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 Wire to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three and seventy. Today in the show, we are discussing the trials and tribulations of public land deer hunting. Some things not to do, some things to do, and some lessons learned from our Idaho public land white to hunt. All right, welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today in the show, we are talking public land deer hunting. We're talking about the trials and tribulations of public land deer hunting and to discuss that, to discuss some of the challenges of those types of hunts, We're going to use the story of the recent hunt that Josh further Hilliard and I have been on and are still on to a degree as we speak. Um, I want to talk through some things like dealing with hunting pressure, dealing with the random adversity that comes along with traveling to hunt, and hunting new places. I want to talk about the challenges of hunting new ground. I want to talk about things like how to set proper standards and goals for public land hunts. All that kind of stuff is has been on my mind over the last week or so, and I'm sure it will be on my mind again on future public land hunts. And you know, there's there's something you can learn from every trip, and this trip has had a lot of learning experiences. I think. So we're gonna talk about our d I y public land Idaho white to hunt, but I also think, you know, we'll be able to throw back to some of the other trips I've been on and that Josh has been over the past years. We've been I don't know, just in the past few years. We've hunted some public lan in North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Michigan, UM Nebraska. So there's a few other players. There's something else I'm missing from a recent hunt. But but yeah, we've got some different experiences we can pull from here. UM. But let's start just with the store of this trip and we'll kind of take it from there. We'll run through some of these key learnings, will run through some lessons, we'll run through some challenges, UM, and we'll tell the story, and the story picks back up where we left off last week. For those who didn't listen to last week's podcast, which was ten Steps to your Best Deer hunting Season Ever. UM, we kind of teased that we had just finished our first night of the hunt, and that first night was a banger. That was a good night. You saw a whole bunch of deer, a whole lot of deer, You saw some shooter bucks. We praised the power of the first set which we enjoyed that night, and you said that you had nine probability that you were going to kill a big giant buck the next day. I'm not sure I said it was that it was high, but I think that was without giving away too much, I think that was the beginning of the end as soon as you asked that question there for you at least. UM, So let's let's walk it through. Let's I guess I'm gonna take a step back just again to rehash stuff very quickly for people that hadn't heard. This is a hunt, that it was in a brand new area. All we had done leading up to this is a little bit of summer scouting. When I was out west Um in July, I was able to do some drive bys. I did a lot of map scouting, and then I had a day day and a half where I was able to drive and check out some of these places, basically driving past them, getting eyes on him, hopping out, doing a quick walk about, just trying to con arm a few things. Um, see if there's actually crops on the neighboring fields, see what the access looks like, all that. So I was able to do that, and through that scouting work I pinpointed um about four different places that I thought had good potential. One that I was the most excited about because it had river bottom cover and had private land adjacent to it with crop fields, and that's where we started the first night. We pushed in that first night and set up you and that observation stand. I went a little back further back in the cover to see what was going on back there, and you saw a ton of deer, including a number of nice bucks. And I saw a decent number of deer and passed on a two year old eight pointer and some other young guns. Um. But we felt pretty good about things. So the next day the plan was to take those observations and adjust. So in my case, I had seen deer but I hadn't seen the quality dere I wanted, But you had seen a bunch of bucks come out. Basically, there's this elf alpha field you were hunting right, and you saw some that came out on the west side, which is where you were hunting near, and then you saw another pretty substantial number of deer that came more to the east side. So I thought, all right, I'm going to sneak in the back and hunt somewhere on the back side of Again, we can't hunt the elf alpha field, we're hunting the thick stuff behind it. But I wanted to try to get back into that thick stuff to maybe intercept more of those bucks that were coming hitting the east side of that. So I slipped in there and pushed back another hundred and fifty yards. Are so farther east than when I went where I was the first night, and my hopes here were just too slip in there a little bit further, hoping to intercept whatever that line of travel was um. But also I was scouting my way in so as I'm I'm working my way, and I got past where he hunted the night before. I got to a creek, and this creek had just like cow path mode trails um not mode literally, but just like plowed down with deer traffic on either side parallel in the creek. And then two different trails criss crossed crossing it right there. And I saw this and it was definitely the greatest concentration I had seen to that point of travel. And then I saw some beds that had been used previously. We're all off on this grassy point on the knob of the creek um And then I could see way down the creek bed to my west, like three yards or so. It was like this big, you know, creek opening that you could see a long ways and nice thought, Man, this is a great concentration of movement, and I would be able to see all the way down this creek, and if if something doesn't come by right here for a shot tonight, I can at least see where they're crossing this creek and make an adjustment for the next day. And this is a big part of at least from my public land experiences, when you're hunting new ground like this, something that is, if the terrain allows it and the habitat allows it. I often, at least early in the hunt, I'm trying to set up in places where you can learn something for the next hunt. So I want to have a good view at least early on when you're trying to learn these places. I need that observation stand opportunity to be able to learn, because you can only learn so much from your off season scouting, and in this case, I had very little offseason scouting. So basically it's learning as you go. And I wanted to see these crosses. Now you're way back and cover, but it's just this little line of sight, way back in the thick stuff. So as I you know, I got set up in the tree. I will tell you one thing that I've been very happy with as far as this trip, and something that I think is important for you know, my future public plan hunting, and and something I think you know, for most people listening. One of the things I wanted to build do was be more more wol than ever, being able to adapt and move as often as you need to and do it quickly, quietly, um efficiently. And I will tell you one thing that I think I've done better than ever before is that I've not been as mobile, uh in the past, as I have been this chart. I mean almost every night. I've been moving to new places, and I feel like my process is way better than it's ever been. I'm able to go up in one one trip. Um, you know I've the way I do it now. And I also tell you my my equipment has been improving over the last couple of years now to where I'm really happy with the system I have. So as you know, Josh, I'll run through this for for people that might be interested in setting up something like this themselves. Um, we're both using saddles. I'm running the Tethered Phantom saddle and using the Predator platform. So when I get to my tree, I put on my kneepads, I'm wearing my saddle. Um, I have a little it's just a little I don't know how you describe it, not a pack, but it's a little holding case for the platform that Tethered makes that's clipped to the side of my backpack. I have three climbing sticks and these that I've been using this year are from a company called timber Ninja. And I gotta tell you and I you know this, Josh, I'm not big on talking about products all the time, right, I hate I mean, we got to add sometimes, but I don't like to be like I would have never kill this book if it wasn't for my blank blank blank. UM. So I avoid talking about products as much as possible because I hate that kind of thing. But I'm going to give a huge plug to these guys because I have been floored by these climbing sticks. These timber Ninja carbon climbing sticks are nuts. Yeah, they're pretty, they're pretty slick. They're not. I mean, there there's no metal on them. There's no metal, so there's no sound, there's no clanking, there's know weight. I mean you can hold all three sticks like an empty water bottle, like analogene. It's stupid. They're super light. Um. I've just been so so so pleased. Um, I just hate all the metal sounds on metal climbing sticks. Even if you tape your buckles, they're still just too many little pieces and parts that could possibly make noise. You have none of them. These things lock onto the tree really nice. What I've done is I've used the tethered versus straps, which is like a like a daisy chain style, Um, what would you call it? Strap strap? I guess that again has no metal on it, So you just wrap the strap around the tree and then you pick the loop, and then you put that loop on the little button on the back on the front side of the stick sent you down the tree. I also have one of these sticks with a built in eight, so it has like a cable that slides out the bottom of the stick, which essentially adds a another excuse me, it adds another step to the bottom of that stick. So what I'm doing is I'm getting to my tree, I am taking my sticks off my pack. I am slapping that first stick up, but I'm putting it very high on the tree because I can have that eight or that slips out from beneath it. Two. So I stick the first one on there attach it. I then have a m oh, what do you call it? Um my bow rope. It's a retractable retractable yes, a retractable bow rope things. So I clipped that into my pocket. I