on him you know, picked the head up and I started to observe the animal, and he was so worn down. I don't know if this deer was sick or if he had just already been through a hard rut. But his back end was bones like, his spine was sticking out, his hips were sticking out um his front, his front shoulders were kind of scooped in. His his neck was big, and he had an absolutely huge head, but it was thin like you know what I mean, It just looked like someone deflated a deer a little bit. And so but you know what, I'm just sucked there was when we cleaned him, there was no fat on his body at all. So I don't know if he was stick or or there's no like big bruise on him to get hit by a car. It was another puncture wound on his side, but it wasn't a broadhead. It was maybe from it was probably from fighting, if I had to guess, because he he had a broken time and then he knocked another time off when he ran into a tree. It looked like when he fell, so uh, never seen this deer before. He was a beautiful like if he had all his alders on him. He would have been like a main frame nine. He has uh split brows and then one split G two and he has a ton of mass around his main beams. He has a lot of mass on that buck has a lot of mass and uh he made me go, uh so I shot him and uh so there's a chance he's a three year old, but I honestly think he's a four year old. Um And I could not be happier with this outcome from the pure fact that you know, you get into a routine. Now it's like, this is my fourth this is the first time in my entire life that I've gone on a run this long, right four years in a row, shot four different bucks using my kind of my own personal philosophy and my own personal strategy on how I approach hunting this season, and I've been observing, I've been learning, I've been changing when I need to, and I've got found success out of that and that on you know that the deer is always the cherry on top. But my strategy worked again, even though it took longer than you know, longer than what it has in the past. I just I'm very happy with the outcome of this season. And I don't know. I'm just I'm Jackman. It's a good feeling. That's a great feeling. So so what was your biggest takeaway, your your number one lesson or something that really hit home for you after this whole thing came together. Yeah, So the lesson I would, I would say, would be when I started hitting the obstacles like no mature deer on trail camera, no mature deer sightings. Um. You know. Now I had a hard stop of the seventeen. I had five days left to hunt. You know, I was going through a couple of these sits without seeing any deer. I started to realize that, hey, I might need to change what I want the outcome to be, right. I I may not be holding out for Narley Charlie anymore. Because although I did see him, I think it was like three days previous. I I knew that I had a freezer to fill, and I knew saw, to be honest with you, I was I was possibly gonna start shooting does on some of my sets if they offered me really good shots and if if it was slow, and if they weren't getting chased. So I still wanted to fill my freezer, but I still wanted to shoot a mature buck, and I I felt like I did the right thing by changing my goal based off of what I was seeing from the timber, and still continuing to go with my game plan and change my game plan as needed, and not just get into a woe is me, I'm not seeing anything, boo hoo. You just keep grinding, and you keep grinding, and you you look at your maps and you think about all the data and intel that you've had, not from that year, but through all the years, and that helps me put my tree stands in the position that I wanted to. I had the encounters that I wanted to, and eventually that routine led me to this encounter and the harvest of a great deer. Do you do anything different next year? Is there anything that happened that you now will say, you know what, Okay, this is something that even though it worked out this year, this is something that has to change next time around, at the time frame, the time frames shifting it later a week later. I want to hunt up until Thanksgiving, um and I want I think that just like we've already talked about, I think if it's not hot, go away for a day, come back I've I've found now through these because I think a lot of people what what they what they do is they sit in a tree stand and they look at things in blind with blinders. They're like they're in a tree stand and they say, Okay, this is what's happening today when you need to think not only about last year, but next year as well. So now I know, like, hopefully Narie Charlie makes it through the season, right, that would be awesome if he does. If he does, he does, if he doesn't, If he doesn't, he doesn't, But if he does, I got intel on him on this spur ridge. I got intel, more intel from him on trail cameras. So now I got a straight line now between point A and point B that I'm really going to focus on next year. I'm gonna bring more trail cameras in, I'm gonna bring more tree stands in. I'm gonna be scouting more in the within this line late season, and hopefully I can set up so I got him trapped next year. If that makes sense. Yeah, So it's it's basically now, dude, It's so crazy. I celebrated this harvest, but my mind is already going it's just how I operate. The end is also the beginning, man, And it's just you'd never for me. I never stop. I can't stop. I'm already thinking about like right now, I'm looking on a map on this top of map of where I want to have a tree stand next year, and you know, I'm thinking about crop rotation, and I'm thinking about what I want to do next year to hopefully put all the odds of my favor for another successful season. So well, we talked about all the time. It's it's it's really the process. Yeah, that absolutely gets us. It's the end result, of course is important, and we strive for it, but it's everything that leads us to that moment that makes this thing so damn addicting. Um and that I've been talking a long time, but I just want to I really want to reiterate how much fun I had this year because I didn't get stressed out. I went in with low expectations. I knew I had to put my process in, like you said, and once I do that, it's almost like it becomes autopilot. And I had Once it becomes autopilot, you can take the time to not just worry about deer hunting. But man, I saw three bobcats this year. One of them was hunting while I was in the stand. I gotta watch him hunt. That was sweet. I saw a badger, I saw birds, I saw you know. It's just you can. You can be a sponge and just absorbed nature. And that's what I do this all for anyway. And uh man, and the fact that now I have meat in the like I got meat in the freezer because of this too, that's just a win. It's like I had so many wins this season that, um, I don't know. I just I had an absolute asked and it just it reminded me why I love doing it so much. So are you done? Are you gonna shoot some doughs? Are you're gonna go out of stage and keep it rolling? Like, if I get the opportunity to go maybe shoot a dough, I'll do it. Um. I'm gonna check trail cameras before late season maybe. But as you know, and as everybody else with family knows, there comes a time where the brownie points are done right there, they are used up, and I want to maybe go out and shoot a dough because I got three more dough tags left, but I also don't want to burn any bridges, And honestly, I just want to hang with a fam for a while and uh, enjoy what I have, and then maybe I'll get out. Maybe I won't. But I've already had so much fun and success as a selfish bow hunter this year that I think I need to turn some attention back towards the family for a little bit. And after a week or two, maybe I'll it out again, or maybe I'll get out late season. But now it's time to focus on the family and back to business. And uh, dude, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. So, dude, I talked way too much. You're right, that's right here to do. We're here to talk, and I want to hear about your rut. But I have to ask you a question because I saw you in a ground blind with your dad, right, Yeah, I do not come from a quote unquote hunting family, Like I learned all