00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three nineties six and today the show, I'm joined by mediators Janice Proteller to analyze his Wisconsin whitetail bow hunt and to explore ways that all of us can better learn from our hunts and unfilled tags. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X and Tanna show. We've got Janice protell Us with me, and most of you probably know Janice. He's a producer and host and do it all extraordinary over at mediator and a damn good hunter. But most of that hunting over the last two decades has happened out West for big game animals other than white tails. But this year his white tail interest was rekindled as he planned a return trip to a property in Wisconsin that he grew up gun hunting. Now, Janice and I talked a lot leading into this hunt about all sorts of different ideas and strategies. He was listening Wired Hunting podcast and he was pretty pumped to get out there and try a bunch of this crazy white tail stuff that we talked about here, but which he never really had a chance to try back when he was hunting white tails in his teenage days. So very interesting to see a really experienced Western hunter like this come back to the Midwest and and try to explore this different aspect of hunting. And that hunt it happened last month spoiler alert, he did not fill his tag, but he had a great experience and some interesting learning experiences. So today what I want to do was get your Honest on the show to debrief on what happened on that hunt, the challenges he's faced, what went well, what he struggled with trying to take his white tail game to this new level, and and maybe what he was able to learn from all of this too, And that last aspect, that's I think what I'm the very most interested in, which is how can Yannice or you and I better learn from a quote unquote failed hunt, or really any hunt for that matter. How can we learn from a hunt? How can we learn from a hunting season? Um? You know, I know that for some of you listening, maybe that's not something you're worried about. For you, maybe hunting is just an opportunity to relax and have a good time and you don't want to overthink things in that kind of way. You just want to enjoy it. And that's that's absolutely fine and dandy and great. I think you're gonna enjoy Janice's story just for the sake of a good hunting story. Um. But I also I also know that there's a lot of you out there like me, who are driven to just go deeper and deeper into this thing and constantly find ways to fine tune what you're doing and take your hunting experience to the next level. And so for those of you out there like that, I want to spend some time here today talking about this larger idea of how do we learn from a hunt? You know, it's something we talk about on this podcast a lot, but usually pretty generically. You know something some something you gotta learned from your experiences or YadA, YadA, YadA. As long as you learn from a hunt, it wasn't a failure. You've heard me say that kind of stuff, you heard Dan say that kind of stuff. But how do you actually do that and is it really just that easy, as you know, going out there hunting, screwing things up or doing something then saying well I learned this lesson. I don't think it is that easy, at least from my experience. I think there's more to it than that, or at least there can be more to it if we have a little bit of a more thoughtful way of trying to learn from these things. So over the past year so I've been doing a lot of reading and studying about this, in particular, you know, studying decision making and how to analyze your decisions and how do you learn from your outcomes? How do you how do you come to some kind of clear takeaway that you can you know, move forward from. Ah. I know this is some some nerdy stuff, um, and it's it's it's usually written about and thought about in the context of something like business or war or poker or other strategy based activities. But I just see so many parallels to hunting, especially white tail hunting, because white tail hunting rights as many of you guys know, it's it's very strategy focused. You know, once you understand the basics of dear biology and behavior and some kind of standard foundational elements of hunting strategy. From there, it all comes down to decision making. Right, what am I going to do today based on all this stuff? I know? Do I sit there or there? Do I hunt today or tomorrow? Uh? Do I, you know, take this risky move or not? And then learning from all those things. So here we are in December, and for a lot of us, probably most of us, there's a bunch of hunts in our rear view mirror, a bunch of decisions have been made and some turned out well, some maybe not so well. And the question now is, at least for me, is how do we learn from that? What do we do different next time? What do we do the same next time? What should we be thinking about as we plan our next hunt or our next sit or what the hell we're gonna do in one I'm gonna talk about some of these things with Janice, and I want to hear his thoughts. But before that, I want to lay out some ideas that I want all of us to keep in mind as we listen to you, honest, and that I'm hoping that you can try to put into action for yourself when all this is over. So, as I mentioned, I've been doing a bunch of reading on this UM. A couple of the most interesting books on this topic were written by a woman named Annie Duke, and she's a former professional poker player who has then applied a bunch of the decision making strategies and analyzes from poker, um and and and taking all that and apply it to the business world in other places. So she's got some really interesting ideas. I'm gonna share some quotes and ideas from her books UM for reference if you do want to take a look at these. The books are one titled Thinking and Bets Making Smarter Decisions when you don't have all the facts, and then secondly how to Decide Simple Tools for making better decisions. Some good books here. I definitely recommend them. UM. So let's get into a couple of ideas here. I think it's I think it's fair to say that one of the keys to getting better after and you know, an unfilled tag or a failed hunt, right, it's it's learning from them. If that's the case, we need to understand what can help us learn from an experience or hunt and what keeps us from doing that. And there's a couple of things that Annie talks a lot about in these books that keep us from learning, keep us from being able to accurately judge our decisions, and they're something that are referred to as cognitive biases, and basically cognitive biases a fancy word for a mental shortcut that our brains make to kind of make life easier. There there are ways that the brain kind of jumps to assumptions that oftentimes they're right, but sometimes they're not, and they can lead to mistakes and are thinking. The first one of these is something you've heard me mention a few times this season as I've been thinking about this, since it's called resulting and resulting, you know, I'll quote the definition here from the book is is the tendency to look at whether a result was good or bad to figure out whether a decision was good or bad. So, in other words, it makes you think you know something about the quality of decision because you know of the outcome. So because this bad thing happened, my decision was bad. Or because this good thing happened, my decision was good. But sometimes that's not the case. So for example, let's say I make a decision to hunt a certain tree based off a bunch of stuff, trail campis win direction and observation so on. But then the hunt progressive and I see the buck I was targeting and he moved a hundred yards away. Now, given that result, it would be easy for me to say, well, that was a bad decision to hunt from this tree because the buck was a hundred yards away. It didn't kill him, So bad decision because of that bad outcome. But maybe it was a damn good decision based off everything I knew, But it was just outside factors or luck the influenced where that buck was and kept the outcome from matching that good decision. Right, there was a whole bunch of different potential outcomes, even though it might have been a really good decision to be there based off what I knew. If we give into this tendency to focus just on that result and let the result dictate how we judge our decisions a k A resulting excuse our ability to learn from those experiences. And here's another one of these tendencies that we humans have that mess up our ability to learn, and it's called hindsight bias, and this is the tendency to believe that an event after it occurs was predictable or inevitable, something happens, and then after it happened, we will sometimes say, well, of course it happened. Um, it's that whole hindsight kind of thing. So for example, we decided to go sit the corner oak tree on a hunch and a big buck comes rolling through and when you get a shot, and after that happens, you look back on it, and you know, the power of hindsight bias will make a lot of us jump to the conclusion that, yeah, of course it happened. I sat there because you know, there's two trials that came together, and yeah, it worked out just like I planned it. I knew, I knew this is gonna be. Where would happen, right, I know you all have a buddy who will tell you the story. And man, just like I called it, I knew it was gonna happen. But in reality, yeah, it did happen. But there are plenty of other outcomes that are possible. This time it panned out. But if we're being honest with ourselves and if we honestly think through our decision process and how we execute on it, was it really just right? Or we may be giving ourselves a little bit too much credit sometimes, And if we do that too often, if we start patting ourselves on the back too often, if we look at things say well, of course that happened that way, sometimes that's going to start impacting our future decisions too. Now, the same thing can be said on the flip side, when the outcomes didn't go our way and you see the buck traveling off in the distance and you tell yourself, dang it, I should have known that. Of course you'd be over there. But really, you know, this hindsight bias is something we've got to watch out for. So these two little mental shortcuts resulting in hindsight bias, these things can mess with our ability to learn from experiences. Um, you know, they can keep us from analyzing a hunt clearly or or learning from a decision clearly. So here are two things to think about that can that can help us battle that, I guess, and I'm gonna I'm gonna read two quotes here from one of these anti Duke books that I think are are pretty key. Here. Number one, what makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision the result of a good process. So thinking about the process, not the outcome, but the process. And then number two, to assess the quality of a decision and to learn from experience, you need to evaluate your state of mind honestly and recall what was noble and what was not noble as accurately as possible. So one of the keys to determining decision quality or you know, learning something from a hunter and experience, is to think more about the decision process than the actual outcome, clearly remembering and identifying what did I know as I was trying to make that decision? What did I know? What did I not know? What couldn't I have known? And being able to separate those two things from you know, the future and from what the actual outcome was, And then you have to think about, you know, Okay, this is what I knew, this is what I couldn't have known. Now what was the whole process given what I knew, now that I've had time to thoroughly think it through. Did I use that information to put myself in the right position? And then did I execute on that decision and that idea the way that it could have Did I just not have enough information or did I have the right information? But I just got lazy or tired or sloppy. This this step here, this idea of reflecting back on your hunts and thinking through not just the outcomes of your time, but the process you took. I think that is what's actually going to help us get better. And here's the real kicker though, in a really important point that I think Annie makes, and it's it's so true when it comes to hunting. She says, a lot of experience can be an excellent teacher, but a single experience not so much. Think about that. Let me say it again. A lot of experience can be an excellent teacher, but a single experience not so much. So so one single hunt, one single decision, one single outcome that ship can will you. Sometimes things happen because he made a great decision, But sometimes things happen because of good luck, or on the flip side, because of bad luck. If we focus too much on any one single data point or one single experience, or risk of being fooled by randomness. But if if on the you know, on the flip side, we focus on the entirety of our experiences or the averages, the trends, the overall some of our progress. I think that's when we can start getting a more clear and honest picture of what's happening and how our changes in process are either helping or hurting us. So here's what I want you guys to try to do, if you're willing to play along with me, here a little bit, while you listen to J Honest and I break down his hunt. Don't just listen to his story, but also try to listen for examples of this resulting or listen for examples of hindsight bias, you know, as the Honest is discussing what he's doing, you know, listen to his decision making process and how he interpreted the outcomes he saw, and use this as a little bit of a aisle run for your own future reflections. I didn't tell you Honest about any of this kind of stuff, leaving up to do it. So he's just recounting what happened and questioning his decisions and all that just naturally. Um And it's a fun story on its own, but I think it's it's it's interesting to hear how he worked all of this and then think about that through the lens of what I just told you. These these tools, these biases to watch out for, and these these ways to think through things a little bit differently. So when you're done listening to the to the story, the next time you've got a long car ride, or maybe on your next morning run or during a long shower, try to apply a little bit of this thinking to your own hunting season or maybe your most recent hunting trip. Think through the decisions you made and the outcomes that came from those, and then the conclusions you drew from. Push yourself to consider whether or not resulting or hindset bias might have clouded your vision a little bit. Try to pick apart that process and be honest about it. Be honest about what you could have known in the moment and what you couldn't have. Tried to remove the stuff that you discovered later, like yeah, the big buck jumped the string and you missed him, or yeah, the big buck came out over here, or yeah the neighbors there