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 one one, and today we are joined by Will Primos and we're discussing the white tail rout calling strategies for deer hunting the South, and a whole lot more. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Sit to Gear, and today we are in four a treat. Uh not as I'm saying this, I'm thinking like stupid cheesy Halloween jokes, but I'm not gonna make a Halloween joke. We are in for a treat today because we are joined by the one and only Will Promos And uh, Will really really doesn't need any introduction at all, but I'll give a very brief one anyways. Will is the founder of Primos Game Calls. He's the host of Premost Truth About the Hunting, Truth About Hunting TV show, and he's one of the leading voices in the deer hunting community. And today we're actually I actually recorded this interview with Will um a couple of days ago and in that conversation, we talked about the white tail rut. We talked about calling strategies for deer, We talked about hunting white tails in the South, We talked about using train features, the future of deer hunting, all sorts of interesting things like that. And I gotta tell you, Um, since I do know how it all went, I can I can say that I think this one is really good. Uh. Will is just somebody that at least I could listen to talk or tell stories for for just hours. He's a really enjoyable person to to spend some time with. So I think you really enjoy this one. But before we get to our conversation with Will, we need to take our weekly you know, our weekly introbs session pregame show extravaganza. We need to take a few minutes to do that, especially because at this time of the year, what that usually means is that we get to talk about how our hunts have been going. And uh, that's that's the game plan for for tonight, right Dan, that's right. I want to apologize for not being able to make it to the Will premost interview, but I was balls deep in diapers. That sounds like a really a horrible visualization. Yeah, it was. Yeah, we had that. We had to do a funky timing for this one to record it. And and you are super busy these days with the seventeen kids you have, right, Yeah, it feels like seventeen kids. It also feels like I run a prison some days. What are you doing with these kids? Uh? Well, they're the wardens. They tell me what to do basically, and I'm the inmate. I see, I have a lot to learn, I guess. Oh, man, I asked my I asked my uncle one day. I said, hey, man, what's the what's the trick to raising kids? And he said, oh, you just gotta ignore them? And I you know what, I started thinking about that the more the longer I have kids, the more I realized that that is a serious thing you have to at times you have to just ignore them. Yeah. I can see that there's some truth to that, because I mean, shoot, look at someone like look at our generation, the millennials. We got so much attention all the time for everything, and now everyone's so you know, over you. Yeah, everybody's what's the word I'm looking for? And so much entitlement. Everything should be about me? That might be because we didn't get ignored enough. So we need to write that wrong for the next gen. Um. I don't know how I can speak about it since I have no experience at all, but this is what I'm thinking about three months, three months away from being parents. So I tell you what, You're like that person who when when I talk my job to somebody about my kids, they're like, yeah, my kids are crazy too. I'm like, I didn't know you had kids. Ye have my dogs? Yeah, my dogs are they're crazy. Yeah. I think of my dogs as my kids. And I'm just I go, man, shut up, because I wish. I wish I could put my dogs in the base or my kids in the basement, locking them for a day. I can't do that. I just want to say that we do know do We do not condone the places of children in the basement. This is not a recommendation by Dan or is it. Well. I wish I could. I can't. You know you can't when when your son goes to the bathroom on the carpet, you can't hit him with a rolled up newspaper. I wish I could, but I can't. Oh, man, we better, we better move on to something we're better at because we are not good at parenting advice. Although I don't I don't know if we ever said this on the podcast, but you know, you know, we got a review of the podcast on iTunes and somebody actually said that they feel that they're a better parent today because of Dan's advice. So that's that's pretty profound. Dude, You've had an impact. Look for the book. Okay, dear dear, have you been deer hunting in all since we talked last week? Yes? Uh, I went out. I got out Sunday morning and Sunday evening, how to go? Did I tell you what? Um? Sunday morning had a really good uh three year old come through eight pointer. Wouldn't score you know, he wasn't gonna score, um anything major, but head on he looked awesome, like he's that buck that if he snuck up on you, you may shoot him because you look right at his rack. He was about two to three inches outside of his ears on each side, not very tall times, but he had good brows, really good mass um. But so he came out of the c RP. So I saw him for a long time and uh then when he ended up getting close enough for me with I guess you can say considered a pass um. I could tell that his body was definitely not mature, and uh that right there just was like nope. So I just sat down and watched the you know, watched him chase a group full of doz and um, he was kind of bouncing all over the place. And you know, we always talked about seeing cool things in the tree. Stand really quick, I want to share this this really cool thing I noticed. Okay, so this this dough he was chasing had a fawn, and um, it wasn't like running real hard, but he was just kind of trotting after grunting, and she'd run off a little ways, put her head down, run off a little ways. Well, one time he let out a kind of a louder grunt in this fawn like mock charged this three year old buck, like to say, get away from my um, you know, like something like that. It was it was really cool to see. And then he just kind of he took him by surprise, so he kind of jumped a little bit, but then he kind of like he put his head down like just a little bit, and then that that fun took off running. So yeah, the bluff got called. That's that's pretty cool. Yeah, I never I've never seen anything like that before. But and then you know, Sunday night, UM, I went down to one of my best, like my historically good stands. It's basically that the uh, this betting area. And if you remember last year the farm got logged, wasn't it two years ago? Yeah, it could have been two years ago. Maybe it was two years ago. Anyway, whenever, it was, so now all these tree tops are down. There's it's really thick, it's really nasty, and uh, I'm telling you, the deer were packed in there. The dough started coming out. I saw several young bucks kind of chasing, um, chasing the harassing these doughs. UM. And then I heard some crashing kind of coming through the one part of this betting area, and I saw antlers and I saw legs, and he went down into the creek. I put my binos on him. I couldn't really see what he was, but it looked like a bucket had trail camera pictures of a good four year old UM that would would definitely be on the hit list. I couldn't identify him, but I gave him a couple of grunts. He kind of stopped and looked my way behind all the bushes. Um. But then I heard him grunt and take off, and I think I didn't see the dough, but I'm assuming there was a dough that he was kind of going after. So the short of it, that's uh, that was my weekend, dude. Check some trail cameras. I got some dandies that showed up, except they're like ten o'clock at night. So one of them is the buck that I showed you, right, he's still he's still on the same camera. Yeah. And then another buck that matches his size exact same eight like exact same eight point frame, but no split, no split G two wow, so he's a clean eight. Uh. And then the other trail cameras, Man, I haven't checked yet, um, and I won't check them until I actually go hunt that those stand locations in the next two weeks. Cool cool, Well, not a bad day, No, it was a it was a good day. It was like that really crisp crisp morning. The only issue I had was the weather. I don't know if you ever run into this, but the weather Channel or wherever I get my weather from, said we got a south wind, it's gonna turn southwest mid morning. And I got to my tree stand and my my wind was almost straight east with a little bit of south in it, and it wasn't where the deer were coming out. So I figured, hey, I'm just I'm just being aggressive, really overly aggressive with this wind. But typically these deer pile out on a southeast southwest wind, so um, I I let it ride and luckily nothing came through. And when you know, the deer that did come through were like some four corn bucks and they just ignored. I mean, they couldn't smell me. They must have ignored. The ozonics must have been working, you know whatever. So that was my Sunday, man, And you know, I'm now I'm looking forward to uh to you know, Friday and the next two weeks. Man, it's gonna be it's gonna be here before you know it. That's right, Yeah, the rutcation holy Field question mark. Yeah, so that'll be the finale of my update. Let's let's let's start up just after we last talked. Okay, so last time we talked, I had went in for holy Field, went into my ground, went into my box blind and it was infested with bees, so I had hunt somewhere else. The next night, went to another stand in a good spot. The day's going really well. I've got fifteen does out feeding around me with like an hour and forty five minutes of daylight. Still, I'm like, all right, this is it. Like the deer are really moving, they're moving early. This is the kind of night that a mature buck would show. And then like five thirty, like an hour and a half before daylight, while all these deer all around me, all of a sudden, here chainsaw fire up on the neighboring property and all the deer go running out. So that was the end of that night. Hunted the next night, didn't see much um So then after that I got to think, and you know, I've hunted three or four days now in this property. It's not going right, it's not going well. I haven't seen really any really great daylight activity, no daylight activity and trail camera as far as holy Field, and haven't seen any running activity yet. So I thought, you're not gonna give it a break. I'm gonna go down to Ohio for a couple of days. So I bombed down to Ohio hunted for two and a half days down there. UM, I had two good sets of encounters um Sunday nights. I think of Sunday night. UM, I saw two different like three year old's probably the one class UM passed on one of them, the other ones across the valley from maybe cool seeing them cruising, and then UM, then I made a mistake. I did something that I always talked about not doing. What I did here is I did not practice what I preach UM, and I had a reason to do this, but it just proved to be poorly timed. So here's the scenario. I had been sitting this tree stand and midday I had a trail camera about seventy yards away. I want to check. So I go check that trail camera. Check the pictures. It shows one of our big mature shooter Bucks had been at that camera in daylight two nights before and then like five nights before that, UM at six pm both times right around there. It would take a couple of minutes both encounters. Yes, pretty close to the same win that we had that night. So I'm thinking, well, there's a decent chance he might be coming through here again tonight, UM in daylight. The issue is I couldn't see even though it's only seventy yards