this, all this stuff on my own kind of, and I don't. I didn't really have I've had somewhat of a mentor. But like, what's it like hunting with your dad? It's really cool, man, It's uh, it was a really fun thing to get to do because I grew up hunting with my dad. We were we've got a really interesting kind of hunting dynamic though, um And it was fun to be able to do this, and I've got to do a few times over the last handful of years because growing up with my dad, right we'd go out, We've got this family deer camp up in northern Michigan. We didn't see him any deer ever, but we always had a great time just sitting out there together, telling stories. Um, just being up there. That was a really fun thing for me to do. For the I don't know, from the time I was four till the time I was I don't know, ten, eleven, twelve. At some point around there is when I started hunting on my own. Um. But the unique thing with my dad is that he is significantly visually impaired. UM. So he's got a just a real challenge when it comes to hunting as far as seeing things. Um. So because of that, he had only killed one deer his whole life. When he was sixteen he killed a buck, and then all the way through the whole time we hunted together, he never shot a buck all the way until I became an adult, he never shot a deer of any kind, um, except for that very first one. UM. I remember there's a story back when I was a little kid, and I might have told us before, but I was eight or nine and we were hunting together and I saw buck. Me and my dad are sitting together. I see a buck, and I tell him there's a buck. There's a buck, and he can't see it. And as a kid, not being very sensitive to the issue, I got mad at him, like, Daddy's right there, he's right there. Just just give me the gun. I'll shoot him. Just give me the gun. UM. So we joke about it today, but you know, it was. It was something that um My dad has been a hell of a trooper to keep on hunting all these years, given the fact that, um, it's a lot more difficult for him than a lot of people. So over the last decade or so, I've been able to try to give back to him a little bit and take him out and hunt some of the places that I can hunt. UM. And so, I don't know, five or six years ago, I know we told this story back then, but I set him up on one of my main Michigan spots and he killed a little buck with me and him sitting together in a ground in a box blind, and that was awesome. First buck he killed, the first deer he killed since he was sixteen, um. And then we he shot one a few years after that on his own, when I was hunting up at deer camp with him. So that was really cool thing. But now I wanted to try to get him a shot at his first buck older than a year and a half, because it's three bucks he killed up to that point, we're all year and a half olds. Um. I'm not even sure he's even seen a buck older than a year and a half, um, because right up north we almost never see anything other than year and a half old bucks. And then the only other place he'd ever hunted other than when he came with me was our three acre property behind the house that I grew up him, so he would bow hunt back there sometimes and and he's seen a few bucks back there. Uh. So this year we thought, let's bring him out to the back forty for a few days. He could get a couple of days off work during the rut and get his first bow hunting rut. You know, the peak of the rut hopefully on this property is hopefully gonna be really good and get him a shot at his first like two year old or older buck. I really thought like, oh gosh, it should be easy to get a shot at a you know, nice two ye old eight point that he would think is the biggest buck in the world, and it'd be such a cool way to give back to him. Um. So we're kind of skipping towards like the middle end of my rutcation. But but I'll finish off this portion of it. Then I'll rewind back to the beginning because it was kind of this this story is sort of a microcosm for my whole rut um. The process was the fun part. The end result wasn't there. Um. It was great to get to spend a couple of days with my dad out there hunting. We took him out. I had set up a handful of ground blinds in the summer, knowing that he was going to come out. Um, but things just did not pan out on the This was in the back forty we took him so that new farm. Um, things in the back forty did not pan out at all how I thought they would. As far as deer numbers dear activity, the way they used the property. Um, it was just very, very very different than I expected. I've it's as a stands right now, it's the slowest I've ever seen a property in southern Michigan that I've ever hunted. I found a lot of spots in Michigan. In southern Michigan, you always see deer, you always see young bucks at least. Um, we had a hard time seeing anything on the back forty this, this, you're in total they were They were a handful of good hunts and I had a brief moment that I'll talk about of of some things coming together. But overall it was pretty tough sledding, and unfortunately for my dad that continued. We had a couple of fun days sitting in the blind together, just telling stories, reminiscent, laughing, giving each other a hard time. And that was one of the best parts of my entire rut. You know, three weeks that was that was tops right there. Um, he had an opportunity at a year and a half old buck. We had a one buck come in and it's a little five pointer, and my dad got excited about it. I said, Hey, if you wanna if you wanna take cracking, take crack at it. He's never killed a deal with his bow and this he's using a crossbow. Um. He's never killed a buck with any kind of deer with the archer equipment, so that would be awesome if he did. But he decided to pass on it because you know, we had these high hopes and I've shown him pictures of some of the deer that we had gotten on camera and that we're hopefully somewhere around. Um, So we decided pass on it, which I think is the first time he's ever passed on a buck, which is cool. Um. Unfortunately, we just didn't get any more opportunities. That was it. We had. We had some fun times out there, some good stories, but just the deer did not cooperate. So that was that was the hunt with him. UM. Overall though, it was about the quality time and a great reminder for me of of what matters most. And I think that came back time and time again throughout this whole rut, is reminding myself of what really matters. Yes, I want to kill the mature buck, Yes I want to have this end result in the end, does that really matter? Not that much? So spending that time with my dad, That's what really mattered. Taking a few days off to help out my wife and be there for my son, that's what really matters. Taking some time midday when I usually tell myself I should be hunting, taking some of that time off to to help out. That probably is what really matters. Um, when you put in, you know, three weeks of hunting really really hard, and you try so much for one year and it doesn't come together, and he's probably gonna get shot by somebody else, and that's frustrating. Ah, And then you have to take a step back and realize, you know what, it's just a deer. You've got a healthy family, You've got a roof over your head. Um. Those are the things I kept coming back to time and time again over the course of the last three weeks. So that's the ending of my story, is that those worthy sentiments that I was left with after my two thousand nineteen rutation. Now, let me take you back to the beginning and explain how it got there. Right. So, you know, we talked last somewhere in I don't know, middle or late October. Basically I had that Minnesota hunt, awesome experience but we didn't see any deer. Um. I had that really cool mentor hunt experience that was fun. But once I got back from Minnesota and we got to the pre rut time periods like late twenties in October, started to shift my focus to try and to kill this buck tram, that one deer that I knew for sure, it's four and a half years old on my main Chigan property. I'd seen him a bunch of last year. I passed on him. Coming into this year, it was, Hey, it's all about tran And you know me, I get really excited about these one target, that one deer and I've