attached that to my bowl on the ground, and then I take my other two sticks and I attached them to little gear ties like those night Eyes gear ties on that are attached to either side of my saddle. So I've got to stick on my left hip stick on my right hip, my backpacks on my back. The platform is clipped to the backpack. I climb with that first step. I'm using my lineman's belt, and I just climb up that first one. I got my lineman's belt. I can lean back, grab the second stick off my hip, Slap that one up, shimming up that one. Grab the left one off, stick that one up. Grab the platform off the back of my backpack. Stick that up step into the tree. Attached my tether. I'm clipped in. I'm good to go. And my model this whole week. When it comes to everything, but especially like setting up my saddle stands and all this kind of stuff, it is um slowest smooth and smooth is fast. I just said that over and over and over UM. And I've tried to, like, in general, you know, I'm always in a rush. I'm always like feel like I'm always running late or I want to get somewhere faster. I need to get this thing done, um. And so I'm always stressing out in the woods about that. But I've just tried to be smooth with things, and when it comes to my setup process, that has really helped, I think. And so if there's anything I have done good on this trip. It's been getting up, setting up quietly and not always like super crazy fast, but just one smooth um process. And that's something I think can be helpful on Yeah, all sorts of public lan huts in the future. That is all to say that I quietly and efficiently got set up on the down wind side of this creek, within range of the crossings and the two parallel trails, and with a view down the whole creek bed. And I saw a bunch of deer. Um, some young bucks came through, some young bucks crossed way down the creek bed. A bunch of doughs came by me. But long story short, and that night did not see any shooter bucks. I slipped out and met you back in the truck, and what did you see? How'd your neck go? What were you doing? Yeah? I did something similar. I kind of pushed back further into the north, into the thick stuff, um, trying to intercept these bucks that I had saw the night before coming to the LFLFA field. And so I got back in there. Um. And then it was a slow night. I think, I said, I'm trying to remember. I think I saw a few deer that night, maybe a dough and a couple of bonds, and and maybe a year a half old buck um. I did see one decent buck um come through early. I don't remember if I told you about this, but he came through early, maybe fifty seventy five yards to my west. Um. But other than that, it was a pretty quiet night. And that was the night I had high, high expectations for and and unfortunately it didn't all come together that night. But um, yeah it was. It was not what it was like, not what I was expecting to see that night. I was hoping for a little bit better, better night. So we had that hunt had happened the day after we recorded last week's podcast, and last week one of the things we talked about was the importance of asking why. When you have a night like that, you need to try to think, Okay, why did that happen? Let's just not assume well just didn't work out? UM, Let's dissect some possible things and maybe there's something you can adjust based off of um a guess or an assumption or some some kind of slip with work here. So what were some of the things that you think that could have led to a better night or that led to you having not such a good night. Yeah, I think, Um, I think I needed to be further trying to think about this, I think I needed to be further to my north and to my west is where I needed to be. Um, you know, I think once I kind of got set up, I was like, yeah, I wasn't thrilled with what I saw, Like it looked good. Down on the ground. There's a bunch of trails kind of all funneling down to where I think a lot of these deer were entering the lf alfa field. They're kind of like looped around, and then there was some fences and some gates and things like that that I thought they were going around then to get in the field. Um, but I think these deer we're staying further to my west, and I just didn't get over far enough. And my guess is where that one buck came through real quick is is closer to where I needed to be, which is a reason that I went towards that way the next night. Um, we gotta we gotta add something else though. What we didn't mention the front, which was that when we got to the park area, there were two others. That's right. That was at night and it looked like hunters. Um. One truck had a bowcase in it. Um, the other one didn't. But didn't you say, like a dear, dear, there's a deer cart in one of them. Um. Yeah, so assuming other guys back in there, So that was the That was The other big thing is like we we never saw those people come past us, but they could have been farther to the north of us, and they could have been farther to the west of us. And with the wind direction we had there, if they had been west of you, their wind could have been blowing back across where you were hoping those deer would have come. And that could have been a reason why the same thing too. Ye gosh, all these nights are starting to run together and like one thing after another. But yeah, that was that night, wasn't it. There was two trucks there in the parking lot, and yeah, I'm I'm kind of guessing that could have been what what the issue was there? The thing about the spot though, was is it was hard to gauge what you're dealing with, especial early on, and we didn't know as much because there was also fish people were going to fish from this place too, so you'd see these trucks and you're thinking, well, are they fishing? Are they hunting? Uh? I don't know. Now. One of the things that I always try to do when I'm hunting public land, especially if we think there's other people, as you try to get away from other people, right, And in this case, we were walking a closed road that you couldn't drive on at all, almost a mile all the way back, um. And then you were hunting a little bit off that, and then I was hunting way off that. So I thought we would have gotten away from most competition. And it seems like most people didn't go all the way back there. Um. But fast forward to the next day. Now again we wanted to make an adjustment, so I again wanted to push what did we want to do? I was going to push back further the next day, um, because with the possibility of oh this was the adversity day of several um. Okay, so we had had that night. Things didn't go as what we wanted. So I had seen on the maps several other fields I was assuming and I thought had been alfalfa further to the east of this location a much longer walk. You'd have to walk that closed road and then jump back into the cover and then walk the edge, you know, another mile or so to get back to these secluded fields. But my thought was, no one's going to go that far back. I mean, it's two miles back from the parking area, very far from any other access points. And if that is a secluded alf alfa field out there, that's going to be money. Josh, you're and I'll let you tell your side of the story here, But at a high level, your thought was, well, let me take one more stab with these deer that I saw and make one more adjustment. Maybe it was a fluke last night, and it just wasn't quite in the right spot right yep, basically, And I was actually gonna sit a little closer to the two track this time, but but further the west, and it was a little bit more open in there, um where I could see exactly maybe where they were coming through, um, just to have some better site lines, and and then you know, the deer they were moving earlier at that point in the trip. Um, So I was hoping that if I didn't push in as far, i'd be able to see a little bit more again almost like a like another secondary observation sit almost but also be in the game there um with where I was. And and I want to reiterate one of the things that that I'm always trying to do on these hunts is is you keep adjusting until you've got it figured out. Very rarely what I ever said, just stick it out in the Saints about over and over. It's just like you see what you learn something from that day, whether it be when you're scouting on your way in or something you saw or something on trail camera, whatever it is, and then adjust, adjust, adjust, um. And so in this case, we were just trying to You were making micro adjustments because you you were in a spot where so many deer had come through that seemed like, you know, barring some kind of hunting pressure disaster, that you would hopefully get a chance. I, on the other hand, was trying to find this secondary spot since I didn't want to crowd on your stuff too much. Um, So I was going to make a bigger adjustment to try to get to this really far away secluded field that in my head, I thought, Man, if you get in that and this is there's a there was the flfa field in the private land that you were hunting near, and then there's a standing corn field next to that, and then what looked to be enough alfa field tucked in behind that, and I just thought to myself, man, that's way back in there. I gotta believe if so many deer were coming to this one that you were hunting near, that there's probably a bunch going to this other one. And if I could slip in there, man, that could be money. So we hike in. We hiked the mile back on the closed road. We get to the end of the road where you're about to jump in and try to find a place, and there's two hunters standing there on the road and two uh two guys too young guys who are going to hunt right there in the edge. And they had access to this from the private land, so they didn't have to come all that way in. They just popped in through the private land and we're hunting the edge there. Um, which ended up being something that we had to deal with a lot more throughout the trip. Even though I thought we were getting so far away from other hunters, because we were going so far um from the public access, you know, when there's In the case of a lot of the places we hunted, they were long and skinny. So if you came in from the public, you had a long walk to get this stuff. You came on private, it could be a much shorter walk. And I'll tell you there was just a lot more hunting pressure in you know, for a Western white tail hunt than I've ever had before. Um I've never encountered so many Western white tail hunters. Um. So I don't know what's going on in Idao, but you guys need