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 is episode number one and tay in the show, I'm joined by my good buddy, Josh further Hilliard. I knew I was gonna make it. What I'm trying to say is that today on the show, I'm joined by my good buddy, Josh further Hilliard, and he's sitting right next to me, which is why I'm having a hard time saying this. But we're discussing his successful Ohio Rut hunt, the Quality Dear Management Association, the latest of my hunt for holy Field, and our Northern Michigan deer camp. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Sitco Gear. And this is a little bit of a different episode. Uh. Dan Johnson is not with us, but I have another bearded uh fill in. She's gonna handle Dan's role today. I think my beer might give him a run for his money right now. Right now. Yeah, it's going pretty good. It is pretty good. Um with me today playing the role of Dan Johnson, is Josh further Hilliard. And we had to give him a chance here because in last week's episodes, you guys heard me and Dan were talking while Josh was sitting on the sidelines in the hotel listening to us talk smack about him. So we had to give you an opportunity now to actually be on the podcast and to actually, you know, speak your own mind now. So I appreciate that. Yeah, so we got Josh here. Um. Have we told the story of why I call you Further on the podcast? I don't know. I don't think you have told it. Maybe once a long time ago. You know what we did because you are on the podcast a couple of years ago and Dan asked if you had any like funny nicknames growing up because I told you know, I told Dan that you grew up together. He asked if he had any nicknames, and I said, yeah, we call him Further. Um. It's pretty cool. This has really gotten some momentum across the hunting community. Now everybody does refer to you as Further, which I'm so happy about it. I'm gonna be on like a one name basis in the hunting community, right. You really the equivalent of like Kobe, well, I think I told you to say that a guy facebook frond me and uh, I got a message from his like, so how did you get the nickname Further? Just like out of the first thing. Well, for those that are new who aren't familiar with who Further is, the short version of the story is that in high school, Um, we got the idea that we should call Josh Further because his dad's name is Frank and we were like, his dad was just a funny guy and we would see him a lot when we were hanging out, and um, well Josh was like a mini Frank, so he's a Frank Further. So for sure we's called Further, but we decided not to tell Josh why we were calling him Further. So me and all my buddies for I don't know how long it was, maybe a year, it was longer, it's like, not until it was finally, So for all that time we called him Further and Joshua get pissed. He was like, why do you call me that? What does that mean? I had no idea. Yeah, So so that's where Further comes from. Um, so it's kind of like anti climactic though, like it doesn't really make I don't know right. That's what makes it so good in my opinion, because you're right. It is not a clever, funny reason for the nickname. And that's why it's so good, because it's so stupid. So Josh and me are right now sitting in a it's about maybe twenty yards long by ten yards wide, um cabin. We are up at my family deer camp in northern Chickin and right now it's just me and Josh. The rest of the crew hasn't got up here yet, so we figured this would be a good opportunity to record a podcast. Um. And we've got a cold beer in her hands. We just ate some venison stew after the evening hunt got the wood burning stove piping hot. Here in between us, um field stone kind of mantle piece above the stove, and then along the wall the log cabin. And to our to my right side is this wall of all these racks from over the years that have been killed here. Um. And it's pretty cool and we can talk about about this more later. You can't leave out like the leather chairs, Yeah, we get the really old leather chairs. Um. And then if a couple of cots and um, there's a mouse or two hanging around right now that are giving us some company. Um. But but we're gonna talk about deer camp here today. But there's a lot more talk about other than that. So we'll kind of end with a few thoughts on what we're doing here and why this place is kind of special to me. Um. But I want to hear a little bit more about what Further does because he works in the hunting world these days and he's doing some pretty cool things. I want to talk to you a little bit of that, Josh. Um. And then also, so last week on the podcast, when you were sitting listening to me and Dan talk. Um, the very next day, I think you had a very exciting day of hunting. I did, so I want to hear all about that because Further laid the smack down on a big Ohio buck. So we're gonna we're gonna talk about that. And then, UM, I'm gonna do something that's gonna piss off my buddy Dan. But I want to talk about holy Field and my final week of hunting him. Since we talked last time. UM, apologies Dan for for not letting you be a part of this but we have to talk about it. So Josh, you're gonna have to play the Dan role there and questioned me and badger me and tell me what. Okay, if you were Dan, no matter what I do, you will tell me, well you should have rattled, or you should have grunt it, or to try decoying. UM. And then I'll say, well, this is Michigan, Dan, this isn't an Iowa. UM. I gonna put myself in like I'm hunting Iowa. Yeah, jeez, ones that be nice next year, right next maybe hopefully. UM. So yeah, that's the game plan. UM. Let's talk about real quick what you're doing these days? Because you used to come on the podcast and you were just my friend who uh was just you know, this strange guy that walks around and you call further UM and you hunt with me. We share our property down in Ohio. UM. We've done a lot of hunting together. We went eltcutting together recently, deer hunting together for a long long time. UM. But this year you actually got a little more involved in the hunting world. Talked us about that what are you doing these days? I got a lot more involved in it, um. And may I started as a Regional director UM with Quality Deer Management Association UM, covering Michigan, Indiana and western Ohio. UM. So I went from zero to a hundred real quick. And I was helping out with you and wired to hunt on the side a little bit from a day job, and UM, you know, just an opportunity arose and you know, everything worked out and I've been having a lot of fun. It's been a it's been a great what six months now I've been doing it, so it's been it's gone really fast, but it's it was so cool to see, like because we talked about you know, you had this passion to try to do something like this, and we we brainstorm different ideas and like you said, you start helping all the wire to hunt and we've had we've had so many long drives down to Ohio together where you would talk about like your frustrations with your old you know, the things you were doing, and how you'd like to get more involved in something you were passionate about. And to see it all come together, to see to see you, UM take the deleape and put in the effort to to not just settle for something that just got you by, but to actually Chase. You know, a dream to see you do that was was really cool for me. Yeah, no, it's it's been. It's been great. And you know, I've told a couple of people this. I go to my old job. It was a good place to work it you know, I've you would laughing a good time. There's there's a terrific YouTube video. I should find this YouTube video and uh post it for everybody. For his old for his old job, they created one of these. Um it's like a marketing video. It's like a market kind of and there's this great scene where where the camera had been going to different people at the organization and they were saying why they liked it or whatever, and then the camera kind of follows down the hallway and then turns into an office and then there's Josh sitting at his desk and like a suit tie or something. He says, I would recommend X y Z Company to all my friends, and I would. It was it was a good place to work, but just not what you know, I just couldn't see myself doing that forever. I'd I'd get to work and I'd sit in the parking lot and I'd just be like I don't want to go in you know it was in It was in Metro Detroit, so I was battling traffic every day down there from you know where I lived, like a forty five minute commute, and I just think the whole way down there was like, man, this, There's gotta be more to life than this. And UM, I just kept an eye out for different things. And UM I met a couple of the guys from q d M a um down at the A T A show last year that I went out went to with you and Lo and behold, that's who I ended up interviewing with UM a couple of months later there and uh, like I said, it all kind of just worked out and I feel very fortunate to be where I'm at right now. And um, so, so what does a regional director of what is the regional director for the q DUM A do? And UM tell me what? Yeah, tell me about that? And then for people like actual member, as irregular people, how would they interact with you? Um, for those in your region especially? Yeah? So, so as a regional director, my my main goal is to help UM spread the mission of q d M a UM SO by gaining new members. What is the mission of cute Man