00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number on Tannis Show. We're joined by Todd Mead, who's going to share this how he's managed to kill big mature bucks all the way from the Big Woods Mountains of New York to the public lands of the Midwest. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by sit Gear, and today we're joined by Todd Mead, a hunter hamling from the great State of New York. And Todd brings some really interesting perspectives to the table as a deer hunter, as he's someone who has successfully hunted white tails in some wildly different situations. He's had success both in the Big Woods mountainous terrain of New York's at Arondic Mountains and the flat agricultural lands of the Midwest. And he's done it all d I y and almost exclusively on public land as well. So obviously this guy knows something about hunting white tails, and I think we all can learn a thing or two from him. So that said, today, I'm going to grill Todd all about his experiences in both of these different types of situations. We're going to dive deep into what it's like to hunt in the big woods or mountainous situations like you might find in the Northeast, and exactly how to find and kill mature bucks in those areas. And then we're also going to explore how Todd has been able to have equally as impressive success on his cross country white tailed trips to the Midwest and public land situations like that. So all in all, it's going to be a very interesting conversation and I think a perfect way to kick off October. But before we get tied on the line, we need to do two things first. This is a little, a little bit kind of special here. Earlier this week October four marked the three year anniversary of the day that I quit my full time job and went in on wired to hunt. Three years. It's uh, it's pretty hard to believe that this much time has passed and that I've actually been able to do this for that long without the whole thing crashing in around me. But but remarkably, I've been blessed with this incredible three year journey so far, and to be honest, you know it was it was scary as hell when I quit my job back in thirteen, and many of you know that story. But I had a great job with a big tech company and life was solid and safe and going as planned. But but that kind of life and job it wasn't where my heart was. And I knew that that year until thirteen. I finally had to make that decision. I had to finally decide to chase that dream, to listen to my heart, to wave goodbye to that safe, solid, secure and instead of embrace the risk and the opportunity of doing what I love for a living. And now here we are three years later, and I think you know by far the biggest reason why this whole thing is still going. It's because of you, guys. It's because wire Hunt readers and viewers and listeners have allowed me to share my stories and my failures and my lessons learned. And you've stuck with me through it all. You've you've listened to the podcast and you share the articles, you've given me feedback, you've given props to the companies have helped us, and so so much more. And it's because of you that I'm getting to enjoy this three year anniversary today. So I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't say it enough, but I hope in some small way you can realize just how appreciative I am and how much the wire dunk community really you all mean to me. You guys are the best. I appreciate you and thank you. Now to the second thing we need to do before calling Todd, we need to thank another person will not personal company in this case, that being Sick of Gear for sponsoring this podcast. They were actually the very first company ever to support wired Hunt way back and I think two thousand and ten. They start off, and they've really been instrumental in keeping this podcast and website afloat. So as we do every week, we've got a sick story to share, and if you recall, in last week's episode, we began with a story from sick employee Alex Tannembaum, who was relaying the kind of experience of one his of his very first white tailed bow hunts, and when we left off, he was in the midst of a very close encounter that left him with some interesting lessons learned about thirty five yards out they did, they kind of you know, made a turn. Um it might have been because I made some noise. It's hard to say. And uh so I drew and uh and then they were all three of them looking like straight at me and like oh geez and uh and I still even have haven't even made a pick like which one should I shoot, you know, like I haven't even thought that far I had. I'm just like I'm drawn and I got year and I'm like, uh that one and uh and you know, put my pen on and like like nothing feels good about this shot, like like not a single thing. Like I'm just like I'm shaking. I'm I I just I got nothing. And but I didn't want to let down because for some reason, like that felt like I would be like I don't know, I I think I was just still a pretty new hunter and like that idea of letting down when I had an opportunity to shoot, like I just didn't. It just seemed like maybe that wasn't like a like a I don't know, a virtuous thing to do. Um, you know, that wasn't like the that wasn't what a real hunter would do. And so instead, um, I raised my bow up like way the heck over him and just touched off and just shot way over their backs. And because then I could say, oh yeah, it was a clean miss um you know. And uh so that was you know, in in that like kind of you know, flood of totally illogical thinking and emotional thinking, that was that was what I did. Um. So, So, knowing what you know now, would you have done anything differently in that situation? Yeah? I mean I guess looking back at it, if I could have changed the outcome, Um, if I could have done something differently, like knowing what I know now, but you know the me of back then standing in that stand, um, I think I'd have just counseled that that Alex of years ago to to have like the the the comfort and the self assurance that like letting down it was okay, that I didn't need to let an arrow go to make the story better or to make to to have to to sound more impressive to to other people. Um, you know that I they really they to have more confidence in in in my personal ethic. Um. That's That's what I would say to to that kid who was standing in that stand that that morning, and that right there, my friends, was a sick story. If you'd like to learn more about Sick of Gears technical hunting apparel, you can visit sick of gear dot com. And now let's get back to the show and give Todd me to call. All right now with us on the line is Todd Mead. Welcome to show. Todd, thanks for having me Mark. I appreciate you asking me to be a guest on your show. Yeah, absolutely, I'm excited to chat. It's been a little while. We we actually, well, heck, I don't know when I first started hearing about you, maybe through social media or something, Todd, but as you know, we got to chat quite a bit this spring when we were working. I was working on a story for magazine where we actually featured you in that, and I got to learn a lot about how you're hunting and the kind of success you're having, and to be honest, I was I was very impressed. So I knew eventually we had to get you on here and share what you're doing with the audience. So I'm excited to do that now. Um, but I suppose before we dig into the house and the what's of your hunting? Can you just tell us a little bit about your background as a hunter and kind of how you got to where you are today. Sure you bet. Uh right now, I'm forty seven years old and I live in what they call the Adirondack Park of upstate New York, and it's approximately five hours from New York City in an hour and a half of south of Montreal, Canada. And it's a pretty mountainous region. Most people that are familiar with New York don't know that New York has mountains, and the Adirondack Park is uh. It's approximately six million acres and about fifty two per cent of that is privately owned, so the other forty eight percent is open to the public for hunting, outdoor activities, et cetera. UH. In the area in the Adirondack Park, it's it was declared forever wild by Teddy Roosevelt, and UH he decided that you could never have motorized vehicles in there. Um you could, you you wouldn't ever be able to do any logging on the public land. So in some ways it's really hard to hunt. And that's what I'm faced with because it's a mountainous area and there aren't a lot of deer. Like in the area that I hunt, there are approximately one to five deer per square mile, so finding the deer that could be a really difficult task, and it's different from year to year depending on the feed. So originally I got my start when I was a kid. My father was raised on a dairy farm, and he never really had a lot of time to hunt. As he got older, the dairy farm kind of went under and then he, uh he went to work in a factory. So when he started working in the factory, he had a little more time and he began to hunt. So he had a really late start. He was he was in his early twenties when he started hunting, and uh, since since he lived on the base of the Adirondack Park, he decided to hunt in the Adirondex because it was easy to hunt close to home. So I mean that's pretty much where I started. He he was in his early twenties, which is when I was born. So my dad and I are really close in age. He's only twenty one years older than me, so a lot of people think that we're brothers, and I kind of like it that way because my dad's also my best friend. So when I was little. He brought me into the woods and he he introduced me to hunting, but he never really forced me to go, and he always asked me if I wanted to go. And I never really took a liking to hunting. I always wanted to go fishing instead. I wanted to be uh. I wanted to be like a die hard fisherman. I'd spend every minute I had in creeks, ponds, lakes wherever I could go to catch trout. And I just didn't like killing things, and it just turned me off. And as time went on, I kind of I warmed up the hunting a little bit, and when he would come home, I would wait for him to come home, just for him to tell the stories. And what really captivated me were the stories that he brought home, and I thought to myself, I I think I'd like to do that. I think I'd like to make my own stories. And then then we basically started hunting together. I got my hunting license. In New York. At that time, you had to before teen years old to bow hunt, and uh, I began bow hunting when I was fourteen, and then you couldn't rifle hunt in New York until you were sixteen, and that's when I began hunting with a gun. And in the early days, it was tough because I think my father and I were kind of learning together. He had learned quite a bit, but we used each other and we still do today to to kind of bounce things off from each other and learn as we go. And I guess that's kind of where I stand and and where I started. Uh, I'm definitely not an expert hunter. Uh a lot of people. I have a collection of deer heads and I bring them to shows because I'm an author. I've written a couple of books on deer hunting in the Adirondex. So to sell the books, I had to find a way to promote myself, even though I'm not really a self promotional person. So I decided I have I have over twenty deer heads that are that are moun and my father has some on top of that. So I decided the best way to sell books would probably be to go to these outdoor shows with the collection of deer heads as my display. So then I went to the to the shows and I brought the deer heads as a display and and it was a huge draw and then a lot of people began to think that I was some great hunter. And uh, although it might look like I know what I'm doing on the wall, uh, the reason that I got most of those deer is just because I said, and spend so much more time in the woods than anyone else does. And if anyone spends as much time as I do in the woods, they're definitely bound to get lucky at some point in time. So I like it, But but don't undersell yourself, Todd. You're you're doing a lot of things right, and I think like to your point, the very most important of all things we could possibly be doing as hunters is putting in the time and energy, which definitely seems like you're checking the box on that one. But um, but then also, I mean, right, you you were hunting the Adirondacks and the big mountains and the big woods, which is this incredibly challenging environment. You were finding ways to kill, you know, seemingly lots of mature bucks, the kind of bucks that you know, obviously someone in New York but even anywhere would be pretty excited about. And then you also started changing things up though, and then traveling out the Midwest to right, when did that