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. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your guest host, Tony Peterson. Today I'm joined by my good buddy Dylan Lentz, and we're going to talk about all kinds of topics, including scouting and hunting the Big Woods, the advantages and disadvantage of being a trail camera junkie, and what it's like to film a wide variety of hunters throughout the season. I had variety of hunters throughout the season. All Right, you might have noticed that this isn't Mark Kenyon here today. It's your old backup QB Antonio. Mark is off again this week, which probably won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who listens. Surprisingly, he isn't on vacation this week, but is recovering from another clarinet related injury. Now, while one of those little Kenyan boys didn't fire at football into his face while he was playing this time, what did happen is actually a lot more embarrassing. You guys don't know this, but Mark is trying to get into shape and it's not going very well. In fact, he tried to deadlift his clarinet case, which weighs about eleven pounds, and he pulled several of the muscles in his lower back. He also slipped a couple discs, popped out a hernia, and from what Missus Kenyon told me when she called me about it, had a bathroom related accident in his boxers. So he's laid up this week recovering from a litany of injuries. And I'm talking to Dylan Lenz, who is one of the best hunters I've ever spent time with in the field. And that's no joke. Dylan does a lot of camera work for his job. He films a lot of hunts and if you want to see how good he is, you can go over to the metater dot com and watch my North Dakota show from last year. Dylan is also a habitat Google who works with Jeff Sturgis to help clients create their dream deer ground. This is just a great conversation about a wide variety of deer hunting topics, but I think you're really going to enjoy Dylan Lenz, how are you, buddy, doing good? 00:02:18 Speaker 3: Man doing good? Long time to see. 00:02:20 Speaker 2: The last time I saw you was last week and you were hoofing it through the cattails with a fifty pound pack on your back, trying to catch some roosters in flight with a camera before I shot them out of the sky. 00:02:33 Speaker 3: That was a fun challenge though. I've talked to a couple people about that, and I was like, that was actually really fun to try and film. 00:02:38 Speaker 2: So enjoyed it. It was a different than our typical get togethers out there. 00:02:43 Speaker 3: Huh yeah, for sure. 00:02:44 Speaker 2: So for the guests that don't know you, you are a man who wears many hats. You have filmed me for a bunch of hunts. If anybody saw the North Dakota show of mine that we dropped recently, it's on the Mediator website. You film that. People freaking love it. You did a great job on it. You and I just did a you know, run out in North Dakota. We did a run here in Minnesota for pheasants. You film with Mark, You film with a ton of people. 00:03:11 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Yeah, And that's that's what's super fun about what I do is just how diverse I get to be just to try and make a living. So I enjoy hunting with a lot of different people, filming a lot of different things, and just trying to think about animals along the way. Like it's just just that's kind of like the binding theme is animals and being outdoors. 00:03:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have a you know you have that's not your only business, right, Like, that's not all you do. We're gonna talk about your other business that's also involved in Deer two. But your experience, you know, one of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on here. And obviously we've become friends filming together and hunting together. But I've filmed with I don't know how many camera guys over the years, quite a few if you go way back into my bow hunter days. And I was telling Mark this after our North Dakota. I was like, Man, Dylan is the the first cameraman that I've ever hunted with who I run stuff by him to actually like get his opinion instead of just being like a courtesy thing or something. 00:04:11 Speaker 3: Awesome. That's really good to hear and it's like that's it's fun too, because like all the people that I help with, like the most fun trips for me are when it's you're almost like working as a team. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: You know. 00:04:22 Speaker 3: It's like how we're both here for the same goal. We want to film something cool happen and be successful in the field, and like if we can work together on that, it makes it enjoyable for both of us then, right, so. 00:04:33 Speaker 2: Oh big time. And I mean that's I don't need to go too deep in the weeds on this, but you know, some of the some of the places I worked before this, where I filmed, you know, you'd get a cameraman who was like, I'm here to film a deer dying. Yeah, Like that's this is my job, you know. I mean I've told this a few times. When I had a guy one time years ago on a hunt down in Illinois who when I picked him up at the airport, he looked at me and he said, listen, man, I'm not going to see any deer coming in. I'm not going to look for them. I am. When you tell me to start filming, I will, but that's all I'm gonna do. And I'm not lying. We I mean, we had a miserable hunt. We ended up killing a buck, but I looked up at him the first day and he had his head down in his hand, and he was not interested in being there at all. But was Meat Eater is a different thing, you know, they look at video production. I think this is part of the reason that Meat Eater has been successful. You know, Steve's very I don't know how to put this without making him sound bad. Steve has a high standard for videos and that sort of trickles down to us peons who you know, aren't at Steve's level. And so we get a lot of camera operators who are, you know, maybe really good at running the camera, but have never been in a saddle. And then once in a while we get somebody like you who can do it all and and has a ton of white tail experience. And I'm telling you, man like it is a relief when I know we get to hunt together, because it's a different thing to, like you said, to work together on the project versus just having somebody who's kind of hired just to be there. 00:06:08 Speaker 3: Right right well, and that's that's what's fun for me too. I Mean, I film a lot of different stuff with a lot of different people. And there are times where I get there and I feel like I'm just there to film. I'm not part of the decision making. I'm just documenting, which you know, there's a time and a place for that. But when I hunt with somebody that that are open to hearing my thoughts and you know, maybe we should try this, Like I feel like we end up being a lot more successful because we're thinking about a lot more variables when we're more widespread then you know. 00:06:36 Speaker 2: Right, I mean this is this probably sounds crazy, but I've noticed this not not only filming hunts, but also hunting with my daughters, where the calculus for everything changes if you have to think about somebody else who isn't also thinking about the best of the process, And it's you know, I mean, it's just kind of a weird thing where you're like, it's not just can I get two guys in that tree? You know, it's like what can you see? Yeah? Yeah, you know what movements can we get away with? Like where where are we gonna you know, like where's he going to come in? Hopefully what's he going to do? And it's a it's a different thing and Man, you and I have had some fun and we had you know, we had a good hunt last year in North Dakota. That was cool. We had a great hunt this year? Was I was that the biggest buck you've ever seen? Somebody missed the one I missed? Or have you seen somebody miss bigger? 00:07:26 Speaker 3: Man? I I hate to say it. That might be the biggest going miss. But I'm sorry, that's a terrible record to hold. 00:07:36 Speaker 2: It's okay, man, it's okay. That's not the first big buck I've missed. Uh, But let's talk about that because you you know, you just got back from Pennsylvania with Sturgis, Jeff Sturgis. You were out there killed a great buck on public land. Really cool, short hunt, awesome. You filmed, you know, the private land thing all over a lot of the public land thing with a bunch of different people. Like what do you pick up? Like, is there something that you've picked up hunting with a wide variety of people that you bring home where you're like, dang, I like that I took that out of his hunt and I brought it home or something like that. 00:08:08 Speaker 3: There's something I pick up. You know, it'd be cliche to say, like I learned something on every hunt, because there's definitely hunts that I'm just like, okay, whatever, you know, this is just another hunt. But there's a lot of trips that you take where it's like, man, I never thought about that this way, or I wonder if that would apply elsewhere, And you know, just kind of looking back at our north to go to hunt in twenty twenty three when we were out there, you know, walking under that big oak tree that had a lot of sign under it, but it was close to the road and it was close to access. Like personally, I would have just kept talking. I wouldn't have thought about it. 00:08:37 Speaker 2: Again. 00:08:37 Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, it's all nighttime movement here. You know, this gets blown out all the time, and you like took that and you put it in your hat like this this means something, and like that stuck with me a lot. You know, there's a lot of other people that I hunt with where you know, they think about, you know, certain concepts and yeah, I note that, and I kind of put that in my notebook as well. Of like, you know, if I'm in these scenarios and I'm come up short and my traditional tactics aren't working, then you start thinking about you know, how do I think outside of my box and start to utilize suff that makes other people's successful. 