00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. 00:00:17 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week, I'm joined by a longtime co host, Dan Johnson to reflect on the past ten seasons of this podcast and the deer hunting lessons we've learned along the way. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Light, and today we have got a special episode because we are joined by drumroll please, the One, the Only, Amiel Bartholomew Johnson, Dan, welcome back to the show. 00:01:06 Speaker 3: Right now. Everybody just hit the stop button. 00:01:10 Speaker 2: Or they're thinking, is Dan's middle name really Bartholomew? 00:01:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, like this guy is a nerd. How are you man, I'm good man, How are you? 00:01:21 Speaker 2: I am well, I'm doing good. I uh, I'm glad we get to catch up here a little bit. I've been doing something that you inspired me to do. Do you have any guesses what that might be? 00:01:36 Speaker 3: See, So, the first thing that popped into my mind was inappropriate for even this podcast. So I gotta go into I don't know number two. Yeah, I'm gonna guess wrong. I'm gonna guess wrong unless it's eighties like started watching more eighties movies. 00:01:55 Speaker 2: No, it's not that. Here's what you inspired me to do. Okay, you and inspired me to listen to the very first Wired podcast of all time? 00:02:06 Speaker 3: Yep, yep. 00:02:08 Speaker 2: Yeah. So here's this crazy man. We have just recently entered the tenth season of this podcast. 00:02:16 Speaker 3: Nuts. 00:02:17 Speaker 2: How crazy is that? It's come a long ways? This has been a long journey, man, and uh, it's gone. Part of me feels like it happened in like a flash, and part of me feels like it was a lifetime ago that that first happened. You know, I don't know where I stand on. 00:02:33 Speaker 3: That, and I'm not sure what kind of caused me. 00:02:37 Speaker 2: Two. 00:02:38 Speaker 3: Okay, so here's here's part of the reason. So you know, I have all you know, I have the network, and I have the nine Finger Chronicles and things like that, and so I was I never ever ever go and check the reviews on the podcast, and so you know, all these awesome, great reviews and then I then I go back and I look at the very like the oldest reviews that I possibly have, and how you know, there's there's a handful of them that are just like one star, try something different, like not good, and so I it kind of sparked in my brain. I go, Okay, I have to go back to the very first podcast that I ever did with Mark and I want to listen to our conversation and to see how different it was, you know, today than it was. Damn you're ten years ago. 00:03:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, to kind of see what kind of progress you've made exactly exactly not much? Well, well what you uh, what you when you when you sent me the text, tell me that you listen to that. I start having the same thoughts that you just mentioned. I was like, you know, that might be useful to go back and listen and kind of think back on, you know, take a little time to reflect back on this ten year journey and where it's taken us and what's happened and stuff. And so I kind of thought for today, you and I could kind of do that on air. We could think back to that episode and where we were ten years ago, talk a little bit about that, and then talk about the progress we have or have not made. Now and then also I want to do a little bit more reflection and steal another idea from that episode. So, if you recall, from episode one of the Wired Hunt podcast, our topic of discussion was the best and worst moments of our twenty thirteen season, right, So I thought to end today's episode, we could do the best and worst moments of our twenty twenty two season, since you and I have not talked about that together on the show yet, So that's my idea for today, is a little bit of looking back ten years ago to where we are now, and then stealing the idea from that episode's topic to kind of round it out. What do you think about that? 00:04:57 Speaker 3: Man, let's do it so. 00:05:00 Speaker 2: So, first off, ten years ago, you and I we had got together, maybe a couple weeks before we recorded that first podcast. Do you remember what we were doing just before that podcast. 00:05:13 Speaker 3: I'll never forget it. I'll never for some reason, and I mean this in all seriousness, I'll never forget that those days, those couple of days when you came down, we did some shed hunting, and man, we were drinking. We were drinking some beers at that night at my parents' place. And You're like, Hey, dude, I got this crazy idea about a podcast, and so it was a shed hunting weekend and that's kind of what kicked it off. And at that time I was kind of transitioning out of White Knuckle and didn't really have anything planned, anything to do, and so I was just like, you know what, let's and when you asked me, I was like, it was a no brainer. It's just like, I don't have anything else to do, Let's do it. 00:06:00 Speaker 2: So I feel the same way. The only other thing I would add to my recollection of that weekend was also that time when you told me go out on very thin ice to try to sabotage and kill me and try to drown me in an Iowa orri ever. Do you remember that part. 00:06:15 Speaker 3: And the steal the podcast idea and do it myself exactly? 00:06:21 Speaker 2: It almost worked. 00:06:24 Speaker 3: So I will say this on top of that, It was like last month I was digging through all of the old footage that I had and I came across that particular interview when you fell through the ice, and and the kudos to you for being tough because you didn't go back to the truck. We finished shed hunting before we headed back to the truck. 00:06:47 Speaker 2: I had to. It was cold too, Yeah, yeah, I was so if I remember right, I think it got like almost up to my armpits, didn't it. 00:06:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was right, Yeah, it was. It was deep. You fell right by a down tree. The roots were exposed and so and so those usually have some deep holes surrounding them. And you went, you went like nipple high and luckily all your camera gear was up high and all of the like the important equipment was up high. 00:07:19 Speaker 2: So yeah, so so real talk. If I had been swept under the ice that day and died, do you think you would have taken the podcast and then started the the Dan Johnson episode back in twenty thirteen. 00:07:32 Speaker 3: I don't know. 00:07:33 Speaker 2: I doubt it. 00:07:34 Speaker 3: I doubt it only because I probably wouldn't have known how to do the research to get even started on something like that. 00:07:44 Speaker 2: It was it was tenuous there at the beginning, that, yeah, for sure. So so yeah, so ten seasons of the podcast now and fifteen years of Wired Hunt. I was just thinking about this morning. The Wired the website started fifteen years ago. Yeah, And what's funny is I you know, the tagline for the website and everything for the longest time was Deer Hunting for the Next Generation. Yeah, and I started it when I was in college. I think I was twenty years old, right, I got to thinking I am no longer part of the next generation. We were like, this is now like deer Hunting for Geriatrics. Now we're both getting pretty old. So I don't know how that happened, but I wondered what your thoughts were now looking back on those good old days when we were so young and fresh shot the womb. What did you think about how the podcast itself went. Did you think that we did you think that we sounded like idiots? Did we hold our own from that perspective what we're thinking? 