start? Yeah, that's correct. I Uh, for years and years I hunted the Adirondacks. And and if if you're familiar with the Aderondex, we have what we call die hard Adirondack hunters that will never ever leave the ader Ondex because it's so challenging and so rewarding when you kill a deer. There there may be years where you might see one deer and it might be a dough um. But if you see any bucket, doesn't even matter what kind of bucket is. It could be a spike horn, a four pointer, could be a monster ten pointer, it could be anything. Uh, you're considered above average because some people go for a period of years without and seeing deer. So along the way, UM, I was fortunate enough to start killing a lot of older deer and uh like good rack deer for the Adirondacks. Typically, the Adirondacks don't produce big rack deer as far as score wise, because all their energy goes to surviving the winner. So when when all the energy goes to that, there's nothing left over for antler growth. And on top of that, there there isn't much feed. Um, they're pretty much browsers, and there's not a lot of mast or anything in the Adirondacks except for the lower portion of the Adirondack Park. Um So, along the way, when I started killing a lot of these mature deer, my father, my father was doing the same, and I became fascinated with big antlers, and I'm like, I would like to kill big deer, and I would like to see more Dear because I knew that I I knew I would no matter where I went. I knew I would have no problem finding Dear if I could find him in the adder on dex. So, when we decided that we wanted to do something different, um I began shooting what they called the IBO National Triple Crown. And I was pretty successful at competitive archery. And I don't know, I think it was around I'm not sure the time frame, but it was probably around the year two thousand two. I was shooting the third leg of the National Triple Crown and I was in southern Ohio and there was this guy in my group and I was shooting the semi pro class and he was shooting in the hunter class, and for some reason they had him in a group of three semi professional shooters, and this guy was really nice and he was a local guy. He was from right there. He was trying to shoot so he could go home and he would be done with the tournament. So as we are shooting, I was telling him that, you know, hunting was my passion and uh and I loved archery, but I never had a place to really bow hunt. So when when he was done for the day, he asked me to go over to his car. So I walked to his car. He showed me this photo album of all these deer he had killed, and he said, well, what do you think I said, oh, they're pretty impressive. I said, you'd probably never see a deer in a lifetime like that, and he had our index. He says, well, he's since you don't have really many bow hunting opportunities where you live, what do you think about coming out here and hunting with me? So I asked him. I said, I would love to come, but my father's my best friend, and I really can't come unless he can come with me because I don't do anything without him. And he looked at me and he says, that's not a problem at all. So then we became friends. And he showed me some places at a hunt in Ohio on public ground, and uh, that's when I started my trip into the Midwest. And from Ohio, I just continued all the way across the straight the states to Kansas. And to this day, I always take a week or two and I hunt. Something is different in the Midwest. Um. I might randomly pick it out, or I might hear about it from somebody else like I did from this guy, and uh, and then I just go and I hunt and I see what happens. So that's kind of my story of how I transition from the Big Woods to the Midwest. That's awesome. Well, I want to talk about both of those two different situations because we've got a lot of listeners that are that fall into one of those two camps. But I suppose let's first start where you started. Um, we don't get to talk to enough people that hunt in areas like you do in the other roundecks or in the northeast. Um, but there's so many listeners that do. And so I'm excited to kind of pick your brain about how to do this because it's so different from hunting here in Michigan or Ohio, where you've got, you know, lots of egg land and small wood lots and easy little pinch points and different things like that. I mean, it seems like it's a totally different ball game. So I suppose can you first, you've kind of elaborate, you've touched on this a little bit already, but can you just kind of set the stage a little bit for us? You know, what is this big woods mountain hunting like in a spot like where you're at New York and what you know, how is it so different than what the rest of us have? Okay, to the average person, it would be really scary because like where I hunt, there's probably there's there's no intersecting road from from probably about twenty miles from the point that I enter the woods. So if you get lost and you're going in the wrong direction, you're gonna have mountains to cross, or rivers to cross, mountains to climb, swamps to navigate through. And uh, it's it's really hard to not be intimidated, which is one reason why not a lot of people hunt it. So when you go into the woods, you have to learn to you have to respect the woods, but you can't be afraid of it. And you have to know how to use a compass. Um A GPS is good, but a GPS won't do you much good if it stops working. So I've learned to navigate with a compass. My father taught it to me when I was young, and I pretty much rely on a camp compass, even though I carry a GPS rhino And uh, that's how I start. And when I say i pull up on the side of the road and I'm going to go into some place new, I have a general idea. I've looked at it on a map and I know kind of what's in there. And what I do is I I look at different areas that I think I want to go to. Like if there's a mountain that tapers down into a big swamp, I'll look at that, I'll circle it and I'll be like, Okay, that's the first place I'm gonna go. So say it's three miles back in the woods. Um, if I've never been in here before and it's daylight, I'll just pick along and I'll observe as I go, and I'll make my way to that place that I circled down the map. And once I'm there, i'll determine is it a place that I'm going to come back to? How many good places are between where I came into the woods and where I am, And then from there I'll continue on to say and other place that I have on there, and I'll try to loop all the way through it and see what I can find. Um, if I go through the area and I don't see any sign that I'm looking for, such as big rubs, signpost rubs, old scrapes with like licking branches, stuff like that, then I probably won't go back. I need something to show me that it's worth my time to go back there. So so this is this whole the starting point, I think, at least for me, and I'm betting for a lot of people. Beginning in an area like this seems like the most intimidating portion of the whole hunt. When you have this vast wilderness, all this landscape, and it's like, how do I find dear, how do I even start? You mentioned the fact that you would look at maps, and one example you said was that you would look where a mountain dumps off into a swamp. So can you can you talk a little bit more about what these different spots are that you look at or look for as starting point. So that's one example. What else would you look for in a map to say, Okay, that's a good starting point, and this is a good starting point. What are some of these key places you would kind of focus in on to find where the deer might be to begin with? Sure, I'll tell you this is my favorite thing to do. Um I'll look at a map and I'll see I'll try to find what I call a bridge. And a bridge is going to be something that takes you from one area to the other. And let's say we have just to compare, like we have an ocean on both sides of the bridge, okay, and then on the opposite opposite end of each side of the bridge, there's a there's a landmass there. So I look for the bridge that links things in. An example of that would be say I'm going along and I find a bunch of beaver ponds, and these beaver these beaver ponds blocked the deer from going through them, like they're not most likely they're not going to swim through the pond um. And then on the other end of the beaver ponds there's there's like really rugged cliffs. They're straight up and down cliffs, so you can't the deer can't n have a gate because you know, they're not rock climbers. So what I then I have a bridge. They have to find a way to get on the other side of the beaver ponds and travel on this side of the cliff. So if you can find something like that that will funnel the deer through an area where they have no other option, that's gonna be most likely a really good place in big woods. And there are a lot of different places like these. Uh the examples I used, I just used them because I have a place that that I've killed a lot of really nice deer that is just like that. And but it could be a variety of different things that could be. Uh. It could be like a river. I mean, deer will swim rivers, but if they can go along the river and then they find an easier spot across the river downstream, like where it shallows out or something, then just look for things to send the deer in the same area, like they're really focus them in one area where they don't have an option. Okay, so that makes sense. So it's we're looking for funneling features. They're just they're different funneling features than what I have in Michigan, Ohio. You know, instead of two big fields and a little narrow strip of timber, it might be you know, like you said, it's all within timber, but there's different terrain features or water features or things that still have the same effect. Um do you kean and other like topographic features to like saddles and ridges, points that kind of that kind of stuff too. Yeah, there's there are some really good places when you're hunting big woods, and you like what I mentioned earlier. When you find a swamp at the base of a mountain, um, that's usually going to be a really good spot. And the reason being is there you'll usually find a runway that goes along the swamp, and along those swamps there are usually a bunch of scrapes, rubs, et cetera. And the reason it's good is because the dose will travel on the edge of the swamp and bucks can be on the ridge above that, and if the wind's blown uphill, then they can get a whiff of it. And say the buck goes down into the area by the swamp, he has an easy escape route. He can either go back onto the mountain, or he can just jump into the thick cover in the swamp. So like when I find a swamp, it's uh, it's definitely one of my first places I go, just because usually that's where you're going to find the most sign um. Another thing too, in swamps, like I've never I mean I've seen it in the Midwest, but not like in the in big woods, you'll find signpost rubs, which are rubs that the deer will come back to a year after year. And Uh, when you find these signpost rubs, that's usually a really good place to sit because just like a scrape, a number of different deer will visit the signpost rub and you can usually in the area that I hunt, you'll find them like on black ash trees, and they'll always be in like a lowland swampy type area. Sometimes if you're in the area and you're looking for those things in the spring, it'll be underwater. But for the most part in hunting season, Uh, you know, they're usually pretty visible because the sign will take you past them. So how do you use that kind of sign? This is one of the things that I'm always curious with different people. You know, everyone kind of says that they pay attention to rubs and scrapes, But I'm always curious about how you're actually factoring that into your strategy. So, Okay, you find this signpost rub, or you find a big scrape or something, are you actually now going to hunt like right over that or is that just like a piece of the puzzle. It tells you Okay, this is a good general area, and then you look more. I mean, how do you use specifically the sign that you see? Yeah, that's exactly, it's a piece of the puzzle. Well, you now you have to put the puzzle together. Like now you're now in that general area where you found the signpost rub, you have to look for all the other puzzle pieces you and you need the corner pieces to the puzzle. Without the corner pieces of the puzzle, that signpost rubs sitting there is all it's going to be as a puzzle piece laying in the pile with the other pieces. So when I find that, I know it's a good area. But now I have to determine what's the best area for me to sit in here. Um. Usually what I'll do is now that you know, now that