00:09:08 Speaker 2: You know, So when you talk about that, because I've had people say that to me about that North Dakota deal too. Where and I've done this a lot, right, Like I've walked past fresh sign deep you know, big concentrations of sign and I'm trying to remind myself every year because I feel like on public land, I run into that almost every year. Somewhere this year I ran into it with my daughters or one of my daughters over in northern Wisconsin where we encountered a great dear like a one thirty on public land, like two hundred yards from where the road is, oh Man. But it was just that concentration a sign again, And I always wonder about that because I bring and everybody does this, but we bring this personal kind of bias to wherever we go where it's like, okay, you're you're from Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a ton of hunters, and so you're thinking I got to get away from them and being even no matter what, close to the road, Like you said, well, that's going to be nighttime movement, right because they're not going to move there in the daylight, but you're not in Wisconsin, and it's a hard thing to recalibrate yourself. And I think a lot of people we sort of make up our minds on stuff like that and go because I hunt, I'm from Georgia or wherever, like this is what deer do or this is the thing that hunters do. And that's one of the reasons I preach this travel to hunt things so much. When you go do that and you don't really have a choice, you're like, I got a couple of days, I got to try it out, you start to learn that those things you think just aren't necessarily. 00:10:32 Speaker 3: True definitely, And that's you know, that's what's really fun about getting to hunt in so many different places is you see those different scales, right, so you look at you know, here in you know way, northern Wisconsin, New York, up, all those kind of places. These deers, their their movement in a daily basis is a lot longer than when you're slammed in agricultural wood lot lands, where it's you know, these deer are moving sixty yards slammed in this little woodlot versus this dear might be moving three quarters of a mile from where he's betting that day to whatever food source of the moment. There is so kind of being able to like look at that and like whatever trip you're on, just kind of thinking like, all right, what are these two deer doing here? And it's so variable based on your region, Like different areas of different states are that way, you know, southern Wisconsin and northern Wisconsin. Holy cow, is it different right well? 00:11:27 Speaker 2: And I mean what you're talking about there too, partially is just a deer density issue as well to some extent. And this is this is one of the things that makes it so hard to hunt big woods. You know, you were just out in the Adirondacks up there in upstate upstate New York, like, oh yeah, you get very few deer and you get a ton of kind of mono habitat to work with. And you know, Southern hunters deal with that shit a lot too. Maybe they have a little higher population and deer in some places, but you get sort of that nomadic, uh, you know, small population thing, and it makes it so hard. But that's again sort of a lesson on those concentrations of sign right for sure. 00:12:09 Speaker 3: And that's what's so fun is like I feel like when you are successful in those places or even when you come upon that sign, like it feels like a gift almost like you're like in this sea of the same. I found this. This this means a lot. Now that I have this little token here, how do I extrapolate that and actually hunt it? 00:12:27 Speaker 2: You know? 00:12:28 Speaker 3: And that's why it's so fun to hunt those big expanse places where it's a neil and a haystack. When you're talking about deer and you know that each encounter means that much more then, right. 00:12:38 Speaker 2: Right, Well, and you also have kind of a lesson there too when you talk about you know, if you if you go to a high deer density place, like you know, where you live in in Wisconsin, you probably have a lot of deer, right Like some of the places I hunt in southern Minnesota, we have a high population and so a concentration of sign is everywhere. Yeah, so so now how do you distill that? So, you know, I start to look at this stuff like the more I travel, and I'm sure you do too, where you kind of just go, okay, well this this hunt, you know that that ADIRONDACKX hunt where you're waiting for that snow to track one. You know, you're waiting for the right conditions to get there, but you're also looking for that concentration a sign, and you you really realize that there's like benefits to every place and there's like these negatives, right, So like, yeah, hunting a place where a ton of deer is awesome because it's easy to see deer, but how do you pinpoint the buck that you want and how do you get in without spooking all the other deer? And then you've got the other end of the spectrum where you're like, I can't even find a freaking deer in this section, right, and you know, like you said, and when you finally find that sign, it's like, Okay, now I'm onto something. Whereas somebody in you know, Nebraska and would lot would be like, well I can spin in a circle and count forty scrapes like who cares? 00:13:54 Speaker 3: Oh exactly, yeah definitely, And that that to me, like, you know, that's why it's so fun like hunting these different places, you find these different concentrations of deer. But it's just I love how no matter where you are, it changes so drastically that each place kind of has its own niche, right, So it's like you almost want to learn all these different areas and like, well, when I'm in this, that means I do this, you know. Like to me, that's just so fun about it is how these animals all kind of work off of the same basis, but it's so different when you extrapolate it out right. 00:14:28 Speaker 2: Well, one of the guys who I've talked to a lot about that is Clint Campbell with Truth from the Stand podcast. I just had him on a little bit ago and we talk about that a lot, where you know, he's hunting the mountains of Pennsylvania, you know what I mean. He's not hunting egg He's hunting you know, big woods, lots of terrain. And then he goes out to Kansas and he's like, you know, some of the stuff you find or some of the stuff you're like this saddle or this bench or this you know, soft edge out in Pennsylvania. This plays like this soft edge in the CRP in Kansas or whatever. 00:15:00 Speaker 3: Exactly. It's that, you know, it's like those same kind of you know factors, right edge change like that is always going to be monumental, I feel like, but it's just how much does it mean here? And does that depend on the deer density? Does it depend on how far they're traveling or what food sources are there? You know that that's me is the fun part of it. 00:15:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that So again, I mean this, this is a message. I try to get out with foundations a lot too. So so you and I just filmed that pheasant hunt, right and we had one day that was super windy, real windy, Yeah, and we would get out there. You know, you're you're in western Minnesota, so that there's no trees to block that, there's no hills. I mean, it's howking across the landscape. But you get into those cat tails lows and you find a spot where you'll be just moving along and all of a sudden, there is like a little wind break somewhere and you can feel it. It's like palpable, and all of a sudden, that's where you flush the roosters, and that's where you jump those deer out of there. And you're like, even if you never hunt that term for white tails, being in there, following a black lab around hoping to shoot a rooster, all of a sudden you pick up on those little micro climates, that little micro habitat situation, right, and you go, man, I don't know how I'm gonna use that at home. I don't know what that means to me. But someday I'm gonna go out and it's gonna be super windy. I'm gonna be sneaking into my stand or something. I'm gonna hit a spot where I don't feel that wind anymore. I'm gonna bust a big buck and I'm gonna go, Okay, Now when I see that on the forecast, I know what to do. 00:16:27 Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, And that's fun too. You know, you talk about those microcosms of habitats, and you know that could be you know, a change in you know, density of stem count. That could be all right, there's a little bit higher amount of conifers in here that are breaking the wind or you know, hindering the snow a little bit more. And it's just you might not even notice it all that much when you're looking at an aerial because it doesn't stand out. But then you're walking through there and you're like, you know what this now that I'm here, this does look a lot different at ground level, and that absolutely matters. To a deer, right they they I don't know how they seek it out, But I don't know if they just feel it like it's more comfortable here, or do they look for those conditions, you know, but they feel it. They absolutely are relating to those changes. 00:17:11 Speaker 2: I mean, it's I think it's just a matter of they They have about a mile by mile they work with generally, And if you spent every day out there every condition, you'd be like, I know, if I go here when it's rainy, it's better than being there. And if the wind's blown out of the southeast during the rut, which sucks everywhere, I'm gonna look for does this way because there aren't gonna be any hunters there, And I think they just get to know it so well. 00:17:35 Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely so. 00:17:37 Speaker 2: You run one of the things that I you know, you and I have spent a lot of time talking about deer on these trips, you know, sitting in tents and all that stuff. You have kind of a couple different styles, and you're you're always checking your trail cameras. You have a lot of cameras out, yeah, but you're also going You're also going to places like the adrond ACKs, like you just did, or go to Pennsylvania where you have no intel, no intel nothing. Do you feel like, how does it make you feel going from one to the other, Because I know a lot of people are like really dependent on the cameras now, but you seem to have like a foot in both camps. 00:18:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. I it's tough because as a whitetail hunter and as somebody that's trying to make the most out of their time on these trips, if you have that intel, I feel like then you can kind of either cross areas off or circle areas and say, wow, I need to hunt here. But at the same time, it's a blessing and a curse where there's something super refreshing about when I do these hunts and I have no intel and I go in blind and you're just going back to basics and scouting sign or scouting those changes in habitat or clearcuts or whatever, and you're just like, there has to be deer here because the factors tell me that they're a deer here versus you know, this year, I my intention was to shoot a buck in the upa, Michigan. I don't think it's happen. I put some cameras up there. I think I have four cell cameras up there, and I was just so discouraged by the lack of deer sign or I'm sorry, not the lack of deer sign, with the lack of deer photos. I was getting buck pictures specifically, and you know, the amount of wolves I was getting on camera that it just discouraged me from planning a trip up there. 