00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail 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. This week on the show, I'm joined by Lake Pickle to discuss Southern deer hunting, summer deer prep, and the fascinating stories of wildlife conservation that inspired his new podcast with Meat Eater Backwoods University. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. This week on the show is that just mentioned We are joined by my buddy, Lake Pickle. He not only has one of the best names that I've heard, but he is also a tremendous storyteller, podcaster, hunter, representative of the Southern Hunting and Fishing community, employee of on X, and the host of the latest podcast with the mediator network, Backwoods University. And so today on the show, we do a couple of things. We discuss his new podcast. We discuss how he became fascinated with wildlife, wildlife conservation, and the stories of the people who are who are studying animals and studying ways that we can keep them around and preserving our hunting opportunities and traditions. We discuss that, We talk a little bit about his background as a Southern deer hunter, his experience. I didn't mention this at the top, but I should have. He has filmed and worked with the Primos hunting crew for many years as well, so he has like this really interesting background and following around diehard deer hunters like Will Primos or Brad Ferris. And in this podcast we discuss a little bit of what makes Southern deer hunting culture unique, what makes the way you need to hunt in the South unique, whether that be you know, you know, hunting around people that are baiting or hunting in big woods country. So we talk tactics, We talk about summer deer prep, you know, doing camera work, velvet scouting, all that kind of stuff, and much much more. So today you've got a varied show. We're talking deer, we're talking wildlife, we're talking conservation, and we're doing it with a very fun, very informative, great guest, mister Pickle. And I just want to say very quickly before we get to that if you are listening to this in real time when this podcast just dropped, which is well, I'm recording this on June thirtieth, this podcast will drop. I believe it will be July third. If you are listening, then you are hopefully very well aware of the public land sale that was proposed within the Senate Reconciliation Bill. We've been talking about a ton on social media. You hopefully listen to the podcast Me and Kal that we dropped last week as a bonus. But as you probably saw, that sale was removed from the bill. So the mandatory sale of over a million acres of public lands was taken out of the bill. That is great news. Each and every one of you who made a phone call or sent an email, or informed your friends and family, or posted about it, or sent letters, whatever it was, if you were involved in this campaign to stop the sale of public lands, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for your actions, for your words, for the time you spent and invested in standing up for our public places and wildlife and our opportunities to hunt and fish and get out there. It's so important and I'm encouraged by the impact we had. The rallying of the hunting and fishing and larger outdoor community in opposition to this was phenomenal. This was an unbelievable kind of coalescens of different kinds of people all saying, hey, mister politician, we are not going to stand for this. We care about our public lands. This is as American as it gets. In Our lives in many ways revolve around these places. Get out of here, keep your hands off our public lands. And our voices were heard. So our voices matter, our advocacy matters, and we can make a difference. So I want to remind people to things. Number One, don't ever forget this in the future. Your voice does matter. We can make a difference. It is worth engaging on these things. It's worth paying attention to these things. And number two, that's very important to remember because this isn't the end. This is not the last proposed sale that we're going to see someday down the road. If you read my book That Wild Country, or if you've listened to past podcasts I've done about this, you know we were talking about this back in twenty fourteen, Back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. We talked about it earlier this year. For decades and decades, you know. In my research for my book, what stood out was that for as long as we have had public lands, people have been trying to dispose of them, transfer them, sell them, cut them down, drill them up, dig them up, whatever it is to extract dollars from them. They have been trying for not ten years, not twenty, not fifty, not eighty one hundred plus years. They have been trying this. So don't for a second think that they are not going to continue trying this in the future. There are a whole bunch of things being proposed in this bill that maybe by the time you're listening to this has already passed. There are other things in that bill that are downright destructive to many of our public lands. And outside of just that bill, things that were originally included in the bill but had to get pulled out for varying reasons. That stuff still being pushed by politicians today, things like putting in the mine on the edge of the Boundary waters, putting in a road through one of the last unroaded places in the wild of Alaska, things like in the coastal plaine of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where Cal and I just visited this unbelievable, still intact, still truly wild ecosystem. They want to turn that into an industrial center too. There's so many examples I can't even list them all. Right now, we're gonna have to keep engaging. We're gonna have to keep staying up to date in this stuff. This was not like a blip on the radar. This is just kind of the way it's gonna be. If you care about hunting, if you care about fishing, if you care about your public lands, We're needed. You're needed. This is how we make sure that these things are still around for our kids and their kids, and selfishly for us, hopefully in the next twenty thirty, forty fifty years, however long I'm around, I sure hope that I can return to these wild places that I've experienced and still see them in a wild and intact state. Still bill a hunt there, still bill a fish there. And that's on us, because if we don't stand up for these places, certainly nobody else will. It's the folks that are out there, seeing them, feeling them, experiencing them, hunting on them, fishing on them, camping on them. We're the only ones who really get it, So how can we expect anyone else to stand up if we are not willing to. So that is it for me. I appreciate everything each and every one of you did. Let's keep the momentum. Let's keep on cranking on this stuff. Let's keep our public lands and wildlife and wild places around for the future. And with that little monologue out of the way, appreciate you being here. Let's get to my chat with lake Pickle. All right, joining me now on the line is mister lake Pickle. Welcome to show. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: Lake Man, happy to be here, Thanks for having me. 00:07:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, it's my pleasure. I am very excited not only to be chatting with you, but to be chatting with you as a official meat eater contributor. I don't know if i'd call you like a colleague, but be least a contributor, right, I mean, already officially in the meat of your family now, So welcome. 00:08:02 Speaker 3: I man, it's one of those things like I never thought contributor, cut whatever whatever title you want to bestow on it, it's not one that I pictured myself having but I'm happy to have it. So yeah, just I'm excited about everything about everything tied to that. It's been a fun time. 00:08:18 Speaker 2: I bet, well, it's It's been fun to watch your stuff from Afar, you know, seeing you're involvement with Primos and then your Guys' podcast and then stuff you don't with on X and then when I've heard that you were, you know, bumping around with Clay and Brent more often. That was great to see. And then, as I just told you off air, I actually sometime this winter was talking to my boss and like, hey, you know, I really want to do a podcast that's more about you know, just wildlife issues and people and stuff like that. And he's like, man, that's a great idea. But you know Lake Pickle, right, he's already doing that podcast for us. And I'm like, oh man, it's a smart guy. He keep beat me to the punch. So so yeah, I'm stoked for it, very excited for what you got in store for us with Backwoods University. How are you feeling about stuff so far? The first couple episodes are out. Does it feel real yet? 00:09:13 Speaker 3: Are you? 00:09:13 Speaker 2: Are you excited that it's out there? I know it could be like a