we have trail cameras stuff like that. I'll put a bunch of trail cameras in that general area, and I'll try to determine where a deer going in the daylight. And if I can establish where the deer are in the daylight, then I know I'm on the right track. Uh. An example would be I found this signpost rob a few years ago, and I put my camera on it. So I got two bucks hitting the signpost tree, and uh, one of them was in the middle of the night, and one of them was at eleven fifteen in the morning. So I'm like, Okay, I only have two deer on here, the cameras here all year, so I'm like, the odds aren't good for me to sit there. So I said, I have to do a little more research and figure this out. So then there's a stream that goes down there and it kind of anders back and forth, and then it dumps off into a bottom, and there's another small mountain that runs down in and it creates a bench across that stream. So there were a few runways in there, and even though they are a hundred yards apart, I put a camera on every runway. On the three runways, two of them. I had active daylight pictures like regular daylight pictures through November and the other one. Uh, there were some pictures on there, but nothing in the daylight. And in all these runways there are only a few you know, hundred yards apart or whatever. And uh so then I just used that to determine, Okay, dear, go through here in the daylight. I have a lot of pictures, and uh, it's not like in the Midwest, You're not gonna have a lot of pictures such as like hundreds of pictures, Like I think I had four daylight pictures and three weeks. So I'm like, okay, this this is a good spot because you know, you see so few deer. So after I found that, um, I determined it, you know, that's the place. And then after finding that and then sitting there, then I was able to you know, to see deer and pass deer up where before it was just a shot in the dark because I found the signpost rub but I really didn't put the pieces of the puzzle together. And then after they all directed me over there to where those three runways were, which was just over the next hill. Um, then I knew, I knew I had that puzzle figured out so that it's time to go to the next one. So on the trail camera piece, can you can you elaborate on the details of how you're using So it sounds like you're finding a general area, you know, doing some on foot scouting, then you're fine tuning with trail cameras. But like, when do you put out the cameras, how long are you're running them throughout the year? How often are you checking them? I'm kind of curious about that stuff. Yeah, this is a tough one because I'm not around a lot so what I used to do. This is a new area I'm hunting, and I haven't hunted it, and uh, you know, I randomly hunted. I don't hunt it a lot, so I kind of wanted to know what was going on in there. So what I did is the first year in there, I put the cameras in in July, and by what the hell was it? By the end of August, I had no cameras left left because bears destroyed them. Bears pulled them off trees, they smashed him on the ground, and it was just a mess. So that first year it was a disaster. So I'm like Okay, I can't do this. I can't put them in here that early because for some reason, that early the bears get him. So then I started putting them in our muzzle. Older season usually opens the second weekend of October. So I'm like, okay, I'll put him in the second weekend of October, and I'll leave them there through the season, which is the usually the first weekend second weekend of December. And what I did, I put them in there in the in the beginning, and I put I always put some of them on scrapes, like if I that area I was just telling you about, I found a primary scrape with a licking branch in there. There's a bunch of rubs around it, and it was on a runway. So I kicked the scrape out and I put buck urine in it, and then I put a camera on it. And then there were two runways on each side of that, and and they were well used runways, and I decided, well, I'll put cameras on both of them. So so now I have those three cameras right there. So I have a one on a scrape that they use every year, figuring I'm going to get most of the deer and the most of the bucks in this area because they're gonna come back to that scrape. So then I went in. I checked it the next week because I'm I'm gonna every weekend. I'm only in there on the weekend because it's too far for me to hunt, like after work stuff like that, and then I go way to the Midwest. I usually leave for the Midwest the first in November, so I have that one week to check it. So I go in there, I check all of them, and when I put that camera on the scrape the next week, I had a daylight picture at nine o'clock the next day from when I put it on there, and it was a really really good buck for the adder Ondex and the two the two cameras on the runways had nothing on them. So then now I'm now I'm in the Midwest. So then I come home. And when I come home, I usually come home on Thanksgiving week. So on Thanksgiving Day, I'll drive my few hours north and walk my few hours in the woods and i'll hunt, you know, the morning and early afternoon for Thanksgiving, and I'll go in and I'll check them. I'll check every camera I have in the woods, and then I'll determine what I'm gonna do from that point until the end of our season. And so really I only check the cameras. I check them probably three times a year. I check them that first week, um, when I come back from vacation in the middle of November, and then I check them the week after that going into the last week of our season, and then I'll make any adjustments on whether I think I'm in a you know, I could be in a better spot and and things like that based on what I see on the camera. So typically, and maybe this is different now that you're that you spend time in the Midwest, But do you spend a lot of time hunting in that October time period or you're usually waiting untill later during guns season, um, you know when you can still hunt and stuff like that. It's funny to ask that because I thought about that today and I'm like, I think he's gonna ask me this question. I don't want to answer it because I have to be truthful. But yeah, I for twenty years, um, from the time I was sixteen until the time I was thirty six, I can count on one hand the number of days I missed in our entire season in New York. In those days I missed. Uh, they're all because I was sick. And uh, I remember one year I missed one day because I was I was really sick. I couldn't get out of bed, and my father killed a really nice buck on that day. And then I missed. I missed three days on another year because I was I had like the flu and I couldn't get out of bed. And they're the only three days I missed in those twenty years in the season in New York. And Uh, what happened is when I started going to the Midwest, I started getting a little less ambitious as far as going into the big woods because I know that I'm not going to see any deer. And I mean, I'll see deer, but the work you put into it to see the deer, it's just it's beyond what most people can comprehend. And I always put the work in back then. But now as I've gotten older, I've I wouldn't say I've gotten lazy, but I'm like, maybe I'm smarter because I know what I'm going to see in the woods at that point in time. So now I kind of I back off a little, like, I mean, I'll I've hunted one day so far, but next weekend our muzzle older season will open, and then I'll be in the woods pretty much every day, just because I always think in the back of my mind, this could be the day A right. So how do you deal with that though? As a hunter, knowing that you're gonna see so few year and that you know that this type of honey is so much more difficult than you know what guys are dealing with these other states. I mean, what's your vice for another guy it's got a similar situation like that? How do you handle that? How do you deal with that knowledge, that painful knowledge that this is a very difficult I just wrote an article about this for New York Outdoor News, And uh, I think I'm a little bit different than most people because that when I don't see any deer, it drives me like I want a hot harder, because I'm like, I want to see a deer, and I want to see the deer that I want to see. Um, So a lot of people will get discouraged, and I'm kind to the opposite. I hunt with my buddy Brian, and he gets really discouraged, and I I don't really get discouraged. I get more, I get more confident as I go, Like I can always feel it when I'm getting close. I'm like, I'm getting close. I'm getting close, and I'm not sure if I'm convincing myself of that or if it's really happening. But I always, I always do these things to make myself realize that, you know, the next minute could be the minute that you shoot the biggest buck of your life. In New York, and what I do, I use little things like if I see a new sign that I hadn't seen before I go through some new country, I'm like, this, this could be the place. And I just use little things to motivate me. So it's not I mean, you have to find things to motivate you to go in the woods. And one thing I just like and I enjoy being the woods because I'm kind of a loaner and I like to be alone, and I liked my alone time and my mind wanders all over the place, and I've probably written a thousand novels when I've been sitting in the woods, and it just gives me. It gives me time to unwind and appreciate life because where I'm from it's really wild country, and uh, it gives you a better appreciation for who you are and where you come from. Yeah, I imagine so converse to that. So right, there's this innate challenge to hunting an environment like that. But tell me about the feeling when you do kill a mature bucket situation like that. It's got to be pretty incredible. Oh yeah, it's uh, it's an unbelievable feeling. But then it can be followed by like extreme sadness almost because like some of these deer, like one deer, I hunted this one deer for a number of years and I'm like, I am going to catch up to this deer, and every time the deer like outsmarted me and it would blow, it would take off, I jump it. And for big woods, that doesn't happen usually too often because usually don't find the same deer in the same area because they're they're kind of wanderers there, nomads. But this one deer, like we we just went back and forth. It was like a NonStop battle. And then there was this really really crappy morning. I mean it was it was brutal. It was nasty. It had snowed all night. The snow were it was on the trees. You couldn't see anything. And I was sitting there and I heard like a little noise and I looked over and the deer was it was looking right at me, and I had my gun in my lap. I picked the gun up, I put on it, and it was almost like we looked at each other and and I could tell the deer was saying, oh ship, and but he there was nothing he could do. And then I just pulled the trigger and it was over, and it was I don't know, it's kind of I don't know if you can compare it like this, but it's like watching a movie and then the ending comes and you almost want to cry because it's like, oh, man, that that sucks. I knew that was going to happen, but that sucks. Yeah. So I don't know if that's a kind of you know, explains it well enough, but that's kind of how it feels. Like it's a perfect analogy. You don't want that movie to end, Yeah, exactly. I completely understand what you're saying. I get so caught up in the challenge that when I accomplished the task. Well, like I I'm not. I don't know if I'm ready for a new task. It's like, okay, I'm not. I'm not. I haven't had enough of this of this one yet. Yeah, I have experienced something similar for sure. I UM. I was kind of curious, as you mentioned a second ago, about the fact that you don't bump deer very often this kind of in this kind of area because there's just not that many deer. Um, how do these deer react to hunting pressure? I mean, do they get so little hunting pressure that it doesn't bother them, or do they freak out because they're not used to seeing humans? And when they do, it's like this huge change. They do both of those things. Every I've seen deer do both, you know, both ends of the spectrum. Uh, it all depends on the deer, and every deer is different. Like I have this one deer that I've been chasing around now for a few deer a few years, and it's weird, Like I'll put a trail camera up and then I'll leave and then the deer will be in that buck will be in the in the picture within an hour of when I left. Yeah, and it happens every single time, and it's almost like he's toying with me, like he's watching me or something. And then I have this other deer. Um for the last four years, I've gotten one picture of him, and it's been