was fifteen neighbors hunting on the other property, and you know that stuff after your decisions, But try to think about what did you know in the moment when you were deciding what to do and when you were actually doing it, And also then think about not just one single moment or experience or decision, but the some of those experiences. So we're not going to be fooled by one single data point, We're not gonna be fooled by randomness, and we're gonna look at the sum of the whole. And then after all that, after all that thinking and reflecting and picking things apart a little bit, I think then you can have some useful, clear, uh takeaways. And my one thought on that is to is to try to focus your takeaways to just maybe one or two things. Um, At least for me, it can be easy to you know, look back on my hunt. Let's say, look back on my hunt for Tram. Right, you've heard me talk about that and reflect on that, and I could sit here and I could list off like three, four or five six different things that I learned from this hunt, and that maybe, you know, I want to incorporate into future hunt so that I want to change the different takeaways some lessons learned. Um. If you do that, though, it's really easy to get overwhelmed by all that and then none of it stick. On the flip side, if you can focus on just one or two things and say, okay, from this hunt or this season. These are my two big takeaways. These are the two things I want to get better at, or that I want to do different, or that I have to remember for next time around. If you can have it focused there, you've got a much better chance of actually being able to take action on them and to actually do something with It's like a New Year's resolution, right, If you've got fifteen New Year's resolutions, you're not gonna keep any of them. But if you've got one of them and it's achievable and actionable and clear, then you got a chance. So so that's that's my that's my homework for you. I guess um. I know you sure as hell didn't want homework from me, so sorry about that. But but if you're if you're game for this, try to come up with a couple of things. Keep it tight, keep it actionable, keep it achievable, and write it down. You know, And maybe this is something that's best done at the end of the year, when your whole hunting season is done, but maybe maybe not write down this couple of things, and you know, leading into one, you've got something to work with. You've you've been able to take a clear look at what you did. You're able to have a clear, accurate and honest understanding of your process and have a few actionable items to think about or two to move on. So there you go. It's a lot to think about there. I realize, UM, maybe I lost a couple of you, But for those of you that are still here with me, I think and I hope that this is going to be a helpful frame work for us to have in place as we dive into this conversation with Joannice. Um, So there you go. I think enough of me rambling, Let's just get into Jannice the story, think about these things, enjoy this, and uh, I hope you find it helpful. All right with me on the line now, is my buddy Janice tell us Janni thanks for thanks for joining here on the show. No, thanks for taking the time to uh make me a better white tail hunter. Mark. Well, I gotta tell you it has been it's been fun seeing you kind of get re excited about white tails this year and getting these random text messages and phone calls from you picking my brain about this thing or that, because I'm not used to that from you, and uh, I'm I'm digging it. And I'm hoping you're gonna keep keep on the white tail train. So are you feeling like it's going to continue? Or was this a one and done? No, for sure, as long as they when I say they, you know that the powers that be. Uh, if I did a good enough job with my white tail hunt this year and made some good entertaining content, then hopefully they will let me do it again next year. And uh, yeah, I think I plan on being back in the on the same ground for well, that's something we can talk about. I don't know if it'll be the same dates, um, but roughly during that somewhere in that three week peak white tail period, I'd like to be back, um, hanging in hanging off out of a tree for you know, a solid week or so for sure. So what I wanted to do here, uh was, you know, basically take a conversation I think you and I wanted to have anyways, which was hearing about how your hunt went, and you know, kind of dissecting and maybe doing it almost an autopsy of the experience and what were you thinking leading up to it, what happened during the hunt itself? Um, you know where the things you could have done differently where the things you did. I kind of want to walk through the whole hunt, your whole experience, kind of diving back into the white tail thing after you've been somewhat removed from it over the past couple of decades, and in seeing if not only can you learn something from this hunt, but maybe there's some opportunities to help everybody else learn how to kind of dissect their own experiences, because this is something I'm always trying to do myself. And you've heard some of my past podcast you hear me lots of times trying to analyze what I was thinking at a given moment, or did I make the right decision here? Should I have done something differently? And at least for me, I kind of geek out about this constant fine tuning and polishing of what I'm trying to do. UM. And I hope that's something that people can take away from this and do themselves. So this seems like a perfect case study. UM. And then the goal would hopefully be that you come out of this having found something valuable too. Uh So are you are you game for that? For me to just start picking it away at everything you did and see what we can and fine, oh yeah, please please. Like I said before we started recording, I think I'm gonna get more out of this than uh than your listeners. Um, but hopefully it's of equal value to both them and me. But yeah, man, have at it. Well, let's set it up a little bit, because right you grew up having done some white tail hunting and then you headed out west and started chasing all sorts of other things. Can you just lay the groundwork as far as what those early white tail experiences were, like, how did what did you have coming into this from your past? Yeah, so you know I started hunting white sales. I don't know. I probably started sitting in the blind with my dad at ten or so, and I think I could hunt at twelve. I can't remember which state was which. What is it in Michigan now to over fourteen, it's it's it's removed. Now if you've got a mentor with you, you can start hunting super young. But it used to be I think thirteen with a bow, twelve with the bow, the two of the guns, something like that, and you right about that age, I started, you know, carrying it going a few years later, I got a bow, started shooting a bow a little bit, and it's hard to put an exact number on it, but definitely there was a couple of falls before I left, because I left Michigan when I was eighteen, I believe, to move out to Colorado, So there was probably two or three falls there where you know, I probably spent a dozen days or you know, haunts in a tree stand on my own with the boat. UM, took a few shots, never killed one. UM over the years, I don't know, killed probably ten does and then three four small you know, basket rack, Michigan special box and UM, I know Wisconsin I killed like a crotchet horn was my first buck in Wisconsin, and I think I was probably sixteen ish when I killed that. UM. So as much as I say like I grew up white tail hunting, you know, I think I left right as at the point in time where I could have gotten kind of real serious about it. And I know some people get more serious earlier, but UM for me, I think, you know, roughly at the age of eighteen, I probably could have started, you know, really you know, focusing in on it, and I just was was gone. You know. So there's some white tail experience, but it's definitely limited. And then over the course of the next twenty years, I would go back probably every three or four years to Wisconsin and just haunt the gun opener and then the following two days, um, all on the same property that I hunted this year for a full seven days. So um, there's definitely some familiarity. But I think one thing I learned this week, like big time, is just how you know the different levels of familiarity. Right, you think you sort of know a place, and then and spending a whole week there like just pounding it, I just have a whole different view on it now, you know what I mean. Yeah, And you and I were talking the other day about how, you know, just going from being in a situation that you're typically in out west in Montana or Colorado or wherever, chasing elk, mule deer, all the stuff you've been doing over the last twenty years. You obviously have you know, developed a real level of expertise doing that stuff. But then you go back to something you did a long time ago, and it's it's a little bit humbling being put in a slightly different position now. Right when you headed back to Wisconsin taking on this you know, hunting in a different kind of way, bow hunting during the rut, pounding it for seven days. What was that like for you? Just going from something you're super comfortable with tow now back in a different type of situation and kind of I don't know if I wanted to say you were I'm not sure exactly what the right word would be, but but in outside your comfort zone in a weird way, I guess yeah. I mean I think mostly what I noticed they were that was that I just I lacked the confidence in decision making, you know, because even though I haven't done a lot of it. Um, you know, I spent a couple of years ago, you and I hunted in Michigan kind of on the same hunt, and I spent you know, three or four days in a tree stand. Although I hadn't really like picked locations there. We kind of showed up and you were like, yeah, I go sit here. Um, because I didn't really have to do much of the homework. But um, yeah, it was just like the lack of confidence, Like when I'm in the woods out here out west, I just sort of have like, like, I know him maybe not making the right decision, but I have confidence in my decision and I go and execute on it and you know, let the chips fall. But that week in Wisconsin this year, I'll just constantly just battling my in my head like should I stay? Should I go? You know, just this classic fomo of fear missing out of what's going on over the next ridge, and should I give it some more time or should I not? Is it too indeed to be on a ridge top? Um? Is if I go off the ridge top, is the wind gonna suck? You know? Um? So yeah, because these days with so much information out there, you know, listening to all your podcasts and listening and watching the hunting public guys, um you know, reading stuff, there's just so much out there that you sort of like gain like us like going into it before you get your boots on the ground. You kind of have a false sense of confidence, especially when you got twenty trail cameras out and you've got like, you know, six or more like I'm happy to shoot kind of bucks. And then you all of a sudden you have to put it all, you know, put the boots on the ground and make it happen. And then you realize that like, oh, it's not gonna be that easy. It's just like everybody makes it sound like on every podcast. Yeah, So so set me up with the place. This is somewhere that you have hunt in the past, but never like this. This is somewhere Wisconsin. Kind of paint the scene a little bit for what you were heading into. Yeah, we're up in and kind of like pretty central, like over by Eau Claire across are kind of the two nearest bigger towns. Um. What's interesting about his property is that it lacks any real agriculture. Like we have a couple of small fields that are on the neighbors on one side of us, but other than that, it's just all big oak woods, you know, and it's been it's been managed, you know, had you know, cuts done on it over the years, and so you have you know, like the poplar and and uh maple, you know, kind of younger thickets you know here and there. Um, but there's just there's it lacks that edge habitat. You know that if I was gonna go and like just pick a place to go hunt, I would like find a place that had a lot of edge habitat, right, because it seems like like deer like it and also seems like a good place to ambush deer is on those edges. Um, and it's got a live topography for white tailed country. I mean it's not quite the you know, white tail country of Montana, but like it's got ridges that go two to three feet up from the bottom and definitely has stuff that's deep enough to you know that that you could ski. And it's sort of just like this interconnected woven it's either you can say that the ridges are connected or the bowls are connected, you know, through saddles, however you want to look at it. But like a lot of ups and downs, a lot of little finger ridges popping off the main ridges. Uh. It's a place where when you're taking the ridge out, you know before Onyx, where there's a lot of times where if you you know, take the finger ridge down too early and don't walk the extra if you're seventy five yards to stay on the main ridge, you know, you end up going into a hell hole and having to walk around another ridge versus taking an easy way home, you know what I mean. Um, it can just you know, and it it all looks the same. We have it so easy for navigating out west. Uh, you know, big mountains, it's just easy to you know, know which way is downhill and which way to go, and when you get into you know, um, not that this train is flatter, but it's just more covered in vegetation, I guess. So it's always it's harder to just see, you know, around you and just kind of go, oh, yeah, there's the you know sun in the south or whatever. Um. So anyways, yeah, big ridges, big balls, all hardwoods, um and UM I also want to say about it, Um, is there anyone hunting other than you? I mean, there's a pretty good group of guys at all hunted over rifle season, um, you know, and this year it's in the last couple of years some of the only fellas have retired, so that this year they actually put in uh two weekends over rifle season. But otherwise no nobody really hunting it for for both season. UM. I mean every now and then, you know, someone might come and put a day or two in, but it's fairly unmolested. Okay, So then what about fo acres is about what I had access to. So then what was the game or what was the prep work that you put into it leading up to the hunt. We're able to come out and scout or do anything in the spring or summer or was this you know your dad hung some cameras and then you came right out during this actual hunt. Yeah, so I didn't get to make it out there. I tried thought about it. Um, in retrospect, I think it's like there's some things I could have done. I don't know if I would have done these things that would now do if with a trip in