tense moment when your baby metaphorically goes out into the world for the first time. 00:09:23 Speaker 3: Dude, I was obviously to answer one of those questions like I can answer one of them very simply. You asked if I was like excited that it was out there. I'm stoked that it's out there, because it was like this, this this process of like kind of concepting and figuring out because honestly, like I can't fully take credit, like I didn't come out the Gate and go I'm gonna do a podcast about wildlife and how human we as humans interact with them and influence them. It came out the Gate is just like a wildlife biology focused podcast, and the human side of it didn't really come into play. And I kind of got into the weeds of really starting to build some episodes, and I went to Clay. I was like, Clay, there's not a single wildlife species or wildlife process or anything that I can talk to or talk about where you have to mention us like we as humans, like we're a huge influence in all of it, And it could go either way, like a lot. That's the interesting part because a lot of times when you hear human influence on wildlife. It's associated with the negative and that does happen, obviously, but there's some episodes that will come out where we've had a overwhelmingly positive effect. But it's been really fascinating. But yeah, the day that episode one came out, I don't think i'd ever been more I don't nervous, isn't the word, Just like, I don't know, it's just tense, you know, like there's just a lot of I'd never put so much work into a single podcast, and it was just kind of I guess, like, man, I hope people like it. That was just that's just what I was hop But I hope people liked it, and I hope that it translated that it was you know, people were understanding what I was trying to get across. Thankfully, I had a really busy day that day. I wasn't able to just sit there and twitter my belt the other one. 00:11:13 Speaker 2: Scroll on Instagram for comments. 00:11:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just yeah, nod on drywall. But yeah, yeah, I'm psyched that it's out. Yeah. 00:11:24 Speaker 2: So, so for folks who haven't heard yet, can you give us like the one minute cliff notes on what the theme and direction of this show is sure. 00:11:33 Speaker 3: So so what we say is backwards University focuses on wildlife, wild places and people who dedicate their lives to conserving both, and that's really what we do. Like, the first episode that came out was like kind of an overarching view on bison, and when you first hear that, you're like, oh, bison, you know, I kind of cliche honestly, but it's like, but bison in the Eastern United States, bison in the Eastern Unit of States don't get talked about a lot man. And what was funny is I was kind of like just I had a large amount of time to do these first couple episodes just because we were trying to figure everything out, and so I was kicking around ideas, and I was kicking around this bison idea, and I was like, is this as like a unknown of a topic as I think it is? And I would be talking to friends of mine from around here that are outdoorsmen and at hunt Fish that care a lot about conservation history, and I would point blank some of them, I'd go, hey, did you know that we had bison here in Mississippi? And they'd be like, are you serious. I'm like, yeah, yeah, we did, and the more I bumped around and asked folks that and talked about it, I was like, Yeah, this absolutely needs to be talked about. But human influence is pretty hefty on that one, as you can imagine. And the most recent one, the one that came out yesterday, Bob White Quail, that was spurred off of a personal interest of mine. I got into up and bird hunting probably six or seven years ago now, and my mom dug up this picture of my grandfather quail hunting on the piece of family ground that I grew up deer hunting on that is almost void of quail now, and it kicks you down this line of thought. You're like, well, wait a minute, Like all these stories of these guys and English pointers and limits of quil every day and that's just what they did, and now they're like this foregone almost afterthought of an animal, and you're like, well, what would happened? 00:13:28 Speaker 2: You know? 00:13:29 Speaker 3: I asked the question, and so that's kind of what we've been doing, is like you take a look at an animal or a person. There's one coming up in a couple of weeks about the first wildlife biologist in Mississippi who is a woman named Fanny Cook who's in pretty incredible, but just trying to get a deeper understanding on wildlife, what they need and then how we influence them and how we can influence them going forward. 00:13:56 Speaker 2: So you grew up, does I understand it like a lot of them hunting, fishing, playing the outdoors, doing all this stuff. When and how did you transition to being interested in this next kind of level of understanding, Like or asked another way, why is this set of topics and issues that this podcast is framed around. Why is that of interest to you? How did this come about for you? 00:14:24 Speaker 3: Man? That's a good question. I it kind of like again, I didn't orchestrate it, you know, like because I mean when I was a kid growing up hunting, I was much like any other kid that was in the hunting I you know, like if something, if my dad would have let me shoot you over the limit of something, I probably would have done right, because I just didn't know any better, you know what I mean, Like you just don't. You don't think that way, or I didn't. At least you just are told, hey, you stop at fifteen doves or you know whatever, and that's just what you know. But as you get older, I'll tell you what a lot of what had to do with it was. I was a wildlife science student at Mississippi State University and I got in some classes there, like one of the I remember one of the classes was basically I can't remember the name of the class, but it was basically teaching like a like how concert wildlife, conservation, and agriculture systems could coincide with one another. And that was the first time i'd heard of like some like CRP type programs and conservation programs and first and like it kind of like trend, you know, pushed my thinking further. And that was the first like I remember that professor telling us like, well, the reason that they came in came up with CP thirty three is because all the fenceros were gone and that was having a terrible effect on upland birds. And that's the first time I heard about some sort of link to why we didn't have quill anymore. And I'm like, whoa, you know, I mean, it just and it just kicked me down this whole lot of thought. And then obviously when I went to primos man, I mean, there's a lot of things I could be I got a lot to be thankful for, man, But if anything poured gasoline on that fire, it's the amount of time I got to spend spend around Will Primos, because like, one of the first times I met Will was at a farm that he used to have in Mississippi Delta called Rivers Run, And one of the first things he did was I got in a truck with him and he rode me around his farm and he was like, that's where we got warm season native grasses planted, and that's where we got this planet and this, and we got this for a corridor for the deer. And I mean, like you my wheels are just spinning. I was like twenty one, you know, but that extra and you know, and then him explaining like, hey, where we've got these warm these native grasses planted. This wasn't Roe crop, but we put it back in native grasses and now quill can live there. And you're You're like, what you know? I mean just and so those just influences like that over time just really started to peak my interest. And then I guess it just kind of compounded over time. 00:17:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that too. That that sounds pretty similar to my story, it's you start out with this just hey, I love this activity. I love these places, these critters doing this stuff. It's fun. And then at some point there's all all of a sudden, this like aha moment where you realize like, oh, there's a reason why we have this thing or don't have this thing. Well, there's a reason why we have this place or or don't have these places like we used to. You know, there's there's versions of either type. Right, there's stories on both sides of that coin. And then for a lot of folks, and then sends you down a whole bunch of winding rabbit holes as you start chasing those questions. Right, So, how many episodes do you have in the can so far? Can't tell me that? 00:17:49 Speaker 3: Four? Well, okay, five? 00:17:51 Speaker 2: All right? So yeah five. And so you've got Bob Weight, You've got Buffalo, you've got a wildlife biology. So you've got a breadth of topics. I'm curious, if you were to zoom out so far, given the topics you've explored, is there any overarching similarities