away. There was a little bit of thick cover in the way, so I couldn't really see that. So if that buck came through there, I wouldn't really know unless he continued in my direction. So I had this idea. I was like, you know what, when sixty five comes around, I'm gonna try a little calling sequence, just because you know that much has been going on. Can't hurt give it a shot. I'm down in Ohio. Um, I'll be a little aggressive. And so the night progresses, and at sixty five rolls around, I decide, all right, I'm gonna do my calling sequence. Now. The thing I usually preach is I don't like to blind call personally. I typically do not call to deer unless I can actually see them. Um, because you know, there's a number of different risks. Now, I know some people blind call and it works for them. It's is maybe I'm overly cautious and conservative, but I worry about spooking deer I don't see. I worry about maybe getting a deer's attention that I don't know's around, and then him coming in from a direction I don't you know I'm not aware of and then him catching moving or something, um, etcetera, etcetera. So six four or five rolls around. I uh, it's very it's kind of windy, so I have to be kind of loud and aggressive with my grunts. They do like a loud grunt, and then I'm like, why not try snort wees? So then I hammer out of snort we's and um, I hear and I spin around and I see a white tail about forty yards away, bounding away from me. And I pulled my binoculars and I see a great big rack on top of this buck's head. Really, so there was this buck that was at least forty yards if not closer, coming towards me, and my assumption with beasts, I hadn't seen them before. Um, now I've been like looking around me and stuff. But you did the pre rattle scan, didn't Yeah, I'm sure I did a scan, but I obviously didn't do a good enough scan even though like where he was, where he ran into and where I'm assuming he was coming from. It's kind of thick, and it was low light. You know, it's only fifteen minutes a daylight left. It was kind of when he said everything's moving. So I did a quick look around, didn't see anything, um, but obviously did not look well enough because he was very close and closing the distance. And then I go and make a loud grunt and a snort weeze when he's maybe thirty five or forty yards away, and um, and then he bounded off. Now I don't know how big he was, you know, because all I could see was a couple of seconds of him going through this brush heading away. UM. And I'm looking at him from behind, and you know, deer always looked bigger than they maybe always they actually are when you see them from behind. Um, but he looked I don't know. And he could have been maybe from one twenties to one forties, I don't know, somewhere in that ballpark. But not a buck that you want to spook would be the moral of that story. But he didn't seem to be too spook because he made a couple of bounds and then he stopped. I saw him stop, and then he kind of just walked off. But um, so do you think he was it was just taken by surprise, or do you think he caught your wind? I think he just got taken by surprise. He did not catch my wind. Um that was rattle. I didn't rattle. I just grunted. Okay, So I don't know, but I don't think you know. I wasn't making any dramatic moves. It was pretty subtilely and I was facing the opposite direction from him. So I think he just got startled by this really loud noise and he was right there, and um, I wasn't feeling it. So that was That was that night. The next morning, hunted a different spot and had a nice nine pointer come in. I think he could have been four. It was kind of hard to see his full body with how tall the brush was. Three or four definitely maybe like a hundred and thirty class nine point, like a really cool, big, kind of curving bladed brow time. Yeah. Um, but I decided to pass on him, but got a cool and Connor get to watch him for a long time, and that was That was a hunt and hunted that night, didn't see anything but a dough and headed back to Michigan. Um, which takes us to last night, which is the question mark incident. Right, I may have had a holy field encounter. Okay, how close was this encounter sixty yards okay, but as it was him, I'm not a positive. I've gone down in confidence since the incident. Like every time I think about I'm like, maybe not. It's like when I first when it first happened, I'm like, I'm sure that was him, and then by the next morning, I'm like, well, maybe sures him. And then tonight I'm like maybe five percent sures him. Um, So why don't you just tell, like describe the encounter. Yeah, So here's what happened. Some hunting in UM. One of my favorite sets has been there for a long time. It's been traditionally good spot to be this time of year. A little like quarter and a half acre food plot UM chucked in between on one side is a really good betting area and the other side is the narrow strip of horn that comes down, and then another good betting area just on the other side of that, and um some sitting there. It's like four thirty or four or forty five was pretty early in the evening UM and two doors that come into the food plot, and the way my wind was blowing, I was just cutting the corner of the food plot with my wind, like so if the deer were in the food plot, they couldn't catch my wind, but if they happened to go on the one very far bottom corner of it, they would possibly be in my wind. Well, these two deer went there, of course, and um, so they're right down wind of me and they're just standing there. Fortunately, with all my sun control stuff everything I'm doing, they didn't win me. But they knew something was up. So they're standing there and there there's their noses in the air. They're looking their nose trying to figure out what's going on. So I'm looking at them, and then I'm like, oh, they're gonna blow, or they're gonna blow, or they're gonna blow. And then I just happened to catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. So I turned my head, looked to the left and across the food plot, maybe five yards inside of the timber, and it's it's very thick across this across the food plot, inside the timber, I see a big buck like walking right towards me, like he's gonna come into the food plot. I'm like, holy crap, And like in the had like a second and a half where I'm looking at him and like my mindset, that's Holy Field, like the basic frame. I was like, that's him. There's no other I mean, there's no other Bucks big Bucks in the area but him, and like that's him. And he's walking right and he's like five yards away from the food plot, aimed right at me. So now I need to get my bow before he gets in the plot. And you know, I can't move, so I I spin slowly, grabbed the bow, and as I start to spin back, I'm looking. I'm looking at him again, but now instuff coming to the food plot. He's turned and he's parallel in the food plot, and I get like another two seconds of looking at him, and then he gets behind this thick cover and literally lets it. So I had like a second and a half when I saw him coming in, turning at the bow, and then by the time I turned back, I've got like two more seconds of a glimpse, and I remember the thing I was trying to figure out. The thing I was trying to confirm is whether his main beams curved up or curved down. Because there is a two and a half year old buck that I've been calling droopy that is like a mini me of holy Field in a lot of ways, like what he like what holy Field looked like two years ago, except for his beams angled down at the end instead of curving up. So I've seen this buck in the past and like, oh, crap, is the holy Field like for a split second, and then you're like, oh no, it's not. Smaller beams go down. But so in this instance, I was trying to see as he's going through the cover, that's what I remember looking at. And I feel like in my head I remember seeing curved up. So that's why I feel pretty confident with him. But because it such a brief encounter, I don't know. And so he gets behind this thick cover and so my next thought I got, I needed grunt to I need to call him in. So I grabbed my grunt tube, and then I remember those two doughs and I ain't look over and again those two doughs are still standing at twenty five or thirty yards or whatever, with their noses in the air, still trying to figure things out. And I realized, if I make a grunt right now, if I make some noise, that's gonna spook these deer out. Of here, like they're gonna freak because they're already kind of on edge. And then if they hear a loud noise and twenty yards away, um, I'm gonna blow those does out. So I can't grunt, I can't make a call. So now I'm just hoping that they don't blow and that he is just coming in from a different angle and going to come into the plot. Well, he never did come into the plot and I could never get eyes on him again. I thought he would walk across the clearing in the brush and I'd be able to see him again, but he never did. And I scoured, I scoured and scoured it. That was it. That was the encounter. I mean like three four seconds, um, and he just disappeared like the ghost he is. Um. And that was it. And then I saw I did see Now, this is another thing that made me wonder. Um. Like an hour and a half later, I did see Drewpie. I saw his mini me chasing does. Now he came from a different direction. He came from the totally opposite side. But I did see Drew Pe later that night. Um. And then this morning I saw Drew by again bumping around. He's all over the place. Um, I saw six bucks Curison around this morning, but no sign of holy Field. But I do have news related to holy Field. Still. This is new, even from when we started this podcast recording. I have a picture on my cell camera that just came through of holy Field in my food plot about minutes ago. So he's there right now. He's there right now. Dude, dude, that guy is gonna tease the ship out of you and he's gonna prevent Oh man, this you know, you know how I was obsessed with this butt called shipwreck, and like you're kind of getting to that point now where you want to kill him so bad that you're like you almost have blinders on. Yes, I can't really like enjoy what's going on in Ohio or think about other things. That really has become an obsession, that is, because you know, I wouldn't. You know, you're getting ready to potentially head out to North Dakota to hunt as well, and you you don't even know if you're gonna go now or not, because it's like this entire season revolving around one deer. Yeah, And that's that's exactly the issues that I wanted. I've got this North Dakota tag. I want to use it, but like we talked about earlier today, unless I kill holy Field, I just don't. I can't leave. I can't. I need to be local. I need to be here to take advantage of something if something comes up. So yeah, it's uh, it is all consuming. It's kind of um, it's quite an adventure. He's been frustrating this year. He has not shown himself in daylight yet. So, UM, ho's gonna change, man, That's gonna change hopefully soon. Yeah. So just crossing all my fingers and toes, trying to be smart about it. Um, trying to be careful but aggressive when I should be. Um, tomorrow, I've got a horrible wind for hunting this property, and I sat all tonight like trying to think, how can I hunt? How can I hunt with this wind? And UM, I ended up deciding I'm not going to hunt it at all. I'm gonna go and run and guns some random public land rather than force the issue on a day that tomorrow it's gonna be sixty degrees, it's gonna be warm, and it's gonna be storming all day. Like, I don't need to push it on a bad wind. With those kind of conditions, UM, I'm gonna get let the proper take a day off and