got this one main farm where I've been really lucky to have an opportunity where these deer have a chance of making it back. So it seems like almost every year there's at least one deer that I had history with in past years, and um, that just is the funnest. The most fun for me is when I get to know a deer like we talked about, You get to know a deer, get to put together those pieces, uh, figure out the chess moves. That's that is just so cool. So I get hung up on that and really excited about it, and Tran was the one deer I knew for sure fit that bill, so he was my target buck this year. Um. Now, there was two other really nice deer that I had been seeing through the summer. There's one deer I just kind of called him the big nine, really nice big nine pointer, um, probably one thirty class in that ballpark, and I saw him quite a bit during the summer when I'm glass in the soybean fields and he ends up. Though, after looking at him and looking at trail camera pictures, I'm really pretty darn certain. I'm certain he can't be older than three. So I decided I'm gonna pass on him. And so I think we talked about this. I saw him on October two and I passed on him. I had a shot at him, like a ten yard shot, and I passed on him on October two. First time I'd ever passed on a buck of that caliber in Michigan. So that was cool. Um, But then I also feel like, man, am I crazy? Like people in Michigan don't pass on bucks like that and my nuts, but I really want to get a shot Tram. So I did it. Now fast forward, it's late October UM, I hunted the back Ford with Doug during for a couple of days. I thought we'd be having some activity. I had. I was starting to get some more pictures of this buck I was calling the wide eight on that farm, so I thought we were gonna be getting into it. But it was just dead. We saw just like a button buck in the year and a half old buck, and I think a doe. You know. That's of course the three days of hunting out there. So it was really disappointed in that. I'm wanna ask you a quick question, why did you think why? Why do you feel that farm was dead? Because you had this moment of excitement about the back forty that you started having some good deer show up on camera, and you felt that the closer you get to the rut late October time frame, you felt it was going to start getting better and pick up. What changed? So I still don't know if I know for sure, I can only theorize right um, but my thoughts are this. I think that there's a ton of activity in the summer. We were there all over the place, filming all these things, having all these people see it. We were all over the place, so there was there was a whole lot of action there during the summer because of that. Then September comes, we get one mature buck that starts showing up on trail camera. That's the wide eight big body. Definitely an older deer, just a wide apart, not very much going from an antler girth standpoint, but I was stoked because it was definitely a mature deer and that's what I was shooting for. So we had tried to do one basic improvement, basically weren't able to and we talked about this already, but UM, just to recap, just did not have time to do any really significant changes to the property because of the filming schedule and the logistics of everything. So all we basically got to do. We're plant some food plots, and the food plots were supposed to be a blend of a variety of different things UM that would provide a lot of attraction over the course of the whole hunting season and beyond UM. But I was trying a new way of planting. I was trying to do everything no till this year. So without diving too deep into that, it just it just amounted to a very different way of planning. Stuff that's better for the soil, better for the environment, better hopefully in a lot of different ways. But what ended up happening is that it didn't turn out very good for me. In the back fort you most most of the blend that I planted did not come up. I basically just got some cereal grains like oats came up, um, and that was kind of it. And oats are attractive earlier in the year, they're typically not very track div later in the year. Now that can be different based on where you're at. But for me, um, that's it's just not a home run once you get into November later. Well, that's all we had though so early in the season, Early in October, there was a decent number of does feeding in those fields. I got some trail camera pictures of the Wide eight feeding in those fields. I thought it was gonna be good. Like you said, I was feeling, okay, we're coming along. Stuff is only going to get better as we get into the rut. But as we got towards the rut, as the pre rud arrived, and once the rut got cranking, fewer and fewer and fewer deer being sighted. UM just did not seem any deer at all. Now, we never saw a ton of deer out there. Um, But I think here's the things that could be to blame. Number One, we just didn't have enough good food on the farm. We had that basically those oats, we didn't have a lot of implanted, and they very quickly went from like a decent food source to a food source that deer weren't really hitting very much at all. I'm used to hunting spots with, you know, food source that you're gonna have a good umber of deer, a good number of dos passing through every day in the morning, every day and the evening, coming in and out, coming in and out. Um. Something here you would hunt what looks like a terrific food source and you see one dear day or something like that, and and we're I'm hunting it as much as I possibly can. Notice is this is a new thing for me. It's hard because it's not just me hunting. It's me and a cameraman. And on all of our hunts so far, there's also been a guest and a cameraman every time. So you've got four guys going in and out of this property every time you hunt. Um, which made an impact. I'm sure we did everything I possibly could to reduce the impact, but I'm sure it made an impact. So that's happening. And then we're just not seeing these deer like I thought we would. And I think it's number one. The food source we have was not very attractive compared to what was around us. Around me is a lot of good properties with a lot of guys that are managing deer I've come to find, and a lot of people with great food plots. And then secondly, just like you have thought, thousands of acres of standing corn all around us, so on three different sides are standing corn fields just off of the neighboring property sort of, so I can't hunt the edge of the standing corn where you might be able to take advantage of something, um, but it's there, so there's not much betting on our farm. Our farm secondly has these big open fields that I was hoping would grow in and be thick and hopefully still get used by deer even this year before we get to improve them. Turns out there pretty much deer deserts right now. Um, no deer betting in them. Very few deer passed through them, so more than fifty the farm is this desert. All we had is this swamp, um And and so I could hunt the swamp some and I did, and that's where I ultimately had some success. But I couldn't take the guests in there because all the guests had to hunt from ground blinds. Um. You can't see anything in there from a ground blind. So there was different challenges like that as I was trying to balance all the different things going on. But I think the standing corner was a was a big factor. I think not having quality food on the farm was a factor, because there's so much of it everywhere else. Um, the old fields being a desert were a factor. Having this increased amount of impact compared to what I typically do was probably a factor. And then I don't know, maybe it's just I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know what else it could be. But those are the theories I have so far. Um. That led me to the point where October, which are historically pretty darn good days around here, at least for seeing young bucks bumping around and doing things, we saw almost nothing. Yeah. That was very disappointing. Yeah, so that whole thing was frustrating. But then so that happened. But I said, okay, that's all right. It's back to my other main Michigan property, which in late October