on all different cameras, and as soon as that deer sees the camera or like the picture, you know, it takes a picture, he's gone because I have it on like video and the picture comes first and he bolts out of there so quick it's it's unbelievable. And so, I mean, every deer is kind of different. And I've had deer that I've jumped and they've stood up and they've just turned around and looked at me, and I've shot him, and I've had other deer that I've never seen him again. So it's kinda every you know, it's kind of like people. Each person is their own person in this area, kind of each deer is their own deer. That makes sense. So kind of going back to the building blocks of a strategy in this kind situation, right, it sounds like a lot of what you're doing is focusing on finding these funneling features, something that funnels deer through them. But do you ever spend time actually trying to find bedding or feeding areas. You know, does that even exist? Is it all just betting and feeding? The thing is with the feeding thing is what I do is when the snow flies while even when the snow is not on the ground, I mean, you can see where they paw around and leaves. Like say, I'm sure you're familiar with this. If you go to where there are a lot of oaks, you can see where they pot around and leaves, leaves are turned over and they find the acorns. UM. I always look for that early in the year because if I can find we're deer or feeding. Um whether usually the area huh, it's mostly beech nuts, if there are any nuts, And if I can find where they're feeding, I'll definitely go there because it's like a gold mine because they don't normally have that type of food because they really only have brows in the area. So the instant that I can find anything like that, um, I'll be sitting on it. And it doesn't matter whether it's early season, late season, middle of the season, because deer have to eat. And it's kind of like this. If you drive down the street and you see a subway, chances are you're going to see people in it, right, So it's the same thing. So when I find something like that, it's like a subway or a McDonald's, Like I know they're going to be in it because because those restaurants don't exist in that region, So I mean they're gonna go to the good food and uh. And then usually like when the ruck comes along or whatever, I know Dose will be feeding there. And if I can see Dose, and I know I'm gonna see Bucks because in the mountains, Bucks will go for miles to to search out a dough. And as far as betting, like I've seen, I've seen a lot of places where the same buck will bed over and over. It might be like on a ledge that overlooks a big bowl or something like that. But on the opposite end to I think a lot of our deer are like random wanders. They wander, wander why under and then they get tired and they lay down because it's not like they don't need a bedding ground like in the Midwest and the Midwest they need the bedding ground for protection. But in the big woods where they don't really have a lot of predators, um such as it's like humans, Um, the betting area doesn't. I mean some places, I hut, you'll see it. But for the most part, it's just random. They'll bed here and there. A lot of them like to bed high, you know, high on mountains and uh and stuff like that where they're a little bit above everything. What do you what do you think is the biggest mistake that most guys and girls are making when hunting in places like this because most people I'm making assumption here, tell me if I'm wrong, But most hunters out there in the Adirondacks or in Hampshire or Vermont or wherever Pennsylvania where they're hunting this hilly, big woods country, most of these people are not killing the big old bucks, the few big old bucks out there. So what are these people doing. What's the most common mistake that these people are doing that's keeping them from killing in that big old one. I don't know if it would be a mistake, but most people just don't have the drive. I mean, it's like what we just talked about, you need to go, go, go, go and go without giving up. In most people just give up, um, I mean, they just don't have it in their mental makeup to keep on going. But as far as the people who hunt all the time that actually you know they hunt every day and they just can't catch up to them. There are a bunch of different things that probably contribute to the reasons why they're not successful. And one of them is I think that people go too fast, like their ram ram ram, and they don't pay attention to the clues that are around them. It's like what we're talking earlier with the puzzle pieces. As you go put the puzzle together, don't just walk through the middle of all the pieces that are laying on the floor. And that's what people do. They ram through the pieces on the floor without really trying to put all of them together. If you step back and you take the time to put them together, then the picture is gonna be painted in front of you. And that's that's kind of what I try to do. And another thing I know that like, I have a friend of mine who he just can't figure out why everybody else kills Big Deer and he has such a hard time with it. He'll see him occasionally, but he doesn't kill him. And he over analyzes everything. It's okay to be analytical, but don't overanalyze yourself to death because he just every single thing, and it hurts my head to listen to him talk because I'm like, wow, I can't even imagine like thinking that much. Dear Dear are habitual creatures, but if if you were able to figure out their habit, then you you kill a big buck every single year there. You know, even though they're habitual, they don't have habits where you can just say, Okay, I got this figured out. Anybody who says they have Dear figured out, then I have a hard time believe in that because a lot of it just comes down to luck. You're you put yourself in the right place and you're there at the right time. Like a deer might go through an area, whether you're in the Midwest or whether you're in the Adirondacks, it might go through an area once a week. If you're there on Tuesday and it goes through on Wednesday, then you're out of luck. But if you're there the same day goes through, then that's your lucky day. So it's if you goes back to that, if you put your time in, you'll probably be successful. And that's what I always tell people. Just put your time in Yeah, yeah, it's funny that mature dear sure have a way of making the best made plans look foolish. You can put to your point, you have to do your best to make those plans and look at the puzzle and to try to put yourself in the best possible position, and then at least you've got the best chance of getting that luck that you just need to wait for and put your time into eventually get. So that's another thing like people, I mean a lot of people too. Like I hunted in most people in the Aderondacks, they don't hunt specific deer and they hunt in parties. Um. That's why I'm a little bit unique in uh, in the Adirondacks, because I hunt by myself and I usually try to hunt a specific deer um. And you know, there are a lot of things you have to pay attention to when you're hunting a specific deer uh, And I think people just don't pay attention to that. Like a lot of my friends are trackers, and I tell people I don't have the patients for trackers. Then my tracking friends tell me they don't have the patients to sit. So you have to find you know, what works for you. And although I don't track, I still hunt so and when I'm still hunting, I pay attention to things like you know, a big buck is gonna have a you know, a wider gate when it's walking and uh you you usually know it's carrying a good rack. Like you'll see where dose will go, Like they'll go underneath trees, they'll go like in between trees in A big buck won't do that because a lot of times as antlers won't go through there, so he'll walk around it. So if you pay attention and you see where deer, like a deer walks around something, you're like, oh, that might be the deer right there. You know, they might some of them might have like a distinguishable mark on their track or something like that. And a lot of people don't pay attention. I mean, as you go you have to look at the tracks and pay attention. Okay, that that one has a chipped hoof, I can see it right there, and then you know it's the same deer. So I mean, just try to pay attention to two different things that deer do. Mhmm. Yeah. The whole thing with tracks is something that it's it's something that so many modern hunters, I think overlook because we have, you know, the technology like trail cameras and stuff to make you know, scouting a little bit easier. But it's something that I think, um, you know, you know, given what you're saying a lot of other successful hunters, it's something that should not be ignored. I'm trying to get better at paying attention to that and learning what those subtle things are that you need to look look for that might determine yes, this is a mature buck, or yes this is the type of track I need to be king in our this is a recent track versus an older track versus you know, all that kind of stuff. There's there's a lot of kind of woodsmanship that I think has been lost that I think we, probably all of us, would benefit to learn a little bit more about. Yeah, that's where I'm kind of lucky because like at my age, I started before all the technological advances and hunting, so I kind of, you know, I have the best of both worlds. I have the old stuff to go by and I have the new stuff to help me. Um, It's just like when when I'm in the woods or whatever, and you have a bunch of deer in an area. And Uh, I learned this from a friend of mine. Um, you have a bunch of tracks, you get a track and you're lost in there. You're like, oh, where the hell did he go? And uh, a friend of mine from me and Randy Flannery, he says, you know, just take a little stick, put it in the track and break it off the same length as the track. He said, when you go through, just keep putting in the tracks until you find you'll find the same track because it'll fit exactly the same in the track. So then, like if you thought a deer went out one way, you could find out just by that little stick you got in your pocket that it's actually gone the other way. And you're not wasting a lot of time doing that. So in the same thing, like people, people don't pay attention to when deer p in the snow and uh, bucks will almost always like they tend to urinate when they walk. But at the same time, when they when they urinate, they shoot a hole in the snow. And uh does like if you see the tracks in the snow, Uh, where does go to the bathroom? Uh? It'll the urinill usually be behind Like where the rear hoof prints are because does have to squat to pe usually, So I mean you have if you pay attention to stuff like this, then you'll have a better idea of what you're seeing as far as the tracks, instead of just saying, oh, there's a lot of tracks here, right, that's interesting. That's uh to your point. So many of us run right through the puzzle without even really paying attention to what is there, without reading the clues. And that's one of those things that I certainly have have probably not done a good enough job paying attention to as well. So that's super interesting stuff. Um. So, I guess unless there's something big that you think we've left out on the big woods, I got let me ask that first. Is there anything that we should touch on when it comes to big woods or mountain hunting before we move on to what you're doing in the Midwest, anything you want to make sure that you share we touch Oh yeah, another thing on why people don't kill deer up there? Um, what people doing this happens anywhere. It could be like in Ohio like where you hunt, or you know where a buddy hunts in Michigan or whatever. A lot of people will kill a deer, they'll kill a nice deer, and they'll go back there next year, and then we'll go back there the next year and look back there next year. I've killed a lot of deer in the same places. But at the same time, if I kill a deer in a place, I don't keep going and back there just because I killed a deer there in the past. Like, if I go back there, there's a reason why I'm back there, So don't keep returning to the same place if the sign doesn't warrant you going back there. Yeah, see, because people think, oh, I killed a deer here last year, I'm gonna kill another big buck here this year, and it just doesn't work that way usually. Yeah, it's a great point, right, It comes down to you said it, why why did they kill big buck here? And if the answer to that question as well, because he was randomly chasing a dough or something, well maybe that's not somewhere you're gonna kill buck year after year. But if the answer to that is, well, because this terrain feature funneled him down here, then maybe that is a spot a right. I mean, that's exactly it's asking that question. Yeah, And then I mean another thing I do too is when I killed deer, if it's on the snow, I always backtrack them. Okay, I killed it, the deer is dead there Before I do anything else, I'll follow the tracks backwards. And most people will never take the time to do it because they're so excited that they just killed a deer. If I follow the tracks back where I might find out something that could help me in the future. Um, and then I want to find out where did the deer come from and what was it doing before it got to me. So yeah, and uh, I mean that's another one of those puzzle pieces. You might find another piece of your puzzle even though you think you already put the puzzle together. So it's a little things like that that a lot of people overlook or don't do. And uh, and I think this stuff like that might help me be successful, you know, more often than not. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it. I love that idea to backtracking. I always find myself like wishing, like it would be so cool if you could. Of course, I wouldn't want this to be in the real situation, but it it would be so cool to be able to have a deer that you could like track and see, you know, have a radio collar on her somewhere. If I had a personal access to just see what a deer does during his day. I know some researchers do have that, and I guess maybe I just want to be a researcher and be able to have that, um just to see how how fascinated would be to see how a buck spends his day. You know, we all, you know, almost making assumptions about what I think they're doing and where they're traveling and how they're doing it. But I would love to, like, like if you, once you killed your buck, if you could like press a little button and then it shows, Okay, here's what he's been doing his whole life. I mean, that would be so interesting. And I guess what you're doing backtracking is a real life way to get a little bit of insight into that. So I like that idea. It's entertaining, Yeah for sure, Yes, Yeah, that helps a lot. Which is trickier. It seems like these days we don't get quite quite as much of it. I feel like it did when I was younger. But um, so let's talk about when you made that transition heading out west. We've talked to a number of different hunters over the past couple of years who live in different parts of the country that traveled to the Midwest, And I think there's lots and lots of people like that who have their their week of rut vacation maybe where they're gonna go to their big buck holy Land state, and they've got to fit in all their hopes and dreams into that seven days or whatever it is. You've been able to do this consistently successfully? How do you Let's start at the beginning, how do you start that? How do you even pick, like where you're going to hunt? What's a good because you're doing most is on public land, I think, right, so how do you even begin that? How do you pick? Okay, this is a good public land spot, this isn't or anything like that. But actually, before we make this shift, let's pause briefly to think. Our partners of this podcast episode Mayven Optics and Maybe is a relatively new company creating high end optics like binoculars and spotting scopes for serious outdoor adventures. But they're doing it differently than anyone else out there, and the biggest differentiator is that they only sell direct to the consumer. Through their website, and this allows them to do a couple of things. First, because they don't have a retailer middleman, they can sell these very high end optics at significantly lower prices than the other optics manufacturers out there. And secondly, they're also able to offer a huge amount of customization options for these optics. I'm talking all which different builds and colors and camels and engraving and all sorts of really cool stuff. But what do you really get when upgrading to a high end optic like this? That's what I recently asked Maven co founder Brendan Weaver. Well, I think you know it's a lot of money. You know it's and and I don't mean to downplay that that you know you can you can buy a decent binocular and lomart and that it works for a lot of people. Um, a thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend on something, and so it takes a lot of consideration. And you know, I guess what I tell people is that, yes, if whatever you're doing is is kind of aimed at going out super early staying out late, in the value that you get during those two times of the day. If that's a high value to you, that's when you're gonna see something like what we put out there is that's when you're going to see the difference if you take our stuff out and you line it up against every other brand in the market in the middle of the day, great light, Um, I know what to look for. You know, you can show people the differences in it. Um And granted you're going to see a big difference between something that's super cheap and what we're putting out, but um, it's it's that extra you know, forty five minutes to an hour and sometimes even longer than that, that you can get in a day from using something like a maiden product, because if if you know, you don't get to get out there and hunt all that much um and a lot of stuff happens early and late, and if you can stretch that out for another hour, you know, and let's say that you've got you know, you've carved out your vacation time. You've been looking forward to this hunt for for five years. You put it together with your buddies and you can make use of an extra hour of daylight at day over you know, a week, that's a lot of time, and that's you know, that can be pretty important, and it's you know, there's a there's a there's a chance that you don't want to spend you know, step up from two d fifty to a thousand dollars to make that happen. But I personally, I think it's worth that money to get that kind of performance. And that's what you get, UM. You get you know, you get flawless glass, but you get fantastic low light performance UM when you step up into a glass like ours. I can definitely attest to that. I've been using Maven binoculars for the last two years now, and wow, what you can see in those final mens of daylight is way, way, way different than I used to with my old cheebows. So if you'd like to check out some Maven binoculars for yourself, even build up a sample set, you can go to maven built dot com. That's Maven and then the word built b U i lt dot com. And now back to the show with Todd. I was just asking Todd about how he begins this whole process of finding a spot to hunt on public land in the Midwest. I do a lot of research, UM and another thing is I have a pretty big network of people across the country. Um, you know, I shot competitive archery for thirty years and I met a lot of people across the country, so that usually gives me a relatively safe area to start. Like if I know somebody that lives say I know somebody lives in Michigan or whatever. Then I say, well, how's the hunting near you? And then we talked a little bit, and I'm like, well, if I was coming out there hunting, where do you think a good area of the state would be to go? And you know, they give me their opinion. Then I'll go online. I'll look at it, and uh I'll start looking around a little bit, and then I'll I'll search different hunting forms to see if anybody talks about those places in uh. I guess you'd call me a stalker. Like I don't, I don't say anything. I just read all this stuff, okay. And then if I say, I go like online on a forum and I find somebody I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh, like, actually, I've hunted Colorado the same same place for years in elk hunting, and uh so then this year I was looking at a different area. I just wanted to explore a little bit. And I'm like, holy kyl, there was a guy that's signed on right there in his hometown is the same exact place I'm going. So I just sent the guy, you know, I said, hey, you know, i've hunted out there since and I'm coming out. Do you know anything about this area? I mean, it's just a generic random, you know, question or whatever. And you'd be amazed at how people help you. And as long as I'm not infringing on him, like he's gonna give me information and uh like, I get a lot of information that way. And Okay, for every ten times you do it, you're probably gonna strike out eight times, but then you might just hit that one person that could really help you. Um. Some people aren't willing to help other people are. And I formed lifelong friendships through stuff like that. I know, years ago. I it was in the mid nineties. Maybe I was online and I this person wanted uh information on this special draw unit for elk hunting in Colorado. I had just haunted it the month before, and I knew I wasn't getting drawn for probably four or five more years. So I just typed the guy said, this is my phone number. Give me a call and give you any of the information that you would like. So he he called me up and he said, well, what can you tell me about I said, well, I've haunted it three times, I said, and when I was in there, this is what I learned. And this is where I killed the elk, and this is where I saw a lot elk. This is the place I would avoid. Well, he went in there, he killed a really nice elk, and that he said to me, said, well, he says, if I can ever return the favor, he says, I'll return the favor. And uh, I think it was actually maybe. And in two thousand and six he called me on the phone. We kind of kept in touch set like you know, emails back and forth now and then, but it wasn't It wasn't like a regular contact back and forth. But we did keep in touch. And like two thousand and six, I think he called me and he says, hey, says, uh, I got a place that you can look at hunting out here. He says, I have a little more time now where I can be involved in it. Blah blah blah. And he lived in Kansas, so that's how I started hunting in Kansas, and then when I started going out there, he gave me more and more information. I met more people out there, and one thing led to the next. So that's kind of how I go about finding my places. And then I'll also go through like every almost every state has UH on their website. They have conservation in areas. UM I click on almost every single conservation area and I study everyone and I write down what it has that I like, and then if I find enough the stuff that I like in it that I I set it aside. I'm like, Okay, this one has to get looked at further. So then I'll go down and then I'll come up with say thirty or forty of them, and then I'll just keep on narrowing it down until I find the place I want. So then when I decide where I'm gonna go, I have my place I'm going, but I have no idea how many people are going to be there, So I'm like crossing my finger. It's not gonna be overwhelmed with people. So when I get there, I have a plan. I'm gonna I'm gonna look at this place, that place, in that place, and I'm usually with my father, and neither one or two of my friends. So there's like four of us that travel together. So each of us bites a chunk off and we all go in our own directions, and then we come back and we decide it's worth hunting or it's not worth hunting, and if it's a maybe, then we'll we'll give it an you know, a couple more days or whatever. But if it's a no, then I go to my next place on there, even if it's a three hour drive away. Okay, we're going to the next place. And I won't waste time in some place once I get there that it doesn't show what I wanted to show. And so I don't get sucked into some place that I shouldn't be. And uh, I think that's a secret. You just you have to be willing to move, and you have to be willing to blow a week or two of your vacation. If I come home with nothing, I don't care because I come home with nothing before. And if I come home with nothing, then it's it's a bad trip if I didn't learn anything. But if I learned something that I'm probably going to capitalize on that. And then in the next trip. So I want to I want to take a jump back to something, and then I want to talk a little bit more about those first couple of days of your hunt. But first, you said that you're looking at all these pieces of public claim, like you know, you find it on the state website, and sounds like you're you're looking at maps and stuff. And you mentioned that you're looking for certain good things in these properties, and if the property has enough of the good things, then you're gonna focus on that. What are the things you're looking for? What are those good things that you're trying to key in on to tell you that this property could have potential. One thing that I look for is