00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three and today on the show we are covering the ten steps to your best deer hunting season ever and discussing our first white tail hunt of the season. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X to Dan. The show it is myself and Josh further Hilliard. Josh, how you doing. You don't like it when I call you further Well, I mean you did this little shake of the head. I'll take it. It's all funny games. I don't have a choice anymore. I don't think to change it now. So no, man, it's locked in stone. Um So here's what we're gonna do today. Um we I thought that with hunting seasons opening up across the country, right our season started today. You and I out. We're out here in Idaho on our public land whitetail hunt. We just had our very first hunt of the year tonight. Um, our seasons are kicking off. People are kicking off in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, all over the place, and then a bunch of seasons opening up for the next couple of weeks. I thought we'd kind of do my beginning of the season Pep Talk episode. Every few years, I try to do this, just kind of laying out some key things to think about. And I thought, rather than it be just me lecturing folks, UM, why don't the two of us talk through a handful of things. UM, I'll kind of lay out some of these idea is basically what I've done is is compile a list of ten different I don't know if it's steps, it's more so ten different reminders of important things to keep in mind throughout the hunting season that's going to help you. Some of these are there are contactical things, Some of these are more mindset things. Um in some our beginner some are a little bit more advanced. But I think regardless of if you're a new hunter or if you are a very experienced hunter, there's something in here that will be helpful to you to keep in mind over the course of the next four months. Right because you can never stop learning, you can never have this stuff figured out enough so you know, if this all sounds like something you've heard before, as we're discussing it, think about, Okay, how do I actually execute some of these things this coming season? Or can I pick one of these things to try to really focus on and get better at this thing? Um, that's how you grow is by kind of taking purposeful, meaningful focused practice or attention to detail specific things. And I think that's what we can do here. So some ideas will walk through these ten things, and then after that, we gotta tell everybody about our hunt to night because we had a hell of a hunt. We had a good one tonight. I still can't really wrap my head around what happened to you tonight. Further further had a hell of a hunt, guys, a really fun night. Um, so we're gonna tell you about that after we run through our ten steps or ten reminders to your best deer hunting season ever. We'll keep this one kind of quick because I know folks want to get out in the woods. The seasons are opening, so let's not spend too much time sitting in the truck listening to people talk about it. Let's actually get out there and do it. So, uh, here's what I'm thinking, Josh, I'm gonna bring up each one of these different topics. I'll kind of lay out some of my thoughts or ideas on it, and then if you've got any examples, or if you've got questions, or if you've got something else you want to add to it, Um, jump in and do that. Sounds good, um, And we'll just kind of take it from there and then we'll get into story time. So here we go. Ten steps to your best deer hunting season ever. Like, one of the first things to keep in mind if you are, especially if you are taking that step to trying to hunt for bucks or especially mature bucks. What I'm gonna tell you here is is something that just is crucial, and that is the fact that the details are everything. All the little things matter. I go back to and I bring this up a lot, but Mark D'Antonio, the former coach of Michigan State football, always said that it was a game of inches, and that's stuck with me. It's those little inches along the way that lead to first downs, which leads to touchdowns, which lead to games one and the same thing applies to white tail hunting. It's the little things it's it's um you know, making sure that you've got your whole process down when it comes to setting up your saddle and sticks, and so you're you're well thought through and planned and how you're gonna do that, you can do it quietly and effectively. It's a little thing like taping a buckle so that when you drop a strap and bangs against the side of your sticks, that doesn't make that ding. It's a little detail, like thinking through exactly how the wind direction might change part way through your day. It's it's it's not glossing over things. And it's so easy to do. And I am guilty of it a lot where I want to gloss over things and sometimes I still do, even when I know it's not the right thing. Um, But I try really hard not to do this. Um. But the details can be a pain in the ass, like trying to have to worry about all the little things like on our hunt tonight, right, I mean, there's so many little things that you don't want to worry about. The wind direction is this certain direction when we're heading in and then you can either just ignore it, or you can take a calculated risk, or you can go do something totally different. And then you gotta think about, Okay, now, how am I going to set up my stand in a position so that I can get shot and I can get access without spooking deer, and I can I get out without spooking deer. And I need to be able to be covered in the tree, and I need to be able to you know, move around. All these different things you have to think about. Every little tiny thing does matter, sure, especially on the first hunt, right like the first one of the year. I mean, you're rusty, you're not used to you know, by the time November comes around, you usually a well oiled machine. But I'm guilty of forgetting something almost every year. My first time, I forgot my arrows in my truck. I forgot my quiver in my truck one year. So I mean, the first hunt is always you know, attention to details make such a big different difference on that first one, especially, which brings to mind something that a little tool you can use the helps you pay attention to these details. And I think when it's something that's kind of floating around in your head, it's easy to ignore something or move on from something, but it's a lot easier to follow through on things when you write them down. So, for example, if you know there are some little things that you want to take care of before opening day, like taping the straps on your sticks, or like making sure your tree stands aren't squeaking, or you want to get better making sure you follow through on your entire sent control regiment that you know you should do, but you inevitably skip steps because you're tired or lazy or whatever you don't want to do at all. If there's something like that, and and it's a good idea in a lot of cases with with all these things to try to not necessarily tackle everything, but pick a few things to focus on. So write a few of these things down and say, you know, this year, I'm gonna nail that thing or these three things. I'm gonna make sure I pay attention to the details of you know, in this case, keeping your stand in sticks and everything perfectly silent. There's a little detail thing that can actually make a big difference. Um. So that's that's a high level concept of sorts that can apply to a lot of different aspects of your deer hunting life of a given season. But try to try to just always