it's usually the very best time of year on this farm. I've had all sorts of good encounters with mature bucks at that time of year on this farm. Feeling good, I just said, okay, it's time to get serious about trying to kill Tran. I basically left him alone the whole month of October other than the very the very very beginning. Now it's time to get after him. Um, and I will fast forward through the whole last week of October and basically tell you that nothing worked out. I didn't see him, wasn't seeing him, wasn't seeing any of the mature bucks, wasn't seeing any kind of pre rep behavior. UM. I wasn't diving into betting years or anything. I was still playing it safer. Um. But that was disappointing as well. Just wasn't happening for me. Around the same time, I also started looking at some more pictures of this other buck I was seeing on the farm. So I told you about that big nine point I passed on. I know about Tran He's the four and a half year old that I definitely want to shoot. He's a four year old, big eight porn er, two years of history. But then there's a third deer, and this third deer showed up a lot during the summer. He was the first buck I got on trail camera in the summer, may probably the most consistent on camera, most consistent to see out in the fields. And we started calling him r B, which is short for risky business, because he was going to be he was gonna be a buck that came in and you'd really want to shoot him, but he's probably just a three year old, and I really wanted to try to hold out for four year old this year, specifically Tran. If not Tran, then a buck that's like a no brainer. Yes, he's a mature four year older buck. Um in this buck in the summer, I'm thinking, Okay, he's three. But then I'm looking at trail camera pictures in middle and late October, and now I'm thinking, man, he looks like he's got a bigger body. Maybe he is four. And I'm thinking I'm back and forth, back and forth, and basically this whole last week of October, I keep on looking at pictures. I'm like, if he shows up and if he looks like a tank, I might have to shoot him, um, because he might be I don't know. And then I go back and I look at other trail camera pictures from last year, and I see a buck last year that really looks like it could be this dear, But he was definitely two year old last year. There's no way he could be a three year old last year. So now I'm thinking, Okay, no, he's got to be three. But then you know the next day that I'm like, but maybe it's not him, And so I just had this whole thing going on in my head. Halloween arrives, snow storm hits. I see Tran for the first time during hunting season. Basically, he's on the neighbors. He chases a dough towards me. The dough turns runs out into a field across the way. He follows her. Very exciting. Uh, finally got to see the buck I'm after, But you know, it wasn't really in the thread of actually shooting him. November one arrives. Now it's time to get serious about getting into those betting areas. And I will say one of the nice things for me, um over the last year or two, definitely this year, sort of like you said, that good feeling you get when you start to realize, like my strategy works, things are clicking, I'm figuring things out. Um. So this property I've talked about, I talked about a lot over the years, but it's it's an eighties seven acre farm, of which about half of it is the big open fields. So I've got like forty acres of like huntable stuff that's either some swamp or edges of the little of the edges of the field that I can hunt, or some grassy stuff or some kind of thin strips of timber that poke out into that field. That's what this farm looks like. Um. The early years I hunted here, I hunted a lot of field edge, some of the food plots, and you know, it had some sightings, has some encounters, but wasn't getting a lot of shot opportunities at the old buck or two that might be out there. Finally I started realizing where these best dough betting areas are on the back of the farm. And now every year for the past few years, I've been putting my time in back there. In the mornings and I'm having encounters and getting shots at better deer. And so that's what happened on the morning November one. I sat back at the down one side of one of these doe betting ears, kind of where a whole lot of movement pinches in where there's kind of a chunk of timber and swamp on the south side, and then a thin strip of timber in the middle with its some dough betting in it, and then a bigger chunk of timber to the north. And so it's it's down wine of a doe betting ear and a pinch, and it's it's dynamite because of that. So I see a lot of young bucks coming through. Everything that passes through this area comes within range. I mean, it's perfect. And I see a big set of antlers coming through the timber towards me, but kind of angling away. I fire off a grunt, and that deer turns and starts walking right at me and look back. Best feeling that is the best feeling where that contact grunt and they're just like that over there, crap here we go. Um. And so that's exactly what happened. I pull a buy nose to get a better looking like, oh, it's RB. And then the next thought I have is, oh, ship, what am I gonna do? And he's coming on a string, and I'm like, ah, what am I doing right now? Should I shoot him? Should I pass him? Shuld I shoot him? Shory to pass him? I grabbed my bow. He's getting closer. I get set, I get lined up. Should I shoot him? Should I pass him? Should shoot him? Should I pass him? He's at thirty yards, he's at twenty five yards. He steps into my shooting lane. At twenty yards. I draw back. I put the pin behind his shoulder. Should I shoot him? Should I pass him? And I just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger because if I pull the trigger, I'm done. I'm not. I don't ever want to take two bucks off this farm, and I know I wanted to save a tag for the back forty still, so I was basically, I've got one buck on this property, and if I shoot RB, that means the hunt for trains done. And I just in that moment, I just couldn't. I didn't want that to be case. So I let him go and he walks through, and man does he looked good. Though. As he walks away, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know he he's He's got a pretty good sized body on him. He's a really nice ten pointer. He might be like mid one thirties ten pointer in Michigan. He'd be one of my biggest bucks in Michigan ever, a buck that pretty much anyone in this state would you know, their draw dropped for most guys. Um. And So I'm sitting there thinking, am I the stupidest person in the world? I just do that? But at the same time, you know, I just I wanted to still hunt Tram. So that happened. Um. I will fast forward from there. That great encounter happened, still chasing Ran. Next day, have an encounter with Tran. This was my best encounter with Trand up to that point, and really for the rest of the season. I move about a hundred yards from that location to the down one side of another betting area that's kind of there's a sort of a line of dough betting ears on this property and I just hunt on the downwind side of this line, and in various points you're gonna get bucks to come cruising through there. And there's a few kind of pinches where the travel gets narrowed down a little bit more. I hunted one where I had that RB encounter. I moved up to the next one for the next day. And first thing in the morning, I hear some noise behind me. I look. I see Tran like forty yards away in this really thick stuff. I can't shoot into it, it's not even shooting like yet, but I see him on the Colie crab. Um. The basic gist of this, I think I think I mentioned this story already to Spencer on a rut Fresh radio episode. Um. Basically gist of it is that he ended up being in this thick, nasty stuff just behind me with a oh, and he popped out eventually, maybe twenty minutes later, and I can see him now. Finally he's at like forty five or fifty yards and he's locked on a doll and nothing I could do was going to get him to come the next ten fifty yards to get closer to me. And he followed that dough off into the neighbors and then he circled back and chased, surprisingly, chased