00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. In this is episode number three seventy two, and today I'm joined by renowned public land deer hunter Tony Peterson to break down exactly how he would handle some of the toughest, most interesting public land hunting situations I could think of. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X Today. As you just heard, We've got Tony Peterson back with us. Tony is a good friend, He's a great hunter. He's been on the show quite a few times over the years, and I think he's one of the very best folks we've had in the show. So I'm excited that he's back. If you're not familiar, Tony Peterson has writ for just about every deer hunting magazine out there you can think of. He hosts the Hunt for Real podcast. He has hunted all over the country, and he specializes. I think you can say that he doesn't do primarily or only, but he definitely specializes in public land d I Y type situations. He's got a great perspective from a lot of different parts of the country, and and he can I don't know, he can just communicate what he's doing and why he's doing it better than a lot of folks, which is why I enjoy chatting with him. We chat with him today through the whole lens of this what would you do format that I started testing this past summer. We're gonna continue to do these here and there throughout the season when we've got somebody who we've talked to before, but we want to try to get a different perspective from them. If you didn't hear those past ones, you should definitely go back and listen. We've done these with John Eberhardt, Steve Bartilla, Mark Jury, and Dan Infult. And basically what I do is I put out a specific, unique situation, some hypothetical set of circumstances, and then ask the people to explain what they're gonna do how they would handle it. That's what I do for Tony. We chat through a bunch of different public land scenarios. We talked through some specific things related to my recent Idaho public land hunt. We hear about his recent North Dakota public land hunt and even a little bit about the Wisconsin opener which just happened. So it's good stuff, great conversation. You're gonna come out of this one learning some things that you can apply to your future public land hunts or even private land stuff too. So we're gonna get right to that. But a couple of quick heads ups on things. Number one, dost Boat Season two. That is the fishing show that we've put out over at meat Eater that has just launched the second season of the show. It's terrific. It's on the meat Eater YouTube channel now that first episode. Gotta check it out. The first one's got Steve renovating an old boat of a family friends and going fishing for a trout in Lake Michigan. And then there's a whole bunch of other cool stuff from the Upper Midwest. From everything I've heard, this is going to be top notch and first season, the first season was definitely top notch too, So check it out again. Is that the meat Eater YouTube channel. Speaking of other things we've got going on, you probably know this, but just in case you've been skipping over them. Starting last week and again this week, you'll have seen our new rut Fresh radio mini series episodes coming out right. That's something we've been doing every year for five years now. Coming out on Wednesdays. We've got a special mini episode where we interview four or five hunters from across the country and we're asking them what kind of deer activity they're seeing, how are certain conditions impacting the deer hunting, what are certain seasonal factors that are influencing how they're hunting, What kind of tactics are working for them right now? All that kind of stuff we cover. It's going to get you the most up to date and helpful intel before your next hunts. So don't skip those episodes. Listen to them asap because they're timely. We put them out on a Wednesday, we talked to those people on Tuesday, and the following week we do the same thing, so make sure you tune into those. And finally, speaking of up to date updates, this is the time of year where I start sharing a whole lot more over on the Wired to Hunt Instagram account as far as my own personal hunts, different things I'm seeing on the field, different things coming out across Meat Eater and Wired to Hunt when it comes to whitetail content, So make sure if you're not already, follow Wired to Hunt on Instagram. Check out my Instagram stories, check out the feed. Plan on pumping that up a lot here over the coming months with plenty of new content. So that is all I got for you, my quick updates. Thank you for tuning in, Thank you for being here. If your season started already, I would love some updates. Shoot me a note on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. If you've had some success. I hope some of these things you've been here and have helped. And I definitely think what you're gonna hear the rest of today's episode will help. So I think where that said, I will stop talking. I'll let you get right into it. Here we are with Tone Peterson. We're gonna find out what would Tony Peterson do? All right? With me back on the show is the one and only Tony Peterson. Tony, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me, buddy. Yeah, I was hoping we could do this in person a few weeks ago, when you were out here in Michigan on the back forty with me. But we just we're working too hard, too tired. You know how that goes. You don't want to do a podcast after twelve hours in the field hanging stands and stuff. So we're doing this one. Yeah, we kicked it around and we decided we would uh the podcast episode would be way too low blood sugar, and decided we'd do it when we were a little more rested after after a couple of weeks. So I think we made a good choice. I think so too. I was forced into a couple of those end of the day podcast like I did one two weeks ago, after having driven twenty five hours straight across the country and then getting to my desk nations scouting through the midday and then hiking in a mile and a half and hunting, and then hiking out and then driving back to our camp, and we recorded at twelve thirty at night after everything that I just described, and somehow we managed to talk for about sixty minutes. I don't know if any of it made sense, but we did talk at least for the minimum amount of times. So yeah, thanks, no, thanks um, But yeah, man excited for a bunch of stuff because for the first time, actually we've talked about doing it for a number of years, but for the first time, we're finally going to hunt together this year, having you out in the back forty, which which I'm I'm excited about. I'm excited about it too. Man, I had mixed feelings about burning up a week during the rut in Michigan, when when I'm sitting on in Iowa, after getting out there and working on that property a little bit and seeing what's going on out there, I'm excited for it. And honestly, this is gonna sound so bad, but I'm just excited to hunt a private property in November. Yeah, you know, it's funny after the week I just had, I'm excited about that too. Um, I want to talk about a bunch of different things, but I have to get your your thoughts on the back forward you a little bit. I mean, you're gonna come out, as you just said, we're in hunt together during the rut, but we wanted to have you out in August to just help with some of the scouting, some of the stand prep, some of the you know, just hunting prep, and we checked tryal camera as we did a little evening glass and all that kind of stuff. Um, what's your take in the property you're seeing it now in year two, Um, what do you think about the place? Man? I think it's cool. I mean, it's just it's it's always surprising to me even with you know, I mean that property what six acres, you know, so that's not a big property. It's a nice size property. But it's always amazing to me when you see what can be done on small properties, you know, And it's it's a weird thing when you when you hunt a permission based property like I have here in Minnesota, where around the cities where it might or something like that, and you can't work on it, you feel really limited as far as what you can do with it. You know, you're just gonna show up and there's a couple of good spots and you're gonna hope it works out. But when you have when you can get your hands on a property and just work on it and do the things you want to do and develop it, it's like a never ending process that takes you into like a year round white tail plan, and it's just it's it's such a different thing than a lot of stuff we do with the public land hunting, and it's so appealing on some levels because of that because you can look at that blank slate and go, I will if I if I want to, I'll never be done trying to make this into something else and something better. And that that property is just cool. Man. There's a lot of neat stuff on there. Yeah, it's got it's got a lot of potential. And we've just been kind of slowly doing a few things here and there that I think are getting it there. But but you know, as we discussed when we were there together, even just in the one year, I can see things changing. They give me new hope. I mean, like the trail camera poll. We checked cameras, and last year in August, when we checked our summer cameras, and I've had cameras running for like two months, we didn't have a single buck over a year and a half old all summer on camera. And this year we checked and I'd only had the cameras out for ten days or twelve days or something, and we had several bucks that were two years old, three years old, maybe a four year old couple, four plus year old bucks on there. Um. It was a dramatic improvement from year one to two, at least on that in that one kind of sample size that we're looking