00:19:20 Speaker 2: You know, and you got a lot of wolves up there, huh. 00:19:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, quite a few wolves, I would say, yeah, at least once a week, if not every other week. But a lot of wolves on camera. And you know, I don't know how detrimental that necessarily is to the mature bucks or you know, mature deer that I'm hunting, but you know, it's just the fact that there's not a lot of deer on camera and the amount of predators I'm getting on camera. It discouraged me from planning a trip where had I gone, it would have you know, I would had a blast, no matter if I even saw a deer, I'm sure, but I think it would have made me become more resourceful and do more scouting and find that legit new fresh sign. And then I I would have been more successful instead of just writing it off like, well, I have the cameras up there, they're telling me there's no deer here. You know, had I gone and put the work in, I would have had a blast. And well, it's a huge regret I already have from this fall, and the fall is not even over. Right. 00:20:13 Speaker 2: Well, I was going to ask you about that, because I knew you didn't go up there, and I knew I think it was when we were coming back from North Dakota. You were pretty excited about that to get up there. And so there's the other side of it, right, Yeah, if you don't have that, if you hadn't put cameras up there, in the up, you would have gone up there. 00:20:30 Speaker 3: I would have gone, and I'm sure I would have had a blast. Maybe I wouldn't even seen a deer. Maybe I would have seen wolves, who knows, But I would have done some scouting, put some boots on the ground, and at least found areas where I felt confident in hunting versus watching these cameras. And I would have went up there and been like, why am I sitting here? There's no deer? For miles, I get a deer here every five six days. You know, I think I would have went into that hunt a lot more negative. And so I think next year what I'm going to do is I'm gonna go up there in Turkey out that area in the spring and hopefully look for some sign and kind of rezone in on some areas. But then next year, I think I'm just gonna go hunt and go for fresh sign and not put any cameras out. And I think that that's gonna encourage me to go a lot more because I'm like, man, there's got to be some big giant swamp bucks up there. I want to go shoot them, you know. So right, it's kind of one of those things. 00:21:21 Speaker 2: You were you hung some some cameras on scrapes, right, but you were, you know, however far you have those spread out when you look at that now, because I was just talking to a buddy of mine about our northern Wisconsin stuff where last year we had a wolf move in to his property. Big male got pictures of him all the time, and that's that's unusual. We get them swinging through, but we don't get them where they're like that that dude's just living there. Oh yeah, change things a lot right, like it just does. And so you know, but there we have, you know, a couple of private properties that are maybe ten miles apart, and then we have a huge chunk of national forest that I like to on a lot. Yeah, where even when something like that happens, I go, well, I've got Plan B and Plan C, so the area is still going to I'm going to go regardless. Do you think like next year, you know, you go up there turkey hunting, you think you'll try to find some pockets that are far enough apart where it's like if you do set some cameras this next year and you see those wolves, you can be like, well, I've got you know, fifteen miles away, I got another area I scouted and just give yourself that shot. 00:22:27 Speaker 3: And you know, I think my cameras were spread enough that I definitely had two separate areas that were very far apart. I think I was a little bit too tight in one of the areas on where I'd placed some cameras where you know, I actually had the same buck on camera at you know, two or three of those camera locations, and you know, then it's like, man, why didn't I just spread these out more, you know, and just kind of figure out what's in this area if there are deer in this area. But yeah, I think when you hunt those big expanses of public land, or even when I go out to South Dakota, I have like a plan ABCD e F where it's like, all right, this area, there's trucks parked at every spot. I go to this spot. If there's people there, I go here. If you know all these factors, you know, I have, I blew this place out and I just need to go somewhere else, Like I go into it. And this is one of those things when I can't fall asleep at night, Like I'm sitting on on X and I'm dropping pins where it's like you just you start and you just go down this rabbit hole and next thing you know, you have all these pins that you've never even seen before, and you're just like, someday I want to go check that out, you. 00:23:28 Speaker 2: Know, dude. So that your situation there with the up hunting specifically or the scouting and the hunting you didn't do, people are going to listen to that and like that's that's going to confirm some thoughts people have of like that's not worth it. But because we we often present this. So like last year we went to North Dakota, right, we hunted two days, killed an ice buck. I hunted that spot one other time in twenty nineteen a hundred it four days and killed a nice buck. And people see that and they're like, Okay, well you have to find a spot like that. But that spot that I just mentioned with my daughter that we went into that we had that big one come up on. I hunted that I killed a buck there and I think like twenty sixteen and then twenty nineteen, and then I was covered in people and so I gave up on it. And two winters ago we had that heavy snow that knocked down a bunch of trees and changed I mean, it made the woods nasty. And I've been driving by that spot looking at other stuff, and I'm like, I wonder if that spot came back, because there's no four wheeler trails going in there, like you could tell it wasn't getting used. And when I walked in there today or this year, there was more sign in there than I saw in Iowa when I was down there, and I go, okay, so this came back around and the first time I hunted it by myself, which was the only time I had because I hit a deer that night with my truck and I had to go home. I had a pretty good buck come in and I almost killed him, and I was kind to hunting on memories but also hunting on the fresh sign, and I go, you know, this is like a ten year process. No, yeah, and I don't know it like I don't. I don't. I can't walk into that place and just kill a deer. But like when you talk about this up experience, and it's like, Okay, well you found some wolves, you found some bucks. You didn't you didn't find enough to get you to go, Yeah, you're not done. You're gonna go turkey on up there going back. Yeah right, and you're gonna you're gonna devote that time to build those layers and eventually you're gonna learn that area enough where if you put those cameras out and the wolves are there, you're not gonna be like I'm not gonna go and I'm gonna regret it. You're like, I'm gonna figure it out. 00:25:48 Speaker 3: I'm not focusing on the wolves necessarily. I don't think the wolves are why there aren't deer there. I don't think that I think that there are deer there. I think my intel, my quick running gun scouting, like I wasn't on the X, you know. So it's it's a matter of pushing a little bit further, going to you know, maybe look at fresher aerials and say, you know, maybe there's different changes here that I didn't see based on the areals that I was looking. Maybe there's a fresh cut I don't know about, or something like that. But it's it's one of those things where and I'm sure you've had this too, where when an area kicks your ass, like you want to figure it out. Like now, it's like I'm going back because I'm not going oh for nothing on this, Like I want to experience this big wood success, you know. I want to go up there and I want to go to an area that everybody says, oh, there's no deer, what are you wasting your time for and have a hunt that I can be happy about, you know. And I think that's what I respect about, you know, especially the way that you hunt and the way that you hunt out of state is like the measurements for success are so different in all these places that you go. Right, So it's like North Dakota, you know, we go out there and here we have an encounter with an awesome giant buck, and then we shoot another deer. We're totally happy with that. 00:27:00 Speaker 2: Well, let's be honest, we had two encounters with that dear, well two miles apart. 00:27:05 Speaker 3: I can't wait to watch that film. 00:27:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're right. I mean, it's that is another thing that I'm trying to not be a dick but push. And it's that when you go do something else, even if you're in state, and you're like, I'm just gonna go hunt this part of the state I've never done, or I'm gonna hop across state lines. I'm gonna hunt the state I've never been to. Now, you don't bring that the standards you have at your lease at home or a gramma's farm that you get to hunt every day after work or whatever. And when you hunt under different rules for yourself, you hunt differently. Yeah, and now it's not just a sit and wait game like a lot of the whitetail stuff now is like I'm just I'm waiting for the cameras to show me the good stuff. I wait for the conditions to get right and then I go in and I kill You don't do that on when you're traveling, and that that really sharpens the blade, I think. 00:27:55 Speaker 3: I think so too, And it's just it's more fun to be honest with you. Like I have three properties. I can hunt here in Wisconsin. I can hang stands on them, I can hang cameras on them all year, water holes, food plots, you know, scrapes, whatever. But that only gets me so far to where I want to be in a fall, Like I want to experience that adventure. I want to go hang and bang and try new spots and just try and figure out an area where it's like you kind of dial these other spots down and it's like now it was just a waiting game, Like now I'm just waiting for a buck to start to do the things that I know they're going to do, versus going and figuring out what the bucks are doing here and how then you tap into that Like that to me is so much more fun. And not to say I don't have a blast shooting bucks on private land, I absolutely do, and I will do that forever. But there's something to be said about like every year. I want to go get my ass kicked somewhere. 