a group of four doughs towards me. Got to like forty five forty and but no shot opportunity and then stopped and turned and went back towards that original doll and and that was that was this one really close and call with tray and I thought, man, it's gonna happen. When he came in that second time, he looks amazing. I mean, just a huge mainframe eight pointer um at least for around here. And it was really exciting. Not click close enough and uh and then you know I re positioned. Was this a like that was the closest that you got to him? That was the closest I ever did end up getting to him. So like yards is probably about where he was at um at forty five yards at all? Did he have an opening? Oh could have shot him at forty five years? No, because he came he came running in facing me and then immediately spun away and went the other way. Um because he was chasing those four doors and so ran behind the doors, stopped turning, ran right back towards the original though he was with UM. So no, I think the only time I really could taken a shot, and I would never shoot this far. But he like he was broadside at sixty just standing there with the dough for a long time, um, but never presented a real shot um within my range. So I moved that next day. That day, I got down from the tree, ran back, got went to my house, got a got a saddle and sticks, came back in there and repositioned thirty yards to get to where those deer had been coming in and out. I hoped that that same dough would start cycle back in and give me a shot. This time didn't happen. Um. Then I had to leave the next day. I think it was because that was when we were gonna start filming on the back forty um. So that was a bummer. But I'll skip what happened in the back for you to continue the trans story. Um. So I took a seven day break in the middle because we had a scheduled time with the camera crew to be at the back forty um. So I told you what happened with my dad. Had that happened, I had four or five days. I got to hunt myself and another guy that O'Brien was there hunting too, So that all happens I come back. It's maybe the I don't know. Um. Well, no, this is when I took two days off to get back with the family. Took two days, tried to you know, help our around the house, just get the family feeling good. And one of those nights I was of course there were the family, but I had to at least try to glass one of the fields one night. So I get out there in glass of field and Tran comes out on the night of the tenth bumping does around. I'm like, ah, he's there, and I was exciting of one of your stands. Let me think about this, Nah, not really. Um, if I had sat that infamous hay bail blind, I probably could have maybe kind of if I shot, if I sat in the poop blind and maybe would have had a long shot at him. Um, but not like a gimme shot. But he was definitely in the zone. UM. So then I get back out there the next day and I have now four days left before guns season, and I go back in the next morning to one of his betting areas and I see this dough behind me, and there's a whole bunch of different box kind of young bucks passing through and dos passing through. I'm down wind of this bedding dough betting here again, and I see this one dough behind me, and she's maybe forty five yards away, and I noticed her. She's just standing there, still kind of looking around, and so I looked a glass around or try to see is there is there buck falling behind hers? There buck there? Nothing? Nothing? Nothing, Okay, keep looking, there's other activity in front of me. I'm watching this. I'm watching this. I look back that dough still standing there. What's she doing? Look around, look around, can't see anything. Okay, Now I gotta focus back on the front again. Another young buck passes through. Well, I don't know how long this went on for maybe forty five minutes, an hour. Um. I look back there and that damn dough is still there, and I think, golly, that dough is acting like a locked down dough. She's acting like she's just standing here. The only time I ever see a dough just stand kind of in the open. She was right in the edge of the thicket. Um, is if she's you know, if a bucket the door locked down and she's just standing there, and I keep thinking, man, is there a buck standing with her? And I just can't see her. And as I have this thought, I pulled my binos again to look one more time, and there's a buck right behind her and it's tran and like, holy crap, there he is right there. But they're directly down wind of me. This is like the one area. Why not directly downwinded me, I guess it would be, but sort of downwind of me. And he she's been standing as whole time he is. I don't know if I don't What I don't know is if he had been there, was he standing with her but just inside the thick stuff this whole time and I never knew it, or was he just cruising through? And I happened to look that time that he passed through. I don't know which it was, but he I see him there for a second and he's walking straight away into the next betting area down and I can't grunt, h or do anything because just like you said, he's down winded me or very close to being down winto me. I don't want to encourage him to get spooped anymore. He disappears, um I continue to try to take stabs at him. I hunt these betting areas in the mornings in the evenings. There's two main food sources. There's a cut bean field on one side, of the farm. There's a standing corn field on the other side. I kind of bounced back and forth. If I saw him like those days, I saw him up in the north betting area, I would say, Okay, best chances he's gonna be with a do on the north side, they'll go to bean field. If I saw him in the south betting area, there's a slightly better chance he might come out with her to the south field there in the corn fields to try to hunt closer to that. I ended up seeing him one more night, um off the north field in the neighbor's betting area and nothing that I could possibly take a shot at. I actually saw him on the neighbor's betting area game a grunt and he circled several hundred yards, and I can I can see him multiple different times because he's passing through brushes and uh autumnile bushes and different crap like that. So he disappears and he shows up, the disappears, shows up, and you could see him go all the way from almost due north of me to all the way almost due south to get down wind, so he passes towards last time I saw him, he was heading towards my down one side. I couldn't see my down one side, um because there's some thick stuff there and uh, he probably went down windo me. I don't know. UM, So that was disappointing. And this takes me to my last morning, my last day, I think, and maybe I can't remember if the encounter I'm about to tell you what happened on the morning of the thirteenth, of the morning of the fourteen. But um, there's basically two more encounters worth mentioning. This one is back down window that doughe betting year that I first talked about, um, where I passed on RB on November one. I go back there again. It's I think, probably my best spot because it's down one of the Doe betting year and it's the best little pinch I have their sorts. So I've kind of came to see this year that there's if if it's gonna happen, that's one of the very best chances of where it might happen. So I'm sitting there again and I look behind me and I see a big rack coming my way. I get excited, pulled the buyos it's r B again and sure as ship, here he comes. And now I'm thinking, uh, should I shoot him? Should I pass him? Should I shoot him? It's now, you know, almost both seasons almost done. Uh ah, he's a pretty nice buck. I still don't know. I still hadn't made a decision up to this point. Even over this whole time, I kept thinking about it, and still was like I would go. I would say, no, you passed on him once. You want to kill tran, just stick with it. And then a day later though, I'd be like, man, your wife's pregnant and tired, your son's you know, would love to see his dad. If you shot this buck, you'd be done. You wouldn't you wouldn't feel the pressure to keep hunting anymore. And maybe it's just end the season, just get it done with it. And then I go back and I say, man, if