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 thirty three and than the show, I'm joined by the d I Y Sportsman himself, Garrett Prawl, to examine his ultra light mobile hunting style and the fascinating approach he takes to testing and modifying his gear to perfectly fit his hunts. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on x TAN. The show, like I just mentioned, we've got Garrett Prawl and if you know of Garrett, it's likely because of his popular YouTube channel or podcast, both under the name of d I Y Sportsman. And what I think makes Garrett's approach and his content so unique is this the seemingly endless tinkering and modifying and fine tuning that's applied to almost every aspect of his hunting gear and his hunting process. You can just see this engineering background shine through everything is doing, whether it's talking about climbing stick modifications or choosing the right place to hunt on any given day. And I just love this, this analytical and and experimental approach to things, even though at times, maybe especially with gear, I'm not very good at that, but I'm I'm always wanting to try and get better at those kinds of things. So that's what we're talking about today. First, it's a thorough examination of Garrett's mobile hunting style and how he approaches scouting and hunting on the fly, and how he adjust to change the conditions or hot deer sign, how he knows when to hunt somewhere and when he knows to keep searching for something better, and a whole lot more on that from very interesting stuff. And then secondly, we spend a lot of time talking about the gear that help helps him with this ultra light mobile hunting style. So we're getting into the nitty gritty details on his climbing system, you know, climbing sticks, his saddle hunting gear, how he modifies sticks and tree stands and lineman's belts and all sorts of really in the weeds gear tricks and tips that have made him a more stealthy, speedy, and efficient hunter, which, at least from my perspective, I think is really helpful stuff. I gotta believe you guys are gonna enjoy it too. So it's a chat I really enjoyed. I think you will enjoy it as well. And I'm excited for that one. But before we get into the main event, UM, I do not have my buddy Dan Johnson with me here today, so it's just me. But I do want to tell you a story because I've got an exciting update. If you follow me over on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, you likely know about this, but I thought he'd shared the story anyways. Um, yesterday, my wife was feeling very, very very pregnant. Right, she's almost well, she is pretty much ready to have baby. Let's just put that out there. She's thirty nine and a half weeks very uh eager for this thing to happen, as am I, and so yester, she's let's go for a walk. She's been pacing around the house all more thing, just walking circles because that's the only thing that makes her feel half decent. So she said, let's go for a walk. And I think it was me, might have been her um who said, well, let's just go walk in that cornfield up by the road at this property. Hunt It's it's nearby, it's easy to get to and um, just we could just roam around wherever we could take the dogs. So my wife, who's very pregnant, my two dogs, and my two year old son and I head outside, head out to this spot and just start walking. And we just get into the corn field, and my son doesn't want to walk in the snow. He's for whatever reason, just the texture of the snow or the depth or something, he wasn't comfortable. Um So he's just standing there, refusing to walk, refusing to walk. So I go walking like ten yards up and turn around and tell him to come follow me, and he won't do it. So I go back to him, I pick him up, and I start walking again. And and because of where I had to go to pick him up, I'm now a couple of rows down in the corn then I would have started otherwise. And I just barely start walking. I mean I'm ten yards in fifteen yards and something like that. And in my mind I kind of thought, oh, man, I better just keep an eye out just in case he happened to seeing antler out here. But I'm right off the road, right by a house, and lo and behold, there's an antler, like right there, and I look five yards further on and there's another antler right there. There's a match that right in front of me, just as we start walking with my whole dang family right there. I mean, it was crazy. I'm you know, I can't believe that I'm yelling at my wife. Oh my god, there's antlers right there. Get every We gotta show him the antlers. And we go up to him, and Kylie sets ever down in front of the antlers and she picks one up, and then I get to see the angler. I let them pick it up first, and as she picks it up, I see the G two's on it. And it was one of those holy crap moments. That's trans antler. That is the antler from the buck that I watched all two thousand eighteen, passing on him because I wanted to see him in two thousand nineteen and then two nineteen is you guys probably know if you listen to this podcast, you know that I was hunting him obsessively all two thousand nineteen. Had these close calls, you know, almost had a shot and basically had a shot but passed on it because I didn't feel comfortable with um, the angle he was at and the possibility of limbs getting the way, So I had all these close calls. I saw him on the very last day of the season. He's the one and his antlers both sides are right here, right off the road in front of me on this walk with my family. I mean, it was nuts. I freaked out, very very excited. These are the antlers I was dying to get my hands on this year. I was gonna spend a ton of time shed hunting trying to find him. And loan, behold, we stumble on him, and the most unlikely fashion of all time. I mean, the luckiest thing maybe that's ever happened to me as far as deer hunting related things. I just couldn't believe it. Shocking, very exciting. Um, But what's interesting is what happened the rest of the day. So we we get the antlers and then we go home a little bit later. And at first, when my son got the antler and we saw the antlers outside in the corn field, he just wasn't feeling He was kind of sour. He just wasn't happy about the whole walking in the deep snow. So we go back to the house, get inside. I give him the antlers then and then he freaks out. He's really excited about the antlers. He's trying to say the word antler. It kind of comes to ira, but he's running around with the antlers. He's put him on his head like he's a deer. He's pointing at the deer mounts up on the wall, pointing at the antler's pointing at his antler's pointing. The antler's pointing his handlers. He's rattling him. He goes to our shed pile and makes me grab some other sheds and I have to rattle while he rattles. I mean, he was having just a blast. Fast forward a little bit and later in the day. Now it's in the evening and he looks out the window. It's about dinner time, and he starts yelling Dad, Dad, da, and I look out there and he sees deer out in the field, and with the snow over the fields, the deer really pop. And that's something he's never done before. He's never actually spotted deer before me. So he spots the deer, starts yelling at this dead, dead deer, and I have to go over there and watch the deer with him. And then we go look at the front out the front of the house and there's deer in the front field across the road. So we're running from window to window. He's yelling about the deer. We've got a grab binoculars. He makes me grab mine. He's got his little toy binoculars. We're watching him. Then we got to go to his room and look out his window and see if there's deer out there. That was a blast. And then he goes and grabs the grunt tube and his rattling bag. He gives me the rattling bag, he takes the grunt of he starts grunting bra He looks at me and then makes me rattle. Um. Just hilarious. So that was great. And then maybe I know, we eat dinner, We get done with dinner, and then he starts bugling. He loves watching ELK videos, so he's got this really high pitched kind of mouth bugle whistle he can kind of do. He he'll do that. When he does that, it means he wants to watch some el cutting videos. So you know, I'm thoroughly enjoying all of his excitement today. So I decided to throw on a YouTube video that just shows bugling bulls, just to kind of a reel of all these different bulls somewhere the song record all this different video footage out in the Rockies are somewhere. So we pull that on and then I go grab my bugle tube. I've never done this before, but I just for some reason, I got the idea that I bet you he could have a good time with the bugle tubes. So I give him the bugle tube. He watches the Elk on the YouTube and then he starts mimicking it with the bugle And I'm not shipping you, guys, he is good like he now he's not using the read he's just making the sound of his voice and amplifying it with the tube. But I mean, he was nailing it. He was even getting some growl in the front and the back end. He's got the rising tone and then then drop off at the end. You know, he would listen to one and then try to mimic it. He listened to one and try to mimic it, and it was just the coolest thing seeing him there doing it. And he would even you know, when guys bugle and he's probably seeing this in the hunting video, that's what he's duplicating it. But they often start with a bugle tube pointed low and then rise, rise, or lift the tube up high. Towards the end of the note, he was even doing that. It was crazy. Um. So we just had a ball, just an absolute ball. And I'm laying in bed last night, getting ready to, you know, shut it down, and I'm thinking back on the day. You know, I found these antlers from the deer that I've obsessed over for the last two years. It was my number one goal for the next couple of months, and there they were, and I got the match set. Um, that's incredible. And then I'm thinking about all the other things that happened, like the fact that I did that with my son and with my wife, and then playing with the antlers afterwards, and then grunting at the bucks outside and watching them with our binoculars and then bugling like an elk, and all these things, and I realized, Man, the best things about that whole day didn't have to do with finding those antlers at all, and it was just It's a small thing, but it was just one of those moments where I was reminded of what's really important. And it's easy with how much we love this stuff, how much we love deer and hunting and whatever outdoor pursuits were into, it's easy to get wrapped up in that. It's easy to get obsessed with the goal, with the thing, with the pursuit. And I am as guilty as anyone you guys know it. I really get after the stuff. Um, But days like yesterday just remind you to take a step back and make sure your perspectives right, especially man, after everything they happened this Sunday with the passing of of Kobe, you know, just an iconic figure like that that I know some so many people were influenced by and grew up with. Um, him being with his daughter, that just breaks your heart and it makes you think, as a dad, um, just to kiss your kids, hug your wife or your husband or your family members, and just remember what's really most important. So with that said, we do need to talk to deer hunting, So let's get right into it and talk to Garrett Prawl Before that, though, quick break here and the we're not going to thank a partner here this week. I'm actually going to just thank you, guys. I want to give a thank you to the entire wire to Hunt audience for your support with my book, That Wild Country. The support, the just the uprising of folks talking about the book, sharing the book, buying the book. It's been incredible. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It's been a huge success because of you guys, So thank you for that. If you haven't yet picked up a copy, certainly would encourage you to do so. Um check out the reviews on Amazon to see what the real people think about the book. I've just been so pleasantly surprised and honored and humbled to hear the people are really enjoying it, finding it really informational but also a lot of fun. Man. That is the coolest thing to see people enjoying that. So thanks in advance, and if you did pick up a copy, I thank you for that. But also if you haven't left a review on Amazon, it would be amazing if you could do that. There's a couple of folks in there that I don't like the fact that Hunt or leave a couple of nasty comments like that, so we gotta make sure there's some other good reviews out there too, um, which fortunately of them are which super appreciative, So head on over leave a review and thank you in advance for all of your support there. All right with me now on the line is Garrett Praul. Welcome to the show. Garrett, thanks for having me on. Mark. Yeah, I'm glad we're getting the chat. As we just mentioned before I started recording, I saw you at the bar at a t A. And I think I was standing next to Dan Johnson, and you know how he is. He's big and loud and you won't get to get past him, so I couldn't reach over and grabbing and chat with you. So I'm glad we're finally getting able to chat tonight because I've been following your work from AFAR and enjoying what you're putting out there to the world. So glad you can be here to night. Man. Absolutely appreciate it. So tell me this. I kind of want to just jump right into it. I want to know, how did you become the d I y sportsman? Why is that how you define yourself? You know, I think it just kind of it morphed into that over time. I've always been the kind of guy who tinkers around with a lot of stuff, um, you know, build stuff in the garage, never really um did anything in terms of like guided hunts or anything like that. Everything that we did growing up was always, you know, for the most part of public land kind of you know, figure stuff out as you go. So when I started to make content, eventually it kind of morphed into you know that everything kind of fitting that d I Y category in some way or another, whether it was from that hunting aspect or if it was actually building my own gear. Um, and it just kind of kept on going from there. What was when did that facet of its start the whole gear side. Were you doing that even as a as a kid. Were you the kid that was obsessed with legos and connects and all that stuff, or or when did that kind of click for you? Oh yeah, I've always been that way. I was the kid who was, you know, a second grader whittling little Ropolo lures pocket knife. That was that was totally me. That's amazing. What what was your first piece of hunting gear that you modified or created? Do you remember that? Oh? Boy, Uh, that's a good question. I'm not even percent sure what the first thing was maybe eight ors for stix. Nice. Okay, so that's probably within the last decade then, yeah, yeah, So what about your hunting style itself? When you know, if I were to look at when my hunting, when my own style of hunting kind of came into its owner. When I came into my own as a hunter, Um, it was it was a little over a decade ago, probably my very early twenties. That's when it kind of when it clicked for me and I went from just hunting to hunting in a in a informed way that was like no on my way. Um, when did that happen for you? When did you shift from just being like a kid out there hunting to oh, I'm now I'm hunting, do you know what I mean? Yeah, for me, it was probably when I was about fifteen. For the first couple of years, my dad and I we'd go out in the woods and we kind of try to figure it out, but we never quite you know, I knew exactly what we were doing. Wanted to get better for sure, And about that same time, I stumbled on some articles from guys like Dan Infall Madre de Quisto talking about marsh hunting techniques, which was you know, kind of the terrain that we most often hunted, and that really opened up my eyes and also allowed me to to kind of dig a little bit deeper and figure out on my own what methods and strategies I could use to help, you know, get a little bit more familiar with the scouting aspect, get a little bit more familiar with the note taking, and kind of plugging in all that together to make it work. Actually in the fall, so that's kind of when I really went off the deep end, so to speak, and really started to put a lot of time and effort into really refining the way that we we hunted. Yea, So how would you describe that the way that you hunt if if you had to? You know, let's say that the classic elevator pitch are on an elevator going from the first floor to the fourth floor and a guy says, tell me what you're hunting style is? How do you describe that to him in the sixty seconds you've got before you get to that fifth floor? Oh boy, you might you might want to turn into a forty floor elevator. Well, okay, skyscraper. So in a nutshell, for me, it really between off season and in season. The off season stuff really revolves around a combination of aerial scouting and boots on the ground scouting, and in season it's the same thing. It's just that it really just revolves between aerial scouting and looking for fresh sign with that in season scouting. And really for me, it's very cyclical. I go right for one to the other. They're always really meshed closely with one another. The better job I do with boots on the ground and the off season, that allows me to look back at the maps and better piece together the big picture, and then I find new things in the map, go back into the woods, dig it a little bit deeper. And then same thing in the season. The better job I did looking at the maps, the better job I did actually you know, picking it apart in the postseason. I find that in season, when I find the sign that I'm looking for that indicates them in a hot area, that other stuff really helps me look at exactly how I want to pinpoint that set up on that specific day and be a little bit more precise and and how I do that set up. Whereas if I just you know, focus on one or the other, if I focus all on postseason, if I focus all on just in season, I feel like I'm really limiting myself, or if I don't look at the maps, I feel like I'm really going and blind. Yeah, I want, I want to dive deeper into those quite dramatically. But before I do that, you mentioned on the front end that folks like Dan Infalt were really influential on you, and and and me too, and a lot of people out there. There's there's a lot of folks that have this kind of style of hunting. Um, how would you say, if at all your own spin on it is different if you and Dan were to go out, if you're on the public Land Challenge or whatever it is, and Dan's going off and doing his thing, You're going off doing your thing. How would you describe what you're doing that would be different than him. I think you could probably summarize and say, Dan at this point is a little bit better woodsman than I am. He can look at things and have a little bit better feel for what exactly is going on than I can, whereas I have to rely a little bit more on being able to piece together certain you know, theories and strategies and whatnot by looking at kind of the bigger picture and trying to piece together, you know, what the maps say at one location, how that compares to what I've seen in a different location, and then piecing it together with what I'm actually seeing on the ground and kind of learning that way. I think I maybe do a little bit more on the UM I would say, the technical, but the UM online portion of that scouting than he does. Okay, Yeah, you know it's funny what you said there resonates with me because I think I'm probably similar to you and that for us at our stage, you know, versus having done this for forty five years or however long he's been doing it at this level, um, when we've done it ten, fifteen years whatever. At this level, I still have to really focus on analyzing all these pieces of data coming in. Right I'm thinking about all this fresh sign, all of my all the sign from previous scouting efforts, and I'm sitting there and act to literally think it through and kind of compute Okay, this is telling me this and this is saying this other thing. Now I'm going to weigh the odds of these two things and make a decision. While some like in Faults might just have that intuitively click, He's just gonna He's not gonna sit there for five minutes and debate between A and B. He's gonna know, yeah, I've seen this a thousand times before. This is gonna be the best option. He steps in the woods and these things pop out like bright shining lights. Um. And I think every year the bright shining lights start to flash a little bit more for me. But I still have to sit and think for a second. Um, does that sound right? Is that kind of where you feel like you're a lot to that that takes yet to think it through? Still it's not that snap. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of describing it. I'm the type of guy who I'll sit there in the truck before I leave, and I'll sit there for half an hour trying to debate between two or three different spots that all could be equally good based on the wind direction and what I've noticed scouting. So I definitely I think about it a lot more than I probably should, probably to the point where at certain times I get paralysis by analysis. But eventually, you know, I just kind of kind of go with the flow on a particular day and and make something work and and then you know, take out, take what I learned that day and modify it for the next day. How do you deal with that situation? So me and Dan talked about this a lot, dealing with paralysis by analysis, because we're both guilty of it. We both are so we geek out about the details and about trying to think through all these things. But like you just said, sometimes it can get to be so much you're stuck. How do you push through that and make that final decision? It's you know, it's the rut. It's November four, Ye're about to head out on this hunt, and it's two thirty or three thirty, four thirty morning. You've got to make that decision of where you're going. How do you how do you break the tie riker? So I think for me, it is number one having a plan, not being afraid to stick with the plan, but then also not being so stuck into the plan that you're not willing to deviate from it when you see something that tells you you should. So, for example, you know, when we went down to Missouri this year, I had a plan that first day for all the types of spots that I wanted to to look at. You know, walk nine miles that first day, just looking for pinch points between various betting areas I thought I saw on the map. And then my plan was, you know, basically just systematically work through a bunch of these different areas. But what we found on the first day told me that that first strategy wasn't gonna work, so that all planned B. So I just you know, basically I had to plan B already in mind, So I just went from A to B, and then just started doing some of the additional scouting, um, getting some feedback from other guys in the group they were in that same area. And then based on some of my historical you know, experiences and looking at research in terms of weather patterns and whatnot, I had planned on basically setting up in a certain area based on what the weather was going to be the next day. Um. And that was basically the plan for that and it allowed me to really easily kind of stick to that plan and get into that area, hang our sets for that next morning when we're supposed to get that nice you know, high pressure, cold air, nice calm day. Um. But then at the same time that particular day when we went and set our stuff up there. Um, we found that even though the weather wasn't maybe ideal for what you'd expect a lot of deer movement to be. The deer were just on their feet running um. And we saw we work worked through an area that we saw a lot of deer moving around, and you know what, we we can't go back and do what we were planning on doing. We got to just sit right here. And that's how I ended up shooting that buck that I got in Missouri. Um. But had I had I basically either number one got two stuck in that plan, and I probably wouldn't have ended up sitting where I ended up shooting my dear and number two. If I didn't have the ability to just you know, so easily make that plan in the first place, I would have been, you know, stuck at the truck trying to figure out, you know where in the thousands of acres I was going to go, and it would have been you know, much tougher decision. Yeah, that's really hard to do what you described there, especially that first part where you've got a plan A and you go in on day one and and I've experienced this, it is really hard to shift from a to b especially if you're in a new spot where there's you know, thousands of acres to choose from, and your day one would be a tough thing to do for a lot of people. Where you correct me if I'm wrong, but you went in thinking you were in to focus on tops and finding these terrain funnels of sorts, and you didn't find sign and you ended up in a totally different area like river Bottom area, and then you did find something there. That's that's right, correct, Yeah, that's absolutely what happened. We covered tons and tons of miles on that of those walk ons Bridge tops looking for sign. Last year in Missouri, we're on that same time, that's where the hot sign was. Different area but similar terrain, and so I thought it was just gonna be like we did last year, and it was ended up being totally different. But I will say what what has helped me probably this past year that I really started focusing on a little bit more, especially in areas where I haven't done the priest scouting, even around home in Minnesota. Hunted a new marsh this year, and I didn't have any postseason experience other than a couple of quick trips in June and July, which is awful in the swamps. But effectively, what I tried to do, since there's so many there's so much acreage, there's so many spots that look like they could be great, is I would specifically pick on a particular day to go on a route that could take me through an A, B and a C. And so I would go in there on whatever day I was going to hunt and look at the sign an area A, and if it wasn't that great, I would just keep on going to be and then I would keep on going to see and by the time I got to see, if see also wasn't that great, that I would just continue scouting my way back to the truck, and you know, it didn't feel as much like it was a wasted day, whereas in the past what I may have done is said, Okay, it looks like the best potential spot based on the map, and I would go in there. I'd hunt it regardless of what the sign looked like. And I think I definitely got on more deer this year by having that ABC strategy in mind rather than trying to pick spots where it was you know, really you know, no plan B option. Now, how do you do that at the scale you did on that first day where you walked nine miles without finally seeing the thing you wanted to see. I don't know if I could do that. I thought, you know, I went on up in Minnesota's pasture and I walked something like three miles, and I thought to myself, all right, you covered a bunch of ground