00:08:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think right off the bat, there was a period of time on the podcast where we both kind of sounded We sounded like radio DJs, kind of like all right, so, uh we today we're going to talk about betting areas, and uh, let's talk about it, you know, on betting areas, and you know, just like really rehearsed. We sounded really rehearsed. We sounded really like prepared. We sounded really I don't know, like we wanted it both to work, and so I think we were really kind of tight and tense at the beginning, and then it took us a while to loosen up and relax. And once once we started to do that, I felt like, then it then it caught, and then it became something special. Yeah. 00:09:37 Speaker 2: You know, the other thing that stands out to me is speaking of podcast reviews. We always used to get these reviews that said, why does Dan sound like he's recording in a bathroom? It was like, yeah, you realized, like, oh, my microphone isn't plugged in or something. It wasn't. 00:09:56 Speaker 3: It was the settings. Yeah, it was the settings on my computer that I didn't change. And so that led to one day just me like going in and saying, oh, and then you're like, holy cow, what did you do? I'm like, I turned my microphone on. 00:10:13 Speaker 2: If that's not like the perfect analogy for everything we're doing, that's that was very fitting. So that was pretty funny. You know, another thing I noticed too, you you weren't affected by this as much. I don't think you when I listened to you back then, like other than what you just just described, you basically sound like you still and maybe maybe you feel differently because it's your own voice. But when I listened to my own voice back then, it sounded like it sounded like I had just come out of getting my wisdom teeth pulled, and like I was still like waking up from a drug induced nap, or had no vacane still in my mouth or something. Yeah, mumble mouth, sleepy mouth. I don't know what it was, but I sound like I'm not quite there. I don't know what about. But I also have the same thing. I went and listened. I went and watched one of my first YouTube videos, and it is absolutely painful. It's the same thing. It's like that same like I've I don't even know how anybody could listen to me back then after watching that. So, if nothing else, we've both gotten a little bit better at communicating, I guess, yeah, yeah, but what about the content of our conversation. So, like I just said, we talked through the best and worst moments of our twenty thirteen season. Yeah, And listening to that, I was kind of struck a by how much hasn't changed. But then there were some things like where I thought to myself, all right, we both come a long way in certain ways. And at the same time, I was shaking my head at the man, you're still battling with the same things. Yeah, what what about you? What kind of stood up for you when you look back on you know, what you were saying back then to where you're in now. Yeah, and so maybe can you point out those things? 00:12:00 Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, So obviously by then we were to the point where we kind of understood how deer uh, how their noses worked right, and things like that, and so and so, but we were still kind of talking and and I want to I don't want to necessarily say regurgitating old information that you you know, that the magazines had done throughout the years. But what's cool is I would say, in the first Man, how many years was I on the show? Like the first year on four or five? 00:12:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say the first five year on almost every single episode. 00:12:40 Speaker 3: Right, And so in that timeframe, we talked to a ton of really good either deer hunters or property management style hunters, right, And so I think what was cool about that is we would talk to let's say, a public land guy who would throw a strategy ideas out and I think really what happened was me and you were able to go out and apply some of those practices to our own hunting strategy. Maybe we got some results, maybe we didn't, but it allowed us to form some different unique opinions about our own methods and really, I don't know, and really not only change our interviewing styles because we now we had this, we were gaining experience. So because we were gaining experience, we had the ability to ask better questions to these people. And I think once that that damn broke out of the first two years, then it's just it started clicking, and that's when the content really really started getting good. 00:13:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, you make a really good point, like there's there's only so much you can learn from reading or listening to other people, right, I mean, you're absolutely right. In two thousand thirteen, you know, when I started the podcast and rewind five years earlier, when I started the website, absolutely in two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine. So much of my understanding of deer came from what I'd read and watched and listened to, you know, my childhood of deer hunting experience, Like my first fifteen years were up north hunting in Michigan, where I hardly ever saw any deer. I had some basic deer hunting knowledge that my family gave me. But basically that was don't move, don't make too much noise, sit in the woods for a long time, and there's this thing called a rub and there's a thing called a scrape, and that's good. Yeah, and that's kind of all I knew for the first fifteen years. So then, you know, when I started the website, it was, well, Okay, I've read this book, I've heard this thing, I saw this on the show, so this is what you're supposed to do. And it took a long time. Like you just mentioned to actually, you know, you could understand it like in a textbook kind of way, but until you have that real world experience where you've done seeing it, seeing when it works, seeing when it doesn't work, understand the context. You know, all of that builds like a foundation and you can't really have things start clicking till you have that real world foundation where you've ran all these textbook ideas through your real world filter. I guess you know, yeah, and I think that's that's that's exactly what happened. 00:15:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll stay there with you, like, yeah, I'll say this real quick. So for me, when when we started this. It was the it was spring of twenty fourteen, and so twenty uh I was in this period where I still hadn't I killed a buck In O seven, I killed a buck. In OH nine, I kicked killed a buck in twelve, and then thirteen fourteen and fifteen, I didn't kill a dear, And so I was I was brand new to the to this method of attacking and mobile hunting. Even though I was several years into it, I hadn't found success. So the cool thing about that is that over that period of time, I struck out, struck out, struck out, and then I don't know, you know, I can't necessarily speak for you, but for me, when it started to click in twenty sixteen, then it was like, I don't know if you could see a progression, or if there was clips that you could go in and listen to us talk about certain things and then kind of mark the time that it sunk in. For me, I would love to go back and hear those conversations. 00:16:40 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:16:53 Speaker 2: I actually just met someone I don't know a month or so ago at this volunteer habitat Day who had said he said that he was on like episode two seventy eight or three some I don't know, somewhere back in there, he said. He went back and started from episode one and was listening all the way through. And the thing he said to me is, it's it's been so interesting to watch your guys' progression to like hear us and how we talk about things differently as we learned, you know. And so what took us years he was listening to over the course of months, you know, and seeing it all happen kind of fast forwarded. And I think you're right. I think that has been hopefully the same experience that the listeners have had over this decade. Right is I've always thought that you and I have kind of been like a stand in for the listener, Like we are learning right with the audience, Yes, throughout this whole process, week by week, year by year. Yeah, And and I think I hope what has been happening is what has happened for you and I, which is like, and I've always tried to say this, I've always tried to remind people this, like take it all in, don't don't don't make assumptions that this guy won't be interesting, or that this person won't be useful or that this person is one hundred percent right and everybody else is Wrongly, try to take it all in and then filter it through your own circumstances, and then test it, test it, test it like go out, try all these things, use all these ideas, think about these things, and then you'll slowly over time start seeing like, let's throw all the spaghetti at the wall. It's our unique wall, right, My wall is different than your wall, which is different than Joe Blow's wall. That's listening, like, we all have different things will stick for different people. But find what sticks in your place, with your goals, with your circumstances, with your resources, and keep going like that. And that I think has been I've tried doing that, and that has been what's worked well for me is I've tried all of these things, and then a lot of my dropped, a lot of I said, you know, this isn't for me, or this isn't for my area, or this doesn't work you know in this situation. But maybe if I travel to X place or why place, maybe it will work there. Right, And that's you know, that's been kind of the superpower I guess of this podcast, I think is just getting so many different ideas and and and what I've tried to do, and I know what you've tried to do