not cut yourself slack when it comes to these things. When you find yourself wanting to cut the corner, try to remember, dang it, those inches matter. I gotta pay attention to the details. I'm just gonna do it. It's like when I was a kid. I used to right ignore my mom when you told me go claim my room or vacuum the stairs, or do this thing or that, and I would like try to push it off as long as possible and find some way to skirt around it and get away with not doing as much. But at some point along the way, I realized that my life would be better and easier if I just like took it on the chin and just did it right away, Just get it done over with, do the hard thing right away, and then the rest of your life is so much better. And that's kind of the thing with deer hunting is do the hard, annoying, detailed things sometimes. Just do it, get it done, check the box, and then move on, rather than letting that thing naggets you, knowing like I should have done that. So that's number one. Number two this is a more tactical idea, But keep this in mind throughout your hunts, and again None of this is new stuff. These are things that we've talked about over many episodes with many different guests, and everyone has their own take on it. So what I'm trying to do here is synthesize a few of the most important concepts and talk about them in a more general way that you can maybe apply to whatever circumstances you're in. So here's something that we've talked to a lot of people about, and that is the importance of the first sit. The first time you go into a spot is often your very best opportunity at a book right because you're gonna have deer that very quickly pick up on what you're doing. We know that one of the greatest challenges we have as hunters is trying to keep deer from becoming educated as to what we're doing trying to hunt them. So one of the best ways to keep them uneducated is to keep changing it up. So that means one of two things. Either it means waiting to go in to hunt certain place until the right time so that that first time you go into the right time, or number two, it's have a lot of first sits, so don't hunt the same place over and over and over hunt a spot, swing for the fences there, and then moved to a new spot, get your first sit there, and then moved to a new spot, get your spot there. And you can do that in several ways. You can do that by having a bunch of tree stands all over your properties, or you can do that by being mobile like we are on this hunt. We both got our saddles and sticks, and we snuck in today we hunk are hung our saddles and sticks hunted, and at dark we pulled them all down and we're gonna move for tomorrow. So that's a great way to always be in a fresh spot. Keep those dear guessing they are not going to know where you're gonna be tomorrow, right because they've had no idea, And that's gonna put you in a better pocisition. Yeah, And just like you know, I I hunted. I got access to a new lease last year and hadn't been hunted in a while, and my first time out there had a shot opportunity passed on a buck that would have been one of my best books. I just you know, I didn't take the shot and never really had an opportunity. But I don't think I would have anyway, and um, you know, first time out there and they had no idea and first time out tonight. I think we can talk about that a little bit later, but you know, I think we both had, you know, a good first set in a in a new spot. Definitely something to be said for that. The first set. It is a powerful, powerful thing, and so many people can point to that. Um, it's it's something you want to preserve or create. So keep that in mind. Let's jump over to another mindset thing. This is something more and more and more, and I want to dive into this further in future episodes. But I see deer hunting like becoming a good deer hunter is a two part thing. One part is understanding deer and dear behavior and and strategy stuff. They're like, what is a deer going to do in certain situations and how do I on for them? But then the other side, decision making. It's understanding how to analyze all these different inputs, all these different things, what I scouted, what I saw, what the weather is, what the time of years, taking all these different things and then try to have some kind of model to process that and come to the right decision. That's a lot harder than people give it credit for. And that has got me kind of fascinated in a whole bunch of weird wormholes around decision making, around mindset, around human psychology and how we can apply that. And one thing that I have dove into a little bit this is getting a little wonk, not a little a lot wonky, is ancient philosophy and how that can apply. I know you think I'm nuts, but hear me out here. One of the most important high level concepts that's practiced and philosophy and just basic everyday life is this idea of understanding what you can control and what you can't and learning to give up, not give up, but by by releasing that those things that you can't control, accepting what you can't, and taking responsibility for what you can do. And if you can do those things, your life it's a lot easier, a lot more fulailing a lot more successful. And that applies to general life, and it really applies to deer hunting. There's so many things in the deer hunting world where I found myself in the past stressing out, getting upset, getting piste, getting frazzled about some kind of situation, that if I were to take a step back, I'd realize, Man, a lot of these things are out of my control. Like the neighbors started driving up down the property line and shooting his gun something like that. I can get piste about it and tell all my friends about it and let it ruin my night and ruin my week of hunting and blame everything that goes wrong on this guy. Or I can say, all right, this bad thing happened. I had no control. I have no control where happens next. And you know, at least in regards to what this neighbor does. So all I can do is this that's water to the bridge. The only thing that can control is how do I react to it. That's what you have control over. So, Josh, if you miss a deer, you can't get that arrow back right. That thing happened. You can't control it anymore. All you can control is what you do next. What are you gonna do about tomorrow? Shoot your bow and try to fix the fix whatever's going on. And yeah, I mean, you just gotta get back on the horse and and keep going. And I had that situation last year, so and dwelling on it and pissing the moaning about it and feeling bad about it. That doesn't it doesn't achieve anything, right, Nope, I think so many times it's once you can turn that corner. He said, Okay, that happened. Now what I think that phrase right there? Now, what is an important one Whenever something crappy happens, is up hunting hunting season, when someone steals your trail camera, when you miss a buck, when your neighbor shoots the buck you were after, when you lose access to your best farm. Except okay, that thing happened. Now what that is? The superpower that you have is you have this superpower to make the next decision. You can turn that page, and the sooner you can do that, the sooner you get onto the next thing, and making good things happen exactly. We were talking about that on the truck right out, Just like mindset and attitude and not how so much of that can play into success and just putting yourself in better situations by you know, having having the right mindset. And I think that applies directly to that topic there, very very true, and that actually applies to one of our other key reminders here. But