00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the modern white tail hunter, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and today in the show, we are joined by Clay Newcome, Josh Hilliard, and Justin Michow to break down to September white tail hunts. Let's see what we can learn from these two very different experiences. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. Today, we're playing a little bit of Monday morning quarterback. By that, I mean we're gonna take a look back at two different hunts that just happened here in September, and we're gonna analyze what happened, what went right, what went wrong? What do we learn from this? Uh, YadA, YadA, YadA. And what's interesting is we've got two very different kinds of hunts. We've got one private land hunt, we've got one public land hunt. We've got one American hunt, we've got one Canadian hunt. We've got one hunt with a guy who prefers wearing overalls. We've got one hunt with a guy who prefers wearing a semi flat bill hat. So this is all about contrast. Today we've gotta me and me and further Josh Hilliard are me talking about our recent Western public land white tail hunt. And then I've got Clay Newcome and Justin Michow who're gonna talk about their Manitoba white tail hunt. Um so that's the game plan, and I think we should kick it off talking Canada. Clay, give me some background on on what this is all about. How did this hunt come about? You know, how how did this happen? We're just so first of all, if you're gonna hunt in Canada and you're not from Canada, you have to have an outfitter, So you have to go through an outfitter. So there's really no do it yourself hunts for guys like us coming from the States going into Canada. But as Justin, I think would agree, this is probably the best case scenario for kind of a do it yourself guy wanting to go there. And and I do have some three years of history on this farm with this outfitters name is Tom Ainsworth, and it's it's probably mark my favorite hunt of the year, Like above everything I do. It's uh, you know a lot of the hunts that I'm doing bear hunting backcountry stuff is it's hard. I mean, it's like you're sleeping under the stars. You're fighting against you know, your tent camping, your um doing a whole lot of deficit, your hiking. Physical fitness is an issue low density animals. Man, This to me is like exactly opposite of that. You know, we're staying in the house, we're eating three meals a day at a dinner table. Um. Aside from at times in Canada tough weather to deal with, which we did not in this early season hunt, and it's just an incredibly fun hunt. We see a lot of deer and the people that we hut with have kind of become like family to me, Um, Tom and deb Ainsworth. So this was my fourth year to go there. I've been there the last three years, well the last four years minus COVID. Last year I didn't go. This is my fourth year and I've had incredible luck up there in Canada. I've I've killed. The first year I was there, I killed a hundred and fifty two inch buck with my bow. Second year, I killed a really nice eight point that I would shoot every year of my life. For the next However, many years that is, um, it didn't score real well, but it was a real heavy horned tall G two's just a really gnarly old buck um. And then the third year I went, I killed a hundred and fifty six inch deere, so a ton of history. And but this year I couldn't go during the run. Every the three times prior have been, I've been the first seven days of November essentially, and this year I couldn't do that, so we bumped it all the way back. Manitoba has an early white tail season that starts on August thirty one, and so that's when I went. We are first hunting day was the evening of August one, and um, yeah, just to describe the type of hunting, we were hunting alfalfa fields. There are it's crop land that juts right up against what the Canadians called the bush, which is what we would call national forest. And their bush is thick. There's really not a lot of opportunity for getting back in there and finding travel patterns like back in the timber. For these deer coming out in these fields, it's super thick, very thick, and uh so we're hunting these deer and crop fields and this year. The every year the farms a little bit different with what crops are there, and this year there was a very limited amount of alfalfa and a lot more oats, and that I felt like it was advantageous to us because the deer seemed to prefer alfalfa. They also eat the odes. But yeah, so that's that's where it all started. Mark, that's perfect. What was like, what was the the game plan? And like where was your head at leading into day one? I mean, you've had three previous years of experience, So did you come into this knowing, okay, based on what I know, I'd really like to hunt in this spot or spot in this spot, and I think they're gonna do this, this and this, or did you come into it, you know, thinking that this might be totally different because the crops are in different places and and all that kind of stuff. You know, it's the kind of place Mark that I I pretty much had a there was eighty percent chance that I knew exactly what was gonna happen, and that that was true. I mean, I pretty much hunted in the places I assumed that I would hunt. These deer are pretty unpressured and there pretty predictable and it worked out just about like what I thought. Um, so okay, so then talk to me about what you know you got there? Day one? You've you you drove in right in. Yeah, we drove up to Canada. For me. It was an eighteen hour trip. I picked up Justin and we uh we arrived early in the morning, like at three am, and we were out scouting shortly after daylight and uh saw some deer, saw some bucks on the alfalfa, right where we hoped they would be. It was the first place we pulled into. Basically we saw bucks on the alfalfa. And so basically it was a ten acre rectangular block of alfalfa that had a big, like forty acre track of oats to the side of it. And the wind that first so our first afternoon, the wind was coming out of the south, and so we hunted the north side of the of the south alfa and it's big, you know, I mean, it's you know, it's fifty yards probably to the other end, and so you're kind of just guessing, hoping that they are coming within, you know, forty yards of your tree. And uh, we just and I both had saddles, and so we were able to set up in a reel small tree that you know, had never been hunted to our knowledge. I mean we we had to trim it out and everything, and I got in the stand probably four hours before dark, and uh, that first evening we had bucks come on the field, you know, just kind of prime time, you know, an hour to an hour and a half before dark had bucks come on the field. And then the last thirty minutes of daylight, Justin said, oh man, there's a stomper buck that just stepped out. I don't remember his exact phraseology, but I'm pretty sure stomper that seemed to be something. Is that? Is that your phrase, Justin? Is that what you said? No, I can't remember what I said At this point, I was gonna piggyback though. Um, you know what was cool I've I've not to take away from where Clay was going, but it was what was neat was I've only been to an outfit there a couple of times, never for white tail, and like Clay said, this place was like as close as you could get to just like knocking on the door and getting permission. Um, you know, there were stands set but like like Clay mentioned, like we we went in that morning when we went into scout. Um, we we came up to that field and as soon as Clay came around the corner, he'd like dropped down and he said, there's a shooter right here. So we like we felt good right away about that alfalfa because there was art. I mean, I was probably you know where we were way into daylight and there was a shooter that didn't see him, but you know, had his head to the ground eating and so we backed out and and knew like that that we had a pretty good scenario there, and we drove around a bit more and a lot of the fields that typically held alfalfa, from what Clay said, in previous years, we're somewhat empty. So again, like it just kind of stacked the deck a little bit more in our favor as far as like there's not a ton of places that these deer are gonna want to be right now. And um, but yeah, we were you know that that first night set up we you know, we're positioned in a way that we could both have eyes and we both had binos and uh, yeah, we had a doe and uh probably it's hard to tell you like you know at home now would be probably a three and a half year old book, but place whereas that those deer two and a half there, um did or that size because their bodies are just huge. But we had a dough and a buck come out early, and you know, he was in full velvet. I don't know, he's like a nice eight was it an eight or ten clay? Nice deer came out fed a little bit, and then he and Doe went late on the field edge and just decided it was a great place to nap. So we watched him for probably an hour, and um, yeah, we watched deer messing around and they started coming out and I call it a slammer lambor, that's I do. It started with an H and then next next thing, you know, man, I had been watching this deer in velvet, and I was like, gosh, that's kind of that's a nice dear, you know, like for for being the first year that we saw. I'm like, all right, this is great. And then this this other deer came out and all of a sudden that that other buck, the velvet buck, just was dwarfed, and um, I had seen a few photos and then we were at Tom's house and I got to see one of the deer he had on his wall, which I would think was a two oh eight or two oh nine um that was from that property. And they have this their frame seems pretty unique. I mean, you know, it's like seems like a genetic thing there. And when he came out, he just his rack looked like it was glowing red. I mean, it was just like you could tell it hadn't been too long since he had shed. It just looked fresh, and his body was like a cow. So I was like, man, we were in the game. So the slammer stepped out in clay. How far away was he at this point, probably two hundred fifty to three hundred yards, you know, it was a good ways off, And we pretty much knew we were out of the game because the deer stepped out on the total opposite edge of the field. But being the first day, that's all we wanted. We just wanted to locate a shooter buck. And the thing about too, about uh this outfitted hunt is Tom and I've learned to love this. He doesn't do a lot of reconnaissance. I mean, it wasn't like he he has kind of a philosophy that he wants his hunters to hunt, and so he knew there was a big buck there, but he didn't give us much intel. He didn't show us pictures, and so you know, we kind of discovered this buck and we're like, Okay, that's the deer we're after. And Mark I I believed it to be a hundred and fifty inch main frame ten. He he might have he could have been seven, or he might have been one, you know, but just a classic ten and in heavy horned. And man, those deer from having killed three deer up there that they'll weigh in at two hundred fifty pounds almost on the dot. I've killed three one way to forty, one way to and one wayed. Um, I don't think I ever killed one actually the way to fifty one. The biggest one was totight. So you know they're they're just big deer for us. You know, a big deer at Arkansas is gonna weigh a hundred and seventy five pounds, big mature buck and so um, when they when they're that big body and the horns look fairly big, you're talking about a hundred and fifty inch deer. Usually if it's a ten point you know. And um, so we were in the game. Uh that night Tom came and picked us up in the field. We so we busted these deer off the field, you know, to get out. I felt like that was the best thing to do. Um, justin feel free to tell any of these stories, man, But I'm just gonna kind of march through, Mark if you want me to, Yeah, Mark, march me through. But me, I wanted throw in one thing before you give me the full detail in day two. I really want to know the thought process behind how you were planning to adjust, Like, give me the full rundown of how you were thinking about where to set up day two, because I'm imagining you're taking into account where you saw that deer. You gotta take into account the wind direction, and god knows what else. So so walk me through that. Okay. So there's timber on three sides of this field. One side of the field butts up against another big oat field, and I just felt like we were gonna swap back and forth sides based pretty much every day there was some some version of the north wind or some version of a south wind, so you could hunt one side of the field or the other and we were watching these deer kind of where they're at. And Tom had a shooting house, I mean basically like an enclosed blind upon a platform. It looked like a porter party. Let's just a green porter party. Yeah, and it's about the same size. Yeah, that's about right. And and all these deer were within bow range of that porter party. And uh so so the next day we actually went in trying to hang. We were gonna hang a set hang out of our saddles, and I convinced Jess and I was like, dude, we need to get in that thing because it's gonna protect us from any kind of swirling wind. And all those deer were pretty close to that blind. And mind you, mind you, that first night we probably saw you know, fifteen to twenty deer, and most of those deer came out on that and towards the blind. Yeah. Yeah, so that the well, our plan was to hunt the south end the next day and so eventually we would end up there. But the next morning, Mark, and this is probably the most unique stand on the property, and from a white tail strategy