the summertime. But um, yeah, so I didn't make it. So really I just poured over you know, the topography layer on on X probably more than anything as far as like digital scouting goes, and just really try to just from what I know from like general dear movement on this property and then really just try to fine tune it and look and like pick my saddles because like everybody knows, right like rich country, it just seems like saddles, you know, our our places where deer travel, you know. So I just really try to bear down on those and figure out, you know, where I should try and you know, set some you know, set of stand up. Now my dad did hang I don't know, approximately twenty cameras. I think we had like eight of the Moultrie um cell cameras and then a dozen or so of just the the standard cameras. UM. He did most of the work on the ground. UM. I kept asking him to find me like the thickest bedding cover, and it was something that just never really material materialized that in him. I've kind of realized that my dad at seventy, you know, I can have a long list along to do list, and m he's only got so much energy, you know what I mean, So like where you and I could go and cover seven miles and pretty much cover the whole place and be like all right, here's the you know four main really thick looking betting areas. You know that that took all summer and more UM to get out of him. So he did pre set um I think six or seven tree stands for himself, UM, which I wasn't too worried about. I mean, I helped him pick locations and again we used just historical you know data, and then and then just where we had seen a lot of activity you know from the cameras UM. And then you know, he picks he picked whatever it was six or seven spots to set up his tree stands. The guys from River's Edge actually came out and helped him, just like they helped you on the back forty two uh, to set up the stand. So that was super nice of him. Yeah, huge help with the assembly of some of those things, that's for sure. Um, for sure, it takes some time. So that was it. Man. I wouldn't really call it a lot of like prep work, you know. I was counting on you know, having some at least having an an inventory idea of of what we had with the cameras and knowing what was there and what, um, mostly just so I would know like, oh, okay, like there are no big bucks, you should just shoot the first basket six you run into, or like oh no, there are enough like what looked to be three to four year old deer too. I could hold out and try to get shot at one of them, you know. Yeah, so so walk me through where you're dead. Ended up putting some of these trail cameras. I know you and I had some discussions through the summer, um, but well what ended up being the plan for where those were placed to get you that inventory? Um, well, what happened with the cell cameras we quickly realized that you can't just put those anywhere, you know, if you don't have the best coverage, right. And I definitely seemed like we just had to be up on the You could be like halfway up a hill and get decent, you know, reception, but if you had them on the ridge top, they were going to be working the best. Um. So we basically did you know what what from what he could tell in the moment, you know. And again he was setting them in the summertime, so it's really hard to set in the summertime when the woods don't look like they're gonna look you know, come October November, you know. Um. But I had a couple of spots where like historically I knew they there's a bunch of scrapes. Um. He would set them there. Um. Sometimes he just like you know, was walking and just you know, I was like, all right, here's two trails, like you know, come across the saddle. I'm gonna put one here. Um, Like I said, a lot of them we put in locations that we wanted, but we ended up having to move them. We definitely put a couple down where we do have that little bit of edge habitat where where like our woods, about the neighbors agriculture and he had beans and uh corn um and then otherwise. Yeah, just like you know, I kept telling him, just trying to you know, when you're walking the boundary or walking, you know, walking the road, just look for where there's a lot of tracks crossing the road, you know, and put one up there. So um, yeah, that's I guess that was our tactic for where to set them and okay, walk me through and what you ended up discovering? Did you find out what you're wanting to find all those cameras? Yeah. What was really interesting is that early on, like for most of the summer, like I'd say, like well even well into October, it was as if there were no Bucks living there. Like I was quite kind of surprised. I was like, there was like literally nothing, especially nothing mature. Um. And I think that sometime in September we finally got like us ten point and it was like I don't know, points like sweet, like there's one. You know. It was amazing is that like whatever whatever tripped them in October when they finally started moving, and I'm guessing just had to do with the scrapes because all of a sudden, like we had one camera. It was funny. It wasn't just bucks. There was one camera my dad had set up on a place that he named like mouse Meadow, and I forget the reasoning behind it, but like it's it's an old scrape that's been there for whatever as long as he remembers. So he's like, yeah, I put it up on this old scrape. And I was getting to the point where I was gonna tell him he yanked the camera because like literally we had zero deer on this thing at all, and then all of a sudden, something change and there was doze box, doze box, doze box, like every single day hitting this scrape and coming down this ridge like to to this scrape. Uh So that was like, that was very interesting, and that happened in a lot of places. Um, Like I was telling you earlier, Like I had a spot where I kept telling him like please, there's like there's like a ridge where you almost kind of go through a little tunnel of like just like real early growth, successional growth. You know, I don't know if it's Pulper's maples whatever that are have grown in and it's probably been five to ten years, and it's kind of like you go through a tunnel almost. It's so it's so thick on this ridge top, you know, and we've got to cut open just as a trail, and right when it pops out, you kind of you're on a kind of a three way where the ridge is intersect and there's always you know, scrapes there and I had n't put one up there, and the same thing there for like but when we finally put it up there, that was getting towards the end of the summer, but still two weeks nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, And then all of a sudden, sometime in October, it was like scrape time and there was just constant activity in that zone. And that was one of the big things that I've learned. And then obviously I learned that there were more bucks, like more shooter type bucks around than than you know, we had we had previously thought, you know, how many do you think? Mm hmm. I think we had like trying not to count the neighbors, because the neighbors sent me some pictures too of bucks that we never even got pictures of, but we probably had like two or three ten points two eights We had one that we called the straight eight because he just had these main beams that just like we're out and then went just straight out in front of his nose, no more curb, you know, no more cur up or in, just like straight out. And then we had another one that we called like the big eight, and he just had a little bit bigger frame and the main beam that like curved and it curved up at the end, curbed up so much that it would almost make him look like a ten in some pictures, you know, because the main beam would kind of throw you off because it kind of pointed upward. Um. And then uh, we had one kind of non typicals, you know, I don't know, I'd i'd call him a giant. We never never got to see him in daylight. It was only on nighttime pictures, but it was like, I don't know, he had plenty of little stickers and points, and he's a he's a big giant buck, you know, definitely like a you know, one fifty plus kind of buck. Um. So I don't know, i'd say at least six maybe eight bucks that I would be like super happy to shoot. You know, what what did you think about? And maybe maybe this isn't the case. I don't know how you guys did things back when you're guiding elk hunts and stuff. But was this interesting situation going to a hunt knowing like, Okay, these are the bucks that I can probably expect to see, and you you sort of were setting expectations based on that. Um. Did that feel different compared to when you head out into Colorado or the mountains of Montana or something, don't really know what's up there? Um? Or what? Was this not too different and you were just gonna kind of set your goals as you went. Yeah, I mean, I just I wasn't. I wouldn't say I was like hunting particular bucks because I just I quickly realized that man, I just didn't have it dialed in enough to be like, oh, yeah, the you know, the Big eight is always running this ridge or he's been seeing here a bunch, or this is his favorite travel route and maybe this is where he bets. Like. I didn't have any really thoughts like that, So I was going out there just thinking like, Okay, I'm gonna just like, shoot, you know something that looks more like he's two, three four years old and not a one year old, you know, and um, there's plenty of them out there that I should have an opportunity in seven days behind Yeah, okay, so do you? I mean, it was cool to know that there was like some big box roaming around, but I definitely wasn't like zeroing in on one of them. What about that big giant buck though I know that that got you a little excited. Was there any part of you that when you started hunting, you were thinking, Man, should I should I be patient these first couple of days because there's this this super big guy out here, or or were you honestly that realistic from day one and you were thinking, ah, he's probably not around. Well, I will say, because like we rolled in in the evening, I didn't really have like a spot set for the morning. And then one of the few spots where like I have walked it and been there enough where I literally knew, like I could go in there in the dark and probably get into a tree without a lot of commotion. The first morning it was in the area where we had picked him up on camera. So like, certainly the first morning I kind of was drawn, you know, you know, towards his his little zone where we would pick up on camera. Um, but man, just like yeah, I said, I guess I was pretty realistic then because I just knew that I just didn't have enough like data to be like, Okay, I'm gonna sit here for seven days and it's gonna happen, you know. Yeah, we'll walk me through what you did. Then let's let's let's just here the day by day. And I'm kind of curious from you not only tell me what you did, but I'm also curious if you can remember, like what your thought process was when you were choosing what to do, or what were the things you were struggling with, Like did you have questions like were you struggling to think what the hell should I do on day one? Um? That would be interesting and then we can kind of walk through and I might pick some of those things apart as we go. Sure, So that was open and morning, and I want to say that I saw I saw too deer like just cutting cutting through the woods kind of at a quick pace, and it was hard to tell it like if a bok was chasing a dough like they were that far off you know where it was just flashes and I got my binoculars up and never really couldn't identify them. Um, but that was all I saw all morning, and so I decided to pull out and then go to a place that's called the Oak Flat. And the Oak Flat like I didn't have a camera up there, but it was. It's basically it borders a neighbor, and the neighbor had just like in the last two years, I think, pretty much clear cut, like a like a forty acre chunk, right, And I just figured that that clear cut would for for multiple reasons in my head, would be holding dear whether it was just young and thick, so they'd be betting in there. Maybe there'd be some like enough sunlight getting to it where there would be some forage that they'd want to be eating on. And so I decided to go hunt this oak flat, which is on top of a ridge. And I get in there and I actually bump two does like right when as I'm basically on the oak flat kind of looking for a tree to to set up in, and I'm thinking, all right, that's like a decent sign, right, There's like they were probably betted here or they were just feeding here off this edge, I don't know, but they didn't bump too hard. They just kind of scampered off and you know, didn't really know what it was. So I don't know if if they just barely caught a whiff of me or what. But um, this oak flat has so that was like off to one side was this clear cut, but it also has like probably maybe like a ten year old cut on another side of the flat, like coming off the steep ridge, which is super thick, and the wind was blowing kind of out of that ten year old cut thick stuff up onto the oak flap. So as I'm the oak flats maybe I don't know, hundred yards wide or so ish, and I just in my head, I thought, Man, if a buck comes up onto this oak flat and he's cruising and checking like a betting area, he's going to calm like closer to this thick stuff then farther away from it, because he'll just be right on top of it, you know, trying to smell what's down in there. Maybe, so I set up, like if you divide it into thirds, probably a third of the way closer to like this thick edge that dropped off, and I could still see the whole oak flap um, you know, in the other directions, so you know, it felt good. It was a good tree with. What I found interesting too is like just learning how to pick trees like quickly, you know, when you're when your saddle n ng um. Yeah. These like in this big oak forest and on like an oak flat like that where it's like a lot of mature trees and the leaves were like gone. Like you get up there and man, there is not a lot of cover, you know, so you're like looking for ones that have a couple of extra branches poking out maybe, or looking for one that is next to a white pine that you know might break up your slhouette a little bit. This one, actually I did have a nice white pine next to me kind of in my like no shooting lane, which was perfect. Well anyways, um, I think I have a like a forking hornbuck come in maybe I don't know, an hour before dark, Um I catch. I think one of those does up and feeding again out in that clear cut that's brand new, and then like fifteen minutes left to go before dark, up onto the oak flat flat pops up like I think it was the straight eight. It's like nice eight point buck. I'm like sweet, you know, like from whatever distance. It was less than a hundred yards. I cannoculars, I can be like, oh yeah, sweet, but you're bot And he kind of came. He was actually paralleling