I'm gonna jump back to a more tactical thing, and this jumps or this this is very related to the last one. We talked about the importance of those first sits, those fresh sits. One of the things you can do to make sure you have more fresh sits is to preserve your best spots for the right times. And this is something that we've talked a lot about over the years that I've focused on a lot about over the years. We've talked to Mark Drewry about this a lot. Understanding different factors and conditions that can help you pinpoint your best possible chances when the possible odds of success are as high as they possibly can be because of outside factors like barement, your pressure, or temperature changes or precipitation or you know, observations or time of year. Um. A big, big, big, big change in my dear hunting success came when I started realizing that you can't just sit stuff over and over. You've got to have certain places for certain times of year, in certain places, for certain situations. When you think that, Okay, this is this is game time, this is a killing day. When you've got those killing days, you gotta go to a killing spot and then there's other days where the conditions aren't so great and you can do one or two things. You can sit at home on the couch, or you can go and hunt secondary spots, or hunt a wild card spot, or hunt some public land. Get out there, learned, has some fun, maybe you'll get lucky. Um. But when it comes to those special special spots, save them for the right times. Try to preserve those fresh sits as much as possible, or they really aggressive sits. Try to time your aggressive moves to better conditions so that when you do swinging for the fences with um, you know, diving into hunt a betting area or a buck bed. You know, Andrew Quisto talks about this. He will, you know, bump buck and find out where his betting areas. But then sometimes he'll try to time his return trip to when there's a good moon time. He's a big believer in the moon positioning and how that can impact dear movement, and so he'll wait and try to see when the moon says that that buck will likely return to his bed a little bit later in the morning, going to keep him on his feet just a little bit more so now he knows that's the time to strike because I've got that little thing in again. Back to his inches, He'll have a couple of little inches and more in his favor. So you know, you can listen to four hours on this and Mark Jurie if you want, or we've talked about it many times. But if there's anything I like the most, it's it's temperature drops. I'm a huge, huge believer in the power of cold fronts um bara metric pressure. That seems to be one that's consistent with a lot of people. The moon thing, I still I don't know. And then you know intelligence, trail camera pictures, actual observations, those things. When you see that, move on it because dear behavior can change fast, So jump on those opportunities. So let me ask you a question. How are you going to apply that topic to this hunt? Well, we're out of state hunt. We've got seven, eight, nine days something like that to get it done. We kind of dove in tonight in some good spots. We've got some not so great weather coming up, pushing ninety degrees. How are you going to put that into motion here on our hunt? Know? So that's an interesting one because I would actually in a situation where you've got a very limited amount of time. I would kind of push some of that out of the way, and I wouldn't worry as much because right right, the right time to strike is the few days you have. Like you, so you just got to take advantage of the few days you have. So in that case, you know, even if the temperature gets hot, we still gotta hunt. We still gotta try to make the best of a couple of days. Even at the bare metro pressure of the moon's around, we still gotta go and hit our good spots because this could be the only chance. Um. But there are certain things like an observation. So for example, if I observe a deer do something, I'm going to know not necessarily that tomorrow is the day to strike. Of course it's Mars the day to do it, but you know where so you see a deer do something, immediately adjust go in there, try to get him doing it again the next day, and that kind of thing. You know, if you're on a long trip and you've got something really dramatic where there's you know, it's been super ninety degrees warm forever, and then we know on the second day of the trip that you're gonna have a thirty degree cold front come through and it's gonna be amazing. Then I might think, Okay, that first night, well let's just Scott, let's just watch that first night because it's gonna be so good. The next day, let's just observe at night number one, see exactly what they're doing, and then we can make a killing strike the next day, a very educated move. Um. That kind of thing. Maybe, sure, but you know, in our situation, I think we just gotta keep on going. Um. So that's my take on that. And again, there's there's so many different ways it's gonna be applied throughout the hunting season. So it could be outside factors like temperature, moon, blah blah blah. It could also be time of year. So right, if you're a new hunter, it's important to remember there are certain times of year when you're gonna have a disproportionately high chance of deer being on their feet moving. So, for example, if I had to pick, like my strike zones, the times of year that I'm you know, all things being equal, I'm gonna feel the very best about my chances. I'm gonna be looking at the first few days of the hunting season before a bunch of hunters have mucked things up. You've got a really good chance swing swing for the fences that time of year. And then you're gonna get into late October or November when you're getting to the rut phases. That's a great time to swing for the fences. Um, you know, you get into the late season if you get certain weather mixed with the late season, like really cold and snowy temperatures in December or January, and then I'm gonna swing for the fences those kind of situations. So there's a bunch of different little ways that can be applied. But but think about that high level concept throughout your year. Pick your times, pick your spots. You can't you you almost play pro baseball, right, Josh, you can't. You can't try for a home run every single pitch, right. You got to know the right pitches to I mean, you tell me you you throw what's a baseball stick? Is what you swing? Yeah? I think the stick? No, I mean you you get yourself into certain pitch accounts that you're more likely to get a fastball or an easier pitch to hit that you can kind of you know, quote unquote swing for the fences a little a little more freely on those types of accounts than um, you know, other scenarios. And same thing with hunting. Um, you're gonna have days where, hey, this thing's a pitch right down the middle, you're going to that classic rut spot because it's November eight, um, But you don't wanna go sit that same spot October one or September one or whatever it is. And that tastes some time to figure out, you know, if if you're brand new, don't feel bad if you don't know some of these things yet, but try to pick up or listen when you hear other conversations when people are talking about these different times of year, these different circumstances, that that that that influence them to do certain things. Know that very little that's by accident. Most the serious and consistently successful deer hunter does not do things willie nilly. They don't do things by accident. The people that are consistently successful do it because they have