I'm from the Adirondex, So I'm looking for pieces of land to have a lot of timber on it, which you know, of course sometimes that's hard to find in the Midwest. Uh. Number one, I know if I find timber, it's going to keep a lot of people out of it, because people are afraid of the woods, uh, no matter how big they are. So if I can find acreage that's you know, anything above like a thousand acres of wooded area, then I'll definitely circle that, Like this is a place I need to go because a thousand acres it might not seem much. But if you're in a thousand acres of woods and you've never really hunted woods, you've hunted field edges, stuff like that, it can be really intimidating for the average guy. So I looked of that, and I look for places I can access only by boat. So if I can only get there with a boat, then I'm almost sure it's going to be good. So you know, I do that, whether it's a river, a lake, a stream like whatever it is, So those two things out of the way. UM. I also look for areas that either are closed to hunting. UM. It might be a place around there that has there's no hunting allowed. It might be owned by like a government agency. UM might be owned by say like a church group and they own a big piece of land and there's no hunting allowed on it. Because then I know there's no hunting allowed on it. It works as a sanctuary for deer on the public land, and that's where they're gonna go. Yeah. Um, I look at plat maps to see who owns the land around it, and then I'll research that online. I'll be that silent stalker again and some places. I one place that I found was really good because I knew that this person hunted on their own land and they were a presence in social media, and I'm like, I just found your land and uh, and it bordered public land, and and I had read where they had killed like a hundred ninety engineer on it, and I'm like, there's no way that deer wasn't living on that public land. So I mean, you have to It goes back to the whole thing about you have to be a little more motivated than everybody else. And that's kind of what has led to me being successful. I think, Yeah, I do a lot of that plat books talking too, But I've got a buddy who just takes it to a whole different level. Like he literally knows everyone for like two counties. If you mentioned the last name, He's like, oh, yeah, such and such is over by this street in that street, and I hear there's a there's a co op down the road from there, And I heard that such and such has got the number six book buck in the state. And he knows everything for all the southern Michigan. And I should get together, Yes, yes, there'd be some interesting conversations. Um. Actually, I'll tell you one of the best places I ever found. Let's get it. I was driving. I was driving down the road and my dad and I had a general idea. Somebody told me, go look in this area. And I'm in southern Ohio. So I'm driving along and I'm like, we're driving down this road and I look and there's this guy taking this picture on the barn. He's got his deer heads on a barn and he's taking a picture and he's got his bow, you know, and he's standing. And as soon as we drove by, and I looked and I said to my father, said, turned the freaking car around. I said, that's so, And so I said, I saw him in North American Whitetail last month. And he turned around. And this is on a back road in the middle of nowhere. We're basically kind of lost, even though we know we know where we are, but we don't know how we got there. So we meet this guy, and uh, and we started talking to he introduced himself. In the course. I know who he is, but I you know, I know his name, and I know him from reading about him. But I don't you know, I don't personally know him. So then we talked back and forth and he's and he's saying, oh, yeah, he thinks we're just we're not pretending we're hunters or anything. We're just kind of like, you know, oh, those deer are cool, blah blah. He doesn't know the first thing about us. So anyeah, we got a bunch of information about him. Then it turns out like the picture that he was taken on the bar and that showed up in another bow hunting magazine, and I'm like interesting, And then everything he's talking about in there, I'm like, I know exactly where he killed his deer and it bordered all public land. Wow, that's pretty awesome. There's there's some good stuff down that part of the state, that's for sure. So I mean a lot of it's, like I said, a lot of a lot of things are just luck. I mean, I was lucky to be driving down the road that day and he was there. I would have never known that he lived there because I wasn't doing the old plat mapping down there, because it was just a place I was randomly looking at. So I love it. Sometimes you just gotta be present and out there trying and just sometimes luck will fall into your letting that applies to hunting or finding places down or anything like that. Um, really quick, it's kind of taking a little tangent here. You talked about how one of the things you look for is water, where water keeps people from accessing places. And when we talked earlier this year, you told me about a pretty cool little lightweight canoe I think or kayak or boat that you used to access these spots. What was that? Because that sounds like a tool that a lot of people would would find handy. Back here in New York, a lot of people do like backcountry fishing in ponds where they gotta kit. They have to carry boats for miles into the woods on trails and some of them go, you know, like cross lots with no trails in the boat. They're called Radisson canoes. Um. What they do is they come with tours. You sit in the bottom of the canoe and it's lightweight, it's like pound and U they come with. You can get a shoulder strap for him so you can carry them kind of like a backpack almost and you walk through the woods with them. And these things are great because they're fairly stable. They're not you wouldn't want to be in it if you if you weren't comfortable in a canoe. They're fairly stable and they can get you almost any place that you want to go, and we use them. We usually bring two of them with us. And uh then there were able to get down small streams, were being able to get across big rivers, uh ponds, lakes and but one thing you really have to do is you have to have a life jacket with you. I mean I would never go in the water without a life jacket. How expensive are those? Do you have any idea what they were on? Oh? Shoot, I would say the last I knew they were running between like six and seven bucks, but that that was a long time ago, so I don't know. Um, they make another there's another person up here in the aud Ondecks. It makes a kevlar canoe and those are a little bit more unstable for me. And there are a lot more expensive and they're called hornback canoes and they're made right here in the Adderandecks. Interesting, I was just that I was an ari I last night actually, and they had something called an o Ru kayak. The brand was o O are U. It's hide a spell it And it basically was a kayak or a small canoe that packed up with a back with backpack straps on the back of it, and it packed up into basically I don't know, like about the size of if you were to buy hang on Tree Stand, the box that I hang on Tree Stand comes in, that's basically what this packed down too. And then you could just throw that in your back. That was an interesting idea I saw too. I don't I don't know how much that costs, but having a portable boat like that would seem super superhanded access in these spots. So so fast forward. Let's fast forward back to where you were talking about last. So you've found your different You've got a handful of different public properties you're gonna hunt now, you and your buddies and your dad. You start going out there these first few days, So tell me a how are you hunting those first couple of days? You are you just sitting observation stands? Or do you know, like I want to go right to the best spot, Like, tell me how are you first hunting? And then what do you need to see that either tells you to stay or go to a new spot. We we probably piss off a lot of people because we're kind of like wild Banshee Indians. Uh. We will walk through every single bit of the property, like I'll cover every single bit of it. I mean, I'll walk, I'll zig zag, I'll do everything. And I'm sure people get piste because it's in November. You're on public land, people are on their vacation, and I'm walking all through the woods and we all do the same thing. And what we do is we walk in the first day, We'll try to determine where do we want to go, like where do we want to start on the next day, and then like I'll either market with my gps um like okay, I'll mark the way point and then I'll have it right there and like this will be number one, number two or whatever. And then the next day I'll go back there. We'll all go back to wherever we found and we'll hunt there in the morning and then we'll see what happens in the morning. We'll meet in the afternoon and then we'll come up with another game plan. And like say you're hunting on like a you know, public area that's four thousand acres or something, and it's it's not a bunch of different roads. We'll all go to a different road and we'll all do our thing, and then we'll come back and we'll discuss it, and then we'll make a plan from there. Like my father and I try to cut do what it's called cut areas off. Like if he finds a place and it looks like, uh, you know, two of us can be in one area and we might be able to get a big buck. Say there's big Bucks signing there, and then be like, okay, maybe if two of us are in here fairly close together, then one of us will get a chance. And that's really key to hunting. You need really really good hunting partners. If you don't have the right hunting partners, your your trips can be a disaster. Yeah, Like I mean, you can't care who kills the deer. I don't care who kills the deer, whether it's me, my buddy Doug, my buddy Brian, or my father, I don't care who kills it as long as one of us gets a good deer. Like like right now, I'm getting a lot of the you know a lot of people have found me because I had to do a little self promotion because of my books and stuff. But those three people that hunt with me, my father, Doug, and Brian, I mean, they're just as successful as I am, and without them, I wouldn't be as successful as I am. So it's kind of like a team type thing. Yeah, So when you're out there, what is going to tell you? I guess I still want to know what's the criteria to to stay or go? You know, if you if you guys go out there and you you you're checking out these areas. If you see another hunter or a couple other hunters, is that game over. We gotta try to find a different spot or is it give me some more details on that. It all depends on the area. I mean, like if I go into an area and there are people hunting in there. Like one of my biggest pet peeves when I get to where I'm going and there's somebody parked there and I'm like, oh man, But then I'm like, wow, there's a lot of woods in there. Most people hunt, you know, certain areas all the time. They don't move around. So I'll go in there and I wander around. If the person isn't in an area that I found that I like, I'll stay in there. If they're an area I found that I like, that, I won't go back because I don't think it's fair to them. Even though it's public land, it's not fair to them. So when I'm in there looking around, I usually look for as many scrapes as I can find in a fairly tight area, um, you know, where they're not far apart, and I look for multiple runways that come together, like maybe two, three, four or five runways that all come together around those scrapes, and then I need some thick cover around there someplace you and uh, those are the places that I usually look for. If I find all of that in one place like uh. Usually when I find a place like that, I go back to the camp and I show my buddies and I market on my GPS just so I know where it is. So if they want to go there and I'm not going there, I could just give the way point to them, then they can go find it and I mark on their the killing tree because because usually when I find a spot, I'm almost sure we can kill a good buck there. Yea, So how are you actually hunting a spot like that? Thenice. I think you said that you hunt that first morning, then come back and meet up. But the rest of the hunt, then let's say you find this good spot you set up. Um. You know, do you hunt all day during the run on these trips or do you move around throughout the day? Uh, tell me a little more about that. Yeah, it depends on the day. Um. Throughout my hunting career, no matter where I've been, whether it's been in the Adirondacks, the Midwest, or wherever you're during the season, you're