at. Yeah, there was. There's a pretty nice representation of different year classes in there, and it's you know, some of that probably can be attributed to having beans close in the time of year that you're there, but a lot of it is just the place is more desirable. It works for them better, and they're gonna move move in when you when you make a property that gives them some more advantages and more places to bed and feed, they're just gonna come there. That's what they're gonna do. And so it's it's amazing to see that progress in two years. And and like you said, it's a never ending thing. For if we had this thing for a decade, there's so so much more we could do. But it is fun just trying to think through It's just a different kind of chess match. There's the public land chest mass where you're trying to figure out what to do with a concrete set of circumstances, at least as far as the ground itself, Like this is the terrain, this is the habitat, Now deal with it. You've got moving variables like hunters, but otherwise you have to adapt to the situation. While this kind of thing. You've got a set of circumstances that is fluid. I can change the circumstances. I can move this here, I can move this there. I can place this habitab feature there, um, and then see how the deer change and then adapt to that. So there's I just love that whole process in both types of places. But um, there's something fun about getting to get your hands dirty in this kind of project. So it's gonna be fun to try to try to apply the Tony Peterson hunting tactics to the sixty acres in Michigan ground and see what happens. Yeah, Well that's that's one way to put it. It'll it'll be interesting to see what we come up with. A November, we got a little drop time buck. We got a little little droppy or whatever you're calling him. I don't know if it's a drop time orfits of main beam that bends down at the end into it into a drop appearance. Um, but he's a cool buck. Yeah. And and we have the Spencer new hearth buck out there too, the really weird sided one overcompensating lower voice one. That's the one. Uh yeah, man, there's a couple of nice Bucks, and then we never well, I think I showed you the pictures of that just big solid eight pointer. Um so yeah, and who September is here? Bucks rearrange their home ranges sometimes, so there might be different deer in there now. I don't know, but there'll be something for us to chase. So it's gonna be fun. November will be fun. Um. So, what I really wanted to talk to you about the Tony rather than back forty stuff, was, um this, I want I want to talk a little about your North Dakota hunt. I know you just did a hunt in Wisconsin. I want to talk about that a little bit. But maybe we talk about that by way of a little game that I've been playing with some people. It's this whole idea of of throwing you into different situations and then finding out what you would do. So, what I want to do, Tony, rather than my usual podcast where I'd be like, hey, Tony, what do you think about rubs? What do you think about? What do you think about? What do you think about the rut um? I want to lay out as many different, relatively detailed scenarios for you and then ask you what you would do in that situation. How would you approach it, how would you think about it, how would you execute on the game plan? Um? All that kind of stuff. So I will give you as many details as I can about these different scenarios, and then just feel free to walk me through your thought process. Walk me through. Maybe you'll have to fill in some gaps, um, but let's just see where that kind of thing takes us. And I've got some questions that are related to some things I know about your North Dakota hunt, UM, so feel free to jump into some anecdotes from that, UM, and we're just gonna kind of see where all that goes. And UM, I don't know. I think it'll be a fun thing to to get a new way of learning from you, since you're always, uh, you're always a treasure trove of information, and I think this will be a new opportunity for us to dig to a different level. So are you ready for the Wired to Hunt? What would you do? Challenge? I am, buddy. Okay, Well, then let's start here. Let's say we are in North Dakota and you're on your public land whitetail hunt that you like to do in states like that. We're gonna say it's September or October, somewhere in that relatively early part of the season, and you've got a set of conditions that a lot of guys do not like to see. Now, I know that you are different in this, so I'm setting you up on this one, but I just want to hear a little bit more detail. You're on your week long public land hunt. You gotta get going after it. It's early season, and then a very hot weather front comes through, so everybody wants that cold front to come through. Right. You get this warm weather pushing through, most guys are going to maybe play it safe until the cold weather hits three days in. Let's say some cold weathers coming later, and they're gonna observe, observe, and then they're gonna hunt tight to whatever they see on the third or fourth day when the cold weather hits. Um But what would you do in that scenario if you have hot weather the first part of the week and then it's can be cold the second half. Walk me through how you would be thinking about having those two different types of weather conditions and how that would change your strategy in this this quick hunt where you've got to make something happen fast. Um. You know, the beauty about western river bottom situation is it's really easy to figure out bed to food and food to bed patterns because there's so much more visible than then a lot of places you white tail hunt. So my my default setting in those scenarios is always to glass first and just see what's going on. And you know, if you're talking a uh unseasonably warm weather for three days and then a cold front coming in in that situation, what you're really talking about it is, okay, are you playing the water at all? You know, are they are they coming to the river a little earlier because they're thirsty or there's some stock tanks in there to glass and then later in the week when it gets cooler, the ideas they're going to be moving more, Well, they might they might come to the river earlier in the day, you know, before all the shadows of stretched across the land and you have that magical half hour. But really, what I'm doing in that situation is I'm just gonna look first. Because we we think about deer being super pattern able in the early season, which they are until somebody comes in and blows them up. But what I've seen in those states where you can glass really well. Is those patterns stick till the rut like they're they're just timing them, maybe a little bit different throughout the day and not going quite as early by the time it's October. But when you can watch them get up, or you can watch them on their feet where they were probably really close to their beds, or come back in the morning as their head to their beds, you see you see these patterns unfold. And it really doesn't matter, at least in my experience, whether it's October tenth or September one, they're doing the same thing. They might not be all bachelord up, which can actually help you. And so my my default in that situation is if I can get eyes on them, I'm going to If it's really hot, like kind of miserable hunting weather, I might just I might just go to where I know there's water and sit it. I mean, I did this in North Dakota for the opener. We had We had kind of a weird weather there too, where the one day it was really hot and overnight it was getting pretty cool. Overall, it was pretty cool for for the opener. But instead of just going back to camp. I went. Every day that I hunted, I'd i'd sit to stand in the morning, and then I'd go hike up the river to this stock tank I knew about. They had water in it, and I would go sit on that in the midday hours for like four or five six hours, and then I'd go back to a tree stand somewhere along the river. So I hunted all day. And it sounds like an awesome plant. I never saw a deer come into that water, but there was nothing. There's nothing else to do, you know, either go back to camp and you take a nap, or you stay out there with the deer. And so I would probably do that if I couldn't get eyes on him. If I just had to go blind and say, all right, well, it's you know, it's seventy five degrees and these deer are gonna be thirsty. They're either come into this river, They're going to go to one of these little tanks in the middle of the day. I'd probably go post up at one of those tanks and and try to sit a good crossing in the evening and in the morning. Now, what about a scenario like that where you know you have hunted some of these spots and scouted these spots and you know where there's water. But what if you were on a brand new property that you don't know where there's water, but you get that hot weather. Would you take that first day and no, Okay, hey, I've got three or four days of really warm weather. I gotta find water somewhere and just criss cross stuff until you find it. Or would you still try to glass and still hang hang back a little if you don't already know where it is. Um Man, it just depends. I would not set out west to just randomly stumble across water, you know. I mean. The good thing about on X and you know satellite imagery now is you can find water really easy, you know, so you you can scout, you can do your east scouting and find water, especially because most of this public land has cattle on it, and so you can see those trails spoked out in the water, and you know, you might have to mark a few spots and walk in to see if there's actual water in there at the time you're hunting, because sometimes there isn't. But I