is the two of us in these conversations, whether it was on this podcast or then on your podcast subsequently, you know, trying to dig into people's process, you know, like understand why they do things, because if you understand why they do things, then you can start to better apply that to your situation. So even if even if Justin Holland's Worth is hunting a property that's so different than you or I, if we understand why he, you know, only hunts with X and Y wind on these days, then even though I have a very different property, maybe I can understand how to apply that same idea. So that's that I think has accounted for a lot of the growth that we and and probably a lot of listeners have had. 00:19:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, the other thing that I really let's see, how do I put this. I think this podcast happened at the very beginning of what I'm going to call in awakening in the hunting community and hunting industry, and you know everybody, and what I mean by awakening is we had some of the biggest names in the industry on the podcast and we were able to interview them about how they how they do it and what that did, and this is my opinion, what that did was not necessarily relate, but open the eyes up to the rest of the listeners, going, oh my god, I've been trying to do this, apply this strategy to maybe a five acre or a ten acre farm, when the people who I've been taking advice from and doing all this stuff, you know, like looking up to have thousands of acres of managed property. And so what it did was it allowed people to realize that those groups of people are the one percenters, and I need to focus on my own property kind of just what you said, but look other places for serious content that are more relatable to the style in which I hunt. 00:21:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like and it also kind of showcased, you know, and brought to the table certain people like, oh wow, so this guy is only killing three year old that are at one twenty and he's been doing that for decades and decades, and all of a sudden we start to realize, like, oh wow, that's actually a heck of an accomplishment in those circumstances, and this guy has a ton to teach us, and I can learn a lot more from this person than I could learn from the guy with four two hundred inches or whatever it is exactly, You're right, like there was like a sheet pulled off of the the magic hat with a rabbit in it or something like that. It was like the democratization of knowledge, and. 00:22:06 Speaker 3: It just showed that people could be successful, like the Anti Mays of the world, could be successful without the same resources as some of the you know, the people who for so many years we were looking up to. 00:22:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I will say it, I think it also for some of those folks who you know were on TV still are on TV. It did give some of them an opportunity to detail the work that did go into getting what's to have and doing what they have. So it's not like I mean, even now, you watch an episode of one of these mainstream TV shows. They only got twenty two minutes to show you, and it looks very easy right on camera, this bock walking to a food plot and they shoot the big Deer's the fifth big deer of the year. Whatever. Now, yeah, that might be unrealistic for ninety nine percent of us, but still there was a ton of work. There was a ton of effort, there was a lot of planning, there was a lot of you know, different kind of stuff. So I think it also gave us all a new understanding of if that is what you actually want, here's what it takes, and do you still want to do that? Is that still what you want? Are you willing to commit so much money, so much time, so much equipment. Is that what you want or not? And I think that we have seen now as a community like you can do that, but there are also other opportunities too, and there's it's fun all the way across the board. There's just different goals, there's different ways, there's different styles, and I hope I don't know if this is true or not, but I hope that part of what maybe our impact with the podcast and other podcasts and things like that, hopefully some of the impact has been that it has helped shift people's idea of success a little bit. Yep, you know, maybe maybe fifteen years ago, success was man, you gotta get a booner, you gotta get the two hundred, you gotta and not saying there's still an obsession there's not. I mean, yes, there is still an obsession and interest in those things. Today, I'm as guilty as anyone of like a big deer. But I hope to some degree we have shifted it a little bit away from Antler's being the only measure of success to now, you know, experience being part of the success, Overcoming challenges, learning, growing, setting your own realistic goals for what you want, what's enjoyable for you, what's realistic for your area, all these things, you know, giving back hopefully, hopefully success. I guess I can't speak for anybody else, but I can speak for myself, and that success for me is a much more mixed pot than it was ten years ago when I thought, man, I just got to kill one hundred and fifty in four year bucks, and if I can do that, I am validated. 00:24:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And to elaborate on that thought past hunting and hunting strategy. It was also cool to see the sheet pulled off of the scientific and the conservation type content. So when you're talking to guys like Matt Ross or Bronson Strickland and they start dropping some facts about deer, you know, like like I used to think that if you killed small antler deer genetically inferior deer, that it would mean less of those deer, right, And so when I heard this information, like, hey, guess what, it doesn't do anything, you know, like like calling deer or that quote unquote management buck that you shoot every year, It doesn't it doesn't do anything. And so that type of information is brought to the light as well, and it just kind of exposes that and you're like, oh my god, people are telling you not necessarily lies, but half truths. And it was it's just kind of like a really type moment. 00:25:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's it's. It's it's two things I think happened. One, like the mediums of content back in the day just weren't very conducive for like a deep understanding, you know, I think like the podcast and and just like the explosion of long form like YouTube stuff too, has just given the chance for people to like dive deep into things that you couldn't ten or fifteen years ago. Like very few people would read a book, you know, back in the day about this stuff into the nitty gritty. Just a few hardcore folks would, but a whole lot of people would listen to an hour and a half with Bronson Strickland as he dives deep into that kind of stuff, like you said, So that's that's certainly helped a big, a big substantial kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, it's been it's been really interesting personally. What you know, I could say two things. I can say one. Over the last ten years to your point, like, I feel like I have grown like leaps and bounds as a deer hunter, Like I feel like a completely different human being when it comes to you know, just understanding what to do, how to do it, when to do it. Like I remember, back before the podcast, going onto a new property with a buddy of mine letting me hunt some property he had access to, and I just remember feeling so lost, like I had no idea where to start. I walked out there, I'm like, man, I don't really know. I mean I can walk. I'm going to walk around, find some rubs, some trails, and just kind of hope and now you know, I can set foot on new properties and just right away be like, okay, I know this, I know this, I don't know this in this, let's go figure it out and let's make an assessment. And just like there's so many examples like that where I feel a million times more confident yeah. But I say all this to bring up two big things that I heard in episode number one that I am still experiencing today, Okay, And so I thought it might be interesting if you have anything that you heard that you're still experienced, I can lead with mine. Yeah. I so, listening to that first podcast, there were two things when we talked about when it came to you know, we talked about the best and worst moments of our twenty thirteen season. And one of the things that I talked about is that I was having this really rough twenty thirteen season. I had had all these close calls, nothing came together, made mistakes, YadA, YadA, YadA. And I talked about how I had let myself get overstressed, overworked up, bummed out about it. Just got too much pressure on put too much pressure on myself to have success, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that ended up being like a ten year thing for me, right, I mean, that has been an annual thing. Listeners have heard me talk about me just working through that, and it really wasn't until last year that I felt like I had a breakthrough and felt like I was finally getting past that so that was interesting to me. That took me about ten years to finally stop, to finally mature enough maybe to stop being so worked up about a whether or not I was able to achieve like the ultimate success of my goal of killing a big deer and older or whatever it was. And then also not caring what other other people thought, and then if I could remove those two things then just focus on, you know, the experience itself and having fun. Like it took me ten years, even in twenty thirteen, I knew it was a problem, and it still took me ten years to you know, work through that. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying it's a thing that I maybe will ever fully move past. Maybe that's just part of my personality. But I feel like, you know, last year was a big fork in the road where I really moved past something. So that was interesting to me, and I've talked about on the show, and you and I have talked about on the show. But I think it's just worth re emphasizing, like I don't think there's been anything more important. I'm guessing this because at the very beginning of it, but I'm guessing this will have been the most important I've made in my hunting journey being able to get past that, you know, obsession with am I good enough? Do people think I'm good enough? Is this deer big enough? Did I do good enough? And getting so worked up about that and beating myself up for not doing it right, or beating myself up if I didn't feel like I gave it two thousand percent or everything went right, you know, as soon as I was able to move past that and start just focusing on enjoying it, you know, so many things just it's like turning a movie from black and white to color, is what it felt like last year. Yeah, So I hope that's something that maybe other people can learn from my mistakes. And maybe it's one of those things you got to go through it on your own, but maybe by hearing my tenure journey on that front, some people have, you know, maybe followed along on that same journey as me. The second thing I noticed that I am still working through was I mentioned in twenty thirteen that the worst moment of my season was when I was hunting Ohio, big old blizzard pushed through. I drove down to hunt southern Ohio to catch his coal front. I got set up, couldn't climb into a tree stand because it's too icy. So I'm hiding behind a tree, standing on the edge of a bedding area and a cup bean field, and this nice eight point buck comes walking out, and I remember lining up on him and taking a crack, and he just stands there. So I reload the muzzleloader, take another crack, he just stands there. Reload a third time, and then before I get fully reloaded, he runs off. And I can't remember if I mentioned the episode or not, but I also scoped myself on one of those shots, so I had blood dripping down too. So I talked about rushing the shot and like not being fully in control in that moment, and that has been a thing that has again been a reoccurring topic of conversation these last ten years. I mean, I missed that deer that year. The next year was the year that I rushed the shot a little bit on Jawbreaker and hit him, you know, back in then testines, Oh, I don't know, I mean a handful. I've missed a couple other deer since then. I missed that deer two years ago in Iowa, missed an eight pointer in Michigan somewhere in that window. So I had my I've had my share of screwed up shots over these years, and I've like tried different releases, and I've tried different processes, and I've practiced my tail off. And last year I went to an archery coach and totally rebuilt my shooting style and process and I think that's helped, but I know I'm still still not one hundred percent there. My goal, one of my two goals last year, as you know we talked about this. One of them was to have fun, like to focus on what we just talked about, just having fun. And then goal number two was only good shots, like you got it, make good shots, and that was so important to me, and so I kind of and we'll talk about this in a little bit more, but I kind of had I would give myself like a b on that I only took good shots. So I was really glad about that. I had opportunities at some shots that I could have taken, but I chose not to because like I just didn't want any I want nothing but perfect. So I passed on a mature buck two different times, once a little out of range and once just I was not comfortable and steady, and I just I didn't want to risk ruining a great season with a bad hit or miss. So I was glad about that I had. The first year I killed, I felt really good about that shot. The second dear I killed, felt decent about the shot. The third dear I killed, I felt like I still rushed it a little bit. And so I'm working through like these steps. I've got this like four step process for my shot process. I'm still not getting one hundred percent of the way through, one hundred percent slow, one hundred percent of control. I'm getting better, but I'm not on the way there. So this is all to say that, like that has been another one of those like always working on it kind of issues for me that maybe that's the case. Maybe I know there's some people that don't deal with that issue at all. And then I think there's probably other people like me that you're probably good enough most of the time, but is that okay? Do you want to be just good enough most of the time or do you want to get to the point where you are locked in perfect every time? And if that's what you're trying to do, I think that is for some people, I guess I can't speak for anyone by myself. For me, that has been a year by year continued challenge to keep on trying to work on getting one percent better whatever it is, because it's a it's a wild crazy moment and says situations that I at least have continued to have to work on. So those two things stood up to me as like man, of of all the things I made a ton of progress on, those two things have still been like my thing to bear over this decade. Yeah, what about you? What are your thoughts on that or yourself? 00:35:12 Speaker 3: Yeah? So I think we were putting we were both putting a lot of pressure on ourselves that probably didn't need to We didn't need to put on ourselves, right, both of us. But one thing that I I listened to that was how hard, not efficient, but how hard I was hunting back then compared to how hard I am I'm hunting now, and that I would I was worried about. You know, I still thought back then that time in the woods. Now, don't get me wrong, time in the woods is always a benefit. But if you're sacrificing just to be in the woods versus laying off and accomplishing something else. I didn't necessarily understand the importance of that yet, and so man, I feel like I was hunting really hard when I didn't need to be, Especially like I knew that the first three weeks of October, I probably didn't have that good of a shot at going in and knocking down a good deer, and so I was just I was going. And I think that over the last ten years, one thing that I feel like I've gotten better at is just sitting back and observing. And that doesn't mean in the tree stand. That also means at home, watching watching weather, watching cold fronts, watching and observing deer behavior, you know, listening or learning from what the trail cameras are telling me, taking all of the past information that I've gained throughout the years and kind of forming it into things that my brain could digest and say, Okay, listen, dude, you don't need to be doing this right now. Or hey, last year this, you know, this terrain feature was really you know, was really good. You should probably get back in there, or you know that that paralysis by analysis type of thought process, and really what's happened out of that has come more of this fluid a strike when the iron's hot type mentality, and I'm not I'm not worrying about being in the woods when I necessarily don't need to be. 00:37:39 Speaker 2: You make a great point, like there's this difference between working harder versus working smarter and an efficiency, and I am right there with you. Like in those days, I just thought you just needed to pound the ground NonStop and be out there every single day you possibly could, and like that was like that was the way to success. Was just like death by persistence somehow, you know, And you're right, like I think we both have found the power of efficiency and doing things smarter versus like the