to pick up elk hunting or mule deer hunting or antelop hunting. You've got these mountains full of critters. Get out there. Leave the white tails alone. White tails are boring, there's small Uh, they're like rats. Just ignore them. That's my recommendation. But but yeah, so I forgot to mention another thing happened this night before we even got there. We got a flat tire. Yeah. So we're pulled off at a little access point. We're doing some work midday and when we got back into the truck, realized with the flat tire, so we had to we fixed the flat tire, but that made us late for everything. So we were running late to get to the hunting spot after fixing the tire, and then we got there, got all the way back. Then there's these two hunters. Then I leave you. You go get set up. I start hiking. I slip in there, and I'm trying to be quiet, and this stuff is just like thicker than just I just gnarrowly nasty stuff. And I'm trying to slip through there quietly and just slowly taking my time. But it took a very long time. I finally get all the way around this chunk of private I have to I have to walk this this public job. I go around this chunk that kind of goes into the public land. Way around, I'm added like another mile to my hike. I get around to the other side to where this secluded alf alfa fields supposed to be, and it is standing corn. So I'm looking at this and it's, you know, September four or fifth or whatever it was. There's third, I don't remember, but early September, and there's green alfalfa fields around here, I know. And I just historically from what I've seen, these deer and not going to key in on corn until it drives down until in October or something. Um, maybe they'll you know, you nit along a little bit, but I don't think it's gonna be nearly as attractive as those up green alf alfa fields. So my thought was, Man, this is not gonna be the spot to be. There's another field I can see, an onyx that is even further to the east, and I think, well, I've already gone this fire, might as well go another half mile to get to this next one. Maybe that would be the honey hoole. So I keep hiking, keep hiking, and there's so many like stickers and burrs and prickers and crap, like my pants and boots and everything are just covered and stuff. I get all the way to this next field, and first off, it is not a greenolf off the field, it's like a cut hay field. It's just just dry brown um straw. And then there's a truck parked there on the private land. But it's like next to there, there's some cattle in a little corral, and then there's a truck parked next to that. And so I'm sitting there thinking, man, is this a hunter or is this just an old farm truck that's just sitting back here by the cows. Uh does this mean there's a farmer back in here doing something or does he just leave his truck here? And so I'm sitting here trying to think through all this crap, and I'm frustrated. And now We've been late in the first place, and then I've been hiking for like an hour or and a half or something, so now it's down to maybe an hour of daylight or day light. So finally decided, screw it, I'm just gonna move back, pop up in a stand here and just watch the edge of the standing corner field and this little kind of staging air back behind it, and a little bit of this straw field, and you know, I might as well just try to get in a tree and see something. For all this time I just spent walking out here, and long story short, I didn't see any deer around me at all, zero deer. I did see some deer come out into that hayfield way off like five yards away, uh, in in a nice buck, like a shooter buck, the first for sure shooter buck that I saw the trip. And he came out and his he had velvet peeling, so it's like dangling off his anilers very cool. He comes out and another buck that was like a borderline kind of deer, and a couple other little ones and they're out there feeding and they're moving in my direction. The big buck. Every once, I would look at the tree line that was like in between me and him. So I've got a standing cornfield and then there's a little tree line, and then there's the field he's in, and he he would stop, and he was kind of staring at that tree line, and it was kind of like h staring in my general direction, but I knew there was he wasn't staring, and he was so so so far away, and the wind wasn't blown that way at all. So I kept wondering, is there another deer? There is there someone there? What's going on? But the evening progresses and it gets the last like ten minutes of daylight, and then I hear just don't jump jump crank crank clank clank, and a truck starts driving down the edge of that field, just barreling down the edge of the field and just drives like a bat out of hell all the way down the field past the deer, like within like a hundred yards or yards something of those deer driving past them all the way down to the end of the field, and I can hear the truck stop. I hear doors open and close, and then nothing, and then those deer eventually run off. So there go the deer, and someone had driven in here. And now I'm wondering, Okay, what were these people doing? Um is that the farmer? I don't know. So the rest of the night passes another ten minutes, it's just about dark. I'm packing up, and then I hear crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, And I looked down the kind of opening where I'm at the little trail I was near, and here comes a guy. And I'm looking at the guy and he's wearing like a white jacket and it's like not what I would expect a hunt to be wearing, but he's wearing a white jacket. It's like ripped up, and he's walking right at me, and he's holding his bow and his arrow is knocked and he's like clipped on, walking with his bow like this, and it's like the end of the night and like charging at me, like moving very quickly right at me, And I'm thinking, what is this guy doing and how does he not see me. He ended up walking literally within like two yards of my tree, right underneath me, and I just I don't know. It just was a kind of weird situation, and the guy was a little different, and I was like, I'm not going to bring any attention to myself. I'm gonna let this guy just go. I don't know what he's doing. I don't know if he had been hunting that edge and was going into the private land to get to his truck somewhere else, or if he was I don't I don't know. I don't know, but I didn't wanna have anything to do with it. Probably a good idea to not say anything and it so he walked on by, and I'm frazzled and frustrated. And then I go to get my head lamp to start packing stuff up, and I've realized that in all the casts earlier in the day, I forgot my headlamp, so I know, I head lamp. I've got like a psycho killer that's walking past my tree stand and and now I've got to do more than two miles back in the dark through this hell hole brush. And to make this fast, I had a horrible hike back. I had to use my cell phone flashlight and a little tiny light that's on the quiver of my bow. Neither of them worked terribly well on the situation. I fell down a lot, I got bruised up, I covered and burrs again, and by the time I got to the truck, I realized that I lost two of my arrows out of my quiver too. So that was my night. Um, that was my adversity day. You I had. What happened. I ended up going further back in than what I originally wanted to. Um. I was maybe I had moved maybe fifty to seventy five yards from where I was sitting the night before, I think, and maybe i'd catch one of those bucks coming through again. I decided to go back in further because that um that other hunter was was basically going to blow all his wind right back to where I wanted to sit. So I was trying to kind of get back and around from him to not deal with any of that. And I saw a few small bucks at night and a couple of dos, but but um not the not the deer I was looking for that night again. So here's here's one of the things that I think needs to be thought about. And it comes to hunting public land, especially if you're doing something like this where you're going to brand new ground, it is really helpful. I wish that I had had more time this summer to go and scout this out on foot, so that I would have known what each field had. So what I've said, I would have known, you know a little bit more about the habitat features. So instead of discovering these things every day as we went, I could say, Okay, I know exactly where the three best food sources are, planned things accordingly. I could have saved essentially a wasted night. That night was a waste for me. So when you're on a trip like this, were we only have seven, eight days or whatever, you can't afford to have wasted days. You can't afford to have wasted nights, and and we had one. So if if I'm looking for different takeaways or things that I could have done differently, that I can do differently in the future, one of those things is going to be again, try to get more scouting time. And when we talked about this last week, Scott scout Scott more scouting the better, and and I thought we had done I thought we had found the things we needed to find, then felt confident. But you know, we kept finding, we kept having new challenges that forced us to forced us to do new things in which having more information would have helped. So you can never have enough scouting. Maybe we could have done more scouting during the trip. That's another thing I thought about the last couple of days. Should we have been taking some of the time midday when we were doing work or when we took a fishing break a couple of times. Um, should we have gone and been walking some other stuff to put you know, some contingency plans in place. Um. It's a weird balancing act on a trip like this because you're trying to kill a deer. You're trying and do this at the same time, you have to get at least in our case of yourself to work. And then you know, like we had some days like over the long weekend and stuff where we're still trying to have a good time a little bit and do some fishing, enjoy yourself. You're out west, you don't get to do that a lot. But then I look and say, well, we didn't spend every single possible minute scouting or hunting right, we could have done a little more. Um So those are the kinds of things that I start looking back on and trying to, you know, analyze and think through what could you have done differently? Or maybe not? Maybe maybe maybe you don't need to be uh machine on a trip like this. Maybe it's okay to have some days you go do something a little bit different