or themes that you've already kind of pulled out from this experience so far that are standing out in your mind. 00:18:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it is, uh, the probably the most abstract one, but also like the most like powerful one. I think is you cannot love what you don't understand. And that's, like I said, that sounds big and broad, but it's true, the one about the wildlife biologists. Man, and you're a white tail guy, so you'll appreciate this. Mississippi has a yeah, and other states might be like this as well. I've just looked this one introspectively because I'm you know, I'm I live here from from here, but we have a very very complex and complicated history with our wildlife and our natural resources. So right now we have our white tailed deer population is a little bit over one point five million in the state. And it's not I mean and to the point, like our Missipi Department of Wildlife is literally imploring licensed hunters to shoot more deer, not go over their limits. But like it's like I think it's like, uh, it's like five dos and three bucks or something a year, which is very like a pretty good bag limit. But they're like the average hunter is shooting between like one and two a year, you know, like please shoot more, Like we've got. 00:19:46 Speaker 2: Too many sounds like you're deal in Michigan too. 00:19:49 Speaker 3: Yeah, so in in nineteen twenty nine, Yeah, in nineteen twenty nine, Aldo Leopold made a trip down to Mississippi to do kind of a survey of the natural resources because at the time we didn't have a game in fish department, we had no infrastructure. And it was estimated in nineteen twenty nine, that's almost one hundred years ago, not quite twelve hundred deer was the estamate crazy, insane and it was not you know, and that's what I mean when I say you can't love what you don't understand. It was not like we weren't no one set out going, you know what, We're gonna wipe these out, you know, or like there was no mal intent. Really there was. There was a great depression. People were trying to feed their family. There was market hunting, there was sport hunting back then, just an over exertion of it. And one of the coolest things in that Leopold report, and then the follow up with what Mss Vandy Cook did the first biologist, is they notated clearly they were like, if wildlife is going to succeed in this state, we have to form a partnership with Sportsman. That's they and and so like the first people that they paired up with were private landowners that were like in serious concern because they were like, we don't want to lose this and that. At the time, you know, it's it's easy to look, you know, now we have so much information at our fingertips and like deer management and habitat, we have all this stuff. Back then, no one knew, no one, no one knew, but there was a there was a yearning for it. There was a yearning for understanding. And that's that's what saved the wildlife of my home state. 00:21:29 Speaker 2: Mm hmm. And it's a it's such a a common story for so many states too. For for so many years, we thought that these critters were limitless. We thought there was no way that we could possibly send them to an oblivion and then kim as a shock when all of a sudden they started truly disappearing. But yeah, man, we figured it out the last moment, and thank goodness. Right, Yeah, So, I just wrapped up a book on this same set of topics. It's basically exploring the past and future of fish and wildlife in America. So I've studied a whole lot of this similar stuff and have been like deep in the weeds, and I've had this like pendulum swinging experience. And I'm curious if you have had the same thing as you've dove into this world. So the more I learn about our history with wildlife and fish here in the United States and really where things are going now, I sometimes kind of fly to one side. And if you can imagine the pendulum swinging far to one side in which I'm really discouraged. You hear about just the way we've trashed these resources or wildlife populations in the past, where you see how many different things are struggling right now, how many species are in decline, how many wild places we're losing, how many you know, if there's an endless list of depressing statistics, if you want to find the stuff when it comes to just the decline in wildlife abundance and so many other things. So if you go down that path, it can become very discouraging. And I found myself swinging that way in the pendulum sometimes on the flip side. Though, as you study this history and as you study what people are doing today, you also though come across so many stories of inspiring individuals or projects or efforts in which we have saved species or saved places, or you know, people have done heroic things to protect our wildlife resources, or incredible new studies being done, or projects that are going to help this critter or that critter, or this place or this water source. There's so many examples of people doing good work and good progress, and so I also find myself very inspired. You know, if you look, if you look back, you know, to some of the things you're talking about, you know, you late eighteenth or eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, we basically wiped everything out almost but the last we got our act together and a handful of you know, motivated people that really cared about this stuff stepped up and changed the way we think about these things and we saved them. So in some ways, that's very inspiring that our predecessors, you know, figure this out and got us back to the point that we are now, which is pretty darn good compared to one hundred some years ago. So when you consider that, it can be very encouraging. Those are the two worlds I find myself like flipping between all the time. These days. Does any of that resonate with you? Where have you found yourself? 00:24:35 Speaker 3: So, man, I actually had this conversation probably with more people than wanted to hear me talk about it, just like buddies at home. But when I was in the midst of researching some of this stuff, I even said, I think I was talking about Buddy Jordan, But I said, man, I have spent I don't know how much time, you know, driving down the road or whatever, just burning when time. And I'm sitting there thinking like, should I be mad about this because you look at it, I mean like it, because you know it's one of those things hindsight twenty twenty, right, and if you look at it like like sure and through this perspective, you're like, yeah, we should be thankful for what was saved. But man, those guys screwed up a whole lot. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:25:20 Speaker 3: And then it dawned on me one day, I was like, what in the world is me deciding to be mad about that? What positive result is that gonna yield? Like nothing, none, whatsoever. Now it's worth looking at that and making note of what went wrong, so you know, we make sure to not do the same thing. But again, and especially like learning. That's so literally all of it virtually came from a lack of understanding. And so yeah, that that resonates with me a lot, man, because, like, for instance, one of the episodes I have coming up is conservation history of black bears here in Mississippi. A lot of these, a lot of these early episodes are stuff that's just like really close to home with me. We had, like, black bears are native animal here. They were almost wiped out, but they were never fully wiped out. They were never functionally extinct here in Mississippi. At one point, I think the lowest number was like twelve, so bad low. Yeah, the past few years they've made and they've made a natural expansion. They've they've been protected. You can't shoot them obviously, but they're they're not a hunting season or anything, and they've just been slowly naturally expanding. And they're a very controversial animal now because if you if you go to the root of it, the reason they're controversial people don't understand them. That's been there's been enough generations occur where we don't have bears that people don't understand them and they don't know how to live with them, and so again, if I were to approach that, and so in the Black Bear program, the head biologists of of that program is a very good friend of mine. I've actually it's been awesome. I've been able to go and do a lot of bear projects with them and have my hands on lave bears, which is incredible. That looks good walking through him with that stuff, and like just seeing just like the from the eye level, from the ground level, like just the level of controversy and the questions and stuff. And it's like if you go if you went into that with that angry mentality, you know, because there are some people that are like, we should exterminate these things while we have the chance. And if you go into that mad, you're not gonna get anywhere. But if you go into that with like a no, no, no, man, you don't understand, let me let me explain this animal to you. Let me like you know, cause again we I've researched this. If you can go back from records of of Mississippi in the eighteen hundred and nineteen hundreds, and bear was a more highly regarded meat animal than a white tail was. 00:27:51 Speaker 2: It's not fun, you know. 00:27:53 Speaker 3: And so that's the way to approach it, or the way that I've decided to approach it, is like you just you have to approach it that way or you're just gonna yield more bad results, like explain, you know, try to understand the animal and the habitat and and focus more on the people in the in our world that you know you talked about that have done heroic things to save wildlife. 