walking. He's kind of coming up out of a bowl. And then his path was paralleling that the fresh new cut was on one side of him, and then the kind of the that the ten year old cut was on the other side of him. It was he on top of the ridge or sidehilling. Well, he came, he came straight up out of a bowl and then popped right up on top of the ridge. He got up there. And then for whatever reason, instead of like as soon as he popped up, taking a right like I thought he would, and then coming along that edge that would have brought him, you know, right into like where I was hoping that he would walk and he would continue to basically sent check that super thick stuff that he had kind of come out of it. But but he had kind of come off the edge of it, you know what I mean, Like he didn't seem like he had come right out of the thickest part of it, you know, just knowing what was below me. Well, when he pops up on the oak flap, my wind is, you know, pretty much going the same direction. He's traveling right. So if he takes it right, immediately he's gonna come across the wind and never cash my wind. But for whatever reason, he goes almost across the Oak flat and gets like down wind, but he's we're still here, I still have like a parallel wind. And then he then he takes the right and basically comes and then you could tell he was he had actually turned and was gonna come back across the Oak Flat to I don't know where he was going to go at that point. At this point I was guessing, but he had made the turn and then literally as he made the turn to come back towards me, and this is probably I don't know when he popped up. He was probably sixty yards and then he went stayed at roughly sixty yards maybe seventy, made that turn and then was gonna come back towards me. But at that point he caught my and caught my wind, and that was it. It's so funny because you're watching, You're like, oh, yeah, these big bucks are gonna be so stupid. It's November five, you know, I'll get away with everything. It's like, well, you get away with everything except for when they smell you. Yeah. So do you looking on that then that night, given what you knew, if you took the fact of what he actually did, but do you feel like you were set up in about the best place you could have been given the information available, or after watching that night, did you learn something that would have change your thought process next time around up there? Mm hmm. Man, it's a tough call. You know. We saw I sat that oak flat probably at least three more hunts, three or four more hunts. That's probably like the one spot that I spent the most time in because I was having, um, you know, continual success there right, Like I was at least seeing deer there, even if it wasn't like a mature buck. Um. And one of the following days when I set up, I set up probably thirty forty yards more down wind. It was interesting. We had a south wind pretty much the whole week, which was hot week, wasn't it. Yeah, very very very warm. Um. I think a lot of people battled that in the Upper Midwest that first week of our November this year. Um. But yeah, it was just like the south wind. So a lot of my planning in my head, you know, and I was like looking at saddles and and just like thinking about where to put stands. Everything in my head was like, well, you're gonna set up for a west wind, because that's just gonna be like more than likely what you're gonna be dealing with, you know. And so that really threw me off was to constantly have to go in there like, Okay, no, it's gonna be south wind. South wind, you know. And so the when I set up consequently, I was I was setting up more down wind. And I think every deer that pretty much came onto that flat, like I would have gotten close to getting a shot on him, you know. Um, but the flat is just big enough, you know what I mean, where you can't cover it all if you decide to set up like on the actual down wind side, you know. Um, and a lot of these like where these ridges break off and fall off. If you get right on that edge and the winds blowing anything more than four or five miles an hour, I feel like that your winds kind of getting blown out into I don't know, just like the universe, as opposed to like kind of falling down the hill, you know, what I mean. Yeah, you'll blow overtop anything right that comes close. Yeah, so you're almost like getting the best of both worlds because even if something comes up the hill down wind of you, it's a really good chance that your winds blowing over the top of them. Right. So anyways, Yeah, that's what I did. The following sets, Um and I had like a I forget what it was. It's like either either a fork at horn or maybe like a real small six that that I messed around when he came in and um, one of those talks that really anxious right like comes by once didn't make it within raine, So I let him get to like, you know, just where I could barely see him, grunted at him. Then he came all the way back, came went down wind of us, definitely could tell he was smelling us, and then came right back under the tree again asking for trouble. Yeah, asking for trouble. But it was early in the hunts. I'm like, I'll let you go. It's gonna get better. Man. What what about? What about you know? Send control? Is that something you did? You run the Western route, which is just play the way and don't worry about stuff. Or did you try to adopt some of the white tail fanatic approach and do some stuff to minimize a little What did you do on that front? Uh, not too much. A couple of bottles of this sent away. We're kicking around, you know, we would spray ourselves, you know, periodically we left. We did leave our hunting clothes outside. You know, we wore rubber boots um while we hunted. But and you know, being that like it's two of us, right because we're videoing it, and the fact that we were like doing some pretty serious walk and it wasn't like mega hikes, but like you know, a solid like fifteen twenty minute hoof in the dark is definitely enough to like, you know, if you're not dressed properly, if you've got too me clothes on, you're gonna get lathered up a little bit. So Um I was. And you know what, I can't tell if it or not, because anytime like a deer got directly down wind, um, it seemed like they were onto me. You know. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really hard with the camera. I definitely agree with that. I feel like if I do everything just as best as I possibly can, when I'm solo, I can maybe get away with it thirty percent of the time, you know, thtcent times something like that. The rest of the time I'm getting winded, but I get away with it a few times. But when you've got another person up there with all the additional possibilities that come with that, it's it's really hard. Although we definitely had a few, uh examples this year on the back forty where we at least got deer that were confused. Um, but I'm running things even you know, further than what you described with also using ozone too, but with two guys in the tree, both of us being super serious and in having what's it's called ozonics machine, so it blows some ozone out there, which foils things up a little bit more. Even we had a couple of times where bucks would get down wind of us and know something was up, but not enough that they buggered out of there right away. And actually that was the buck I end up killing on the back forty. That happened on the very first night of our hunt. He got down wind and was just, yeah, I don't love it, but there's a bunch of doughs around and I'm more interested in that, and so it's it's one of those things that sometimes it can help, sometimes it doesn't. But I don't know. It's it's for me. I usually air on the side of I'd rather do too much too than too little. But I don't know. It's tough with the caraman. Like you said. I digress though. Another thing on the this first night's hunt, you talked about getting into this oak lot and trying to pick a tree, and how so many of them lack cover. Did you find yourself having to sacrifice at all on the spot you want to be to get cover? Because this is like a thing I'm always battling with. Do you pick the tree that is in a slightly less than ideal location but it's got great cover and you know you're not gonna get busted. Or do you get in the perfect location in a subpart tree where it's you know, a little more risky, but you're in this spot. What did you have to do in this time? In this example? You know, I got lucky and there was there was enough good solid oaks to climb up there, and like I said, just a couple, like a little smattering of white pines. Um It seemed to work. We even had like I think the second tree we chose for the for the follower following sits, it had like a nice v right at you know the height that we were setting up. You know. Also it gave us a little bit more cover. Um. But yeah, just in general throughout the week, you're definitely weighing that a lot, you know, along with I mean, I don't know if you want to get into that now, but like just the prep that goes into you know, picking your spot, you know, and how much that ways into which tree you're going to get into, Because you can get into one where there's you know, almost zero you know shooting lanes needed to cut and just a few limbs on the way up. Um, but it's like way too open, right. But then if you go ten yards over, you know, to get a little bit more cover, the next tree that's you know whatever, yeah, just giving you more cover. All of a sudden you got like you went from four shooting lanes down to one and it's not the best one, um, And then you've also got to cut you know, twenty limbs and make a racket going up the tree. A lot of that did you find yourself airing towards one of those extremes of the other man. No, not really, It's just because again it's like, you know, days are short, you know you ye, we would I would sit until you know, never came down, probably earlier than like ten thirty eleven, And so if you sat to like one, it's getting dark at whatever it was five thirty, and so you've only got so much time left, right, so you just have to, like, if you're going to a new spot, there's not let a lot of time to be walking around, and and plus you don't want to walk around too much and stink to place up and so a lot of times I'm just I was probably hasty. Um, And that's something I thought about retrospectively too, is like, but I probably could have done some nights, and I actually did it one night. Is actually because I just wasn't feeling my spot. I just got out of the tree and just kind of sort of still hunted my way up this road where I thought I might intercept something. But there's probably other times where I had like just to set up wasn't right, the wind was wrong or whatever, and I should have just gotten out of the tree and went for a walk. You know, and went and did some still hunting and see if I can make something happen as opposed to just sitting there and cussing the wind. You know, that's hard to do though, hard to bail on a hunt like that. Think it's gonna lay out and it's gonna get good, or you're like the app keeps saying that it's supposed to be straight out, So why is it blowing out of the north on me? Right now? I was tricky in that rich country is and I think that happened to me a couple couple of sets is where I think I was getting like a recirculating wind maybe right, So it's like blowing off the top of a big ridge and then somehow like turning underneath itself and then blowing back against it, like midway right where I was set up. And um, you know, obviously you're like, I'm like looking up this ridge expecting these deer to come down it towards me and the you know, the winds blowing right at it. Um. But yeah, hindsight, you just described all this prep and work it takes to get up in these trees and and moving around and whatnot. This is the first time this this season at least, has been the first year that you've tried using a saddle extensively like this and and been really mobile, um, you know, elevated hunting from new places, hanging sticks up and down, you know, climbing up and down every hunt. What what was that like for you and and your preparation leading up to it. I know you were, you know, practicing in Montana and you did some hunts out there. Just I'm kind of curious where your head's at and now having done it, used it over the course of a of a good rut hunt. Now what what? What kind of prep did you need to make it work? And then when the hunt actually happened did you feel like you were ready for that? How did it go? Yeah? I shot a lot out of it, but I had it set up to where I could just like step up onto a tree and onto the platform and clip in, you know, and shoot. So I felt like I did my homework there. I did my prep and I was ready to ready to shoot out of it. And the way I haven't set up in my house because that doesn't make it sound like I'm getting much of an angle, but I've got a very steep embankment kind of gully at my house. So I would climb a tree that's at the top of it, just like and get two ft off the ground and then shoot down that slope, which so I could shoot these like twenty yard shots that were it would it would be as if though you were like thirty ft up in a tree, right, So very like steep angles, you know. And so I got all that practice in and I've got a full sized deer target. Um, you know, they'll kind of let me see, you know, what those arrows impact like. And because I think a lot of that changes to you know, not I wasn't used to. That is where you know, you actually might have to aim a little bit higher on that animal if you want to strike center of the of the vitals, because as if you just hit the tin ring, but you're shooting from a high in a tree, you're probably just gonna hit one long and go underneath. I get long, you know. But um, otherwise, uh, I probably could have done more, just like trying to get in more haunts, just like actually climbing the trees. Um, but I went with me. I was using those uh timber Ninja, the carbon fiber sticks and with the ropes. Uh initially had sent me the buckles, and then I saw that, like it seemed like everybody was just running ropes and you can just use that very simple cow hitch, and so I just went and bought some I think it was like six mill static rope, and UH put on some chunks. And where I learned there is that like like I think I cut them all at seven ft. Next year I will have probably and I was running four sticks. Next sure, I'll probably run three of them at seven ft or maybe three of them at six ft and then have one that has like maybe ten feet on it. Because a lot of these oaks, that very first step that you attached, like I couldn't even get my arms around it, you know what I mean. And so you don't have enough cord to get around that sucker, You're just gonna you're gonna be s o l and you gotta go pick a different tree, you know, even if that's in the right spot. Um, but yeah, man, I mean it's like it's definitely a little bit of a workout, you know, especially