blunt force approach, a brute force approach. But I wonder this could we have Could you really get to where we are now, to where you can actually be efficient successfully and know how to apply and when to strike at the right moments? Can you ever get there if you don't first go through the brute force approach of just spending a ton of time out there, Like if you couldn't if someone see That's what I'm wondering, is I think that maybe that almost you almost have to go through that to get that foundation of experience and knowledge to ever be able to understand, you know, when's the right moment, when's not, or when's the right time to push versus when's the right time to stay back. Even though we can look back and say there was a mistake, maybe it was a good mistake, you know what I mean? 00:39:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if we're going to go back, I want to go back to two thousand and six. That's a that's a that's a year for me when I said to myself, Okay, I'm wanna, I'm gonna start taking bow hunting serious again. And I went blunt force and I went quantity of hunts. But that allowed me to learn a whole bunch of different things. In the next I would say ten ten seasons of hunting. And so the thing that really and it's not it's not hunting related, but it is a reason why I had to be more efficient with my hunting. Episode number one, I had a one month old baby, my first child, a one month old baby in the house, and so I mean, there's no other reason way to to put a halt to hunting, like kids, right, having having kids, especially a newborn in the house, and so my time then was more on not necessarily hunting itself, but thinking about hunting, and with that came planning for hunting and kind of changing my mindset to you know, the old style of war where two people would line up across from each other and just just battle it out instead of being tactical and flanking, and you know, you know what I mean. And so yeah, it's it's that twenty thirteen. Right when we started it. I feel like you were still in it and I was not. I was still in it, but I was on my way out of it because I had to. Yeah. 00:40:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing how a family will do that. 00:40:46 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:40:47 Speaker 2: Here's the thing I think though, if I'm if I am listening to this podcast right now and I am just starting a few years into hunting, or I'm young, maybe I'm twenty, maybe I'm what it is, I think if I were listening to this or to that person listening right now, who is that person? I would tell you don't necessarily rush to try to be the person that Dan and I or be like hunting in the way that Dan and I are talking. Yet, like, don't you know our mutual friend Tony Peterson likes to, you know, just hammer on this a lot. Don't make excuses not to be in the woods. Don't look for excuses not to be in the woods, especially when you're still in this like real figuring out kind of stage. 00:41:31 Speaker 3: Right. 00:41:32 Speaker 2: Don't let the weather forecast like if you have a weekend open to hunt, and right, you've got limited time and this weekend's your weekend. You've got to hunt, but the weather looks bad, like, don't let that keep you from hunting. You need to get this experience. You need to get those days in the field. Don't don't get ahead of yourself. Don't worry too much about efficiency before you have a foundation. Now, certainly think about that efficiency, think about the things we're talking about and try to help, you know, let that help you use your quantity it more effectively. Right, But but don't use these things as excuses not to go, because early on there's nothing more useful. You know, we talked about this in the beginning, right, I mean it's like we couldn't we couldn't even understand what our podcast guests were saying during those first ten episodes or whatever in a real full way because we didn't even have enough of a foundation in context ourselves if we were to listen to those episodes now, like when we talk to these other expert guests, I bet you we would get a lot more from it now because we have ten more years of personal experience, ten more years of context, ten more years of success and failure that now you know, we've got to We've going back to like the throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, like we have a much stickier wall. Probably now, like we a lot of more of these things will make sense to us or we will be able to use just because we've we've built this level of understanding that's going to make everything else so much more useful. So don't don't think that you can skip that process. So get out there and you can be smarter about how you do that, right. I mean, if I were to look back at what I did you know in twenty thirteen, I guess I'll use this as an example. Twenty thirteen season I was definitely in the quantity over quality kind of mode. I thought, Man, every single day, I got to be out there. So I had a Michigan property that I've just pounded to death because I felt like I had to be out there. So I probably hunted it. I don't know, twenty thirty days something like that of you know, a three month season, and this is like seventy acres or something like that, seventy eighty acres that I was out there that many times, maybe more than that, and I think I've probably did like two weeks straight of like all day sits, So I mean a ton of hours in the same place and getting the same results, like not seeing the deer I was after. So maybe in a different world, what I could have done if I'm still at that phase where I need time and feel to build that foundation, but I could have spread it out. I could have hunted a couple days on that property and then do some more public land stuff, or I probably should have knocked on more doors and got permission on some other places. Like spreading out your pressure is one of those things that still to this day is super important. And that was something that I knew that back then, like I knew it intellectually, but I did not know how to do that or wasn't willing to put in the right kind of work to make that possible. So I guess that's my point here is there's something to be said for hunting smarter versus just pounding your head against the wall a thousand times. But there is value in that pounding your head against the wall, and you can't skip it. Like there's no fast forward button, there's no silver bullet. There's nothing that someone could have told me, or there's no product I could have bought. There's no book I could have read. There's nothing that I could have done on Spring twenty thirteen, right then and there that would have gotten me to where I am today. Right easily. I had to go through these ten years of mistakes, failures, successes, lessons, lots of days in the field, and you got to just go through that with that constant, open eyed perspective of what kind of learned from this? Why did this happen, Why did this work, why did this not work? What should I try different? I mean that if anything out of the last ten years has been like hammered into me, it's like taking that approach to this learning, learning, learning, asking why testing, testing, testing, If you do those things, you can get you can make progress. 00:45:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, And even when you get into that that point where you know what you need to do and you you even apply it to the woods, there was still a period of time when I was getting frustrated because the results weren't coming. So the perfect example would have been twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen season. I was, I was not necessarily hunting as hard because I had, you know, kids at that point. But then I also, like I really wanted it, and so I was getting frustrated when things weren't Like when I would make the perfect access route, I would go in and the target animal just wouldn't show up, so I would I would hold that frustration these days, dude, like if I don't see a deer, I understand, right, I get it, And now I don't get frustrated anymore. I know that deer don't always do the same thing all the time, and there's very rarely ever like a slam dunk sure thing in this world when it comes to bow hunting mature white tails specifically, and so I you just gotta go with the flow and stay calm, and and you know it doesn't work out, you know, try it again the next time and and then it will then it'll work out. But I don't know, I was. I can just remember getting so worked up when I would when I would apply the strategy perfectly and nothing would happen out of it, which just kind of leads us to say, you're not in control at all. 00:47:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, so true, There's