a very clear plan and they do things for a reason. Nothing's by accident, Which brings us to another high lovel concept which has helped me learn a lot as I go through my deer hunting journey, and that is this this um idea of always asking why so when something happens. And I've I've shared this anecdote many times in the past, I'll share it again. But I was hunting with with the late Craig Doherty and we're sitting in one of his blinds in New York and he was a very experienced great deer hunter and I was just a kid, I don't know, twenty one or twenty two. And we're sitting there and we were hunting what looked like a great place to me, but we weren't seeing any deer. And as the night wrapped up. Um, I said, well, I guess you know, I just got unlucky. Um, just how it goes sometimes. And Craig's like, no, no, something was going on tonight. There's always a reason why. I always ask why. And then he started like putting up potential things. Maybe it was this. Maybe when we access to this blind, we didn't think about the fact that the wind was blowing into that whole cutover timber area and that might have been where they are all better tonight. So what I try to do and what I'm actually gonna try to start doing this hunting season is every day after I hunt, come back and ask why, Like examine what happened tonight, what I see, what they not see? Why did these things happen? And if you can do that in many different ways, you can do that like I just described after hunt, or you could do that when you're you see a buck go skirt in the edge of field, or you watch a mature buck go do something, always try to think about why that buck's doing that, because again, mature bucks, just like consistent dear hunters, they don't do things I accident. Typically they're doing something for a reason, and if you can get better and better and better at discerning that reason, you become a much better hunter. So always ask why, because that is the key I think to learning and growing. Yeah, that's definitely something I need to get better at asking myself why. I think that's a great idea to keep track of. You know, your observations, what you're seeing, and then why why? Why is that what you're seeing? Yeah? And then and so part of it is a thought exercise for you, Right is it you the individual? You're asking yourself why, and then you're making guesses. Right, You're trying to think they're Okay, these are the things I know, these are things I think. I know. It might be this, it might be this, it might be this. And simply going through that exercise is going to be good for you. But also don't be afraid to ask other people that are experienced get other perspectives too, because that's really gonna help you so and you may be able to start connecting dots to you if you're looking at Okay, you know November one, I saw him November eight, so you know what, what were there any similarities from those days and maybe that's the reason why he was doing that. Um, I think that definitely definitely helps something I want to start doing more of. And and this is where just having a good network of hunting buddies of some kind, whether that be folks you grew up with or someone you're involved in a conservation organization. If you don't have a group of hunting buddies, get involved with something like q D, m A or b H. It's a great way to get some friends that can help you out with these things. And one of my you know, one of the favorite things during the hunting season I enjoy is this, you know, reaching out to your buddies after something happens, Hey, this happened, What do you think? Why? Why do you think this happened? And getting all these different ideas. UM, that's fun and it's also really helpful. UM, So don't be afraid to do that. Don't be afraid to ask why. You don't need to know it all. You don't need to feel bad if you're don't have if you don't have an answer. UM, Admitting you don't have the answer is probably the first step. And then trying to figure something out or a lot of times you probable won't have an answer, but the process can help you get there somewhere, moving on to something a little more tactical. And this is this is just a key consistent trade again of all the people that are really really good at this thing that we talked about on the warrecome podcasts all the time. Deer hunting, scouting, scouting more, they scout more than they hunt. Scout scout scout scout scout, learn, look for details, pay attention tracks, pay attention to fresh sign, pay attention to old sign. Go back and and study these different things. See how sign changes year after years. See how sign changes in regards to crop rotations. See how um see if you can pin specific kinds of sign to specific deer year after study trail camera pictures, study observations from the past, take note of these things you're seeing. Don't just walk around the woods and look at stuff, but go back and write in your journal or right on your phone in the notes that you saw this. He y're in here and here, or go on your maps on ONYX or wherever and mark all these things up so you can start to put the picture together. Um. It's such a simple thing. But it's easy to want to just go out there and hunt because that's you know, what a lot of us think of his hunting. But I can't think of anyone who's really good at this who doesn't point to the fact that they enjoy scouting a lot, but do it more than more than the average person, for sure. So so just don't discount that this. It can be in season, it can be off season, it could be boots in the ground, it could be studying maps or studying trail camera pictures. Um. But it goes back to a lot of what we're talking about here. We have this whole puzzle that we're trying to figure out. When we're trying to hunt dear, you're trying to learn what dear do, why they do it, and then you're trying to predict what they're gonna do next, because that's the only way you can kill a deer is by predicting what these deer are gonna do. The only way we can do that is by actually getting puzzle pieces to build out the damn picture on the table, and the only way you get those puzzle pieces in place is by scouting. There's lots of different ways to do that, but you need those puzzle pieces. It's very hard to recreate the picture on the box if you've only got four puzzle pieces of a thousand, So get out there, find them, do the extra work to do that. UM an educated, well planned out hunt, just one like that we're scouting has has led you to have a well informed, educated guests behind everything you're doing. One of those is worth ten willy nearly uninformed hunts, or or fifty it's it's it's again something that over the last however many years, have been doing is eight nine years talking to the best deer hunters across the country. That is very, very very consistent. Next, let's talk mindset again, positive mindset, but negative preparations. So here's what I'm talking about here, and this goes back to what you talked about a little earlier. I do think that there's something to be said about having a positive mindset, believing in yourself, having confidence in the fact that I'm going to make this thing work, and also being positive about the fact that, yes, bad things are gonna happen, and you know, I'm not gonna let that weigh me down and ruin my hunt and ruin my day and ruin my year. So what you what you can do is often, at least the way I look at Maybe it's different for different people, but it comes down to a decision. You can choose to be a negative Nancy, or you can choose to say, you know what, I'm going to find some way to find silver linings. And a lot of these things are connected. I'm going to control what I can and I'm gonna let go of what I can't. Um And what you can do when you have that is that you become much more accepting. I don't know if it's accepting, but um, We've got a friend who believes that if you've got a positive minds that it creates like an energy feel that draws things to you. I'm not there yet. I don't know. If I don't, I don't, I don't. I can't get behind that. But I do think that if you have a positive, confident um, optimistic belief in yourself and view of the world, that you become much more able to take advantage of good things when they come about. Those opportunities. You know, someone might call lucky, but I think you know what do they say? Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. It's you've You've put in the work, You've you've got the right mindset to take advantage of these things when they come along. If you are sitting there sulking about all your bad luck, all the things that went wrong, how tough your rut hunts bit, you haven't seen any to hear it's been so yeah, exactly, and all those all those things lead to you know, self fulfilling prophecies. So that is the positive mindset side of things. But I was recently listening to someone talk about the positive benefits of negative thinking, which was kind of counterintuitive. Counterintuitive to me, but it makes sense and and her her horror role idea here was that the whole positive mindset things important, but it is also beneficial to think through and have a plan for negative possibilities. So believe in yourself, believe and and be positive about how you're gonna spin these things as a positive, but also know that, hey, they're likely will be potential challenges. So why don't I spend a little bit time thinking about what will these or what could these excuse me? What could these challenges be? And how can I plan ahead of time to to do something about it. So heading into your hunting season, get your mind right, plan on being positive, but then think about, Okay, hey, there's some things that probably will go wrong, and maybe I can do a little thinking ahead of time to be ready to deal with some of that stuff. So, for example, we're on our public plan hunt right now. I want to be positive and optimistic about how things are gonna go, but likely some things will go wrong. Here's something that could go wrong. I bet you there's gonna be other hunters out there. They're gonna muck things up. So before this hunt, I thought to myself, Okay, probably is gonna happen. There's gonna be other people. So right off the bat, I need to really try hard not to get all pissy and money and upset about that when it happens, be okay, this is what it is. That's okay. How do we adjust? Okay, so there's one thing I'm thinking about. I'm gonna I'm gonna be much better at that. And it happened tonight, right, and we can be pissing money or because Okay, that happened. It is what it is. How do you adjust? What else we could we do? We're worried about other hunters, Well, have backup plans. So this year I made sure we had three very different, diverse, different types of areas where you're not dead set stuck on any one place. We have options. So if we came in here and there's a lot of other hunters, we plan to have their options. So that's just one example of of of how you can do this. The same thing could be said for your upcoming hunting season. Like here's another example. I am so focused on trying to kill Tran right, that's my number one target buck in Michigan, my third year hunting him. Um, you know, I spend a lot of mental bandwidth thinking about how I'm going to find this deer, and you know, I'm all wrapped up in this mission or whatever you wanna call it, but I also need to be realistic about the possible negative possibilities. I'm not wishing this, I'm not I'm not giving into this fate. I am just being realistic about the possibility. Hey, a neighbor could kill him, someone else could kill him, he could get hit by a truck, And all these plans, all this work I've done specifically to try to kill this one deer, I can all go out the window. So I'm going to and I already have. I've had like a little mental conversation with myself saying, hey, this is a possibility. How are you gonna handle that? What are you gonna do when that happens? You're gonna sulk theman and give up on the season, or you go into you know, regroup and go find something else, somewhere else and find another fun thing to do for this season. So I've kind of already tried to mentally prepare myself for that so that when it happens, if it happens, I'm not going to be devastated and kicking and screaming on the floor. I'm gonna, you know, take the punch and move on. So that's all you can do to have that positive mindset, but prepare for negative possibilities. I think that's something that in so many parts of the deer hunting experience, can help you. What else do you want to talk about, Josh? How about here's a high level one that again this isn't rocket science, this is nothing new to anyone, but it's something that I think you just had to get knocked on the head with over and over and over and over with it, which is, don't get lazy with your access in your exit. Don't cut your corners when it comes to getting into your tree stands or out of your tree stands without spooking deer, because if you're educating your deer, this goes right back to the very first thing we talked about. The first said is the best. You don't get a first set if you let them know you're coming in on the way you're there, and you don't get to enjoy future first sets if every deer in your property knows that you're leaving at the end of the night and walking through a cut corn field and you're spooking fifty deer every single night. You gotta have a plan in place for how to deal with access and exit. So today, when we hiked in, we had we had to deal with slightly less than optimal wins. We had a plan for how we're going to access this as best as possible, thinking about when thinking about send control. And then when we had to exit tonight, you and me were talking through, Okay, how do we get out of here? What spooking these deer that got to these fields? You wait a while, I'm gonna sneak out this back way a little bit um. You just don't want to bust these deer. And again, I'm not claiming this to be rocket science. This is just a hey, this is your once this week reminder. You gotta take it serious. Yep. Well, especially like just to go into a little bit about tonight, I mean, first hit really good. Sit made some great observations that we can use to our advantage tomorrow, which could potentially be another quote unquote first hit in a little different spot, mix it up a little bit, um, move and adjust our setups to what the deer are doing. Similar win directions. So we you know, I had a deer all over me, so I just had to wait to get out of there. Um, try to get out there as quiet as we can so we don't muck it all up for tomorrow. Well yeah, and that's the thing is that you have. We had this great first set, We had this great observation with great new intelligence, this new scouting intel that we can use to hopefully put a kill, make it happen tomorrow. But if we got lazy with our exit, we could throw all that out the door, because we might educate all those deer and then tomorrow they're gonna do something totally different. So it's one of those things that can just have this really disproportionate effect. It can really change things. It can take all your hard work and and just stomp on it like grapes. So oh so, don't let that be the crux that ruins what you're doing. And it's it's again it goes