and finally you got to sit down somewhere. Um, you cover nine miles before you finally found the thing you wanted to find. Um, tell me, tell me about what you saw over the course of that day. You know, there must have been something that made you think, oh, this might be okay. I'm curious what made you keep going and going going, or was it just simply like a complete lack of zero, devoid of deer sign. I mean, it wasn't just a desert. Or did you have such a strong sense of confidence in the fact there had to be somewhere with tons and tons and tons of fresh sign that you were gonna keep pushing until you got there. What was your whole thought process throughout that day? Yeah, so it definitely looked like a desert for a lot of the area that I was in places where I would expect to see for sure, sign, rubs, scrapes, whatnot. There just wasn't much of anything. Might see some old tracks on the logging roads or something like that, but basically I wasn't going to stop walking until I found something that gave me at least some amount of confidence that would be good too to set up in. So we just kept walking that first day. And really that first day, the only thing that we ended up finding that looked remotely good is when we finally did get down to a river bottom type area, we found a few sets of fresh tracks. Let me started to find a couple of rubs that we found a scrape, and then we saw three doughs that we kicked up and and h bounced out of that area. And then from that point it was okay, well, if we walked through this many miles of hills up in the ridge tops and just haven't seen much of any sign, Yeah, we know that there's deer down in this river bottom. Let's go back look at the maps again, talk to some of the people back at camp, and then see what other places on the maps are going to be similar to this. And then that kind of fueled how we looked at going about the next day. You know, it's kind of shifting focus from not necessarily the exact spots, but the type of habitat that we were in and saying, this type of stuff that we've already walked through, we've walked through enough of it to say we don't have confidence with this type of stuff, but this other type of stuff that we walked through, we did, you know, have confidence in. And maybe that's not the exact spot, but there's gotta be more spots just like this. So that's kind of, you know, what we did for the next day. Yeah, this last summer, me and Dan were talking about his UM trail camera scouting strategy that he put together and we called it Dan Johnson's dots on a map connect them with lines strategy. And I think that you've now created what I'm going to call the type of stuff strategy, and I think I think it's going to be a good one because it's it's a great point that you make, which is especially when you're hunting public land, especially when it's larger swaths of land, you need to somehow compartmentalize it. You have to break it down somehow. And one way to do it is what you did, which is breaking it by the type of terrain or the type of stuff, and in finding where the act of it is focused, because very often what you described is happening in other places to where they're They're in a spot for a reason, right there in a river bottom for a reason, just why they're not on top of those ridges. So once you can isolate it, drill it down somehow, then you can focus on finding something similar. And that's man that's applicable during the rut, that's applicable in the early season, the late season, any kind of time of year. When you find what that type of stuff is, it can help you. Yeah, absolutely, And I've even seen it in terms of you know, say like Marsh Islands, where there might be islands and a particular piece of land, but maybe you find that you were hunting on an island that was surrounded by redbrush and all of a sudden you found more dear activity on that particular island. Well, then you can go back in the map and look at, Okay, how do these fifty islands, maybe you know eight or ten or twelve of them also have that same kind of brush surrounding those islands, So then that would be kind of where I would focus on next rather than China, look at that whole sea of fifty of them and trying to figure out which one would be the best. Yeah, it comes back to to look at those details, like why is this So that's here's the type of stuff. Now, why is this the type of stuff? So you found that that the red brush was the unique feature. That's uh, that's interesting. Now the next day, so you're on the Missouri hunt. The first day you walked and walked and walked, never really found what you wanted until the end. The next day you went back to a different place but the same kind of stuff, and this hunt you actually had the opposite I think, if I remember the story right from watching your videos and stuff, you had a game plan looking for that kind of stuff, and then before you could even get to where you eventually thought you'd go, you decide you had to stop right then there because of the deer activities. Saw right, Um, how do you go about making that decision? So day one it was I'm not stopping until I see something that makes me have to stop, and you never did, so you kept going and going going, So we just talked about how you know when not to stop. Now, day two, you're going in and the opposite happens, that something stops you before you get to where you thought you were going to go, and you said, oh, this means I have to stop. Describe that thought process. Sure, well, I'll interject before I answered that question specifically to say that there was a day in between there where we didn't we didn't see much at all, but it was a very hot, like sixty degree afternoon. But we took our learnings from day one, got in another low river bottom type area that again had this like I don't know what kind of plant was, but it's this green stuff that was growing in this river bottom area. And we only saw a couple of deer that entire day. But when we were walking out at night, we must have kicked out twenty different year. On the way back to the truck in that same river bottom area, we saw a really nice buck in a private field right again in that same kind of area after dark. So it was like, Okay, now we've kind of affirmed that the river bottom is where they're at, and we think that it might just be a factor of the weather that they weren't moving during daylight. Um in that particular habitat. So based on based on day one, I'm not seeing anything the ridge tops saying hey, you know, it might be good in the river bottoms. And then day two kind of that confirmation of hey, the deer down here, they just gotta move during daylight. And then we jump into day three. So day three, how do you know when to stop? While we we basically walked into again an area that was kind of like a thermal hob that we had planned on sitting the following morning because this day three started jumping. But just in case people don't know, can you explain what you mean by thermal hub? Sure? So in this hilly Ozark, Missouri habitat, there's a lot of these little, you know, fingered ridges, and you have these, um basically these bottom type areas where it's the almost like the bottom of a creek drainage where you might have all of these little tiny creeks that flow and they eventually into you know, bigger and bigger creeks, and you get into some of these areas where it's just kind of a flat, open area, but you might have three or four different ridges that all drop off into this one little bottom area. And the way that the deer can use that, of course is with the scent, especially the dropping thermals in the early morning and late evenings when that scent dropped into that area kind of pools and it collects the scent from a lot of different area and the surrounding hills. So the thought process with that is, hey, early morning, it's gonna be nice, you know, calm cool. If we get any dropping thermals um, then that could be a good area for potentially a buck to hit that area, as he sent check in for dose first thing in the morning. So that was kind of the thought strategy and kind of the description of the area that we were looking at specifically where we you know, hung our stuff for that following day. Yeah, so continue on, yep. So the weather is the other kind of important thing here, And that morning of the third day, we didn't even hunt because it was about you know, thirty five degrees driving wind and rain um, and of course we had camera gear and this, that and the other thing, so we just we knew it was going to get colder with this cold front moving in, so we decided to wait until the rain turned into something solid eventually turned into sleet, and that sleet eventually turned into snow, and that was when we hit the woods. So we got out there thinking that the deer might be hunkered down during that, you know, that major front, and then the next morning was gonna be the hot spot. So we weren't even really thinking at that time that we were planning on giving a high percentage hunt that afternoon. We just wanted to get ourselves into a good area, picked the trees, get set up so the following morning we'd be able to have the ideal set up. But then after we got into that thermal hub, we found the trees, we found the ideal set up, we hung our platforms, we hung our sticks. As we were coming back the direction of the truck, we got into this river bottom area that you know with the probably the half inch of snow that was on the ground. By that time, we were seeing sets of tracks running through, so that already indicated us that in the last couple of hours there's been deer running through here. Then we kicked up a dough she had a buck on her, and then we saw another dough on a buck going through the same area, and at that point it was like, okay, we'd be idiots to keep walking past this, So we just we obviously didn't have our stuff with us. We just looked for an ideal spot to be able to sit at least somewhat secluded on the ground. And the challenge of that particular area was that it was open river bottom and you could see you know, two yards in most directions, so it's like, well, how do you know exactly where to set up? And we really didn't, but we knew we had to be there somewhere, and that being next to any particular tree was better than you know, not being in that area at all. So we ended up just kind of trying to pick the best spot that we could that was next to some tracks and it was kind of next to convert of like a crp field and a little bit of thicket. There was also kind of in that river bottom. But to be totally honest, I mean, the the deer really there was nothing that was defining enough of a terrain feature to force the deer through any particular spot. So we just kind of picked the best spot that we we thought we could and you know, hunkered into a deadfall and then describe what happened next. So we saw a faun moving through, got within twenty yards of us, never knew we were there. It was kind of fun for my wife because she got to film it and see it. And then we saw a buck chasing the dough about i'd say eighty yards away from us, and then from a totally different direction, about an hour before light, I could see another dough coming from that CRP field direction, so totally different direction than the last dough and r bucking doll that we saw running through again, indicating that it was just kind of luck if you're in the right spot at the right time down there. But we saw a doe coming in. She was headed nearly straight toward us, and then I could see a buck right behind her, and she slowly moved, you know, getting a little bit closer and closer. She was probably about twenty yards away from getting directly down wind, and I was thinking that she was going to bust us. But then the last minute she turned and came out of bee line straight toward me, and then of course about it's hard to tell in the video, but she's about ten or twelve yards away. She looks up and sees me holding my bow and and sees my wife standing there in the dead fall, and she takes off. But the buck doesn't really know at this point what has happened. He's standing about twenty five yards away, quartering too well. Then he finally turns us had to go look at the dough and I got back to full draw, um, and then settled the site on him and shot and then you know, the rest is his history. So it was a little bit of a you know, luck, But I'll take that during the road any day, you know. Heck. Yeah, Well, it kind of seems like this is something that is not completely out of the ordinary for you though. Um. That being it sounds like on occasion you do find yourself. Um decided to sit on the ground, and I think just having the confidence to do that allowed you to, you know, pull off this hunt because some guys would maybe have been walking through there and they saw this sign and the deer go running through, and they're thinking, crap, I don't have a stand with me. Um, I can't hunt here, So I'm gonna go back to the truck, or I'm gonna go back wherever you did hang your sticks and go grab your stuff out of the tree and walk back and by the time they came back and two hours later or whatever, the sign or the the action that you guys actually enjoyed would have been passed. Um, tell me about that. Tell me how often do you find yourself bow honey on the ground and that kind of you know, impromptu kind of way. Is that something you're you're adding to your repertoire more and more and why? Yeah, I think this year definitely more than in years past, probably about i'd say a goodt of my hunts this year I sat on the ground and a lot of times it was just kind of going back