00:28:17 Speaker 2: What's your sense? I had kind of a similar conversation to this, or at least around like a broadly similar topic with a guy named Dan Flores. You know Dan. He's he's also got a podcast for us, He's written to rendus book on a similar topic, and and so I was speaking with him about this same topic. And he has this unbelievable deep knowledge of the long, deep history of you know, our continent and what's gone on with wildlife. But I think when you when you talk to someone like that, they have you know, he has seen this through the context of of a different generation than you and I, right, And I guess I'm just as someone who you know, similar age to me, hangs out with a similar circle. What's your read on like us? Like what we're on? Like our generation? And our understanding of this stuff and and where we are at with this because I think you know someone who's who's I guess I don't know what I'm trying to say here, like, but but maybe you're getting the general thing I'm flinging at you. Really you talked about how like understanding this stuff matters, and how shifting our our perspective on these issues and also maybe shifting from being just like a consumer to being more of like a advocate or at least, you know, being able to you know, work with these things. I guess that's something I'm feeling a little bit more with Like our generation is like it's not as common now for people to just be like I just want to shoot stuff. It's it's I think it's becoming a little more common like yes I like to hunt, or yes I like to fish. And with that comes you know a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Is that something that you are seeing too or is there anything else that you're kind of sensing when it comes to you know, this next generation of hunters and anglers and hopefully conservationists. I'm horrible asking questions today, Like sorry, that was a real roundabout way of getting to something to. 00:30:17 Speaker 3: You, I think I smell what you're stepping in. So I think looking at yeah, like kind of the our demographic right that particular age range or whatever. And you could go younger too. If I were to go with the negative, first I'll go negative, then I'll go positive. The negative I would say, is we live in such a dense information era that sometimes that can yield two not so good results. One, I think it can be taken for granted. Two Well, and let me I mean by it can be taken for granted, is I think you like no one wants to go to find some of these records I've been telling you about a stuff that was going on in Mississippi in the eighteen hundreds. I had to I had to do more than type it into Google and see what popped up on the AI results. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like it's it's it's becoming like information is so easy that it's like why would I take another step? You know, I got I got my quick answer right there. That's problem number one. Problem number two is like it's real easy to get the wrong information. Like there's a lot of like you could go and get. You can get caught in your own echo chamber if you want to, like, you can google until you find the answer you want to find, you know what I mean. But on the positive side of that, well, man, I remember talking to Will Primos and Brad Ferris about it about like content in like this newer in like this current time, and they were like, man, back in the time where they were making VHS is premost truth about hunting VHS is They're like, if we even tried to put in a segment about the NWTF and Turkey research, like no one wanted to watch it. They were like, it would be clear that like people didn't really care about watching this kind of stuff. Whereas now, like I'm sure you've heard it too. When I go if I interview biologists about something, some of them will go on and on. They're like, people just it's it's so encouraging people care to know about this now and that like that, Like I said, I went negative first. I think the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, because it is, dude, this podcast that I'm doing, you know, where we were looking at this stuff. If if what you're asking about, if that wasn't true, I don't think this podcast would ever even been entertained to be an idea, because it would be like, why would they care? 00:33:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, good point, you know what I mean. It's interesting. 00:33:04 Speaker 3: So I think I think, yeah, I think people have a more well let's go, not not to derail the conversation, but like the current public lands issue, Thank god, I haven't heard anybody say, man, we just can't get hunters to call about this stuff, you know what I mean. Everyone's been like this is great. Everyone's come together and they're calling an email and so so yeah, I think I think there is more of a sense of wanting to understand and caring about the resource, and that's that can only yield good things. 00:33:36 Speaker 2: So, you know, as far as you've gone so far into this world, you know, you mentioned earlier that you said that, you know, one of the things that stood out is maybe like a consistent thing was the fact that you know, you can't fight for or advocate what you don't understand. But what about like a a lesson or a takeaway or like an action item Like I mean, you've looked at, you know, what happened to Buffalo, you looked at what's been going on with Black Bears, you've looked at you know, quail, You've looked at deer, and what's going on in Mississippi a little bit. Is there anything as far as like moving forward that we as hunters and anglers can be thinking about or trying to do a better job of or we're digging into more if we want to make sure that things are trending up rather than down. You've got to study a handful of these stories now, and I'm just curious if there's any like action or priorities that we as individuals can be keeping in mind so far. 00:34:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So like the there's actually, like the Quail was a topic that I did, Like I said, this other episode came out, but I did two episodes on it, like the next one, and it's kind of it's you know, centric on Quail, but it's focused on kind of what you're talking about. It's like, all right, I understand that we used to have a lot of Quail, and I can wrap my head around why they were diminished so much. But episode two is like what's the future of them? Like what can we do? And one of the biggest things is like just taking some ownership, you know, like like understanding that that is a resource that has to be managed. And that sounds cliche, but like in that in that other episode where it's focused on the future of quail, like I interviewed some people that they're fam like one of the guys, man, he's such fun, he's such a fun guy to talk to. He's in his eighties now and he had quail like it's it's this land has been in his family since he was a kid, and he watched the quail get diminished and it just broke his heart because you know, he cared about quail hunting like you care about Whittahun and that dude made it his personal mission to establish quail back on his place. Now, not to he never had any restocked or anything like that. It was just he got with some biologists, he got with some people that knew what they were doing, and they were like, we've got to fix this place. And they did all the habitat work and continue to the habitat work. And it's a bit of a it's it's a it's an anomaly of a story in some ways because now he's done so well with it and spread the progress out between his neighbors and got them all with the same program, because you know, who would have thought when he starts doing all this awesome habitat work for quill he started how you know, guess what else went up? His turkey quality is deer quality? Did you should see like some of that place, like with the with the wildflowers on it and just like it looks like something out of a time machine. But uh yeah, just taking ownership, man, like, not being passive about it and not going, well, that's what we've