00:28:49 Speaker 2: You know, right, I mean right before we got on here. I for some reason, I have never had a lot of interest in Kansas. 00:28:56 Speaker 3: Oh yeah. 00:28:57 Speaker 2: I huntred at one time years like two thousand and nine or something. I had a really big one and lost it. They found it later. Turkey hunted at one time. But I like, it just hasn't been on my radar. And I was like, you know, I gotta go give Kansas some effort. I don't know why, you know, like I know, I just there's something happening. But it's it's that thing you're talking about. I wanted to ask you when you when you went to the up and you were like, because I know you were, you were stoked about that, and you went up there and you scouted and hung some cameras. What were you looking for? Like? What were you like? I want to find this, I want to drop a camera on it, and I want to see what's going on here. 00:29:36 Speaker 3: Ah, you know, It's it's one of those things like and this is just because I was there in early October. What I was looking for was fresh sign, right, So like everywhere I went, if you got on a scene of change, some kind of change in the cover type. You would see those old scarred rubs right like you would see where you know, even like you see those like sapling asspen that are falling over because they rode it out in the middle from a rub that's twelve years old or whatever. You know, that tells you that that area has movement on it, right. But then it's like, okay, are there deer here right now? So that's what I was really looking for, is like is their brows fresh? Is there fresh nipped shrub tips? You know? Now? Is there a fresh rub near that? 00:30:19 Speaker 2: You know? 00:30:20 Speaker 3: Is there some inkling of a scrape? And I'll be honest with you, I didn't find any fresh scrapes. But what I did find was some fresh rubs that told me like, Okay, a buck spent some time here. And I'm not just looking for like, you know, one inch sapling that's scraped and broken, like you're looking for that. A lot of the ones that I found up there were on tag alder where a tag alder that's or five inches around is worked and it's two feet and almost all the way around, And then you know that buck was mad for a long time while he was there, which tells me like he's not just out somewhere that he's never been before and spending all his time making all this noise. He lives here or he had he is familiar with this place, right So that's what I was looking for. And I only found a couple instances of that fresh sign. You know, there's a lot of old pretty rubs, but I only found a couple that were like, dang, this is this is where I need to be focusing. 00:31:16 Speaker 2: And you didn't find any scrapes, no scrapes. 00:31:18 Speaker 3: But again, I was there, you know, early October, and I wasn't near a lot of cuts where I was focusing that time. I think if I had have gone near the cuts, I would have found like those early scrapes, you know, where they're they're spending a lot more time, like on their food sources, in the staging areas near those food sources. I was more or less going like, Okay, this is the spot that I can get into an access quickly off the river and I can pop into here, be low invasive, and just find are there dear here right now? So I think if I would have looked in those other places, I would have found some scrapes, but I just I wasn't in the right areas for it. 00:31:53 Speaker 2: Right when you when you talk about tag alders, man, I find a lot of interesting woods buck signed when I hunt woodcock, oh yeah, oh yeah, because I mean you're always around those. And that's that's something after the last two years over in Wisconsin that I've tried to figure out more as those alder swamps, because they are just a special kind of cover, Like you can't go through them. 00:32:18 Speaker 3: Because like you look at them in an aerial and it just looks like this massive nothing. But you know, if you ever have to go through with all their swamp, all of a sudden you're going through and there's just a six to twelve inch change in elevation. It's just this little dry hump and that's where the rubs are, and it's like you would never find that or see it unless you're trudging through there. And then all of a sudden you get out in the spot and there's a couple of sprigs of raspberry or you know, maybe one aspen, and it's like now there's change, and that's why those deer there there's a little bit more brows there's a little bit different cover, you know, and so unless you're really putting in those miles, which sucks walking through those older swamps, right, but like that's where I feel like you find. 00:32:57 Speaker 2: A lot of that really valuable stuff, dude, you do, and that lesson there, you know, I think when you talk about elevation changes, I think, you know, I grew up in the bluffs down along the Mississippi, so I'm used to like big hills, right, And when you have big hills, you have big saddles, and you have big pinch points, and it's like to me, it's just so much easier to read the flat stuffs hard man, Like you can't control where they're gonna go, you know, with the wind, it's a different thing. But when you when you have like relatively flat ground, like you're talking about like an alder, swamps gonna be low and flat, just it is going to be. But you see that little pocket of you know, uh, some kind of some kind of pine trees or something that's like just like a species of tree that's gonna grow in a little bit more, like it needs a little bit more. It can't drown out. And then you're like you you know when you walk up to that, there's gonna be buck side definitely, like there's gonna be beds. It's the same thing those cat tails we were in. Yeah, you get out there and you're like this is all the same, and then you start walking through it and then you're like, Okay, there's a vein of willows over there, a little bit of dog would over here or something, and that's where the sign is, that's where the birds are, that's where the deer are. And it's like, man, you can't. You can sort of pick that stuff up on on X or you know, aerial photos, but until you walk it, you just don't know. 00:34:20 Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely, And that's that's what's so fun about Like playing around on aeriels is like trying to look at like I mess with like the leaf off cover and you know you're looking like, Okay, when was this photo taking. What's time of year? Is it in early spring? Where you know the aspens are popping a little bit different. Like it's so fun to like look and try and figure out just what clues the aerial gives you. And it's like it's this you know, dead piece of data, right, It's just like this is a photo that was taken. At some point you're trying to like figure out like what does this actually mean? What can it actually tell me? 00:34:50 Speaker 2: You know? 00:34:50 Speaker 3: But then it's like, all right, now I drop some pins in there. Now I gotta go trudge through there. 00:34:55 Speaker 2: And actually look at it, right well, But it's just how it goes, you know, And it's that's the kind of stuff in you know, when you have nothing to do in February, that's good stuff to walk. The water's going to be frozen, you know. I just got permission last night to hunt this farm with my daughters by my house that I've you know, I've turkey hunted and I've hunted in the past, but I always got to go ask him. Yeah, and he was telling me about where they're seeing the bucks and you know, the usual stuff, right yeah, And I can't I gotta wait till I gotta go to Montana here in a second. But I when I come back, I can't wait to go walk that farm to just figure out, like I know where the I know those dear are going to be concentrated because we just wrapped up a long gun season and there's only so many spots. But doing that like just kill your buck and go take a walk or like it's so valuable. And I did this. You know, I had a entirely different plan for Wisconsin this year based off of the fact that I killed a buck last year and I had a couple of days to mess around, and so I went and walked swamps Oka and I dropped cameras and I was like, Okay, now I'm learning something. And I I built my whole plan around it this year, uh, until I got distracted by that public land stuff. But I'm telling you, and you know this, that boots on the ground stuff after review, like you said, when you can't sleep and you're scrolling through on X and just looking and then you get out there like we've got months of off season coming up. Oh yeah, you know, and we've got. 00:36:19 Speaker 3: Funny when you get to this point in the season and it's like there's still time left to make plays and you're already like almost like writing it off like I want to. I'm already like looking ahead to like what intel can I find now? This could help me next year. Right, I'm at that point where you know, right now, like Muscloaders open, I'm home. I should be muscloader hunting, and it's like, you know, I should probably score some Brownie points while I'm home, and like I'll take a sit or two here like this week. But it's not like I'm like pushing as hard as I could, because it's like, I've already had a great year. This is awesome and I'm looking forward to next year so much that it's like I'm thinking about the scouting I'm gonna do for next year already. 