to the plane ABC. Sometimes you get to Plan beror Plan C and you just don't feel like you have that much time to be able to set up, or maybe the area that you're in is not really ideal for a tree stand set up or a saddle set up, but you can you have great groundcover, whether it's grass or whether it's deadfall, and I feel like sometimes you can be more factive on the ground. You definitely do get picked off, in my experience, a lot more on the ground that you do when you're up in the tree. But again, it's it's kind of a balance between do you think you got a better shot at trying to get up into a tree and maybe busting a deer all because they're getting ready to move um or do you think you're gonna be able to get a shot off on the ground. It really just comes down to a situation specific type thing. And if I'm hunting on the grounds, it's usually because I have the competence that I'll be able to at least, you know, get drawn back and be able to get a shot opportunity in a particular area without getting winded. Yeah, anything you've picked up haven't done that? More and more this year, Any little best practices or tricks you've learned to whether it be getting drawn or picking the right spot on the ground, or anything you've found that's helping you do that. Yeah. A tree size definitely has been a big thing. Every time I've tried to sit on a tree that's narrower than my torso, I always get busted, it seems like, and I like so I like the bigger trees. Also, where the sun is coming from definitely makes a difference in how I'll set up. If the sun is from behind me, I like to get on the front side of a tree or a brush or deadfall and kind of sit in the shade and be on the front side of the tree as if I was turkey hunting with a track gun. And if the sun is in my face, then I'd much rather be on the back side of that tree and be kind of sitting in the shade there, so now the sun glaring off me and magnifying all of my movements. So if the sun's in my face, a lot of times I'll take the tether for my saddle and I'll just hang on the back side of the tree to stay comfortable. And if it gets down a prime time, it might even just unhook and just stand vertical behind the tree. I do that in one hunt this year and had a buck walk by within it's had no idea I was there because I was able to sit behind that big red oak in the shade and he never even looked my direction. Um. But then if the sun, of course is from behind me, that I'd like to stay on the front side, um and be a little bit have a little bit easier time trying to get to full draw. Picking when to draw definitely is is huge. I always, even if it's a year I'm not gonna attempt to shoot. I like to practice getting to full draw just because it's you know, it teaches you so much thinking, like learning what you can and what you can't get away with and when you need to be able to move and of course and of course filming makes that infinitely harder. UM. A lot of times when I do get busted's from a combination of moving the cameras and trying to get my bow into position. So if I didn't have that, that would make it much easier. What I like to do with the compound is definitely get drawn back at the first opportunity that I have and stay at full draw, you know, until I get a shot opportunity. With a traditional bow if I'm hunting with one of those, that I can't really do that necessarily, so I just kind of geta until I get the first good chot opportunity that I would have. UM. But yeah, all those little things definitely UM make a difference when too. I mean, you can have the wind doing one thing up in a tree on the ground, it might can do in something a little bit different, So it's almost it's really a case by case thing. And every time I do it I learned something a little bit more. Probably in a couple more years, if I continue to hunt off the ground a lot, I'm sure i'll know even a lot more than I do know. Yeah, it seems like you're getting into those kinds of situations because you have this very mobile hunting style, which we kind of talked about in Fault even Heart Whoever. A lot of these folks that have kind of, um preached this for a long time now, there's a lot of folks like us who are trying to adapt it to our own styles and put that into action. UM. So when you're not on the ground, it means you are in a tree. And one of the things about you that has made you interesting to me, particularly interesting over the years is the way you've focused on really fine tuning your mobile hunting set up, maybe more than other people, definitely more than most people. UM that's been really interesting to me because I am not naturally good at gear. I'm not naturally good at messing and modifying and improving and fine tuning and testing a gear set up, whether that be my boat or my tree stand, or my saddle or my truck. Uh, that's just not what I'm just not naturally good at stuff. So when I see someone like you who's really good at that stuff, I'm very jealous and I kind of dislike you a little bit for it. So let's just get that out of the way. Um. But that said, I want to dive deep into kind of the evolution of your mobile hunting setup because I know that you've you've used climbing sticks, you've used mobile tree stands, You've you've saddles, you've used all sorts of interesting modified climbing methods. Um, let's talk about where you're at right now. What is the best mobile hunting setup for Garrett today? If ready go on with with one one setup for your public land hunt you're going on or whatever kind of hunt, what's that going to be of all the things you've tested? So, I would say probably my bread and butter system is a saddle with a platform like the Predator, three climbing sticks with double steps, a single loopator and if the leaves are already down, then I would take that. I would take four sticks instead of three, and then a lightweight lineman's about like an eight millimeter aplex rope. Same thing for the tether and basically just but just go with that. That would allow me to climb up in a tree. It allows me to use one stick up I need to, two sticks if I need to, allows me to hunt off the ground if I want to. It really gives me a lot of options. Um, And that's it's really It's something I can bring in on any given hunt in hill country and marsh country, big woods country and be able to adapt and be able to pick a spot and hunt it the way I think it should be hunted. Yeah, And I think that's been one of the biggest things for me. Especially why I love making the switch to a saddle is that when you head in and you've got your saddle and you've got your sticks, you don't feel the same obligation to go sit in a tree up high as you do if you carry it in a twelve or fifteen pound tree stand. You know, it just seems so much easier, you know what, I'm just gonna sit in the ground because you're not hauling in this big thing. But at least for me, when I used to have that stand with me, i'd get in there, I'm like, well, damn it, I just hiked this thing in here. I better use it. So yeah, that the lightweight approach, the ultra light approach um is more and more and more appealing to me. Let's start at the ground, though, Let's start at what you're doing at base level before you get up in the tree. You've got to climb up there. Um, You've tested and tried a whole bunch of different ways to get up in there. Um, some of it I think it's crazy. I've seen some of the things you've tried and the things you've manufactured, and it's nuts, but it's pretty cool. I couldn't do it. Tell me about what your current climbing method of choices. You said two steps sticks? Um, what's your favorite brand? Are you modifying them at all? Um? What do you think is the best option right now for you? Well, so, the ones that I typically use are ones that I made a couple of years ago. They are twenty four inches long, and like I said, the double steps, really the closest thing in terms of design, if people want to get a visual, would be like the Beast gear sticks. In terms of the weight, in terms of the length, in terms of the design, they're very very similar to those. Um, So that's kind of what I prefer because I feel like I'm able to maximize the amount of height that I am able to get per stick. They're lightweight at you know, roughly a pound and a half per stick, and the eiters don't really add much of any weight at all to them, and they're just they're not as pacable. Right If I need to crawl under deadfall, that's that's really the only time when it becomes a pain, because those steps will will hang up on the deadfall as you're trying to climb underneath or crawl underneath. But apart from that, it's usually not not too big of a deal. Um, And it's there's really no tree I can't get in with that particular system. And the other thing that it allows me to do with the steps being that far apart from one another, is on certain trees, I can kind of you know, lean forward and hook my knees around those top steps, and that gives me a little extra stability on top of the lineman's belt to be able to you know, trim a limb if I'm able to trim limbs or set my next stick if it's a really goofy, odd leaning tree. So it just gives me a lot of flexibility. Yeah, so if people people most people out there probably can't build their own sticks or modify sticks maybe, but if they were out there looking to buy something, you know that's that's commercially available right now, what would the you know, key things you kind of just described it, But if you're looking at what's available out there, what would be some of the key features you would say that people should definitely try to get when they're choosing from the four or five six different stick options out there. Sure, you know, one thing is one thing is weight. If you're using one or two sticks, it's really doesn't matter all that much. But if you're using three, four, if you're using five, and that really starts to add up pretty quickly. So wait, it's definitely something I would look at. I personally like the double steps, like I mentioned, but there's a lot of guys that also like the single steps, and it really that comes down to personal preference. I think more than anything, single steps sticks will usually pack a little bit better than the double So if you're just crawled, just to make sure that folks understand when you say single versus double, you're I think I'm understand what you're saying, as I understand it would be when you get to your first step, like on a lone wolf, there'll be one step that slides out to the right and then you have to kick out one to the left for the next step up. But then on a different type like the muddy sticks or something, they've got left and right steps on the first step left and right, on the second step left and right, you know, as you go up and up and up. That's what you mean, right, yeah, yeah, And it's good to clarify that because there's the double steps like you just described, and then there's also sometimes I'll use double steps to describe the fact that there's two steps on that stick. There's two of those double steps, one on the top and one on the bottom, plus the eight or versus having three like a like a set of hawk or muddy might have. Yes, okay, so continue with what you're saying. Then started jumping. Yeah, so so definitely wait and if you're a single or double step guy, that'll determine, you know, if you want to go more packable. If that's more important to you, then rotating single steps like the lone wolves might be a better option for you. But if you like just all around best climb ability. I think double steps, you know, each step having to on the same level is definitely the way to go. I personally like standoffs that are a little bit further from the tree as opposed to steps that are the standoffs that are really close to the tree. Just from the standpoint that it allows me to get more of the balls of my feet on the step, and then I don't get cafetigue nearly as bad. Um, So it allows me to wrap my wrap my knees around the top steps a little bit easier if I do happen to be on a tree where I want to want to be able to do that. So those are things I would look for. Um. Really within the mobile community, there's you know, there's the b sticks, there's the lone walls, lone Wolf, Coustom gears, the you know, the hawks. Hag actually came out with a new two step stick this year based on the fact that a lot of guys used to take their three step ones and cut them down to make the you know, just the top and the bottom one. Um, which brings me to another you know point of distinction is just the overall length of the stick. Me being six ft tall, I like twenty four in aluminum portion of that that stick. I don't feel like that's really stretching it out too far for me at all. If I was six four, I could probably go with a little bit longer to um. And then obviously late season it gets a little bit more tight. But I still found that for me is still doable. And the step spacing on that's probably closer to two Manu factor in the loss, you know, having the step not at the bottom of the tube. Um, whereas you see a lot of stack, a lot of sticks out there might have a fifteen or seventeen inch step spacing. So again, the shorter ones are going to be more compact, a little more pacable. But I feel like the climbability you can usually get by with a little bit longer step spacing than you might think. Yeah, what about um, the attachment to the tree. I know that I've on the sticks I use, I've replaced the usual belt I'm blanking on brain farting on the right way to describe this, But the the webbing that you throw around the tree and since on reverse the button or