perspective, I would be interested if Mark Kenyon and Josh Hilliard would come to this property and would see this stand and would not be like you would be interested to see if you would have thought if it was a good spot, because I didn't. I was the porter potty spot or a morning I'm sorry, I'm about to describe where we sat in the morning perfect. And so basically there's a main county road that bisex the property. I mean a main county road the south foul of field. Let's say it sets three yards off the road, and it's gonna be really hard to describe in boring if I take ten minutes trying to describe the exact layout. But basically, through observation over decades, Tom has been like, those deer always come by this little corner and cross the main road and go back to bed on the other side of the road. And I just don't think you would be looking at an aerial map and figure that out. I mean, it just you just wouldn't. It's just not it's just not intuitive that those deer cross right there. In the first year I hunted with Tom, he put me in that stand and I was just thinking, oh boy, here we go. You know the rancher. You know, Tom's a rancher. Man. I mean, you know he doesn't. They don't white tail hunt kind of like we do because they don't have to. They know the patterns of these deer so well that you know, they kind of cut through the riff raff of sometime and they're just like, hey, let's deer cross right there, just hunt there, wor about. You know, we'd have been thinking like, all right, let's try and get in close to bedding and blah blah blah and times like you see this two track, I put that in there so that you walk down it. And sure enough, you said, on this stand, it's like ten yards off of this two track, so that he runs his quads around like that's just how he accesses around his property. Bear you know, just to the dirt. And you would think like, well, kind of got screwed here, Like I literally you're in the stand within like thirty seconds of being dropped off from the road. So yeah, you're you're you're hunting. I mean, you've got acres and you're within you know, A muzzleloader shot of a main road that like school busses are driving down, you know, and uh, it's a gravel road. There's not a lot of traffic on it, But I don't think. I don't think Justin saw the school buses, but usually I do. But but I've hunted there three years, and I'm telling you I believe that if a man were to go there, and it's is usually six days of hunting, if you set in that tree for six days, you'd kill a big, mature Canadian buck. I mean, it would be so boring because you don't always see deer. Just some percentage of the time these deer exit these fields and come that way. I would say thirty percent of the time, I think. So if you set there ten mornings, I think you would have deer within bow range three to four times starting rupt. But now that you've actually sat the spot right, so it's not like you've only looked at the map. You've actually been on the ground and actually seen it. Is there any Is there any rhyme to why can you understand now why the deer passed through? Like is there some little topography thing or something. I think it has to do with they could walk in the timber the whole way and be covered by timber across the road. I think these deer so unpressured. It's just easier than walking through timber. So they walked down the edge of this timber and now they're I'm serious. There are multiple things that they could do that I would have predicted that they would do before they do this. So there's not a lot of reason to it other than it's highly predictable because in three years I have personally seen multiple mature bucks crossed within bow range of that stand. And if you could, if you could picture it, there's a bit of a curve on this two track, So if you followed the curve to the road, then that's like how we would get in, right, But if you are like a really open j right, and what's happening is there walking down the straight part of that j and right as it starts to curve, which is probably clay, would you say forty from the road, Yeah, okay, So right when that jay starts to to curve, they cut into the woods right there. And you know, again I don't we didn't investigate too much, but what they end up doing is crossing that road. But for some reason they're cutting in right there, and maybe they just don't want to go in the driveway. I don't know, but that like consistently. That's what they're doing, is just following that road straight in. So you you sat next to the road, did you see the big giant Well, so this is a great morning stand though, because you can't even see the alfalfa field. So these deer on the alfalfa, you walk in the dark, just out of the truck, climb up in this tree. You don't spook any deer, and then your position for their exit. That's what it that's what it happens. So on the next morning, mark uh, just after daylight, we saw three bucks exit the field and come within ten yards of our tree. One of the deer was a was a nice full velvet eight points. I would have suspected him in the one twenties as score wise, I mean, a nice looking deer, but not a deer that I was interested in shooting, which spoiler alert, there's a little bit of there's a little bit of drama involved in this. So I passed this, I passed this deer, but they come right in. What's interesting too, is this whole time we're watching a very large bear out in the oats, probably five yards from us. Um so afflicted, oh, not really conflicted. I was pretty interested in the deer. But it was kind of cool to be watching these deer and a bear out of the same tree stand, you know. Um, So I passed these deer on the first morning. So that evening, Mark, we go to the porter potty stand and uh, it's not it's bigger than a porter pot It would be like a two seater porter potty. Is this is this the night you sent me your second video? Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it, the second video. I thoroughly enjoyed that. We're not gonna get that because there's another conflict of some people, don't you know. Well, now you gotta explain, just kept. I don't want to. I don't want to ruin. I don't want to wreck people's world views on scent control just yet. I mean later later, Mark, Okay, okay, later, I want to. I don't want to bankrupt the scent control companies. These guys are just trying to make a living, that m um. So the next day we get in probably four hours before dark and setting this stand, and Mark, it was like it was perfect. We saw fifteen bucks. I'm trying to fast forward because uh, we saw fifteen deer, many of them within bow range of our stand. We're looking over this alfalfa, and thirty minutes before dark, we see the stomp what stomper buck? Slammer buck? Justin says, there's a slammer buck, and he's looking four or five yards across the oats. And here comes this buck that we've seen the evening before, coming from the total opposite direction, crossing a wide open field for several hundred yards, enter into the alfalfa, and he walks within probably eight yards of where we were sitting the night before in our tree saddles, and we basically watch it get dark while he is just prancing around within bow range of where we set the evening before. And um, it was pretty incredible. I mean, at this point, I've seen it there twice now on the alfalfa. It's just a matter of time, you know. And I just tell Justin, I mean, we had the same thought. It's just like, dude, we just got to keep doing this and eventually you know he's gonna end up here. But it was interesting too, because you know that that alfalfa field was just like so lush and green, and I was surprised how much these deer were spending time in these oats. And and when we say oats, like they were like brown, like tall brown oats. It's not fresh green growth. Um. And they were in there just like you know, hitting them, hitting them hard. So you almost had to you almost had to keep eyes in the oats as much as you did in the alf alfa. Again, that that alf alfa field, how how big would you say that field was? Clay? I think Tom said it was seventy acres now that I think about it. That the oat field was a lot bigger than the off Alpha field. But I mean it was nothing to see these deer scoot right out of the alf Alpha field and start feeding in these oats, and you know it looked like dry soybeans. Um. But yeah, that's that's where he came from. That night, he just was cruising across the air, taking his time and uh yeah, just he started working our way. But you know, dark got to us. So next day, okay, so we the next day we go back to the county road stand and I'll give you a couple of clues and then we'll dial this in here and and and the story will be finished. Okay. Um, the Big Buck was hard horned, and probably eight percent of the other deer were in velvet. Okay, so that's that's one thing that is in my mind that the big deer is hard horned. Um. So the next the next morning, we climb up in the stand where we'd passed the deer to day the day before. This is the county road stand, and it's it's overcast, so it's kind of dark, but the sun starts to come up. We're ready, and I pull up the buyos and I see three deer coming out of the Alfa alfa turn and start coming our way. And I can tell their bucks, but it's there, you know, they're three yards away, and I can just see racks on all of them, and I can tell the one in the lead is hard horned. And this is where I made a mistake. Um. And you know, it's kind of cool making a mistake because I don't know, you just learn a lot from it. And and I go back and I just like track what happened, and uh, you know, it was so dark, I couldn't see these deer real well, but I could see him through buyos and and um and and I mean you can see them with your naked eye but I'm but once they make the corner, they're coming fast, you know, I mean, they're they're steady walking. So I pull up the bottoms one time and the first deer is hard horned and his horns come out to his ears, and he just looks like he's got a solid rack. And I just made the decision that is the buck we're after. And that was it. Like he's the one from the night before. That's right, I say, that's the big one. He's in the front, and man, I put the bottos up and I never looked back, and they were like once they once they came around that corner, they made their way out into that oat field and started feeding their way towards us. So it wasn't they weren't hauling down that road like the three we had seen the day before. They were kind of taking their time, but you know they were they were. We knew where they were gone. Yeah, and and basically quit what stay three is this day three of the hunt? Yes, morning of day three, because we we fed a bear hunt in between in that one second day, right, I think, So I'm trying to remember that. Ye. So basically this deer just comes into twenty five yards and I never scrutinized him, and I could tell that the deer behind him was bigger, but the way the wind was blowing, they were gonna cross right into our wind. Like so I felt like I needed to shoot the first deer. And I felt like the first deer was a hundred and fifty inch deer, the one behind him was slightly bigger. Tom had seen a bigger buck the day before, and I I felt like, Man, I'm not gonna get greedy and let this one fifty walk past me and get down wind waiting for this bigger one. And so, man, he comes into twenty five yards and you know it, it's minutes. I mean it's early, you know, I mean it's it's it's go shooting light. But it is overcast and it is early, and um, and I mean I pulled back, and I mean I can see him perfect through the peat and but I'm not scrutinizing Hornson. I mean I just tendering him at twenty five yards. Just shoot, and I mean just double. Um. We hear a twap, he runs off falls in the field and I'm elated, and uh, we go out there and that's it is not the buck at all. It's um, you know, I don't even want to say what he would score, uh because I don't know, but it was. It was a two year old eight point buck and uh man, to say I wasn't disappointed would just be a lie. I mean, I was disappointed. I've been to Canada three times and killed really nice deer. We were after a really nice deer, and uh so I was very disappointed. Um what, I hate to say it. I hate to say it because you know, I mean, there's just there's just no no getting around it, you know, I mean, I I shot the wrong dear. So Clay tell me this, how do you so? I'm gonna ask this to you Clay first, and then I'll ask justin next what does disappointed just shot the wrong buck Clay look like and sound like in that moment. You know, I'm pretty hard on myself. I mean I really am. I mean I in some some some ways, you know, people might see me as just kind of like happy, go lucky, whatever happens, not a trophy hunter. When it comes to white tails, I'm probably a little bit different. I mean, um, uh yeah, I was. I was. I was quite disappointed. I really was and and and partly because everything was in place for us to kill a good deer, you know, and in to end the hunt that quick. And I have a elaborate, elaborate spiel on judging Canadian white tails. That is killer. I about all the people that didn't kill big deer that he brought He so I knew what. I knew what we were up against. Oh, Mark, I have every the other three years I've been to Canada, I've brought people with me, and every single person nobody has walked out of Canada with a big Canadian white tail. Every single person I brought up there has made a mistake and shot two year old deer. One guy shot one guy probably shot a three year old deer. But it was a It's just like anywhere. I mean, they're not all big, you know. So you could have a mature four year old deer that had a rack. You know, that's possible. No, absolutely, I mean I could tell you