the farther apart you spread your sticks like, um, it takes an effort, and uh, but overall, Man, I enjoyed it. It's definitely like it's sweet to just have the freedom, you know, to go anywhere and any kind of work that you might have, like you know, getting up and down trees. I think it's it's um outweighed by the benefit of just being able to set up anywhere you want. You know, was there any aha moment for you as you start doing it more and more where you had something click with that process that made it easier or that helped you become more efficient? Um? I don't know. Was there any little trick to your system that ended up making things start flowing more smoothly? Mm hmm. Man Again, it's like you kind of as you know, we're kind of set picking trees and making sets for two people, not just one. Um, but I know that just as the week went on, I was much easier and quicker able to visualize, like where do I want my platform? What is my three o'clock that I'm not gonna like like that three o'clock is like that a that the angle or the direction off the clock that you are least likely wanting to take a shot right, um, and sort of visualizing that and setting the sticks up and climbing the tree so that when you get up there, you know, you put your you know, platform exact where it needs to be, and you get in there and you don't get out there and go, oh no, I totally like I'm off by nine degrees and like where the same trail is. It is like not like my best shot angle, you know, or my shot position. So uh, just visualizing that, you know, I started to come together and that was smart, um knowing just like the height of like where you want to put that first step, you know, my steps had those eighters and I could pretty much take a step and like the top of it, I would like pin it to the tree with my forehead and and run it around and then pull and pull my eighter down and with the fact that it would slack a little bit, the slack would come out you know when you when you step on it. That would sort of put it at the right height for me to get my boot into that aid and start climbing. You know, now you're a decent bit taller than then Chris, who is your cameraman. Was he able to was he able to get up the steps you're hanging or do you get the same struggle that my caraman sometimes has with my long legged steps. Now he was fine, he was fine. Um, I would probably even like because what I would do is when you get the first one up and you're like, oh, that's not bad, and it just it's just would seem as though I wouldn't be as confident setting the next steps as far as part using the aider to the maximum advantage as I could. Um. And again, in just these woods and I'm hunting, I feel like getting high is gonna be key, um, both for wind and just for not being detective, because just like so many times, I would just imagine, like I would look through the woods and like whatever seventy yards like down a ridge and be like if I was staying sitting in that tree right now, what would I look like? Then you just imagine that, and you're like there's no cover. Like sure, there's some branches and stuff sticking around, but like unless you're like tucked in behind the trunk of the tree, you're like sticking out, you know what I mean. So you can just not move, you know, and try to blend in. But like if you're moving around in that open canopy, boy, I just you know, I think getting high it is important. So I'll be next year, I'll be trying to, like, you know, get the max distance with those steps and get up a little bit higher. Yeah, you know, probably twenty you know on average, um, and I got we got comfortable there. But you know, when you're not used to that. And even though I shot hanging out of that saddle all summer, it's just like it's a different feeling when you're hanging at twenty Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know. Two things on that On that note, One, you talked about how it was a struggle sometimes get your step, getting your sticks the straps around those bigger tree trunks at the beginning of a tree at the bottom. I've experienced the same thing. And so what I started doing this year, especially because this year I was I took my mobile hunting to a different level. Two, I was moving almost every day, bouncing all over the place. And because of that, what I ended up doing was bringing two screwing steps with me as well, so I would have three sticks and then two screwins that I'm just sticking a pocket on my backpack, so if I ever you know, it ended up being very lightweight and not cumbersome at all. And throwing two screwins into a tree is is fast and easy, and that would get me past the really fat part of a trunk. So then I could be I could be five ft up now or whatever with just two quick screwings that I do from the ground, and then once I got that high up, then the straps would fit around really easily. Um So I essentially had the height of an extra stick and you know, something that just fit right into my pocket. I wouldn't want to do that with fifteen screw ins and do the whole thing that that's a pain in the butt, But just two of them. It was a nice little trick to use in certain situations. Um yeah on the stick and and kind of back to sent We had a dull one morning, and I don't know if it, like if it totally messed up my whole morning hunt. It might have played into there's no way to tell because I can't tell one dough from another, you unless she's got like a one one white eye and one black eye or something. But she came in right, was she as she was supposed to coming cutting across this saddle, and she gets right underneath us. I mean literally underneath us. It wasn't a strong wind now, I had like, I think it was only forecast to be like two or three, right, But it's blown enough where I'm like, I don't think my sense dropping straight down. But she gets next to our tree and catches something. Did she catch us like when we walked in? Was she was that what she was smelling? Or did was she smelling my steps on the tree? I would say both. It's really hard for them not to pick up your ground scent. But then also imagine, you know, whatever was on your boots and your bare hands or your gloved hands. I'm sure the some scent on that, um, you know, as you're going up those steps. And then where were you putting your sticks? Where those in the in the house or those in the bed of the truck. That could be a thing too, So I would guess a combination of both, probably, right. I I have wondered about that too. I keep my sticks and straps outside all the time, or at least in a borrowed or garage. Um, but I have wondered. You know, I know you laughed at me when I was spraying down trail cameras last fall, right, because I was touching those on my bare hands. But I have seen so many times where if I am not wearing gloves and I touched something or I or I walked through a brushy grassy field, and then later in the day I'll see a deer walk through there and when they hit that trail or where they hit where I grabbed a branch and got lazy and didn't you know, I wasn't careful about it. They can pick up on that stuff, so asked. And if it's the wrong dough, you know, and then and it's the dough, there's a buck behind or something when I could ruin everything that one little thing. So I constantly trying to find these little errors like that that I can fix next time. So I'm trying to make sure I'm wearing fully gloved hands when I'm walking in so I don't have to grab and push a branch out of the way that maybe a buck will walk by and smell or those little tiny things can sometimes make the big difference. So, like you said, you don't know if that made a difference in the long run, but it could have. Yeah, Well, so what happens is like she runs off kind of the same way she came. And then like I don't know, a while later, hour, maybe more later down off the saddle in this bottom below me maybe yards like mega crashing and running chasing activity, right, and like the comment or like the sort of like the path of least resistance add this bottom would be up through this saddle that I'm set up in. Well, like I get bits and pieces of deer running around there, and I finally catch a g limb of this box and it's probably the biggest box. That is the very last morning of the hunt, the biggest buck that I've had in my binoculars all the whole hunt. I'm like, wow, like look at that, you know, like there's a mature one. And they run around down there for a little while, and we're far enough away that like I wasn't worried that, like they're picking picking up on us. But eventually, when they're done doing their little thing in that bottom, the dough goes not directly away from us, but definitely like just climbs up and out of this bottom and goes to a high ridge like away from us and not towards us at all. Now I don't know if it was the same dough and if her experience from two hours earlier, you know, like made like affected that decision in that moment. But you know it's in the back of my head that it could have been. Yeah, I hear there. That's that's one of those things you never know what little like It's the butterfly effect. They say that one little butterfly's wings could change everything. I have so many moments as a hunter where I wondered, was that little thing actually what resulted me not getting the shot? Or if I'd done this one small thing different yesterday, could that have changed what happened today? You never know, um, but I do try to consider the possibilities and and so what you did there, you know, consider well that might have been in an impact, that might have been the thing. So so tell me this then, as you sat there that day and we're thinking about well, ship, was that my sticks or my steps that spooked that dough and then led her to go the other direction? Thinking is that being a possibility? Would you have done anything differently now? Or do you think you try to do something differently next time around in any kind of way with your setup or your gear something. Having the fact that yes, you've had a deer that win died something down low on a day like that and maybe screwed your opportunity. I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I mean all of our gear, backpack, sticks, all that stuff, if it was back at the camp, it all stayed outside, like on a deck where it was. It's like a covered deck but open, you know, on three sides, so it's getting plenty of you know, breeze all the time, um, not getting infected with smells from inside. Um. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, what do you do? Carry a bottle of sent Away and just spray down your your sticks as your as you put them on the tree. Probably probably can't do that. Oh that sounds like even more worth than I'm willing to do. But yeah, happy that Like there's like a direct route from camp to this saddle that we had said it up in that would have been you know, ten minute walk, and instead I did like climb the ridge kind of the opposite direction, walked our ridge top and came all the way around and probably took me thirty to forty minutes to come in from the down wind side and not come in where I thought the deer we're gonna be coming to me from and that that seemed to pay off. I think had I had I come through the bottom and straight up into that saddle like those deer that were there in there later in the morning, they wouldn't have you know, they wouldn't have been in there. YEA interesting, Well, that certainly seems like the right way to go about with that access route, at least. You know. One other thing I do, which you know, some people will things over the top, but a lot of things I do are over the top. I guess, um, I spray vanilla extract. It's that there's a company that makes the stuff called nose Jammer. You maybe heard me talk about it, But I do spray a little bit of that on like right by the tree and my first step, um, every time I go up, as just like it's little, you know. Basically, the idea of this stuff is that it's a very strong odor, kind of like the whole cover scent idea. It just kind of overwhelms or roll factory system. And I have seen examples of times when I thought that helped me. And so that is something I do at the base of my tree, just just because you know, that's the spot where there's a lot of human scent pooled at the bottom. Not only do you have your sticks there, but when you're getting set up you know, to head into or to set up your tree stand or set up your sticks, you maybe had to set your backpack on the ground, you have to set your bowl on the ground. You're standing there for a long time as you organize your gear and you get your stuff prepped. So that's that point where there's a lot of potential for contamination. Um, so doing that little sprits of the of the vanilla maybe has held me a few times too, and that might be something worth considering. But everyone's got away. How much junk did they want to take it with him out there? You know? How much do you want to deal with? But that's that's something to consider. Um, I'll definitely have that in my pack next next November. So so rewind me a little bit up because you told me about the first time. Now you just told me about the last time. Talked me through now like day two. It sounds like day two you decided to push to another spot on that same oak flat. Um what else? What else happened after that? I actually haunted the oak flat. The next morning. Um, so day two I was, I was there at the break of dawn, and I think that's I don't know, somewhere around day two or three, like the heat was like overwhelming, and we definitely started realizing that it's like the deer were moving like very early and very late. I can't remember which if that was that morning or if it was a morning after that, but we literally walked in there, red lights going, and there's there's two deer like standing right there on the oak flat, you know, ten yards from the tree. We get up in and so we basically just you know, stood there and let them just kind of feed away. They didn't bump out of there get into the tree. And just as we're finishing setting up, it's still totally dark, like a deer walks, you know, definitely within shooting distance right underneath us and kind of goes the same way the other two went. And then it got light and nothing, you know, like absolutely just dead. Um, and so we just started I definitely still was starting to get the feeling like, man, I gotta like I got a zero in on on something to like get a little bit closer to them, you know, or find the action. So I don't know which day this was, but I did. I did a loop and found like they just cut in a new road where they're gonna get ready to do some uh logging. And so the road was fresh and soft, you know, it's like very sandy soil there. And so this road is covered up in deer tracks and there's like a nice buck track in there. I think I actually sent you the picture of that buck track, and uh so I basically just was like, okay, there's a thicket here near this road. It was basically just to