00:36:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so I mean, I know we pre this all the time. I look at winter scouting kind of like the all day sit thing, right, like we talk about it all the time. I feel like there aren't a lot of people who do it, and it's such a it's so valuable. And if you tie that in, I mean, if you if you don't want to go out right now, like you said, you know, the muzzlar seasons are open or whatever. You know, maybe maybe not this month, but next month. In a lot of places, that deer season is going to be closed, and definitely by February. And there's so much to learn out there and a lot of your lessons from the last season are still super fresh, absolutely, and so you're like, and people think they don't really think about that stuff. Like if you you know, you went and ran those cameras in the up, didn't find what you needed, but you found something. You found some stuff, you got some information, you make a run up there and look around. All of that's fresher now than it would be when you go back in the summer, Turkey season or whenever that shit matters one. 00:37:55 Speaker 3: Hundred percent, And now like you look at it and think, like, okay, January February, depending on the winters that we have, like these deer are gonna be doing completely different things than they were doing all season. So then all of a sudden you get into these areas and there's cow paths and there's a ton of sign and there's shit everywhere, and you're just like, holy cow, I need to hunt here. It's like, okay, now are they here because it's winter and they're they're living here now because the food sources and cover has changed, or were they here in October November? So then you have a lot more to like sift through versus like right now, it's so easy to go out and be like, holy cow, there's a big pad up up there. That's an enormous community scrape, right that's not covered in snow or whatever. Like there's so much to learn, Like as soon as that season is over, if you're done hunting, or you want to go take a walk with your muscleoader or whatever, Like there's a lot to learn right now. 00:38:42 Speaker 2: Big time. I want I remembered something I wanted to ask you when you know, I asked you what you have learned kind of or like what you've picked up from some of the people you've hunted with. You know, that's like a very that's like a softball question, right, Like obviously you've hunted with a bunch of different people, You're gonna pick up some stuff. But I think about this a lot, like how do we how do we get information to our audience that they aren't getting from everyone? Right? And so I thought about this with you because when when we've hunted together, you kind of hang your own stands and you're like very capable of the whole process. But what have you picked up? Is there anything that comes to mind that you've picked up about like camping or like stand set up or gear, you know, blood trailing, like anything where you're like not not hunting strategy, but like the shit that the glue that keeps the whole thing together. 00:39:32 Speaker 3: I could do a whole episode on that kind of stuff if I like really thought about it, I would say, like what really jumps to mind quickly is just like and I think it's comes from being a cameraman, but like you want to be a fly on the wall until it's time to not be so like when you're hanging a set, you know, like I try and be so quiet, and I like I nerd out on my setup where it's like I tape where two pieces of metal connect. I have my strap in a way that as soon as I pull it out of unravels and I'd take it and I hang it around the tree, so it's not going to bang in anything. It's just like I think filming has just kind of honed me to try and be as minimally invasive as possible, because like when I hunt by myself, like, yeah, I can disappoint myself. But like if I looked look over and I made a noise and I look over and that hunter's looking at me because they heard the noise that I made, then it's like shame, right, So it's like it's like you're trying to not only keep yourself happy, but you're trying to keep the hunter happy. Or you know, you're sitting and you're trying to not spook the deer that are coming in, So your movements are just so much more small and sobtle, you know, I would say, like hanging a set. That to me, like I pride myself and I think I had mentioned this year, I wish there was like they do all these weird competitions, they should do like hanging a set competition style, Like I would love to sign up for that. I want to do the fastest, the quietest, the most efficient like that. To me, it would be so fun. And I know it's super nerdy, but like that to me would be super fun to watch. Like, Okay, what work I do differently? You know? 00:40:57 Speaker 2: I mean it's it's important, you know. I mean just when when we set up, when we when we encountered that buck in North Dakota the second time, when we didn't get a shot at him. That wood lot's tiny, yeah, I mean that would lot is maybe five acres and we had jumped some big deer out of that I think the day before or two days before, just sneaking in there looking and we got to the edge of that sucker and set up in really shitty trees because that's all that's there. And that buck came in and worked that tree twenty one yards away. And there's the way that that land is out there in the bad lands, Like he didn't come from a mile away, he was there and that So that stuff is like, you know, and I know we've pushed this, you know, the saddle and the mobile thing a lot, which of course makes sense, but it's not it's not just enough to get a saddle or you know, we were using those exopeace stands this year, which are freaking bad ass. Man. They don't we don't have I don't have any relationship with him. I fell in love with him. They are designed they're like somebody was reading my diary when they made those suckers. That's badass. But but that stuff is so important and you you do pick up on things like that when you hunt with other people, and that's that's one of the things that I don't know how to do this yet. I'm kind of working on this idea of like how do we how do we sort of isolate those lessons you know, from a hunt in a way to like share because there's so much little stuff, you know, and I've I've had people where like, you know, I have my own style of like butchering them in the field or butchering them on the back of my truck, and that you could film that stuff. But it's like there's so much, so many little things. 00:42:36 Speaker 3: Right, It's the little thing. It's the hey, you make this cut here on this deer, and that makes it that much easier to take out. Like that's maybe not something that's worth a whole video, but it's like those little tiny lessons that it's just like, oh, this guy showed me this one time. It makes a lot of sense and it makes my life easier. Like you know, you mentioned blood tracking and stuff like that, and like, man, I've been on so many blood trails with guys where it's like, seriously, this is how we're doing this, Like slow down, man, Like let's let's let's actually like sift through and figure out what's happening here. You know. I think like there's so many people that you do learn from that It's like I feel like a lot of the things you learn from people is like slow down, Like, don't just be in a hurry, like actually think about every move that you're making. And that goes for blood trails, hanging a stand, looking at signed whatever, like a lot of the stuff we want to do very quickly, but it makes way more sense to do it successfully and actually like quietly or you know, efficiently. 00:43:33 Speaker 2: I mean that that lesson. You can't you really can't overstate it, and that's you know you you just followed me through the cattail sou It's like, I'm I'm a fast walker. Like people bitch all the time. I get it, I get it, but I'm I intentionally do try to slow down because you know, like the blood training thing is a perfect example, right, like I can I can't bloodshow very many people because it's just not it's it is a it is a thing. It is a task that requires patience, Like it is a task that requires you to just throttle way back. And I think a lot of times we don't. We don't give ourselves enough time. Like I have one buddy who's like he's perpetually late for everything, so you know, like I know when he texts me and he's like, yeah, I got in a little late this morning, or like he was rushing and rushing and rushing and rushing. And one of the things that you know, a lot of these traveling trips, like we we had this in North Quota this year. That was the middle of October, so it wasn't rut, it wasn't all days sit time. But you're you're you're facing the reality of you walk out in the morning, do your morning sit and you're like, are you gonna go all hike all the way out and go back to camp or are you going to stay out there? I mean, we stayed out there on the river, you know coup that was great, awesome, but we stayed out there. And then you know, even though you end up sitting longer than you probably would need to, you also are walking into a situation where you're like, I don't know where we're going to hang this set. I don't know what we're gonna find. I don't know who we're gonna bump into. I don't know the level of impact we're gonna make on this little tank that I want to hunt. But we're gonna blow deer out of there. So if we can give it an extra hour or two or three to get our setup right and settle in and let let like let nature kind of come back and like find that balance that stuff matters. 00:45:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's you know, not that you need to go on these big long sits and give yourself all this time to enjoy nature or whatever. You know, it's like give yourself more time so that you can make less of an impact getting in. You know. It's like if you actually are not in a hurry, you're making a lot better decisions. I feel like too. 00:45:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's you know, this is this is something that I think we a lot of people kind of have this idea like I want this property, I want the box b linds, I want the set up ladder stands. If you have that situation, you don't need to do this. Really you should. You should have your work done ahead of time, but you still should have a mobile setup because those deer are gonna figure you out. They're gonna they're gonna they're gonna react to you in a way where you're still gonna need to do that. So this is like a this is a muscle you need to work. I get. Yeah, you don't let me put it this way. You don't meet anybody who could show up on public lands somewhere who's not really good at that. Yeah, like giving themselves time and figuring this stuff. 00:46:24 Speaker 3: Out, for sure, I mean you do. You do meet a lot of guys that are throwing it together. But the guys that are successful, like they have every variable checked, you know, they're they're thinking about it ahead of time, and that's you know that to me is again one of the nerdier parts about what we do. But I love like that feeling of like I'm super preferred for tomorrow. I have everything where I need it to be, and I know I'm gonna get up in the morning, pour myself a cup of coffee, and I'm gonna go and everything is set. You know that to me is like super satisfying. And then when you get in there and everything goes hey wire, at least you're ready for it. 00:46:56 Speaker 2: You know, right. So let me run a scenario by you. So one of our producers calls you up and says, hey, Dylan, we have a shoot for you if you want it. What I'm assuming I'm gonna fill in the blanks here for you a little bit. I'm assuming that you probably like personally enjoy like a public land hanging bang type of thing a lot. Oh yeah, what's it like? What would be a kind of hunt where they would be like, hey, can you film this where you'd be like, oh, that's just kind of a job. I'm gonna take it. 00:47:25 Speaker 3: Public land peasant hunting in western North Dakota wasn't like that. On an opening weekend of rifle season, I was definitely like, oh, man, all right, I'll do it. 00:47:37 Speaker 2: But it's going to pay those bills. 