always gonna have one or two days where deer are just going bananas in the woods. Like I mean, there's deer running all over the place. You're seeing bucks. Uh, you know, one after another a day like that, Like when I come across that day and I'll know what it is when it happens. Uh, I'll sit where I am all day. I won't move Um On other days, I base it on the on the activity through the day. If I get to I usually sit until eleven thirty or twelve. If I get to twelve and it's kind of slowing off and there's not a lot going on, I won't really go out of the woods. I'll just move to another spot. So I'm still in the woods, but I've just moved my location. So that way, I'm I'm staying active and I'm I'm just moving around and I'm not like I'm not gonna wear a spot out. I'm just gonna keep on moving and moving moving. So what about trail cameras? Do use trail cameras on these Midwestern trips at all to help you scout these public spots? Oh? Yeah, I used them. And the thing with using them as you just have to be willing to throw a hundred bucks out the door because people are gonna gonna steal. Last year, we found a Last year, Brian and I were walking around in Uh. I saw this really big bucket, was probably like a hundred and sixty inch deer, and it was going away from us, and my father was he didn't feel well, and he was sitting on this like ditch and the deer was going right towards that ditch. And I said to Brian that deer is gonna walk right by my father, And sure enough, it came out into this opening. But then it it sensed something was wrong and it went the other way. So anyhow, we went out and we met my father and uh he decided he was gonna sit in there the next day. Well, on the way to meet him, Brian and I found this incredible scrape and there was a there was a huge, huge rub there. I mean it was as big as my thigh, and so we put a camera on it because it was it was really active, and I was pretty sure it was that deer, even though I wasn't positive. So I'm like, I want to picture of that deer. So we put the camera on there, and then my father we we walked around. My father he found a spot for the next morning, so we're like, okay, next morning comes. I dropped the two of them off there, and then I continued up the road to go to another spot. So I come back to get them and my and Brian says me, you're not gonna believe what happened this morning. I said, what he says, some guy came crashing out of his tree stand with his flashlight, got in your father's face, grabbed his grabbed him by the shirt, asked him what the app for you doing in here? Blah blah blah. You're ruining my whole hunt. And this is an hour before daylight. So and my father is like, what the heck, buddy. So my father just moves, you know, he moves his stand and he goes and he said, someplace else. So we didn't go back in there because we saw the guy's vehicle there. I know what his vehicle looks like now, So I could see it there the next few days and then it cleared out. So my father decided, well, I want to go back in there and hunt again. We'll see what happens because the area was fairly large. So he goes back in there and I told him, I said, when you're down in there, it's probably like five days later. I said, when you're down in there, get that trail camera for me and bring it, you know, bring it out. And he comes out of the car and said, you get my trail camera. He's like, uh, it's not there, So I know who took it. I mean there, there's no doubt about it. And it's like, you know, and then what we do is we have a term for those people, and we we just called them. When you pull into the parking lot and you have somebody like that, it's I hope we don't meet angry man today because you're you're going to get a lot further ahead if you're not angry. Man. Yeah, how do you deal with other hunters out there? I mean, I know some guys that like to, you know, just keep to yourself. I know some guys when they hunt public, they talked to everyone they see, and they kind of try say, Okay, I'm hunting here, you're hunting here, I'll try to daddy your hair. You know, how do you how do you try to manage those interactions to deal with that best? That's really difficult at times. It depends on the other person. To be honest, I'm I'm fairly quiet, but my father is like the mayor. He has to talk to everybody in town, so he he gets all the information we need. And I mean, I talk, but I don't. I don't go out of my way to talk. But if my father sees somebody at tree stand, he'll walk right over to him, talk to him, ask him how long they've hunted there, blah blah blah, you know where you're from. And he's made some really good friendships. Actually, we've made some really good friendships from doing that. But then when you get in the opposite situation, like what I just told you. Like this year, when I was in Colorado, we we one day we decided to hunt someplace different and we had to drive there on an old forest road. So we pulled off this forrest road and I had hunted there before, and I pulled down in there and there's a guy there and it's I don't know, it's like hour and a half before daylight, and he's standing next to his vehicle putting his socks on. So I pulled up and I said, I said, where are you gonna hunt today? And he's like, he starts swearing at me. He's like, you gotta be off and kidding me. Are you really going down in there? I said, it's a huge area in there. I said, I just want to know where you're hunting so I can make sure I can avoid you, because I'm really familiar with this mountain. And then he just teed off on me. And then finally he got in his vehicle, spun the tires in the dirt, and took off. And I'm like, and I said that, I said to Brian afterwards, because Brian, I'm like, was I in the wrong there? I mean, it's public land he doesn't own the land, and I said, I'm not going to interfere with his times. I'm going up with an entirely different drainage than wherever he says he's going. It's not he's not gonna hear me, not gonna see me. He's gonna have no idea where I am. Wow. So every person you deal with is different. It's just like daily life, like if you go to the grocery store. You know, sometimes your cashier is nice, sometimes she's not. I mean, it just depends on who the person is you're dealing with. So true. So back to your hunt. Back to one of these hunts. You're targeting lots of times thick cover with some you know in the cover type scrape areas, lots of different runways coming together. Are you also I mean it sounds like, I mean these types of areas probably are funnels of some type, But are you also keying in on like the traditional Midwestern type funnels to you know, where like the pinched timber between two fields or that kind of stuff, or you're trying to just is that kind of stuff the types of places where you see all these other guys in public and you're trying to get back off at that's exactly where I see all the other people. Like people like to read magazines and do exactly what it says in the magazine, which is conducive to hunting your own land or private land. Like it's it's funny because everybody says, if you'll if you read public land hunting, and you know, I'd be the first one to do this, to say, oh, get as far as way as you can. I've killed two of my biggest box. I could see the road and I could see people walk ng on the road, and uh and everybody said, oh, you can't kill big deer next to the road, and you most certainly can if you do it the right way. And uh so I kind of I don't know. I I use different tactics, but as far as that goes, like being next to the road and stuff like that, Um, if you can find a place where deer across the road, you can usually see their tracks in the dirt right there. Um, most people are going to be right next to a parking lot. And what I do is we'll do well, like what we call it, drop off, drop me off, and I'll run into the woods right there, and the one deer I killed. I was. I was about seventy five yards from the road down down into a gully, and I could see back up into the road like where where the road crusted, where people were walking up there. And I killed a really big ten point, like a hundred and fifty ten pointer, and I could at the time that I killed it, I could see three other people that we're hunting, but they were just standing on the road. That's awesome. Yeah, So I mean you you have to be a little bit creative and you have to be willing to take a chance. So yeah, how aggressive are you in other types of tactics like calling or sense or decoys or any of that kind of extra stuff. Do you do you fool around with anything like that? On these hunts, I usually sit in a tree and I'm pretty quiet because one thing that you're gonna get on public land, no matter where you go, you're going to hear the guy that's over there with his dear bleat and he doesn't stop all day. Like last year, I was hunting a piece of public ground. I climbed in the tree and it was a long walk. I got in there an hour and a half before daylight, and uh and I'm right next to a road by private property. I'm right on the border public road, but or public property and private property. But I can see the road, but I couldn't come in that way because it's private. So about a half hour before it gets light, I can see somebody coming so and they have a flashlight. I turned my flashlight. I'm in the tree and I'm in this row of pine trees. I flashed the light at him twice. And there's two people and they turn their light off, and I don't know what they're doing. I can't see him. It's dark. They're probably a hundred yards away. So then I see one light come on and it starts coming right to me. The guy comes over, climbs up a tree right next to me. He's twenty yards from me, but I can't see him because it's all pine trees. He gets in the tree, it's before it's even daylight, and he starts calling on his grunt call. Then he's rolling his bleak can or I'm like, oh my lord, and I'm I have a little bit of a temper sometimes. Okay, this went on until eleven o'clock, so I'm what is it's like five hours? Yeah, for or five hours and NonStop. It never it never went for more than uh like maybe fifteen minutes. So then finally I I and he knew I was there, but I'm like, okay, I've had off of this. So I coughed really loud, like you know, basically like the shut up cough, and then he's quiet. So then like another ten minutes he starts doing again. And then finally I'm texting my father. I'm like, this guy is driving me f and crazy. So then I couldn't handle and I probably shouldn't have done this, and I don't like admitting I did this, but all my buddies thought it was funny as hell. Finally I couldn't hell anymore, and I yelled shut the f up, and the guy. The guy's twenty yards from me. He climbs down the tree and he kind of like tiptoes out of there, back out through the private ground. And I felt really bad afterwards, but I just couldn't handle it anymore. You were you were the angman that I was. Yeah, so I decided I better not be angry man anymore. So so then anyhow, after the guy leaves, Okay, I had seen a few deer throughout the morning. They were filtering through the area was I was next to the CRP field and I could see deer out through there. Within a half hour of that guy leaving, Uh, bus just started filtering through there. And then I sat there for another hour or two and I saw nine different bucks, but I saw nothing the whole time he was doing that. It was almost like they knew that he left. Wow. Yeah, So that's my story of So speaking of setting up tree stands in the dark and stuff like like like that guy was doing and we climbed up next to you. What's your what's your tree stand set up? You know that you're using for these types of hunt because it sounds like you're moving around a lot and you're kind of setting up on the fly. What do you use? How do you go about doing that in a way that's not messing things up? I? Uh, what I do is no matter where I go, especially if it's a place I've hunted before, I'll find one place and if it, if you can, if it's allowable, I'll put a portable tree stand there and I'll leave it and that's gonna be the spot that I'm going to go back to. You know, fairly regularly. I'll visit it throughout the so I'll leave that there so I'll always have something to go to, you know, it'll be out of the way of other people, where I think is out of the way of other people. And then besides that, I carry a you know, lone wolf sit and climb tree stand and that's what I have on my back and I walk all over with it. When I'm walking through the woods doing the the exploring stuff like that. It's always on my back. So after a few weeks it gets a little bit heavy, but I mean it is what it is. And the only thing that really stinks is sometimes you can't you have to get in a tree instead of the right tree, and it can