the north side of it, and it was pretty big sized like thicket, like just thick young white pines with like interspersed just brambles and whatnot. It seemed like a really good betting area. And I just went to the downwind side of that and got into the first tree act that I could and climbed in there and set up. Um. Nothing popped that night, like zero deer um. At one point, because I was getting a little frustrated of like not seeing enough action, UM, I just decided to, you know what, instead of like trying to get somewhere and make a decision, you know, in the dark, and just have like a goal, I'm gonna actually wait until it gets light and then leave camp and literally go for a walk in the its until something tells me set up here, whether it's bumping into deer, a whole bunch of tracks, fresh scrape activity, or whatever. Um. Because you know, I heard so much over the over listen to all the podcasts over the months leading up to this about like during the rut, if you're not in the action, then you need to go find the action, right. I kept thinking, Man, if I'm not like seeing or hearing these doughs getting pushed around, or seeing the bucks looking for these dolls, like, I'm just not in the zone. So the morning I did that, it actually as a day as a whole, it worked out good. The morning itself was kind of uneventful, and I think I didn't get into a tree and probably till like I don't know, at least probably two hours after he got daylight. But I got onto a saddle. I mean I had a rough idea of the path I was gonna take, and I get into another saddle and there's a scrape and like in I can't remember, it was in a leaf are just like in a divot in I think it was on a leaf in the scrape, but you could like see fresh piss, you know, on this scrape. Sweet like this is like this is good right saddle and I scrape got some fresh piss in it. So I got into a tree, had a nice white pine next to me. Get in there and I have a dough come in and bed down like I don't know, seventy eight yards from us on the on kind of saddle, but just on the on the least side of it. And I'm thinking, jeez, like this is gonna work out, you know. Well, the whole day goes by nothing nothing, not quite the whole day. But it's getting like mid afternoon, like nothing, no action. I'm like, all right, we're moving. I get down. Chris is still in the tree and no sooner do I like get put my both feet on the ground. He's like there's a book. I'm like, oh my god. Well it turned out to be a small box, but still like a buck. Nonetheless, we let him pass. I'm like, all right, let's see if something shakes out the bed. A dode gotten up at some point and just kind of wandered off. Um, So I got back up for another hour nothing. We get down and just the way I decided to go down this ridge, it's kind of I was going from a saddle to like one of these three way spots where like a ridge splits kind of and we get there and it's like fresh rub central and I'm like sweet, Like this looks good, you know, like stuff is crossing through here. Get up into it, Get up into a tree, and it's dead until like literally the last twenty minutes of the day, where it's already kind of getting dark and you're starting to like look at your pins, going, man, can I make a shot? That's when the first buck comes through and he was like a He's definitely kind of a scraggling eight. But at that point I'm like, man, I'm shooting if I get a chance, and he actually stops where I had a shot opportunity, but there was like one just limb that I hadn't cut out during my quick prep and it's like going right across his body and I just don't have it. But I get drawn back and he's like he starts walking again, and just like it's thick, thick, thick, And then there's like a couple of shooting lanes and I try to give him the you know map sound a few times, and he just keeps on moving like he just he definitely had a plan in his head, you know. He the whole encounter lasted like twenty seconds. It was fast. Well, then like ten minutes later, it's even darker, and literally from the same direction that that buck just went. A different buck just like an an eight pointer, comes almost on the exact same trail. So I'm able to get drawn back because he's coming through like the stiff, thick stuff, right, I didn't have a shot earlier, and I'm hoping for him to pop up like same place that first bucket kind of stopped in the open shooting lane, and for whatever reason, when he pops up, like instead of being at like thirty, he's more in that like forty yard range, and just like nothing I can do about it, you know. I let him go and then grunted at him, and it kind of seemed like he half circled towards me a little bit, but eventually he just faded away. Um So I felt good about like the way that day played out and the decision I had made. You know, it's like found signed set up like even though that didn't work out. I moved and and then I only moved like two yards between where that scrape was with the with the fresh pists in it to where all these rubs were on this like ridge intersection was only a couple of hundred yards and um, you know, lo and behold, like two bucks you know, came by me. Um and then like that's probably where where like I started of like having because it sounds like I'm having like retelling this story. I'm like, well, jeez, sounds like you're having a bunch of action the moment you're like, well, we sat all day and then right a dark it was like two bucks that scurried by. For whatever reason, I never sat that spot again. Hm. I mean it's it's it's hard to say, but I guess depends on what you went on to do later. Um. But if you had a terrain feature which sounds like a couple of ridge ridges coming together with the fresh sign and then you saw two bucks cruising through it last light, it certainly sounds like something I would try again, um, especially given the weather. So the big thing I saw during that same week was what you just described, which was zero activity throughout the heat of the day and then a bunch of it the last twenty minutes. Um. And so in that case, because the last twenty minutes with that weather is essentially your whole day, UM, it might have been worth trying to get end because you certainly had some pieces of puzzle working out there. Why didn't you because it was just slower through the rest of the day, um, Or did you have another plan? You know? I want to say that was like far enough into the hunt where we basically had I hunted seven and a half days, and I want to say we had four days of like that miserable heat, hot weather, and then we had a day of rain, and I think that rain was coming on the heels of this, right, and so this is kind of like I was gonna do, like what would Mark Kenyan do in this situation. We had a river's edge pop up line set up, and um, there's enough, there's a room for two people, and so it was gonna rain enough to where it's like, especially again with cameras, it's like I probably could have made it by myself in a tree and just stuck it out, but with the camera were like, you know what, let's just go and sit and stay dry and hopefully something will happen. And we had like a small box passes by like a hundred yards and it's just funny. It's like this thing set on like a the corner of this cornfield and we had a camera there and then there's been does you know enough doughs there in that zone where I was like feeling pretty good about it. But that morning zero um, midday, I think like three or four dolls pop out. They go back into the woods and we kind of see them trickle off up a ridge um, which was interesting to me to see, like doz hit a corn field at like two and then not just stay out there like I would have thought they were just gonna be out there for the rest of the evening, but instead they actually went back into the woods and then went upper ridge, like up into the big woods. So I don't know, I don't have no idea why they were doing that, Like was there were they going after acorns up there? Like it was there not enough corn in the field. Um, didn't make sense to me. Interesting, I would say, one thing I would think is that I do see something like this and that dear they require and desire diversity and what they're gonna eat so throughout that you know, they're just not going to stick it on one thing forever. They're going to constantly want to get some other options in there. So I'm not surprised entirely that that early in the day that they would be bouncing from thing to thing, and with with all those oaks that you described, Um, I gotta believe that was a big part of what they're eating. But but yeah, that is interesting to see them go out there for so little time. Um, it was cool that rain day. Unfortunately was on the neighbors and I didn't have permission to hunt over there, but I did get to see out in the rain kind of late afternoon, like a pretty nice shooter buck tending to a dough and just very much on lockdown. Like they popped out of like a little thicket. Um that's right off the side of the road. They fed out there for an hour. He was pretty much just you know, just watching her, and then they kind of disappeared right back into the thicket. Uh. And I think that was the evening where it finally kind of the rain showed out enough where I'm like, you know what, I'm done sitting here and I'm just gonna go for a little walk, and uh, I kind of went for a walk, and then for the last maybe hour, I basically just stepped off the side of a trail and just kind of stood there, you know, fairly well concealed, thinking that hey, you know, never know, like a deer might just come walking right down um this trail that I was walking up, you know, but nothing panned out, So I don't know. We talked about this before we started. Is like the reason I probably didn't go back to that spot that had a bunch of fresh rubs and I saw two bucks one night is that like I had four acres to hunt, and it was almost like I had too much to hunt, and so you know, you kind of I'm like I gotta hit it all. I gotta sit on every ridge top and the bottom of every bowl one time. So so you just kept pushing into new spots. And after that, well, like I said, I did hunt that oak flat like probably two evenings and three mornings. I think, Um, I kept I can tell you, like I kept thinking like it's weird because you're like in this country, You're like, am I gonna hunt on the ridge top or am I gonna hunt in the bottom because it doesn't really seem You told me about this when we were talking about Prepper for this hunt this summer, about how like in that hill country, a lot of these bucks like to run like a third of the way down the ridge, right, Yeah, that's the side tell. These ridges are almost so steep where it seems like I kept thinking that was going through my mind, and maybe I just wasn't like looking at it right. Maybe I was thinking just like I should have been a third of the way down, like lengthwise on the ridge, like where a ridge goes from high to low a little bit, and set up kind of there where they might kind of like again cross the ridge as their side hilling. But a lot of these ridges, when you're looking at if you just go and set up, let's say it's a three ft ridge and you go instead of a hundred feet down, like it's so steep that you're gonna be, you're gonna have like a perfectly perpendicular or parallel to gravity shot to the hillside right next to you, you know what I mean. It's like it just didn't make sense to set up like that. Um So I kept thinking, like, man, the bottoms must be where it's at, because I'm just not seeing the deer moving that much during the day up top. Maybe it's somehow cooler in the bottoms, you know, maybe that's where there's more just thick bedding cover. But man, every time I went into the bottom, I just seemed felt like I was getting hosed by the wind. Yeah. I already explained that one set up where I just felt like it was supposed to be bowing south and I felt like it was it literally blew north the whole time and just totally screwed my evening hunt. And then every time I was just popping in these bottoms, it's just like it's I couldn't trust it like I could trust it on a ridge top, and it made me. It pulled me to those ridge tops where I'm like, you know what, even if I'm not seeing as many deer, like if I at least if I see one up here, like it's gonna if it comes when I think it's gonna come, the wind's not gonna hose me. Yeah, And that seems I mean, that's pretty consistent both from what I've experienced. And then a lot of guys you talked to those bottoms are they are where dear want to be a lot of the time because that effect you just described, the fact that the wind does pool down there, it swirls down there. Uh, they can win a lot of stuff going on, but really hard to hunt. Um. The only thing I found is sometimes you can find with certain features there will be like one wind direction where you will get consistent winds. You can sometimes get away with it, Like there might be a valley with little bowls coming off the side, but that valley runs let's say, you know, from northeast to southwest, and if you happen to get a wind that blows straight on that angle, it doesn't spin around, and you'll get that one consistent. But you have to kind of know that from experience to know the little those little edges you can cut on days like that. So I don't think you made a bad decision trying to play a safer with a wind that probably is the better bet. Nine times that attend that kind of situation, did you did you find yourself once you got to those last couple of days, though, wanting to throw caution to the wind for lack of better term, and conduce hail Mary stuff like that. You know, I think what sort of educated the last two days, because I think we had the rain day and then I think I had a one full day of like good cool at Tempts, and then I had a half day after that. And I'm trying to think where I started. Oh, I started on the oak flat in the morning and Chris my my camera guy, was like, we should see here all the day, we should see here all day. I'm like, nope, it didn't happened. And I'm like I'm out of here. And again I had some spots in mine and we slid down into a saddle that was kind of like a it's like a subridge um and I get into the saddle and right as we were kind of entering the saddle, I bumped I don't know, three or four dolls in a buck. Couldn't really tell how big he was, maybe a shooter or maybe not, but they're they're just off the side of the saddle, kind of in the bottom. And again didn't bump real hard. I think they armped on seeing or hearing us. And that was the other thing. Man, It was so dry that those woods were so loud that like it was even hard to tell if you were going to bump anything, because they were gonna hear you a hundred yards away and they could just sneak away, you know what I mean. But I bumped him, but then I could like still see a dough as she's like kind of doesn't know what's going on, she's feeding. She kind of just walks away, something like perfect, I'm in the saddle. We're setting up