00:47:39 Speaker 3: But that's right, man, make cave while the sunshines, right. I I hate turning down work like that's you know, at the end of the day, you have to pay bills, right, So it depends on what jobs are thrown your way. But like, if I could pick, it would be going to a new state, a new area and hanging banging on public land like that to me is the most fun thing to do. And it's one of those things where even if we're not successful, like we have probably had a blast getting our asses kicked, where there's probably still one heck of a story to be told. And if it is successful and you do kill a deer, you probably have a heck of a story to tell. Because holy crap, that doesn't happen all the time, right, So. 00:48:21 Speaker 2: But what's what's a hunt that you would they would pitch to you where you'd be like, I'll do it, but I don't, like in your head like I do it. 00:48:28 Speaker 3: Like you know, I would hunt private land, white sail somewhere. I would absolutely I'd have a blast doing and I do it all the time with people. But it's one of those things where it's just like not that it necessarily feels like a grind or like work, but it's just like it's not as fun to me. I'll do it, but it's like, yeah, all right, it's not as exciting. That's what's so fun about what I do is most of the time I go on these trips or hunt with people, I'm excited just to be there. Like I'm grateful that I got the call to be there, right, So, Like, you know, there's nothing that really jump saw at me that'd be like, ah god, it. 00:49:02 Speaker 2: Is part of that just because there there's just less of a story to tell a lot of times, like you because you this is what people don't understand. Behind the scenes. My producer bitches all the time. He's like we gotta get transitions. We gotta get these shots, we gotta get these shots, we gotta get these shots. Because to build a story, you have to have the footage. Like it's not just filming a deer dying, Like yeah, you're you're providing them with hours and hours and hours of footage of specific shots so that they can piece together something that has this flow and this storyline and like a secondary through line. And your job is to gather all those pieces. And if you go someplace where the hunting is really good, and you know you're gonna sit this stand today and that stand tomorrow, it's just like a harder story to build. 00:49:47 Speaker 3: It. I wouldn't say that it's a harder story to build. It's just that this story's already been told a thousand times, you know. It's like, you know, for example, I used to film weddings to make ends meet. I hope I never have to film, and I hope I never have to edit another wedding because it is the same story every time, you know, And it's like you're literally just checking boxes of Okay, I got this leaf shot, I got the broadhead on the end of the you know, whatever I got. You know, as we're coming off of the side by side to go hunting or whatever. It's like it's the same story or over and again, over and over again. And that's not to say that I don't love telling that story. It's just not as exciting as going somewhere new and being like, Okay, this is completely different. Now I have to try and piece this story together as it's happening, versus, Hey, I know we're going to do this and I just have to be ready for it and. 00:50:33 Speaker 2: Have it again. That's to me if I could equate that to my work life. That's when my editor is like, hey, we did a bunch of SEO, you know, analytics and mature Bucks and the rut really perform well, so can you write a bunch of articles about killing Bucks Mature Box during the rut? And you're like, oh, there's nothing left to say, man, Like I don't know what to do, but it just is a part of the gig. Yep. 00:51:07 Speaker 3: Absolutely, And then again like I'm not it sounds like a bitching or whining. I love what I do. I love no matter where I'm filming these hunts, as long as I'm in a tree and waiting for a deer. That to me, is it? I love it? 00:51:19 Speaker 2: Yeah? Well I can say from a guy who's hunted with you a lot, you do a lot of bitching and whining. It's really annoying. 00:51:25 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:51:26 Speaker 2: Mark said that too. 00:51:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's why it doesn't have me filmed anymore. I guarantee. 00:51:30 Speaker 2: Let's talk about your other business, because you also have another business that you're doing a lot of work in the white tail world. Yeah. 00:51:37 Speaker 3: And just to disclaimer this, it is not my business. I work with and for Jeff Sturgis at White Til Habitat Solution, So I do Habitat consulting Hunt Consulting basically under the umbrella of White Til Habitat Solution. 00:51:51 Speaker 2: Got it. 00:51:51 Speaker 3: And so he keeps me very busy doing that. And I absolutely love that too. And I'm actually switching over into that season here shortly. 00:51:58 Speaker 2: And what do you do for that? 00:52:00 Speaker 3: So, I mean long story shorts. I work with private landowners that are looking to develop their property to be a better white tail hunting property, and then I tell them how to hunt it once they've changed it into that hunting property, so you know, and a lot of times it's somebody that just bought a new piece of property and they've never hunted it before, and they're just like, you know what, I already spent this much on the land. I better set it up right so I'm not chasing my tail for the next five years or ten years or whatever. The other side of it is when I get calls from people that have owned a piece of property for a long time and they're just upset with how the results are shaking out, you know, or they bought the property and it gets worse every year. We see that all the time, where it's like you have this piece of raw ground, they buy it, and then they start hunting it, and they hunt it poorly, and now it's kind of like they're stepping on their own feet their whole hunt or the whole time that they're developing this parcel. And a lot of times it's just thinking outside the box and thinking like, Okay, where is this process getting messed up, and how do we start it over to avoid that from the beginning. 00:53:04 Speaker 2: So when you talk about those properties, are you talking because I feel like I see this a lot with people where to get their hands on an eighty or whatever they get and immediately turn it into something that like is easy for them to hunt, right, they've got the perimeter trail cut to drive the side by side. 00:53:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm typically a big fan of that perimeter trail, I'll tell you that right now. I'm usually a very big fan of that. 00:53:26 Speaker 2: But like why is that? 00:53:28 Speaker 3: Why is that? Yeah, because then you're you're saving a lot more of your interior, your core, if you will, for deer. Right, So like if we can pull your access to the outside, you're now giving more to the deer in the center, you know. So we call it depth of cover. So like depth either goes away from a food source or from your access, right, So, like you're trying to build as much depth of cover as possible to encompass, you know, room for a mature book that doesn't put up with pressure, doesn't put up with social pressure from other deer as well. So like you're trying to make this property seem bigger in the eyes of a deer. And to me, like the more that we can leave in the center, the less that gets marginalized. Right, So like that's why we like to pull a lot to the outside, you know. But I would say, like the big mistake we see all the time is like big food plot right in the middle of the property, or their best favorite gun stand right in the middle of the property, where it's like, okay, this food source right in the middle of property. You're nixing your depth of cover. Then when you go and try and hunt this food plot that's in the middle of your property, you're probably blowing it off. Now you're blowing off this thing that's supposed to be very secure and it just so happens to be right in the middle of your property, you know. So it's like you're this attractor repel, you know, pattern of Now your neighbors are shooting your target bucks that you're getting on camera at midnight one in the morning, and you're like, ah, I just need them the daylight, and it's like, well, he's daylight twenty acres over, you know, So let's rethink the sweets daylight here, you know, yeah. 00:54:55 Speaker 2: Because you I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but that that idea, right, you get your hands on that eighty put that food plot right in the middle. Maybe there's a metal there or something already to start with, doesn't matter. Then you put that box blind in and then when you go hunt, of course you're going to center your cameras around that, right, Yeah, and then when you go hunt, you're gonna be like default to that, default to that, default to that. So you've made what you think is the kind of like primo set up for killing deer. But the way that you've set it up, you are forcing yourself to burn out your best stuff. 00:55:31 Speaker 3: And then we have like what we call the great deceivers. Right, So like then you have your local dough family group or you know a couple of buck fawns that live in or near that area that can tolerate your pressure. You're repeatedly seeing them, so you're like, I'm seeing deer. I'm not spooking my property out, but those mature box like they're just not gonna put up with that pressure. So now you're you're like checking the box, like there's deer here. I'm doing everything right, But it's the deer that can tolerate that pressure. Right, So it's like you're repeatedly conditioning those deer that, hey, I'm here, it's fine, but I'm sure buck just doesn't get conditioned to that kind of pressure, right, So like you're pushing them even further at that point because now you're pulling in deer that can handle that pressure, right, So it's it's just weird balance, and that to me is like the most fun thing about it is like no two designs are the same, Like no two hunting goals are the same. Typically, like usually you have you know, somebody on the property is super die hard. Maybe they're all die hard, but like a lot of times there's Uncle Terry that comes up for gun season and it's like trying to work with all these different styles of hunting and put together a plan that works, you know for everybody is so fun to me. 00:56:43 Speaker 2: I mean it is, and it that's that's the part, you know when you're talking about that with with how people kind of design their properties and then over over time burn them out. Yep. I have a little thirty acre property over in Wisconsin that I put a an ever expanding kill plot in, Like I go work on it every year and make it a little bigger and find some apple trees and mess around. But what I learned about that I put it intentionally very close to the road because I knew just the way that the land around me was set up, like deer probably not going to come in from that way. Anyway as much, sure, And so I'm like, if I cheated on that side, I have more usable land that I won't be going into a lot but still mine all and by accident, I guess not by accident. But I'd also have a little maybe like a four or five acre meadow that has some of the alders in there and dogwood and stuff, and it's sort of become a betting area, like there's always a few deer use it. And what I learned was, even though I kind of got lucky place in that food plot in the right spot, when it took me like five years of parking there to figure out that I have to go park on the one end that's closest to the two houses because they hear cars over there. Yeah, And if I park anywhere else, I see fewer deer, especially in the evening when they're probably bedded in that meadow and they hear me park on the other end of the property. They're like, we're not nope. 00:58:07 Speaker 3: We heard him park. 00:58:08 Speaker 2: We heard him crunch down the gravel. 