back to planning these things out ahead of time. Think through, Okay, what's the challenge of getting in or out of here? And how do I count for that? Is this the spot I just can't hunt in the night, in the air, starry in the evenings. Is this the spot I just can't go to in the mornings. Is this a spot that I have to convince my wife to come drive out here and pick me up? Um? Whatever you gotta do. Think about those things and understand that it's it's something that has to be part of every decision when it comes to picking where you're hunting and when you're hunting. That has to be at the very forefront of that decision making process. How many does that, Josh, I don't know. I was about to ask you how many we've gone through? You know what I did here is I wrote down more than ten. I got on a roll and I just started writing things down. So I don't even know. Let me see here. Um one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight two more two more. Okay, Uh. This is one more tactical thing, and it's a little bit of a it's nothing too special, tricky, but something that's helped me out in a lot of situations. And this is the idea of the It's it's easy to get tunnel vision with the places that you hunt. You can get so focused on the little the spots you hunt and the property that you hunt, that you what's the saying you you missed the forest for the trees. You don't zoom out and look at the bigger picture. So my reminder to everybody is to remember to look at the big picture. Don't get too obsessed with these two trails and how dear getting between that little ravine and that swallow or that swell. That's important, But also what you can do is zoom out, literally zoom out on the maps and look at how your little property fits into the bigger scheme of things, or look at your property with new eyes and try to say, Okay, if I had never hunted this place and I was looking at this as a brand new property from above, what would I think where the places that look particular appealing? Because if you've got twenty years of history in place, it's very easy to get sucked into the same old, same old stuff. And this is what grandpa there, that's what we did, and this is what we do, or this is what has always worked for me. But getting those fresh eyes on a property and and looking at it from a high level and trying to start the simplest and then work down it's a really powerful way to come to new ideas. So that's something like before the hunting season opens or soon after. I'd encourage everyone to try to to try to do this, to try to look at your spots, whether it's a public land area or your land that you own or least or have permission on. Try to try to as best as you can. This is against like a mental exercise. You can't completely do this, but try to say, Okay, if I didn't know anything about this, if I was looking at this as a brand new place, what would the spots be that a key in on? Or how do I think deer moved through here? Or how does this property fit into the square mile? Or how did dear get from that corner of the square mile to this corner of the square mile. You might start to see trends or ideas or patterns that could help you in your little tunnel vision world, but you never would notice if you only lived in that tunnel vision world. So look at the big picture. And that's number nine. Number ten. I think we will. I've got three good ones to choose from, Josh, I'm just gonna say them all. I'm gonna call this ten. Execute on the plan. You know what to do if you listen to this podcast, if you love this kind of stuff. You know, most of the things you're supposed to do. I say this a lot, but this is one of the hardest things we have as hunters. And it goes back to the whole. Little things matter the whole. Every inch counts. It's doing the ship that you you know has to get done. But it's hard to do. It's hard to do all the little stuff. It's hard to get up early. It's hard to make sure you packed everything and double checked. It's hard to wake up eight days in a row. It's hard to walk that extra half mile to make sure you're not blown deer out of the field. All those things are hard. What's easy is to skip things. What's easy is to say it'll be fine today. What's easy is to say it's raining outside, I'm gonna watch college football unless you like the big time. Um, you know, but if you can make this promise to yourself, and every year I try to do it, and I'm never I'm not I'm never perfect at this, and maybe some people are. I'm not perfect. I can't nail this all the time. But every year I try to have kind of a mental little pep talk, you know, at the beginning of the season, and then usually at the beginning of the run, like, hey, you gotta do better than you did last year. At least execute on this thing. And you know the things to do. You have a plan, You've done the work. Now you just have to follow through on it. And maybe maybe you don't try to, you know, bite it all off at one time. Pick pick the one or two things that you know you really struggle with the most that consistently every year that you struggle with. Pick those and and try to fix those this year, and then maybe pick something else next year, and you know you'll get that ball rolling downhill and you'll be good to go. Yeah, And that applies to all of these ideas, right, A lot of different high level, little little reminders here. And I don't think any of us could probably try to focus on all of these, but if each one of us could pick one of these things to really focus on this year and make a real tangible difference there here all of a sudden, I having a better deer hunting season, Which brings me to the last thing, which is something that Andre du Cuisto talked about a week a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, and it really stuck with me was this idea of trying to overcome our fear of failure. And it's something that I realized as he was talking about this, that I've had a lot over the last decade as I've learned more and more about, you know, hunting mature bucks. I don't know what the twelve thirteen years ago now on my thirty three, I was about twenty. Yeah, so about thirteen years ago I decided I'm gonna start try to start shooting big old bucks. And the first things I read and many of the people that I was learning from early on, it was all about how to not screw up. And and some of the things we've talked about today are related to how to not screw up, how to keep tear from getting educated. That's very important. But at the same time, back to the baseball analogy, if you constantly are bunting because it's like a safe thing to do, you're never gonna hit a home run home run. Sometimes you do have to take that swing. Sometimes you do have to get aggressive, and that comes with experience, It comes with time, it comes with knowing the right time to strike um. But I'm working on this year to try to not be so afraid to fail and instead be a little bit more I'm not sure what the right word is, but prepared to succeed or or or reaching for the success. Sometimes you gotta go get it. You can't always wait for it to come to you. It's it's like there's two approaches. There's the weight around and just don't r up enough until the deer makes a mistake approach, or there is a go for it, go for it, go for it until you get the success. And you make a bunch of mistakes along the way, You screw up a bunch of stuff along the way. But if you swing for the fences enough times, you will get that home run. And you only need one home run a year to be a pretty happy hunter. Um. There's a lot of circumstantial stuff that can change how you actually execute on this. You're