quizy here can you can I guess before? So, yeah, let's take a step back before we get to what you do as a regional director Quality Dear Management Association. One oh one. Just in case we've had a lot of people from the Katy Man in the show, but just in case they're not familiar, can you give me, like your one minute spiel of here's at a high level what the Keatie may is about. Yeah, so so kind of like the elevator, you know, the elevator speech. So our goal is to ensure UM are hunting heritage UM, conserving the white tail deer UM through a scientific approach, UM through hunting based activities. UM. You know. The main goal is to uh to make sure we've got a balanced heard um through sex ratios, age structure. UM. You know, we do a lot of research on the disease fronts. UM. So we're conserving the white tailed deer in our hunting heritage is our is our main goal? Cool? All right, so you guys are doing that. There's a whole bunch of different ways that I know from my own experience with the organization that they are, you know, doing great things for white tailed deer and white tailed deer hunters. But okay, now to you regional director, what do you do? How do you help your people? Yeah? UM so a big, a big chunk of my job is UM helping facilitate a lot of these, UM, you know, fundraising events like banquets. UM. My my region, there's there's about thirty branches, and I think last year between the regional director who before me, who retired, and then when I took over, I believe there's eighteen or nineteen banquets throughout the year that we we put on. And that's that's one of the main goals. Our main functions of my job is to help facilitate these banquets UM raise money for the organization. UM. So we put on a lot of those every year. UM. There's a lot of secondary events like educational events, UM, habitat days, UM, just different type of events that I will help a branch kind of organize, UM anything that they need through the national office, they would go through me, UM to get UM helping them market different events. UM. So working with all these volunteers that are out there trying to spread our mission at a grassroots level. UM, I'm kind of their go to to help them UM with whatever they need from the qd m A. So, so there's the national QUDUM A organization and there's you know, tens and tens of thousands of members and then within different states than there are these local kind of subgroups of of the QTUMO, right, and you guys call them branches. And then each one of those branches has like local events that you just talked about. They do different things to help deer hunters out. Like he said, there's just habitat days. I've been to a number of these habitat days as are really cool educational events. UM. I know there's events where like they helped take new new kids out hunting. There's mentor things, we've got our Share your Hunt program UM. So a bunch of stuff like that going on and the so like you said, then you are like the go to person for all those branches to help make that happen right, and then you know a lot of the behind the scenes things like making sure we've got insurance for those UM events and all our eyes are dotted and teas are crossed, um raffle license things like that kind of making sure we're kind of doing everything by the book and and also we help facilitate you know, we've got a core like banquet package that we get through our UM sponsors and things like that from q d m A that help raise money at them the banquets UM. So that's kind of a high level overview of what I do well. And then you're taking those those fundraising the results of those fundraisers, I imagine are going back to you know a lot of these different really cool events like what just did last night Opening Day in Michigan. UH one of your branches sponsored and hosted a buck pull event right yet we had a buck pole that Eaton County branch of of q d m A had a buck poll um in Vermontville yesterday and that was a lot of fun. We have like thirty two deer that that came and got checked in and we pulled some job bones on on some of the deer and we filled out a lot of information UM that will provide then to the Michigan DNR UM for for reporting reasons and and so they can have some data and then they'll also mail all those hunters their successful deer patches for seen and UM. It was it was a lot of fun. There's a big turnout for a pretty crappy night of weather. I mean it was rainy, and UM we had a great turnout. And you know, like you said, UM, at those fundraising events, a portion of that money goes to the national office to help UM the mission spread the mission at the national level, and then also a portion of those funds stay with that local branch to help do UM community of events that helped drive our mission as well. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I can say from my own personal experience UM the cut UM as a national organization and the different things they do, the the work they do to make sure that good things are happening across the crunch happening across the country UM, and the educational resources they put out. I mean those things are amazing. But the local level, even there's so many cool things going on, Like you know, these different events we talked about, UM, the you know, bringing in really great people to come and share their experiences, talk about whether it be habitat improvement or hunting or management strategies, different things along those lines. UM. For someone you know that maybe is a member or isn't what has been looking for a way to just get more involved with like other deer hunters in their area or people that are that care about white tailed deer and conservation. How does someone go about actually like getting involved with the branch, meeting other people like that. How do you get kind of synked into that? Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. I mean, you know a lot of people asking what do I get out of being out of What do I get out of being a q d M a member? And the answer is really, you know, you get out of it whatever you want to put into it. If you want to be super involved, you can do that. If you just want to get the magazine and read some great articles, you can do that. UM. You know, if someone wants to get involved, they can. They can go to our website and they have we have a list of all the different branches in their state. UM. They can click on the state and it pops up the list. UM. So you can reach directly out to the contact listed for that branch, which is typically the president. UM. You can also reach out to me and let me know where you live, and I can let you know the closest branch to you, UM and get you involved that way and get you connected I've had, I've had I've had past guests that have given their cell phone numbers of the podcast. Are you willing to take that risk? Yeah? I mean it's all out serious. Yeah, I don't care. It's all on the website. Well, but you're welcome to give it now, or you can just send the website. You go to the website, my email addresses there, my phone numbers there. UM contact me anytime. UM I can get you hooked up with where you need to go. UM. We're always looking for volunteers to help out UM at a branch level, and we've got some amazing volunteers. There's just a lot of people that have poured their you know, their life into helping UM Q D m A and the White Tailed Deer and it's it's it's really cool to go around to these different branches and just see how passionate these volunteers are about UM, you know, the organization and hunting and making sure that you know, hunting and the White Tailed Deer are going to be there for their kids and their kids and their kids. UM. So that's that's it's really cool to see. I mean, it's branch to branch brand. They're all just die herds. Um. Well, speaking of that, you know, I get lots of I want to say lots, but I get a decent number of emails or messages um, from people who are like, Hey, love the podcast, love we're doing blah blah. I live in Michigan or I live in this town or that town. Um, I don't have many like hunting buddies. Do you want to get a beer sometime or do you want to get whatever coffee sometime or whatever? And I unfortunately just simply can't you know, get beers with all these different people. But if you're looking to meet more hunters, like if you live in an area and you don't have some hunting buddies nearby, or you're you're new to a spot and you want to meet some people, I can't think of a better way to instantly get plugged in to a great local deer hunting community. Then find out about your local cutie may branch, get involved, and then bam, you've just now got a whole bunch of die hard new deer hunting buddies right there. Um. I mean that is from from a purely selfish standpoint. If you just want some hunting buddies nearby get involved that one, yeah for sure. And all these all these branches, of the majority of them have Facebook pages. I mean you can get on and search them on Facebook. And they've got a list of their events coming up, Like, uh, the Northwest Michigan branch, since we're kind of up in the up this way, Um, they've got a aging and scoring night coming up. I think it's December. Um. So that's a great bring even if you don't have a deer, go and hang out and you know, meet people. Um. You know, we're looking to grow co ops. If you own land or if you're a landowner, um, and you want to start practicing q DM q d M on your property. But you think, um, you know, my neighbor shoots all the young bucks. Go talk to them. You know, maybe you might you might find out that they've got similar aspirations that you do. But they think you're shooting all that you don't have. So, you know, co ops is a great way to meet people and meet your neighbors and and get on the same page with people. Getting involved in a branch is a great way to meet other hunters and like minded people and go have fun at events. With them. Um, getting involved at a in a leadership capacity and a branch is a great way or if you don't have a branch around you start one. You know, it's it's it's a great way to meet people. And I've met a ton of great people in my short time I'm here. That's well. I UM, I have been fortunate to be able to, you know, participate in a number of those different events and things. And while I haven't been able to take a leadership position, We've got a couple of buddies of ours. That Coco we're talking talking about you work. We need to work. We need these guys to step up. So UM, speaking of Coco Um, what we'll use his code name, our buddy code name coco Um. He was hunting in Ohio with me and further and uh so we were in Ohio last week. That was where we recorded the last episode. And UM, I think, well, we never talked about your hunt. So let's go back to Ohio. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break for our Sitka story. And here's Spencer new Hearth for this week's Sitky story. We're joined by SITCA Ambassador Chad Stearns. Who tells us about a memorable white tail hunt in Michigan where he wasn't even behind the trigger. Okay, last fall, um, I was hunting a buck that we had deemed the name Dozer, three year old buck in central Michigan, and I had been after him for a couple of years. Just a unique rack, and it was interesting. My son was the one who actually gave him his nickname. So I had had a couple of long distance encountered during archery season, been trying to hunt some primary scrape areas and could never seem to connect. And one evening late in our Michigan rifle season here my son was with me running the video camera and we had kind of change tactics, started hunting some food sources, hoping the deer would come out, and he appeared at about two hundred and fifty yards following a dough out into a picked cornfield. So you know, between he and I trying to coordinate our efforts and in Guineamon video and and finally got an open shot. We were able to take this deer. And it was special to me because I've spent a lot of time trying to guide my son and a lot of my time recently has been taking him sort of share that moment. Buck. We've been after had countless trail camera pictures. I was really kind of special to share that with him. I think he was more excited than I was. So, you know, anytime you can take kids out and introduce him to the outdoors and have some success, that's just ultra special to me. So that one stands out to me as a sick moment on Chad's hunt. He was wearing Sita's fanatic system. If you'd like to create a sick of story of your own, or to learn more about Sitka's technical hunting apparel, visit sick of Year dot com. So let's go back to Ohio. You got down to Ohio a day or two before I did because I was still chasing the Holy Field and I kept pushing my Ohio trip back because I want to try to kill him. Um, so you got down here like as a day or two beforehand. Talk to me. Let's walk through Ohio. Hunt you out there? First day was pretty boring, right, Yeah, I gotta think about this for a second. First day where I set my first dad, you set the grassy field stand, right, I don't think I saw a thing. I don't say a thing that night, but I got down there just for the afternoon hunt. Um, and this this stand has been all right, It's never been great. I don't think we've ever I don't think either one of us has killed anything out of that stand. But the weekend before, let's let's mention this, because I think I talked about a little bit with Dan. But the weekend before I hunted that stand, I went down for two days and a really nice buck came by and I passed on him. Um, because it was still early, and I had decided this year. You know, I talked kind of jokingly. I had said, booner or bust this year in Ohio because our friend Coco said that he wanted to challenge me to shoot a boon or by the time I was thirty, because that's when he shot his booner. Um, it's obviously not gonna happen because I'm probably not gonna shoot anything this year. But I thought, you know, I'll try to be a little bit more piggy this year. UM. So I passed that buck. Then you hunt it again. Didn't see anything there. But let's back up again, because when you sent a picture to the group, text like, oh I just passed this one. Yeah, I said, if I see that buck, he's not getting pass Maybe a little foreshadowing there, yes, And I said, absolutely right, you should shoot that buck him, um, because I don't want to shoot the booner because yeah, I'm not on the booner or bus train. Okay, So day one boring Day two? You said, did two? I came right, yep, did two? You got there? Well, you got there late that night. Late was that Tuesday night you got in? I don't know, but okay, Yeah, basically, let's let's fast forward to your next exciting hunt. So that would have been Wednesday afternoon. The morning it was slow, um. And then I don't even think I saw anything that morning. Maybe like one or two does filtered through. Um. The afternoon came and it was getting close to dark, and I turned behind me and looked up on the ridge and there's a nice buck coming right down towards me. And you were hunting the stand that I killed len from up three two or three years ago. Now, that really nice buck that we were chasing for a few years. That was the second or third year we're hunting him. Um, so that stand has a little history too. So you you're sitting there and you see a nice buck come downhill, see it coming down the hill. It's coming right to me. So I'm scrambling. I grabbed my bow, try to get my camera turned back around there and turned background. He's still coming. He's still coming, And you spouted pretty far away, right, Yeah, he's pretty far away. He's a couple hundred yards away. But I had like a like a perfect lane that I can see all the way to the back corner of our property. Um, and it's just it's almost like a perfect like haircut right through there where I can see up to the top of this ridge. And he's just coming on a string right to me. I don't know what's worse when you see a buck and he's like right there on top of you, like you just turn there's a bucket twenty yards or like. And when I say worse, I mean, like how you get over excited right when he's just right there and then all of a sudden, bam, you gotta go or don't have any time to think about it? Yeah, or you see him four hundred yards away, excuse me, you watch him come for ten minutes and you're like, oh my gosh, she's actually coming, has actually happened like that can be? Did you get pretty ampt? Yeah? I got pretty ampt because it is like the first good buck I've seen all year, because you've been I've been a bunch of public land in Michigan that's pretty heavily pressured, and I've seen a handful of year and a half olds, but I haven't seen anything that's really been like, oh, man, here, so described this buck coming your way as he or what you see at least as he's coming. Yeah. So I see him, and I, you know, I media identified that he was a shooter and a big body, and he starts getting a little closer. Maco, Man, that looks a lot like the buck that Mark passed, and I put my bindos up on him one more time ago that is guy saw the big curve like bladed, kind of tall brow ton on what his left side? Uh yeah, yeah, it's left side deer left yep, yep. And so he's coming to me, and he's coming, drops down in this little creek and he comes right back up and all of a sudden he's like on me like that. I mean it's felt like forever. But then he was Boomi's right there, and he gets to this point and he's behind some thick stuff, a couple of trees and some branches and a couple of bushes, and he's like twenty yards and but he's right on the He's right on the property line and where you clipped on. Yeah, yeah, I was ready to go at the camera aimed where I wanted him to go to, um, because I had cell phone filming myself, and um, he just needed to take a right or keep going straight, and I had a shot at him, but he jumps the fence into the neighbors and I on and atom and he just didn't want anything to do with it. You just dropped into the drainage. Again. I never saw him come out of there, so I was I was bummed. I the one spot he couldn't go. He want It just seems pretty typical how that usually goes, as you know, really excited and then I go, all right, that that sucks. That's it wasn't It wasn't. And that was pretty much that we had maybe a little bit of daylight left side. I hope that he'd come back out, but um, didn't happen that night, and I don't think I saw anything. I saw a few does that night and not any bucks. Um. So that was that night. We went back to our hotel. Let's talk about our hotel real quickly. UM. We we usually stay so we are cheap, and we are like dirt bags. And so when we started hunting down in Ohio, I don't I've been hunting in Ohio for I don't know, seven years now or something like that. Um, because I started hunting down