00:58:10 Speaker 3: They get conditioned so quickly, they learn so fast. I mean, you know, even the deer here, and you know I live on three quarters of acre here. It's attached to my neighbor's own thirty five back here, and like our dogs run outside, we drive the side by side back and forth all the time. But there's bucks that use these woods back here, and it's like they've become accustomed to what we do here in our yards and they know what is normal. But as soon as my dog runs too far to chase the squirrel into those woods, or I get curious and I got to go take a look at the scrape that I can see from the field edge. Now the camera that I run in there like doesn't have deer on for a few days. It's like they learn so quickly what's normal, what's acceptable, and what's out of the ordinary, and what they need to avoid. Like that to me is like goes so far when it comes to pressure. 00:58:56 Speaker 2: It's it's so crazy. I mean, that was one of the things that just blew my mind when I'm moved here to the suburbs. How both turkeys and deer were fairly like tolerant of me just walking on through yep, you know, like and I see this, you know, this little property I'm hunting here that I picked up two years ago, and the one I'm gonna take the girls out on those deer smell people, hear people, and see people all the time. I mean, this this property that they killed my buck on here this year, I can I probably see people every time I sit in her in her yard. I mean, it just it sucks, but it just is what it is. But when I go out there to like hang a stand or something, if I just burn through there, go do my thing and walk out, you'll see deer looking at you. Like you'll see deer standing off in the brush, and they're like totally tolerant of that. When you walk in and you start messing around around them, they're gone. 00:59:50 Speaker 3: I don't like too far in the weeds here. But like there's studies on this where, like you know, they study in like parks or you know, areas where there are hiking trails or whatever, and like deer become accustomed to that intrusion of normal hikers or park goers whatever. And then if a hunter goes in there and tries to conceal his movements and conceal his scent and sound, whatever wears camo the deer. Like that's that right, you know. So it's like here, you think you're doing the right thing, and you'd be better off if you're wearing a you know, just a sweater going for a walk and carrying your boat. 01:00:23 Speaker 2: You know, it's it's really crazy. I mean that that's the other thing you know about this travel stuff. Right Like when I hunt in northern Wisconsin, I get picked off all the time. Like those deer are just like a game deer, right, like they just they have another gear down. Oh dude, it's just I know, people like listen to it and they don't believe, like they don't believe it. But it's like it's for me, it's almost a guarantee if I have an encounter over there, they're going to look up unless I'm really tucked into a pine tree or like a multi limb, multi trunk deal. But that buck that I killed this year here in the Cities, that dude, I went it was the last chance I had. It was November seventh. I hung a stand where I've been seeing these years go through and I had one place where I'm like, God, I hope they don't come through there, because if they do, they're gonna win me. And I turned around at like two in the afternoon there was a buck standing behind me, and I'm like, well there, unless he comes straight at me around the pond, he's gonna get me. But one hundred yards away is a house and the wind is blowing from the house to me and me to him, and this is all I can think. That Buck wanted so bad to go to this little dough betting area in this person's yard. There's like five acres of just six scrub brush on this house. And I see does come and go there all the time, and that Buck was going there, but he winded me and had I had an ozonics unit going, but I was still like just no way right, Like he's twenty five yards away, but you could see him like wrestling with himself where he's like I want to go through there, and I'm not going to wade through this pond. I can smell some asshole there. I don't know if he's hunting or if he's just like leaf blowing. And he like would come in, turn around and go away, come in, and it was like he was just like trying to talk himself into it. And one time he came in just a little too close and opened himself up and I pumped him. But I was like I think that deer was sitting there like calculating in his head, is this haunter? Is this like human like what? And you know, probably not to that level, but like what threat is this right? And he's like fighting that urge to go chase those because he's November seventh. It was freaking great. Man, Like I'm like, give me all these dumb ass deer that are like used to smelling people in their yards. I need them, Like I'll take all of them. 01:02:30 Speaker 3: That's awesome. 01:02:32 Speaker 2: But it's cool. I mean you don't, like you wouldn't see a fawn do that in so many places? 01:02:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no kidding, And that's what's so cool too. And like, no matter where you hunt, you know, we talked about this, especially when you're in North Dakota, South Dakota, whatever, and you have a bear tree, it's the only tree to get in and you're like, oo, am I gonna get away with that, and you're like you're don't look up out here, and you just get up there and like you can get away with it. Versus Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, it's like they'll pick you out if you peek around the tree. You're wrong, you know, it's so crazy. 01:03:04 Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I wrote a piece for last week about this, but you know, we'll take that first North Dakota hunt we filmed. I'm I'm really into natural ground blinds, and part of that, I think is and this this might be totally bullshit. I don't know, but I feel like a lot of times I get deer that just look right through me or past me, like they don't expect you, you know, And so some of those situations you get like out there, we could have been in a tree and been fine, right like, but we didn't have a tree right where I killed my buck. This year in Iowa, we tucked up and I've done this a few times, but we tucked up under a river bank and there's a bunch of willows and a bunch of yellow grass, and it was just kind of like it felt like those deer and we had dose come out and look right at us. That's awesome. Where You're like they just it's like they it doesn't register for them, right, And you know, like we got busted in the trees, and I'm like, you know, it seems dumb, right, get on their level, but you put yourself in those positions and if you really kind of get brushed in. And I think it works with the landscape, like you can kind of override that a little bit, right, and that that shit's fun. 01:04:11 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Oh I've had a blast hut with you that way the last couple of years. Like it's it like it almost feels like you're a kid again. Like I I personally, I haven't hunted like that in a long time. So when it's like can we piece this together? Can we make this happen? And then as it's happening, you're like, oh god, are we actually gonna make this work? This is this gonna happen? Like that to me, like it brings back that youthful of like I don't know if it's gonna work, but we're gonna try it, you know. Like to me, especially like building those ground lines and stuff, it's like we're trying to break up outline as much as we can and then we're gonna see if it works. Like there's something super fun about that, and it's been super fun watching it actually work. 01:04:46 Speaker 2: I mean, it's it. It is a very viable option if you know how to do it. Yeah, you know, And and I think I think I think a lot of people try it right, Like when when Steve and I were in Oklahoma last year, I found freaking ground blinds. Oh really everywhere. I mean you just find setups everywhere down there. Everybody in Oklahoma hunts. It's wild. Oh yeah, but a lot of them you look at it and you go, there's just no way, like you're gonna get busted one hundred percent of the time, Like you gotta you have to have some depth, you have to like, you have to do it right. But what it opens you up to for spots is like incredible, and it's oh yeah. People have a hard time with it because it's oftentimes not like you're not gonna see a lot, but if they come in, you're gonna kill them. 01:05:29 Speaker 3: And that now to me, like that thought just usually like it scares me of like what if they come from this way and now I'm looking over and he's fifteen yards and now I have to pick up my bow and draw, you know, like I I like to see so if I can. I'm getting intrigued. But it has been super fun watching you and be like we can make this word, let's do it. And I'm like, all right, that sounds great, but holy cow. Would I be scared if I had to be the one to pick up my bow and draw it right now? 01:05:53 Speaker 2: But this is what I try to like, this is a message I try to get across. Is like if you have a tree, use it right, Yeah, Like I mean you just you just should mostly. But the thing about that stuff is is you you can get away with a fair amount if you do it right, and if you do get a shot, it's awesome. Oh yeah. And so it's like you know, I mean again, it's there's like a compromise to be made somewhere in there, right, Like you can't see as much if you have conditions like we hunted in last year, where it's like you're not going to hear them coming. Oh no way, yeah, you know, and if they come from behind you, you're screwed. But you get into a tree stand and they come from the wrong direction, you're screwed anyway. 