here, set up and and get the saddle. Was kind of closer to some of this agg than, uh than a lot of other stuff I was hunting, and uh, I set up and I don't think anything happened that evening. But then the next morning, you know, it was the last morning I told you about where I had like the dough right at first light, and then an hour later I had the buck pushing the go around and there was like a little a small buck in and the monks them too. So that wasn't That was a day where I had I was so confident that spot and it just look good because it's just, you know, such a good saddle, and I had like a good thick looking betting area off to one side of it. I'm like, I'm just leaving the setup, you know, and number is gonna come back here in the morning and hunt it, and um, you know it paid off. I mean I definitely got a view of, like, you know, a real good buck. Um, he just didn't walk underneath my stand. So what we're what were the questions you had out of the hunt, like did you did you the hunt wrapped up? And did you find yourself like damn, should I have done this different? Or was this did do this wrong? Or did you did your head away from it thinking I just you know, I just needed more time? Or what was your thought process at that point? Oh man? All the above? Um, certainly could you. I mean it's so hard to tell to you because it's like you go and hunt the rut and it's like you have highs that were like almost reaching seventy in November. It's just like not normal, you know what I mean. So it's like it's really hard to like extraculate much when you're like, oh yeah, I remember that. It is like you could hunt it in a T shirt the whole time, you know. Um, But you know, I think trying to get more out of my trail cameras would be like sometimes it's funny before you start using them, you're like, oh man, it's gonna be so easy. If you just get trail cameras up everywhere, you'll know that that box is here at one pm, then he's here at two pm, and then they're at three. And if you set up in this tree, you know what met you. And it's just not like that great big buck that we had on camera. We had had him only on camera maybe one time during daylight leading up to the season, but during season, I mean, he was like running. He was probably the closest buck to where we were sleeping um that we were hunting, like like literally sometimes crossing, kept cutting his tracks like less than yards from the camp itself, but we only caught him on camera at night, you know. So it's like I don't even know if that if if I would have sat on his travel route for seven days, I don't know if it would have paid off because I don't even know if that buck moved during the daylight during that week, you know, even though it was November five, twelve. Yeah, trail cameras can only tell you about one little snippet of time. And and the other thing is that they only tell you what's you know, in front of you at that one angle, you know, there's there's a whole lot of space around that camera that these bucks could be passing through and hanging out and spending time and going just twenty yards of the direction and you would never know it. So they give you this little glimpse, but it is far from all knowing. Um. And I keep finding year for a year that the less I depend on them the better, usually because when you become too dependent on them, I think you get your judgment becomes clouded by this like my opic view, Like you get you're looking at the world through a straw, and you need to look at the world at a much higher level when making these decisions. They they should inform you. But if you only let that dictate your strategy, I think you really put yourself in Um, You're you're just handicapping yourself if you do that. So it doesn't sound like you did that though. I like the way that you were, you know, looking for sign trying to find the action, especially given the fact that you didn't really have a ton of historical knowledge about what they're doing at that time of year across the place like this, and you know, going in relatively blind. I think it was smart that you moved around key did on stuff. One thing I was cure us about was just how does factored into your hunting. You know, you were looking for sign Excuse me, but did you did you ever find anywhere that had the most consistent dough activity, Because that's the one other thing that you know, from from an outside perspective, I would have said, Man, if there was anywhere the head that consistent doe group, you know, betting or feeding, I would have camped there to a degree to because that's the one other thing that in big country like this, if you can find that, it can somehow, you know, you know, tighten what you need to focus on. You know, the only place we were seeing it, both just by through our own eyes and through the camera were kind of on that corn field edge there. And I probably didn't hunt down there quite as much because we had more of the tree stands that were set up for my dad in that zone, and so I was letting him, you know, hunt those spots a little like that, just that general area, more than I was um And again they were sort of at the bottom and the toe of this hill, and I was just getting so burned by you know, the wind hunting the bottoms of those hills. That was probably scared a little bit of that, but like, yeah, there what I can't say, you know, besides that one road that I cut across. And again it's hard to stay there too because it's like, well, finally you have like this medium that will show you a bunch of tracks because it's not hard or it's not covered in leaves, it's not covered in grass, and you're like, oh my god, there's a bunch of deer tracks. But you wonder if the whole forest floor on acres looked like this freshly graded, you know, soft sandy dirt road, you probably find that all over the place, right, Well, it kind of you know, you're like, yeah, tracks, but then you gotta think, you like, but it's hard to see the tracks because there's just there aren't a lot of places that just show tracks like that, Like I know, hunting Doug Dern's um a lot of times you just cut these tracks where they're coming out of the woods and and coming out of like corners or you know, some sort of strained feature that that funnels them and and there's a there's a trail that spits them out into a big field, and man, like my kids could walk down there and be like, oh my god, there's a deer trail, you know what I mean, Like you don't have to be sure like Holmes, but I feel like in this country you so rarely get that. It's just those trails are You're like, anytime you're on a ridge top, you're like, sure, there's a deer trail running down the middle of this thing, But like every ridge top has that, you know what I mean. It's never like you're just like looking at that one muddy trail and you're like, holy cow, look at the deer traveling down this thing. You know they've got to run it out. Um. And again, maybe I'm just making excuses and not able to you know, read the sign properly up there, But I don't know, when it's six inches of oak leaves on the ground, how do you find a trail. They're very at least from my experience, you're very rarely going to get what you described at Dougs and and you have to just rely on those those lightly just just seeing where the leaves are kicked up, and and then depending on sightings and sign to determine if it is well used. But it sounds like this wasn't a super high deer density area anyways, so you probably weren't going to get to those pounded cow trails no matter what. No, And we know that you know where dogs areas, right, I mean, it's some of the highest deer density probably in the state of Wisconsin, right man. That's one of the tough things when you get in one of those lower deer density areas where there's the one school of thought like you described in which some folks in the podcast you know, talked out, which is if you're not in the action, move to get to it. So there's that school thought. But when you're in these lower deer density areas, you know there's not a whole lot of action to be had, and sometimes you know there won't be any dear action anywhere. You count for several days or at least relatively few, until you wait it out. So sometimes it's a matter of finding the spot and knowing that, Okay, this has the ingredients I need and it's the right time of year for this spot. If I give it three days, eventually something will come through here. But I have to give it that three days for that to happen. Um, But it takes a certain amount of comfort and experience in a place to know that. It's really hard to make that guess without having the experience that tells you these kinds of spots are where you need to put the time, because sometimes you get a camp, sometimes you get a move. And I dealt with that a lot um this year myself, where first I was like, Okay, I got to bounce from here to here and keep moving, keep moving. But eventually, on the tail end of my rut on some of my Michigan spots, I realized that you can sometimes get to the point where you're chasing your tail a little bit too much. And if you find those few key places and if you can hunt it without buggering it up too much, you do need to put in some volume in your few key spots to allow the randomness to finally work into your favor. Um walking that lines the trick. That's that's the tough part is knowing when to go those two directions. One of those two directions. Yeah, like, I like I like that Buck. The first night on the Oak Flat smelled me like hardcore, right, Like, I mean, he just gotta win nose full, and three bounds later he was out of my life. I never saw him again up there. Like when you spook a buck like that and he wins you. You know, even if it is, you know, the middle of the rut, like should I just had given up on that spot because I'm like, you know what I mean, how many bucks are gonna be coming through here? That's the question too. It's like, well, whatever, you just bumped one out there, there should be at least two others are gonna cross come through here in the next two days, right, Yeah, I would have thought the same thing. Yes, he might be less likely to come through there, but there's other bucks I would have I would have not felt bad at all about focusing on that. And even even with a buck winning you that one time during the rut, you know, if the right lady comes through, I think they look past it. I mean I saw that this year that I had a buck win me um and then you know, hours later where it's a hot dough and he was right back in the general area because the right dough was there. So you know, the rut does crazy things. Sometimes you gotta put the put the overthinking glasses aside and just realize that you gotta let mother nature do its work sometimes too well. I did that definitely kept me in the woods, and it kept me, you know, thinking optimistically. I don't know if that's a word, thinking positively, being an optimist. It was just that, like keep telling yourself it's a rot. It can happen any moment, just like be in the woods and keep sitting still, you know, be in the woods, being the woods. What would you do anything differently now when you when you look back and think it through, are there any clear things? I know that for me, one thing I try to do after a trip or hunt or a season is I will try to identify just two things, because it's it's really easy to list off a whole bunch of stuff I did wrong, but then be overwhelmed by all those things and never be able to actually take action on it. But if I narrow it down to the two most important things, then I can actually do something with that and remember it and focus on that. Is there. If you had to pick two things you would do differently or try to do differently this next time, what do you think that would be? M m m M. I don't know. I guess I mean kind of sorry, yeah, I mean I guess one thing would be tree prep right for the saddle, like even though you can just move anywhere you want with that saddle. And again maybe I'm maybe I'm placing too much, like sort of like negative connotation on having to like cut limbs and cut shooting lanes when you get to a spot, but like one, it took time where I wasn't hunting, and to it makes racket right where you know, if there happens to be something better than a hundred yards away, Like I don't know, are they gonna be okay with hearing me saw down thirty to forty branches and some small trees. I don't know. So I feel like maybe what I could have done is like instead of just like being like, okay, you gotta get in the wood and start hunting, maybe I should just take in the first day and like walk the whole property, which again some people be like, you don't want to do that because she's gonna run your scent all over the place, But like walk the whole property, identify like you know, some hot scrapes, some hot trails, Maybe maybe find that road you know earlier in the week they had the uh you know, a bunch of tracks on it, and maybe you know, hunt it at a different time, um and maybe just pick out some trees and just go that spend a day climbing up and down trees and cutting out shooting lanes, you know, and cutting out you know, just prepping the tree itself to get into it. And that way leave leave myself in six days where you know, not every set up, but almost every setup, you could be like I could go in there and know that I'm just gonna slip in quietly and and get into the tree and be hunting, you know, um man. Otherwise I could probably have just sat more. You know, I think having the ability to move so much, like I never in those seven and a half days, I never sat one tree dark to dark, like I moved every single afternoon. And I think that, like you just said, you gotta you gotta give the animals the opportunity to walk underneath you, you know, and every time you get down, and that it happened to me that one day where I couldn't take it any longer and got down at one or whatever it was. Sure enough, you know, there's a buck, even though he's a little buck. But it's like, hey, he could have been a twelve pointer, you know. Um, so I probably just you know, two or three days should have just been like you know what, it's as good as spot as any else. Just sit it out, you know, and instead of taking those because like moving trees, even if even if you just moved two hundred yards like I did that day after the I had the scrape with the pists in it, even I only moved two hundred yards, it still took a solid two hours from my hunting right where like I'm out of the tree, um, walking around, um, you know, sawing limbs, I'm prepping the next tree. And you know, you add that up over the course of the week. And if I did that every single day, and I'm guessing because I thought I would be faster, it takes time, right, I bet you it was two to three hours every time I wanted to move. And so you add that up over you know, a week, and all of a sudden, it's like I almost burned a day, right, You easily burned an eight hour day middle of the day walking