like, you don't want to go hunt betting areas every single time. If you have a twenty property, that's the only thing you can hunt. Um, But I do think there are opportunities, at least speaking for myself, where I can get more aggressive in the smart way, in a well planned way. UM that in the past I was probably you know, worried that's that's too risky, or that's you know, too aggressive for this time of year, for this kind of property, for the state. UM. But maybe that's a lot of just what other people are telling me. UM. Why not go learn those things for yourself and see if you can pull it off, and if you can't pull it off, what you learned from it? Ask why after the situation learn from it. Control what you can control, Let go of the things you can't execute the damn plan. Be positive, but prepare for the negative possibilities. And right up in a nice little bow there, Mark, that was nice. If you can do those things, you are set for quite possibly your best your hunting season ever. Maybe that's literally, maybe that's just emotionally or fun or whatever. But I do think and I hope some of these ideas can help you out, whether this is your first hunting season or your UM. I think there's some things in here that that each and ever one of us could could think about a little bit more. So those are my reminders leading the hunting season. I'm excited for all of you. I I I'm excited for myself. I'm excited for you, Josh, And let's just give the people the story of what happened tonight because we got to I know, we drove twenty five hours straight from Michigan, all the way through the night. We got to my place out here. UM, we did some scouting on a property, lots of other hunter signed a bunch of trail cameras tree stand UM. So that's a little disheartening, but were prepared for this. Um ID scouted several other places this summer. So I had one place in particular that I was very excited about. UM. I think I talked about so Dan on one episode, but I'll just for those that aren't familiar, I coul should have to be just a little bit. I. I basically had been roaming Idaho looking for places where public land intersected with river bottom cover, which is usually where you find good white tailed populations out west. And then I was trying to then verify that after after finding these places on maps, and then I go and verify in personally. Can you get access in here? UM doesn't actually look like there's food around it the deer would be feeding on. Can you hunt it with certain wind directions? Are there actually deer in here? So I went and visited a bunch of places, drove all over the place, UM hiked in suddenly spots, and eventually found one of them that I really liked. I snuck in there in the last couple of hours of daylight, started seeing deer crossing little opening. I hunkered down, watched this area for a while. Then I stuck up to a field edge right at the edge of the public and watch several nice bucks and a bunch of deer go out in the south alpha field. So right there I ascertained Number one, there's quality deer on this piece of public land. Number two, I figured out, hey, these deer going going to this field, Here's where they're betting, here's where they're feeding. In a general idea, and then I went and I left with a little bit of daylight left, and when drove the outside roads to see other food sources, to see, you know, are there more deer coming to other fields? What's the kind of big picture of what we have here as a possibility that all led to us today. We checked spot number one, determine there's some other people in there. So the idea was, let's going to spot number two. I can tell you right out the gate that there's gonna be deer probably feeding in the south Alpha field and I'm pretty sure the betting on these you know river bottom stuff over to the north. Um, and you and I snuck in with the game plan to try a first night hunt with what goals to observe and learn and you know, still be in a position that maybe we could get lucky in that number one. Yeah, I think we we definitely put our We both put ourselves in positions that I think we could potentially have shot shot opportunities, but then also be able to kind of see what's going on with the with this piece of public land and what's going on with it and what the deer how they're using it, and um, yeah, I've had a I had a night like I don't think I've ever had in the woods before, just with NonStop action. Um and started off slow. I mean we got in there pretty early, um, just to make sure we had some time to check it out and knew what we were doing and knew we were going and um, but we had a geez, what was that maybe two hours before dart first buck popped out in the off Alfa field where you know it's going kind of slow and then all of son. First dear came out, um, and then from there on out it was just um whirlwind of trying to keep track up the deer that I saw on and trying to keep track of where they were coming out, on how they were using the betting area and coming out into the food source and um, you know. And so to back up real quick, Josh, just when we're explain how the two of us set up differently, Um, we ad you set up kind of on the edge of this field so that you could shoot in the public land cover on our side, but you could at least glass the half off the field and the private land. The idea being that we really wanted to know a, are there deer still coming out to feed out here? And be if so, where are they leaving the public land from. If we could figure that out, then we would know one night number two where to go set up. Yep. Um, so that's where you went. I went back in the cover closer to the betting areas to try to see, Okay, is this where they are? I didn't know. Excuse me, we weren't able to be out here for the first couple of nights of the season. So we're in here nine, number three of this season. So I was a little worried. You know, I did a bunch of guys poundless the first couple of nights, and all that bad defeat stuff isn't gonna be happening as visibly out closer to the field. We might have to be typed to the bedding air. So I thought, you know, if you're on the observation, standing near the food sources, you can see what's happening out there. I could be a little tighter to the cover, a little bit farther in, and we'll kind of see which situation we're dealing with. And pretty quickly became apparent that your situation was was pretty good, because I saw some deer, but nothing like you saw. I saw two doors, a fawn, a little six pointer, a spike, and like a nice little two year o day pointer. Um. And that was all about in the last hour of daylight for me. Um. But that's what I saw. Like seven deer. You saw seventy eight d deer or something. I couldn't. I couldn't keep tracking. You've never had a night I've never ever. I mean, every time I turned around there was more deer like and I could tell there are different ones because they kept feeding out into the middle of the South Alpha fields. I mean by the time, you know, daylight was gone and there there was eight deer in that. I mean, it's crazy. I've never seen anything like it. How many five or thirty? I saw one bachelor group of ten bucks come out another seven bucks just before uh last light, and I saw I think I was keeping track on my phone. I think I saw eight Bucks before those two groups. Um, you can never say that I got a hole. You Yeah, that you're right. I didn't put you in a bed and you picked your own spot, but I certainly didn't know. No, we you know, it was incredible. I mean just there's deer coming out everywhere and trying to keep track of where they were coming out and eventually