01:06:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very good point. Definitely, damn if you do, damned if you don't. 01:06:36 Speaker 2: But I just I love that stuff because it's you know, like you said, it is sort of sort of goes back to like when a lot of us started, you know, I mean, I'm sure there's kids starting now because of the options they have, it's different, But we used to do that stuff a lot. Like we have one stand that weighed twenty nine pounds. Oh my gosh, you know it's screw in steps. 01:06:57 Speaker 3: Here's wild thinking about that, Like what a mobile set was five years ago, ten years ago versus now. It's insane. 01:07:05 Speaker 2: It's just really cool when you kind of you kind of put yourself in a position where you're like, well, I I got to make this work. And you know, this kind of ties back to what we started talking about, right where you're looking for that you know, concentration of sign. Right, so you go up into the up of Michigan and eventually find that swamp buck and where he's living. I think you might kill him out of a tree, or you might have to do that next to the alders or something. 01:07:32 Speaker 3: Who knows exactly. Yeah, it just depends on what the field gives you, right, And like I don't know. That's why again, going back to just hunting at different places and experiences in those different areas and how you have to play at a deer's level is so fun. How it's different, you know, from Kansas to North Daklada to Michigan wherever. Like what you're given and what the deer using, you know, puts you in so many different scenarios, and that to me is super fun. 01:08:00 Speaker 2: It's a blast. Let's talk. Let's wrap this up talking about the Adirondacks, because I'm I'm I have never met anybody who's gone out there who hasn't been like this place is amazing and I need to go back. Yeah, what is it? Man? 01:08:13 Speaker 3: The vastness, man like just the nothing and just you think about you know, I was in New York, but I've done this in Maine. I was out there with Mark Kenyan in twenty twenty one. Just something so different about just this sea of the same timber for miles and miles and miles and just just rolling soft mountains and just somewhere out there in this horizon that I can see there's a big buck and I want to find them, you know, to me, like that is awesome. And this year I got the invite from a good buddy of mine. He's been inviting me for a couple of years to go out there, and I finally was able to make it happen. And you know, I jokingly text him like, we keep some snow out there, right, He's like, we need the snow. I'm like, all right, awesome, Like we're are doing the tracking thing. He's like, oh, only way to do it. I'm like, all right, this is gonna be awesome. And didn't have the snow. So we got there and you know, just took a mobile set and I started setting up on different kinds of habitat changes and cuts and where I thought, you know, concentrations of deer would be and found a lot of fresh signs. Saw a couple deer while I was sitting, but just you know, wasn't exactly on the X. 01:09:22 Speaker 2: And did you see any bucks out there? 01:09:24 Speaker 1: Uh? 01:09:25 Speaker 3: Not while I was hunting. No, But there was a couple of times where we were just like kind of walking, just like, hey, you know, we're gonna kind of kill a few hours here and do some scouting. There was two times where we walked up on a buck where you could smell it. You know, you're like, oh, he's close, and then you start tiptoeing and we're not even tracking because there's no snow. But it's just like, Okay, he's gonna get up any second, and he's close where's he going to be? You know? And we did end up jumping some deer in one of those spots, and I just didn't see the buck. You know, maybe he had already been gone or you know whatever, but very close to bucks, but just did not see any bucks. You know, sew plenty of dolls, and of course the day after I left, they got clobbered with snow, and so I'm literally like, what are the odds that this happens? Right? And my buddy texts me, He's like, it's beautiful out here. He went out that next day, day after the snowfall, killed a beautiful point buck, like nice mature. They go by weights out there a lot of times. I want to say, his was like one hundred and seventy five pounds. And he said, that's a really good buck out there for his region where he's at, you know. But there's just something so like, you know, romantic about just this idea of this big woods thing. And now I'm just looking for tracks and okay, is this a track that I want to pursue. What's the size of this track versus the other ones? Yeah, I think this is a buck. I think it's a good buck. And now I have to go follow him through his daily movements and try and close distance on him. 01:10:56 Speaker 2: I don't know. 01:10:56 Speaker 3: That to me is just so cool. I want to do it so. 01:10:59 Speaker 2: Bad, kind of like a mix between a western hunt and a whitetail hunt. Yeah, could keep walking down and that. You know, I think almost everybody who hears about that, and we've heard about that kind of hunting the hell blood style for a long time thinks that you know you have to go to the Northeast to do it. You don't like I killed a dough years the first time I ever did this. I killed a dough in Minnesota with a muzzle order. This is back before we could scope them, so it was just an iron sight steal. I went out the last day a muzzlolder season. It was snowing and I'm just sneaking along and I looked up and there was a dough in a fawn ahead of me, and I missed her. And I remember thinking, I can't believe I just blew my chance on the last evening. But then I was like, I can just follow them, and if they didn't leave this property, which where I jumped him, I'm like, they're probably still on the place I can hunt. So I followed it around and I watched where it was going, or I could see where their their trail dropped down this valley, and I was like, I know, there's an outcropping over here that has a coyote don un or it's just a cool spot, Like I'm gonna crawl up on there and see if i can pick them up. And I crawled up there and I looked down and they were bedded beneath it. So I shot that dough in her bed and I was like, that was some of the most fun I've ever had. And I've talked about this, You and I talked about this when we were peasant hunting. I did that last year. I didn't shoot one, but I got the conditions to follow tracks and the cattails, and I think about it all the time. I'm like, that was the most fun I had last season. And we've stacked up the deer last year. But so what I'm saying is, and that was on public land, right, Like you could go do that in Wisconsin with a fresh snow if you could get it right. And so that's another thing where it's like you know your buddy going out and shooting a big buck. That's really cool. But if you're sitting on a dough tag and you have a muzzle loader and you get that fresh snow, you can go have a really fun hunt and it's not just your typical hunt and that that shit's so cool. 01:13:03 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, we used to do that. We do that in college a few times where you know, especially like this time of year for scouting, right, like to go explore a new property figured out and carry a rifle or a muzzloader if there's a season open, like you know, for example, here in Wisconsin we have the holiday hum where it's an antlerless hunt. What a great time if you have a tag or you can pick up a tag on public land to just go and like explore new properties and hunt while you're doing it. Like, man, it doesn't doesn't get beat right, So like, as long as you have the conditions in the snow, that'd be awesome. And I definitely am going to be doing that. 01:13:38 Speaker 2: That more New Year's here, that holiday hunt. I'm torn. I got that little three hundred blackout for my daughters. Oh yeah, they want a rifle hunt. And you know, we have my buddy's place in southwestern Wisconsin. We can go to where the deer density is really high, and the girls are like, we should go down there and shoot some does, and I'm kind of like, how many dos do? I want? A butcher kind of thing, like I really want to take them, but I also know it could be one of those situations because you get like three free do tags when you buy down there because there's so many deer. And I'm like, I know me so for sitting there and some deer come in, I'm gonna let them stack them up and then I'm gonna be like, oh shit, and I got to butcher all these So I'm kind of like, I'm not. I'm kind of trying to figure that out. But anyway, to your point, there are opportunities out there, definitely, you know, not very obviously if you live down south. 01:14:28 Speaker 1: It's a different deal to wired to hunt. 01:14:30 Speaker 2: There's cool stuff out there. Your God, it's so much fun to hunt with you, and it's been so so much fun to get to know you. Where can people find you? They want to look you up? Maybe somebody wants to hire you to go film an awesome New Zealand hunt or something like that. 01:14:41 Speaker 3: Yes, I'm on Instagram. It's Dylan Underscore larming, can you and Elli and z that's my last name, not a play on the camera, just that's actually. 01:14:51 Speaker 2: My sheer coincidence yep, pretty crazy. 01:14:54 Speaker 3: So yeah, find me there. 01:14:56 Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate it, buddy, Thanks for everything. 01:14:58 Speaker 3: You bet, thank you. 01:15:03 Speaker 2: That's it for this week, folks, make sure to tune in every week for more white tail goodness. I've been your guest host. Well, I am your guest host, Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. Now, if you want some more whitetail content, feel free to head on over to the medeater dot com to get more than your fill. 01:15:22 Speaker 3: You know. 01:15:23 Speaker 2: While you're there, maybe check out some other podcasts. Maybe check out Clay's Bear Grease podcast, you know, Brent's This Country Life podcasts. So much stuff. There are three different podcasts every week on the meat Eater feed, tons of videos, tons of articles. You know, you can do a little shopping at the Mediator store if you want whatever. Check it out the mediator dot com and as always, thank you so much for your support.