would I would start there, So I wasn't you know, wasting a bunch of time, and then if I couldn't find anything that was like a rock solid little tank or a guzzler or something, then it's going to be time to glass. And there might be a situation where those deer betting on a sage flat or something like that where they don't have that, you know, that that pond or that tank, and they got to get to the river to drink. And you might see those bucks follow a route that doesn't take them out into an opening anywhere, and they can dip right down a bank, grab some water, and go back up. And that's really important because if you can watch them drink in those situations where they're like, this is the safest place for me to go get water when I'm thirsty, that is just a money set up. And all of that is is getting on the spotting scope above the rivers and just watching to see who comes down and where did they come down. Let's look at a different situation now, public land, same kind of thing, but this time we're moving into mid October, and we're hunting mid October in Iowa. Typically most guys are going there. Out of state hunts in Iowa maybe sometime in November. Right, you saved up to get these points. You want to hunt to the peak of the rut when there's gonna be giant bucks running all over the place on November five, or eight or ten. But you've got a jerk of a friend who invites you to hunt in Michigan in November, and so you can't do your allan when you wanted, and so instead you try to get You gotta get creative, and you gotta figure out a way to kill a buck in Iowa in October. Let's say that you have to do the middle of the month for some reason. Maybe you're gonna give you a long weekend. You've got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, October fifteen through the nineteenth. Let's hypothetically say, what kind of game plan would you put together for that kind of hunt. If I told you that that's not just a preliminary hunt, that's your only hunt, that's your only four days to kill a buck with your Iowa tag, that's when you got to do it. Walk me through the unique set of strategies and put in place to to cash in on this really special tag in that what some people call a suboptimal time. Uh. Some people, including me, that Um, that's that's a that's a wild scenario, pulled out a thinner their market. Um I that so, yeah, it's hitting real close to home. Uh. I was openers October one, and so my my plan is to get down there on the opener and then to swing back through in mid October if I don't kill one then and so just like in a lot of states like maybe Michigan, maybe Minnesota, you know, if you're talking least in mid September or later opener, it's always it's always worth playing that gimme on a field edge right away because you might get it. You might you know, opening weekend, you might get that buck that comes out to the beans and you can kill him when you in a place that's just dumb. You also know that the the pressure is gonna come in there on those field edges and the easy to get two spots, and those bucks are going to react, and by mid October it's going to be a staging area deal on public land. I mean it just at least in my experience, that's the best scenario for for getting on one when you you know when the lulls supposed to be happening, is those bucks you know where they're gonna end up. You know you can look especially you know, if you're in Iowa, you know the destination food sources are out there. You know which ones they'll probably be. So now it's a matter of going, Okay, I'm not killing him on the edge. How how far back into the cover do I have to get? And the good thing about mid October is you can start to piece together a lot of rubs. There's gonna be a lot of rubs out there. You're gonna start seeing, Okay, these if you get in on some of those ridges and get a couple hundred yards off those field edges, you're gonna see those places where bucks are killing time in the daylight. You're gonna see those concentration of rubs. And so that for me is going to be just a hanging a hunt. Get in there, look around. You know. I'm gonna go in with a plan as far as like, okay, these ridges come together, and you know, try to try to give myself a few advantages beforehand. But it's gonna be one of those sort of freelance hunts where you walk in and go, Okay, I don't know exactly where these deer are staging. But if I sneak through, you know, I'll probably bump some deer. It's it's not going to be like an ideal scenario, but you're probably gonna stumble across a couple of areas that are just tore up, and you go, okay, this this looks like where these bucks are. They're getting up out of their beds. They're coming here. They're not going to poke their nose out in daylight, and they're gonna stay here. They're gonna mess around, they're gonna make some rubs, maybe work a scrape that time of year, and they're just gonna kill time until the clock runs out and it's dark and they can walk acko. That's that's like my I love hunting that way. Let me put it that way, and so that that'll be the Iowa strategy. Can you describe an example of one of these types of spots you would pick out on the map as giving you an advantage. You described like some ridges coming together, but could you give me a little more detail of what one of these spots specifically you'd be looking for in a map that would give you, Okay, this is about that's worth me sneaking into and looking for that fresh sign and setting up explain what that looks like a little more detail for that October fifteen to kind of time frame. So you'll have to bear with me here. What what I think about in those situations is what what what's the predominant wind? Right, It's going to be a north or west probably, um, So I'm I'm operating on that assumption, and I'm looking at these ridges going Okay, which which way do they run? Like, how can I get in there and play the most likely down wind side of this where I might find uh a bunch of rubs in a staging area. Because those bucks are gonna get up and they're gonna cruise that ridge, and they're gonna cruise it in a way where the wind is in their favor, so they're gonna be on the same side I want to hunt, but I can hopefully hang off the side a little bit and have my scent blowing out into nothing, blowing out into a valley. So those bucks are moving along and they're using the wind to tell them either what's kind of what they're kind of paralleling or what's in front of them. And so it's blowing across most of the woods that they're traveling through and there and they go, Okay, I know I'm safe. Like I can, I can pitch off this into this valley if I need to, and I can smell everything up ahead of me, and you you see them travel like that a lot, and so if I can, if I can pick out some of those spots close to a destination food source and and and look at them on the aerial photos and then occasionally because I'm gonna be hunting a lot of bluffy type of river, you know, type of land where it's pretty up and down and it's it's gonna have a lot of benches in there properly. So I'm gonna look at this and go, okay, can I get in this way? If the wind is blowing here, They're probably gonna travel on this side of the ridge and feel safest. And you know, a hundred and fifty two hundred yards away from this spot, I like there's some benches. You know, those big bucks operate just like bull Elk. They love benches. They love these places where they can play the thermals, and they have a whole bunch of escape routes and so you can kind of I mean it's like it's a moving target. You can look at on X and zoom in there and see these things, but you don't know until you get in there whether you're gonna actually find the sign of whether it sets up correctly or not. But if you have a couple of those places picked out with that that offer that kind of advantage to you, usually you'll find one where you're like, okay, this is this is the concentration of deer. This is where the good one is working. And then you can really, you can really put it together. And the thing I like about those spots is if I get in, I'll play it a little safe, and I won't I won't push it too hard to get in too deep, and you can set up and you can observe too. So if if you see one doing something you know, and he's he's crossing the ridge in a different way or coming out a little later than you expected, you can you can move the next night, move in on him, you know, and you might screw it up, but you can. You're in public land, you can get a little aggressive, and a lot of times the first night you see them and the second night you move in and get your shot. Yeah, and that's that's something very reminiscent of what I was trying to do this last week. Is exactly that. It's it's it's trying to pick a spot on the map that has potential. Then you move in try to find the spot within the spot, and if you don't have that exact thing, then you you set up, observe, adjust. But what if you go in there and you're doing something like that and you never find the sign that you expected or that you're hoping to see. You go in there and it seems relatively barren. Is there ever a situation where you would just pull the plug and not even set up for the night and observe. You would just say this isn't it's two hours before dark. You walk in there and it's just sterile. Would you ever say, Okay, I'm not even gonna hunt tonight, I'm just gonna keep scouting and keep walking, or I'm gonna pull the plug and go glass of field or anything like that. Is there ever a scenario where you would do that? Yeah? I mean it's i it's hard to imagine in Iowa, you know, with with a good deer population that if you had two hours left you wouldn't at least set up to see what's going on. But I've had that happen in other states where I've wandered