you shoot this buck, you're gonna feel a little let down. You're gonna you're gonna walk up to and be like, ah, he's a nice buck. Um. But in the back of your mind, you know you're gonna be bummed that you're not chasing train. You'll be bummed that you gave in or that you settled. Um. So this whole thing has been playing on my head over and over and over again. So he passes by like twenty yards and I don't even grab my bow at this time. I just film him with my phone and say, you know what, you made your decision. You're not gonna settle, You're not gonna change your goal. He's an awesome buck hopefully makes it to next year. You really want to keep killed trans stick with it, and so I let to watch him go. He passes by easy, chip shot goes on through. Now I have the same feelings. I'm like, gosh, are you an idiot? Mark? What are you doing? Go through the whole thing. Twenty minutes later, I hear snap Curious again walking right through, and this time I grabbed my bow, like damn it, damnit, Mark, just get it done with so not grabbed my bow, and I start to get in position like maybe I should just shoot him. I'm about to draw back, and then a dope pops and he jogs off after and I didn't have to I didn't have to make the decision again. So that was that I was there this year too, with that three year old, at that eleven point three year old that I passed probably a low one fifties. I passed him like high one furtiest one fifties. I passed him three different times this year, and I mean like at ten yards three different times. And the first time was like, okay, we're not gonna pass. The second time was like, well the rut is kind of we're in the middle of the rout. And then the last time was like it could be over right now. It could all be over right now. Man, It's it's a tough one. I don't know. I still have been debating back and forth, you know, what's the right thing. So there's all these different things going through your mind, Like I just mentioned a whole bunch of them. I had this original goal I want to shoot for sure, mature buck now and trans really really the one I want to shoot. But if if a mystery buck came through that I saw there was no dat about a tanker, I would have taken a cracking into probably at this point. But I still just so unsure about him, Like I could convince myself one day maybe he's four, and then the next day like, no, he's probably three, and and I just didn't want to do that. But on the other hand, you know, I posted on social media, and then you got all these guys, oh my god, why would you shot? Why would shoot? What are you doing? And then for a half second you let that influence you. You're like, should I have shot? Am I an idiot? And like, no, you can't. You can't listen to people. And then your buddies text you, and your buddies say, dude, what do you think? And you're not gonna see another buck like that in Michigan. That'd be your, you know, second biggest archery buck in Mischigan. You gotta shoot that deer. And then's that No, No, I gotta stick with what you want to do. Um. And then this other weird side of you says, man, you know you you work in the hunting industry. People are wanting to see that you know what you're talking about. You never shoot anything because you're passed on these deer. And then I said, no, you can't let that influence you. But like that debate, all these different voices, the angel and the devil on your shoulder saying do this, do that, do this? Do that? Um? That was very much the story for my rut with this deer, um, having those opportunities, having another big nine I passed on. I passed on a really nice eight pointer or my first day in North Dakota. I passed on more bucks this year of like nice nice bucks for me than I ever have. I've never done that. I had four shot opportunities this year in Michigan at a three and a half year old buck in Michigan, um with my bow, which is a big deal around here. Um, and I passed on them all. You know, just a few years ago a three and a half year old was my target around here. So it's part of me is like, what are you doing? And part of me says, hey, that's pretty damn cool, mark that you can pass that. You don't need to shoot that deer anymore. Keep it going, keep keep pushing yourself. Um, that's fun. So that all said, though, I had this like roller coaster of emotions of like, wow, this is awesome seeing really nice deer and passing it too. Then are you making a mistake? Are you just out here and you know that buck's gonna be killed as soon as gun season comes in, and trans probably gonna be killed by someone in gun season, and you have nothing to hunt and nothing to show for all the time you put in and so where where I settled on was the fact that you know, I'm gonna hunt for why I really want to hunt. I'm not going to shoot a deer unless it's really, really, really going to be the deer that, um, that I'm excited about and that I've worked for, And in this case, I had those goals, and I want to stick to those goals, and it's gonna be tran or you know, if a surprise four or five year old bucks shows up, um, that's a mzing um. But I'm not going to settle because someone else says I should shoot. So that's where I ended up. And the last night of the hunting season, I decided to hunt a spot I haven't hunted yet all year. Um, it's it's a weird spot. It's right in the edge of the best betting area around, but I can't hunt the betting area, it's the neighbors, So I have to hunt the edge of a cut bean field. Um. That said, I've seen this buck go out in that field multiple times, several of the sidings he crossed along through there, and many bucks in the past I've hunted have passed within range of the shooting of this tree. Stand. So I sat there with a risky wind I knew as a risky wind, but as the last night before gunn season, and said, screw it, I'm gonna throw a hail Mary and you know, basically blowing out the top quarter of this betting are hoping that my buck would come out in the bottom three quarters. And uh, Tran came out. But he came out in the top quarter, stepped out right down wind to me two d yards away, and I could see him on the neighbors and he just stood there, looked in my direction for a few seconds and then just kept on going. UM. So I'm sure he got a smell of something and that was that. That was the end of the boat season. I do not know if Tran has made it through the last few days a gun season or not. I don't know if RB has made it. I don't know if the Big Nines made it. Um. But that was my That was my boat season on the main Michigan farm. It's just a lot of question marks around shot decisions and holding out for one deer and the excitement of that versus the stress of that. Um. That's kind of where my head has been. UM. But that I I've totally skipped over the one really good thing that happened during the run, which was surprisingly in the place where I saw the least activity. So one second in regards to Trana, not only Tran, but you've had I mean you've played cat mouse on your your property before with holy Field, right and then yeah and Frank, So it's not like it's anything new six before that. Yeah, yeah, So deer do become do get old in your area around that area. They there's there's a chance they can make it. The cool thing is passing this buck just solidifies that you're now potentially going to have a another shooter should chase next year, right, not just one, but too. That's the hope. You just never know. Um and I keep on, I keep on waiting for the other shoot to drop, right, I mean, I keep on. I've been lucky to have some of these bucks make it year after year. That is really unique. You know. You know a bunch of my hunting buddies, um, Andy and Dustin and Josh and Ross and Peter and those guys and Corey, and they're constantly giving me crap about how nobody else in Michigan gets a chance to see these bucks year after year, Like I'm in some little weird microcosm or some weird sphere that's protecting these bucks because all my buddies, all their deer get killed every year once hits. Like that's the group text message through I going on right now. Everyone's sharing pictures of the buck because the hunt it all both season that are now dead. They have shown up on somebody else's buck