stories and it um. But every single one of them killed two year old dear, And so I have Oh, I should write an article about judging trophy whitetails in Canada. And you gotta tell me what what's the secret to properly judging a trophy whitetail in Canada, Well, you've got to make sure that you're looking at a two hundred and fifty pound deer. You know, this deer probably weighed two hundred ten pounds is what I would have guessed. It is a big deer for me, and and the scale of his rack to his head. If he had weighed two fifty, he would have been what I thought he was. So when I judged him, I was like, that is a full size, full sized Canadian white tail buck. So you're you're looking at that body shape, body size, and then you gauge the horns because the first day I ever killed a Canada um, I saw him at eighty yards and I thought, oh, that's nice, dear, that's probably a hundred twenty deer based upon the scale of way, the way his horns looked, based on his body, and you know, assuming I'm looking at hundred and sixty d seventy pound deer, that have you know, hucks. Anyway, I thought this deer was a hundred deer. I shot the deer and he scored uh one fifty two, so massive ground swell. I walk up that there like holy cow, I said, I had no idea that their bodies were this big, and uh, basically those two and three year old deer can look like studs, um, and they're not. So that's primarily my spiel. It's like, you really need to look at a lot of deer. You need to see these big deer up against these two year olds. You need to look for that mass um. The older deer almost always gonna have really good masks, and um, you know, you just you just gotta be careful. So so now I gotta switch it over to justin. So two questions for you justin number one, when you saw this butt coming in and Clay said, oh, what's the one in your head where you're like, oh, yeah, that's the one? Or did you have this whisper in the back. That's like, I don't think that's the right dear. Honestly, man, I was Uh. I really didn't get a chance to get good eyes on them. This was I think the first hunt that on the trip that I didn't bring my binos and at the speed they were coming, I was just trying to make sure I had my act together, so um, you know I was filming. I was just more focused on filming Clay, and I was shooting pretty wide at that point, so, um, you know, being in my spot, there's just more things you had to be concerned with than you know, where those other situations. I had the camera set up, everything was good, I had every you know, I felt confident in everything. It was still early, so we were trying to be careful and quiet and not do too much, um, you know, before realizing the situation and and you know, figuring out where deer were. So I hadn't like really spread my wings yet. And so when I saw the deer coming, I could tell they were bucks, but I wasn't able to really assess whether or not. And and Clay said, he's like, man, there's a big one. He's at that corner and he's hard horn. There's three of them. He's like, the second one is bigger. And he started to you know, I started to get the like what he just said. I thought, oh, that second one must be um, the one maybe that Tom had had seen as well. But I could tell Clay was going for the lead deer, and so I was just trusting his you know what he could see. I didn't really have time to get eyes on it. And like he said, man, the bodies on these things, like, oh, I could see was you know he they were in the oats. It was brown, you know, and it was like overcast, and I wasn't able to pick the antlers out like I could in that alfalfa yield. And so they were coming and I was just making sure I was ready. And then when Clay walked up on him, like does Clay secretly laid on a bunch of cuss words? Or is there is there some secret part Clay that we don't see that comes out when he shoots the wrong buck? What does that look like? And he was he was swearing at me like no, and he here like I'm in a unique situation because you know, here, I am filming right, like that's my thing that I'm doing there. But I'm like, I'm I'm hunting. I'm just not shooting right, I'm not getting to kill anything. And um, I spent a lot of time in the tree and in the field, and so I get the same range of emotion that you guys do, like when we you know, when your dad shot that year on the back forty Like I'm feeling all the same things. And so when those deer came came around the corner, like I, you know, my heart rate lifted and the like, making sure I got my my stuff together. But I'm also I also feel that anticipation that I would feel if I was where Clay was, and just you know, trying to like keep my head together. So when he shot the deer, man, we were we were just so pumped, like because we kept having encounters with this deer, and you know, there's always that like that like crux where okay, here's the deer and the bows drawn and the only thing now that you hope for is a good shot. And when he shot, I mean it just you know that sound from heaven, just like that deep cavity, you know, clump sound. And he ran off and he got to the top of this little ridge and he tipped right over, and so like it was it. That was it. It was like it was done. It was awesome. We celebrated, you know, you know, here we go now he can now we can shift focus a little bit and we go walking up to it. And man, I can tell you like exactly what I started to think. I'm walking up and again he's laying in oats that are brown hand and brown, and Clay's like, here's a deer. And I look up from the camera for a second and I'm like, my first thought was, gosh, did he shoot a dope? And just just for a split second, and then I then I then I saw the andlers, and then I was looking at Clay, and man, it hit me like a brick wall, just like that disappointment that he felt. I could see it in his face. And I felt like I was paralleling what he was feeling because I just felt all of that. So he handled it well. It was one of those situations where, you know, if I had a tripod, I probably would have stuck the camera on a tripod and just like walked walked away, But I filmed him, you know, Like I think most of all, what you have to do in these situations is like you gotta you gotta be authentic. You gotta realize, like, all right, like, Okay, we killed a deer. It's not you know, it's not this deer's fault, right, he's dead. And and Clay is not like slinging things and throwing his hat and being like, oh gosh, you know, he's like he's absorbing the fact that like all right, I killed this deer. I killed the wrong deer. But here's just here at lace, you know, and I could, uh it was. It's a very unique thing to be able to go in as a as a cameraman and and do this. But but you're participating in a way that you wouldn't if you were just on a film set. You know, you it's raw. You get to you get get to like win a dobe blows at us in a tree, my gut saying, just like it does for you guys. So uh, it's it's a very interesting thing. And yeah, he was disappointed. I was disappointed, and I think then we were just like, you know, it's just like if you were by yourself and you killed this deer and you walked up on it, You're like, this isn't what I wanted. But we got meat, and we have a story and it may not have played out like we hoped it would, but um, you just gotta swallow it and and move on. Yeah, so Clay, you this happened, You were disappointed, you got at him, you brought him home. Yeah, did all the other stuff. You went out there and tried to kill a bear, YadA, YadA, YadA. When you look back on it now you've had some days now to think about it, to process it. Uh, what did you learn from this experience? Like? What did you learn? What would you do different? If anything? What what's the big takeaway here for you? You know, it's it's kind of like we my wife and I have something that we say to each other when things don't go right, and we say, when you ride bulls, you get your teeth knocked out sometimes, and uh, you know, when you're you're in Canada and there's just no cahoots about it. We're not like meat hunting in Canada though. The meat from these grain fed deer is incredible and I brought every stitch of it home and we will use that meat. But you know, I mean, I'm not saying that I went up there just to shoot a meat buck, you know. And uh so you kind of get your teeth kicked in, But it's, uh, it's a pretty good problem in your life. If you kill a deer in Canada and you know you're disappointed about it, you know, you probably have a that's not really that big of a problem. But no, I just made I just judged him too quick, you know, and uh, you know, I've killed a lot of deer with a bow, hunted up there a lot, and this every little thing that happens, you you learn from it, and um, it's just another thing. I just I didn't have enough data points and I made my decision too quick. And here's the main thing, another main thing I learned without getting into our bear hunt. This was a combo hunt, and I was trying to bear hunt and deer hunt. And I don't think I'll do that again because it just put too much pressure on me. Because the whole time we were deer hunt and we're thinking, man, we gotta kill a deer so that we can bear hunt. We're not gonna have time to bear hunt. And I feel like the kind of this overall pressure that was on it was on me solely by my choice, kind of put a a bit of urgency on me that I typically wouldn't be hunting with. And so in that regard, perhaps I've bit off more than I should have, you know. And uh, you need six days to go up there and kill a good white tail usually, and uh, I guess I just had it. I was very confident going into the hunt. Now, I told I texted Justin and told him there I felt really humbled, you know. I mean I've I've been fortunate with some good deer and I mean I think even from a kid, when I started bow hunting, I didn't a lot of let a lot of stuff get past me. I mean, I I capitalized on a lot of good opportunities, and so I've kind of built kind of my perception of myself as a bow hunter. It's like, yeah, I'm proficient. Deer walks by, I'm probably gonna kill it, and uh, and that's just kind of a dumb thing to think about yourself because it's such a complex moment with so many different things. And now I was just humbled. I really was, uh, just kind of humbled by it and grateful that I made a clean shot on a deer, very grateful for the deer and uh, but but also kind of evaluating my standards too. I mean, because when you kill a deer, you shouldn't feel bad. So I'm kind of personally moving through that. I've never shot a deer with that much ground shrinkage, never, so that's a new experience for me to shoot one that was that far off, you know, I mean, so I'm kind of like, it's kind of dumb to feel bad about shooting a deer and kind of goes against my principles and a lot of other areas of my hunting. So kind of evaluating that thinking about it. You know interesting, well, you know, you never I've never yet gone on a hunt or had a season where I don't come out of it on the other end having learned something new and learn something new about myself. And uh, certainly seems like you guys both had those kinds of takeaways. I mean, yeah, big buck or not, you grew, you learned something, Cary tell us about your hunt. Mark, Yeah, I wanna. I wanna now throw uh throw a little bit of the hosting responsibility over to you guys. Now. I think I want to walk through some stuff. So I'll kind of talk through some of our thought process around this trip, and me and Josh can can tell you what happened, but you guys jump in with all the you know, foult questions that you want and what details we miss out let us know. Um, So we went on a hunt just about the exact same time as you guys. I think our opening day was the day before, so August and this was public land, and this is the same place that me and Josh went and hunted last year. Last year, I think we started on September three or fourth, so we're a little bit late. We missed opening day last year. Um, this year, we'd be there the day before opening days. We'd be able to scouting all that. UM. And I don't know if you guys heard the story from last year, but listeners will remember that we went on this trip last year was our first time down to this piece of public land out there, and we kind of had a for lack of better word, of ship show kind of thing. It was just like every day there was other hunters kind of blowing our stuff up. Um. There was one day where I'd gotten on two really good deer the night before, made a move on them, and then that next day a group of like teenagers on UTVs came driving through, like banging metal pots and pans or something together and screaming, hooting, hollerd and driving all over the place. So I had this kind of negative experience. Um. But at the same time, you know, we saw a good number of deer. I mean, we saw a lot of deer and a couple of nice ones. Um. I mean, Josh, you had one hunt where I mean the first hunt you had there was like the best hunt in your life. What did you see? Yeah, yeah, or something like that. Just an insane number of deer um and a lot of a lot of bucks, like fifteen or twenty bucks, with a couple of those being shooters. So, I mean the first night out of the gates and we're like, all right, this this place is awesome. Yeah. Um. And then after that the wheels just kind of started to fall off. Yeah. So so we knew this place had this potential um, but also the fact that it had the potential to be a mess because it's it's a little closer, it's significantly closer to a larger city center that I usually like to do out in these Western public plan hunts. Uh, it's it's it's outside of what I would normally do. But we're trying to find a place that was close to my cabin out there that had quality deer numbers, and this was