around, you know, And I know some guys don't even sit the middle of the day, right, But like had I been in the tree, I don't know, maybe something else could have walked by me. Yeah, and you do have it's it's um oh what do they call it? That there's just basically the tendons see two, look at what happened, and then trying to come up with answers for why it happened. When sometimes it's just bad luck too, Like there's this, Sometimes you need to be analyzing what you did and and understandably or or clearly be able to say, Okay, yeah, that was a mistake and this is what happened. But then there's other times like this where what you just described maybe you should have said. But in the back of my mind, I'm also thinking, but it was also seventy five degrees um probably wasn't going to be shipped moving through there anyways. Now that could have been. But at the same time, you were dealt a tough hand with the weather during that week, and and so much of the activity was pushed to the edges that a little bit was out of your hands there. Um So I don't know when I when I hear about what you did, it seems like there's there's a lot of stuff that made sense, But at the same time, there was things where you know, I think if you had a little more confidence with some of your decisions, you maybe have stuck it out in places a little longer than that might have helped you. Um All that takes time, That's the thing. It's like confirming decisions takes time. It takes like years in these kinds of places to be where I'm at. You know, in some days, I'm thinking, Man, I just know, with these three factors lined up, this is a place that deserves time and attention. Or based off the fact that I saw this happen last week and this week, I know that this is somewhere somewhere that I'm willing to sit eight hours without seeing anything because I know that if I give it ten eventually something should. Um. But you know, ten fifteen years ago or whatever, before spending thousands of hours doing this stuff, I would have been questioning myself the whole time. Um. So I don't know how to you know, there's really no way to build that up except for just time seeing it, testing it and seeing what happens. You know. Yeah, No, I feel like you know, my dad actually ended up getting a shot. Unfortunately, he had he had lost a release and then was using a release that he hadn't practiced with as his backup, and um, I think it was much uh lighter released than his old one, and so he basically touched the arrow off long before you know, he had even kind of settled his pen and uh you know, had had a clean miss um. But uh, you know, it's it's actually the rainy day. And he basically went into a zone where we had been getting some you know, fairly good activity, and he's like, you know what, that's a place we haven't hunted yet. I'll take my little pop up blind in there and set up and hunt him. And sure enough, a bunch of great running activity and he has a nice ten pointer come right by him. And unfortunately he uh he uh you know, didn't get it. But um, so yeah, I think you know, between my dad and I, we got like some pretty close calls, you know, how to just a couple of things gone a little bit differently. Um you know, might have gotten to you know, fling an arrow at a or had a dead buck. You know, do you think that is there anything you can point to that you I feel like you really took away as far as like a learning experience that that you can point to. It is like, man, I'm gonna I'm gonna be better because of that. Jeez, do you think you're a better deer hunter now after after this hunt, having experienced all that, you know. I was gonna say, just if there's if there's one thing, it's like the whole thing of just like spending a full week, seven days boots on the ground, you know, having to go through all the all that decision making and pig trees and and all that stuff, um, and just looking at that proper which you know, I hunted since I was a little kid, but never through the eyes of a serious bow hunter. And now having done that for seven days, like, um, yeah, I've just got like such more intimate knowledge of the place. It's gonna help me, you know, informed decisions that I'll make in the future. Um. Yeah. So I don't know if it's like a better dear hunter, but I think that joh. I mean yeah, I mean I guess you could say that, you know, and hopefully hopefully when it gives me out of more than anything, it's just the confidence to make a decision right and be like, yeah, that was the right decision. You know, go with it and not be swinging around that tree constantly going no, should I move? If it makes you feel any better, well, I just told you that I'm a lot more confident. I still have plenty of days where I'm sitting there wondering should I move? That still happens to me too. I know one thing, man, if like the wind is not happening, I'm not gonna waste my time if like, even if I that up and it's just the best, best, best spot, because I just don't feel like sure if it's like kind of off, if you're like, oh, I was supposed to blow south and it's blowing southwest, sure, like, I'll stay there. But when when it's blowing north and it's supposed to be blowing south like it just is not gonna happen, You're gonna I'm gonna have to get out of the tree and do something else. You know. Yeah, it's a tough pill of swallow, but it's true. It is. And maybe use that evening to just go and glass the field from the road and see what pops out on the field, you know, and you know, get some information that way. So do you did you like it? I mean, you went from like the deer hunting you've done the past was was, like you said, a little different, little gun season type stuff. But now you kind of dove in head first this full blown bow hunting, A lot of strategy, a lot of puzzle pieces you gotta put together. Are you into it? Totally? Man? I love you know, the older I get, the more That's what I'm drawn to is the hunts that are hard for me. I mean, I still don't get me wrong, I still love a squirrel hunt because it's like casual and just fun and it can be easy at times. Not the squirrel hunting is always easy, but um, you know, even though I haven't, No, I did kill a bowl this year with my bowl, but like I kind of just have an idea of what to expect when I go out into the Elk woods, you know, And like I had four really hard days of hunting a week ago here to finish out the Montana Big Game season. But it was tough conditions. You know. It's like I I went and hunted, but like I know, like why things happened, right, Like I have answers for all of it. But I think, like I said was saying, I think What's what draws me towards this and like any kind of new hunting I'm doing, is that like I don't know it and it's a challenge and there's like a lot to figure out. There's a lot more to learn, and that gets me excited, you know, and to know that like how close we were, you know this year, you know, having a dead bock, um should I got a feeling we're gonna be like that much closer you know next year with what we know now. Um, But you just kind of have to you gotta tighten the news a little bit, you know what I mean. Yeah, Like we had like a kind of a medium sized news going and never really snugged it up, you know, to really to really dial in. But yeah, h you gotta be careful. You gotta be carefully, Johnny. It's a slippery slope. When you start to get excited about this stuff and getting into the nitty gritty details and strategy, it can can grab hold you fast. So be prepared. I'm ready, man, I'm ready. I told myself one of my uh, one of my resolutions, and I've already done it since I've since Big Game season has ended, as I've shot my bow once this week, and uh, I'm gonna shoot that socker all we're long. I'm not gonna have this where like Turkey season ends and I'm like, oh my god, I better start shooting my bow. Yeah, um, because that's kind of where I've been in the last three or four years. Um. And uh, I want my like bow shooting be too like the lat It's like I feel like it's something I can control much easier, and it should be the last thing that's on my mind when I'm actually out there hunting. It's like, oh am, I gonna make a good shot, you know. Um, I want to have that all dialed. Like I'm gonna switch arrows this year. I'm gonna go I'm going to the super heavy set up, super high fo C. And I'm gonna get that done in the next you know, month or two and not in the summertime. You know. Uh, I agree with your your thought there with it, not necessarily just the archer thing, but if there's something that is in your control that you can do something about right now, like do it because in the field out there, you know that next time you're out there for a week in November, there's going to be so much that's outside of your control. Whatever you can turn you know and and have dialed. Now, that's that's one of those things when you're trying to tighten that tighten things down that you can control ahead of time. You gotta you gotta try to do that. So where where you we gotta wrap this up? Um? I feel like I do have kind of one more thing I want to kind of discuss quickly we have the time. Is like one thing I saw in the trail cameras is that, like I was telling you, there was like that it seemed like it was the last two weeks of October. We're all of a sudden we were like, oh my gosh, like we're gonna have some bucks to hunt, you know, like they're here, like all of a sudden, they're showing up, you know, they're hitting those and they were hitting the scrapes hard. And then it seems like when we got there it like and again could have been this like crazy hot weather too, right, like that played a part in it, but like it almost seemed like the buck activity on camera slow down and then it picked back up like after what I mean most people would consider like peak Rutt like sort of somewhere middle of November or trying to think I left on the twelve, but like, so after that, towards the end of November, it's sort of picked back up, and I saw like I caught two box that we had never seen yet on camera, like completely new box, and so I'm like wondering, like what my dates are going to be next year? Hmm, it's there's go still for the first week of November. Do I maybe slide into three or four days of October and then hunt into the first four days of November. I always look at the first two weeks as being your safest bet. The first week or two November is is just safe. But if if you get a weather front like what we had come through, can really change things and make things more difficult. So I mean, like in your situation where you have to lock down the dates way ahead of time, you're kind of s o L. I would still air towards somewhere in that range, just because it's just hard to beat it in a year in and year out if you had to average things out. But you know, hunting pressure could have impacted you a little bit, right, I mean, once you start being around there and you walking around and your dad walking around all that stuff like that could be part of the reason why things slowed a little bit. Of course, the weather slowed things. Um who who knows what else is going around there. I wouldn't read into it too much given those factors, as I guess what I'm trying to tell you. At the same time, though, you know, you can start to get to know property, and like in my case, I've got a spot that always is better early. I've hunted it for over a decade now, and I have found that, for whatever reason, there's some doughs that come into heat, you know, early consistently. There's always a hot dough. You know that last week in October, so peak rut type stuff starts happening for me that round there, and so I hunt that week just as if I was hunting November five. But it's taking me time to figure that out. And you know, there's no other way to find other than that kind of thing. So always something more to learn, Ynni, Always something more to learn, man. But that's what fun it does. That's that's for me. That's what I love about it. Like you said, it's the challenge. It's this puzzle it's it's chess and poker and checkers all mixed in one and and I just I geek out about the never ending process. So it's it brings a smile to my face knowing that I've got a kindred spirit over there in Montana right now. And uh, I think we just gotta figure out a way to share the white Tail woods together here soon and do something, do something, get a hunting on the books. Oh man, man all Uh let's uh we'll end this and get on the phone, start planning. I like it. We're can people see this hunt? You honest? Where's where is this all gonna be? And when? Uh? This will be a meat Eat Hunts episode which will air on the meat Eater YouTube channel, and I believe now they're talking um like April time frame, ish um, and I'm gonna have six episodes coming out and I can't tell you which one this one's gonna be, but uh yeah, start looking forward late March, um and keep an eye up for it through April and then if you still haven't seen it, maybe in the first two weeks of May. But yeah, Meat Eater YouTube channel, Meat Eater Hunts awesome. I'm looking forward checking it out. Yeanni, thank you for taking the time to walk us through all this stuff. Um, I still feel like there's fifteen other things I wanted to ask you about, But like we talked about, we always go longer than the planned time and we already have. So yeah, well maybe we'll uh maybe you ought to come out this spring or summer to the property and we can go do it two or and then we can sit down to a podcast after we walk the property and you can give me your your feedback. Sign me up. I like that idea. That sounds like fun. All right, you're honest. Thank you, and uh, let's figure out that spring trips in sounds good? Thanks again, Mark, all right, that's a rap. I hope you enjoyed the honest story. I hope that maybe some of the things we talked on the front end we're able to help kind of color some of this conversation for you and and left you with some different things to think about now that we're wrapped up. Um, if you can do some of that homework I mentioned, hit me up on Instagram, leave a comment on Facebook or Insta, and let me know some of the things that that you took away either from this podcast or from your own hunts after you were able to do a little bit of that um decision analysis or or learning. So thank you all for tuning in, Thanks for riding along with me as as I go down these crazy rabbit holes. But I hope and and really what I think this podcast has the most opportunity to do, not just this episode, but in general. Right I want to make the Wired Hunting Podcast be a place where where those of those with a similar passion can get together and have a good time, but also where we can push ourselves and push each other to take that next step. And I think this type of exercise is a way to do that. So if you're game for it, give a shot, think about these things, let me know what you're thinking, and uh, until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.