just got okay. I think maybe out of those or thirty bucks, maybe three or four of them were like mature bucks that like good shooter bucks. Um, and I want to take a step back to just say this is absurd. Yeah, it is not normal for most people or for us. UM, I don't like, yeah, this is nuts. We've kind of we've kind of stumbled on him and my scouting worked out got a little lucky to found a little honey hole here. That's hard to get to. You gotta walk along ways on the road. It's relatively tough to access public land in an area that not a whole lot of people are interested in white tails. And you've got good food and good cover. All these things kind of line up to have this kind of underutilized resource. But there's a whole bunch of deer and a bunch of nice bucks. Um and knock on wood. We're in the middle, and they see him healthy. I mean, we saw a bunch of I saw a bunch of fawns, a bunch of doughs with with twin fawns. And so that's exciting too, from like a like a quality standpoint, like these animals are getting the food that they need, and they've got the security cover that they need him and get. They've got everything right there and um, they don't have to adventure very far for any of it. I don't think so. So. So you were set up on the field, you had a buck, he had one shot opportunity. I did, I did, I passed, I passed a nice as the nine point I think he's probably two and a half year old. You know, my personal goals are like a three and a half year old. And I was clipped in on my bow and I was looking at I may regret it later. I may regret it, regret it by the end of the week, um if if another opportunity doesn't arise. But um, yeah, I was. I was this close to uh taking a shot tonight. Just um. I wasn't quite ready to be done that in the first day after that kind of action. So yeah. So everything else though, was was kind of out of range by a little bit. Yeah, most most things were out of range. Out of all those dear, I think I maybe had I don't know, five or six within range um. And then some of that was on the private that the LFLFA field was they couldn't shoot into there um, but there were a few deer that would have been within range um there. So yeah, I think maybe five to six deer, we're probably within range. And then everything else was I don't know, you know, some stuff was way out and some stuff was within a hundred yards. So some microadjustments I think to what I want to do tomorrow, and I should be, uh should be in the game. So I didn't see anything I was interested in shooting where I was at, So I'm making a wholesale move to a new area. But you saw several bucks that you would like to shoot, So walk me through your game plan for tomorrow. So we got a couple of things to think about. One of the things we didn't talk about was we did have another hunter in there tonight. UM. I don't know when he came in. I never saw him come in. You never saw or heard him come in, UM, but come Yeah, we just saw him riding a bike like a mountain bike on the way out that I could see about binoculars. He had a bow in his lap and that was like fifteen minutes before shooting light ended. So that was one of those things. Jeez, you know, I might as well start packing up now. And no later did he go driving out? Did a bachelor group of seven bucks come out right where he rode his bike through, Um, two of those being good shooter, you know, nice, really solid eight points UM within minutes after he left. So UM, I don't know where exactly he was at, but I think my plan is to um move up on a little bit towards the betting area and further towards the east of where these deer were coming. They were they were coming out into the field about seventy yards from where I was set up. So if I can cut that distance down and then move a little further back into the cover, I'd like to try to intercept them a little bit sooner. I mean, they came out within the last couple of minutes of shooting light, So if I can get back in there a little deeper without spooking anything, UM, give myself a few, you know, a few extra minutes of daylight, hopefully to to make something happen. What's the conference level? UM, I'm pretty high. I'm feeling and pretty good about it. Um, if you had to place like a probability that you're gonna get a shot tomorrow percentage wise, I don't like doing this. I was gonna put ten bucks on it. I don't you're putting me in a bad situation. I don't like putting it because then I'm gonna have this pressure on myself. I don't know what I mean, so many things can go wrong. I mean, right now they're calling for the same wind, and you know, will they do the same thing? Maybe? Did they come out down there because they knew I was in there, and they you know, it could be a number of the why I don't know. I don't know why they did that. Um Or is that just the the trail they have been using for the last couple of months in their summer feeding patterns. I don't know. Um if they did exactly the same thing, and I set myself up in a good you know, a tree where I could have some multiple shot out pretty like different lanes and things, I don't I don't know, confident man, positive mindset. If there's seventy or eighty deer running around there, maybe maybe it'll be some others that could get an arrow as well. So, UM, I really see my target rich environment. Yeah, I'm I'm really excited. I didn't have nearly the night you had, but just hearing about your experience has me so excited, just because a that makes me feel great about my own possibilities, but then also it's just gonna be fun to see you get an opportunity. And now now that we say that's I probably won't see a single deer tomorrow or something we don't believe in jinx is. We don't believe any of that kind of stuff. We're gonna see what happens, and if it doesn't go well, we will adjust and adapt and we'll figure out I forgot I did see a cow moose to your grand of the night sounds kind of well, it's pretty cool, cool cool critters man, big big animals. All right, Josh, do you have any final thoughts before wrap this one up? No, just I'm see if I can. I should be able to get some sleep tonight, but going on like thirty six straight hours and not much sleep, but I'll be thinking about tomorrow afternoon. Everybody. If if nothing we said here tonight makes any sense, just know that's because we drove all the way through the night and then hunted and worked all day today and it's like almost midnight when we're recording this, and I think we've neither one of us got more than two hours over the last of sleep, two hours of sleep over the last forty hours. So the fact that we have coherently spoken for fifty nine minutes and fifty six seconds I think is downright miraculous. So we just got a good attitude and we've got the right mindset right exactly. So um, yeah, with that said, I think I'll let you guys get after it. For those of you that are starting your hunting seasons this week or have over the past couple of days, good luck get out there. I hope you can take some of these things into account and find them helpful. You know one thing I didn't mention and should have mentioned, one of the very most important things on top of all these other reminders, on top of all these other ideas, Ultimately, have fun. Enjoy it out there. Don't get too worked up, don't get too stressed, don't make it work. Try to enjoy this thing. Put food on the table, spend time with your friends and family, and enjoy the great outdoors. This is an awesome thing we get to do. It's a privilege, it's a it's just good stuff. So best of luck, enjoy it until next time. Stay wired to hunt.

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