because that keeps you moraile high and that makes the larger trip enjoyable. Um it's not all just about failing tag right, um So, so I don't know, but that's These are all the things I'm thinking about and that I'm going to continue to battle with I think, and yeah, I know I've definitely had those same thoughts and like, oh man, should we have been doing this or you know? And then I started thinking, if we go to look at some of these other places, are we putting more unnecessary pressure on some of these spots then but they're may be already getting you know, by going in there and scouting around and checking things out. Um but yeah, I I also think some of our our fishing breaks have been much needed morale boost for some of the days that we've had. So it's a catch twenty two for sure. Yeah, And and to your point, I mean that's the count. The constant balancing act on a hunt like this is that balance between scouting and learning and hunting while keeping pressure as low as possible. And the whole name of the game on these hunts, This one, more than some hunts have been on, has been dealing with hunting pressure. It has been constant, it has been more than expected. It's been unexpected places in an unexpected way. And it's basically throwing a grenade into every different plan we've put in place, and we've adjusted, and you'll hear we keep on pivoting, We keep on going in new spots or pushing in deeper, or trying to adjust based on what's happening. And then there's a new grenade and a new grenade, and I think that brings me to the second or whatever number were on. Another takeaway from me when I look back on this experience and look back on past public land hunts, and it's just being able to do what we just You have to be able to pivot, You have to somehow put on a smiley face and pivot to the next option. And so many times we've had that happen where it's like, son of a bitch, this thing happened. And then the way I try to handle it is like I'll feel it, I'll give myself like that night, I'm gonna be pissed about it. That night, I'm gonna be frustrated. We'll vent to each other for a little bit, and then's all right. You gotta adapt and adjust, you gotta push through it. You can't, you know, it's all. It's funny. It's so funny. Everything we talked about last week in that episode, we've dealt with this good timing. It was a good timing because so much of the mental stuff we talked about we've had to try to practice this week. And it's not easy. It's not always easy to practice what you preach on that one, because so many times you want to get disheartened, you want to get frustrated, and and I don't want it. You do. I do get disheartened. I do get frustrated to do get uh, just down on stuff, and you somehow have to try to battle that. And it's it's something that you just gotta do your best at and try to figure out a way to keep on grinding. I think we both had some therapy sessions in the truck on the way from hunts this this week for sure. So yeah, I'll tell you what it's nice to be with somebody else. So I've been on hunts like this solo, and it's it's easy to it's easier to fall into those things when it's just you and your head. When you've got another person there, usually one of you can be like the good cop. So if like when you're Aldonamo something, I was trying to tell you, you know, hey, you can all change. I got to keep pushing whatever. And then when I'm piste off about something, you were saying the same thing back to me. And that, I think is is another great reason to go on these hunts with a partner. Um, to to have a built in psychiatrist if you needed um. So that was nine number three or four or whatever it was. Um hunting pressure influenced us from both sides in a bunch of unexpected ways. So after that, I think, um, we decided to try a new area. Right, this is my adversity day. This, well, your next day was the adversitydy, wasn't it? Is? This? I think, well, I don't know, I can't one of the many adversity days. Yeah, But this day decided to go and hunt a new spot that was kind of farther to the east, and this was in the same general area, give or take. So I I believe there to be more green alfalfa fields in this section over here that we could access from a different access point, different spot, but get into similar types of habitat, great thick river bound cover with private land crop fields on the outside, so same kind of game. I just wanted to get into the backset of this area. And this time I found an access point that didn't seem to be as known. It wasn't like a place that's just for hunting. It seemed to be something that, um, if you didn't know you could get in here to hunt um from past experience, you wouldn't know it. While the other place had like a gated little parking lot and a closed road you could walk a mile back this spot there was nothing. There was just a bunch of woods and you had to cross the road and dip into a little chunk of timber hop fence and then you were in it. So that said to get back to one of these crop fields I had I had spotted some bucks feeding out into one of these fields this past July, I guess it was, and I marked that an onyx, so I knew, okay, I know for sure that there's some good bucks back in that timber and that cover back there. It's about two miles to get back there, though, but we've been dealing with a lot of hunting pressure. And when you look at this map, you've got a narrow stretch of cover along this river on the public land, and then it eventually widens out in as much ox bows and just really good looking stuff. And that was all right near where that field where I saw those bucks were, So all that told me that this seems to be a good area to be. We decided to make the hike and do it. So I got on the hiking boots and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. As we walked in, there was a trail camera and a tree stand just like within a hundred yards of the access point. So already I'm a go, no more hunters on this than this spot. To keep going. We see another tree stand way up high. Keep going. We see a ground blind so now I'm sweating bullets thinking that even in this spot, we're back in it. But we eventually get about a mile out back that disappeared, and we get to a spot where the river comes tight to the private land and there's a small pinch republic in between it, and there is a elf helfa field in the public land, not on the private land, and an open gate and then the public land and a bunch of trails you could see all coming through there. And that looked pretty dunk good to me. So we decided that somebody's ships should sit there. And you did. I did. I sat there, You sat there. Yeah. Um ended up being a better night than the previous nights. Um. They didn't quite use that area like I thought they would. Um. I don't think I had any deer come back from the cover and go through the gate. Um. I did see a few, uh, like one for sure, shooter buck that had came him my east. Um. I think he was maybe on on the private or on yeah, on the private land. Um. They were away out a hundred two hundred yards out, a small bachelor group with some other bucks. But um, other than that, not a whole lot going on back there. Ended up seeing a couple of moose, I think like four moose that night that came right out of the thick bedding where I was hoping deer would come from a bowl and a cow moose came out of there and making all sorts of racket. Um, there was a deer headed down a trail towards me, and that's when those moose came out. And I never saw that deer. I don't know what it was. I could just see the back of it. Um. Yeah, ended up dealing with with moose that night. I think they ended up being four out in the field by the time I left, And as soon as they came out, I had a couple of does come in the field. But um, not really any other action from from bucks that night. UM, at least close everything goes was a ways off in the distance on on private, so I had continue, you're done past that point, and I wanted to try to get to this area directly above where I had spotted those bucks in the summer. And what I was trying to do with this situation was find And again I've never walked back in here before, so you're trying to look at a map and pick the best possible location off of a map. But what I saw was, as I look at this area directly above where the crop fields were, there was a long stretch where is relatively open kind of sage brush, open field kind of stuff on the public land. And then there was a line of trees and then another opening and then a bunch of really good thick stuff that led up into this section of islands and ox bows. And with the wind direction we had, I'm looking at that, and I'm trying to pick, Okay, where would I hunt in this huge check or this huge chunk of ground. Well, if I'm gonna have a good starting point, if I'm a buck, there's a decent chance I'm not going to cover any of that. I'm not going to cross any of that open stuff. I'm gonna want to stay in thick cover. So I looked at where's the thickest stuff, and then how would you come from that very thickest stuff in these islands down lawn that edge. My assumption was that they would go no farther east than this stage brush edge. So my idea was to set up essentially off that edge, beneath it, in a spot where I could see but beyond, you know, within shooting range of this main trail that came off that edge. That's all I had to work with. And then I wanted to be somewhere I could at least see a good distance on either side, again pointing to that whole observation idea when you're on these hunts, want if you're not really sure of where you're at, what you're doing, being a place where you can learn something into jus for the next day. So I got set up. I saw some does early on, and then I don't know the last twenty minutes of daylight, I had a buck pop out, dropped down right off that edge, came across us. And when I first saw him, thinking oh, that might be a shooter buck, and he turned and looked at him, he was like a decent a pointer, and I'm arranging him. He's just past forty yards and at that distance in the angle, ha, like, I don't want to try to make that shot. Um, it just wasn't a shot. I felt comfortable with with the way he was coming in and the way the tree was in front of me. So at the same time I see a second deer come behind him, and that dear steps back. It's a little bit farther behind him, and I put my binoculars up on him, and he is a big buck. He's a big buck, um, like a buck I would not expect to see in public land. And he's at fifty five. And the