there's a lot out of your hands. All you can do is control what you can and then let the rest slide, Let the rest like hit your back and bounce off. You know, there's you just gotta kind of, like you said, roll the punches, roll the situation, and remember like this is just I always have to remind myself of this, like why are we out there doing this? We're doing this because it's supposed to be fun. This is like, this is our hobby, this is our passion, this is our lifestyle, this is this thing that we claim to love so much. Why in the world are we sitting out there beating ourselves up and making ourselves miserable while we're doing it. I don't think people do that when they like, I don't know, when their hobby is a video game and they like playing a video game, or when people like to watch sports, or when people like to play maybe people play golf beat themselves up, but I don't know. You know, you're doing this because you're trying to have fun. Why are you letting. Why are you making it so serious that you are stealing that away from yourself? Yeah, I mean I just go back and over and over, like nobody cares if you kill a deer. 00:48:30 Speaker 3: No, Nope, especially in today's world. Even if you do kill a deer, a giant deer, and you post it and all that stuff, people forget about it in yeah, half a day or a week or whatever, right, and it's onto the next thing. So that's why it's like, and just to finish your thought there, I mean, it is truly about you and nobody else. 00:48:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you just I mean, like we talked about, that's been a process for me. It's taken me a long time. It's easier said than done. But man, is that's just so so critical because the fund can be sucked out of this fast if you let it. But at the same time, it can be reclaimed very easily with just like that attitude shift. It's totally a mental shift. So we're kind of talking about this, like from twenty thirteen to now, how we've progressed. I think the twenty twenty two season, I guess is a perfect example of what that progression could be because we can compare twenty twenty two to twenty twenty thirteen. And so what we probably should have done was I should have probably told people the week before this to go back and listen to episode one that everyone listening now would have had the same context that we have. But maybe people can do that afterwards. But anyways, worst moment of your twenty twenty two season and then the best moments of our twenty two two season, does it? Does something come to mind for you were out the gate? Or do you want me to start and let's start with the worst. We'll start with the bad, will I'm with the good? 00:50:11 Speaker 3: Okay? So here's where this mindset really comes into play is that, like, when you think about it, there really is no bad part, especially if you keep a positive mental attitude. I mean, you're outside, you're doing what you love, and you know, as long as you're healthy and as long as you can get out and you have a place to hunt and you know you're able to get out. You know, however, many times that your schedule and lifestyle allows, Man, that's a good Like I've realized that's a good thing. That's a that's a really good thing. So if you take that layer off of it then, And you want to talk about things that didn't go right, man, I don't like I don't it would It would be hard for me to nitpick something in my twenty twenty two season where I was like, oh, that sucks. I got bit by a dog in South Dakota and that is the that was literally the worst part of my season from a strategy standpoint, I'm not one hundred percent sure of what I could have done better in order to you know, from from a Western Yeah, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of things, but I'm in that learning process still. Iowa tree stand saddle hunting. Man, I don't think I did anything too terribly wrong. I just applied the method that I have been for the last ten years, and you know, I got the job done. 00:51:44 Speaker 2: That's a good thing. 00:51:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good thing. 00:51:47 Speaker 2: That's a very good thing. And I like your point, like you don't even you can almost eliminate the idea of like a worst moment or a bad moment just with your attitude. Yeah, that's a really good point. So my worst moment I had a fleeting worst moment and it was one that again comes down to like how you deal with it with your mental attitude. And that was the night I shot my Nebraska buck. And so, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, my one of my two goals going to last year was good shots only right. I just wanted to make perfect shots. That was this thing that I worked on so hard last year and just wanted to be perfect. And so this deer that I got a shot at, it was the first night of this hunt in Nebraska. This great, big, giant seven pointer comes in and I shoot him, and in the moment, it was right before the end of shooting light, and he dropped and I just couldn't tell where I hit him. I thought I maybe shot right over him, and the like the first second after I shot him, I thought I shot over and I thought I missed. So I was pissed off that I thought I missed this deer. I couldn't believe I blew it. And I think about all these things I just said. I rebuilt my shooting process. I'd worked so hard with this, you know, just shot a doll last week, killed a nice belt a couple weeks before that. Like, I thought I was making such good progress, and then this thing happened. Again. So I was devastating that moment that I let it happen again, went down, checked the arrow and actually did have pretty good blood on the arrow, and so, okay, now, so I did hit it. I must have hit him high, because I just felt like in that moment, I just felt like it it was high and I couldn't tell if I grazed the top or hit high or missed above. It was something like that. So now see the blood, see the arrow, get in the blood trail, end up having pretty good blood, track the deer a couple hundred yards, and then the blood kinds of dries up, and now I'm more like, man, are we pushing this deer? I just don't know, and end up backing out for the night, decide I'm gonna come back in the next morning and try to pick it up with daylight. So that night was the worst moment of my season, because I mean, we've all been most of us have been there where you just don't know if you're gonna find that deer, if you wounded it, if you killed it, if you didn't you know what happened, Like those moments when you're on a blood trail and it's just like not going the way you wanted to, and you're just not sure what's gonna happen, and you're feeling increasingly increasingly anxious, Like those are those are tough moments. And so that night, laying in bed, I was just like you know, leading into the season, I was just sick of I don't I don't want any more missus. I don't want any more bad hits. I'm just so over that and trying everything I possibly can do to eliminate that, even though I know you can't on one hundred percent eliminate it. So I was beating myself up pretty bad about that. That was my low point. 00:54:43 Speaker 4: Now. 00:54:43 Speaker 2: Fortunately, the next morning we went out there and the deer was like ten yards away from where he stopped. He was right in front of us. I don't know how we didn't see him, and it ended up being a double long shot. 00:54:54 Speaker 3: It was. 00:54:55 Speaker 2: It was high, high, top of both lungs, but he was dead right away. I just got unlucky that we stopped a little bit too soon. So I ended up working out okay. Now, like I mentioned earlier, I still could have slowed down more on that shot, so I know I still have work to do. 00:55:11 Speaker 4: There. 00:55:12 Speaker 2: But that was my worst moment. Yeah, and it fortunately led still had a good outcome, still a good teaching moment. But I had that one moment during the season where I was feeling rough. So that was the worst moment for me. 00:55:28 Speaker 3: I guess if I was going to break it down, I had. I had that moment with a buck I shot here in Iowa this year. I mean that whole debacle where my arrow fell out of my bow. He saw it happen, and then he kind of took a couple backward steps and started flanking away and I shot, You know, I I shot him while he was taking small steps and I ended up hitting him, you know, back liver guts, right and so and so if I was really going to break all that down apart, maybe I would have done something a little bit different. But also it's a perfect example of you kind of got to be ready for anything, and and you know that that was a that was the low part of that story. 00:56:19 Speaker 2: In am I am? I remembering this story? 