whatever I've I've taken that out and replace that with with something different than the one was mainly what came with the sticks on the box. I know you've tested a whole bunch of different things. I saw a video of yours once with like six different rope systems attachment methods. Where what do he thinks the best option? What do you use? What do you recommend for the folks there just use it on the box, or do you think we should all be switching out? Well, there's nothing wrong with using the the off the shelf method with that cam buckle strap. But if you do ditch that strap, you save like six to eight ounces per stick, and you illuminate that potential for noise. Right. You can you know, put style strips or rubber or felt or anything on those buckles to quiet them down, or you can just be really careful. But if you switch to a buckle list system, then you're able to be you know, obviously a little bit lighter, a little bit quieter in general. But I like, personally the best after trying, like you said, just about everything that's out there, I still keep going back to a quarter inch piece of am steel that's spliced into a loop on one end that you flip, that you slide over the versa button and then you just throw that thing around the tree and then you just you know, it's gonna be tough to describe it on a podcast, but the rope mod basically where you just take that free end of the rope and and hitch it underneath itself and lock it and hold it in place with a half hitch is it allows me to use it on basically any tree because you can make that that am steel rope as long as you want. You can make it eight foot, you can make a ten foot, you can make it six ft right, you can do whatever length you want there. So tree size isn't as big of a concern. That am steel is very very low stretch. It's dynama. So when you actually do the rope mod and you wait, you put your weight on the stick, it doesn't sag as much as you would get with some other climbing ropes or just like accessory cord or something like that. And in comparison to you know, some of the daisy chain style of methods, you don't have to worry about nailing a specific loop perfectly right. It doesn't matter what exact diameter of that tree is. You can take that am steel, hook it in place, and just pull it tight and cinch it, and then you're gonna get a minimal amount of uh, you know, movement down the tree once you actually do put your weight on it. So I'd say that's probably my my go to for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty slick um. And and for anyone who's not familiar, am steel is just a really low, small diameter, super super strong rope, right basically, That's that's what it is. And then you you splice essentially a loop in the end. And then with those knots who described that, you're able to do that all without any daisy chains, without any buckles, without anything else. That's pretty that's a pretty cool way to do it. Yeah, And I like it a lot. It's you know, personal preference. Also, I know a lot of guys that have tried the am steel rope and they like a daisy chain system better, right, And there's some guys that like the buckle system just from the standpoint that you can get a little bit more momentum on a bigger tree to swing that thing around than you can with a little bit lighter rope. Yeah, So I switched to a daisy chain this year, and I like it a lot. I like it a lot more than my buckles, um, because like you described, it gets sort of that whole risk of noise. But you're right, it does have you. You do have a little bit less you know, ability to get just the right tension as you would with a rope system like you have. UM. I like it for me just because I you know, it's just dummy proof, and I'm a dummy, so it works pretty good for me. Um. Continue with ropes, though, what about linesman's belts or that lineman's belts? Um? Again, I'm using, you know, something I can buy from someone, because I don't like to customize things because I don't have confidence myself to do that. But you're it seems like many times making your own going as lightweight as you possibly can. Um. Any recommendations, whether it be for making your own or d I ying it, or if someone doesn't feel confident with that and you want to point them to something they can just buy off the shelf for a couple of pieces they can buy. What would you recommend as far as improving that? Because I can tell you back in the day when I used to hunt a tree stand and I used a full tree harness. The lines with belts they brought with the get in the box of those are so god awful and I use them for way too many years that finally switching to something good has been just a paradigm shift for me. Um help correct some other people before they spend years and years and years like I did with a piece of crab. Sure, So a couple of options Number one, if you're going to make your own, and I'll just I'll start with this because it's what I'm more familiar with rather than what all the particular options you can buy. Would be a really good option for Alignment's rope is the Samson Predator eleven millimeter paired with a Ropeman one ascender. It's really easy to use. You can adjust it both to add tention and remove tension with one hand. It's a nice, you know, a little bit easier to handle size. The big a little bigger eleven you know millimeter rope that's very similar to what you would already see in a lot of tree climbing industry applications, and it doesn't take up a whole ton of weight. It's gonna be again similar to maybe something that's off the shelf from like tethered or muddy or something like that. But it's a pretty good reasonable option and I use that for uh several years and didn't really have that many complaints with it. Another option that I've used and used more recently would be a smaller rope eight millimeter in size called the Sterling Poplex rope. And that rope, again, it's a a static rope. It's got a nice camouflage color to it. It has a nice firm sheath, so it's you're able to use it like a Lemon's rope very easily. For that one, I wouldn't use the Ropeman one just from a sizing perspective, but you can use other ascenders like the Ropeman two. Uh, there's a con duct, there's a CT rolling lock. Those are all mechanical ascender options. And if a guy doesn't want to use the mechanical as center, maybe it doesn't feel comfortable with it or whatnot, you can also use a small cord like a a bill jammie, and it's a little small cord that's very high tensile strength that is used for basically making hitches on smaller diameter ropes like that, and then you can use either like a prusi knot or there's other types of knots that you could use in that particular setting to slide your carabeaner back and forth. And then there's little pieces that you can add to that system that are called tenders that basically would take the place of your second hand. You know, normally, even have a prusing knot on a lineman's rope, you would have to grab the knot with one hand and pull the tag out of the rope with the other right. So what the tender basically does is a little a little mechanism that just basically when you pull on the tag into the rope, it grabs the back end of the knot for you and allows you to slide that with just one hand. So that's an option for guys who I want to go with maybe a smaller rope, but don't necessarily want to go with a mechanical a center, they have that option too, but I typically do for the linman's rope. Is I used that sterling oplex rope with a ropeman two ascender Um, you've got to be a little bit careful of the ropeman two, because the teeth do tend to to chew away at the sheath if you're not careful, but if you're careful, I haven't found it to be that much of an issue, but I've heard reasonably good things about the conduct and the CT rolling lock two for that particular application. And then for a tether, same same thing. You can use the Samson Predator rope. You can use a sterling oplex rope for that. I've used both of them. Um, if I were going to make a tree stand tether, I would probably go with the a little bit larger diameter Samson Predator rope and use a friction hitch, whereas for the saddle, I usually use that oplex and I usually just use a again, a mechanical ascender because it's just really nice and easy and fast to be able to adjust on the fly. So when you're talking about these different types of ropes, why are you why are you choosing one or the other? Um? Like, what is this simply trying to cut ounces, trying to be as as lightweight as possible for a lot of this UM versus just you know, taking a rope that I get when I buy the whole kit with my saddle or something like that. Yeah, So basically it's trying to reduce, reduce weight, reduce bulk, make it easier to use all without making too big of a compromise on safety. Right. So if it was if I was going to do something where I could get down to a two ounce lineman's rope, but it put me at a large risk safety wise, it wouldn't be worth it. Right. And if there's nothing wrong with the off the shelf stuff other than the fact that you know, it's just bigger rope. Even that Sampson preddtor is a little bit bigger rope. So when you bunch that thing up and put it in your you know, little ciss holer type bag, it's just gonna take up more space, and that's less space for other type things. Um, the weight, if you have a pretty minimal system, isn't a huge concern. But again, if you can make it lighter without compromising safety, and you can make it more pacable, then why not. I hear you're there, so speaking of um trying to find lightweight, non bulky ways to improve your system, we were talking sticks. I forgot to ask you about your aiders. Um, I know that's another thing that you've tried a whole bunch of different routes. I've been trying a couple of things here over the last year, tried to add that to my system. Um, walk me through some of the different options, I guess, first off, explain to folks what an aider is, and then walk us through some of the different options you've tried and what you've ultimately landed on for you. Sure, So, in a nutshell, an aider is an additional step that's flexible that you can attach to your stick so that when you pack your sticks up it's not taking up any extra length. But yeah, when you hang the stick on the tree, you have that extra foothold that just kind of dangles underneath your step so that you can have one additional foothold to get you a little bit higher per stick up the tree and typically don't add much weight at all depending on how you how you build them. So there's either options that are d I y or there's options that are store bought. In the rock climbing industry, especially for like big wall type climbing, they'll have these eights that guys will use to help them get up the up the walls, and a lot of times those eights will be three, four or five or even six steps. I've tried eighters like that. A lot of guys like them. For me, I find that when you get that many steps and you get eights that are that long, they tend to be a little bit more challenging for me to use, especially if I'm entrees that are maybe not straight um or maybe I'm going from one trunk to another on the way up, and balance becomes an issue. I personally like just a single step that's pretty close to the same length as my normal step spacing. So for my sticks, if I have a twenty two inch step spacing, I would have one eight or loop that is about right thereabouts for my additional loop. I find that early season, or if I'm practicing in the summer, I can add two loops that big and I can use it just fine. But get into November December, you got extra clothes on. I really feel a lot more secure with just having the single loop, and that's again a comfort level for you know, some guys are gonna like being able to get higher and they're you know, maybe a warmer climate there a little bit more athletic, and they don't have any issues at all with a multi step you know, long aid, whereas you might have another guy who just feels a little bit safer with kind of minimizing the amount of eight that he has on each stick, or maybe just having an eight on the ground level stick and then as normal as other sticks are eight or free as normal. That's that's the route I took as as kind of a beginner's step into using an eight. As I bought one of those five step eighters from the rock Climbing World and I attached that to my bottom stick. But now instead of having my bottom stick, you know, way low in the tree, I can stick that bottom stick at head level almost and then I can climb up to it with the aider. But God forbid if I, you know, got a little uncomfortable using the aid. I'm only three four ft off the grounds. There's no big deal, right, That was a nice way to try it out this year. But what what kind of aid are you described using that single loop eight er? Um? You're making that yourself, right? How do you do that? Yeah? I took a piece of three sixteen am steel and remember the steps of my sticker double step, and it's a fixed double step, so I basically spliced it into the loop on one side of my step, and then I spliced it into the other side, so I was able to use a locked Brummel splice on the first side, and then you can't do the lock Brumbel's place on the other side, which is just one of the two methods making a splice, So on the second splice I had to do basically just a lock stitch to hold that in place. So if people aren't familiar with splicing, that's probably going to be really hard to follow. But it basically looks like just a big you hanging off the bottom of the stick, and it's just an am steel you. So the advantage of that