the best I could find. Um. So all that said, after last year, I wasn't sure if I want to go back or not. Um. I guess I never really asked you, Josh. I mean I know we bounced back and forth in this, but what was your gut reaction coming into this summer? Like when you and I were talking should we hunt here? Should we hunt here? Were you always like I wish should really go back? Or was there something in your mind was like, now we really shouldn't. Like I know what I was thinking, but I was torn on honestly, UM, And I think ultimately we made the right decision going back to the spot, just for the sheer number of UM deer. UM. The spot is just gonna be It's just gonna hold a lot more deer than UM some of the other spots we were looking at. UM. I knew there was a chance we would be dealing with more people, almost guaranteed at this spot. UM. But even though we saw people last year and it was kind of a goat rodeo at times, I mean, we were still in deer almost the entire trip. UM. So I think ultimately it was the right decision to go back here, UM, just for the sheer number of deer that are in the area, as opposed to some of these other lower density spots we're looking at UM that may have some good good bucks and maybe low pressure but we could have gone the whole week without seeing a single deer too at some of these other spots. Yeah, we w yeah, what's up? What's the what is the terrain? Like? What are you what are you hunting? Yep. So this spot is a river bottom, So there's there's hills on one side, and then uh down in the river. There's a big river that runs through a valley, and then there's public land that runs along the border of that river, and that public land is mostly uh grasses, shrubs, cottonwood, trees, some sage brush, and then just a bunch of other cover just like thick Russian olive kind of stuff that runs along the edge of that river. So that's the public land. It's long and skinny. Um, there's two access points. There's two different roads that go on either side of this that are separated by I don't know, four miles, five miles something like that. So it's like a four or five mile skinny stretch of public land that runs along this river that we have access to. And then outside of the public land there are crop fields on the private land. Some of these crop fields are ALFLFA. Some of it looked like maybe win or wheat. Uh, some of it was corn actually. So you know what we saw last year was that these deer obviously bed back in that cover along the river and then they transition out towards the private land crop fields every night to feed. So you know the general pattern of what these deer do is is simple, and that they had from the betting area which is all on this side and the head to the feeding area, which is all on that side. Uh. The tough thing about it is that there are there's very little pronounced difference in any of those spots. So where those deer pop out, like how they choose to go from north to south, it could be almost anywhere. It's it's relatives is different than honey on the back forty justin where we kind of knew, oh, here's our little like three acre great betting area, and we there's a pretty darn good chance that there's a big buck around here. He's gonna be in this little three acre betting area because that's the best thing around. He's probably gonna come out to this food source. No, it's like we have five miles of the same kind of great adding cover, and we have five miles of the same kind of great food, and you know, they could come in and out anywhere, and there's just very little that differentiates. And so our task was to do two things. We had to try to find something that would differentiate and help us pinpoint like narrow down where these bigger bucks would come out. And then secondly, how do we do that knowing that there probably would be a bunch of other hunters again like last year. Um and ultimately, like my my mental calculus was that I knew there's gonna be other people like we we we both came into it knowing, Okay, this place is probably blown up with other people. Would just let's assume it. Let's just like go into this knowing that every day we're gonna see people, and just knowing that off the bat, off the bat, it will hopefully make it less stressful when it actually happens. It's like every day I was like, Okay, don't get stressed out when you see other trucks here, don't get upset when you see someone walking in, because it's just gonna happen. Know it and have a plan for that. And ultimately, what I believe is that I thought we could out hunt them. I thought that there was enough targets that we would be able to um have success despite these other people. We could get back and behind him, We could hunt them in a different way than everybody else out there wanted to do. UM. So that was you know, that's the mindset we brought into it. UM. I mean that's basically where your head was that too, right, Josh, No, for sure that that was the same same type of thing where we thought we could maybe work around them getting further than them, UM, get deeper into the cover than what most people would like to do. And some of that was based on last year were you know, a lot of the kind of the preset stands that we saw and a lot of the hunting pressure we saw. It was kind of tight to the private um. You know, it didn't seem like there's many people that were getting too deep in there or um really kind of going the extra mile UM, And I think we just thought we could we could, we could work around them. Yeah. Yeah, So that what you guys did was go, if there's this five miles stretch, I mean, assuming you know, two and a half miles in, you're kind of in the middle of it, and that's that's a pretty good buffer that probably a lot of people wouldn't walk that far. Where How far were you guys in? Yeah, so so I think I think, as I'm saying this, as as I've been talking this a lot, I'm pretty sure I measured it and it was like right around four I think, was what the distance was between the two points. And so, yes, exactly what you said. We, you know, last year, trucked in as far as we get in one direction. We got in there pretty far, right about into the middle of it. And then this year, you know, the the the idea was to start at the place where you know, I'd seen the most and that ended up being about that far in. So by the time we got to the end of it, I was doing a two mile hike in to my stand every day. Um. Now, the problem that we eventually get to and that we saw a little bit last year and it continued this year, was that some people were getting access through the private land. So some of these people had you know, locals had connections, were able to shortcut in that we just couldn't do. Um But you know, we did what we could, and that we got there the night before opening day and we decided to split up and glass that first night and try to see, like, are these deer doing what we think they're doing. Is there any way we can get some intel they will pin down a little bit more of exactly where they're coming out under this private land, that might be able to help us choose where to start. Um. So, Josh, you know, he was able to get up on one of those hills I was talking about on the one side of the river, and I was able to drive along a road on the opposite side of the river along the private fields, So we had two different perspectives looking in at the same general area. And then that night, you know, we just glassed as much as we could and saw as much as we could, And I don't know, it was sort of useful in that it just confer our general idea, which was there's a lot of deer. There's a bunch of bucks. There was several bucks that, you know, they're far enough way we cannot tell exactly what they were, but I think we each saw a couple of deer, Josh that both you and I were like, Okay, that could be a potential shooter, right. Um. It was that kind of thing. And I don't think either one of us was able because of the various like topographical features and cover features, Like it wasn't like we could pinpoint exactly where they came in and out of private, but we knew in general, like, Okay, this little corner that we thought would be good, there was a bunch of deer that came out over this little zone by that little fence gap that we liked last year. This seemed like there was some deer coming out around there. So we basically confirmed our hunches and and told us that, yes, this is a a spot worth starting on. UM. A second thing that confirmed for me was that the this was more towards like the eastern access point was a little bit closer to the eastern access on the western access point was a spot where when I had actually been out here in the summer and checked it out once in the summer, it looked like the fields were not going to be planted into green food source UM. It was look like we that have been harvested or something. And so in my head in the summer, I was like, oh, they're not gonna be on the west side as much because of that. But when we came back now in September, they had replanted something or something was coming back up green because now there was a big green, lush food source coming in there. So so now both west and east sides might have something going on. So that was another thing in the back of our minds was that, Okay, the whole whole stretch now might still be attractive. So that all leads us to nine number one, where Josh and I both had two zones that we liked the previous year. Um. The previous year, we had walked into this area about a mile and a half in from one of those access points and passed the spot where the private land comes about as close to the public as it does anywhere, and there's an alf alfa field but right up to it, and there's a there's like a barware fence the runs along the whole edge of the alf alf alfa field, and then one opening in that fence like a big open gate. And it just seemed like, oh, this is obvious. This is an obvious spot. A lot of people are going to go in. And I think that day last year, like I don't know if it was drawing straws or whatever, but for whatever reason, you got that spot last year, UM, and hunted it and liked it, and I had gone past you then that day and you know, got on a couple of really good bucks, like six seven hundred yards further way. So now we kind of said, hey, you know, you want to start back at that spot you like last year. And I was like, I'll go to that spot where I saw the big ones last year, and those will be two good starting points. Um. So that was what decided to do with those two spots lined up with the general movement we saw the night before. Uh, the wind was you know, if if I was hunting in Michigan, I would have said the wind was really concerning um in that it was blowing generally towards betting um. But it was gonna be blowing generally to that direction the entire week. So we knew we were operating within the fact that we had to make some kind of sacrifice. So the trick was, you know, your wind's gonna blow into some of the cover no matter what, every single day. So we just had to think about, you know, which corner do we want to be blowing into when we positioned ourselves, and hoping that we could position ourselves in such a way that the majority of the deer traffic would be coming, you know, from the front, so if you can vision, like all the covers to our north, all the foods to ourselves. But we have southerly winds the entire week, so we had to hunt when it was like if it was like a south west wind, you know, we'd position ourselves so that we would hopefully, um, be a little bit to the east of where we thought these deer were going and try to catch them in places where they'd be crossing in front of us versus like coming from directly above us or something like that. So so that was a little bit of just like a burden we're gonna have to bear the whole week because of it. But you know, I think here, I don't know, I want to say that there, I don't know. I was gonna say they're less pressure than like Michigan deer at home deer, but I don't know. I mean, these deer get hammered there. Um for some reason, they're just a little bit dumber, I guess, I don't know how to describe it, but they almost I almost wonder if it's because they're just so used to having people in and out of there. Um that they just take a little bit more. Um, they just allow a little bit more of that human odor to be present before they really get boggered up in there. Um. I wonder if that's part of it. There are so many people in there, and not even just hunters, people recreating back. There are people recreating in the river. Um, they may just be used a little bit more human pressure than or be more tolerant of it than some other places. Yeah, I think there's there's something to be said to that. It was at times it almost felt like we were suburban bill hunting with the types of stuff we were seeing. Like that night we were glassing, I saw a guy who was not a hunter. He was like wearing like a blue jogging suit, like taking a walk on the edge of this public land, and these deer were out in the field and they kind of looked at him and then just went about their business, and this guy just kept on on stroll. Um. So you know, I knew we were operating under different rules than some places I hunt. Um. At the same time, as soon as hunting season begins and hunters start pushing into these places where deer aren't used to it, we knew that would also still have an impact. Um, so you know, night number one, I decided to go back to the general area where I saw these two slammers last year. I saw two really really good bucks last year. I was like sixty yards from them, just a little bit too far from me to feel comfortable. I made a move last year, and then you know, I made that move right to the spot. But