then um then get back after him when this another little cold front comes through. I've got good winds and and um, hopefully the cards will finally be in my favor. So I'm pulling for you. But well, I appreciate man, I appreciate everyone. I gotta say, it's been kind of cool. Um, so much support from our audience, from from all you guys listening and following along on social media and and all the different things that we're doing. So many people wishing me luck, sending words and support, talking about how they're following along. That's that's awesome. I appreciate that it's keeping me going strong, keeping me on point, and hopefully I will be able to have good news here soon. But but for anybody who's been listening and they don't care about us at all, all they've wanted to hear is about Will Primos, I apologize that our rambling has gone on on for so long, but you now know a little bit about about my my hunt for holy Field and Dan's kids. So so next week will be an exciting podcast because Dan, you will be in the middle of your rutcation and I will be hopefully doing some exciting things, so we'll have some good stories to share next week. UM. So for now, I say, let's let's let's stop our stories, let's pause to thank our partners that sit a gear, and then let's get Will Primost on the line. For this week's sick of story, we're joined by Jim Caesar, who tells us why his twenty seventeen archery season has been the most unique one yet. This here for the Louisiana two thousand seventeen archery season. I decided to make a big change to my arsenal, and that change being traditional archery gear along with or sick of gear. Um, this has been rather rather different for me. I was in for a lot more streets whenever I made six. Um, I've literally every time I've gone to the stand not five minutes later there I heard. I heard of wild hawks that comes out every time, no matter at the time of the day. I can go into the stand at like twelve o'clock and I kid you not by toils oh five there will be takes coming in. And um, I've managed to get I've managed to harvards for hawks so far using traditional gear, and um, it's just it's just an amazing feeling being able to go out in the stand and almost knowing on public land that you're gonna have opportunity at an animal and it just makes it that much better. And um, it's just it's just awesome public land. As many knows, it's very it's very hard hunting. Uh, it can be very rewarding, and sometimes you know it's just you get the wrong end of the deal and you just go out and nothing happens. But this year, I can only say it makes me look forward to what's what's to come. On Jims hunts, he's been wearing sick as an equinox system. If you'd like to create the sikest story of your own, or to learn more about SICK technical hunting apparel, visit Sitka gear dot com. Alright with us now on the line is Will Primost. Welcome to show. Well, thank you, Mark, glad to be with y'all. Absolutely, this is what I've been looking forward to since we're able to line it up. And I gotta ask you right out right out the gate, how is your hunting season going so far? Well, we start earlier because we chase so many elk, we usually are gone for about a month to six weeks depending uh. And this year we started out in early September and went back when the guys went back for rifle season in early October. But so that starts to hunt seasons. It was a great elk season. Um. We just we love the West. We we love that world and get to meet a lot of different people out there and get to see new places done white tails and the drainages and so forth. So I like the aspect of the two. Um. But we had a great, great season. And then deer season has gotten kicked off pretty good. I hunted last week before last and I did not get a shot. I had to deer that they were a little bit there were. One of them was two hundred and two hundred twenty five yards and wait and one of them was fouring in twenty seven yards. Routs Honey an old river bed uh that used to be the Mississippi River until it switched courses. So it's a wide open area that has a slight slow going through it with very little trees growing in it. There's a lot of just just water vegetations and so forth where the river used to be. But anyway we had we could see a long way from where we were sitting in a willow tree back from it a little bit. One of the deer was foarder in twenty seven yards and they were both fully mature. I couldn't decide if they were fouring a half or five and a half. Um. Both of them were fine, fine bucks. But of course that was way too far from my boat. And Kara man said, why didn't you shoot it one of those deer? I said, Man, I didn't want to show off. So so are you hunting locally over the coming weeks? For are you traveling anywhere else to do some mark? All these years, I've traveled the Midwest and gone everywhere from Montana out of home, you know, hunting, hunting white tails. I'll with Kansas, Nebraska, Texas. And I'm sixty five years old, and I'm real healthy and strong or exercise and good. But I've just gotten to where I don't like to travel. And I love the deep South white tail hunt, and I love what we call these just big old swamp doggies that are so hard to figure out. You don't have the noticeable funnels and things like that that you do in the Midwest. So I we're sticking close and we lease eleven thousand acres on the Mississippi River, and it is in the corner of where Louisiana meets Arkansas, so North Louisiana and South Arkansas. And then the Mississippi River changed courses, so there's an island called Sarah Island. It's not an actual island unless the water's way up. And so we have laying in all three states. We have all three licenses, and that's where we produced the premost show. Primarily there's every once while we'll go somewhere else in this area, but that is primarily where we do all of our white tail honey. So that's where we were hunting. And then last week they went back. I did not go last week. And Troy Roue is who's part of the team on our show. He killed two nice bucks, one with his bow and one with a with a crossbow with Matthew said a new cross with three in treble and he he used it um in Mississippi, so he got two nice books. Brad Ferris kills the doe. Uh. He's part of our team and haven't been a part of our team for a long long time. So they're headed back over there today and they'll be here this week. And I'm taking a couple of days off for one to be with you and your your guest on your show. Well, we certainly appreciate that. And uh, I want to talk about this topic of hunting in the Deep South, and you know how different it is than the Midwest, like you mentioned. But I guess before that I would be I would be remiss if I didn't at least gets you to tell us a little bit of your history, will because I'm sure most people today are familiar with who you are and what you've done with primost and everything, but maybe they don't know how that all happened. Could you give us, like the cliff Notes version of how this all came to be? Sure? Well a slatter you say it knows everybody knows who I am or whatever. I don't know if that's the truth. But we have been doing this for forty one years. I started in nineteen seventy six. I was born here in the Jackson, Mississippi area, UH, to very extended large family. Grandfather's grandparents, both sides, uncles, and they all hunted and uh hunt in the Mississippi Delta for in flooded timber for ducks. And we grew up one of a small farm and my family was in the restaurant business and Jackson and this little small farm. We had a little lake and I had all the small game you could chase a stick with, you know. So that's how I grew up. And I loved it, and I loved fishing. I had a little red rider wagon that I'd fill up with brim and bring him to the house and and go to scale up. I love fright hole. So anyway, that was kind of my life. And uh I just I just loved it. So I started making turkey calls early on, and people liked them a lot. They were different. And one thing that did another. I got out of college, you went to work with the family, have a business degree, and I started this little company on the side I called the premost Yelpers a yelper y e l p r. A yelper is a turkey mouth call. And uh so I started doing that and going to shows and I'd just sell out that go home and make more. And one thing led to another and for all and I said, did come and I got I think I had by that time, I had twelve or fifteen products and thanks for going great. And it was a timing deal. I couldn't do anything. I don't think you could do it today. Packaging so much more sophisticated in the digital world of doing businesses so much more sophisticated. You really, I've tapped some startup funds to get it going, but at any rate, UM things grew and grew, and in nineteen in two thousand and six, UM Jimmy Primos and my cousin had come in to help me run the place. He was the chief operating officer. We had seven vice presidents that ran different departments within the company. At that time we had about a hundred and sixty employees I think it was. But we sold to a private equity firm out of Chicago and UM then we I stayed owned as as on the head of it and Jimmy was the chief operating officer and all the executives stay and we grew it, doubled it and sold it to Bush nil Um in two thousand and twelves and then in two thousand and thirteen a t K which was Applied Tech Systems UM, which is a publicly traded company that owned Federal Premium and c c I as well as a lot of other outdoor brands as well as they were in the business of putting rockets into orbit. Uh. They bought Bushnell, so we became a part of that family. And then a p K split and they made a publicly traded separate UM UH outdoor sporting products division and the rocket business putting rockets into orbit and government contract side of things went to a company called Orbital so v I s t A. This that was born. We are part of the just the brand of products now UH. Premos Actually the guy who came to Primos from South Carolina, Mike Powell, actually runs Primos on a day to day basis. Now I'm still there, um anytime. I want to be in New days every day. But um so it's Jimmy, but he actually runs Primos. Mike Powell does, and he also We also own and run gold Tip arrows, be stinger stabilizers, Final Approach decoys, and waterfoil products, UH, double bulllines, UH promos and bushneail cameras are all under Mike's watch and our watch. So we're developing those products and putting new products out the other full new product development team and so forth. So that brings us kind of to today and where we are now. My main role is the public relations role, being in advertisers, being on UH camera hunting representing the company UH Premos Truth about Hunting on on the Outdoor channel started and it rates every month between one in five and the last three months, it's been number one on the Outdoor channel as far as outdoor proven programming goes. So we're proud of that, but we're kind of amazed by it, um because we've been there so long and it's easy to get stale. We got stale at one time and didn't do as well and that's kind of come around. But we love whitetail honey. Um. We do it and we live and breathe it year around. UM. So maybe that's a little more than you wanted to. That kind of gets you up to speed to where we are. No, it's it's it's an incredible story and I just can't I can't imagine, Well, could could you have imagined when you were first making those premost yelpers that that you know so many years later you would be standing here today, you know, working with all of these brands and um, you know in such a different place. It's it's an incredible journey. I have to imagine. Yeah, it is an incredible journey. And you bring a huge smile to my face. And you're asking that question because I can remember those early days and I can remember the struggles and the sacrifices. Um, it's quite amazing, uh to be where we are. But can I did I imagine it? Imagine having a strong vibral uh game car company? That for sure. And somebody said to me one time, don't ever underestimate passion. And somebody asked, uh, it was It was talking about Charles Crault and how many of right listen to know who Charles Carrault was. But he was on the road as CBS for years. And they asked the cameraman, who's still living? They worked with Charles Carrault when he was on the road. They said, did why did people try to call Charles Carroult out of doing this? To them? You had the idea, Um, why why did why did they try to talk you about that? Because that's a known thing that people that CBS didn't believe that this on the road show would work. And the guy said, well, I guess he knew something they didn't know, So you know, you know what you know. But for those of us who are passionate about a product or about a product lad or an ideal, um, you know, that's that's something to be reckoned with. UH. And there's many great business principles. Have a major in business, and I love business, and I guess all that kind of came together to to help us channel that passion into something that we truly loved. UH. And to be aboul to have the energy uh to do it, to run a business and hunt that it takes a lot, Like we're serious about it, So it takes a lot. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think this this idea of of having that passionate and how you can use that passion to be successful in business, that that perfectly translates to the woods as well, because I think if you look at some of those core you know, common threads that run between you know, those people who maybe are the most consistently successful hunters, they all have that shared passion UM no doubt they do think. And I will say this about those consistent hunters that consistently killing mature big white tales on a regular basis, year in year out, done it for years. There's many of them out there, and I love those guys. But there's there's one thing that they do that the average guy doesn't do, and that is that they respect the white tail. Most everyday weekend hunters that want to be successful do not respect the white tail enough. His nose and his ears are absolutely incredible. And you can't you can't just be blasting up in the woods and expect one of these big guys to give himself up. They just say, gonna happen. Very true. So so when you say respect the white tail, it sounds like we're talking about just really respecting and understanding and accounting for just how wary and and and what survival experts mature bucks are right. Is there is there anything more? Well, you know that you can get down to that. You can break it down into all aspects of entering the woods, being in the woods, leaving the woods. All that adds to not letting them know you're there, because you can't let them know you're there. Um and and it kind of goes like this, you cannot hunt a white tail where he is now that one exception is that is that if he's bedded and you've got the window and him and you're able to see him or see his horns in the field or see RP field or whatever it's stalking and get within bow range and he shoot. And I'm talking about bow hunt here. But you can't typically hunt a white tail where he is. You've got a hunting where he's gonna be, and you've got to get to where he's gonna be without him ever knowing you're there or detecting you while he comes. So that hope that answers which you're trying to get at it in respecting the white terricles, they truly are. And I think it was um ah, gosh, my mind just went black. One of the guys, Uh, they had early October white Tails video that back in the um back in eight yeahs. I believe one of them said. I think it was very um that he said, when all said and done, there's no living, very few living creatures on earth, the third to the last will be a white tail, the second to the last will be a kind of and the last will be a roach. And just it just tells you how incredible those three animals are um because they are survivalist. And to understand the white tail and what he needs and to make him happy by me and happy what relaxes him, and that's cover and that's being able to enter that cover and get and leave that cover undetected. Uh. Understanding his food sources, Understanding how he goes about his daily activities. It's all. It's all an incredible puzzle. Yes, And I think that's what draws us back to a year after year after year. Um. Now, now, speaking of all of these things that make a white tail such a survival expert, how does a Southern white tail differ than maybe the ones that you see on TV most of the time up in the Midwest, um or or like where I'm in Ohio right now, or wherever that may be. Yeah, were years ago Miles Keller came down here to hunt with a friend of mine, and he looked at this forest. He was hunting in the hills south of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which is not far from Mississippi. But they're called Lowest Hills l O E s s ATLA. But that's when blown dirt win long dust that made the hills south of Vicksburg and he got there and he looked at this and he goes, oh, my gosh, how do you ever kill a white tail? Because it's tens of thousands of acres of woods, there's no funnels, there's no big plateau, grasslands, plateau tops and in a bench that leads down a drainage that allowed this show that that's the funnels. Have a hunted those that country, that that Midwest country, And oh how much fun it is to find one of those funnels. Oh my gosh. You know, you just have to be the biggest problem with those is is you're gonna see us. You can see bucks, you can see that, you're probably gonna see some deer, and you've got to let the little ones go if you want to kill a big one, because when those three and a half year a hundred each deer come by, you're going, oh, that's the biggest jeer I've ever had a chance to shoot that. I ain't fasten that up. But if you if you will know and behold, you know, booners might come by, you know. So so the so honey in the South. You Brad Ferris, who's ran the Primos TV and video department for years and still is part of the show. Um he he is incredible at being to look at that kind of country and figure it out. We call them buck lines. The buck lines vegetate in different stuff can be a funnel to a white tail in this part of the country. And you're hunting food sources a lot this time of year. You've got for simmons, You've got honey locusts. Um. These are some of the foods. And then we have native pecans. Native pecan is about two or three times as big as the small name along your little finger. They're real little, they're full of oil, and they are the redwood to me. They are the redwood of the Mississippi River, as the redwood is to California. They are huge, and when they get to be eight years old, there's bigger runners to pick up truck, and so tall and straight. It's just incredible and they're unbelievable producers of math. The number of the cons in those trees is crazy. So we had a big wind storm come by last week and it just on the river. There's just but the dominant tree is the native pecan, and so there's just mass on the ground everywhere and it really changes the hattern because they don't have to go very far to get food. Um the water sources, you've got the river they can feed in, You've got slews. So it's really hard to hunt water sources. So you've got to find out where the thick areas are and you make some of those. You know in time and why you're why you're dealing with your property. But they're gonna be in those stick areas, and we like to go in and provide a way to hunt them. Like we'll go in there and we'll make a thick area, like say a three to five acre, I mean a cut over, and we keep it that way. We're going there and hacking squirt and poison to keep it. We don't want it growing back up in big trees. And we but for the dominant wind that we have, which is going to be a southerly or northerly in nature, but southerly when the southern flows are coming out of the Gulf and northerly northwest where the winds are coming in from the north as came through like just happened. We're gonna go in there. We're gonna make a small food plot usually in an hour, last eight and we're going to grind the stumps and we're gonna make that food plot, and it's gonna have a lot of cover next to it except for where we enter on the down wind side, and you gotta enter from the down on one side. You can't come in from the other direction or they're gonna smell you. They may get up and leave, or they may just lay there. They just they know you're there. A white tail can tell by smelling you how close you are, whether you're twenty yards away or whether you're fifty yards away or a quarter mile away. They they it's intensity and they they're that they're that good at it um. So we build that to enable us to hunt a food source for early season. And then you typically know what we call regions, believe it or not. We've got ridges on the Mississippi River, some of them maybe six inches elevation in height. And I remember the first time a guy from up up there came up in your part of the country, came home with me at my farm, and I would saying, we just walk into you to you get to see the ridge. I wasn't thinking, you know, I said, what do you see the ridge? Then walk down the ridge and you'll see the stand right there on the edge of the ridge. And so I came back, he said, I finally found the stand in an hour after it got daylight. I said, dude, what and because there was no ridge. So I walked him in there and showed thee says, this is a ridge. It's really it's a six inch elevation, and the deer will walk that. It may be ten yards ride or twenty yards ride. Is how the river, the Misissippi River and the missipilivial floodplains before the levees were built on the Minissippi River and all that came in and move the water and built up sediment and caused these depressions flews or oxbow lakes off of other rivers or ridges, and you learn, you learn the finite details. And a Southern hunter can more quickly find the nuances of the stuff in the Midwest, I think, because when we go we're looking at it with a different attitude. We're not looking for what the big blinking neon light. We're looking for those teeny tiny subtle sounds, subtle sites and terrain features that uh, we'll guide a light tell to what we call it trade. We we would develop in I will we least land for quite a few years and we had I don't know we had three or four. We called them killing trees and we can never moved to sand they were killing trees. I'm sure you've got some of those in your part of world. Can you elaborate a little bit on for the for the southern deer hunter, those those nu ones, little features or whatever it might be, whether it's terrain or cover or or something else. Can you elaborate some of those things that you found do funnel deer or or help you better choose where understand where these deer might be moving. In general, deer are lazy um. When they're moving, they relax and moving and so to get down on their chest and go under something like bob war fence. If they're entering a field or something that I mean, they'll do that. But if they're just walking through the woods, they're not typically going to do that. So you're looking for treetops and you're looking for the wind may have come down and blown down several trees, and you start paying attention to how that forms, so to speak, a fence. Um