there a year or two before you did. Um, me and Coco did. Um. So when we started going to this area, the first thing we do is find the very cheapest hotel we can possibly find. And it happens to be on the outskirts of a somewhat large city and unfortunately, is the closest hotel we can get to where we hunt. It's like a forty minute drive. Yeah, it's like thirty six to forty minutes, um, depending on who's driving. UM, I'll say that I'd take I get there in thirty six. Um, you know you're there. I used to much more. I used to be the Gramma driver. UM. I've come a long way. I'd like to think. Uh, but so we we found the very cheapest hotel and at the time we were like twenty four when we started hunting there or something. Um, And I mean it's it's pretty rough. It's the kind of spot that before I ever opened up the door, I always peek out the window and like look and just see is there anyone out here? Could I get jumped? Um? Like there's weird things going on a lot of the time, like last year or two years ago. So like in the middle of the night, I don't even remember what he was saying, but there's a guy like standing outside of the room just screaming. Well that happened, crazy thing when you were and you were down there by yourself that night, right, And I got there the next night. The first night was by myself, and there's someone outside my door like like like Tourette's but maybe on drugs or drunk or something going on ladder yeah, um, and just yelling like cuss words and like screaming. And I woke up and like this guy come into my room. Um he didn't, but then he did the next night when you were there, I think, Um, so like that kind of stuff happened or even this year we went there. I went there, I guess this was by myself, and I went up to the front desk and I had to wait like fifteen minutes before the receptionist came to the desk. Um, and like there was a group of like six people all waiting like there's no one here. I was calling, no one's showing up. The guy comes in, he was like, oh yeah, there was a nine one one call back on the back block. So you know, it's just like stuff so always has pretty sketch, it's a little sketchy. Um. Now, our buddy Coco code named Coco Um went there last year that he had his incident that made his wife. So last year he went and he got into his room and he found bed bugs in his room and um, and then he had to request another room. And then the next room he went to have bed bugs too, or something something like that. And then so they went to a different hotel. So then this year we're all going down there for vacation and Coco's wife said, hey, you're not going to the dunghole motel. You gotta go somewhere better. Now, I don't want you to bring bed bugs. Hum. So Corey finds it. We really went up a lot of notes there. So so Coco goes to this other hotel and m he gets in there, he gets the room and so but now he's paranoid about bed bugs. So he checks the room, checks out aneth the bed and doesn't. He find bad bugs in that the first room. So he finds bad bugs in the first one there. So he goes back to the front desk and they give him a new room. He goes into that room and it smells like cigarette smoke and there's like ashes on the ground and stuff, and like you have to sign like a two waiver like that you will not smoke in these rooms and if you don't or if you do smoke in then you get paid bucks. So now he well, someone smoked in here, so let's go back to the desk. Tells the guy, Hey, someone's been smoking here. I need a different room. They put him in another room. He goes in there, checks the bed. There's not bed bugs, but there's I guess, like the sign of past bed bugs, like dark spots all over something. Somehow he ended up on four different rooms. Yeah, so we he finally did get a different room that was bed bug free, smoke free, signs of bed bug free. UM. And so now we're at the new place and m the next day. Now I got there and we're like, you know what we are, we are thirty years old, Like we have real adult jobs. Now, maybe we don't need to be at the Dandia's worst hotel. And it's not like we moved that far. This this hotel is like five dollars more night or like ten dollars a night. And I was not like a big upgrade here, right, it was a little bit nicer. We were ringing our hands about the money. We're like, oh, man, I don't know, should we really spend this much more? But you know, I'm happy we did it. I think it's a little better. I'm really happy we did. I think I changed my luck down there. Yeah yeah, okay, So back to that, enough about the hotel. UM. So you had that really close call. We go back to the hotel room. It was pizza night. We had our Marcos pizza and we watched Bucks on DVD. UM and I record a podcast. I listened to you listened to us record of the podcast and talk about you and Uh. Next day I headed to UM this stand at the very back of the property up on this ridge. How many times have we hunted that one time? I've only I've hunted it one other time, and you've never I've never hunted it. So it's only been hunted twice ever in the history of us hunting this property. And this is like our fifth year hunt. I don't think I could find it in the dark. No, you do not have that sense of navigation. One time Josh got lost on a tech acre property and he thought he would be we had to go here. He thought he'd be smart by putting up that orange surveyor's tape as he went along to like map his route. Yeah, it's gonna just mark it for the way in in the morning on my way out, I'd be I'd be perfect of the morning the flags in. Well, he got lost and he was only you know, like it's a tech acre property and then his his his family in laws, his in laws cabin, little cottage is there, and um, so he got lost. He finally finds his way out of there after how did you find your way as you like walk up to the wrong house. Eventually I like ended up at something like little cabin like on the other way I don't know what I was doing. This is this is a this is a while ago, like six months ago. So then the next day he takes his wife out of your girl, and then she sees, why is there this big circle of So I don't think I'll ever live that one down from right, she she still gives me a crap about that. So, so, yeah, you're right, you could not make it to the backstand. Okay, So I'm on the back ridge and you were on the main ridge stand, right, my favorite stand. Yeah, because what four years ago you killed a really nice buck. There is to the day. I mean that morning I sent you like a you know, I get those Facebook or whatever. Then and it was the buck I shot four years ago from that stand on the same day that I sent that to them. Repeat right, because November is that right? Ninth nine? Okay, Um, so let me let me tell about my starting the morning because I'm sitting this backstand and I've been watching some doughs filter through down the bottom. I'm kind of up on a high ridge and then there's a pasture, high pasture behind me, and then there's a low valley where there's another sort of pasture there, and um, I've been seeing a good number of doughs moving through. Um, we don't see many deer on this property. I've talked about this in the past. It's uh, it's a property. It's kind of frustrating to hunt a lot of times because you'll you'll hunt for days and days and you won't see more than like a dough a day or two deer a day or something. But if you are willing to put it in enough time, and if you are in the right spot and get a little bit lucky, you know, the one deer you do see could be a really nice mature buck. So I'm sitting the back ridge and um, I've been seeing this deer and then I hear little crashed to my left, and I turned my head and I see a big buck coming like he's like fifteen yards away. Like, oh my gosh, I'm seeded. I'm not prepared. And I've immediately flashed to what happened to me with Holy Field, like two days beforehand, where Holy Feel surprised me. And then he's booted. So I'm like, oh my god, this is not happening to me again. I wasn't even messing around my phone. I think I was just looking the other direction. But he had come over a little rise and he dropped over the rise. And then once he gets over that rise withinside of me, he's like thirty yards away wherever. And he was like coming on a trot right at me. And I'm stuck seated in this tree. And what I realized is that this tree we we we didn't have a whole lot of great tree options on there, but this tree did not have very much cover. So we were high in the tree. It's it's a pretty high tree stand um, but there's not much for cover. Um. So I was like, oh god, he's gonna spot me up here. I'm gonna get busted um and a big shooter is going to get away. Um. But so I just stayed froze. Usually in this tree, I would have thought to try to stand up. If I saw a big buck coming, I try to stand up. So I just seemed to blend in a little more and be tight to that tree. Um. But I knew I I couldn't move at all. But then I look at this deer a little more. I'm like, oh, I know that, dear, that's the deer that passed last week. Uh, really nice puck. He's coming. But now I'm a little bit less nerve, Like I'm not as stressed because I didn't shoot him last weekend. I'm not gonna shoot this weekend. But he comes in and he walks right to like ten yards and then he kind of looks around like he's gonna spot me any second. He's gonna spot me any second. He's gonna spot mammy second. But he didn't. And he walked by, and