two of them passed once a little past forty ones, that around fifty five, and they moved through, and I can't get a shot anything. It's too far for the big one. They moved through very excited. Moments later, I see another deer, another like fifteen yards farther back, and he steps out and he's even bigger, um, big big buck. So I see these three nice bucks. Two of them are impressive deer, and they go through and quickly we're out of site. But a pinpoint exactly where they crossed happened very fast. It was intense um and I couldn't get a shot. But it was this moment of hope and excitement and were right away, Okay, I'm gonna make an adjustment tomorrow. I gonna get a shot him. Now. When I sit and look back on that night, I see one glaring missed opportunity, and just in the moment, I never even thought about it, and I don't know why not, but I didn't even think to try a grunt. I should have. I mean, you could make an argument that these deer were completely unaware of my presence. They're moving through. You know, maybe it could have spooked him, But these deer out here, I think, at least I used to think our relatively less pressured and more apts to be susceptible to calls. So I think I could have tried a you know, a light, little contact grunt and maybe could have made one. I'm curious. All I would have needed is that, you know, that second buck to come another twenty yards closer out of curiosity, and I might have been able to get a shot. And I just never thought about it. I don't know what what it was. I mean, I was just in the moment and I was like, oh my gosh, look at that one, and oh my gosh, look at that one. Um, But that could have been a game changer. Maybe you never know hin, um, but that's something that if I'm looking back on things that I could have done differently, that's definitely one of them. So I didn't the bucks moved off. I waited till I was quite pretty confident they'd moved way off and went out to the fields and were long gone. And then I slipped out of the really quiet, pulled my set, and then I made sure to remember exactly where those dear crossed visually. So the next day my plan was to come in and set up about fifty sixty yards farther to the east to hope intercepted them coming back through. Very excited that night, um and was full of hope, excited to see what would happened, and the next day to be to to move it along. I guess you had some stuff come up. You couldn't hunt that night, some stuff. Um, So I was going solo and I snuck back in there, and this was I felt great, the the wind was right. I slipped in there in such a way that, you know, just once I got close to the generator, I was just in super stealth mode. Took it slow and smoothed. Then I slipped in and made a big loop back around the section so that I wouldn't walk anywhere that these deer might possibly cross. Made sure that my scent was as far to the downwards side of possible, so like essentially Luke did like a jay hook around and then approached my tree from the bottom, got into it, got all set up, um and and I found the tree. So I didn't have a set up there yet at this point, and basically had moved to be downwind of where these bucks had passed through, but within shot shooting range of war all three deer came through. I found a tree with a big fork and a bunch of vines hanging off of the prize provided some pretty darn good cover, and um, I felt good. The night progressed. We should point out all of these nights it was like nineties, high eighties to low nineties, the whole super hot, so all the movement was in the last half hour to hour in most cases, and that ended up being the case. Here we get to the last half hour or so, a bunch of does come out passed by, and then boom, here comes a buck popping out of the same spot that those bucks did the night before, and some the cold crap game on. I got my bow, I clip on. First it was like a little velvet five pointer, and then a hard horned six, and then a velvet seven pointer, and then there was one of the bucks I think of four key and then here comes at eight point from the night before, and so at that point I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is the running buddy. Then right behind him is going to be the two giants. And so they come in, they filter, and they stopped like all around me. So I've got five bucks in all directions of me, all within shooting range, fiddling around that big eight, not big, but like a decent eight. He's like rubbing his antlers and tree limbs and fiddling around, and I'm I'm looking at them, like, God, where's the other box? Where the other box? Where the other bucks? Should I shoot that a pointer? Where the other box? They gotta be coming, They gotta be coming, and to to to move to jump right to it. I guess I decided not to shoot that a pointer because I just had to give a chance of these other deer to come. They've been with him the night before, and they never showed. And the other deer eventually moved off, and I had chip shots at this eight pointer that I didn't take um or all these other bucks. I mean, I could have shot any one of these five bucks, and I didn't because I had kind of got in my mindset on one of those two big boys, and that could have been viewed as a mistake because I haven't seen those two bucks again. And I you know, this is a similt situation to what I had last year where I was in North Dakota and I've seen a really big buck scouting one morning and I went in made a move on him, and outcomes a really nice eight. This was a bigger eight, and I passed on him because I was hoping that the real big buck would behind him, and he never showed. I never saw him again, and then I found myself regretting not taking that shot in this situation. I don't think I made the wrong decision in that case, because he had to at least give it one chance to have the big guys roll through. It would have killed me if I shot that buck and then they showed up right behind him. Um. At the same time, I should would like to fill tech. So I don't know. You could make an argument that I'm an idiot because I keep passing on a lot of nice box out here in public land that a lot of guys would take. Um. You can make an argument that hunt your own hunt and do what makes you happy, and at that moment that is what I really wanted to try to. I made the move forward those two dear. I really want to get a chance that those two deer. I was very excited about those two deer and I wanted to give the chance for that to play out. It didn't play out. It didn't work out. Um, it is what it is. But it's something that I'm sure I'm gonna be thinking about in the days to come. And I did think about in the days to come, because the next day I thought, Okay, well, those bucks came through exactly like I was hoping they would. They didn't spook, they didn't freak out. I had a lot of dear move through. It was all. It all went to script. But the two big boys didn't show. I do you never know? But I thought, in my head, man, there's a chance it was just a fluke last night, and maybe they'll come through again. I think I should give it another chance. So I decided to slip back in there. I've got the same winds, same conditions, everything. I'm gonna try it one more time from that spot. I get into that spot, I'm feeling good, it's looking good, and I don't know, maybe a half hour into the set, I start hearing U A t V s or U TVs driving up and I hear like kids like yelling and screaming, and they pull up like close. It sounds like they're hundred yards away or hundred fifty yards away or something, and my heart sinks something. Oh no, what's going on? And they're coming from the private land. So this group of people comes inot the private land and they start like cutting stuff. I hear saws and hammers and people hitting metal against metal, and I'm trying to listen and trying to figure out what what are they doing? Um? Because at this point I'm thinking, Okay, do I need to bail or do I stick it out because it's gonna be like they're coming in here grabbing something farm equipment and they're gonna be gone or are they gonna be here for a long time? So I'm listening, listening, and I'm sitting there stressing out, trying to start what to do. And then I hear someone mentioned something about tie downs and it's sounds like those girls and boys at first. And when I hear the thing ties downs, I started thinking, are they like setting up camp? Like is it like a group of kids are gonna like set up a tent and camp out on there, you know, on the edge of their farm for the night. So I got this idea in my head that was maybe what was going on, because it was for a long time, all this noise in one place. So okay, I have to move. I'm you know, I'm too close. So I was commotion. These bucks aren't gonna come all the way out here, but maybe they'll come out of the bedding, and if I get right in the edge of the bedding, maybe they'll stop there and mill around and I'll you'll get a shot. So I pulled out my stuff. I decided to leave my set hanging, and I'm gonna sneak on the ground and try to set up on the ground. I slip out. I sneak about two yards deeper into the bedding cover area, towards the bedding cover, at least slip sliding in real slow sneake, sneake, sneak. I'm seeing some good trails and sign I'm feeling like I'm getting to the edge of like where like this real, the real betting stuff is happening. I get in there, I settle in, find a little nook to get comfy in, and I think it's down to I don't know, like an hour and a half or an hour of daylight left or something, and I think, Okay, maybe this will work out. You know, I was saying this stuff. We were just saying adapted to adjusticely. In my head, I was like, God, totally screwing up this great plan I have. But now we're gonna adapted, adjusting the sneak and it's gonna be right. Get set. And then I hear and the dang a TV or U TV with a bunch of people comes driving right across this track that I trossed all the way back into me. I can't quite see that, I can. I can see them come up on a little rise and then they now they're coming back into the bedding cover by me, and they're yelling and screaming and hooting and hollering and stuff, and they drive past me deeper back towards the river, like right into all the good betting cover. So now I'm basically devastated, and I'm thinking, okay, I have Then now this spot is blown out. What's the next thing I'll do? If I'm these deer and all the commotions happening here on the east side. Maybe these deer will pivot and they'll try to go to the far west side. So