around. I can remember two times, once in South Dakota and once in Oklahoma, heading out on public land with the idea, I'm going into this certain spot and I'm gonna find a tree and set up and walking around for like five hours and not finding anything and ending up in a totally different area. And you know, in in North or in South Dakota killing a uck that night, sitting on the ground in Oklahoma, just bailing on an entire property. So it's it's just situational. You know. The thing you have working working for you down in Iowa is you're gonna have, even on even on hard hunt in public land, you're gonna have some deer to work with in a lot of different spots, and so it's just it's less likely to think about having to bail on something. But in a lot of states you would and you just go, Okay, that didn't happen, or you kind of you have to kind of reassess what what you consider to be just that banging spot right, like is it is? It? Is? It? Like a no brainer. I gotta sit here because there's rubs everywhere, or is there is there a little bit of sign, but it doesn't really it's not really getting your spiky sense is tingling. Sometimes you sit those spots and you see something, and sometimes you just do go like this is I'm not feeling this. I gotta go figure something else out, and you just go use your time more efficiently somewhere else. I want to better understand what gets your spity sense tingling. So let's let's layout this situation where let's say you've already gone on somewhere and you've you've picked up a spot, You've found a tree, you like a spot. You think, okay, this is a spot where something good could happen, but you have to access it, for whatever reason, you have to access it from a different direction when you actually go into hunt it. Maybe let's say it's the next day, when you go in from this new direction to hunt this spot that you think is pretty darn good. You start walking through some new cover and it's it's it's ripped up. This stuff's different, this looks even better. Is there any scenario where you would have this sputty sense tingling so much that you would say, oop, this is where I've got to be and yank your set and come to this new area. Or would you or would you just kind of stash that knowledge for the next day and instead sneaking push on through that sign to get to this spot you set up previously because you've got it, it's more well thought out, you already have it set. It's good to go. I guess, answer me that and then described to me what it would take from a sign to make you do that, if you would audible in that kind of way. So I try to be really open to that. And I think I think one of the problems a lot of deer hunters have is we become so married to our ideas of how this should go, like it's I think it's one of the reasons why the private land management situation has gone to such extremes as far as like food plots and box blinds, and we want to control it, like we want to know we're gonna walk in, we're gonna take this trail, we're gonna climb into this stand, and the deer come out here. When you're a public land hunter, you don't have that luxury and I've I find myself with ideas all the time, like I'm gonna go, you know, in North Dakota's a prime example. I would have bet you a lot of money I was going to kill a buck on a little stock tank in there, and it didn't work that way. And it never works the way I think. And so if I'm if I'm sitting there and I go, okay, I gotta I got this Iowa tag and this is the spot I want to go to, and I'm walking through an area and it is tore up with rubs, just tore up, and there's a lot of bucks signed there. There's no way I'm walking past that, no way I'm gonna set up there. And and I say that because over the last couple of years, I've killed a lot of bucks just going on my way to somewhere else on public land and stopping and going, holy cow, like I have to hunt here. That these trails are pounded, these scrapes are tore up, these rubs are thick, and it's just one of those places where you you can't not hunt it. And I get that, like that is a thing that is reinforced to me a lot in you know, a lot of different states, and so I used to go out and go, I have to get to this tree, or I have to get to this spot, because this is where it's going to be. All my research says this. Now I'm like way more open to the possibility. When I'm walking there, I'm gonna find something that's way better than what I was heading to. And I can think of several public land bucks I've killed where you know it just in the last few years where that happened to me, And I hunted stupid close to a parking area or a place that just on paper you'd be like, no way, But when you get there, it's a different thing. It's kind of like the the elk situation now, where you hear people, you know, the whole get seven miles into the back country thing is so pervasive that you hear about a lot of kind of seasoned veteranel hunter is going. You know, I kill a lot of my bowls in this gnarly little drainage right off the road now because everybody's going past them. And in the white tail world, the same thing happens on a smaller scale, and so it's just where are they like, It's just a matter of where do these deer? Where are these deer right now? And that's where you hunt and you find that just by seeing the sign. Like it's for me, you know, I've talked about this on here a bunch of times. But I absolutely love rubs if it's a middle October thing. I like scrapes to not not as much as rubs. If I see a ton of rubs in a spot, that's that really does it for me. If there's some good trails in there, that's just kind of a bonus. But if I see that concentration a good buck sign there, I don't I'm not moving past it. Yeah, I've heard you're talking about in some of your podcasts about this idea of finding these buck concentrations where in public land you'll find these little hotspots where they've they've all kind of found their safe place, and it can sometimes be in unexpected places as you just described. Um, Other than what you just described, is there anything else you're looking for to help you know, oh, I've found a buck concentration one of these zones or is it simply that a lot of rubs, a lot of good trails, um and anything else As far as finding those and knowing that you got it. No. I mean, it's there's no way to do it unless you see them, you know, And I'm not. I just I saw a post recently, I can't remember who it was talking about how you know he would go into public land and he had an end table full of trail cameras. There was probably ten trail cameras on this that he was getting ready for his trip. And I look at that and I go, well, that's probably one way to find these if you have enough time. But I don't have. Most of my trips probably average four days four days of hunting anyway, And so I'm I'm really reliant on the sign that I find. If I find a lot of fresh sign, I know bucks are using it now and I want to hunt there. I don't have time to put out a bunch of trail cameras and let him soak and then figure out where the concentrations are. And so it's just a matter of signs, observe, move if you have to, or you know, a lot of times, if you find that sign, you get it right right away, and if you get it wrong, you just keep looking back to the back to the scenarire. We just outlined before that, and we talked about walking this new routing to a prepared location, and then you hit this fresh sign. Would you if you find it, it looks so good, you know you gotta hunt it right now. Would you rather sit in the ground right then and there so you don't need to push any further and just you just figure out some way to hunt it right then and there. Or would you want to go past it, get your tree standing which you hung the night before, maybe pull it down, sneak back, set up in a tree at the new spot. Which which situation would you prefer? It's totally situational man um I If I can get up in a tree, that's my that's my preference just most of the time. But sometimes these things happen depending on where you're at. Where you do find that place that's awesome, and the tree situation doesn't work very well, and so you do have to sit on the ground. But for the most part, if i'm if I'm hunting a constant like if you if you want to take the Iowa example, I'm gonna get that stand, I'm gonna I'm gonna get up in that tree and you know, that's one of the things that I think is is sort of a barrier for a lot of people in this public land deal. And the saddle thing has helped a lot, but it's just that that kind of thing happens all the time where you get up in a tree and you can't trim and you look at it and you go, I can't shoot anywhere, or you get into a spot and this the trees where you want to hunt don't work, and it's it's put stands up, take them down, or climb trees, climb down. It's it's a the willingness to just do that. And you know that's where the comfort with your saddle or your stand set up is a huge and just just just understanding it's kind of like dealing with the pressure, the other hunting pressure. You just have to know that this is a part of it and you're gonna have to work around it like it's it's you're just not gonna want to settle, and so you have to work through it. So in that situation, most of the time, I'm gonna go get that stand and you know it's gonna it's gonna be a little more effort and a little more work, but it's probably gonna be worth it. Yeah, okay, Well here's something very similar to or that's related to this whole idea of yanking stands, moving, adjusting all that in order. Pain in the butt that can be. What if you've got a spot that you liked a lot, you hung at the night before something. You've got a spot plan, You've got a good reason for going there, you're excited about it, and on your way in