those guys came in and did a bunch of crazy stuff and I never saw those big ones again. But I did see a couple other decent bucks within range that it passed on. So I thought this year was like, Okay, I know this little spot seemed to funnel a bunch of movement down into this little area. Happened three different nights last year. Um, I want to hunt that same general line of movement, but I know there's gonna be other hunters coming in, so I'm gonna backtrack of ways. And I positioned myself I don't know, maybe a hundred and fifty yards further back in the cover. So that's basically went due north, trying to follow those main main trail system that I thought they'd been using to come in. And I positioned myself up there closer into the bedding where I thought they'd be coming from, so that even if other hunters come in, I'll be deeper than they will be. Even if these deer move later in the evening, I'll be far enough back that i'll catch him in daylight. Um. And you know, basic gist of night number one was that I thought I wasn't a great place. Uh. And I saw some deer, saw some does, saw some fawns, saw a couple of small bucks. Um. About an hour before dark, had two other hunters come through that I could actually see biking in on a trail that I could see about a hundred yards away from me. So two other bikers came past me and heading towards where Josh was. UM. And then I saw one decent two year old buck. And that was it for night number one. So it was pretty disappointed because I thought, opening night of the season, I'm in a spot that I know these bucks that'd come through and didn't didn't see a good one. Um, plus the two other guys. So that was that was my first day. Uh, Josh, you want to give me the highlight of your night? What happened there? Yeah? Yeah? Sure? Um, So yeah, I kind of stopped at that same area that I had hunted last year that I liked. UM. I did go in, I don't know, th yards deeper than I than I was the year before, get back in a little bit more to the cover. UM. But I also still want to be able to see this kind of it's almost like a secluded alfalfa field back in there on the private So I wanted to be able to see that and see if there's deer come out the private or kind of how they were using that this year. UM. So I kind of got said up and and just pretty slow. UM for the first part of the night, saw some does and bonds UM. And I had saw those saying two hunters coming down that that trail that I could also see. They worked their way down to me. UM, but they kept moving on, which is probably good news as best as it could have been. UM. And then things started to pick up a bit towards the last half hour or so of light. UM had a couple of like a bachelor group of probably a couple of year and a half old bucks and I think there's like one two and a half yeorld and it was a decent little like a little forky six point with like a seven point coming off. Um, his main beam like just a nub, but he was wide. He's like to his year. He's kind of a cool looking buck. And and uh I saw that that deer and then UM had randomly turned around just kind of checked behind me, check the theflfa field. Um. I had my back to the half alfa field. UM I was using. I was in the saddle using the tree is cover um from deer that would have been coming out of the cover towards the alf alfa. So I had positioned myself where I had to turn around to see the alf alfa field. And I had turned around it at one point and there was a what was the term justin the slammer slammer slammer buck, slammer bucks standing there on that kind of main access trail that probably a half hour ago there was two kids walking their bikes down. There's just big old buck standing right on this trail and kind of trotting along and and um he was now headed Uh he would have been headed west UM and I lost sight of him. UM. But that was obviously a confirmation that I was in a good little zone. There. There's some good deer in that area. Um, saw a lot of deer that night. Um, and then saw I saw one really good book that that I knew, uh what was definitely a shooter. So I couldn't really tell where he went, but kind of at last light, I saw him retrace his that that trail he had taken and head into the alfalfa under the cover of darkness that I could just see him through my binoculars. Um before I was I was ready to get packed up for the night. So definitely definitely good one in that general area. I couldn't tell you where exactly he came from, um, but but he was close. Josh, how big is a what's a good one out there? You think? Yeah, I bet that deer is probably um he was involved, so he probably looked a little bit bigger than he actually was. Um, I bet he was hunter forty year Yeah, real nice time length and and uh I just got a quick glimpse of them. But kind of judging by that, I would have seen his right side, judging by kind of what I saw from the time, length and everything, and I bet he was year really really nice gann deer for sure, Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Yeah. So so our our plan for this trip was to for the first like half or so first handful of days of the trip, our plan was to focus just on the evenings because there was there's no way to get into this stuff without being in front of an alongside these big elf alfa fields where all these deer feeding at night, so that there's no good way to get in the morning without these deer know when you're going in. So our thought was, let's try to have you know, at least three really good, unscrewed up evening hunts, and then if we still haven't killed once we get towards those last parts of the trip, then we would start hunting mornings and just throw caution to the wind and see what would happened, so we could up our odds a little bit in a different kind of way. Um, so we didn't hunt that next morning. Ah. The thought process then was that, you know, Josh is gonna make a play on that buck. Hyesaw, But I felt kind of lost, like I hadn't seen anything worth going to move on after my first night. UM, so I'm sitting here thinking, well, you know, one of my ideas was to push in deeper from that, Um, but then we had this other task, which was we wanted to go put some cameras on the other side of the property, way over by that other access point, just to see like is there anything going on over there? And like I mentioned, like, we did see there was some green food on that side too, so there probably was dear But at the same time, there was also a spot that's easier to access. There's like an easier parking lot to get you know, settled in, there's an easier trail to get into that side. So I kind of had this assumption that, you know, if there was gonna be more pressure, it would be on that side. Um. But I kept going back and forth in my head. I'm like, well, I could go back in where I went and pushing kind of blind and find something, or I could just like suck it up and be the guy who goes and puts cameras on the west side and go in there and see what might happen. Um. You know, I don't want to just assume it's blown up, because maybe it's not. And that does like that spot was the spot that Josh had that night where he saw like sixty in fifteen bucks. Um, so maybe there haven't been people there yet, and if there haven't been people there yet, it actually could be really good. Um So I was going back and forth between like, assuming there's gonna be a bunch of people and it's gonna suck, or maybe I should go there and check it out and see what happens. Um So I finally decided, you know what, I'll go. I'll just go and see and we can check that off the bot. We can check it off the map. Either have a great hunt or um you know, we learned that, yeah, that spot's not the place to go. So I went over there, hiked in, hung a camera, and my game plan originally was to, you know, even though I was going to go on this side, knowing that there was probably um you know, it's kind of like this high risk hiro war kind of thing, I still was like, I'm still gonna go deep in the cover. I'm still gonna go away way back in there so that even if people do show up, it won't blow blow up my hunt. But as I got in there, I got just under a mile in. There's this spot that Josh was able to watch last year on that first night, where a ton of these dear cross into the alfalfa. There's like three different fences that all come together and like these are like you know, low barbed wire fences, and there's three of them that all come together, and there's a couple of like strands down and then there's a gate that's lower and so I think because of that reason, a lot of the deer cross out of the cover right here. The problem is it's it's right next to that access trail, and it's like the easiest spot you could get to if you wanted to walk in down this main trail, you would get here and you'd be like, oh wow, this is an obvious great spot. This is where all these deer crossed by. Um. So I got to that point and in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna cross the fence. I don't hike another like I don't know, third of a mile in here or something like that to get back in this cover. But then I had this little like feeling in my head. I was like, God, there were so many deer that came through here last year. And that was like the third of the fourth day of the season, and they were still doing it. Um. Now, after that day, other people showed up and it's got screwed. But I don't know what's been happening here the last night. This is only day two of the season, so I was basically saying I was trying to termine, like, hey, if no one was in here last night, this might still be dynamite. Um. And it's actually a concentrating feature that you know, would really concentrate movement if they're still doing it and i'd be able to see it, versus if I go deep in under the cover. It's a jungle, and I'm kind of you know, I'm gonna see what's happening in a forty yard radius, and I better hope I picked the one feature that's right, because there's a whole lot more area that they might be passing through and I'm making a blind guess on it. Um. So again I'm back and forth, back and forth, and finally I decided to settle on the riskier option, which was hunting close to that crossing, close to the access trail, close to the food And it was either gonna be the stupidest night ever and I was gonna have it blown up with hunters and I'm gonna sit there and fee look an idiot or these deer would be still on their normal summer pattern. It would actually come right by and I get a shot at one. All right, let me ask you something here. How early were you in there? I mean, like, presumably you didn't walk in there and there's somebody hanging there already. Like what time were you going in? Correct? Uh? End the shooting light was around eight thirty pm, and we were getting in there, I'd say around four ish. I think we we we end up going in progressively later every day. Um, but I think on that second day we might have even been in there, like three thirty. We were in there pretty really marked. Mark. Sorry, I think it was right around four o'clock those first couple of nights. Who were we were getting in there? So those people that you guys kept seeing that we're walking by, you were they just trying to get deeper? Like did you ever figure that out? Well? You know, there's a whole bunch of different examples, um. You know, on on in previous years, there are some people that were going in further but seemingly hunting, like close to the private but going past in this cation um on the west side. That was the case because there's actually a spot where the private land um. This main trail continues onto the private land, and we found out by talking to some other hunters that some locals had permission to cross that private land that we couldn't do, but other people did have access to do um on the side that Josh hunted that we both hunted night number one and the Josh was hunting night number two. We historically had not seen other people hiking that far coming from the public We've seen people hike a short distance in because they're coming off the private UM. So in my case though, on nine number two, i'm, you know, just under a mile from the public access um, but pretty close to the private So I think it was a hundred yards off the private off that field. So if someone came in there, you know, they wouldn't have to go all that terribly far and they'd be right there and right on me. But I don't know. For For whatever reason, I decided, you know what, I gotta try it. I have to try it before assuming that's screwed up already. And to make a long story short, I sat there most of the night and saw nothing. And then we get to prime time the final hour of the day and I see a flash of movement of ahead of me up towards the field. And remember at first and like a deer got past me, and I throw out my binoculars and I look at him and it's not a deer. It is a hunter. Uh. And he's sneaking in with like an arrow knocked. He's like spotting stock on the ground, sneaking down this trail towards me. Uh. And he ends up walking like right in my direction. I whistle at him, waved, and he looked up and saw me and had that like deer in the headlights look like oh no, we both probably had this hunting public. It wasn't, but he was. He definitely was taking a page. He was taking a page as X book. He probably listened to your podcast from three weeks ago, you probab. You probably did, so, you know, God bless this guy. He he saw me, he waved, and then he turned and went back the other way. UM. So that was the best case scenario there at least. UM. But I did think, well, you know, this will be interesting because he just walked up this way, blowing his wind basically, you know, having walked that whole direction, final hour daylight and blown his wind. With