00:56:22 Speaker 4: Ray? 00:56:23 Speaker 2: Is this the one where you brought in a drone and stuff and then you ended up like stumbling on him later though, when you finally did find him. 00:56:29 Speaker 3: Oh no, dog, Yeah, dog. A dog came in, and a dog came in found a different dead, different buck, a different buck, and I was like, no way I shot this buck. 00:56:43 Speaker 2: No way I shot this buck. 00:56:45 Speaker 3: Right, he was like one hundred and thirty inch eight pointer, I mean, just tiny. 00:56:51 Speaker 2: And and so I was like, there's thousands of Michigan hunters right now who are pissed at you for calling me. 00:57:00 Speaker 3: Point two year old one hundred and thirty class, you know. But anyways, but anyway, and I'm just like, no way, I shot this deer. And I was I was about ready to tag him, and like, say, okay, I guess I shot this deer. And I go, one second, I'm gonna look for the wound channel here because I know where I hit him. And there was no woond channel at all. And so the guy with a dog we went for a little bit longer, and he's like, hey man, this buck here is ruining this dog's or this dog scent. This deer is ruining this dog scent because he can't find a scent trail if this dead deer is in the area. So I went back out there later that afternoon and ended up finding him. 00:57:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. That was a wild one. Yeah, wild, and I don't know was that was when you did find that buck. Was that the best moment of your season when that worry all of a sudden disappeared, or what was your best moment? Would you say? 00:57:59 Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I would say this whole hunt was just the fact that I wasn't able to get used as meat because the coyotes got to him before I did, and so that that was a low part, I guess you would say too. But the cool part about this was I would say, the thing that I'm happy with is that this was on a brand new farm that I got access to in I think it was late August or it was late August or September. And then I went in and I know it must have been late August or something like that, and I threw up trail camera like I threw up one trail camera. I started the process of e scouting. I didn't want to go in and do it. I hunted a couple times in October, started to figure it out a little bit. And so the positive or the good takeaway there is that I applied my method to this farm and I got success. And so it just I don't know it it kept encouraging me that hey, what I'm doing is right, it is working, so keep doing it. 00:59:10 Speaker 2: That's such a good feeling, like when you when you're trying something and seeing those positive results come back real time. 00:59:19 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:59:19 Speaker 2: That's that is one of the very coolest things about deer hunting. There's like a whole lot of places in life where you can try some new thing, implement some new strategy and just take it. You won't see the results clearly, but in deer hunting you can usually many times get like pretty quick feedback like does this work or does this not? Did I make progress or did I not? Was this the right move? 00:59:43 Speaker 4: Was it not. 00:59:44 Speaker 2: It's a pretty tangible thing most of the time, and that's I think that's part of what makes it so fun. 00:59:50 Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely absolutely, And I'm on a roll with that, and so it's it's encouraging when I can say, hey, man, my method worked in My method worked in twenty twenty two, it worked in twenty twenty one, it worked. I got lucky in twenty twenty with the deer when I saw him raking a tree as I'm walking into the timber. It worked in twenty nineteen, it worked in twenty eighteen, and then the other two were kind of just more of well I would if I want to be serious about it. It's worked for the last ten seasons since twenty sixteen, well not ten seasons, but twenty sixteen. And so it's re encouraging that that, you know, I mean ten years of shooting a target buck. That's that's that's reassuring to me that, hey, man, you just keep just keep doing what you're doing, be able to be mobile, be able to have different thoughts and ideas, and then apply it how you see fit. And when it works like that, man, it feels pretty good. Yeah. 01:00:59 Speaker 2: I can't argue with that. My best moment then yes, And I'll say moments this. So I guess my worst and best both relate to the two goals I had last year. So if if the worst one was related to my shooting goal, my best part is related to the keep a fun goal. And one of the big things I did last year was was pull back on planning hunts or scheduling things that are just going to be like what's going to give you the best chance to kill big deer, and instead like prioritize fun. And part of that is prioritize, like your family, and and so that led to some experiences that are, without a doubt, like highlights of my season. So one of those highlights was carving out a big chunk of time to go to my family deer camp and be up there with my dad and take my son effort first first, like full deer camp kind of weak almost like four days I think we have. And so just getting to have him up the cabin for an extended period of time hunting with me every day, you know, just like seeing his joy in those experiences was just so cool. Like one day we found a buck track and so it's basically let's do whatever's fun. So I was like, do you want to track this buck? It's like, yeah, let's do it. And so We're tracking this buck through the snow, and I'm assuming it's a buck based on the track, and We're in this thick pine stand. It was very deep snow, and every once in a while there was like big clumps of snow that would fall out of the pine trees and collapse down the ground. And so sometimes that would happen like way off in the distance, and it would look like like a big dark thing moving off in the distance. Okay. So at one point we're tracking along and he's so excited and I'm, you know, getting them pumped up about it and stuff, and all of a sudden he sees what must have been, at least I'm assuming must have been one of these clumps of snow falling way off in the distance. Like, Dad, I just saw the buck go off from the distance. I just saw him, Dad, I saw him, and I was like, oh man, that's awesome. He's just up there. We were both really excited. And then he turns to me because he's facing towards it, towards this what I assumed to be a fake deer. He turns back towards me and he says, I have tears in my eyes because I'm so excited, and I see tears coming down his cheeks. He's so excited and fired up by the fact that we maybe saw this buck. He was crying from joy. I mean, that was just like, I mean, can you imagine anything better than that? 01:03:27 Speaker 3: Right? Yeah? 01:03:29 Speaker 2: So I got to go and spend deer camp with him, and then later in the year I took him out on a number of other hunts back in southern Michigan. We had like really fun experiences, saw a lot of deer, got to see a buck that we were after, so he was fired up about it. And then I was able to kill two different bucks locally in Michigan that both of my sons were able to come out and help me track. So I got to have my boys there to help orcover two different bucks. Just like so cool. And this is the first year that Colt, my youngest, was like old enough to really get it too. And uh, just having them there, being on the blood trail, having them be so excited to walk up on the deer and all that kind of stuff. That was by far the coolest stuff of the year. Just being there with the boys, having them experience that, having them actually like understand, be excited about it, geeked out about it, getting to interact and see the things out there. Those were hugh two highlights. Yeah, and just such a great reminder of you know what really matters? 