pole or Facebook page. And I've been lucky that I have been able to get at least one buck that I've seen previously is back every year, um for the last I don't know, seven eight years now. But I just keep on, you know, worrying that next year is going to change. And there's more people coming into the area I've I've met. There's some new hunters. Someone just bought a farm one property away from me who's really into hunting. Found out there's some two guys leasing a neighboring farm now that are really into hunting. There's a guy that usually didn't hunt his property. He just moved back, so he's gonna be hunting more. Um. Had a person come in trespassing from somewhere else that I spotted one day, so there's like people are there's more and more people. There's always been a lot of people. But I keep on feeling like, is this going to change things? I don't know. So there's worries, but there's hope because yes, there have been deer that make it through and it's possible, so we'll see. Yeah, but you killed something, dude, I did kill something. Um So in the middle of all these things, I did have that week on the back forty um, of which four days were meet mine to hunt. I got to hunt four days, a few days there my dad, but the four days prior to that, I was hunting on my own. And uh. And the long story short of it is, went in on November, starting November three, went and hunting the best spots I had. The spot was calling the honey Hoole. I had saved it all season, haven't touched it. It's it's native blue native big blue stem grass and cedars and all this thick shrubby, autumn ales and different things on this ridge next to the swamp. Super cool little area. I knew there's dear bedding in there. I've been getting pictures of the wide eight coming in and out of it. I had a camera near the edge of this thing. So I went in there and hunted the first day, expecting to see all sorts of bucks cruising this ridge, and nothing like. We saw a couple of dolls in the year and a half old, and then that night, uh, a two and a half year old bluck came out, but much much slower than I was expecting. And the next two days was the same kind of thing, just a few doughs a year and a half old. Um Like we talked about earlier, the whole thing about why this property has been much slower than I expected? If that that's what I just sat and thought about for three days, why is this like this? Um, it's November, you know, it's November three, four five, It should be great. Um. But the third day was the third fourth day, I decided, all right, we gotta switched up to new spots. So I had another spot that I prepped that was at the inside corner of where one of our old fields came down the ridge and pushed into the edge of the swamp. So there's an inside corner of this field that juts into the swamp, and that ridge with the honey hoole that thick ridge drops down at the same point too, so the ridge pinches to the edge of the swamp and the field pinches to the edge of the swamp. And I thought to myself, gosh, if anything is cruising the edge of the swamp or cruising the ridge, and if they want to stay in the cover but not being the really wet stuff, they've got to come right through this edge set up there, hunted it not seeing much at all. Could hear a buck chasing a dough in the thick swamp, but could never see them. And it's nine thirty in the morning. Not a single buck has come cruising through. I'm just having these same thoughts in my mind, like what is going on? Why are there not a few bucks cruising through? Why am I not seeing some two year olds? Like this is a good area. I know it's a good area, and know who's around here. I've talked to the neighbors. Now I know that there's deer in the zone. Um, it's it's a It's got a lot of good things going for this property. Does we should be seeing something? And hits And I'm like, all right, I'm getting a snack, So I bust out a bag of checks mix. I'm eating some checks makes and I look over my shoulder on the hill behind me, and I see a buck running across this old brushy field and me and like, that's a good buck. Put my buyd knows and I realized that's the wide eight and he's running across this field behind me. Graham a grunt tube. Do the exact same thing we talked about earlier. Just let off a rack and he stops on a dime. He looks right at me and then starts coming in and I'm like, holy sh it, he's coming right to me. And that's like, man, that is so satisfying. I don't, like, I know I've already said this, but like it's like boner worthy. When you can do that, it's like I am in control of you from this point on, you know what I mean. It is one of the absolute coolest things. Yes, Like that's one of the very best moments as a hunter when you hit that grunt and they spin and that the moment is when you when you know what's happening, like, oh it worked here he comes did they stop? And they just turn and they look back in your way and you're like got your mother comes that's all right. We're very excited. Um and and so yeah, he he comes in and basically he's coming in a rope, and then he starts to angle south again, and then I think in my head, oh crap, he's heading right towards my wind and he's going right down wind. And now I'm thinking, jeez, it's game over. And he stops, puts his nose up in the air. Sniff sniff, sniff, sniff, keeps looking. Sniff sniff, sniff sniff, keeps looking, and like this is the moment of truth. Like it's gonna either he's gonna bust out of here or it's gonna happen. I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, assuming any second now he's gonna kick up his white flag and tear out of there. And my scent control worked and he's kept. He puts his head back down and keeps coming right in, and I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, it's happening. And he walks straight in on like dead to me, head on to like fifteen yards, but he's facing me a fifteen yards and he stops right in my shooting lane and he's doing the head scan. Now he's like we're the buck. Where's the buck? He's looking looking, looking, and I can't shoot, And now I'm thinking, oh no, like what's gonna happen here? But I'm ready, I'm locked in. I'm I'm using my silver back back tension release for the first time. Um, not for the first time, but I'm going to get a shot for the first time, hopefully. And then he turns and starts to jog, and I have a tree because he's out of my shooting. And now there's a true a bunch of like vines on a grape vines or something, and there's one little hole in the vines, and so he kind of starts to jog that direction and he gets to that one hole and I just rat and he stops, and I pull back and let her rip and double lunged him and you just see him mule kick and run up the hill and run towards this fencer over there and crashes into the woods there and you can just see all the trees like shaken, shake and shake and shaken, and then stopped and um, and then it was just yeah, it's like that's the perfect thing. It's the perfect it's almost like the perfect hunt. Yeah, it was. I made it was and what was what was unique about this And I haven't spent a whole lot of time talking about the build up to this because I spent so much time talking about tran Um. But there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes on this hunt that made that moment really special for me, um, Because you know, I hunted it in the early season, then we hunted again with Doug late October, and then we hunted it for this period during the rut Um. But then there's also been all this time in the spring and summer that I've been trying to get this project off the ground and then trying to get this property set up, and then trying to get people out here to see it and share their thoughts. Um. But really there was this whole other side of things that we don't have to get into. But this is like a very different kind of project for me, right, I mean kind of like filling my first TV show, And there's all these a lot of people involved, and a lot of stuff going on and a lot of a lot of doubts and questions and criticisms and UM, for me, it was just a very stressful summer and fall, trying to make this thing work. Um, a lot of late nights on the phone, rewriting things, changing