jack fences in the Midwest for us were a big guide them for deer. UH jack fence is UH fence has put up typically because the ground has got too much rocks in and you can't put a post in the ground. You don't want to use t posts as you can be difficult. So they're they're leaning fences made out of saplings as big as your calf, say, or maybe a touch bigger, and they're they're forming a uh tepe look. And then you have cross members that keep cattle or livestock or whatever in a certain area, horses uh and so these are great guiders guiding guidance to the white tails. And we would look at those got determine how the deer were traveling. Then of course you find their trails that they're using them a lot. But in the South, you're looking for tree tops, you're looking for kane thicket, you're looking for buck vines um, You're you're looking for stuff that's so thick that a deer can stay hidden until he gets to an open area. So you start walking the edge of that thick stuff. It could be Johnson grass, it could be gold and rod um. I mean that's some of the stuff would be six eight feet tall if you cannot see the deer in there, and you can't see him until he gets to the open spots. So you you go to the open spot and you you you walk it looking for any trails where they may be repetitively using a trail to get to the masteres or or to an agricultural area or to a water a watering area. You just kind of really pay attention and not look for the obvious, look for the things that aren't obvious. You mentioned buck vines, can what's water buck vines? Maybe I'm just ignorant because I haven't been down in that part of the country. Yeah. Yeah. Buck vines may be as big as your wrists. And they will grow on these big huge pecans and and on sycamores and cottonwoods down in the south along the river and other places, and you get so many of them. They're like a tangle um and they and then they come loose from the tree and you can imagine Tarzan swinging from trigger tree on them. It's kind of what they look like. But they can form a a wall of sorts in the woods, and it might not be more than a fifty yard wall or a twenty yard wall, but they will hit that and go down it and then go to the net. And so you're looking for things like that that help you determine the movement of a white tail. And then hunting a place in the rut is another deal. They're typically rut um and they'll show up in an area that typically you wouldn't see him, and all of a sudden, dagn he showed up last November this time, and here he is again, where is he being? We don't have him on camera. We had nobody seen him though. I think they're just not turnal as I'll get out um and living in thick areas, and they move at night until it gets closer to the rug speaking of speaking of of trail cameras and and you know sometimes figure out these bucks might be nocturnal and trying to figure them out, um, you know in the Midwest, when you know, typically we're trying to pattern a buck or something, right, it's these kind of stereotypical usual ways of guys do it. They get they got a trail camera on a scrape, on a field edge or on a food plot, and they just figure outously coming from this block of timber or that block of timber or whatever it might be. UM, it seems like it must be a lot more difficult to try to pattern a mature buck in your neck of the woods, given the diversity and terrain and cover the extent of cover. Um, are you are you using kind of similar tactics with trail cameras and and basically you know, patterning him off of that those types of things or is there something different you guys are doing. Yes, you can now. Uh. Summer salt licks have been a real plus for us. UM. They use them so regularly, and then you start getting the pictures these velvet books. UM. One deer in particular, I'm thinking about. UM. We named him Eric, after a friend of mine who was actually publisher of alcohol Life Feel the Stream at the time. He was the first person to ever see Eric on the hoof. We had pictures of him, but we've never seen on the hoof. And he was a three and a half row. But he was a hundred sixty three and a half year old. And this this is really really really that's an estimate. I don't no idea that p he was. He might have been one. He was only fixt the class dear, and he was he was just a great eight point um. So he was on my farm. I sold my farm, and my farm was very large, and he moved a mile away and we didn't know it. We were hunting another spot and he came out of a planted c RP field which was very, very thick. We had taken a cotton field and put it back into c RP and he walked out about a hundred yards way down the lane. We were looking down. We were bow hunting, and he walked out and we had a dough that had already come out from where he was, and he was fixing the walk right in front office. And when he stepped out, we went, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna have to make a decision to kill him or not because he's three and a half. And he turned him with the other way, and so then we got to thinking, my gosh, he's a min from where he was. He's no, he's We wondered what happened to him, So we started putting up trail cameras and we got pictures of him. We decided to pass on him. The next summer we start. We put on a salt lick that was was outside the ce R P field, but not more than by fift yards in the big Woods. We put a trail camera on that salt lid and started getting pictures of him there regularly. And I'm estimating he's a hundred and seventy eight five inch deer this year in velvet. I mean he's he's a nine point he's gotta split brow and um, he's just massive. A matter of fact, you can you can see that hunt. It's on YouTube somewhere. You go to I think you go to, um Mrs will Primos p R I m os Will Primos Mississippi pig Buck. Why we titled it that, I don't know why I get more views, but anymore, you can actually see the actual because it's on video. So we figured he was living in the c RP field and we had to have uh a wind that had some north and uh some east to flight bit of east in it to be able to hunt him there. Firm memory correct, that's a meant a while. Um. At any rate, we got on the edge of that field and we got about a hundred yards from the salt lick, and he was coming through there, moving from the one going to the salt lick. Anymore but we had pictures of him on the edge of that CRP field, coming out of it, moving through right at dusk, and he showed up and he was out in front of us, and he I couldn't I couldn't believe it. And then he turned around like he's like he's like he smells something or he thought of something, and he turned around. I'm sorry. The wind was northwest and the northwest, remember now, and he turned around and headed in a southwest direction, like you know. And I was just like deflated, and there's an opportunity. We hadn't talked about it yet. But Colin, So the cameraman was Johnny st. Clair's the guy who ran the farm from a great guy. He's running the camera. I'm honey, and he could still see his horns and he's higher than me because he's gonna staying higher than me. And I couldn't see and he could still see the tops of his horns and he's his college and Colton and so I got out of my can and man, man beleeve it and he said he stopped. Run at him, run in, you know. So I grunted at him and he said, he's not moving. So I weezed at him, and it wasn't very long at all. I thought he was gone. He won't coming. All of a sudden he's in front office and I was able to kill him. And if he wasn't for the cameras, and we we actually had like eight cameras surrounding where we thought he was living. But we wouldn't go into that that crp field. Of course. Um, but you it's that's a good example of you cannot go into what people call their core area. You gotta let it be there and let him be happy. Don't go to that area if the winds at your back, never let him know you're even looking for it, and put out those cameras and then use that surveillance to kind of tell you where to place your stand. Of course, everything what makes what makes it so cool is every one of these things is different. Every white till is different, every hunt is different, every scenario is different, Every terrain, landscape, the habitat, the thickness of it, the openness of it, all of that's different. And so you have to take all that information and start trying to put your puzzle together. But the big thing is is to respect them. Do not let him know you exist, you do that and you're changing the game. All right, Let's take a quick break here for a word from our partners at white Tail Properties. This week with the white Tail Properties, we are joined by Jason Ziegler, a land specialist in the Minnesota, and Jason is going to be talking to us about how to hunt an active farm during the un Well. One of the biggest things is is timing. You know, a lot of a lot of times the farmers are in the fields harvesting the corn at either the peak of the pre rut er right at the beginning of the rut, and that can really trigger deer movement inside of the timber. You gotta figure a lot of the deer that are living on these farms are going to add fields, specifically standing corn that's great cover form, and the farm results are taking them off. You want to be in the woods to catch some of that rutting activity. You're driving all over the deer now into the specific area versus a vast flat land of corn. So that's one of the things that I trigger on is get inside the timber, hunt the ridges, hunt the points and the fingers. The majority that they are going to be in that timber and coinciding with the rut, perfect timing to maybe catch that bruiser buck that you've been looking for on a doll moving back and forth between what the farmers are doing and what you're doing. So that's one of the biggest things, is the key in on the timber and get out there while they're harvesting the corn. I know, the key factor is to look at your food plots. Your food plots are gonna light up like a Christmas tree once the farmer gets the egg ground off or their crops off the fields. Those foods, those they are gonna really key on those food plots. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Jason currently has listed for sale, visit white Tail properties dot com. Backslash Ziegler It's z I E G L E R. Now yeah. Now, now there's one exception to that rule, though, I think, which is when you are doing what you just mentioned there, which is calling to them. So you do want them to know you're there, but you just want him to think of something different. Right, You're trying, you're trying to kill him, and you've got him there, no doubt. Example, I'm talking that, don't let him know you're there while you're scouting. Yeah, yeah, and you put that in there. That's for a minute, while you're trying to get your stand in place and while you're trying to figure out how to hunt him. Don't let him know you're looking for him. Don't know you don't. Just don't let him hear you or sail you. Now, now let's fast forward though to that hunting situation. Though, as you mentioned, you were able to call this buck in UM. Let's talk about calling a little bit. Obviously you are you are one of the foremost experts on this topic. Given the fact that you kind of invented the category in a lot of ways, could you kind of walk us through, Could you walk us through the different calls that you like to use, um, and then what the proper like scenario would be to use those, and other considerations that might be on your mind when going through that kind of thing. Yeah, sure, it was no one when I didn't invent it all. There's so many great hunters who have believed in calls and have added to it. Uh. Down South, we used to hunt only with dogs, and you let dogs us and run them across the swamp. It didn't have a lot of beer. But then as we got more deer and people wanted to steal hunt and I wanted to see dear being deer. That's what Colin really became an advantage um. Number one. The problem for most hunters is even people that hunt a lot, they haven't heard all these sounds I did out of my research and in my designs, and sounds that I was trying to make. By you, by me and around ten deer or a brown pet deer. Uh, listen to him, Listen to their wheezes and listen to what they did. Had a friend at a South Mississippi that had a beautiful book um in about a twenty acre enclosure that they raised his phone um and they didn't want to let it get away, so they put it in that little enclosure. And that deer during the rut, he would see you as competition. You walk up with that fence and he shade. He turned it on, and his lift would go back and his hair would go and eat, and he slammed that fence trying to get to it even though he was he loves you. When it wasn't the rut, you know, let your pet him and all that kind of stuff. But the the can is usually the first sound that I'm producing. Every deer knows what that means. And during the rut, I got a can here in my hand. But that sound is the sound of the dough that is in stress and estress. She's calling for the attention of a buck, or she's almost like she's crying that she's she's saying, she's like they're in a tremendous stress at that time when they're when they're ready for a buck to breathe them. And if they're not with a buck, they want to they want a book to know that, and that speculation on my buck. And I don't think they think like humans, but they're they're going through what God is built into them, the instinctive things that they'll be able to do to to be able to procreate and to get the species a new generation of the species going. So the doble will do that. And then if there's a buck nearby, uh, and he sees another buck anywhere clear close by, he's gonna grunt at him. He's gonna let him know stay away. And that grunt can be you're simple just to stay away. And if that other buck makes an approach to that bucking though, then he is going to roar at him. And a roar is a sound that one buck makes another buck that he is fixing to fight. He's he's he's telling him stay away. And that is a very very aggressive, loud, extended grunt. This is it's a roar. And if that buck continues to make advances, the last thing he's gonna do before he lowers his head and slams into his Now, I did that on our buck roller, which is my favorite call that we make. The rout roarer is good as well, but uh, the buck roarer is my favorite. Now, the weeze is the last, the last deal, and that what what you need to know about those sounds is is that the bleak is the lowest, carries the least. It's a low say on it. It's only so loud. It only carries so far. And then the roarer carries the furthest and the weize, I mean the carries further than the bleat, and the weeze carries the furtherest because it's a high pitched sound and it travels through the wave lengths will travel further. So if you see a buck. And let's say he's a hundred fift yards away. You got a little wind going on, and you can tell he's dog and he's he's trying to pick up the scent of of of a of a dope. He put his head down picking it up. But his head down picking it up, he's just he's kind of sniffing the ground, picking his nose up, sniff and he's trying to get the scent of a dope. And you you bled at him, and you go if he doesn't, if he hears you, he's gonna stop him look and you'll know it next down. That's how you want to do is and he's liabel start marching you away. If he doesn't, then and he turned, he doesn't turn to he heard you, but he starts walking away. Weeze at him. That's the challenge, and that what you're saying by making all those sounds to that bucket. Hey, there's a hot door over here, and there's a buck over here, and he's telling you can stay away. Where he's telling another book to stay away. That might be even closer, and that buck will come in and see if you can get in on the action. But let's just say you're in a standing you haven't seen anything. You're hunting your cut over, you've the dear even coming out of that cut over. It's thirty minutes before dark. You haven't seen anything yet. Turned the can over twice. Wait a minute, run yeah, yeah, wait a minute, wait, thirty seconds yay, roar, and then thirty seconds later, ten seconds later, and he's gonna stand up. A good chance he's gonna stand up. I would say for me, it probably works. I pick what I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna say it probably works for me fifteen percent of the time. That's pretty high percentage rates. When you need seeing nothing and he comes in looking now, you want to have the wind in your favor. A lot of times, when he gets fifty yards, he'll start circling down wind. Hopefully he's gonna come within bow range of you and you're gonna be able to make that shock. But that's just a couple of calling scenarios, and it's very typical of what I did when I killed Eric Um. By the way, Eric scored two didn't that's gross. That's gross scored by official score, and he's mass it's just, oh gosh, the pictures of him and just always he took an incredible picture. Um just because he's just it's got such massum. He just always so always pretty. Have to look him up. He's pretty, but he's a pretty buck. I will, I will for sure. Now, what about region regionality? Does the aggressive types of calls that we're talking about here doing a lot of these snort wheezes or buck rows, is that going to be is effective in Louisiana or Arkansas as it is in Iowa or Kansas? Or do we need to kind of temper things based on your location or hunting pressure or other things like that. I don't. You know, if everybody in the woods is doing it, you're gonna have hunting pressure, and you know it's gonna be that that's not not good. But it's usually not the case with the white tail. But I would not regionalize it as much as I would say the better areas that have mature books and or a managed her so there's more books, there's not too many doughs. In other words, that you've got to manage. He's got a three to one ratio is great at three dogs to one. Two to ones can be even better. But any time, you've got age classes of your your seven and a half to six and a half year old, five and a half, four and a half year old, you've got your three and a half year olds or two and a half year olds, and you've got your doughes eat and you've got all age classes. Calling can work great because there's competitiveness. So if you if you've got a situation in your stay, in your area and your hunting club in your public land area where it's a a competitive for the animals, your calling is going to be more effective. That makes sense. No, no where does rattling fit into your calling tactics? Does that fit into this whole sequence you mentioned? Or if if I've done all everything, you know, rattling carry is pretty good. And if I've done everything, um like collar and I haven't seen anything and I avoided you know, minutes, I'll try to rattle and if I see a dear way off, I can try to rattle. And I have had had some great success rattling. Um, I'm gonna say I've been successful rattling five five to almost ten percent of time that I've that I've tried. Not always a big buck, um, but I don't write along, Um, that's my style. You can. But one of the things that's so hard to duplicate in a rattling situation. If you've ever seen bucks fight, A lot of times people see them fighting fields edge fields and stuff like that. But if they're fighting in the woods, if you're in the woods and you're you're you're fighting, you're gonna hear pushing, shoving, and a lot of quiet. You're not gonna hear the the horns all the time because they lock up and minutes a pushing match. So you're hearing dirt moving, ground moving, limbs being shaken, limbs breaking, saplings bending over. Um, you're you're hearing a different sounds other than just horns rattling. So if I rattle and I've got some corn, I will just and then be quiet for a minute. A lot of times that's all the fight that will be because somebody, one of those deer is going to establish authority and strength pretty quick, and then he's gonna he's gonna turn and get the heck out of there because he doesn't want to get his butt slammed there, and other deer in the area become curious and then so wait you know, five and ten minutes and and wees wait five to ten minutes and or grunt or roar anytime you've got the wind in your favor, especially if you're on the edge of a field. Perfect scenarios if you've got a bench and you've got a low field along the river bottom, you've got a bench from deer walking the bench and they've got to come by you to get to that field, and you do this college and sequence has a good chance you'll entice the deer to come see what all is going home. Yeah, it's uh, it's a scenario that I feel like plays out many many times each fall. And it's kind of the thing you dream of too, where you you may as sitting there and it's been a slow day and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna try some calls, and then you see that set of antlers come pushing out of the grass ahead of you, just after you snort, snort, wheeze or something. I mean, that's that's it right there. I just actually grunted. I told you before we record were recording, but I actually grunted in a nice buck this morning. Actually that kind of deal. Um gave him a couple kind of contact grunts. I didn't get to the point where I had to roar or anything. But did you see him first? Yes? In this case, I did see him first. UM, And I can and the way I kind of go about things, if I see him first, I start kind of at the bottom like you said, and then we'll work my way up if I need to. Um. But all I needed was that was that contact grunt. Um. Now how timing for me, at least with a lot of these types of calls, I'm not really active with my calls a rady or anything until that pre rut or rut time frame. Is that the same thing you're doing or do you get this okay, no, day out. I mean it's almost like the deer speak English, and if you're doing all this aggressive calling before the pre rut starts, you're speaking Spanish and they don't know what it is. You know. Uh, it's totally totally changes everything. But now when you talk about timing, that makes my mind go to something years and nineteen, my early seventies, I made my first bow vest and what I what I wanted. I wanted something that when I pulled my bow back there were my string would have nothing in the way, my coat wouldn't be bullished out for hunting cold weather. I wanted to pull my stuff in and counting it and make sure my stream wanted gonna catch my zipper button on my coat whatever um I wanted to also later on, as I got these calls more developed than whatever, I wanted to be able to access and my can call without looking for it. And I wanted to because timing is everything. You see a buck coming through, he's eight yards away walking through the woods, and he's fixed and walked by a big oak, and you want to be able to call to him when his head passes behind that oak. You don't want him to be able to stop and turn and look exactly where you're called him from. You don't want to give away your exact location because he's gonna pinpointed anyway, but you don't want him to be able to see where it is. So I've got this gustage pocket on my right side. I'm right handed, so I'm pushing my bow with my left hand and I can reach in and grab my can never look forward pockets open, turned over and put it up well at error looking forward, looking for the pocket