01:04:34 Speaker 3: Yeah, agree, one hundred percent. Man, I love like, I don't know again, what's the same and what's different. My same is the same as my passion for this. But what's different is that I don't care. I just want to be like if you ask me, hey, Dane, what do you want to do? All day long? Every day? I just want to hang out with my kids. Man, That's all I want to do. And so whether that's doing my passion or doing something that they love, I'm realizing that I have this passion, but that my passion is really secondary to everything else in my life. And so if I can get my kids to come and do these things with me, which so far they like to do, awesome. But if not, man, I don't care. 01:05:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, And man, that's been such a great reminder. Like We've talked about this in previous years, but one of the best little tools that I've had now to help reverse any kind of downer feeling I'm getting when I'm hunting, if I'm out there. And I did this when I thought I when I wasn't sure about that shot on that Nebraska buck, and I was beating myself up. Whenever I found like myself at the moment like that, I always remember, like in the end, this does not matter that much. Like I still have my kid, my kids are healthy, I've got a wonderful family. I'm gonna go home, you know, next week and get to give them a hug at night, read them a story like that's the only thing that really really really matters. So that perspective is so important. Absolutely, so that said, Dan, And that's another thing like I've been saying that said for ten years now, over and over again, an obnoxious amount of the time. So that being said, quickly, let's preview for folks a little snippet of what they have to look forward to as far as our stories for the twenty twenty three season. What do you have planned so far? 01:06:26 Speaker 3: You know, it's always Iowa. You know, it's always going through the process. You know here next month in June. I'm going to be not sure when this launches, but June is usually camera deployment month for me. And get some get a little mineral out. There's some places where I've already dumped the mineral, get some cameras over there, start taking inventory. Collecting velvet pictures is probably, to this day one of my favorite things to do is just look at velvet trail camera pictures. 01:06:59 Speaker 2: Man. 01:06:59 Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I love it. Just found out a couple of weeks ago that I drew South Dakota again, so I've been going back to South Dakota. I'll find out here in probably the next three or four days if I draw Kansas, and so that that's potentially on the schedule. If I draw Kansas, I might as well haunt Oklahoma since I'll be close and and and so that that that's always a possibility. But that's that's the deer hunting right there. And then outside of that, man, it's just life. And this is going to sound crazy, maybe it's not crazy, but like I said, man, I really do like spending time with my kids. And one one way I spend time with my kids and is coaching them in sports. And recently I have fallen in love with coaching and especially little kids that they don't necessarily have egos yet they're not they don't think they're the best type of scenarios. And so I coached my son's uh first and second he's a second grader. I coach his first and second grade football. I'm coaching is baseball. I'll probably coach my son's T ball league this this summer. And you know, I just I love doing that type of stuff and I want to continue to do to more of that on top of you know, the fishing and all the other outdoor activities. 01:08:34 Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, that sounds it sounds like you're gonna be busy. That's a lot of coach. 01:08:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, we have something every single We just got done with spring football last week, so we were doing something six nights of the week, six days of the week, and so now work down to five. 01:08:55 Speaker 2: I think, yikes. Yeah, it sounds like my worst nightmare. But kudos to you. 01:09:03 Speaker 3: Well, at some point your boys, you know, they're gonna get into activities and uh, someone's gonna have to shuttle them back and forth. Yeah. 01:09:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm uh, it's true. True. For now, I'm I'm enjoying the fact that the evening activities enjoy. Let's go catch minnows, let's go catch fish, let's go for a hike. But someday, you're probably right, they're gonna say, hey, dad, I wanna go to football or I want to play basketball, and yep, that'll be all right too. 01:09:32 Speaker 3: Are you already out in Idaho? 01:09:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, we gotut here two weeks ago. So yes. We spent the last two weekends, one weekend camping in Grand Teeton National Park. Last weekend it was Yellowstone National Park. Been hiking fishing, mental catching, rock throwing, rock climbing. Uh, they've been, they've been enjoying the outside. 01:09:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't understand. I mean when I was a kid, I loved it. But you mentioned rock throwing. Kids love throwing rocks. 01:10:04 Speaker 2: Man obsessed with it. Yeah, it's a yeah, I don't quite understand it, but it is endlessly enthralling to these little boys. So yeah, man, that sounds like a great schedule My year coming up as far as hunting season, looks like a September trip to do like an Upper Great Lakes adventure of sorts. I think I'm gonna try to put together a little road trip where I'll be doing some fishing in the boundary waters and some grouse hunting up there and then screwed over the border to Wisconsin and do a deer hunt. So I'm gonna pair. I'm gonna do like a deer hunting Upper Great Lakes road trip that showcases like the diversity of experiences you can have, Like you can do one of these trips, and it's not just about killing big buck. It's about having a cool, diverse experience. So camping, canoeing, fishing, hunting, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. Yeah, so I'm excited about that one. 01:11:10 Speaker 3: I've been to the Boundary waters. Man, that's fun. Uh My uncle, my great uncle used to have a cabin on Oak Island, the furthest uh most point in Minnesota. Nice how it goes, it goes, It kind of jets up just for a little bit, and in that little area of the Boundary Waters is an island and so uh man, that was h that was a fun experience up there. 01:11:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's It's an incredible country. So excited, excited about that. And then I'm gonna do a bunch of local stuff again, my usual local Michigan hunts have got a few bucks that made it through the last year that I'm excited to see again. And then I'm going to spend some extended time on the back forty again. 01:11:56 Speaker 3: Awesome. 01:11:58 Speaker 2: We're gonna hopefully some more mentoring of new hunters out there, and then also try to help one or two of my past mentees hopefully get their first archery deer or first buck and do a film talking about the progress that's been made out there and how all these different new folks have gotten to have their first hunting experiences on the property and kind of showcase the progress we've made out there, so that'll be a fun hunt. We're gonna do a longer hunt, like maybe a week or so up at my northern Michigan property with my dad again and try to get him his first buck up there in a long time. And we've been doing some big habitat work this spring. We did a bunch of cutting and making some wildlife openings and a couple of new food plots and really expanding kind of the quality habitat there. So I'm gonna hopefully really set it up nicely for my dad to have a chance at a deer up there, which would be really cool. So pumped for that. And then I think I'll be going back to Nebraska again during the rut and trying to line up a Illinois property been working on all year. Has not come together yet, but I'm still banking on an Illinois hunt too. So that's my That's what my season looks like this year. 01:13:19 Speaker 3: Sounds good, So sounds good. 01:13:21 Speaker 2: Should be should be fun. Uh Well, I don't know, man, That's what I got for this week's episode. You got anything else you want to talk about? 01:13:29 Speaker 3: Not really, man, I think, Uh it was. It's fun catching up like this and looking back. Uh, I don't know, I dwelling on different parts of our lives and then seeing how, you know, how things have changed or haven't changed, and uh how much we went from radio DJ to to just like normal conversation. 01:13:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, thank goodness, Yeah, thank goodness. Hey and Dan, what is your middle name? 01:13:57 Speaker 3: Keith? 01:13:58 Speaker 4: Gee? 01:13:58 Speaker 2: I think Bartholomew so better, but uh, I guess Keith can work. 01:14:04 Speaker 3: I'm glad I have been to Dame is not Bartholomew. You know, I would have been bullied by my own friends if they found out my middle name was Bartholomew. 01:14:13 Speaker 2: Deservedly so yes, yes, yes, all right man, thanks for doing this. It's good to catch up. 01:14:20 Speaker 3: Ay, same to you, man, all. 01:14:22 Speaker 2: Right, and that is a wrap for this week's show. Hope you enjoyed this kind of blast from the past reflection on the past decade. It's gone so fast, pretty wild. I hope you've been along for the ride for a I don't know, maybe all of it or a big part of it, and that you found this to be a valuable you see your time as much as it has been for me and Dan, Thank you for being along for that journey, thank you for being a part of this community, and until next time, thanks for staying wired to hunt.