cost you, but I mean that's the price you pay, and you're on public land, so it's you know, you do what you can. Yeah, yeah, that's that's one of those tricks, is like figuring out the right balance between the right spot versus the right tree and all that. And I mean, how often do you fine tune on a public land hunt like this where you only have a handful a short handful of day? Is like, are you the type that you know you set your stand in this general area, and you like the general area, and you're just gonna put in your time there because eventually something will go right. Or do you tend to air on the side of you know, you hunt that first day and you see the bucks, you see it, you have a good encounter, but the bucks like seventy yards away or something. Are you gonna just hold it out there because eventually something will coming closer? Or do you like to move like right away, to get up close to where you're seeing the action and just keep on adjusting, even if it's only like thirty yards. Yeah, my father and I are a little bit different. Like last year, he was in this one area. He kept seeing this really big buck. He moved three consecutive days, and I told him to leave. I set the tree stand. He moved it three times. I said, leave it alone and sit sit where it is, okay. So then in the end he ended up getting a shot in. Of course I had the bad spot and blah blah blah. But I'm I usually don't move a lot. If I if I sit someplace and deer filtering through there, and I'm and I know I'm in a good spot, like a place where a lot of things come together right there. I'll just wait it out, um, because it's not like I'm hunting in a field where I can see, Okay, they're coming into the field over there, they're coming through the hedgerow right there, So I'll kind of wait it out. And another thing is I don't usually stay in an area too long. I'll hunt there, like one morning. If I don't see any activity there, I'm usually out of there. And then if I go there and there's a lot of activity, i might sit there the next day and I'm like, Okay, I'm done there. So I'll kind of move around a lot, and then like going into it, I'll end up like if I go back there in the future, if it was worth returning, I'll have a lot of spots to return to that I know are are pretty good spots. So that's one of the challenges I have during the rut, is when I find a spot that like should be a good rut spot, or maybe I even know historically it's a good rut spot. You know, there's something to be said for just putting your time in there right and eventually something will come through. But then there's always the the altar earned on the other side of the coin. That's if you're not in the action where it is right now, you could be missing at all. And so, like I always battle with this internal debate of do I just stick it out here long enough and you're here long enough, what happened? Or do I keep moving around until I find that you know the hot spot at that time of the year. How do you how do you make that decision yourself? I mean, how do you know when it's time to go versus one it's time to day. That's that's really that's really easy for me, and I always give people the same exact advice. Uh, I go with my gut. Whatever my gut tells me, That's exactly what I do. And sometimes it go it's against what my mind tells me. Like my mind tells me, like what you just said, this is a good rot spot, I really need to stick it out, But my gut says I can kill a deer around that creek crossing. Something inside me tells me that's the spot to go. I never second guess that that's where I'm going. So it's, uh, it's like I said earlier, I don't overanalyze my gut tells me to do this, and that's exact actually what I'm gonna do. I found myself slowly getting to that point a little more. I think it's something that comes with experience, I imagine for more and more people. And I think as I get more and more experienced, I start I'm beginning to have more faith in my gut. And to your point, I think when you start going that route, I think it's two things. One, your gut is probably right that that quote unquote gut instinct. It's just the accumulation of years and years and years of all this experience kind of informing you subconsciously of you know something. But I also think maybe I'm wrong on this, But when you go with a gut decision, you will inherently have more confidence in what you're doing. Then, because if you followed your gut and you're sitting in the spot where your gut told you you should be, you're gonna feel more confident about that hunt. And I think when you're more confident in where you're sitting in hunt, you're more alert, You're more ready to take advantage of whatever might actually happen. And so I think, I don't know maybe it's a self fulfilling prophecy sometimes where because you believe in it, because you try us to your gut, you actually can make something good happen. Maybe maybe it's just like two percent better chance. But I don't know. Maybe sometimes that's how it takes. That's exactly it. Like, uh, when when my gut tells me to do something, I'm like, I'm I don't know. I might be like a freaking nature, but like everything inside me tells me this is the morning. And if I go into the woods and I'm like I should have said over there, as soon as that thought comes in my head, I'll get out of the tree stand. I don't care if it's been daylight for a half hour, and I'll go to that other spot, Like I don't I don't waste any time. Like as soon as something tells me you shouldn't be here, I go to the other place. And that's something I think a lot of people struggle with. I think, especially on these short trips like that, it's so easy to stay put right. I mean, it's that's the easy the easy out. But I gotta believe that when you I mean, and I've every year I'm in stimlar situation. But when you only have seven days or five days or ten days or whatever to get it done, right, I mean you can't. You can't miss those opportunities. You have to go for it. Yeah, it's I mean you're gonna come up empty handed now and then. But I mean, if you keep gaining experience, then you're gonna learn the places to avoid and the places to go, and like years and years of experience. Like I can look at something and say I don't know about that, and then I put my father there. That's the just in case spot, just in case he might see something there, and uh, then I go to the good spot man how to hunt, and that's what he gets. Now. It's funny, though, we will share stands. Like one year he sat in this stand for five straight days. There was there were a big buck. There was a big buck chasing a dough on the opposite ridge and he could see it, but it would never come down across the ridge over on to his side. And it was over there every day, and he didn't want to move over to that other side. So finally he said of me, says, you come over and sit in my stand, and I'm gonna go down to the bottom of the hill and that thing's gonna come off there someplace. So I'm like, okay, and I've been hunting somebody's else. I went over there, I climbed up sad in the stand. It's a daylight, it got daylight. I'm there for half hour, and at that point I shot the biggest buck that either one of us had ever shot. So whenever he looks at he says, yeah, that's my dear. I said, yeah, but I shot it. Oh man, That's how it goes sometimes. So so we have got to wrap wrap things up, Todd. But I want to get one final thought for me. I guess if you could offer one final piece of advice or one final concept that someone needs to wrap their head around that we haven't talked yet about when it comes to hunting this type of scenario, what would that final wisdom be? Oh, shoe, I have like a zillion things. Um, you can pick any of the zillion. I'll probably get crucified for this, but I'm gonna tell you, don't pay attention to the wind h and don't listen to all the moon and stuff. If you have vacation and you didn't know it when you picked it, and it's during the full moon. I've killed just as many deer in the full moon or half moon, uh as I have any other time. Um. I think a lot of public hunting land, um, dear deer used to you know, surviving. They have to survive. But at the same time, I think a lot of public land has less pressure than private land, as long as you find the right pieces of public land. And what I mean by the wind the wind thing is if you're hunting in in places where you know they are they're wooded, like big mountains like right hunt Adirondacks or in the Midwest where I look for the big timbered patches. Uh. When you set up like there might be those four five runways I was talking about. When you set up there, I mean you might have an idea where you think the deer coming from. But most people take their vacation during the rut in the deer tend to run wild then and they'll come from every direction in the woods. So don't get up in the morning and say, oh, I just that's a really good spot, but I just can't hunt there because of the wind. Because the wind does funny things. Um. I've been in a stand where I knew the wind was bad, like what the wind said on the on the weather app and I'm like, oh, bad wind, bad wind, because it's blowing up into that field. I'm on the edge of the field. But at the same time, I had hunted it enough to know that when the wind was in that direction, it blew up and over the field. So too many people, when they look at the wind report, they think they know exactly what the wind is gonna do, which they do, but they don't know exactly how that that wind reacts in the area that they hunt. So I mean, pay attention, but don't let that ruin your hunt. I think there's something to be said to you know what you were just saying, Like, when you have such a short time span to hunt this area, sometimes you do have to push all the chips in on the right spot. If everything else is right, but the winds a little wrong, you know, it's either you don't hunt the good spot and you never know, or you do throw a hail Mary and you know you're never gonna catch that touchdown if you don't fill the hall marry once in a while exactly. So that's very very interesting thought there, and makes a lot of people. People can crucify me now, I'm sure, I'm sure you'll I'm sure it'll be alright, Todd. So this has been super This has been super interesting. I I enjoy these types of talks where it's it's something that's applicable in lots of different situations. It sounds a lot of things you're doing. They can work all over the country, whether you be in Indiana or Kansas, or Pennsylvania or Vermont or Michigan. Um, I think there's something we can all take away from this. So so thank you, Todd. And if anyone listening wants to check out your books or anything else you've got going on, is there anywhere they can find that online? Oh? Sure, I have a couple of different websites. Uh. My my main website is just my name, Todd Mead dot com. Then I have another website it's called a d K trail cam dot com, which is uh, it's basically a bunch of trailcam pictures from the adderandex And Uh, you can find me on Facebook. I'm on there. It's just my regular name. I don't know what my profile picture is right now. It might be an ELK or something on there. Since there are a number of me in the United States, I got you're probably the only time made standing in the mountains though, yeah, something like that. I hope I am awesome. Well, Todd, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing all this insight and expertise. And as we kind of alluded to earlier, two people should look for um a little bit more from you and some upcoming issues of the magazine, right ah yeah, hopefully, yeah, hopefully the author made me look good. That guy's a real piece of work from what I understand. Borrowing some unfortunate surprise, I think there'll be an interesting story written by me featuring some cool stuff from you and some other guys, So keep anye out for that in a future issue Outdoor Life. And that said, Todd, I guess good luck to rest of the season, and uh and please stay in touch, all right, thanks a lot, and good luck to you and your friends. Thank you, and with that we will wrap this one up. But before we go, we need to thank our partners who have helped make this podcast possible so big thanks to Sick of Gear, Redneck Blinds, Hunter, a Maps, Yetty Cooler's Ozonics, Carbon Express Mayben Optics and the White Tail Institute of North America, and like I mentioned last week, give these guys a shout if you appreciate them helping out with this podcast, or if you end up trying some of their stuff out, let us know we'd love to hear about your experiences. And with all that said, thank you all for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Todd. Good luck in the wools, and as always, stay wired to Hunt m

Save this episode