the way the wind was going that day, he would have basically blown his wind across everything. I was hoping Dear would come through UM and then turn around went back. So my hope was like, Okay, best case, he'd just keep on going a long ways back. But if he just goes, you know, a little ways back the way he came and sets up, he'll be really blown into all the stuff that I was hoping would be safe from a wind perspective. UM light fades were down like the last ten ments of light. I haven't seen any deer yet. In my head, I'm like, well, this was the stupid hunt you figured it would be. You didn't see anything. It was a bust. Well you know, at least now you know now focus on the other side. But last ten minutes, all of a sudden, I hear like crunching and crashing stuff from behind me. And here's a dough and a fawn and another dona fawn and they're coming out like twenty yards from me, passing, heading right towards that gap in the fence. UM. And now it's like five minutes left and I'm hearing more movement, but you just can't see it. It's dark enough now that we're down to like the last like four minutes or three minutes. I keep like looking at my phone and then pull up my binoes and trying to see these deer. It's enough that like I need my binoculars up to really see what's happening off further into the cover. And we're down to just like those last couple of minutes, and I see another bigger body deer coming to like a little opening, and I pulled my binoculars and it's a shooter buck It's like a nice hard horned This isn't like a giant buck um, but for this trip, for me, he was definitely a shooter maybe like one twenty hard horned eight pointer looking deer. But he's like behind a tree. I can see him through pine boughs um and he's standing there and he just is there. He's not moving, he stopped walking. Some does are walking past. He's just kind of looking around, looking around. I'm looking at my phone. I'm like, God, dangn like two minutes left, Like I need him to go like another five yards in either direction for me to be able to get a shot. He's within range. I would say, he was right around that thirty ish yard mark, but just no way I could get a shot, and so I let out a little I decided to do just a little contact grunt, just like a little like rock, just just in case maybe I'm get him to be curious and do something. I let the little rock, and it does get him to move. He kind of like bounces back a couple of steps back the way he came um, but doesn't stop in the lane. So he bounces back a couple of steps, still within range, but still behind cover. And as I am panning with my binoculars over to his new spot, I see another dear step out behind him, and this is maybe like twenty yards behind him, and this one's like a big shooter, like this one's like a one forty plus buck in velvet, but he's like fifty sixty yards away And that's definitely not a shot I was gonna take in the last fading moments of light. Uh. And so that was it. Light faded. They were right there out and just you know, the one was in range, one was just out of range, but no clear shot um. And you know, I basically left that hunt feeling pretty happy about it. Because I had taken this risk. It almost seemed like it was going to be a really stupid, worthless night, and they ended up doing almost what I thought they would do. Right they came through. They still had not been so pressured that they wouldn't do what they're gonna do, and I was just, you know, a couple of branches away from killing one. So that was encouraging because now I had something to work off of. I knew that for day three I can make a move on what I saw and hopefully get in behind them and catch them earlier, even if they had been pressured, even if they did smell me or the other guy and decided to move later, I thought I could adjust for that. UM. So that day two ended up pretty good for me, Josh, Day two is pretty good for you to write, Yeah, I did. Two was another decent day for me. I adjusted again, or I guess I adjusted for the first time. UM on day two. There I had moved forty or fifty yards to what would have been my west A lot of the deer I saw the night before. I had been using um a different trail than what I had set up on the night before. I think I only had like one dough and maybe like one year and a half old buck use that trail that I thought they might use that previous night. A lot of the other deer were shifted forty fifty yards to my west, so I I moved further that way to get set up. UM. And I was really in dear all night, UM, within range, just just not the right deer unfortunately. UM. But again getting towards the last light last, A lot of the movement was pretty late. UM. At least the better deer that we were seeing. We kind of like it seemed all we could and be like in two waves like that first wave was pretty early movement. UM does fawns seeing young bucks. UM. And then really you know, anything of note wasn't moving until pretty late UM. Uh you know last last half hour, fifteen minutes something like that. UM. So again late movement, UM end up seeing. I'm trying to remember exactly what all I saw that night, but the key part of that night was just before maybe the last five ten minutes a light, I saw a really nice eight point or different duder than the night before. UM. It was like broadside at fifty yards UM, some junk in between me and him, Um, maybe could have squeezed off a shot. Um Man, that's just a that's a pretty far shot on a white tail for me. UM just wasn't quite confident taking that shot. Um. He was on alert. There is a dough I think blowing back in the cover. I'm not sure what I would have alarmed her because she was not near me. I don't think she smelled me. My wind was blown in the other direction, so something had her on edge, which had some other deer on edge. And just again fifty yard shot was was not one I wanted to take on that deer. And and while all that was happening, I I looked further to my west and there is another deer walking through another trail again further another you know, just out of range, further to my west even more um. And then behind that probably two and a half rild deer was a really really nice eight point I'm not exactly sure what he was um in terms of like size, but definitely a big body on him, great time length. UM. And I got some good eyes on those two deer where they where they crossed into the private um. And I made a mental note of that. Uh. And again kind of like on myself in between uh two shooter bucks on either side of me, So kind of in a little bit of a interesting dynamic of which way do I move to the next night? Maybe um to to try to make a play on them. Um, so yeah, another good night, another know, another too close encounters with with really nice box. Um, just feeling like they're maybe one step ahead of me both nights at that point. So far, we're feeling pretty good after that night, wheren't we Yeah, yeah, we were feeling real good after that night and both both getting into good deer. Yeah, now it should be pointed out. So we get done with a hunt like that, right, and then we're moving every day pretty much because we're running gun hunting with sticks in the saddle. So shooting ends at eight thirty. Then we have to tear down our whole set in the dark, so we're maybe down out of the tree fifteen minutes later. In some cases we had to wait for deer to get past us. So let's say nine o'clock we get out of the tree, and then we have about a forty five minute walk to hike out, you know, about you know, between a mile and a half and two miles to hike out. So you're talking about not getting back to the truck until getting close to ten o'clock at night. We get back to the truck at like ten o'clock, and like on night number two, I had to get my vehicle and then drive all the way to the other access point where Joshua's. We get there, takes it ten minutes to get undressed, packed up and going. So we're packed up and ready to go a little after ten, and then we have an hour drive back to the place we're staying. So we weren't getting home every night until after eleven. So we're making dinner at like eleven fifteen at night, eating dinner, doing whatever work we have to get done, and getting to sleep, you know, like twelve thirty one o'clock every night. It was very exhausting from that perspective. Um, it just felt like a grind, especially when we started hunting mornings. Um. So I'll fast forward a little bit for what happened to me that night, because I wanted to make a play on those bucks, of course, and my thought process was that I could get back behind them. And you know basically what I did. I went in that evening, I went and got above where they came in, so now I knew like we had the southerly wind, I know the basic path they were going basically from northeast to southwest. So I would get set up to the north and the west of the route that all those deer came through. And like all these deer came through a narrow swath, so I felt pretty confident with where they were going to be generally moving. And my idea was to get farther back in the cover and up wind of that spot, so that even if they moved ten minutes later, I would still be within range of them if they came through on that same general you know, route of travel. And I got in there and it looked really really good, like I found this area where all these trails came crossing together really felt like the spot, and uh, get settled in, and I don't know, a couple hours for a daylight, here come three people, um but not hunters, like just random people like shouting. It was like they were looking for something. First I thought they lost their dog, and then I heard someone say something about it sounded like maybe he said arrow, Like did I did you find your arrow? I thought they said that so I'm like, oh, that someone shot something and then they're looking for the deer or something. But when I got a better look at these people, they did not look like hunters, So I don't know what they're doing. But they walked all over in the I'm in a jungle, like, I'm in a thick, nasty jungle of cover at this point, so I don't know why they were way back there, but I could never figure it out. They never went behind me too terribly far, but they definitely mucked a lot of stuff up. Um, but they're out of there. The night comes to a close. Zero deer moved past me until after shooting light and then shooting light fades and then I start hearing deer moving, so deer start moving past me. But after shooting light. UM, so super disappointed. Like I thought it was going to be the night I really felt confident. I set up and then you know that that whole thing happened. Um, that was my evening did not go too well. Uh, Josh, your night number three was was kind of similar, right, yeah, very similar, very similar. I readjusted again and set myself up in a position where I could, um, I could see and and have a good shot to that trail that I saw that Uh, that good buck walked the night before and then also was able to shoot behind me to the other trail had set up on the set up on the night before. I kind of gave up on that one buck that he was. He was like near the main access trail. I just didn't think that, um, that was a super high percentage spot where that that they would be again. Um, So I had moved again and it was a pretty slow night, and I think that was a night I saw a moose come through, like a cow moose come through. She read the script perfectly. She would have been a big, old mature buck. It would have been game over. But um, that was pretty pretty quiet night, uh that night. Yeah, so we're halfway through the trip. I was definitely starting to stress at this point. Um, and I'm thinking about, Okay, you know, there was all these people like crazy in here. The day before there was the other hunter, and I actually forgot that second night after I saw the two shooter bus. Not only was there the guy's botting stocking, but after dark, as I'm like tearing down my set, another hunter comes walking in along the edge of the private land the heap he had been on the private land he comes walking by. So so there have been at least two hunters in there, plus these three random people. So as I'm trying to decide what to do for night number four, um one option was to try to push in deeper to where I was on this side and try to hopefully rediscover where these bucks are moving through deeper where they feel safer. But on this side it's it's just an absolute jungle. Like the there's I could not find any rhyme or reason for why these deer were doing what they're doing, you know, other than when I saw that one route that that one night the deer used. Um So, I I could either do that, or I thought to myself, Or I can go back to the east side, where Josh was and where I had had previous success. And over there there's a there's like a channel of the river that runs back into this really good cover. And I always thought to myself that you could use the channel of that river as a concentrating feature. Right, there's gonna be spots where these deer want to cross, and those will be spots will be abill find. Um So I I ultimately decided, you know what, I could just like go hodgepodgs through the jungle on the west side, or I could relocate to the east, go back into that section. I know there's deer because we saw him the first night scouting the previous year. I know I've seen him coming in and there's this island back there that I know there's deer. They've got to be betting on this island. So I could go in there and find the best set of crossings, and like that is something that could actually concentrate movement and give me like a good chance at a bowshot versus going blindly the other side. And so I finally ultimately decided to do that. I slipped back in. This is a