I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna come back to the trail, and I'm gonna go to the far west side of this chunk and just hope that maybe whatever deer aren't totally scared out of their minds might come through that section as far away from the noise and commotion as possible. So the night slip slide, sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak. We're down to the last half hour daylight, forty minutes something like that. Sneak over there and get positioned in a spot where, if nothing else I can walk, I can watch a little kind of a lane and see where these how these deer adjusted. Because I believe that deer, these deer would do something, I want to see how they adjust to tell us commotion to the east. So find a new spot, get set up, tucked into a cedar, and not like five minutes after getting settled in, here comes another UTV drives down and this one this time comes all the way past me, literally within ten yards of me um and there's a group of like young people on it, hooting and holler and yelling. They've got what looks like ladder stands in the back of their UTV and they drive past me. They drive back into another section of the river. I hear them yelling and hooting and like e hying and making like obnoxious amounts of noise. A couple minutes later, they come driving by again, and I'm trying to like listening here and stuff. I'm like, what's going on? What are these people doing? Like it made like when they were just going and setting up camp or something, or what I thought was setting up camp. Okay, that's one thing, but now they're driving all over the property and it's not like they're just chatting with each other. They're making obnoxious amounts of noise, banging metal, like banging things on the ladders and stuff. And then I hear someone say he was seeing some nice deer and then the other guy says, not anymore. Ha ha ha ha. And I don't know if I'm if I'm reading too much into it or what, but at that point I'm like, oh my gosh, my hunt's being sabotaged. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there I mean, they certainly certainly seeing that these kids are trying to screw this whole area. It really seemed like they were going all over the place, making a ton of noise and like that time of like the last hour late like last hour daylight. They were obviously hunters. You can see they had stuff in the back of their thing, but they weren't dressed a hunt um and they're talking about, you know, someone have been seeing nice deer back there not anymore ha ha ha. I don't know, maybe who knows what the situation was, but I had a moment where I'm thinking, these sons of these guys, someone is following my Instagram story and is seeing it has summed up pinned down where I'm hunting, or they've seen my truck and they figured out I'm hunting back here and they're trying to blow it up. That's probably not the case, but I certainly had a moment there where I was like, oh my gosh, this is really really frustrating, and uh yeah, so that was a bad night for me. I got out of there and was upset with the whole scenario and not sure what I wanted to do, and uh, I decided to hold off on my live Instagram updates for a few days because of that. Um, and that was a situation where what can you do? I mean, we kept on trying to pivot from all these different pressure hunting pressure scenarios and then two miles off from the nearest public access two freaking miles back, and then you've got people coming in and blowing it up. I mean, what are you gonna do about that? I was, I was dialed in onto like awesome public land box and then that happens. Um, yeah, that's that was a bummer of a night. I had a similar night that night. Um, we had pulled a trail camera. At this point, we kind of decided to split up. That spot was getting so much pressure, let's split up, see what we can find in some other spots. So, UM, we had pulled a trail came mid day and out some recent intel that there was some good bucks that one of these other areas that we're looking at, and she's what that cameras for four or five days and we had three deer that we're all shooters on there, two of one in daylight, one on the edge of daylight, and one is in the middle of the night. But you know, it was kind of it's kind of in the spot you wouldn't really think the hunt, but it was definitely getting some traffic, some some deer traffic through it where it kind of pinches down and um, you know, it's holiday weekend and I'm not too far from the access road and there's some two tracks and stuff through it, and man, it was just a TV after you TV after dirt bike after truck going down the road and it finally stopped, you know, maybe an hour and a half before before dark. But I think the damage had already been done at that point where we thought those deer would be coming from. There's people driving by all day. Going back to what I talked about earlier, how you need you to have you know, you need to have a lot of scouting lot you need a lot of contingency plans when you're gonna do some public plan hunting. And what I did do well to a degree, it was I had a lot of contingency plans this year. Not that I didn't have like well researched or well scouted, but I had places like I had places that I knew a little bit about, you know, four different good chunks that we could hunt that I had a basic level of knowledge about. And then in this case, this is one property that we went in and we did scout it on foot the first day we got in, that first morning, we went and scouted this and hung cameras just as a backup plan. We want to go hunt these other places first, but we want to have this back up. And thank goodness we did, because you know, when we decided that there's just too much stuff going on and you were going to try this new area, pulled the camera and right there new boost to hope, gave us some new hope. Yet for sure two nice bucks using it and UM didn't work out for you that night. You have three nice bucks didn't work out for you that night, but it gave us another option to work with UM and so what so that was the sabotage night. And again, so much of this hunt was just like you get punched in the face, and like how do you get back up? The moral of the story the more if you if you want to take anything from this whole podcast about the trials and tribulations of public land deer hunting, the biggest thing is learned to take a punch, Like learn to take a punch, get back up and adjust. How do you adjust to hunting pressure? How do you adjust to the guy walking past your trees stand? How do you adjust to there being three trucks of the parking lot when you show up to your spot? How do you adjust when your tree stan't gets stolen? Like, all these different things are possible in public land, and you can have great hunts, like I've killed some great bucks in public land. I've had some really fun hunts in public land. We've seen a lot of good bucks. Like we've been right there on the edge of it. We've been so close to getting shots, and then we've had all these things happen where right and we're zeering in Bam, here comes somewhere with bam, here comes something else. Um, so it's it's it's possible, it's awesome, but it's tough, it's different, and we just had to keep on reminding ourselves of hey, it could change in a second. We just have to keep on moving to the next option, move to the next option, and maybe this one it'll finally work out. So it's definitely been a a game of mental chess, just trying to figure out a way to stay positive and keep moving. But we had this sabotage night. The next day, we hunted in the morning. Um. We started hunting mornings the back half of the trip given the fact that we hadn't filled their tags yet. Stuff was starting to get a little down to the line. So we had we scouted one morning to that point, and now we started hunting. Um. And I don't even think there's anything terribly exciting about this hunts. We hunted that that new areas where we both hunted, Neither one of us saw anything to speak of. That night was like a dangerous windstorm that came through and it was blowing down trees all over the place. We did not hunt that night. Um. But when you look at a short trip like this, every hunt matter. We missed a night because of that, So that was a big deal. Like that was one eighth of our possible good hunts as far as evening hunts gone because of a storm. And then I had another wasted hunt because of my debacle hike. Um. And you can point to a lot of our other hunts that became debacles, can wasted hunts because of this hunting pressure or the sabotage and night all that kind of stuff. So that brings us to last night, right, yep. So we've had all these things happen. We've had everywhere we've gone, we've been blown up by other hunters or other people, but we have head sightings and we have had some close calls. So last night I did some mental gymnastics and I'm trying to think through, Okay, what should I do? Um. My initial gut reaction was that, Okay, all that action happened in there. Two nights prior, we had this big storm blow through in a big coal front hit, so went from being the nineties to now being in like the fifties. Her Yeah, I think it was like high high fifty um, so huge coal fronmt pushed through. All that commotion that happened back in my little honey hole was bad, but it was all on a UTV and like in just like a couple of places where they got out. So these deer used to farmers coming and making a racket all around here. I kind of convinced myself that maybe the impact won't be quite as bad as I initially feared, And I forgot to mention that night after they drove by and left, I end up seeing deer immediately start moving, like as soon as they drove away. The last five minutes of daylight, I had a couple of bucks and a couple of dolls come crossing in front of me. Still, so that gave me a thinking, Okay, these deers hunkered down, they wait till the farmers leave, and they get right back to it. So now I'm thinking maybe with this mega cold front that just pushed through, and with the fact that all that sabotage at least was you know, it wasn't a guy criss crossing on foot everywhere, it was people driving around. We're driving up to the property to go hunt, and we see a truck on the side of the road on the private land with two hunters getting ready to go and hunt. So now I've got a new curve ball throwing in my plans because they this was pretty close to if those guys came off the private went straight in, they would eventually hit the same general area as hunting on public. So as I'm