got a department of wildlife for, you know, that's what the that's what the biologists do again. The wildlife thrive when and I don't mean this arrogantly, it's just like history shows it in the in the world that we live in today. Why would I thrive when humans want them to thrive? And that I mean it's pretty much as simple as that, and there's so much proof there. But like so yeah, like as far as going forward, it's taken ownership and you're like, don't sit there and go man, I wish the turkey population in whatever state you live in was was doing better. Okay, what can you do about it? Like, what can you do as as an individual? You know what I mean? 00:37:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a great point, and it's and we we have a huge opportunity in that way. And I've talked about this on so many episodes in the last couple of years, but you know, hunters manage nearly four hundred million acres of land across the nation. That's almost as big as our entire federal public land estates. So when you look at the swath of land that we have influence over, it's real. I mean, so yeah, we don't need to wait for anybody. We can tackle a lot of the stuff ourselves. I mean, that's such a huge thing, such a huge thing. So I love that that's something that the Ears are going to be exploring in that Quail episode. And it's so funny, like so many of us, at least you know, in my circles, we come to this first through white tails, right, because so many of us love white tail deer. That's you know, that's America's critter. They're everywhere, and you might get a lease or own some land or have access to something. And through that, though, you then have this opportunity to then help all these other critters that aren't doing as well. And and like you mentioned, you do some good stuff for quail or for grouse or for pollinators or whatever. It is almost always it's gonna be great for your deer too, So you're gonna get win wins across the board. It just takes a little bit extra time just to kind of think through what you're doing. But the super rewarding to see that kind of thing. 00:38:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, man, And we're actually like there's one it's not done yet. I haven't even made the first interview, but there's there's a couple episodes that I'm lying I'm working online and up the interviews for. But they're going to highlight people that have done just that. Like there's like I said, I probably shouldn't say too much about it yet, but like one of them is a landowner that the land has been in their family for it literally hundreds of years, and their farm, their property is again I keep saying the word like a time machine or a time capsule, because it is. But do they have done so much work on it and and it and it is work these days to maintain at the level they have to to where it's just man, just the attention they've paid, like the attention they have paid to native habitat and consistent prescribe fire, and just I could go on and on and on, but do the ripple effect that places like that have not from just like people coming out there and seeing their place, and so there's we'll start spending walkin do on my place, the ripple effect on how they're affecting their neighboring properties in a positive way. And to your point, like the further you go east, the further public land there is, right, Mississippi's like ninety four percent private or something like that, And so much of our Department of Wildlife Management strategy is the name towards like well, I'll give you an example that I think it was last spring. They had a game Bird Weekend and what they did it was a open to the public. It didn't matter if you owned ten acres or ten thousand acres. It was there was a I think it was like thirty bucks and you got fed, breakfast and launch for two days. You had you had seminars where you could do Q and A with different biologists, habitat managers. There was prescribe burning, there was native plants, there was trees, there was everything imagine. And then we went out and did a prescribed fire. We did some hands on type stuff and it was completely it was completely geared towards like the dude who owns thirty five acres and is wanting to know, well, what in the world can I do? You know? And and and that's the way like that, that's the way forward. You know. 00:41:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so cool. Uh so so with uh with white tails? You know, perfect segue here with white tails on the mind, what you know, other than chasing around all these new podcast stories and burning the burning the tires off your truck traveling these places, what's your white tail world look like? Uh? This summer? Do you have time to do much prep yet? Or or is all this keeping you out of the white tail woods. 00:41:46 Speaker 3: A little bit? It's definitely definitely out of it a little bit. Uh. The other part of it is is like it's so miserably hot right now. If you wanted to do anything, I will say, and I'm not you unique in this way. I find myself doing some white tail scouting while I'm out turkey hunting, and literally the last day of turkey season, the last day of turkey season down here is May first, and I always hunt May the first because once the last day of Turkey season two. It's the day my grandmother passed away a few years ago, and so I always I just I go out on that day. It doesn't matter what the weather is, doesn't matter, I just go. And I went to a place on public around here that I had not been to in a long time. And I was walking in there. It was late in the morning. I was just kind of cruising and anyway, there was a place and this is all in public. Some of the timber had been logged, and had been logged for a little while. So there was this giant thicket and to see you have this big thicket right here, and I'm walking the edge of this thicket and I'm like, man, I'm already thinking. I'm like, man, I wonder the de You're gonna be bedding nothing here now, you know. And walk a little bit further, a little bit further, and there's like and I'm you know, like I said, I hadn't been to this spot in a while, but I'd hunted this area of this forest for quite a while. And I was far enough back in there that like I already knew. I was like, man, not a whole lot of folks would would come back in here and I come up and there's like there's like four big white oak trees like thirty yards off of this thicket. And I was like, yep, marking that before before I left that spot, Like I was like, I'm gonna have a camera and here the closer we get, the seasoned, and I already found a tree that I could get in and like it. I mean, man, early October, when I get a when I if I can get a north or an east wind, that's where I'm gonna be. That's where i'd me. 00:43:44 Speaker 2: So is summer scouting not as much of a thing down by you because of the miserable, humid, hot weather, or do you guys folks like still get out like velvet scouting? Is that a thing down by you? Like by me? You know it come July a lot of evenings you're out sitting on the edge of a beanfield glassing, you know, late July into August. Is that just a crazy thing to do by you because. 00:44:09 Speaker 3: Of the weather, not not because of the weather. If you live in the Mississippi Delta, you're probably doing some of that just because there's not as much like just not near as much row crop like the our roa crop down here and in the other parts of the state is is La Blay pine trees. Honestly, like there's there's just not a whole lot of like places where you could go and just like glass deer and so the closer it gets, like, I know some folks in the Delta that they'll spend some time doing some velvet scouting because that out there, you you actually would, it'd be worth your time to do it. But like around here central like I would, I don't do much velvet stuff but r on cameras for sure, but not not a whole lot of velvet stuff unless should go down there. 00:45:01 Speaker 2: Okay, So what's the summer camera program in your neck of the woods? 00:45:17 Speaker 3: H dude, I'm like, what do most now? I don't do it. I don't. Baiting is legal down here. That's about ninety five percent of what the camera running consists of. And that's that's just a fact. Like I said, it's it's legal. I I have done it before, I make no bones about it now. I'm not just not a big fan of it for a for a whole swath reasons, but uh, that's what that's the way most of it has done these days, and if not that, it's usually like a mineral rock or something like that. If I was to go run some cameras, I probably would. Well, man, I normally don't even start touching them until you know, late September. 