full two plus mile hike in to get to this spot. And I got back to this river channel, and I walked this river channel right into the belly of the beast, I mean like really thick jungle type stuff, and found where there was three four different crossings all in this one narrow stretch of the river channel. Um coming off that island onto the mainland set up there, and um, you know, the the moral of the story there is that it came really, really really close to working out, had a bunch of deer come through, and ultimately had a shooter buck, a nice velvet I think he was a nine or ten pointer, probably in that like one thirty type category, come through and right at thirty yards. But there was these darned bushes, like a little a little bushes or something that he was walking behind, and so I can see his head and his back line, and I just can't shoot through these bushes with good conscience. Um. I'm trying to like stand up taller, kneel down lower, or like get different angles to see if there's like some kind of hole I can find, um that I think I could slip an arrow through, and I just I can't find anything that I can get a reasonable shot at. So super nice buck goes walking by thirty yards. I think he was even at twenty five yards at one point as he kind of angled his way out. Um, but no good shot. Um. What I did see though that night was that that buck and the dough that was with him, and then another like fifteen deer, including another what I thought was a buck. I could never see his head, but I could just see this big, dark gray body. Um. They all did the same basic thing. Uh just most of them a little bit too far out of range. They were all following this tree line along the edge of the island that goes from northwest to southeast, and they're all angling down the edge of this island. So I thought to myself, I can relocate tomorrow for tomorrow morning. I decided we're gonna start hunting mornings now, and I can get to a new tree where I'd be able to shoot to where this buck was, but also to where all the rest of those deer were another like thirty yards further back. Uh So, after dark, I tore it on my set in the dark that night, and actually went and set up my stand or my saddle platform that night before going out, because I wanted to be there in the morning. Um So did all that, and then hiked the two miles out after that. So that was night number four. Really close call. Thought I was set up for a dynamite hunt in the morning. I thought, these deer, I mean, the fact that I saw twentiesome deer all funnel down this one tree line following the edge of this island, it just seemed like they're gonna do it again. And now I'm set up for the next morning. They're gonna come back and they're gonna come back to bed, and this is gonna be it. I felt really good about that. Um, Josh, night number four, you did see him. I did not see any shootures at night. I saw a ton of deer. I I pushed back in deeper to the cover. UM. I had crossed this little channel as well. I got into this little spot. It was like a point basically where there was this channel and then there is a like a dry creek that that runs out then to the the the main river there. UM. And it was just kind of this like perfect little train feature that I thought would would kind of dictate some movement from the cover. From the thick, nasty cover. UM. A lot of the deer that I had seen the previous nights, I could tell they are crossing this little channel somewhere in this area and then they'd make their way to the f alfa fields. And Man, I saw a ton of deer that night. It's like this perfect little staging area where they were just coming out of thick stuff and it's almost this little bowl um like either side of this little flat in the cottonwoods had like a berm on it, and they kind of come up over this berm and they just kind of browse around in this this flat um. And it was like early movement and movement all night long. A lot of little books, a lot of does a lot of bonds, but but again just kind of waiting for that that later movement of those older deer, and it just never happened that night. But I felt really good about that spot. Um. I felt like that there's gonna be something that's happened that's gonna happen for me. It's gonna be in this this general area. Um. So I was feeling pretty good for that that, just leaving all my stuff up there and hunting that spot in the morning too. Yeah, So the next morning was going to be the day. Right, Um, we're gonna go start hunting the mornings. After seeing what we've seen in all these people and stuff, we decided, you know what, we we gotta we gotta give the shot. We're way deep in the cover. To get in into the morning, we do have to go pass some of these fields. We're just gonna take it. We're gonna we'renna cross these fields. We're gonna walk normal and hopefully we'll be able to get away with it for a couple of days, and we far enough back that hopefully they will be deer that weren't bothered by us that will still transition back. Um and and I'm gonna give you the whole rest of my hunt right now, because I don't want to keep people here sitting for too long. This is going on the edge of our seat. Mark. Yeah, here's about this morning, hut Man. This morning hunt definitely felt really good. I get in there that next morning. We got in there super early to the parking lot with Parker truck, and another truck parks up and I'm thinking, like, there's no way nobody else is doing this. We're here two hours before daylight. We're hiking in two plus miles to our spot. Nobody in a western state hunts white tails like that, Like, no one likes white tails enough to do stupid stuff like this. But someone else pulls up next to us, gets out of their vehicle and I go over there to see, like what they're doing, and it's another hunter. We start talking this dude. He's got a saddle and climbing sticks and he's like, oh yeah, I'm going right back to that same place, Like, no freaking way do we find that one white tail nut that's out here a million miles away from whitetail country. Crazy as us. Um, So he ends up hiking with us all the way back. Um and and I cut in into the cover sooner than he did. He was gonna keep going on. It was actually hunting closer to the food. Um. But so here's another hunter and does this thing with us. I slip into this spot that I had made the move from last night, and basically just what happens That deer start piling in and they start all following a consistent traveler out just like they did the night before, but instead of being on my side of the island, they all were on the opposite side of the island. Imagine that this imagine this island is kind of like a like a hot dog, like it's it's a thin, narrow hot dog like I said, that runs from northwest down to southeast, and there's a tree line and cover on the outside of the island, like all around the boarder of the island, but it's kind of opening grassy in the middle. And so the night before they had all been on that southern edge heading down to go feed in the field. Um, and they seem like they're gonna go all the way to the bottom of the island, to the end of the hot dog and then crossed down there. And then this morning I sat there, positioned on that south side, but instead of coming along the south edge, they took the north edge. Um, and here come a bunch of deer, Here comes a bunch of little bucks, and here comes a shooter buck passes by, like six seventy yards away from me, maybe, but along that north edge. So I saw that was super disappointed. I wasn't sure if it was the same deer or not that I saw the night before. This one was hard horned, so maybe it was. I didn't get as long with a look at this one this time. Um. And then I waffled back and forth, like, Okay, do I chase that movement and move somewhere else? Do I move over to that side for tonight? Or is my belief that maybe you know, in the mornings they go that way back to bed, but in the evenings they're gonna come back and do what they did last night. I decided to I decided that was more likely the case I thought, you know what, I gotta at least sit here at night and see if they're gonna come back down this way. And I did. I said that night they did not come my way. They came out on the north again and followed that edge down. Didn't see a shooter. The next mornings, our last day of the hunt, I decided I was going to just get kind of aggressive now. I actually slipped in on the ground and snuck in on foot and set up in a bush like a clump of bushes and sat in the ground along that north edge and hope that these bucks will come back through. A bunch of deer did end up coming through within range and passed by like six yards from where I was sitting, but never was a buck I wanted to shoot. Last night, I decided that I would just spot and stalk and just again ground pound my way all the way up that island, all the way to the tippy top northwestern corner where the bet like the bettiest, nastiest bedding cover ever was at, and basically got like right on the edge of it. Because at this point now it's been a day in a half since I saw a shooter. My thought is like Okay, they're they're onto us. I know where they're betting. I'm gonna get right there. This is the last chance. And they're not moving as much as they were, but I know they're still in here. But maybe I can catch him move fifty yards out of their betting or ten yards out of their betting. I'll be right there. And the ending of my story was that they did not. I did not end up seeing a good buck come out of that betting. I was right in the thick of it, and I'm sure that deer were in there at times, but they weren't it that night, and I did not kill a buck. Um. So that was the end of my trip. Josh, I want you to tell me about the climax of your part of the hunt. Did I have to? I don't have much more talk about either. You can, I guess you can choose to. You can choose whether or not you want I'll talk about it. Um. Yeah, so uh jeez um. That that morning, that next morning, hunt was pretty uneventful, not much going on. Um, but kind of the the climax of my hunt would have been that Friday night, so second second to last day, and the movement kind of patterns were very similar to the night before. I was like, all right, this is good. These deer are still um because this would have been my third sit now in this general spot. UM, feeling good about it. Uh some of that early movement um you know young bucks does pons all moving through. They're all kind of just picking their way through, not really uh alarmed or or feeling pressured. They didn't seem like they were pressured much. And and I was like, well, all I needed, All I need is is for one of these big deer in the area to come in here and feel we're pulling and do the same thing. And I'm in the game. And and uh man, about time after eight something like that, I had about fifteen twenty minutes shooting light um costs of movement over to my right, come out and thick stuff. And there's a nice buck and see some more moving behind him. And there's a really big buck and then another a little bit smaller eight point but still a shooter and velvet comes out behind him and they work their way up over this little berm and are right out in front of me at forty yards. I've got three shooter bucks um with one really really big deer, the biggest dear of my life that I'm gonna have an opportunity at. And they just kind of keep let me guess, Josh, hold on, you shot the small one the same story. I wish I maybe would have would have Um, I wish I maybe would have gone after that one. I may be telling for a story right here. Um. But they kind of keep work working from my right to my left, and and they get into a spot, um where if they kind of keep working up this this same trail, they're gonna be at like twenty five yards. First one kind of gets to that spot and he starts to kind of beer away from me. I was like a shoot, um that that big buck is his second, and he's about just a little over thirty yards and he's pretty calm, but he looks like he's on the same trajectory of this other buck. And I need to make a move now if I'm going to get a shot at this year. And he was kind of quartered away from me, still good you know, good position. And I draw back and I go in just to total blackout autopilot mode, like the bad kind of autopilot work. I just rushed everything and just at the moment gets the basest to me and I by the next thing I know, I'm looking at an arrow that that went under him. Um. And I missed that buck. And I wish I could tell you what I did. Um, But I've been replaying that that moment over and over and over in my head, and I just I think I just I just rushed it. I rushed it a bunch of trigger. I didn't check my bubble level. I didn't do the things that I know I should have done. Um, And it cost me the biggest deer of my life up to this point. And Uh, I've been kicking myself ever since, you know, ever since that moment. UM. And I had been gone for at this at this point, like eleven days from my family or something like that, had a work meeting out in Idaho before this, I've been out there for four or five days before the hunt, and now we're on the second to last day of the hunt. And I just felt, you know, all the way to the world was on my shoulders at that moment, just like this feeling of failure and like, you know, just just a lot of doubt running through my head. Um. And uh, it was a it was a sucky position to be in. UM never feels good. No, not the first time I've missed. I'm sure it won't be the last, but um, that one's going to sting for a long long time, just given the scenario and UM having just an awesome deer probably like a hund public land and a heavily pressured area and shoot under him. Just not a good feeling. But got down, you know that deer kind of bounded