and it's got a place to tuck the grunt calling the front. If you want to wear it on a lanyard. I'll wear mine on my on my right wrist so that I can lift my arm, which is already going to be close to my string anyway. And it's also got a loop that I put the can with the bow in to hold the bow up. So if I gotta wait for this deer to approach, or he's feeding on the acorns coming my way, and I got to wash him for a long time for you know, ten minutes, I don't want all that weight on my my bow arm and tire my arm. Outside I have that little little pouch there, that little loop there that holds my bow up at the right height, but it doesn't tire my arm. So I'm real big on every stinking detail you could think of. The inside of the vest, I have places to store releases. Uh arm guard. I don't need an arm guard. But when you put on a lot of winter clothes, even though you shoot a bent arm and you shoot a quarter handle and you're pushing that bow correctly, you've got great form, your clothes can get in the way of that stream. Depending on your brave syte. The short of the brace site, the you know, the closer is gonna come to your arm, and I wear an arm guard, so I keep that right there. I got a mask. I don't always wear a mask, but there's sometimes when I don't have a lot of cover and I'm in a tree. I just said, I just don't want my face shine. And uh so this bow vest. If I if I get my bow vest and put it on, I ain't forgetting nothing, and it's all it's all there. Um. So it's a it's a pretty good cool deal because I I swear by the details. And it's when that little micro opportunity comes your way, if you don't take advantage of it, you're liable not to get that another chance. Yeah yeah, I I a hundred and fifty agree. And it's there's so many variables outside of our control as deer hunters, right, I mean, there's so many things outside our control. I just so firmly believe that we have to control all those variables that we do have some type of say over. And it's those little tiny details. So so back to time. Sorry, I was just gonna say, um, back to timing. I was gonna kind of shift gears a little bit. Um. You mentioned how important timing was in regards to you know, calling at the right moment, you know, when the buck's not looking your way or something. Um, or the time of year, making sure it's in the pre rudder or rut. So we're talking English not Spanish. Um, what about just a rut in general? And I kinda went shift away from calling, move over to talking about the rut. And first I guess, how how do people in the South experience the rut differently than we do here up where I'm at. Um. I've heard a lot of different things about kind of wonky timing and all sorts of stuff like that. How was the how was the rut different down there? Well? When I'm hunted the Midwest, Um, there were days when I was so excited to be there and I would not see a deer. And then I'd go back to the little house we rented. Uh there now, and there's a big old book laid down at the fence in the backyard with a dope about eight yards from her laying there. Well, no wonder, I wantn't see you nothing. I mean they were locked up and he she was close to being bred, and he wasn't leaving her, and if she moved, he moved. But if she moved, he's gonna put her back down because he don't want her movement because when she moves and then come other bucks finder, and then he's got to fight. Then he's got to deal with that. So it's all about those big bucks finding those dose and keeping them down. When you don't have a hole, you've got a good balanced her. You know, at some point, just about every buck's got a dope, you know, hot, you know, beded down. So in the South it's it's a lot of the same. Um, it's all about doe movement. So the rout to me is figuring out where they want to be and hopefully them not going into lockdown. Um. Now we've hunted eastern Colorado near Shayan Wells, which is hundreds of thousands of acres of grain and and CRP fields. And how much fun is that? Because you ride around in a vehicle with spottings cope and you're finding dear walking and bedding down first light U from a mile away, half a mile away, and you're able to watch a buck bet up with the dough and then you're able to get the wind on them and make a stalk that may take two or three hours. And god, you talked about adrenaline field, But during that strength of the rut, when they're all locked down, you can find them there. The problem and is no different where we all hunt in the Midwest and where we hunt here once they get locked down, Uh, it's about It's all about the dope. She's got to move or he's got to let her move, uh to be able uh to do anything, because you can't hunt a book where he is. You gotta hunting where he's gonna be. M What about the timing of the rut? There's so many different little pockets of of unique timing for the rut and various locations across the South. Have you ever found a good explanation for why that is or how to keep tabs on all that down there? Well, when you've got to balanced herd, and let's say, let's see, if you've got a three to the three dough to one buck ratio or less, you've gotta balanced her and you have a mature class ages of bucks from six and a half set and a half on down, you've got the classes of bucks you've got this balanced herd. The rut in Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, Central, Mississippi North is going to start. The pre rud is gonna start just right at the day after Thanksgiving, a couple of days I thanked every year. And then uh as you get on the end of the end of December. By December, you know the tenth that's liable to be full born. Um. I've hunted in those areas not balanced, and they don't even seem to rut because there's there's too many doughs. I don't know, I'm not I mean, they've got studies. Mississippi State has done an incredible job of studying white tails and understanding their behavior and understand they're mating times and so forth. So the ruts going on, it is just not evident to us because the hearst out balances and they don't have to work hard to go find it do They don't have to move very much. Um, But typically it has for in my mind and what I've learned, it has to do with how balanced the herd is is when you're gonna have the rut, and if it's a balanced deal, it's gonna start shortly after Nanksgiving for the pre rut. Interesting all right, No, as a matter of fact, a matter of a matter of fact, that that Eric dear I was talking about. Um, I want to say I killed him the day after Thanksgiving. I got the David's They are a couple of days after Thanksgiving some somewhere right in there, and it was it was pre rut. You can tell he was pre rutting. He was, he was, he was on the prowl and he was responding to Gauls. Interesting and that's in that's in the heart of Mississippi. So so okay, the rut. Well, right now, as this podcast is first being launched, it will be at kind of the the beginning of what a lot of people are going to say is the peak of running activity across a lot of the country, especially in the Midwest, the northern two thirds of the country, these first couple of weeks when November for a lot of people is that great rut time period. Um. So for those people right now who are getting into the real heart of it already, and then for those who maybe in December have that to look forward to down south, what are your your kind of keys to success during the road. What are like the handful of things that you tell someone if they want to be able to kill the mature buck in the rut, do this well, don't get in the habit of hunting early. Only first thing in the morning and the first thing in the afternoon. Just an afternoon hunt, in morning hunt and skipping the middle of the day because they can be moving at any time, and a lot of times we don't realize that we were hunting. You're trying to hunt some food sources where the those may be coming through, and the bucks are looking for those. So let's say you're hunting an acre flat. You've got ten or twelve great white oaks, and they're in a certain spot, and you you go in there when you when you sneak in there in the dark, and you get in there early before if you're gonna get set up before the sun even thinks about coming up. And you're getting to your stand, and all of a sudden you hear deer running, You may hear they may blow at you, and once they hear you, if you do it you're under that stand correctly, you're gonna have to win in your face. So a trick there is to blow back at them. Just blow back at them. What they heard was a deer, it wasn't wasn't a human or if they might be moonlit and it might can see you. But what you're doing is you're running the deer off of this spot and you're teaching them that this is where the predators are coming to, the human predators come into. So a lot of times let them leave that spot and go in at ten o'clock. So hunting the rut is all about the dose. It's all about the books looking for dose. Food sources are good because the does are gonna eat, They're gonna be there wherever their does, that's where the buck is going to be. And you've just got to find those travelers where they're going back and forth. I love the Midwest because those those those pinch points were so so active and so incredible as deer went from one section to another section and used that pinch point to travel through. Um calling you do it, let them know you're there. Watch the wind like you've never watched it before. And I will tell you this, and I get a question of time. I've been using ozonics since the year it came out, and if you use ozonics correctly and use ozone correctly, you can protect your down wind side. UM. At my farm, I had nine ozone units ozonics units, and I nobody was allowed to hunt unless they were taught and used it because the down the down wind side if if you think you're hunting, them like to coming, but there's a lot of times they're behind you, or they may be you know, yards behind, you never know it. And if you will protect that down wind side always and eliminate your odor um, then you have a lot better chance of being successful later on, even if you're not that day. And I will say this if the if the wind is blowing and gayel forces to twelve fifteen miles an hour and it's flat lighting and just you just the the unit can't keep up, so don't expect it to be able to in a blind. It's it's near effectively if you use it correctly. But I swear by it, uh and I've got videos to prove it. It's unbelievable what you can get away with. A matter of fact, the guy that helps my life in the yard, UM gave him a unit to help him and getting you and he um he used it. He's already sent me two pictures of two bucks he killed down down wind from me food sources this year. So it's a truly but don't expect it to do everything. You know, when I hun cameraman. We've got two units and because you're trying to cover a wide spectrum of area. And the quick concept of it is is you want your scent line going through a curtain of ozone. If you're using the unit and you can smell the ozone, and ozone has a very clean hospital type smell, then you're using it wrong. And can I tell you how many deer of coming down? When those in Bucks and if I've seen him come in, they stand there, it's like they smell something, but they they slapped their their tongue on their nose like they're trying to grab a molecute or something and trying to figure it out. I don't know what that is. They going right about their business. It's not anything they're scared off. O Zone is natural. Ozone is created by lightning when it goes through the air and inks oxygen into OH three. Very unstable. That's why we'll attach itself to older molecus and why it's so affected. Yeah, yeah, I've