you see fresh boot tracks part way back there, So somebody else is coming here. You don't know exactly how far they went. You don't know when they broke off. You don't know if they pushed past where you want to hunt, or if they just scooted off to the side and or ahead of you. You just don't know. But there's somewhere back there. Do you keep going with your original plan or do you say, you know what, it's just it's too likely that this person pushed into something that's gonna screw me up. I'm audible and gonna try to pivot to something that is definitely outside of this guy's uh sphere of influence. I'm probably gonna just carry on with my plan, And I say that because you know, like like in North Dakota last week, there was nowhere I could go where I wasn't encountering people. I've never seen anything like that. And so if you if you keep you know, if you're trying to get away from people NonStop, sometimes it's a zero sum game, like you just can't do it and you just have to go. Okay, the deer are showing me they like this spot. Maybe this guy blew it up. Maybe he didn't, but I'm gonna take a flyer on it and hope he didn't. And I've seen that a few times in my life, like the buck that I killed in northern Wisconsin last year. I walked into this chunk of public thinking I was going to go to this creek bottom that I that I've hunted a few times and and find a crossing and just set up on it. And on the way in I checked a little old kind of disused logging road that I found winter scouting that had a ton of sign on it. But it's right by the road, and it's in a place where tons of people go in and they ride their four wheelers in there and they go try to shoot grouse off their four wheelers and it's it's a high traffic area, but it's just just off of that. And I walked in there with a totally different plan, just peeked up onto this, saw this, The scrape was there again. It was fresh. I could see some rubs down the logging road, and I thought, if you walk past this, yere an idiot, Like they're they're showing you they're using this right now, even though people been in there, there's fresh four wheeler tracks in there. So I walked in there and set up and the first year that came out was like a one sixty. And then I killed, I mean a legit giant, one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen anywhere. And later I killed a great eight pointer that came right down the logging road, and it was just one of those deals where you could assume these deer blown out, or you can think, man, they deal with this. You know there there you a lot of your listeners are probably hunting public land that gets hunted every day, you know what I mean. And so it's like if you're if you're gonna play that game where you're like, well, I'm gonna go where nobody goes A lot of people don't have that option, Like a lot of people just don't. They have no way around that. So you have to hunt where other people are. And those deers still live there, they still do things like they're you know, they're the toughest deer to hunt, I think, But you just have to work with what you're given there in some of those situations. So yeah, fresh bootprints sucks a lot, but it's something you you kind of learned to live with. And if the deer are showing you it doesn't really bother them, then it shouldn't really bother you. Now. I guess if I'm in that scenare and I see something like what you mentioned and I see that fresh sign in that spot, that's well hit. I would have thought to myself, well, yeah, there's still deer using this, but it's happening after dark. How do you how do you? How do you know or what makes you think that this might be a daytime spot versus a nighttime despite all the stuff you just listed. Uh, if it's in the cover, how much cover is it in? I mean, I don't I know. I'm sure we've talked about this in past episodes. I'm not a big believer in the nocturnal dear thing. I don't think there are very many true nocturnal deer out there. And I know that's like contrary to popular opinion, especially in October, but when you watch I was thinking about this this weekend when I was hunting with one of my daughters. We had we had deer come in pretty early on on opening night, and the first three does that came in, they came in, they bedded down in front of us twice, and they got up and moved a little bit. And I was thinking, every time I ever see dear bed down, they don't bed down that long, even when it's in the morning and you know that buck comes back in and he lays down, He might lay down for an hour or two, and he gets up, goes, browses on something, nibbles around. I don't think I think we give them way too much credit for being nocturnal. So if you if you get into you the cover, the best cover they have, the thickest woods, or something that they're going to feel pretty secure in. I don't think you deal with a lot of truly nocturnal deer. So if I see a bunch of rubs way back on a ridge, and it's pretty thick, and there's multi floora rows in there, something that's that's really given them some good cover. I'm just gonna assume somebody's going to move through there in daylight. Like those bucks feel good enough in there to move around and and do their thing and not expose themselves. But they're in a place where they're comfortable, and I think that I think that exists all over. We just don't get in there enough to know. Now here's an interesting scenario we're dealing with a lot more today related to this, where right there, there used to be this assumption that you're going to have all this activity from humans and from other hunters in certain places like the edges or by access or whatever. But as public land hunting has become more popular, there's a lot of people preaching, you know, go into the bedding years, go deep, get into buck bedrooms, you know all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of really eager guys and girls now they are pushing into the really best, best stuff. So what if you're going into hunt and you realize that all the pressure is going right into the interior um, how do you how do you adapt to that? Because I gotta believe, right if that if that intense pressure is being applied to the bedding cover right then and there while you're hunting, the deer going to react in a way that maybe you can get them on these unexpected places on the outside, but maybe they're just jumped out of their skin for the next few days and there they are nocturnal or something. What would you do if if all the pressure you're seeing from other guys is this really aggressive right into the good stuff kind of pressure. Yeah, well, that's that's one of the things I love the hunting public guys. But I'm like, can you guys leave one betting area alone out there? Like I'm kind of convinced that they might be killing bucks because the bucks they're hunting are so exhausted because they never get a good day's sleep because they're in the betting areas every day. Where dude, what what I think about that is you just have to work with the variables, you know. So if it's if it's an evening hunt and you know they're going to the beans or this cut cornfield, that's that's the best information you have. So if you think, okay, well, I think this is the betting area, because I think a lot of times we get really really locked into the belief that we can just go this is his bed or this is the betting area, and they use this every day. I think that those bucks have lots of different beds and lots of different betting areas. And if somebody goes in there and they throw their saddle up and they're sitting in one spot and not playing the win very well, those bucks have other options. They know, they know where to go, and so you're just you're just working on the premise of like I know where he's gonna end up, but where is he now? And how is he going to get here? And so again it's just a matter of if if people are going deep and you know, like we we dealt with this in North Dakota. Like I saw people going into places I've never seen people go into, and I know they're betting areas because I've watched deer walk in there in bed there. But somehow those deer magically find trails and make it down to the river in the evening anyway, And so I think what happens is we we sort of we we overestimate the amount of influence we have on their daily life. So if you go in there and you jump a buck and he takes off, it's very easy to assume you put that buck on a nocturnal pattern. You you you blew out the area. And I've had it happened where I've walked in on hanging hunt situations and I've jumped bucks out of their beds and set up and they've come back. You know, they used to call that the bump and dump or whatever, but I don't. Or you know, if you sit on public land long enough and you see bird hunters come through, those deer are so good at at just avoiding us very subtly, very minimally, that we're not probably pushing them around the way that we think they are. We're probably not killing our chances to the degree that we think. And it's I think it's more of a mental thing too. I think you've got to be out there and you have to see this stuff play out enough to know, Okay, this wasn't the end of my trip, This isn't gonna These guys walking through here pheasant hunting are doing whatever. This isn't the end of this spot. It might change it. Those bucks might relocate a little bit or something. But I think a lot of times it's it's in our head and we we kind of hit the quit button and go, well, this is over, and now I have to start over. And you're not operating on the same way. But when you spend a lot of time on these hunts where it's like, Okay, I got four or five days to get it done, here's the best spot I've found, you realize that we're kind of overplaying that a little bit, and and a lot of times, even