off, kind of looked around, all three of them. They didn't really spook out of there. Um kind of went back in the cover and before dark, I saw the deer that I missed kind of work his way back across this little opening in this flat I don't about seventy yards out from me, and just kind of browsed on through and just kind of kept, um, you know, steered somewhat clear of that area. And but you didn't seem too spooked. You. I don't think you really knew what happened. Um, you know, I got down, found my arrow perfectly clean. Miss. There's nothing, no hair, no blood, nothing, So UM, no best case scenario if you're gonna miss, right, I mean clean miss is a good is good? And uh, you know, I went right back in there that next morning. I was like, you know what this is, you know, I know that dear is any here. He didn't seem too alarmed, and I actually saw that son of a gun again that that next morning, UM, coming about sixty yards to my south, across the river, across the creek there at a different spot. UM. But it was like half hour or four or five minutes after daylight, just working his way back in there like like nothing was wrong. So a part of me felt like I was maybe still in the game for that last hunt um of the trip um. But ultimately that that last night was probably my slowest night. I saw a few deer, Um, I saw a couple of young bucks, but but that that bachelor group of three good, good shooter bucks never never show back up. So I left Idaho with my my tail between my legs for sure. So m m, that was it. That was man, that's tough to hear. Man. Yeah, yeah, not fun, not fun. And it's hasn't gotten really any better, you know. Yeah, Well you're right, and that it could have been worse, you know, I mean, a clean myth is sometimes a blessing, you know, rather than a bad hit or something. You know, there's always a positive. Yeah, you know, you know I feel good about that. I just wish I could have controlled my emotions or buck fever or whatever you want to call it. I just wish I would have I could have controlled my my myself a little bit better in that moment. That's why I said maybe I should Maybe I should have taken a shot at that, a little bit of a smaller buck at that at that moment. I don't think it would have mattered. You've got three good deer coming in any like that. It's it wouldn't matter what do I shot it. I think it would have been just um, a cluster so um. But yeah, you live, and you learn and and try to try to learn from that the next time I'm in that scenario, and hopefully I'll have a better outcome. Yeah. And if that's not a if that's not a moral of both of our stories, I don't know what is all right. I mean that you gotta you gotta take the good with the bad. You gotta learn to recover from the unexpected. You gotta just grow, try to find the silver linings and all these things, because no hunt ever really goes the way you plan it to. Very rarely does it go exactly how we want. Very infrequently do we think one thing and have it happened just that kind of way, And nine times that tend you going to hunt and you don't end up achieving whatever goal you had. So it's these kinds of pills we gotta swallow a deer hunters, I think are always bitter in the moment, but I think that with time, I guess from my experience, at least you're always better for that medicine give it enough time. Um So I think I think there's maybe something to that with both of our stories. Even though your pill was much less bitter to swallow, Clay, since you got to wash it down with a nice steak or two, we both we all learned a thing or two when we um. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I had a lot of frustration coming out of this hunt not ending the way I wanted to. But at the same time, I guess the only thing that and I fall back on this every time I have an unsuccessful hunt. So it's the same old, same well, but I guess I gotta remind myself that, you know, did you do everything you could did you did you put in the work you knew you should have. Did you leave it on the field. You know, by the end of the trip, we were I was hiking eight miles a day on a white tail hunt in rubber, knee high boots, acting in and out a tree standard, a saddline sticks every time. I amount of busting my balls trying to get this thing done. And it didn't work out. But you know, I had a couple of really close calls, and you know, we we battle through adversity and you know, it is what it is, and you just got to accept the results and uh, you know, not beat yourself up too much if it doesn't fall away you wanted to, I guess. And so that's that's kind of where my head's at now. Mark. Here's my question to you. My question is, I mean, you know, hearing the story and not being involved in the drama and the amount of work and seeing these people which can be so disheartening, and then not bringing home a deer, which is disheartening. I mean, it sounds like you were in a good place. I mean, both of you guys. I mean, for two guys to go hunting on public land and one guy to have a legitimate shot at a hundred and forty plus deer. I mean that sounds like a win. So are you going back going back to this spot? Yeah? Man, that's the ultimate question. Um. I've been going back and forth on a thousand times because like still like the potential is absolutely there. You know, if if a couple of little tiny things went differently, we could have been talking about how Josh killed a hundred fifty inch and I killed a hundred and thirty inch white tail in public land. Uh, you know, it would have been awesome. We would have been Yeah, we had despite having seen all these guys. So so part of me says, yeah, we should absolutely go back because we're this close, Like we're the tiniest of tiniest little bits of details away from having the ultimate success. On the flip side, there's this other part of me, like, when I look at this western white tail hunt that I do every year at the beginning of the season, it's like supposed to be my fun hunt. This is supposed to be the one where you go somewhere where people don't care about white tails, and the white tails are kind of dumb and there's lots of them, and you can go there and you see lots of white tails and it's just like super I mean, I kind of want to be like your hunt Clay, like up in Manitoba. Like I've had other Western white tail hunts where there's tons of deer, they're not too worried about people, there's no nobody else out there hunting them, and you just get to be in a beautiful place and hunting deer being deer um, and it's it's fun and do some fishing. Um. So I was hoping that this trip could be that kind of trip because I kind of need that to prepare myself for the grind that's the rest of the season. Um. But this hunt ended up just being like a grind of all grinds, right. I mean, I think I hiped like forty plus miles chasing white tails in rubber boots, um. And you know, like I described, like, especially when we're hunting mornings, right, so we're we had to get up at three thirty in the morning in order to get set, drive down to this place, hike in an hour, do the hunt that I hike two miles back out, then we do something midday, then we'd hike back in two miles, get set up, hunt pulled on the set, hiked back out. So I'm like, we're not getting home and to sleep till one o'clock at night. We're not waking up at three thirty. We're hiking eight miles a day. I mean, it was just suffer fest there for a while, and so part of me is like, you have enough suffer fests during other parts of the season, does this one need to be one? To Um? Maybe I just want to go try to find a easier fun spot for this. Hunt Um trying to say, is the four of us are going to Manitoba next year, that that might be the case I was gonna I was gonna say, it seems like you guys did a lot of things right and stuff that seemed to be like that went wrong with someone out of your control as far as like trying to get away from people and whatnot. But like if you went back to the same spot now being a third time, like what kind of things would you do differently? Well, I can tell you what I do really fast. I would basically cut off what I did on nights one through three and skip all that, So I would skip the kind of like I went further back into the cover nine number one than I did all of year one, but not far enough. And in day two and day three I made that play on the other side where you know, I almost had a shot there. But I think, like there's just too much uncertainty over there. There's just people all over the place there. So I think I would have skipped all that and I would have jumped right back to where this island is. I think I think if I were to go back, I'm not hunting anywhere except for these islands, like the farthest back stuff you can get to um, And I think if I had more time to work on this island and or others even deeper in there, I think that's where we could catch these bucks in a way that they're not like nobody else is going back. There's like I finally knock on wood, um, even if someone's willing, they might. Well, you did have one guy the last morning, so that's true. But I think you're right. I think that's exactly the ticket though. Just get back into these these these areas that are are heavier and cover, we're less people are likely to go crossing a crossing the creek or the channel or whatever, want to call it, anything that we can do to put some more terrain features that other people aren't willing to go through. Um, just start there, just cross off the rest of it and get back in there deeper from from day one, And I actually think i'd try to hunt the morning is more like the entire trip. Maybe I think we found that, you know, I think we're gonna put more pressure on it, um, but I think we've found that we can get in there um and hopefully we kill it earlier and then not have to worry about it. Um. But definitely decent morning movement, better than I thought there would be. Yeah, we seem to be able to get away with that. So yeah, you know, I don't know. You could also say we should have just done exactly what we did again, and you know, the tennis thing could have got our way and we might have worked out. But it's you know, that's that's hunting, right. Just sometimes it falls away, sometimes it doesn't. I the only thing I can tell you for certain is that I don't feel bad about what we did. Like we worked our tails off, We did a lot of things right and it didn't fall our away. But I'm I'm not gonna beat myself over that too much. Yeah, well sounds like a good hunt. I mean, you guys were on deer and and uh yeah, it's kind of disheartening to not get much reward after that much work. But man, when it does come together, it will be that much better. So yeah, that is the cliche friend thing to say. What I just said was like classic. You should record that and like have it play on your phone, like for when you need a little encouragement. Yeah, but it's it's cliches, is it's it's just the truth of it too. Yeah. I need to drive around that with my in my truck for the next uh you know, three months of the season. Just listen to play tell me that to get over this miss Yeah. Yeah, man, Hey, I I last year I made a list of all the dear that got away that I felt like we're killable. And I find that those deer are often more memorable than the racks I've got hanging here in my office. And I just went down and sat down and made a list and and as of last year, I had eleven deer that I mean, I could tell you more about those hunts than the hunts that you know, we're successful, and there's value in those animals, you know, there really is, and and I like to think that because of those eleven deer, that's the reason I've got the deer that I've got on the wall. You know, it just takes a lot of opportunity to kill a big deer. You just gotta you just gotta get out there and do it well. And you probably replay the the moments from that hunt. Are those ones that you don't bring home more so than the ones you do, because it's like, Okay, what could I done differently? Or what happened here to cause him to do this? Or what happened here that caused me to do that? Um, you just play those over and over in your mind, where you know, you may think back, oh, that was an awesome hunt when I shot that deer and it all came together, but um, you know, maybe scrutinizing the details like you did on on one that didn't happen, Yeah for sure. Well, boys, this one's gone longer than I thought, so I should probably wrap it up. But I think we both we all four had a hell of a week health experience, learned some stuff, had some good times, had some bad times. And uh, I guess that seems an appropriate way to kick off a deer season. Huh for sure, pretty far for the course. Yeah, and uh, off we go to the races for yet more. We'll see, we'll see what happens next. But thank you, Josh Clay justin appreciate you guys taking the time to round up and talk through all this stuff. Yeah, thanks Mark, thanks, thank you. And that is a rap. Another episodes in the books, and uh, you know, as is to be expected, another season is off to a start, a startup some kind. You know. It wasn't the start I wanted, but we learned some stuff. We had some close calls, We had a fun hunt in a lot of different ways, and uh, you know onward you always learn, always grow, Take something from a hunt like this, use it as a kind of jumping off point for the next one. So that's my game plan. Hope all of your hunts are going well. If you're already out there, if not, get all those final pieces of work done, get your head right, get your bow right, get your gear ready. It's game time. Any day now will be those opening days. And I'm excited for you, I'm excited for my own next hunt too, so until next time, stay wired to

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