I'm looking at him like, oh, man, like he looks a lot, he looks nice, and he's right here. I could shoot him. And I came like, I was like, grab my boat, don't grab my boat, grab my boat, don't grab my bow. Grab my boat, don't grab my bow. And he's I mean, he's wide, he's got nice tie in length, he's got that mega browts on on the one side, good solid body, um and just beautiful. And I got really cool footage of him. Awesome encounter. But I was like, no, I mean, you passed him once, you know, just stick with your gut. Um. You made the right decision. I made the right decision because he bounced off and he went down the hill and I was like, man, that was a cool encounter. Um and uh so so that happened. He disappeared, He went down that valley, and um, he went out the other side because there was some noises on that other side. Um. Now those dos I've been watching had been down that valley and then they went to the creek, and they followed the creek across the way, and then they went up to the opposite ridge from me, which is the ridge of Josh for sitting on. And these does went out that ridge and I'd watched them go up that ridge and go past Josh, so I knew what those doughs had done. So now that buck goes that direction down towards that valley, I'm like, if he goes down, if he makes it to that creek, I wonder if he'll hit that trail of all his doughs, I wonderful go up that way. So I'm watching for him. But he had disappeared. Now fast forward like five minutes, ten minutes, and all of a sudden I spot that buck again. Um, but now he's at the creek, and then a few seconds there he's on the ridge and I'm like, holy crap, he's gonna go right up towards Josh, and like before when I'm like seeing this in my binoculars and I'm like, okay, he's gonna go up the ridge. Now he's on the ridge, and I'm like, oh man, he's like right there by Josh. And I'm watching all this unfolding, and in my head, I'm just like it's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, Like this is actually happening. Tell me what happens from there from your perspective. So those those does that you saw come up the ridge, I saw him. They So this this ridge is it's basically a ridge that runs out into it like a finger into the corn field. Corn is still standing down here, and this this ridge has like a grassy top and it's like a shape of a funnel. So there's like a big scrape down at one end that we've got a camera on, and then it kind of just funnels down to the edge of this the end of this finger. And so those doughs and I think there's a spike. I think there's a little spike horn with them. Um. They kind of cut across the top of that ridge down into this ditch and up into the corner at the far end um of that funnel. Um. It's like, that's cool, you know. And I had a couple of dolls that had come down all the way past me that I could have had a shot out of. Um. So I had a couple of dos that had worked through the couple of different dough groups. So that buck can I see him come up, get to the top of the ridge and he's he's right there. He's on that same trail that those doughs were on. And he came a little bit farther down that ridge, but quite close enough for me to get a shot, and he dropped down into that ditch. I was like, son of a he's doing the same thing that he did the night before. He's not gonna give me a shot. So I grunted at him again, and this time I saw him stop. He kind of turned his head and he looked back at the corn and I grunted again. He did the old circle and comes right back around. I go, oh, here we go. And he came back up out of this ditch and he was right on the edge of about thirty yards and he just needed to take a couple of steps and he got there and then he stopped. He like on the footage, you can see like he knew something. I wonder what, because your wind wasn't blowing there, No, it could have been your wind, but well we had the way the sun was my shadow and the tree shadows were going right to him. So I don't know if he caught my shadow when I when I drew my bow back. Um, I'm not sure what it was, but there was something. I mean, you can you can see in the can all normal and then's like he hit a wak. He hit something and just like boom, and he just like held one leg up and then put it down, kind of looking He never looked up at me, but he kind of looked over. And I wanted him to take another step or two to have more because he was a little quartering to me just the hair. Um. I would have liked to take another step or two. I could have a perfect broadside shot. But I didn't think he was gonna I wasn't gonna take that chance. I thought he was gonna bolt. So I had it settled in right behind his shoulder and touched off. He's right at thirty yards and you know it hit hit good, sounded good. But man, I didn't think I got much penetration. And he turned around and um I could see blood coming out the other side, though, says like, all right, it was a good hit, and um he he died within fifty yards where I shot him. I mean he never made it off the top of that ridge. I mean it was quick within seconds. And what's cool is that when I watched the entire thing happened to my been acutor, like even oh, I was like, you know, hundreds of yards away, because all the leaves are down off the trees, I could watch the strege. So I just had my bianos up and I saw him on the ridge and like, oh my gosh, he's gonna be with a range of josh and he second and then he disappeared. And that must have been when he dropped into that dish. And then I'm like, where is he? Where is he? Where is it? So badly wanted to see you get a shot at him. Something like panic came like how did I miss him? How did I lose him? And I'm looking, looking, looking, and I'm like, okay, this one little spot where I thought I was seeing him, and he just had blended in with a tree. Maybe he's somewhere different now. So that I made started making like long pans and my binoculus farther down and then made a longer pan to the left, and all of a sudden, I was like, oh wow, there he is, and he's like right next to your stand then, and that I got to see the shot, like I actually saw. I saw him get hit and run and go down. I mean that was so cool. A really quick yeah, really fast. So the time where I first saw him and time he presented a shot to the time he died. Quick, walk me through your mental state. Man, it's been the last time I killed a buck. It was four years ago in that same stance. I mean, it had been a while and a huntred, you know, pretty hard the last several years trying to you know, I had a couple of opportunities that slipped through my fingers. Um but man, it just felt it felt good to kind of get that confidence back. I was like, all right, I can do this, um and uh made a good shot. Is really great to see him go down, not having that worry of to hit him bad, to hit him back, to hit him forward. UM. So just a kind of a huge um confidence booster, just to kind of remind myself that I know what I'm doing and I could use one of those. I could use one of those right now. Yeah yeah, so I know that feeling. Guy, there's no better feeling. Yeah yeah, that was awesome. And then he gave me the phone call and we get to sell right and I was like, dude, I saw it. I saw it happened. It was so awesome to get a pack hunt a little bit longer, just you know. And then I called you, I think like a half really alright, you told you told me all right, huntill eleven and then we'll get down. And then like ten thirty, You're like, do you want to get down now? Because I could see him that I could. I was just looking at him, stands like all right, I can't take it anymore. So that was that was awesome. It was It was so cool. That was part of that and get to see that all happened, and it happened, you know the second day, well, third third day down there. It happens that. It usually doesn't happen like that. Usually it doesn't tail end of our trip or doesn't happen at all for me. So it was nice and he's a nice a nice nice but yeah, if we pulled this, we got him back to the back to the truck, and I pulled his job bone on him and he was three and a half nice three and a half year old. Um that was my goal coming into the years, try to try to kill a three and a half year old, no matter where I was, either Michigan or Ohio. Um so I was. I was very happy with that. Yeah, he should be awesome. Bucks. So now the pressures on me, pressures on last time you killed the buck down there was the last time I didn't kill buck down. So I hope that's not what happens. We need a year where we both kill. No, we haven't, and it's kind of I've kind of screwed myself because I've not hunted down there at all, but hardly at this year because I've been so focused on Holy Field. So I've missed, you know, all, most of the best times of the rut. But I'm gonna try to get some maybe a little couple of days in late November, I don't have to squeeze in like a little two day trips, and then if that doesn't work out, then late season. But we've seen I mean, we've seen deer down there in late season. We've had opportunities at at nice mature bucks in the late season down there. I mean you had You've had a couple of opportunities. There's a buck that we were chasing JJ that I had a chance down there, and I yeah, I saw a jawbreaker and Glenn both in late November one year, and I saw Glenn the next year, Um in January, like the last day of the season or not that woululdn't be the last day of Ohio seas and