though it really really sucks when people come in and other hunters blow up your spot or you walk through the wrong area and blow it up, it maybe isn't as damaging as we a lot of times think, and we just have to get back up in that tree and figure out what happened. Okay, So you set me up perfectly for my next question, which is a very very very specific scenario. I'm just a really creative person. I can pull out a lot of details, So so bear with me here, Tony as I lay this one out for it. But let's hypothetically say you're hunting some public lan you have been dealing with hunting pressure and other spots all over the place. So you decide, you know what, I'm gonna go to this new area based off of something I saw in the summer. I think there's some good bucks in this general area. I'm gonna look at the map. I'm gonna try to pinpoint the most likely spot that there might be buck betting, and then the most likely route they would take down to this food source. You sneak in two miles, You set up in a tree, and you actually see three nice bucks, including two giants, but they're just out of range. Okay, So you see these bucks. One is like fifty yards the next one's about ten yards behind him. So you say, okay, I know what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm gonna move to get to the other side of him and be within shooting ranch. That happened to come through the same way. That nothing spooked him. They moved past me, past you, very easily and calmly disappeared. Next day, you sneak in, you make your move, You come into the backside, so you don't touch, you don't walk over anything. These deer came through you. There's no way you spooked anything. You get set up. It's great. One of the three bucks comes out along with four other deer. They walk all within shooting range of you, but the big boys never show. You think, okay, this is this is this is where these bucks like to come through. I still haven't spooked anything. I'm feeling good. So the next day he just said, okay, I want to get I want one more good sit in this spot because it feels like this is a killing spot, and to my knowledge, I haven't spooked anything. So you come in the next day with those conditions. You just get to the tree when all hell breaks loose. A bunch of kids start driving U t v S all around you, yelling, screaming, knock and metal together ye hying, uh, just making a mess of everything. You see them drive back into where you think these deer rerebetted. You see them drive to the other side of the property, way down this other section, driving in there, blowing stuff up. You got out of your tree and you tried to make a move on the ground, but they went that direction to it's just a disaster of the night. But they drive out just before last light, and at last light you see a decent number of deer still pop out and go right by where you were sitting originally, or where you want to sit originally that day. Now that happens, it's frustrating, but you tell yourself, man, gonna keep at her. We're gonna figure out how to adjust. Next day, a huge storm rolls through with like damaging dangerous winds, like sixties winds, high wind warnings, don't go in the woods, blah blah blah. So you don't hunt the next day because of that. But a cold front comes through, So now you're two days removed from this disaster night, but temperatures are like thirty degrees lower, and you did see some deer moving immediately after the saboteurs came through here, thinking okay, these deer might have been looking at that as just like a farmer in here doing stuff, etcetera, etcetera. So would you, after all that, would you go in and hunt that killing tree that you still have set up because it seemed to be in the right spot prior to the disaster, because you knew exactly how the bucks are moving through that area in that spot, and you could look at that pressure from the crazy people coming through is is hopefully this one time thing that the bucks thought was farmer intervention or something, and they reacted to it, of course that night, but very quickly a day passes, they go back to their normal things. Maybe you're two miles back from public access. You think these deer feeling relatively calm, and you did see two giant bucks moving in daylight, very calmly, you know, half hour before dark. So number one, would you go back to that same spot for one try more? Or would you say? No? Way? Man? That was a disaster. Uh, you already hunted in the general area two previous days, even though you don't think you spoot them. They might have caught your ground center something coming back. Blah blah blah. I'm pulling up stakes and pushing in deeper or somewhere different because there was just too much commotion, so very detailed. What would do The very first thing I would do in that scenario is I would I would order up a bunch of books on witchcraft and casting nasty spells, and I would try to make sure that those kids caught every std out there in the Twitter sphere. The sphere I should say and hope that they I hope it burns when they pe For the rest of They're like, put this way after casting some spells on those guys, I would I would go hunt it one more time, just just because, you know, So if they drive through there and they're acting like pricks and they're doing that and trying to blow the deer out, but you see, dear still follow the script after they're gone. To me, that's a pretty good sign. And when you've got those bucks there, and you're talking good bucks, that's somebody's home range, maybe both of them, and so they those guys might have really killed your chances that night or maybe for a couple of days, but that deer is not gonna probably move out of there. He's just gonna probably play it a lot safer. And if you if you've got a place, do you feel it, you feel confident enough to name it the killing tree, get back in there and find out, you know it, just just to see, just to know, because when you've got to start over on something like that, now you're talking to multi day process for just finding other bucks and finding spots to hunt them, and you've you've got enough invested in there where it's worth the risk just to see how it plays out. Yeah, yeah, well that's what I did. And uh, spoiler alert. Uh that's what I did, and uh, I didn't see shit. So we cast any spells and give those guys a bunch of STDs. I cast the spells. I don't know what happened, but I did. I did cast some bad karm or their way. Um, and it's it's funny. So I sat there again that that night to try to kind of was thinking some of the similar things you were, and I thought, you know what, I gotta try it one more time and end up being like just a completely dead night. There were a couple of deer in there when I snuck in. It was a dough and a fawn, and I thought, okay, yeah, they're feeling comfortable. It's all good and uh, and then it was just dead and some moose came through. Now I talked to some guys that said that lots of times in these western places when you get a bunch of moose and some spots that will push deer out for a day or two, they don't seem to like to mingle as much. I don't know, um, but that could have been a thing. Um. But funny story. Uh, just to kind of put a cap on my trip that I didn't mention in my last episode where we described this trip. Um. For those that aren't following, I'm describing the exact thing that happened to me about seven days ago in Idaho. Um. So I sat as I just described, didn't see anything. The next day, I just said, Okay, I'm moving back to a different place where I had hunted about six days beforehand, and we were seeing a bunch of deer, but then there was a bunch of hunters over there, and that's what pushed me to this killing tree area because of that pressure. But I've been keeping track of the parking lot in this other spot, the original spot, and there hadn't been hunters there for three or four days. So I thought, okay, let's go try this zone and pushing deeper from the places I was originally hunting, and I'll try that. So long story short of push into this new place, I get into a really cool looking area. I felt really good about it. Um, I don't end up seeing a deer I want to shoot, but see deer and have a good night. And I'm walking out and I'm just thinking, man, Um, this whole trip has been just hunters and just every day dealing with a new hunter, new group of hunters, a new group of pressure, and it's it's been just constantly trying to adjust. I'm like playing pinball. I go here and then I'm bounced off another wall of hunting pressure that I go here and I'm bounced off another hunting wall. And as I'm walking out and thinking, you know, finally maybe I found like the threshold of where you need to get to and push past to get past all the guys in this this area I've been hunting. And as I'm thinking through all this, the end of the hunt, the whole trips is done, and I'm thinking through all this stuff, I smell something strong and I'm like, what does that smell? And I keep walking and it's a really a strong smell. Now it's after dark, it's evening. Um, I'm hiking out now, and I realized I'm smelling weed. I'm smelling marijuana. I'm like someone burning one down out here. And I start shining my head lamp in the trees and I'm walking out and there's a hunter sitting in the tree in front of me smoking a blunt after dark as I'm hiking out. If that's not the most like representative way to end this hunt. I don't know what it is. Ah. Yeah, I don't even know what to say about that. I guess I wish I was more surprised, but I'm kind of not. It kind of sucks that that doesn't That isn't as shocking as it should be. Mark Man, it was. It was just like, yeah, that that's how this hunt should end. Uh. So back to scenarios that aren't my scenarios, back to imaginary scenarios. Then, UM, a