is since one side of the aid is attached to one side of the step and the others at the other side of the step, that loop is always open. It doesn't twist. It makes a really nice, big open catching point for me to be able to fit my boot. In some of the ads I've made in the past, there were multi step and sometimes I would just attach them to the tube of the stick in the center. They would tend to spin around on me and be a little bit more challenging to get my boot in, especially on the way down in the dark. So having having an eight or loop that stays open and a dozen't twist makes it a lot easier to use. I think, is there any fix you've found for dealing with that twist um without creating the you know always in splice like you described there, because because yes, that spin is something I've experienced with mine. Um, any tips for making that a little bit better or just figure out a better system. Yeah, if if you're if you're stuck with a type of aid system that only attaches on a center point of the stick, it can be challenging. What usually just ends up working the best for me in those type of scenarios, just especially if your way down you just take your first foot in that loop and just you know, you get your foot centered in a nice and and well and then you just bite your toe into the tree, and you know, the more firm you can make that first step, the better the rest of the steps beneath it will kind of follow that same that same line or stay in that same plane. Whereas if you just kind of haphazardly fit your boot in and kind of let your foot, you know, just spin and and angle up against the tree. Then the rest of the steps you're just gonna kind of do whatever. I've I've seen, well, I've heard people talk about and I've seen you experiment with climbing methods involving only one stick or no sticks. Um, can you describe is that even tenable for the average person or is that pretty crazy? It seems pretty crazy? Um, But what's your experien has been with kind of experimenting with that? So, yes, and no, I experimented a bit a couple of years ago with both the what they call the one stick method or single sticking as well as you know what you alluded to with like, hey, if you can use a single stick, why not just take an aid or and move it up the tree as you go. Basically, what both of those systems and tail is you basically hang from a tether and you take one stick and you move it up and attached to the tree. Then you climb into that stick or climb up onto it. You slide your tether up and then you hang again, and then you detach the stick, move it up, and you just repeat that process until you're up at hunting height and when you would want to go back down, you would repeat that same process in reverse. So even if it wasn't that big of a pain in the butt to get up into the tree, it took forever to get down. That was one of the reasons why I didn't really use it all that much. Uh. But there is another option that you can do for getting down the tree should be to repel. So if you if you have a forty ft, if you have a forty piece of rope, and you have your repelling equipment, which you know, this is all pretty standard stuff within other industries, you know, like candy neering and rescuing and things like that, you can basically do whatever method you want to get up the tree. And even if that method is a pain in the pot to get down, it doesn't matter because you can just drop it right out of the tree, and you can you know, lean back and just repel right down and then retrieve your fort rope, throw it back in your harness pouch, and be on your way back to the truck. So that's actually a method that I've been playing around with a lot more recently because of repelling to me, is something new I haven't really played around with it until the last couple of months, but I actually I really like it, so I'll probably for at least most of my sets are at least a large majority of them. I'll try and play around a lot more with that single stick and repel. You know, there really the only advantage that I get is, you know, packing weight and bulk, right, If I have three sticks, I'm usually packing those things onto the back of my pack and then I'm carrying my bow. But with a single stick, I can throw that thing on the bottom of the pack, put my bow on the outside, and then I have two free hands to help with balance and whatnot as I'm going through like a march or something. So there's some advantages. They're just like with multiple sticks, I can get into basically any tree with that method. And then if I need to get down quick Let's say I spying a deer and it's rolling around in the grass and you know I need to be able to get onto the ground to get a second arrow in them, or if I need to basically get down and move to a different tree based on movement, being able to repel down is a lot quicker, and it makes you feel safe because you're always attached to the tree. UM. So there's there's definitely some advantages there. It takes a little bit of getting used to. I've learned that with the single stick, there's some things about it that make it a little bit easier to use. One would be the specific type of eight or that you would use with it. The other would just be specifics about the stick. Right, A stick that is very solid, doesn't have a lot of flex, bites into the bark really well, tends to work better than some other sticks. So like anything, there's there's fine tuning and tweaking. UM. But for a guy who figures it out and makes it a part of a system and gets used to it, I think there's definitely some advantages with that type of a system for sure. Yeah. So so tell me about how you think about safety with all of this, because as we talk about all these different clouding methods and all these different elevated hunting styles UM and modifying things, safety is a big issue. I'm sure it's on your mind as you're making these decisions. I know that for anyone that's listening or for myself, we obviously have to be very very very careful about everything we do. Um, because you are taking your life into your own hands and you go into an elevated position. Um, you everybody should know that. It's it's one of those things that you are tackling a innately risky type of scenario that you just had to be incredibly careful with. Um. Especially since I became a father, I have just kind of worrywarded more and more every time I get up into a tree, just trying to make sure I'm doing everything exactly right, taking my time, being very thoughtful about every step I take, every time I'm getting on and off, for every time I'm shifting my handholds or anything, always making sure I'm attached. Um, just I can't afford to make a mistake. How do you go about thinking about that yourself? And I'm sure you get a million questions from people, people watching your videos, people hearing about how you're modifying things, are trying these things. How do you handle the safety topic with those that are listening to the things you're doing. Yeah, and it's especially important for me too, because if I make a video on something and somebody tries to replicate, and maybe they do something a little bit different right, or maybe they're a much bigger guy than I am. But they can all have implications for sure. So typically what I what I look at it as I look through the ends of number one. Are there similar industries that are already using these type of items? How are they using them? What are the regulations, what are the standard operating procedures, and why are those the way they are. If there's already something within the you know, the candoneering industry or rock climbing industry or the arborist industry that standard, there's probably a good reason for it. If I am going to deviate from something like that, I better have a good reason or understand why it is the way it is in that industry and why it might be different for what I'm trying to do. UM. The other thing is I will always look at things like the specifications of whatever materials I'm gonna potentially be using. I'll look at test data UM. And this I think helps a little bit. I come from an engineering background, so I'm always looking at tensile strengths. UM. I'm looking at how different things made together, am I you know, introducing any risk by using something in conjunction with something else. And the other thing that we have, like even in our industry at work, you know, one thing we'll have is we'll call we'll have something called the failure Modes and Effects analysis that we'll do when we're designing something in product development, and it basically is a list of every single possible thing that could go wrong, and then tie it into that is what is the severity of you know, this thing happening, and then also what is the likelihood or the you know, the occurrence of this potentially happening. So if there's something that is really likely to happen, even if it's you know, something that is maybe not that big of a deal, right Like let's say, for example, you using your aid or just on your first on your first stick, right, you falling from five ft might not be that big of a deal. You might roll your ankle or you might do something like that, but right that's that's something that is a decision you can make. Conversely, if there's something that's very unlikely to happen, but there's severity of it, you know, if it does happen is really really severe, you know, like death, then that's also something where you gotta take a step back and say, maybe this isn't you know, worth it. So you've got to look at it from the lens of number one, have we reduced the likelihood of any bad thing happening? And also number two is the severity of it, you know, under control. Um. And that's not the decision that anybody can take lightly, And it's not a decision that you should just you know, look on YouTube or a forum or something and just assume that whatever somebody says is right. Um. And ultimately, if you don't feel comfortable, if you have questions about something, you shouldn't do it and just do what's you know kind of already been established for sure. Yeah, um, yeah, that's that's that's important stuff. And then obviously keeping the common sense things in minds, such as just making sure you're attached to the tree at all times, making sure that you are, Yeah, you just used common sense and take your time, don't rush things. It's one of the things that I'm that I purs only battle with because I love the idea of being able to get up in the tree fast and having a great system in place and being quiet and efficient and bam them up there and I'm hunting. That's kind of like the dream scenario. You want to be that quiet, efficient predator. But if you find yourself rushing and you're just I just want to get up fast. I want to get it fast. Um that's when I think I find myself making a little sloppy mistake or foot slips or you know, you introduce this possibility of of added risk. So I try to remind myself that smooth isn't I think it's smooth as fast or slow as fast and fast no smooth. I always get this wrong when I try to say it smooth is no slow as smooth and smooth as fast? Is that right, Garett? You know what I know? Yeah, I know the saying that you're going for, and if I try to remember it all screw it up. It's basically it's trying to be smooth and take it slow, and when you do that, you end up going faster than like trying to rush it and getting all hurkey jerky and stumbling on what you're trying to do. Um. So that's what I tried to keep reminding myself when I'm trying to get up in the tree, is just take one step of time and as as you go smoothly through it, it happens in a much more efficient manner. And I think one way to do that though, is to practice it and to have like a plan in place. So when I first started trying to be a mobile hunter, like, I got my sticks, I got my horrible tree stand, and then I just went out hunting one day with it, and I never practiced with it before, and it must have taken me like forty five minutes get up in the tree. I rattled and I clanked buckles, and you know, I got up in there, and then I realized, how crap, I gotta go down there and get my backpack and get my bow. I'd forgotten entire things and just a mess. And year after year after year after year after year, I've gotten a little bit better every year and fine tuned my system a little bit to the point where now I've got a much better system in place and out. I'm just continuing to modify and trying to make it quieter, trying to make it smoother. Um, but telling about what your process is, how do you or what things do you try to do to make that process as smooth or as efficient or as quiet as possible, Because I'm sure those things are important to you too. Yeah, So I have a couple of trees in my backyard, and they're not necessarily the easiest trees to climb either, you know, aspins with lots of limbs and things like that. And when I'm trying all these different climbing methods, or even if it's something that I'm familiar with, I always tinker and I go on in the backyard and I try climbing with it. And just from a consequence of how often I'm back there trying one thing or another, I become really comfortable with my equipment and to become much more efficient. Being able to use them all becomes kind of second nature, And so I think that's definitely something that's helpful versus a guy that you know, breaks the stuff out a week before the season and just throws in the truck and gets ready to hit the woods. The other thing that I'll do fairly often, especially this time here, because the leaves are down then I don't want to get that awkward