last day of Michigan season. Um, so yeah, they definitely still and I think this year we've got corn on that property. Um, that will help us a little bit because there should be more late season food there. So the dream is still alive for me. But man, I was so stoked that you got done. And um, it feels good to be tagged out. Yeah, that's a good feeling because I have not had that feeling and four years down there, so you've tagged out. We celebrated that night and then we got talking about Okay, well what are we gonna do next? And then I in my head, I was ruminating on what I should be doing. Like, you know, I decided I wanted to go down to Ohio because you know, we we had played on going down the High and You're gonna be down there, Coco was gonna be down there. Um. And that's just like fun, the camaraderie aspect of it, and of course, like the best chance to get a buck down there is during those that first two weeks in November. UM. So I wanted to get down there, but like I mentioned earlier, been pushing it back, pushing it back, pushing back because I was trying to kill holy Field. But then the cell phone incident happened with holy Field, and I was frustrated. And I've been hunting that property really hard. I hunted it like ten days in a row or something. Um, and I was like just stressing so much about everything going on. I finally was like, you know what, I need to just kind of clear my head a little bit. I need to step away from this holy Field thing for a couple of days and you know, enjoy a little bit of time with my friends down there. Um, hunt there a little bit, you know, just have fun for a couple of days. In the end, that's what it's all about having exactly. So I cannot tell you how happy I am that I did that either, like it was such a good decision. Um, And who knows, maybe I would have killed holy Field if I had stayed at home those two days, but probably not, And I don't care because it was it was so cool to be there for that experience of you. You probably would have been right in front of you when I called you to tell you I shot a buck down something like that would have happened. So but after you killed, now I knew Alre you killed. Coco already went home because I don't remember what he went home, but he went home early. So that was, well, do I want to keep hunting Ohio or you know? Or should I go back chase holy Field? So I was thinking that in my head and then like we're sitting there, and so do you want to go hunt on Holyfield? Now, I'm like, well maybe I should. Yeah, So we decided that yeah I should. Well, and you know, historically the last three years anyway you had shot deer down there first and the next day or two after that has been kind of dead um from after tracking on tracking and all that stuff. So um, and it was supposed to be cold at home, like record loads or something. We had a big cold front hit at home as we really cold. We had mucked up the Ohio property, walking all over the place right through the core area to get your deer out. So decided, yeah, time to go home. So I drove home that morning. The next story the next morning, drove home, got home in time for the evening hunt. So now I want to talk about the next five of days, the final days of the Michigan bow season. But before we do that, let's take a quick break for a word from our partners at White Tailed Properties. This week, with White Tailed Properties, we are joined by Steve Purviance, a land specialists out of northwestern Oklahoma, and Steve is going to be telling us about what steps to take once you've decided to sell a piece of land. The first they need to come up with an idea of exactly what category it falls in. You know, a lot of the sellers seems to be um that I get. Really, I would say a good half of them anyway, come from out the state. Maybe um airs the property that they really don't have lots to do with, or not on a lot um you know, maybe they got it in a you know, in a wheel, and they really need to know a little about it. You know. Of course, once they call me, I can look, I can do some research on the computer on area photos and then of course I look at it. But they really need to know what it is. I mean, is it agg is it good grass that's really just gonna cater to to you know, local ranchers, or is it going to be a recreational piece with good hunting potentially fishing that would cater to a big wide, you know scale of people, you know, out of status, non residents, people looking for um for property to enjoy and invest in. So that's that's one of the first things they need to do. And then they need to find an agent UM, somebody local that really specializes in that. You know. Of course we specialize in the recreational land hunting UM. We can sell any of it and do you know every month, but we we actually specialize in the hunting land UM. But that's that that would be the first steps, UM to coming up with an idea of really what they've got to begin with. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Steve currently has listed for sale visit white Tail Properties dot com backslash purviance. That's p U R B I n C. So now I want to talk about the next five days, the final days of the Michigan Bose, And this is where I need to play Dan. Now, yeah, now you're gonna play. So what Dan usually does is he'll say I got a question. I got a question. He'll say that, um or he'll say he'll he'll recommend doing Iowa tactics in Michigan. Alright, um he what else did he do? He'd um, He'd throw in a curse word or two. I'll try to keep it clear. You can you keep playing if you want. Um Or, he talked about his kids. I don't have you get a dog who he ate a whole whole corn con something a part of a corn cob. Today he's not the brightest. No, that's probably something one who Dan's kids would do too, So I think I think Mac would do that. So all right, so now you know your role, play your part. All right, So we're back in Michigan. I get back in time for the evening hunt. And one of the things me and Dan had discussed on last week's podcast was the fact that I felt like I've been doing like the same things for Holy Field and over to a degree and again. And I apologize that I've been telling this story for years and years. You you all have heard it so many times. So, um, I'll try not to repeat things too much. But I'm pretty limited on this property because of the fact that of it is like just the edge of the field, and then all the good covers on the neighbors that he typically is that where I see him, it's on this neighboring property, and then I just hunt the edges hoping it's going to come out. Um, but that hasn't been working. I've been seeing him, but who cares that you can see him if you can't shoot him. At this point, I don't want to get any video footage of them anymore. I want to get pictures of him anymore. I want to get an arrow on him. So I decided that these final four and a half days the season or five days or whatever it was, I'm just gonna do different things. I'm just gonna do things I haven't done the past. Um, and maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe that will throw him off, because maybe he kind of has got me pegged a little bit. Maybe he does know that I've been hunting in from some of these same locations, um more so than not. So Oh that first night, I UM, I had this idea that maybe I could hunt um the south side of this property because a few nights beforehand, when I had hunted their last, I had seen him coming towards the food plot, and I thought he was going to come into my food plot stand. But instead of coming in, like forty yards before coming in, he turned paralleled it and then walked straight south back behind me through this little tiny chunk of timber and then into the south cornfield. And I don't know what he did at for that point, but with that wind direction, what he could have been doing is he could have went down and then circled down wind of me down into that food plot. So I I hypothesized that maybe he was, you know, entering that way and checking to see if I was in there. So is he going into the south cornfield more times than I'm realizing and going down there and and and seeing if there's someone hunting him? So I thought, I don't know, I've never hunted down there in the south south cornfield because it's it's just like that little this this knob of timber's wide open timber. It's up towards the road. Um. I've never seen mature bucks in there, So I never hunt the cornfield there. I always hunt farther back in the property. UM. But I'm like, well, might as well just trying. So I grab a tree stand and um, hanging news tree stand there and it's um, it's downwind of my food, down wind of this timber. That's down wind of the food plot. Um. Long story, short hangingstand hunted. See a lot of doughs come out at last light. Holy Field shows up with a dough and they step out of the step out of the timber. It's just a little finger of timber. It's like a like a ten fifteen yard wide strip of timber. Really, they stepped out of um. But they were about a hundred yards down from me, and they stepped out and they were just feeding. UM. And it's like really close to last light. Now, I'm like, oh, man, if they if they follow the edge down, they're heading my directions. I said, they keep following the edge down, they gonna come right by me. But instead of staying close to the edge, they went out about sixty yards into the field and then came down maybe