things, trying to change plans, trying to make it work, um, and all of that. Then I shoot this buck, and up to this point where I had taken this buck, I'm thinking, Man, this thing is a bust. I mean, this is horrible. Everything's gone wrong. Uh, I'm a horrible host. No one's gonna be interested in this. I can't even see a half decent buck. Um. And then this thing happens in a split second and all changes, and you know, the buck that I've been hoping to see and that I talked about the most, and that we thought we might have a chance to see, All of a sudden he's there and I get a shot and he's down, and all of these ten thousand things added up too, We're added to all the regular hunting excitement all built up. And then like over float out of me and I had the most emotion filled moment I think I've ever had a hunter. I just kind of broke down. I've never had that happened before. Um, but I just kinda was overwhelmed by everything and I kind of just lost it. For five minutes, and uh, it was a really it was a really uh I don't even know what the right words are, but it was one of those moments that as a hunter, it's so much more than just shooting a deer, you know, Like that was that was the actual physical action that took place, but what it represented and what it culminated was so so so much more and and and it's probably not fair to the deer to put all that on that deer. You know, all these other emotions, all these other things that were building up inside of me, but it all got put on this moment and um led to a really just I don't know, I was very very thankful, really really excited, very very happy. Just like you said, a whole lot of stuff came together there in that moment and reminds you while you hunt, because because you can have that kind of emotional experience out there in the woods and uh and like you said, get some great meat out of it, have some great memories. Uh. You know, got to share with my dad because he showed up a couple of days later and got to see the deer, and I got to show my son the buck, and uh, you know, he got a thrill out of that and the buck. Because of the cold weather, I've just hung the buck up behind the barn and so still hanging there, just letting it hang. And so every day my some months to go out there and see the buck and touch it and uh just say buck buck buck over another chain and uh, that's what's all about. So it was a really cool way to uh to see a lot of work come to fruition. That's awesome, dude. I'm glad. I'm glad he had that moment and those moments like I don't I don't like to like focus so hard on the cherry on top, which is the kill I feel. But when you can have that moment, that's so just feel so right Like me, I was just so overjoyed and you got you got a little emotional and um. And I think that when you can stop putting, if you can, you can relieve the pressure. Like there. For me, one thing I've I feel like I've learned how to do over the last several years, ever since I stopped filming my hunts, and not saying that I'm not ever going to do it again, but taking everybody out of the equation that's not you, and that's not the animal and and and taking out all the things that don't matter, then I think you can enjoy hunting that much more. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something that I'm constantly battling with. UM And I've gotten to a point where I handle it much better, but I still have those back and forth in my mind. I end up in the right place, but sometimes it takes me, you know, some sitting there and like but what about this? What about this? And then no, you know, it's about you and your experience and this hunt, and that's all that matters. UM. So getting there, I can't say I still don't have some stress in between. UM. But yes, that is the way to that is the way to enjoy this stuff the most is to shut out all the outside noise and just hunt. Hunt your hunt, enjoy it, enjoy the process. Don't be so I mean, I'm always I'm an interesting I have I have an interesting conundrum because I always I like to talk the big game to myself and and externally, which is give it your all, put it all in their field, work, work work, don't give up, be strong, push through the tough times. Um. And that's what I'm always telling myself because you know that's what leads you to success. Um. But then I also have this other side of me that's telling myself, you don't need to take it so seriously too. Remember to enjoy it, Remember to enjoy the process, Remember to have fun, Remember to you know, take some time off during the rut to sit with your dad and tell stories, because that means a whole lot more than sitting in a tree and trying to shoot a deer in the big scammy things. So I think that that family and balancing your drive with bigger things and priorities and all that is like when I take away from this hunting season. I don't know if I if I don't know if I can wrap it up in like a sustinct way, but I think over the course of the the last two hours between your story and mine, I think that's kind of the moral of our story in general. Yeah, I don't know, man, I just I love this and every year I say, I say, I just love it so much, and I'm glad I have a wife who you know, I'm not gonna say, lets me go, because I feel like that's unfair to say, like someone's letting you do something but works with me and you know, gives me the opportunity and the freedom and understands is starting to understand a little more every year how this all comes together for you know, for me and the passion that's there. And I don't know, I just feel like want when a person can focus on themselves and the animal and their scenarios, that there's a cloud that's lifted off and they just get so much more enjoyment out of it. And um like, for me, I don't even think about anybody else. I want other hunters to be successful, but I'm going to celebrate what they've done regardless of how big the antlers are. I give zero about the antlers, un dear like, I just like when people measure their success on the antlers. You you are losing your you are losing. You're losing. I don't that's my opinion. I hear you that. I'll start getting fired up if we keep talking about that. Dude, congrats on such an awesome season. I mean, that's what it's all about, right, It was. It was a really cool it was a really cool hunt. And uh and the season is not done for me. I'm gonna keep at it. Um I still want to hopefully have a shot of tran, But I will say that maybe maybe what I got from this season so far is to control which you can control. There are certain things you can control, like your effort, like your priorities, like when you decide to shoot, when you don't shoot, when you hunt, when you don't hunt, where you go. Control those things and do the best you can with that. But when it comes to what you can't control, recognize what you can't control, and stop giving and stop giving ships about it, because if you can't control it, let it go. Whether that be what somebody else thinks about your decision, whether that be if someone else shoots your target buck, to that be if the deer just aren't there in your farm and and and you're having really slow sits. If you can't control it, there's no point in stressing about it and worrying about it and letting it ruin your hunting experience. Yeah, that's a fact, Jack, That is a fact. And I think maybe with that we should shut down this marathon uh story type podcast. That's a fact. I gotta pee you really bad. Well, then get out of here, go go drain the tank and uh, well we'll talk against him, and that's gonna do it first Today, just a couple of quick reminders. If you haven't checked out my new book, That Wild Country, would highly recommended and appreciate it. If you'd be willing to pick up a copy, you can find it on Amazon from now through the beginning of December, and then from December one on you'll be able to pick it up just about anywhere you can find books. A lot more to come on that soon. Otherwise, follow me on the Wired Hunt Instagram account for more updates on recent trips, upcoming hunts and all that good stuff, and otherwise, thank you all for tuning in. I appreciate your support, and until next time, good luck hunting and stay wired to Hunt.