00:46:10 Speaker 2: So if you were going to try to get some summer pictures without bait, is there anyone who's doing it in a way where you can get some decent pictures despite not having that big attracting because that, like you know, I remember early. I mean, it's always a challenge to get pictures in the summer without the easy option of a trophy rock or bait or something. Yeah, it's a little bit easier if you've got row crops. It's gotta be really tough without any of those options. 00:46:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, man, I'm just being honestly. I don't even know if I've ever even tried to be to be totally honest. And now, I mean, that's that's interesting because now my wheels are spinning them. If someone was like, you must try to get some good pictures, I'm like, what would I do? But I could figure something out, but I don't know. Yeah, I've never I don't think i've ever really done it, and it's always like an yeah, like a trophy rock or something like that. 00:47:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, man, those are deadly effective in the summer, that's for sure. I Mean I'm not a baiting guy myself, but I you know, I did like it back in the day when I could put a trophy rock out there over a camera in the summer and you certainly pictures rolled in. 00:47:19 Speaker 3: Can't argue with that, dude. Well, like when I was when I was growing up, like if you heard of somebody at home getting caught hunting over corn or something, it was like they were like a social pariah. It was like and you'd be like, wow, we do that. Well, now like it's it's completely legal. So and right when it was legalized, it was like are you kidding me? Why wouldn't we do this? And so, you know, I mean I used it for a while and then I just kind of was like, eh, like I said, whole list of reasons, but personally I don't care to do it anymore. I don't knock anyone that does. I just don't have you phoned down by. 00:47:59 Speaker 2: You know, in places like that where there's so much of it, are the guys who are like were guys and girls who are killing like the big Bucks mature bucks. Are they even doing that on bait or are they having to kind of play off of it and shift it around and or is other people's baiting impacting people's ability to do that too? 00:48:19 Speaker 3: But well yes, so the answer to the second one first is other people's baiting impacting people one hundred percent, like one hundred percent and so and like it's it's a very man it's such a nuanced and complex issue. I have friends, several friends who don't really care to bait. They just don't. And they have places that they put a lot of time into, you know, working on the habitat trail, like like really trying to make the place better. And they and this is a like this is anecdotal, but this happens a lot. Like I'm thinking of one particular friend had a place who's working on and as a friend and like his a neighboring property that's like forty acres. Nothing is done on that forty acres in terms of habitat, but they put a corn feeder out there and let it spind. And now like that dude's you know, pulling deer off, like directly benefiting from his habitat and deer, I mean, because they're gonna go to I mean, they're gonna go to that corn feeder man, they just are. And so he was like in this in this position, just like conflicted. He was like, I don't know what to do. I don't want to bait, but like the deer just getting suctioned off of my property, you know. So I say, I refer to bating a lot of times as this self perpetuating thing, because that's the mentality like, well, if I had all my neighbor's going to and then I'm not going to have any deer. And to some degree that's true. Unfortunately, the upside of it, like I said that if there is a positive of it, like it there are a lot of people, let enjoy doing it to each their own, but there are like people are killing some really big deer doing it like that's I can't argue with that fact at all, Like people are killing some really big deer that way. 00:50:16 Speaker 2: So one thing with like with the baiting programs and or you know, cameras, there's always this question of you know, are you educating deer? Like these are tools that supposed we can help you, but Also if you're in there messing around with things, or you've got sell cameras doing their thing, there's always done these questions about are you also doing more harm than good with this human influence, whether that's you know, messing around with cameras or messing around out your feet or whatever it is. I gotta believe you've seen a bunch of different instances with this, whether it be on your own stuff or you know, rolling around with the premost crew. I mean, you've seen a lot. Where's your head at on on kind of that balance because I'm always trying to balance this, especially with me for the cameras, it is the big one. But but what have you seen over the years. 00:51:04 Speaker 3: Well, it's it's a similar thing, like to your point, like with with cameras, right, It's like before the cellular trail camera, if you wanted to run a trail camera, you had to walk out there, you had to track all the way up through there, leave your scent all over the place. You know, you could go through all the all the precautions you wanted to, you're still leaving some sort of scent. You just are, you know, And then cellular trailcap cameras happened, and that that was that was very I mean that was a significant change because that's just like a huge portion of human influence and pressure on the woods just eliminated. So it was the same same thing, you know, like when people figured out feeders that you could put on a timer and set to spend a certain amount of days. Because like in Mississippi, like I said, it's legal, but you can't just go and dump it on the ground. It has to be like the laws, like it has to be in a covered trough or a like a spin cast type feeder. And I mean I've seen it several times. I got buddies that deal with it. And it's not like you can't you can't like bet on it. But there are certain mature deer that they they figure that out man like and and I will like some people will tell you, they'll like, man, you want to make a buck go nocturnal, start feeding them like they they they fit. Now, like I said, that is not one hundred percent whatsoever. But some of those five six year old bucks like yeah, like they'll come to your bait at nine o'clock at night. And so that that definitely does happen. And some of the folks that that are killing them, now, uh what they've what I the most probably popular tactic is, uh, it's some sort of bay. Typically, like even if it isn't a trial feeder, they will they will put a like just a huge amount of feed where they don't have to go back there for a while, and then they pop a cellular trail camera up and so it's basically the same premise, like the food's there, but there's not a human going in and out of there, and they got that cellular trail camera popping and the set. Some of them, I know some guys that are like the second daylights one time he's in there, you know he's in there hunting them, or some some of them like I got to see him daylight twice before I risk putting some pressure in there. But that that's typically how it goes. There's there's still a like a very important element of like limiting human interaction or human pressure on the woods. 00:53:35 Speaker 2: So like, how the heck are you killing deer if you don't have two hundred pounds of corn out there? And I sell cam telling you when they show up for the first. 00:53:42 Speaker 3: Time, well, well let me let me, let me give a like an honest representation on myself, Like I don't try to present myself as some awesome deer killer one thing that because honestly, man, and this is like I have. Let me let me be clear, I have. I have something against baiting. I don't care for it. Trail cameras. Have nothing against trail cameras, but I rarely use them anymore. And I'll be completely honest with you why in recent years, because when I was doing stuff with Primos, we did so much with product development. It was just like non stop trail camera stuff to where like I remember, like I never wanted to be One time we were going to hunt somewhere and I was like, had this complete notion of we're wasting our time. And the reason I felt that way is because the way the trail cameras are running. And it hit me. I was like, man, there's no way to be, you know. And so the past couple of years, I either like on Public, like where I was telling you about where I found those white up trees, I'm gonna put a trail camera there just because I'm curious what's coming in there. But the past few years, like between Public and a place that me and my buddy have access to We have access to about twelve under acre track, which is nice one because it's twelve hundred acres of course, right, but two with a with a property that big, you actually can you can't have some deer that that that property is big enough, you can have some deer and have them not be influenced by you know, a feed that's going on on the perimeters, right. Uh. And