sixty seventy yards. So the final five minutes of shooting light or whatever it was past and they come walking all the way past me, right in front of me, but at like yards um, and by the time they got there it was too dark to shoot anyway. So UM, So I saw him. I saw where he came out, UM, and had another close call. That was exciting to see that what I thought might happen, it kind of did happen. At he he wasn't sent checking it like I thought maybe he would. Um. He was with a dough um coming out and she was just come out to feed. But they still kind of panned out, and it told me that, hey, maybe he does use this southern portion more than I thought. Um, because in the evenings I had only ever seen him during the evenings in the past couple of years up at the front front, the front and north part of the property. So that was Um, that was that first day. I'm trying remember what I did the next morning. Um. Shoot, when I do the next morning, I can't keep you straight with where you're You've been bouncing around. Yeah, I'm trying to keep, okay, I think I know it. So next morning I was gonna hunt a betting area off that edge of that corn field is at the back of the property. Back and south of the property there's a big swamp and then there was a little bit high ground on the back side of where there's a great betting area in there. I was going to hunt a new stand I hung this year for the first time right there on the edge of this betting aar. Is that where you did some hinge cutting and stuff? Is it that area? I had done a little hinge cutting in the past down there, Um, And I hung a new stand there this summer. Kylie helped me hang it, actually, so she as a helper that day. Um. So getting that tree stand and someone speaking of this stand I had someone sent me an Instagram message saying like, it's crazy how many times you've seen this buck um your egress and ingress. I'm really curious to hear, like how you're getting in and out of these stands without spooking this deer or other deer enough, Because I've hunted so many times, I I think if I remember right, I think I've hunted twenty four out of the last twenty five days or something like that. I think sixteen of those have been all days since now, and all but three or four of those days have been hunting this small property for holy Field. And of that property, it's it's ninety acres, but more than half of it is open field. So I'm actually only hunting like forty acres of like huntable timbered or covered acres um. And I've hunted it, you know, like twenty days since October. Hunted a ton, I mean, way more than I would ever typically do it, like usually you know, we talked about a lot i'd like to do this drone strike approach, um. But I hunted October one and then waited all the way to because I thought that is when he historically starts moving, and that's that pre run. I gotta be hunting him well. And what's interesting too, you don't have a bunch of different ways to access this place. It's a tough property to access because on the roadside is all open field, so you have to somehow get across open field um to to agree. So what I've started to do though is so first off, I didn't hunt any mornings all through October. Basically I didn't start hunting mornings till November, so that allowed me not to have to worry about that morning situation where you have to come in the morning and go across these fields and spook a bunch of deer. People probably have heard this, But my evening solution has been that I have convinced my wife by begging, pleading, and doing lots of dishes, to drive my truck or an a TV out to this property and pick me up for my evening stand locations. So she spokes the deer off the fields, picks me up, drives me back home, and that I think has made a huge difference. Like I never could have gotten away with what I've done without that. UM. So that's my key, my little secret to success on this property for my evenings for the mornings. Like I said, I just didn't hunt any mornings for a month because I knew would be risky. And then once November arrived. UM, for most of my morning stands I've been hunting have been these betting areas that are on the back of the property. Like I said, on my property, it's mostly field on the front. But I have a neighbor whose um property is not fields it's just timber that runs along the southern edge of the farm that I can hunt, and I can hunt my neighbors to um. It's a small property there, but she's given me permission there and also permission to to hunt it or to you know, go through it. So what I've been doing to get to these morning locations. And instead of going across the wide open field, I go into the neighbor's timber and I walk all the way through her property all the way to the back of it, staying in that thick timber swampy stuff all the way the back of my property. And by that time now I'm in my cover. And then I do a big j hook all the way around the backs of the property to get to us. So I'm taking a very long roundabout way, and I'm doing this too to two and a half hours before daylight. So my my from what I can see from a lot of these deers that they feed out into my fields, that they cross the road, and they feed on fields across the road. So if I get in there early enough in the morning, like two hours before day most of these deer are still on other farms. They're not back on my farm. So I can do this long, roundabout way so I don't spook too many deer, and even if I do spook a deer or two, probably most of the deer still are in the area. So that's how I've been getting into these morning stands. So that's why I did this day. It took me a long time. I got to the stand, got set up, um maybe about an hour after daylight. And here man, maybe in that half hour after daylight, I hear a crack, like a loud branch cracking in this thick bedding cover in front of me. And this bedding area is thick, like really really really thick, impenetrably thick almost in areas. So what we had to do this summer when I hung the stand is I literally had to like I don't know how you describe it, um, like there's no student lanes through it at all into the stick stuff, Like it's just like a wall. So I had to go and just cut like a swath. I cut like fifty branches and trees. And did you cut it or did Kylie? No? I I did it. She's notoriously more andy than me, I will admit, um, but I am better at cutting tree limbs and branches and bushes and stuff. So I had to clear this like strip. So I cleared like a three foot wide maybe maybe four ft wide like hallway through this thick brushy stuff into the cover to this big trail that leads to there. There's just um, this trail that has got a bunch of rubs on it from the past, and there's scrapes along in the past that kind of runs right to the middle of this little bedding area. UM, so I knew that, you know, if there's about coming through, he's probably gonna be coming through this, um you know, a little bits on the down wind section of it sort of but inside the cover. So I had that student lane and then and then um to my left and right though that was directly ahead of me, but to my left and the right was more open because now we're on the edge of the outside edge of it. So I hear this crack inside the thick stuff, and I'm like, man, that sounds like a deer, and I'm waiting and like I'm not gonna grab my ball yet. I'm waiting, and then I hear and I was like, oh, I grabbed my bow. I get pumped and I'm like, all right, there's about coming. But this property has so many deer, there's a lot of deer. There's a lot of bucks on there, but them are young bucks. So I've had this happened many times in the past, heard a lot of bucks grinding over a few days beforehand, that the ten days beforehand. Um, it always been like a two year old or something like that. But he grabbed the bow just in case, and then I see white, and then it was just like instantly, as soon as I saw the white and the frame materialized, it was like, oh, holy Field, no way, Like he's right here. He's the first time I've ever seen him on the southern part of the property like this. Well, that's not that's a lie. That's a mistake because I'm sort of on the southern part where I had the cell phone incident, actually about eighty nine maybe a hundred yards away from more the cellphone incident was, so a holy Field materializes. He's in the thick stuff though, he's grunting making noise in there, and I'm like, he's but he's heading right my way on the holy up, He's heading right to my opening. I'm going to get a shot at holy Field thirty yards and he's come my way, and then at forty he stops and he's he's just kind of looking around, and I'm like, oh, man, come on, keep coming closer. And I'm um, for the first time this year, I'm holding my boat and I'm clipped onto the bow, just waiting. He needs to come like ten yards closer my way to get into this opening, and clipped on. I'm ready. I got the camera rolling pointed at the thing. My heart's beating a million miles a minute. I'm like locked in. But instead of basically where he was at, he could have turned right or kind of angled to the right onto my trail and into my shooting let, where he could angle to the left and kind of go the other direction, not quite the other direction, but a little bit farther away. And of course he chose the path that angles to the left a little bit and stayed at like forty yards. But because he stayed instead of going into my