feeling of the neighbors watching is I'll just go out and climb the trees in the dark, and usually there's enough moonlight or a street light, you know, ambiance that I can see what I'm doing even without a headlamp, and just having that a little bit lower level of visibility helps me get again much more familiar with my equipment. That's smart. I like that because that's a scenario that at least I find myself in more and more often, wanting to go and do a running gun set in the morning and you're doing it an hour and a half or two hours before daylight or whatever it is. And when I first started trying to do that, that was just kind of a disastrous scenario. I didn't feel comfortable doing it. But I've done it so many times that you just you can do it with a head lamp, But practicing it the way you're talking about is it's smart, especially if you're just getting started. Um let's okay, let's take the next step. Then we we start on the ground. We've talked about our ropes, We've talked about our climbing method, We've talked about the process of getting out there, and I guess one other thing, Um yeah, let's keep on climbing the tree. Your process of you know, getting your pack or your bow or anything like that, do you do you have everything on your back when you climb up into the tree, or do you have your bow and your pack on the ground and you pull them up with ropes? Or what about your sticks when you're going up with Do you have all your sticks in your backpack and then you pull them off as you start going? Or how do you connect all these things to you as you send? Yeah, so if I were using the one stick method, I probably would have my bow on my pack. But typically what I would do, and I'll explain this for you know, the three slash four sticks set up, because that's most often what I would do and probably what is more common for a lot of the listeners. So I get to the tree, I take the sticks off the pack, lay them all on the ground, same thing on my saddle platform, and I lay the bow down and then on my pack. I have a retractable pull up rope a Doyle's gear hoist that will often use, and I'll just connect that to the boat and I'll put the pack back on my back. Then I'll take the saddle platform. I'll hang it on a loop on the back of my saddle so it's right in the middle of by my behind, and then I'll take the sticks I'll take one of them, stick it right on the tree. Then I'll take sticks two and three and I'll hang them on the sides of my harness at my hips. And then i'll take that last stick, if it's a fourth stick, hunt and I'll climb up onto the first stick, attach the lineman's rope, and put that second stick on. So then at that point I have two sticks on the tree, I have my pack, my saddle platform, and sticks three and four all ready to go, So I just continue climbing with that lyman's rope. I'll take one of the sticks off one hip, stick it on the tree, keep climbing, take that fourth stick off, attach it, keep climbing, and then once I get up to hunting height, essentially, I'll take the saddle platform off the back of the saddle and I'll stick it onto the tree, climb up onto it, hanging the tether first, then climb up onto the platform and take out a little utility strap from one of my saddle pouches. That utility strap has two hooks on it, one for the bow, one for the pack. So once that's on the tree, I'll take the pack off my back, hanging on one of those hooks. Then I'll go and pull the bow right up and hanging on the other hook, and assuming I wasn't filming, that would be it. From that point I would be essentially ready to hunt, and getting back down to the ground would be the same thing in reverse. How do you attach sticks three and four to your saddle? What are you using to connect it? So there's little plastic clips that you can that you can buy um Eastern Woods Outdoors sells these little kiatax things. I've also taken like the little the little like snaps, little plastic snaps that you can have for like key chain holders and things like that, and I just kind of break them in half and kind of use zip ties to hold them onto the saddle mesh and basically just give me a little bit of a hook on that saddle. And then what I can do on my sticks and my saddle platforms that take a little piece of pair of cord or uh tent guideline or something like that, and I will just tie a loop maybe two inches in diameter, so two three inches in diameter onto the top of the sticks in the platform. So I'm able to just basically take those and hang them on those little hooks on the saddle. Nice. So your your your platform? Um, now that you use the saddle, that's kind of replaced a tree stand platform of course in most cases. Um, but I know you used to do some different modifications to tree stands and a lot of people still do that. UM. I'm curious do you do you make any mods to your platform similar to what you do with the tree stand? Um? Or you're using a platform or have you ever tinkered with making your own? I know some guys have made their own platforms. I know that Tethered makes one the one I use that I like a lot, um, But what are you doing with the platform these days? Yeah? So I started off with the d I y ones right before before you know there was a commercial option. Everybody was anybody who was making a setup platform. It was basically d I Y at that point in time, and mine was no different. And I've graduated to now using the one that Tethered hasn't actually helped design that one. Um. But I don't really make too many modifications to it myself. The only thing that I do is I spray painted it and then I added on, you know, the little loop so I can hang it from my saddle, and I use the mini Versus trap, and then I also you know the UM the verse a button that's cast into that post. I ground the diameter of that down a little bit so it's a little bit easier for me to put on the loop of the versus trap, the mini Versus trap. And that's really all that I've done to it. At one point I wrapped it with para cord, but then I felt like I wasn't able to use the traction on the side quite as well, so I'd ended up taking it off. I put I got stell strips on the on the post, but apart from that, I really haven't modified it too much. Okay, so you alluded to a few things that I know you do a tree stands to or have, UM, But for people that don't use the saddle and they're still using a tree stands some kind of lone wolf for an XLP or whatever it is, but they want to hunt in a mobile fashion. UM, can you describe some of these modifications that you recommend for tree stands so that you've tried in the past that someone could try. Yeah, so for any of like the posts, and I did that on the saddle platform. I've done it on my lone Wolf stands in the past. I like putting cell strips on there because number one adds camo. It makes it a soft touch, warmer to the touch. You're not holding cold aluminum on your bare hands when you're trying to hang the stand. And then of course it makes contact much much quieter. So if you were to bang the buckle on the post or any part of the platform, it would make a whole ton of noise, typically right out of the box. But once you add that stell strip material, which is you know, that nice kind of micro fleece, and you do same thing with the buckle. If you're going to be using a buck hole, then it really does make a huge difference if you do have that accidental contact um. And apart from that, you just have to be really careful to make sure that you don't make that metal to metal claying. But my experience, as careful as you are, usually still mess up at some point, and that could be that it could be the end of a hunt, depending on where you're set up. So I like the style strips where applicable um on the platform itself. For a tree stand, what I've done is wrapped the edge, and what I like to do on the outer rim of the platform is used even something a little bit heavier than paracord, like a quarter inch polyester camera rope or something like that, because number one, it it really adds a lot of thickness and a lot of noise deadening ability, especially when you let that that post kind of swing down. If you get the bolts a little bit loose and normally would make that big slap um, it really deadens that down entirely. And then also it gives you a little bit of a tactile feel for where the edge of the platform is without having looked down at it. So if I have that quarter introop wrapping the outer room of my platform, even though it adds a little bit of weight, it makes it a little bit more user friendly from my perspective. And then the seat I've experimented with a couple of things on the seats um actually my loan if I took the seat off at one point to put an actual p s done with the little bit bigger size and the much beefier pad um I've looked into way, there's there's a way you can actually take a millennium seat like off of their UM sixty s I think it is, and modify that on to alone. If I never did that one, is that the guys that style? No, it's not a sling, it's like it's kind of like a lawn chair. It's like a yeah, it's like a really tightly held mesh type mesh. Yes, that's kind of when I was thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, So there's ways to do that. I haven't done it myself, but those are options. And now after after saddle hunting for a while, I realized that, like if I go back to a tree stand now, I've gotten so used to so many different things that I feel like I don't even really need the padded, you know, big seat as much I'm able to. I'm more comfortable with the more minimal system now than I ever used to be. Yeah. So where do you stand on the saddle thing? UM? I started using one two seasons ago now UM, and it's I've just been floored by the by the things that allows you to do. UM. So I've become a huge believer. Where do you stand on that? Um? You plan just using the saddle for most of the time moving forward or do you see a need for you know, grabbing your portal stand still at times? What's what's where's your head at? Yeah, it's definitely my primary system, without a doubt. What I usually tell people when they ask I get this question quite a bit is I'll still I'm not opposed to going back to a tree stand for when the situation calls for it. And when the situation might call for it would be let's say I got a spot where I've pre scouted it. I know exactly the tree I want to be in. That tree is maybe a little bit of a slight backward lean. It's got a bunch of branches and stuff hanging off the back side. So ideally, in that setup, i'd be on the front side of the tree with a little bit backward lean, and that's where I would put my tree stand platform. And that would be like one scenario. But if I'm going and blind to a spot, or if it's you know, anything else, then maybe that particular scenario that I just described. I feel like there's a lot more versatility with the saddle in terms of where I can you know, set it up not only in the tree, but also on the ground. Like some of those ground type setups that I alluded to earlier. If I'm sitting on the front side of a tree, a lot of times I'll do is I'll just take that platform and I'll hang at six inches off the ground, and that gives me a little bit more clearance from my cam when I'm swinging the bow around the ground level. Um. Same thing if I'm on the back side of the tree, I can hang the tether off the back side of a big tree, hanging behind that tree in the shade, and basically be more comfortable than if I was just sitting on the ground or standing behind the tree. So it really I feel like it gives me a lot of versatility in addition to obviously being you know, quiet, safe, uh portable system. Yeah. You know, big thing I've always liked about the saddle setup is just how much more lightweight it is. You know, if you've got a couple of mile hike in it just it's it's a night and day difference between hiking and with sticks in the stand versus just sticks um in the bulk and everything. We've talked a ton about your kind of hunt, your your elevated hunting gear. Um, is there anything else from your you know, the whole selection of gear that you have found helps you cut weight. If we're talking about how to become more lightweight when it comes to hunt, heading in to hunt anything we haven't talked about traditional both saves you a few pounds. Yeah, sure, that's obviously not practical for a lot of guys. Um One thing that I played on a little bit this year actually was both my boot system for late season and my clothing system that both had significant impacts on how much weight and carrying in once it colder. So in the past, when it's gotten cold enough, have either walked in with heavy boots or walked in with lighter boots and carried heavier boots. But one of the things I did this year, and I really ended up liking it quite a bit, was I used uninsulated boots and just like a lightweight pair of hiking socks for every hunt this year. And what I would basically do is I would pack in a pair of those insulated boot covers, you know, like the Arctic Shield ones. There's a there's a couple other brands out there now too. I think Dan Johnson does the same thing now, and he said he he likes that it's it's definitely less weight than bringing in an extra pair of boots. You can supplement it with handwarmers if need be, and your feet don't sweat nearly as much. At least for me, my feet sweat even when I'm sitting on the couch watching a football game. Right. So, so what I like to do now is I'll take a like a anti persprint footloation, I'll rub it on my feet and I'll put on the a liner sock, you know, thin polypropylene. Then I'll put on a midweight wolfsock and then an uninsulated boot and that'll take me without my feet sweating as far as I want to go. And then once I get set up, I'll put those boot covers on and add the handwarmers if needby, and my feet have not gotten cold. So that's definitely a big step up in terms of just kind of usability and comfort in the woods. In addition to not having to carry that extra weight that I would used to. I used to bring impact boots lash thows onto my stand just so that my feet wouldn't get cold, And that's that's not going to be an issue anymore. The other thing I played around with was you know, Historically I would be the Bibbs and Park a kind of guy, and I would walk in with bass layers and some kind of windshell, and then once I got to the tree, then I would put on my insulating layers, so I would almost be kind of like doubling up on the shell fabric. And what I tried this year is basically I would take a little bit oversized shell and I would walk in with that over top of the bass layer. But then I would just pack in puffy type garments, you know, whether it was a synthetic puffy or a down puffy, and then once I get to the tree and get set up, I would take off that shell, put on the puffy jacket, and put the shell back on over top. And that saves me a significant amount of not only weight but also bulk when you look at it from the perspective of just how many layers of clothing I would typically be wearing. Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot. I've tried something similar. Um, just whatever way you go about it, having a layering system like that in mind, and in knowing when to use some and when to add some later. Just having that figured out is a big shift for a lot of people. That helps, So it's smart to be thinking about that stuff. Um yeah, definitely anything else on that front or otherwise. I'm curious about heavyweight hunting, trying to think in terms of in terms of lightweight, you know, lighthead lamp white, I knows. Um, I mean your boat was gonna weigh, your boat was gonna weigh. You know. That's kind of almost a separate discussion. Um. Well, I can't really think of anything to too ultra specific. I mean, like I mentioned, I don't really carry all that much stuff. If I didn't wear my eventdn't packing camera gear every hunt, then my setup would be, you know, nearly as minimalist as just about any but I almost wouldt even need to bring a pack on a lot of hunts until it gets colder. Yeah, that's a good point you bring up. You're you're filming your hunts, and more and more people want to do that. Um. I've self filmed a ton of hunts and I know it's it's really cool, but it's also real pain in the butt. Um. Any advice as far as how you fine tune yourself filming system? Um? Any favorite pieces of gear? Anything worth mentioning there. So I've come to learn that a head mounted camera is in my in my experience and opinion, I must have. I found that there's been so many times with the head mounted cameras saved me when I wasn't able to get great footage on the main camera that it's absolutely always a part of my system now. And with the saddle hunting, I like to run a wide angle action camera on my tether looking back down for a nice second angle that I can um that I can throw in. And then in terms of kind of the main camera set up, there's a couple of decent systems for you know, mobile ultra light. If a guy wants that kind of a camera, I'm set up. UM out on a limb makes a good system. UM fourth Arrow makes a decent system too. UM. I actually modified mine pretty heavily from what it originally was, swapped all the steel stuff with a luminum to make it a little bit lighter. But apart from what type of arm you're running and what type of camera you have, it's it's pretty cotton dry in terms of that main camera, and there's not really a whole lot that I do that's really unique. Um. The hide camera is definitely something that I feel like if a guy's having issues or struggles with self domingus hunts as is, heading in a head camera and running an external battery into that camera and just letting it record the entire evening hunt makes it a lot easier to get done what you need to get down without worrying about hitting extra buttons and making extra movements. Um, and then you can just add it out whatever you need to after the hunt is over. Yeah, it looks like you've got to I don't know, like you're flying a jet plane or something. When you see the setup you've got in your head, it's a it's a quite a system you've got in place. At the battery pack on the back and then this this camera on the side. Describe what camera you're using, how you connect all these things. I think you've got to external mic, a little little tiny boom mic attached to at least I've seen you you wear that at least once. Um, what's that system? Yeah, So I've tried a few different microphone things and not been all ultimately extremely happy with a lot of them. Really, the easiest thing from if you if you separate yourself from the main camera, which might have a shotgun like in it. For capturing that other audio, I like to have just a lavelier MIC into a recording device that's tucked into a chuest pocket and just have that run the entire hunt, and that's capturing all my voice audio, and it's just capturing kind of your your ambient noise and ambient audio that sometimes mirror may not be better than what your action cameras are able to capture. Um in. Generally your main camera with your chotgun mic is going to be the best audio. But then in terms of the other stuff that's on my head. I've done a Sony X three thousand on a Solvid head mount I've done an Osmo Pocket on a d I y headstrap. Both of those basically with external batteries plugged in. Either one works. I liked the footage quality definitely the Osmo Pocket better, but it is a significantly more hassle prone piece of equipment to use than the Sony was. And I think even now there's there's definitely better options than that Sony, like the Missouri Hunt I filmed on the Sony for the head mountain looking at like the go Pro eight and other cameras that are on the market right now, like the Instant three sixty one are they have a one inch sensor action camera. Um, they're definitely better now than what I've used on some of my videos in the past. So it real simply is just if four K action camera. I think four four K is huge for a head mountain because you're gonna want to have to crop, you know, you capture wide, capture everything, and then you crop in editing to get something that's respectable. Um, so some guys will film in ten eighty. I think it's absolutely on an action camera in my opinion, worth at the film in four K and just deal with the bigger file sizes and deal with a little bit extra editing work to crop in, and I think you tend to be a little bit more happy with the end result. Yes, that's uh, that's something that I have I wish I did more often. I've always had a go Pro and that I have never liked it on my head. I just never got comfortable with it. So I would put a tree mount or I would stick it on a like a selfie stick or something and stick that in my backpack and then I would tell myself, well, when you when you've got a deer coming in, you'll just you'll remember to turn it on and hit record and eight times at a time. I don't. It's been great a couple of times I used it. But your system of always having it there and always having it on, that that makes a lot of sense. But uh yeah, because typically you're if your right hand, you're gonna have the camera on the left side of your head, and so if you don't have it turned on, that means you got to If you've got your bow already held in your left hand, it means you gotta take your right hand, reach across your body and turn that camera on. And I've gotten bust over that a little bit of movement before trying to turn that camera on. So I was like to leave him running. Yeah smart. Um, well, I've been yapping your ear off for longer than I thought I was going to. Um, so I want to I want to wrap this up so your whole night's not sunk. But but we spent a lot of time. You know, we're talking about first your style of hunting and then the gear you use to allow that style of hunting. It's it's being mobile, it's being adaptable, it's adjusting to what you're seeing, what's working, what's not the the kind of stuff strategy or the sort of stuff strategy. And if if that is the strategy that you plan on moving forward with, and that's gonna be right, some evolution of that will be how you're hunting five years from now, ten years from now. You want to be getting better and better every year. Tell me this, when you sit down at night this year it's it's the winter. I'm sure based off of what I do know from you and what I can imagine about you, is that you're probably like me, and that when you lay down at night, a whole lot of nights are thinking about what can I what can I be doing better? Or what's the next thing, or how do I how do I prep this? Even you know, even more perfectly for the US next season. Um, for you, what's what's next, what's the next step? What do you feel is that next evolution you need to take or you want to take to better fine tune how you go about hunting deer. And maybe that's a gear thing, maybe it's a strategy thing, Maybe it's some combination of the two. Um, I'm just curious where your imagination is pointing you right now. So one thing for sure is definitely even more boots on the ground for some of the stuff that I hunted last year. There was definitely areas that I hunted that we're new and I was able to get on deer and kind of figure it out in the moment. But like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, if I can go back in there knowing what I know now and just pick those areas apart, then I don't know the exact right treaty be in the first hunt rather than picking it apart and figuring out after you know, two or three different hunts. And I think one thing that I could do better also is identify dear that I might want to go after. I've never really done a great job at that um in terms of, you know, using trail cameras and figuring out, Okay, I know these particular you know deer in these particular areas, and now based on that, I'm gonna go back in there a lot of times, but I usually end up falling into the trap of is I'll just hunt in a place that I want to hunt and hope that there's something out there that I want to go after. Um. And sometimes I'll you know, be totally happy filling doe tag or from hunting with the traditional ball be hunt, you know, happy with just about whatever. But I've never really said, like, you know, hey, there's this deer here, I'm gonna going after him. And maybe that's something I'm not quite ready yet for. Um. But I think that as I continue to get more and more years of doing this really mobile type strategy and I see more and more things in more and more different places, that eventually, if I get to the point where I do want to say I want to go after this deer or deer of this particular caliber, I think the next step for me is really getting a better handle on identifying and locating exactly where those deer might be because they're just not they're not there's not as many of them out there as you know, we'd like to hope always. UM. So that's that's definitely something where I could learn to improve on. Yeah, well, I I like where your head's at. Um. That's definitely something that I have experienced with. And I'll just give you one word of warning is if you go down that path, it is addicting, it is all consuming, and it will keep you up at night. But it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun to try to figure a deer out. Frustrating at times, but a ton of fun. So that's pretty awesome, man. I'm I'm getting to kick out of things you're doing and the stuff and the stories you're sharing, and the the way you're approaching gear and and uh, I'm learning stuff. So I appreciate that, and I'm sure everyone listening does too. So if people want to follow what you're up to learn more about the million different things you've got going on, where can they find your content? Sure? So most of my content is on my YouTube channel. That channel is called d I Y Sportsman. You can just type that into the search bar on YouTube and they'll pull right up. I also have a Facebook page Instagram under the same handles d I Y Underscore Sportsman for Instagram and d I Y Sportsman for Facebook. I have a website, d I Y dash Sportsman dot com. And then I also have a podcast that's through the Sports and Nation podcast Network, so the network the DAN runs I have the d I Y Sportsman podcast, So those will be all places where people can look up to the content that I offer. Awesome, super cool stuff. Gerett, keep up the good work and thanks so much for taking some time to chat tonight. Yeah, absolutely had a great time. Let's uh, let's follow up it again sometime soon. Sounds good and that's gonna do it. Another episode in the books. Thank you all for listening. I hope you guys found this one to be interesting. I know I did. Again, I just want to reiterate the whole safety thing with any of this stuff. Using tree stands, you using saddles, using different climbing methods, place safety first. Your life is in your own hands. Take that seriously. Be safe, stay connected, use the proper safety tools and methods, and don't risk your life trying to get a deer. All that said, have a wonderful day, have a great weekend, Enjoy the rest of your run on the treadmill, your day of work, or your drive home, whatever it is, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.

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