so that's what that's what we've been doing, is like just going in there and men and just just go honestly, man, just going in there and hunting, you know, just to go on like old school and it man, like going there, finding sign and just trying it out, seeing what happens and just putting it together. And like sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I've I've really enjoyed it. 00:55:50 Speaker 2: But yeah, what's like, uh, I mean, kind of going back to one of the things I just said there ago, you've been able to have this wide exposure I think to a lot of different ways of doing stuff, right, I gotta believe with with the crew you've rolled with and getting to hang out with folks like will or Brad and you know, so many others you've learned from some of the best, no doubt, right, Yeah, what What's what have been those major things you've taken from those folks you've learned from, like the major you know, like if there was like a stone tablet and will roll down like the five most important things to be a successful deer hunter where or something like that, or Brad or whoever it was, do a handful of things stand out that you've been able to take from these legends over the years that you're still putting into play now yourself when you're doing it on your own. 00:56:46 Speaker 3: Mm hm. Honestly, it would be if especially if I'm just talking about like deer hunt. Uh one thing I learned it, and I learned it in like fairly early, like in the first three years of being there, like because I remember the first year I can waiting for me to like catch them doing this like huge thing and me go, oh, that's the thing that makes them so good at this, you know, and there honestly, there wasn't. There wasn't some like huge thing that they were doing differently and like this. If this sounds cliche, I forgive me, but it's like it's true, and I can give some examples they weren't doing the like a lot of the big things that they were doing were big things that everybody else were doing. Like, of course you hunt the wind. Of course you take the at you know, the proper amount of time to make sure your gear is good to go, and you practice with your boat. Of course, you know, you you when the you know, you watch for cold fronts, you know, like the obvious stuff. The things that they did were like this, like this culmination of small things that other people might not do. Like you probably have buddies like this too. I've been guilty of it before. When they're a pro coach in a morning or an afternoon hunt, the mindset is like what is the latest I can possibly sleep and get you know, getting up the tree as quick as you can and where it's like them, it's like I want an hour of a grace period, Like I don't want there to be a single chance that I'm late, right what talking about? Like I mean everyone knows, like some people would say, like routes to a stand is a big thing, dude. Some of the ways when I because I filmed Brad a lot, especially in the early years, like I hunted idea hunting with Brad more than anybody else. I would get aggravated at that, dude sometimes for some of the crazy out of the like just out of the way like routes we would take to get to a tree stand. But like, there is no way that was going to risk that a deer was gonna smell us getting in there. Like, there was never ever a lazy approach to a stamp like it. It did not happen. Dude, everything Brad and Will they both did this. Man, if there was a te screw like like that you that you're gonna put in the tree to hang your backpack on, that tea screw is going to have electrical tape wrapped all the way around it. There was not anything that was going to make a dan, not one like I mean, just like all this small minute stuff that just culminated and just made it to where like they're like, they made it to where it was as seamless as possible. 00:59:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that's you can't hear that enough. I mean I've heard different versions of that from so many people that it's it's almost like the golden rule of deer hunting. Now it's there's no there's no silver bullet. There's no easy answer. There's no like, oh, this is the secret, except for do all the little things. It's like there's no big thing because all of the little things, added up, layer after la after layer, are what lead to success in the end. That's just so true, dude. 01:00:15 Speaker 3: Even I've got I've got another one. Like I remember we were hunting somewhere. There was this, there was this This was really early despite in the first, first or second follows with him, and uh, there was this big a point that we were after. And he was cool man. He had like matching kickers on G two. I mean, just a cool fuck real had had a lot of masks, dark horned. He was just cool. He was really cool. And we had gone through like all this rigmarole trying to get this deer in front of us, and finally Brad got this notion. There was this tree. I mean, I remember, I remember, It's like it was yesterday. We'd been hunting, we'd had a double lock on set in this honey locust tree is an early season like early like super awesome food source in the early season. And uh, we just weren't like even though we you know, we thought the wind was right we thought our approach was right. But after I think we went in there like two three times, we had some doze and stuff come in, but we never saw that buck. And Brad was like, something's not right, like he's catching us coming in there something, and he kept he decides like walking out one day, he's like, we're moving sets. We're going to that tree and there was this wonky tree like it took us forever to get the stand in there. Uh And it worked like that, Like as much as careful as we were as we were trying to take to get in there, there must have been something with the route that we were taking, because the first time we moved that set, we ended up shooting that deer. But the point that I was making is, you know, like we're sitting in this double set and does started coming through early filtering through, heading towards that honeylocust tree. We're I mean, we're not fifty yards from where our first set was Game of Inches, right, and where the way we had the two lock on set, like I always had binos on even though I was running the camera and me and Brad just chilling. These does coming through, and there was one like three year old buck, and I'm just I'm just looking at the buck. And I pick up my byos, look at him, sit there and film war. And I go to grab my binos again and I feel Brad's hand just stop me. And I'm like what and he and he said, what are you doing? I said, looking at that buck? He goes you already looked at him, and I was like, what do you mean? He was like, why would you risk the movement that you ain't got a risk? Fair enough? Yeah? 01:02:36 Speaker 2: Interesting the stuff like that. 01:02:40 Speaker 3: Man Like if he Brad like, he's not going to be constantly doing this number with his binos, He's going to look as much as he needs to, and then he's conserving movement. 01:02:49 Speaker 2: M little things. The man, man, that's the true. What about what about like unique to the South? I mean, you guys and I'll get to go up and do some stuff from the Midwest, but then you've also obviously had this Southern experience being down there yourselves. And this is a place that I've always fallen short with with wired hunt over the years. As being a northern guy myself, it's so easy to ignore or just be ignorant of the unique aspects of hunting down south. You know, having gotten to experience a little bit of all of it yourself, what has stood out to you is like, man, these are the big things that are different about hunting in the South, or ways you need to approach it differently than you know, what you see everybody doing on TV in the Midwest, or you know just how folks do it in Michigan or Iowa or Illinois. 