hiking in to go in there, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking in my mind what to do, And I've got one part of me that says, you had this blow up in there two nights ago, and now there's two guys that are going in to hunt somewhere in the same general area. You need to pull your set, You need to push in there even deeper, right into the heart of the bedding, and hope something works out. The other side of me said, this huge cold front came through. It's gonna get the demer moving early, the whole farmer than just described to you, which hopefully will make things not as bad. And these two hunters that you're seeing have not been here at all this week. This is the first time I've ever seen this truck or these hunters anywhere in the area, so they don't they probably I'm making assumptions, but as I was trying to make guesswork here, I'm thinking, Okay, there locals because they're accessing from the private land. If I'm a local around here, I don't think anyone ever comes to hunts's public I can't. Maybe I'm wrong, but I gotta believe it's rare. The people are hunting the public land, hiking in two miles to get back to this stuff, so they're not used to other hunters being back there. Probably, And secondly, if I live out here, and I'm a Western guy. You're probably used to seeing a bunch of white tails coming out and feeding these huge alfalfa fields. Right, there's tons of deer. They're all feeding out the field. Um, I'm thinking if it's the first night out that I've been out in a big cold front, isn't I'm thinking these deer are gonna be on the fields, so maybe these guys are just gonna hunt the field edge. So I did all these mental gymnastics, and I convinced myself that I should sit the same tree again because I just had a lot of confidence in that specific tree, Like I knew that was the killing tree that these bucks would come by twice before, and I just didn't have as much confidence if I went in tried to find a brand new spot further in that might get me closer to the bedding, but I wouldn't be in the right spot. And we're down to only two more sits two more nights at least, And essentially I I was juggling this back and forth, back and forth, back and forth as I'm hiking in for the two hours or the two miles, and right when I get to the spot where my saddles hung up. I slip in there, and there's deer moving already. There's some does that I end up bumping away from where I was. So there, I'm thinking, Okay, there's deer and here feeding hanging out comfortable. That means those guys didn't come in here. They are hunting the edge. I'm still the furthest back. It's gonna be okay. I climb in there. I decided to give it a shot, and I don't see crap the whole night. I saw a moose and a calf and I saw two more doughs that came from the alf alfa heading back into bedding. Nothing came through from I heard some dear blowing back further into the bedding, which made me wonder if maybe one of these hunters did pushed back there and was scared and deer and was essentially it cut me off. Maybe not. I don't know, um, but it's a really disappointing, frustrating night again. And uh, you know, this is a situation where maybe I had rose colored glasses. Maybe I I wanted it to work out so bad there that I convinced myself of all these things. I convinced myself. Oh, they're probably just gonna hunt the edge because of all those things that just described. Oh, the sabotage night probably wasn't as bad as you originally thought because they were just on the UTV. Um. Oh, you know, they'll probably come back through because yeah, you've been in this general are a couple of times, but you know, nothing ever spooked when they crossed your ground trail. You never once heard a dear blow or so anyone thinks spook. And so I essentially took all these possible negative things, and because I wanted it to work out so much, I maybe convinced myself to sit somewhere that I shouldn't have um high say twenty right. I mean maybe it could have all worked out and it could have been great, um, and I'd be sitting here towny. I was. I was smart. Look at all this great mental gymnastics I did to think through all these scenarios, and I stuck to my guns, and there was the right scenario and here they come. Um. But they didn't. So that was last night. And after that, after sitting this spot and having it gone from seeing a lot of deer and three good bucks to now seeing almost no deer. I definitely knew it was time to pull the plug on that spot. And Um, and that was my my last night in that area. You had gone to a brand new child, went to another another chunk to try to get on some deer, and and hiked way back in there and got into some stuff that was looking good. And UM had high hopes for this spot, and very similar to you, nothing going on. I heard some I got. I literally just got all set up, and I wasn't thrilled about my spot. It was very limited in trees, a lot of big like old cotton woods down in here, and just you couldn't get it. You couldn't get straps around the trees, or they were um split off, or they were dead, or the one tree I wanted to get in was like half eaten by a beaver. It's like I probably shouldn't go up from that. So it's just like just one thing after another. And in the spot where I thought they'd be coming through, UM, on this little creek, it looked like from the maps that you could see trails coming out of there. And I got there and there was no trails coming out of there. Um. The water was maybe a little high from some of the rain and some things that it has been going on here. Um, but ended up finding another secondary little location that I liked. It was in some just on the edge of some thick stuff, a lot of trails criss crossing through. Um some of this cotton wood. I don't I don't want to call it savannah, but like you know, you got the big cotton woods, and you know the grass, you know, the grassy fields below it, and um, so I get all set up and I hear crash, crash, crash, and the thick stuff to my south, and like, all right, here we go, this is a spot. And now it pops out like three moose like a bowl and two cows and he's chasing them all around and grunting and they're just making a racket for like a half hour in there, and then um, they kind of calmed down, and then you know, over to my over to my west, I guess it would have been here's some here's some more crashing, and look over there, another moose coming out. So I ended up seeing six moose at this spot last night. UM, I guess, stop being white tail tags in these Western trips and just figure out how I could get a noose tag because gosh, yeah, it's cool to see. It's a lot of fun to see, and you know it's not something to get to see at home. Um. But at the same time, I don't think there um necessarily ideal for having white tails in the area when he got these big animals bedding in there and moving all around, and um, I don't know. I don't know if they pushed deer out of there, but I didn't see any deer. So that was that night. I mean more moose mo de Yeah, I forgot. I did see a cow and a calf. I don't know if I mentioned that or not. I did see color and calf last night. So yeah, we kept on trying new spots and and panned out. It brings to I was in an area that I could see a pretty good distance and nothing going on around me. And and basically all of these places we've tried to be in we've tried to balance two things. We've tried to in most cases get into the cover and close to bedding scouts so we know we're close to these concentrations, but also placed ourselves in places where we can see because again we've got very little intel to work from. So we get close, get in that concentration point, but with the opportunity to pivot to a next day location based off an observation. So in your case, you had that you're right up on the edge of that thick stuff to yourself right, but you can then see a good way as a head of use. You can see if they crossed out of any where else. Yep, I could see through there's a little meadow that that creek ran through, and I could see down through there if anything came out, um, which a moose did, but nothing else, And I could see then to my west a pretty good ways kind of back. Um. So I had a pretty good vantage point of a pretty wide area from that spot. And that takes us to this morning, the last hunt covered on this podcast. We decided to hunt the forest like the Mountain Forest section where we had gotten those good bucks on trail camera. UM. I slipped up on a ridge back behind you a ways. You had kind of already had this pre hunked spot where that trail camera was, so I didn't want to get encroach in your space there, So I swung up and snuck down this ridge and sat down on the corner of it. And um, the only thing of note for my whole hunt this morning was around seven, I don't know, seven thirty. Oh my gosh, there's actually dear coming. So I'm like knocked on ready and then here comes the hunter and another hunter and they come walking by like seven yards in front of me and walk past. I'm like, jeez, I literally I was sitting on the ground. I literally laid down the ground of put my arms up. I'm just like, I get up and I freaking get out, Like I can't get away from people. Everywhere I've gone. I've hiked miles and miles. I've gone in the mountains, I've gone the river bottoms, I've gone, you know, I've I don't know, just a nap and I'll get away from people. So that was another interesting moment. And then eventually walked over back to your spot to get you and uh, you've had a more interesting day, a little bit more interesting. I had the same experience earlier than you. Those same two hunters came walking by me about seven seven fifteen something like that. Um, so forty five, I mean was that a half hour forty five minutes after shooting light? They come walking through, and Um, I saw them go up. Then I knew they were going to probably head towards you. They started looping around towards you, So you know, I was feeling the same thing. I just sitting in my seat. I was like again, like jeez, like we just you know, can't catch a break. And I'm sitting there and I'm sulking, and I look over and on to the other side of this canyon and I see a deer walking up the steep hill of this cane and kind of sidehilling it up, and UM, throw my binos up and it's one of those bucks, one of those nice bucks we had on trail camera. He's he I think what happened is I think he probably was on our side, and I think that I don't know if they got spooked or maybe just bumped out of where they were at or off their course of travel by those other hunters, and I think they dropped down the creek and then back up the other side, just based on the angle of their of their movement. And then behind him was another one of the nice bucks that we had on trail camera, and they went into the thick stuff up on top of this other canyon. Um, so that was basically the end. I mean that that happened around seven thirty ish and sat for another hour, hour and a half and and didn't see anything. Um to know other than that, but at least gives me a little bit of hope tonight that I could potentially set up on on then maybe coming back down across the creek. I don't know. I mean, at this point it's a we're swinging for the fences here with whatever we can do. But um, at least make an educated guests on on what I think they're gonna do, and and see what happens. Yeah, So tonight is our very last hunt to the trip. Yep, We've gotta take off to farm warning. So you're gonna go set up on the creek, yep? I think so. I think that's what I'm gonna do and just um see what happens. I think that I am going to bail on the sabotage spot and go back to the very first area we hunted. The last three times we've driven back there. We have to drive by the original spot to get to the sabotage spot, and there have not been hunter trucks there. So I'm hoping that there's not been as much pressure back there as was as there was earlier in our trip. As my hope and my idea is too, I'm still going to push in there really far. I'm still gonna push in at least a mile and a half. Um. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go walk the closed road, walk past that whole area you were hunting, Walk past the first couple of places. I hunted past the creek crossing stuff, and actually hunt a chunk that I noticed on my death March day, the night when I ran into the serial killer um. As I was hiking in there. On the way in, I found this spot that is it just looks like a bunch of deer moon all funneled into this, this small um opening of sorts in the middle of a ton of thick, nasty Russian olive and and cottonwood stuff. There's last times, there's like walls of the stuff that you can't cross the all. And what I've noticed in a lot of these Western states this river bottom stuff is when you get these little openings in there, the deer naturally gravitate towards them where they can get an easy travel path into, you know, towards wherever they want to go, and so it's still very thick. I mean, you're it's it's a jungle in there. But inside the jungle there's a small highway kind of and this small highway from Google Maps, you can literally see a bunch of trails coming in and the dirt all coming into that and then heading right towards that alf alfa field to the east corner of the alf alfa field that you watched the first night where you saw a bunch of deer coming in. Essential, what I'm hoping this is is I'm hoping this is you know, it's gonna be It's not the very end of the funnel, because the very end of the funnels on private land by the alf alfa fields. But I'm hoping it's gonna be midway up a funnel of deer movement where they're coming from all these different places and they're they're filtering down towards the food. And my hope is that this thing is way back in the cover, um but in a little bit of a funnel of sorts that I'm that I'm banking on with colder weather, with hopefully no one being crazy enough to push that far back in with hopefully, um, hopefully my guests about the deer movement and based off the sign I said, I want to walk down there's all right, hopefully something's going to move through there, and um, I think it has the highest number of potential target deer based on what you saw that first night. You know what we've seen, um, and my you know, my standards are. You know, I'm not waiting out for two big giants anymore. I'm willing to, um take a crack in a n ice buck. And that's I think the best opportunity to do that. So that's what I'm going to do. I wish that I was like sitting the kill set based off of an observation for the night before. Wish I was in a spot where I'm like, oh, yeah, it's gonna absolutely happen. But unfortunately, every time we start zero in on something that's been blown up and UM, it's just the cards we've been dealt. And I guess my takeaway from this whole thing, if I'm looking at what can I learn from this or what can other people learn from this, it's it's it's just the same thing we've said over and over again, the fact that you need a lot of backup plans when you're planning a public iDeer hunt like this. You need to go into it being like this is another thing we talked about last week, like think positive, believe in yourself, believe in it, but also have plans for the worst, prepare for the worst. And and we kind of did that. Um, we had a lot of different places, so we've been able to keep on going in new spots. I just wish that I had scouted even more and so like so I knew these places like the back of my hand, I don't know them by the back of my hand. So we're learning it all new as we go. And that's inevitably tough to do when you're learning and dealing with new hunters coming in from every direction all the time. Um. So it's been a challenge. It's forced me to probably hunt harder in like an eight pay pier than I ever have as far as like just like hanging and resetting and resetting and hiking like long hikes, like lots of long hikes in and out. Um. Yeah, we're definitely gonna have our set up dialed in for Michigan season though, yeah said it's gonna feel it's gonna feel like a piece of cake. I should. We've been doing that NonStop, so so you know, that's how it goes. Sometimes we've got one more hunt, maybe we'll have that last minute magic and we'll be able to celebrate, or maybe we're gonna go home with no tags filled. Um. It's like, I'm torn on this one. I'm like, very you're very frustrated, upset with it because I really thought we would be able to get it done. I was really confident coming into it. We had a little more time than I usually do on these hunts. I just I couldn't imagine the scenario where we'd come home without failing the tags. Everything everything seemed to be lining up pretty well for us, and um, and then just everything went wrong. And what I've what I've tried to do is like over the last day, as I'm like mentally processing all this is, is also remember that when it comes trips like this, it all hunting is like this, but especially trips like this, you need to be able to take satisfaction out of the whole experience, because if you're so dead set on just killing a deer on something like this, Like, the odds are are stacked against you when you travel two thousand miles from home to a brand new place, uh that's hunted by dozens of other people. Apparently, Um, the odds are stacked against you. And if we can only derive enjoyment out of killing a deer in that situation, well then we we probably should have known that we're setting ourselves up for potential failure. UM. So I think when I look at it, I'm not upset that we fished a few times. I'm not upset that we you know, came out here and saw some beautiful country and we saw some nice bucks, and we saw a lot of deer, and we saw some moose and we got to you know, explore new places. And it's it's um and it's public. It's like here for us, Like, how crazy is that that we got to go to this stuff that we don't own and I got to enjoy this beautiful, beautiful country and critters and things, and we got to do it for basically for free. Um, you can't complain about that. Yeah, No, it's it's been a great trip, regardless of if we um, if we feel a tag tonight or not. You know, I've been doing some of the same thing thinking and um, you know, I think one of the things that I'm proud of us for is that we have adjusted so much. We've stayed positive. Like I don't know, there's probably a time in the past where I would have been like, screw this, let's go home. You know, I miss my family, I miss home, I got stuff to do. Let's bail on this a couple of days early, or that storms rolling in, let's get out. You know. I think there's just there's things that we could have you know, we could have packed it up and went home, and we didn't. We kept you know, charging away at it and and being scrappy and trying to find new spots and new deer to hunt and get away from people. And you know, it didn't didn't always go in our favor. But I think I think we definitely gave it a hell of a shot. Yeah, well gave her hell, that's for sure. So um, yeah, there's our sob story. I hope there was something in there, um that's either reassuring to you or comforting to you because you've had the same thing happen, or maybe can help you adapt and put together plan for your upcoming hunt. UM, learn from our mistakes, learn from our takeaways. UM, set yourself up for a hunt so that you enjoy it and have a successful hunt, regardless of if you feel your tag and uh and get out there. Above all, get out there and enjoy these places. I don't want to scare you away from going out and trying it out of state hunt or trying public land deer hunt. Things happen. It can be tough. At the same time, you could also have a hunt of the lifetime. You just never know what you're gonna get. And that's kind of what makes this thing so special. If it was guaranteed, what funds that I know? I yeah, I mean it's it's been a heck of a heck of a time regardless of what happens. UM, tonight, I do it all again for sure? All right, man, Well, I think we should shut it down, wrap this podcast up, and you and we need to go out and have one last great hunt. Fingers crossed. What happens? Okay, what's what kind of probability would you put on your success tonight? Josh, let's go there, let's go to the flip side. I'm I'm saying about one percent. I'm don't have super high hopes, but there's deer. There's a couple of deer that I saw this morning, and I know where I think I know where they're going, and just a matter if they'll they'll come back down the canyon and cross the creek again. I figure if I go super low percentage, maybe it'll happen on them. There you go. I'm going with twenty percent from my hunt tonight. I'll bought mine up to five percent. All right, So there you guys go. We're very excited and feeling optimists tonight. H. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion and uh, until then, thank you all for listening. Good luck on your hunts. If you're out there, enjoy it, have fun, adapt, adjust, persevere, and until next time, stay wired to hunt. H.

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