I've experienced similar things to you when using an ozonics and it's it's definitely part of my repertoire now too. Um that said, what else is what else do you do from a sun control standpoint? Well, you know, if I like I love to make a fake scrape rub with a scent or anything. Um, I just I'm so freaky about sense any sense you add, I don't know where it's coming from and where it was bottled, and their CWD issues these days and whatever. So I actually am using veterinarian um artificial seminating gloves that go all the way up to my armpits, and then I put latex gloves on top of that, similar to the ways to use gutt and gloves, and I've framed my boots down with We we make what's called control Freak, which is a silver based older eliminator. It eliminates older and there's a great job. And you can prove it if you've got the kids and they play hockey and they've got stinking shoes, spray control Freaking there and you'll be amazed it doesn't and the odor will be gone. But it doesn't. It doesn't eliminate the odor of your body constantly produces. That's why ozonic is so affected your breath. Uh, your body is producing odors to ole times. So you can spray control freak on you. But that other mean it's gonna keep on eliminating the odor of your body's producing. So I spray my boots down, tall rubber boots. Spray them down real good where these long gloves and late to his gloves. And I'll say, I say, I'm in a small food plot. I've got a little small sap and growing out on the little island. I'll go out there and I'll take a salt and i will shave the edge of that tree to make it look like a rub and then I'll make a scrape and if a deer comes, he visually sees that he's gonna walk over to it. I mean, I can make one this afternoon, and if a deer comes to that food plot tonight, it's gonna have deer prints and pall marks in it. And then you didn't any sin in it. So I'm I'm doing that too interesting depending on the situation, and you know where the tree. Yeah, like I've used somewhat similar tactics like that to your planting, Like a fake scrape tree in the middle of a food plot is some way to to you know, control where the traffic is had to give you something. I think Mark Drewy I did a video one time to show doing that. It were it's a great idea I ever thought of that. Man, They're gonna come to it. They're going and they're going to make a looking branch and figure it out, you know, because they think that's what's going on. Yeah, yeah, I mean they're very much. You always hear the analogy that they kind of are like fish relating to structure. Dear relate to structure as well, No doubt about it, you, no doubt about it. So so well, I could probably talk to you for four hours about all this stuff, UM, but I know that you've got a lot of other things going on. I don't want to do it too so I wanted to kind of wrap things up with with this topic. UM. And that's the future of deer hunting. UM. I've heard you and I've seen you, UM kind of stand up and speak out about things over the last handful of the years. UM. At some of these North American deer summits and in relation to some of the different things happening these days in the hunting community. UM, I guess how do you feel about the future of deer hunting? What do you see coming up? And then, um, if you had a final message to leave with our audience about that, um, I would love to hear that. Well. You know, as far as bow hunters go, whitetail bow hunters going hunters to some extent, but we are loners. We like privacy, we like going into the woods being quiet. We're all birdwatchers. We're watching while and we see enjoy being there. We enjoy the fall colors and seeing seeing God's creation in the woods. And it goes against our nature. But I urge people to find somebody uh that wants to learn about archery, about the romance of the era. Teach them about Saxon Cope and heart Young, about issue, about Howard Hill, about Fred Bear, about the history of the boat and era, the the Indians and light that fire and it's I call it the romance of the arrow, of the flight of that arrow. It's just it's just romanic. And then spend time with them to learn proper form to help them get the right equipment. Don't cut them short, get them the best equipment that you can or that they can help buy her forward. You know, I've had seen kids that have gotten jobs cutting grass in the summer so as they could buy a certain side or and and just as wonderful to see them get so involved in it. Um. John Vack is a guy that is head over the pro staff for all of bush Nail and Federal and m Savage, and he helped promote those lines. And his son, he sent me a picture yesterday of his son had killed his first book by himself, sol with a boat. And there's it's just like passing the torch. And what John did and raising his son, he showed him and and taught him and exposed him to this world that we love and cherish. And if you love it and you cherish, then you want to protect it and you want to share it with people. And if we as hunters don't recruit younger new people, because there's a lot of kids out there that don't have hunting parents and don't have opportunity, and if we don't do it, then they're not gonna understand it. And if they don't understand it, they're not gonna love it, they're not gonna want to protect it. Um, So the future of Hunter Honey is really it's up to us. Uh. I was so proud of John Vakas even that picture of his son and had that big smile on his face, and um, I know what, I know it, I know what that's that's got to be like for John to suddenly pass the towards you know, and now his son is gonna be going by himself. There's huge safety issues. How do you use a harness, a safety harness, How to properly get in the tree with the safety harness attached so that you're not putting yourself into a position to possibly hurt yourself and those some of those accidents can be incredibly tragic, not only death, but paralyzed for life. And you know, and and end what you what what you wanted to find anyway, and that by going and doing that was the piece and quiet of the outdoors. Um. As far as the different states, they all have different ideas and and and different rules and regulation. Uh, Mississippi doesn't allow baiting, Arkansas does, Louisiana does, Kansas does for some and you know, people get upset about um people baiting. They get upset about people using crossbows. Look, I remember they drugged me into the compound world. They they drugged me. I said, there's no way that this thing with wheels on it will ever be as good and effective as my recurve. And boy was I wrong. But I love a compound. I shoot Matthews, and I just love what Matthew Ferson does and it's engineering on his bows. I love them. I also love the recurve, and I got my black wood of sitting right here on the table, and I love the flight of the era. Uh. But when they get the argument about people with crossbows. Man, if a guy will go out in the woods and be a hunter and be a part of it, I don't care if he uses a rock. You know, I want him to go. I want people to go and experience it and want to be there. I don't want to restrict him. I wanted to follow the laws of the state where the state thinks it's right. But um, I just want people to participate, and I want people to to be a part and understand what it is we love so much. A friend of mine he decided not to go both hunt Saturday and he went squirrel hunt and I was talking to him and sending them stand there looking at him, names John Stevens and uh, he says, man, he was peaceful and he's finding deer trails and he's scouting while he's hunting squirrels. He killed his limit of squirrels and and talk about how it was a co front he'd come through. Was it was, you know, right at thirty five degrees. It just had a blaste in the woods. And that's what it's all about. And that's what we need to share and teach to those that are around us, in front of us, behind us. We need to share it. We need to teach them. I think that is uh an incredibly important message. So appreciate you appreciate it. Wrapping things up with that, it was kind of perfect way to end this. So so well, if people want, well, start good, you go ahead. I was just gonna say, if people wanted to um see your show or follow up different things you're doing, or check out some of the products that you mentioned, where might they be able to find all these different things. Well, of course, you can go to Primos t r I MS dot com to the website. You can go to Primos's YouTube channel and you can see all kind of tips and see different hunts. You see l hunts and waterfowl hunts and pronator hunts and deer hunts of course, and uh you see all of that. Um. And then there there's there's podcasts available that the company does. So there's there's many many avenues to be able to get to us. Um. But the TV show is on the Outdoor channel, um. And it's got that leaks were areas a week and you just have to go outdoor chain and look at those areas to be sure you've got the right time slot for your your zone, whether it be central or mountain or eastern or whatever it is to be able to know exactly when the show is coming home. But we're having fun with the show. We're we've got a great place to hunt. We're taking advantage of it. That's awesome. Well, well, well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be here with us. We really really appreciate it. Yes, sir Mark, thank you. Good luck to air, Oh your listeners, good luck y'all. Be careful and please be careful clown in those trees. Yeah, and good luck to you too. I'll hope to see some pictures of some big Bucks soon and looking forward to watching the episodes of the show in the future too. Thank you all for thanks Mark and that is a rap. Episode number one eight one is in the books. But a couple of quick updates before we shut this down completely. You know, as me and Dan we're talking about at the beginning of the podcast, our hunts are ramping up. Things are getting exciting, so want to encourage you to foul along with us on social media. I'm posting a lot of updates there. Um the wire do on Facebook page is a great place to get things while you're to hunt. On Twitter, I'm sharing things there and then, and most of all, what I'm doing is sharing every day, I'm sharing Instagram stories, so over on Instagram you can share these little mini videos and photos and things like that. That's the story, um the Instagram story feature, and I'm kind of documenting each day of hunting on there pretty thoroughly, so make sure you're checking those out. UM My handle is at the at sign wired to hunt all one word that's on Instagram. Sign up for it, check it out. That way you can follow along with what's going on. And be the very first to hear about how things go for holy Field and everything else going on. And then, of course you can find Dan's information over there at the Nine Finger Chronicles if you want to foul along with his Iowa hunts or parenting debaccles. So um, I guess. Other than that, I just want to leave you with a quick thank you to our partners who helped make this whole thing happen so big. Thanks to sit to gear Yetti, Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, may Haven Optics, the White Tail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge, and hunt Terra Maps, and then finally, thank you, thank you to all of you spending time with us here today for listening. I know it's a busy time of year, so carving out some time to listen to a podcast, I appreciate it. So good luck out in the woods. Hopefully you're gonna have some incredible hunts, some awesome memories, and until next time, have fun, be safe, good luck, and stay wired to hunt.

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