01:03:38 Speaker 3: Dude, I'd say one of the biggest things is a lot a lot of the other places that we would go for widetail when we traveled, even if it was like not a crazy terrain laden place like Wisconsin can be your Iowa or something like that. I it's crazy, and it's one of I grew up hunting this fla country down here, so I didn't know much different than it. But I remember the first time that I went to Iowa and I hear someone say a pinch point, and I look at this pinch point, I'm like, no kidding, you know. And so one of the bigger obstacles or like huge things that you would have to overcome at home without bait obviously, like bait can be the great equalassar, but but is it's learning like how to pattern deer movement in that flat country. And there's like, man, one of it's like vegetation, like hunting privot lines is a big thing down here. Another thing and it's gonna sound like I'm contradicting myself, but I'll elaborate, is learning to look at a topographic map, because one thing that I learned is I can go to a place. I'm thinking of a place right now, a place that we hunted on the Big Black River, especially for bottoms, like of course the river bottoms pretty flat, you know. Man, You pull up like a topo map like on X or something, and the slightest topographic change, and I mean so slight that like some of that river bottom stuff. You pull it up and you turn topo on, and you're like, there's still not any lines here, There is no there is no topo. If you see that line, if you see a single line, like I will go and scout along that one topographic change, because those that wildlife knows it's there, like and I and you will find even when you're standing there, you're like, this all still looks the same, Like this doesn't look hardly anything different from from here or there. But it'll be just slight enough that the vegetation will be different that deer will be using it for travel that you will find like you'll find the most subtle saddle and there will be a trail through there. But that's that is huge down at home, learning how to determine travel in that flat country, I think I would say that to me, I'd say that's probably the biggest. 01:06:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know what it's like exactly where you hunt. But one thing that I've seen and heard, like when I went and did a project down Mississippi last summer the summer before was down there in the is it the DeSoto National Force? Is that right? Yeah? 01:06:22 Speaker 3: You were like down around like Leaf River or something, weren't you. 01:06:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds right. I think that rings well. Yeah, being in some of that country, you can just see like these vast tracts of timber, you know, I mean there's not the obvious there's not the obvious vegetation pinch points or like obvious bedding, obvious feeding, obvious travel from a to b like you have in row crop country. And I know that's you know, all these pines stands through Georgia or Mississippi or Arkansas or Alabama, Like I know that's a consistent thing. I've hunting down in southern part of Alabama, same thing. Like that is a real deal. Trying to trying to dice big country like that is not easy. 01:07:04 Speaker 3: No, it's not. And it's dude, it'll drive you crazy. Like even the guys that I know that are like, there's I got somebody's down here, man, Like I said, I'm as and I'm just being honest, Like as a deer hunter, I can hold my water. But I got buddies that like I'm like, dude, that's a that's a good deer hunter. And even those guys, they'll drive themselves insane, especially on a new property, like like trying to figure out because the other thing is like, well I said, they will be using those subtle topo changes. It's not like like I remember I remember one of the first times I filmed in the Midwest. I think I saw every deer that inhabited those woods come down this one ridge, you know, whereas like these like you don't know what they're gonna do. You know, like you find a trail, like yeah, that buck's gonna be using it, but you don't know if he's using it, then you know, you know, it's just it's it's uh, it's you. You drive yourself insane trying to trying to pull a pattern on them. Food sources are huge, huge, Like I said, that's why when I found those white oak trees I was talking about earlier, I was like, oh, you know, when you find something like that next to a big thicket, like, that's about as good as an indicator as you can get. Lord Willing, we have a good acre and craft this year. Yeah, but like stuff like that, it's good to kiyo, but yeah, it's tough, man, It's tough. 01:08:25 Speaker 2: Do you have the itch yet? Like every year, right around July ish is when I really start getting the white tail. It's like I'm thinking about it throughout the year for all sorts of different reasons in different parts of the year, but I don't start getting like weird until usually July, and that's I'm like, oh, man, I gotta start watching my white tail YouTube videos or pull out this North American white tail and start annoying my wife with stuff like that. Has that started for you yet or if not, when does that peak? 01:08:54 Speaker 3: Typically about I've actually been like, and this is now I've shot my bow three times, like like three different days going out and shoot shooting my boat shout like three times over the past week and a half. And I some folks would be like, what are you doing? You should be shooting it more probably, but I'm saying that is in like normally I don't. I'm not shooting it all this time now, I'm not like July. August is when I'm typically like out there every day shooting. But I'm a little like, I'm kind of surprised myself that I'm shooting this early. 01:09:26 Speaker 1: But uh. 01:09:29 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd say typically probably around the same time frame, especially about August, you know, like you really start thinking about it and you've been like Turkey season is far enough away, and by the time you hit August, you've gone about as long as you can stand without being able to something. 01:09:47 Speaker 2: You know, for me, and I know this isn't possible down your neck of the woods as much, but for me, that first time when you see a buck in a field like a bean field or alfalfa fielders something, you're like, oh, that's a nice buck, Like the first time they've grown enough where you're like ooh, and you're seeing those like orange, beautiful shiny coats out there in a green field that just like gets my juices flowing. And it's usually, uh, it's usually just downhill from there, so we're getting really close. 01:10:16 Speaker 3: We're getting close, dud, dude, And this is this may sound goofy to you, but like I get when I think, cause like I mean, I may look up and shoot a good buck in October. Typically typically if I'm gonna kill a good buck, it's normally later in the year December, January, rut stuff like heavily after the like post rut keno and food shorts type stuff. When I get when I'm getting jazzed up about October early botseason, I'm thinking about shooting dose like I which again we have a lot of deer down here, but I love shooting does with my bow. And that I mean, And like I said, some folks are like the dough you know. But uh, like even when I when I'm talking about that white oak spot, like of course I would love for a you know, a good buck to walk into there. But when I'm thinking about going in there and hunting it, I'm thinking about, oh, there's gonna be some does come into here that I can pop. 01:11:11 Speaker 2: I love it. Yeah, I feel like I'm getting more of that way every year, more and more. There's there's something about there's something. I don't know if this is the same for you, But when I flip the switch from like I'm in buck mode to instead like dope Patrol, when I flip that switch, it just it's just a totally different hunt, and it's obviously a more target rich environment, and I don't know, it's just so much fun. It's it's maybe less pressure, but more opportunity coming your way. Likely. I love that. 01:11:40 Speaker 3: So I'm always I'm on Dope Patrol a whole lot more than I'm on Buck Patrol. 01:11:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm following. I'm following that path more these days myself too. Well, Like, give me this before we wrap it up. Give me the quick rundown for folks on where to find the new podcast when episodes are coming out, and if there's anything else that you can or want to preview for people other than what we've discussed so far. 01:12:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so Backwoods University. It comes out every other week. But I told one person bi weekly and they're like twice a week. I'm like, no, that is Codunystic. Yeah, so every other week. So we had one come out yesterday or Monday, June twenty third, and so the next one will come out in two weeks. But it comes out on Mondays every every other Monday on the Bear Grease feed. Clay was talking about it the other day. It's like our feed's getting so complicated, it's getting lengthy to start to explain it because you got to go Backwoods University on the Mediator podcast Network. 01:12:48 Speaker 2: On the Bear Speak Yeah, it is getting a little wordy, that's true. Well man, I'm I'm really excited about it. I think you're after a great start. I appreciate the the issues and topics and stories that you're sharing with people. It's so fascinating, it's so important. So keep it up, man, and thanks thanks for taking this time to chat dear and wildlife and all the good stuff in between. 01:13:14 Speaker 3: Absolutely, man, thanks for having me on. I always enjoy chatting with you. 01:13:18 Speaker 2: It's great, great stuff, all right, and that's going to do it. Thank you for joining me. Hopefully you enjoyed my chat with Lake and until next time, stay wired. Done