couple more here for it, Tony. What if you are hunting and you realize that you've got a situation like we've just described where there's this pinball of hunting, whether it's your North Dakota hunt where there's more hunters than you ever saw before, or whether it's my recent hunt where it was more public land hunting pressure than I've ever dealt with I don't western hunt before. Um, and you realize like, wow, this isn't what I was expecting. But you are seeing some deer, and you know there's some nice deer in the area, and you know they're there, but there's just all this stuff that's seriously blowing up your hunt. When and how if at all, do you begin thinking about adjusting your standards? So I know this is something that happened to you, walk me through how you think about that. When you go into a hunt and you think, yeah, I want to shoot a nice buck and maybe that's a three year old or four ye old, there's a nice eight or whatever it is for you, do you change it? How do you change it? When do you decide to make that change? Uh, that just depends on who's walking by me at the moment. But really that one of the things, like your example in Idaho being on those big bucks. What what that does is it it shows you how valuable a backup plan is or a backup spot is. And I run into this a lot on public land where I'm like, this is the area I'm going to. This is where I'm gonna kill. It's gonna be awesome. And then you get there and there's people all over, and if you don't have a couple of backup spots, gets really rough in a hurry because you're playing catchup. And so just just as an example in North Dakota last week, I had the best group of bucks that I saw scouting was there were five bucks in there The biggest one was a solid hundred fifty deer. There was another one that was probably one forty in there, another pretty good one, and then two smaller ones. And I watched those deer walk through this patch of cotton woods on their way to the river. And in the next morning I watched them. They were already back across, but it looked like they had probably come through the same area. And the biggest buck was was hard antlerd some of the some of the other bucks were still velvet, and he was very dominant there. There was a point where I could watch him fight bucks, and I could look in two other spots and see two other buck fights going on. So at one point, from one glassing spot, I could see three buck fights going on. And they weren't like you know, knockdown drag out there. They're sparring, pushing each other around, but you know they were feeling it. When the when those deer go hard antler, they try them out. I mean, it's it's amazing to see. I've seen that many times, and so I thought, Okay, I've got this is the this is the group with the biggest bucks. I know where they are. I know if they come out in that spot. I can get in there and hang a stand and and be on them. Tonight on opening night, and I saw other bucks, and I go, okay, these bucks came in from this way, and they crossed the river here, or these bucks fed along here, And so I had some some backup options because you can see, you know, a long way is there. You can see here a mile away. And so opening night I went in on those big ones I ended up seeing. I saw five bucks. They came down, they split me, and just I was just off just a little bit, just enough where it matters when you're bow hunting. It wouldn't matter when I was gun hunting at all, but with with a bow, I was just a little bit off on them. And so I thought, okay, tomorrow I come in. I moved just a little bit and try to pick one of these one of these deer off as they come down the trail. And I had some backup spots, but I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna give these bucks my best effort right now, because I think I have a chance to killing them, and they're they're great public land. Dear well. When I went back in there the next day after my morning sit. I was going to get into this stand and I ran into some other hunters in there who were looking for mule deer, and they had just burned through that area, and I thought, I'm still gonna sit here if they leave. But I talked to him for a while, super nice guys, and they wouldn't leave. And I'm like, my stands like a hundred fifty yards down the river, like I want you guys to go because I don't want to climb into the stand while they're standing there. And they wouldn't leave, and so I'm like walking down the river like pretending I'm looking at rocks and just kicking at fish. I'm like, please go away, like and I kept kind of like peeking over my shoulder, you know, like you guys gone yet. And finally I'm like, they're not gonna leave. They're gonna stay here. They've got something. You know how it is when you talk to people out there, you can barely keep your lies straight because you don't want anybody else on your deer. So I'm seeing some stuff whatever, you know, or like they seem to be here there, but you don't want them to know, Like I'm on a bachelor group that's coming down to the river right there, and so they wouldn't leave something like Okay, I gotta go to a backup spot. And as I go, I go to I go to my backup spot, get the stand up, and I'm like, the wind's terrible. Pull the stand downs. Four o'clock and I'm like, I gotta move just a little ways to a different crossing. I move, get up, get that stand hung, pull my bow up. I look, here comes this guy walking up the river, turns around, walks away when he sees me, and I'm like, man, same kind of deal, Like you're just bumping into pressure everywhere. But I knew that crossing I was. I was not going to run into a hunter fifty. I knew I had a chance to have an okay buck come by there. And at that point, I'm like, okay, I know you know I have two other buddies out there who are who are bumping into pressure everywhere too. I'm like, it's it's time too. If if a good shot comes my way, seriously consider it. And so I'm sitting there that night and I look out way out and I see this buck walking at me, and I'm like, you know, a little velvet two year old. I'm like, I don't. I don't really want to shoot him, but if he comes in and gives me, like a really good shot, I'm probably gonna regret it if I don't. And part of that was we only had a few days, and we had this massive rainstorm that was supposed to be coming in, and a lot of people were bailing on our campground because they didn't think they'd be able to get out because of the road. And so I'm like, I can't get I have to get home. So now four day hunt might turn into a two and a half day hunt. And so I'm like talking myself into this buck because he's walking in right and he gets oser, comes down below me, and never I never get a shot, and he's within like five yards of me. He goes down the river, meets his little buddy comes across the other way, and you know, they're messing around, kind of kind of pretending to spar but they're both still velvet. And I'm like, man, do I want to shoot him or not? And he comes up the river bank and I'm like, my buddy is gonna kill me if I don't kill this book and I'm like, I don't have a backup to this now. So if if I don't do this now, I have to start over. And I don't know what to do. And so he comes up and gives me a pretty good shot. I'm like, I gotta take it. So I killed him. So when I lower my standards is when I feel like my my time is really running out and there's a good opportunity in front of me. You know, if if those guys hadn't come down, I would have worked those that Bachelor group a lot more just to see what would have happened. But it's just you just kind of play the hand you're dealt and a lot of times on public land when you go it's gonna be a four and a half or bust, it's gonna be bust. I mean it might be years of bust, and so it just it just is what it is. You just do what you have to in those situations. Yeah, yeah, man, that's that's that's the tough one. I just I, for whatever reason, get my heart set on something. If I know something's out there, I have a really hard time settling. And so the last two years, because I've seen a buck that catches my eye and I just get if that's if I know that's here, I have a really hard time not trying. And so uh, same thing last year happened this year where I saw those big boys and I just couldn't bring myself to shoot the really nice eight point of the next day. Um, it wasn't big, big, but he was nice. You know, he was a three year old. Um, I just couldn't do it. And and I don't think, like looking back on it, I still I still think I owed it to myself to at least give myself that one night at least to see if they come. Now the rest of the trip, after that whole debacle happened, then I swim two. Okay, yeah, I'll shoot any nice dear um, But that I didn't have the shot at the nice dear um. But it is a tricky one, that tricky thing between you know, what do you want out of this hunt? Do you want the fill tagged? Do you really want something that meets your original goals? I don't know. It's probably different for everybody in every different such situation, but it's it's one that it's at least I've found it's a good idea to think through it before your trip, to kind of have some idea of what you're gonna want to do as the hunt progresses, rather than be in the tree, the deer is walking your way and you're having that tough situation like you had where you try to figure it out in the moment. I mean that that can set yourself up. It worked out okay, but it can always You can go the other way too, Yeah, I mean, and I think you know you and I are in different places, like I don't. I was thinking about this the other night when I had my daughter out in Wisconsin. I didn't I didn't bring my bow with because I didn't, you know, this was her hunt. I wanted her just this. This is gonna go however it goes with her. But I knew there was a chance we were going to have a big one come out, just just kind of a wild scenario. And we had a bachelor group come out, and the biggest buck was a nine pointer that's all of aftes and he came out too far for her, but the same exact distance I had just shot that North Dakota buck at And I'm like, this deer would be in trouble if I had my bow with and this is the biggest buck I've ever seen in Wisconsin on private property, I mean a legit awesome dear, just incocredible, And I was thinking about it afterwards. It didn't bother me at all to not get that deer. Like ten years ago, I would you'd have to do like a wellness check on me, because I'd be suicidal. Now I don't care. Now, I just don't care about the big buck thing nearly as much as I used to. I still love them, but I realized, like, it doesn't really matter what you kill, you know it, I mean it doesn't, it doesn't. You have to do what's good for you and what makes you happy. And I realized like the chasing the big buck thing for me solely was like a false God. It didn't it didn't work because it didn't. It didn't really matter that much, and and what it did for me in some ways was made it less fun to be out there. I didn't I didn't enjoy it as much. And I realized, like, I don't. I want to focus on those deer to some extent, but I don't care about that outcome so much anymore. And so I'm just I'm kind of and I was. I was talking to Mike Shae from Field and Stream about this the other day. It's like you find yourself when you've been in the hunting industry a long time and you've been doing this a long time, you find yourself going you you there's this gravity to certain things where you're like, I just I want to have fun. I want to enjoy this, and I know there's certain paths I can take as hunter that will erode my enjoyment, and one of them is is a dead set focus on big deer. And that's just me. I've been down that road, and part of part of what that leads me to is I want to hunt lots of other stuff. So like if I if I fill these tags, like if I didn't fill that North Dakotate, I gotta gone back somehow. And what that would have taken away from me is a chance to duck hunt with my dog or pheasant hunt with my dog or something. And I'm terrified of that because I really want to do that because it's fun. And so I know, like if I don't, if I don't control this thing, it'll it'll get out of hand and I'll stop enjoying it. And so that's like a weird way of explaining that. And I know people are at different places and they just have to You have to get out there enough to understand what you really enjoy. And if that's like, hey, it's got to be a four and a half year old or nothing, that's what really really blows the wind up my skirt. Go ahead, like, if that's what makes you happy, that's freaking awesome. Do that. But if you're going I'm not, that's this isn't happening for me. I'm not enjoying this. And you know, I really wanted to shoot that book, but I feel I felt like people would laugh at me on Instagram or something like, dude, just figure out what makes you happy out there and go lean into that hard, because that's what this is for. Yeah, and man, that is uh, that's important stuff for for me and everyone to hear these days. Absolutely that and the fact that I'm also going to take away the expression whatever blows you're scirt up. I like that. Oh man, no, but that's this. This is the kind of stuff I'm constantly thinking about out there too. I'm very goal oriented. I'm very driven by what I set my sights on UM. So I'm constantly struggling between what you just described having fun versus the fun of pursuing a tough challenge and pushing through challenges. Like I enjoy that, but then also sometimes I don't enjoy it. Um, We'll have those moments of frustration. And so yeah, it's something that I'm kind instantly working through and trying to find that right balance point. So it's it's a good it's a good thing to bring up. I'm glad you did. I just I look at it like when I see you fishing out there in Idaho, now a lot I know exactly what's going on there, Like you're finding a new outlet in the outdoors that isn't the pressure of of big Bucks and your job that's built around killing white tails. It's something different, and there's an enjoyment level in there. You can you can watch like Lilakowski is super into fishing right now. It's not a like it's not an accident. You know, the dudes had to work around white tails so long. It pushes you. Either either you walk away or you find other things that are an outlet. And I think I think it's easy to understand when you talk about Lelakowski and you can just sort of look at his life and go, Okay, well, yeah, it seems like that guy should go find something fun to do in the outdoors that doesn't involve making a product around killing big game animals. But I think I think a lot of hunters out there, especially in today's you know, social media, everybody's out there showing you how wonderful they are and how awesome their selfies are in the tree stand. Like, I think everybody has to figure that out. I think we all bump into those issues regardless of what you do for a living, regardless of whether you hunt two days a year or fifty is just find those things that you enjoy out there and get after them. And if if it's not, you know, like if you don't enjoy the pursuit of one booner out there, like find something else, find something else that you really enjoy about it, and do that. Go fishing, dude. It's anything like that. There, there's something really to be said about not just having that single focus, but to be somebody who can learn to just enjoy the outdoors and a lot of different capacities. Very very true. Okay, Tony, we got to wrap it up a little earlier than I usually like to do, but I've got some other time constraints. So I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions to to close a sucker out. Um. But first I guess one one bigger question and then a little rapid fire series and and this is a hypothetical life post to everyone. I've done one of these what would you do podcasts so far, so I want to see how you'd approach it. Let's say I'm all powerful, I have control over the country and hunting privileges, and I am going to take away your right to hunt, your privilege to hunt for the next ten years. You can't hunt anything for ten years unless you kill a mature buck let's say three, four year or something like that. You've got to kill a mature buck this year, but you only have one day to get it done. So you've got to pick the one day of the season in which you think you have your very best chance of killing a three or four year old buck. And I want to I want you to tell me what the day is gonna be that you're gonna pick, and then describe to me with as much details you can, like the hypothetical best spot you would try to hunt for that very specific day. Oh man, Uh, it's gonna be November seven. You know, the weather is going to be set up just perfectly cold front, a little frost on the ground when you get out there, and it's gonna be on just some type of absolutely banging pinch point some kind of terrain feature you know, maybe uh, a steep bluff that comes down to a river and just pinches it down and they have to go through there. That's in a state like Nebraska, will say would be probably there would there's a strong possibility if you pose that to me and said you're down, You're done for a decade unless you get this done, it would I'd probably be pointing my truck to Nebraska on November six to get in there on the seventh and do that beautiful all right now, the rapid fire you can only answer with basically one word answer yes or no, or I'll give you a couple of options here. Um, we'll just go through these really quick and then we're gona wrap this sucker up. So, Tony, does the moon matter for deer movement? Yes or no? Yes? Would you take a fifty yards shot at a white tail with your bow? Yes or no? No? If you could only have one of these for the rest of your hunting days, which would it be? Rattling antlers or grunt tube grunt tube expandable or fixed blade broadheads fixed? Should you stop a buck with some kind of sound before shooting with your bow? Yes or no? Yes? Which state has better deer hunters? Michigan or Iowa? Uh? Probably Michigan. Here we go. All right, Tony, that's all I got for you. All right, thank you, thanks for taking the time to do this. I had fun and uh I look forward to chatting more, hopefully in your podcast soon and then getting me out here to Michigan. Awesome. Well, thank you man. Hey. Also, real quick before you go, for people that want to listen to your podcast or follow along with your stuff, where can they find that stuff? Everywhere? Podcasts are? You know? It's hunt for real podcasts. I also host Sporting Dog Talk, which is all about working dogs hunting dogs. Anybody who listens who likes dogs should check that out and they're everywhere. So if you're if you're listening to Wired Hunt, you can find my podcast as well. Perfect all right, Tony, thank you, Let's check in soon. All right, thanks buddy, and there you have it, another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast in the books. Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this one. As I mentioned at the top, make sure you check out dost Boat season two, make sure you're listening to those Rough Fresh radio episodes, and make sure you're following Wired to Hunt on Instagram for all things wired to Hunt, new content, all that good stuff. Best to look out there in the woods. I'm hoping you guys are putting down some deer having a great time out there. Be safe, have fun, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.

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