lane, he was behind all us really thick stuff, so we went across in front of me. At forty yards, I couldn't shoot him at all. He got right to the edge of the bedding cover and stopped and then the way my wind was rolling that day, if he went out of that bedding and into this opening, he would have went into my wind zone. And so I was like, please, don't go any further. So he stopped, and then another buck came running in like I don't know if it was a year and a half old or two and a half. Yield came running like sprinting past me, and he must have heard holy Field grunting or something. So he comes running in. Holy Field stops and stairs that buck, and that buck comes running by, and the holy Fields right about to step out of the cover. But I wouldn't be able to shoot him still because of where he's at. So I grabbed my bleat my can com like all rights, maybe if I can give him a come back my way. So I try the can call once, try, I can't call twice. He finally hears it, turns his head, looks at me and the stairs and stairs and stairs, and that buck comes running back, comes back past him, um runs past him, and holy Field looks at him, and he starts following that buck back, and so starts walking back that direction. And then this other buck that ran past and as holy Fields walking away now back the other way. He came sort of that second buck starts blowing. Um, he wasn't in my wind. I don't know what he was doing, but he started like freaking up, making all sorts of noise, and then holy Field just kept going that direction and they disappeared. And I don't know what what happened, but I was kind of like bummed out, like, well, that sucked. It was so close. If he'd been ten yards closer, would have been a great shot. And then this boot, this Bucks books or something the worst noise. Oh, it is the worst noise in the world. Um. So I don't know what happened, but I sat there saw another like four or five more bucks come cruising through, um, including um, well, let me try to think about all these days are mixing together. I talked about this on on the rut Rail episode that came out earlier this week. I am not like with it. I even talked about this last episode Dan like I've just because of how much I've been the tree and like getting up with three every day, I've just found like I can't talk straight. I'm like having conversations with my wife and she like just like, why are you talking about like nothing I'm saying is making sense, so my mind is just not at so forgive me. Um. It's like the man's version of like pregnancy brainin yeah, yeah, I definitely have rut brain. Um. So yeah, A bunch of other bucks come through, including a buck that they thought might have been holy Field coming back, but it ended up being his mini me. Um, he's got a buckets a two year old that someday might look like him. Um, he's got these tall Nate pointer with tall times. So when you see him like real quick, you're like, oh, that could be him him, and then you realize it's not him, but just enough to get you excited. Um. Fast forward through the day. One o'clock, I hear a crashing noise out of the bedding. Here again I pulled the buyoes. I see a little dough squirt out of there. At one in the afternoon, I'm like, oh, yeah, like, please pull him out of there, pull him out there. And every time I see a dough like by herself, I always imagine, Okay, holy Field is gonna behind her, but it's never him. But this dough squirts out of there, I'm like, holy Field is gonna behind there, and then there he was, and he comes blasting out there after I'm like, oh, ship, grabbed my bow, spin around, turned the camera. She's coming like my direction. She's kind of trotting away with her little tail flicking, flapping, and they come just busting through though at like sixty sixty five yards and then like at that point, like sixty sixty five yards, she went from like that little trot to them like then she took off and she barrels off and then he barrels off behind and they go running off into the timber to my north and then that disappeared. What time is that? Like one o'clock one? Man, I can't believe how much action you've been seeing mid day my mid days, Like it's been crazy like every day, like like in our group, she was like, oh, I've nothing this morning, but man, this afternoon was crazy like midday with nuts. Yeah, this has been Um, I've had better action in the middle of the day during this run than I've had in the mornings. Um. Yeah, that day I saw like six bucks during the middle of the day. I mean the cell phone day. I had holy feel at a love clock in the afternoon and had like three or four other bucks cruising midday that day. Um, the next day I had five bucks come at midday. So yeah, I mean it's it's a true thing box that really has this increased midday movement. Um, so you know, let me take a let me make sure our fire is not gonna go down here little uh. There's some logs in here because I don't want to get cold. So what am I talking about here? We're talking about midday. Yeah, So mid day holy Field butts out of there and um disappears. A couple of hours later. I decided to move to a evening stand location because he had moved. I saw him runoff way off north in the timber, and if he was going to come back out, he'd be coming up towards a food source with that dough Maybe you're a dome. So I moved to a stand that I had hung many years ago, but I hadn't hunted the last couple of years ago. That was right by where holy Field had come out the night before hunt that stand. Long story short, don't see him, see a bunch of doughs. Some young bucks don't see holy Field that night. Next day, I want to hunt that same betting are again, but I want to be on the down one side of it. But because we've had a lot of these funky east winds that we don't get most years, I don't have a stand on the east side of or the start on the west side of that betting area. So I got another portable set and I snuck in like three hours before daylight and hung a new stand in the dark downwind of this betting area. Hunted it that was this is one of those days that the morning was loudsy didn't see anything. But in the middle of the day I saw five or six different bucks, but all um one or two year olds. And then I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna stay hunting this stand for the evening because I was only like, you know, fifty yards from the very tiny, smallest finger of corn that heads back, so I'm still close to food type to this bedding area. Maybe holy Field will come and kind of check this section between the bedding and the corn and then transitioned out into the corn. So I'm hunting there. He hadn't been seeing anything. It was raining all that day, and I said, all day through it, and about an hour before daylight, I've been watching some does about two yards down the corn field that had been come out to feed. And about hour before daylight, I see a big body out there pulled the buyos. There's holy Field, and holy Field goes walking across the field with these doughs and then goes walking right in front of the tree stand that I was hunting the night before. He's a mess. Yeah, So he walked in front of that tree stand twice out of the last three nights. UM, So that was frustrating to see him go right there where I've been the night before. Next morning hunt another tree stand near that bedding area, but again it was a third stand there. So all these three times i've hundred first sit in that stand, but all different sides of this betting year that now I've seen him around. UM, didn't see him that morning, so decided, well, I'm gonna go to that stand where he's been to out the last three nights. So I transitioned to that stand, um, and that night I see him. UM. What I see this was the he's all blurred together. UM. I guess this would have been the last night of bow season. This would have been November, and I'm sitting that stand and maybe an hour before daylight. I see movement in the CRP stuff behind me, glimpse back there, there he is. He's about nine nine yards away in the CRP, right in the edge of my property in the neighbors. You mean an hour before dark? Yeah, what I say, hour before daylight dark? Um, he goes, but he's kind of angling away and he's kind of bouncing. He's definitely like on a doz trail because he was like bounce, bounce, running with his nose down, bounce, bounce, then disappears in the timber. Um. So now I'm paying attention over here. I'm like, oh, man, at least I know he's in the general area. There's still lots of time left, and hopefully these doughs are gonna filter out past me and then he'll come. Um. Half hour later I've been watching. Half hour later, I see a body pop out into the corn, but he's like a yards down the field for me. Now the other direction, pulledland binoculars. And even even before pulling my binoculars, I knew it was him just from like his body, because I've seen that so many times, like, oh, there he is, pulled the boculars. Sure as there he was at like ninety yards trotting across the Cornfiel went straight across the open corn field, seeing if there's any doughs out there. There weren't any doughs, went all the way across, entered in the swamp and disappeared. And then that was. That was basically the end of the night, last night of both season. And then I'm thinking, man, I was getting your head up to go to a deer camp tomorrow for opening day. Do you have a question? Yeah, I can't stop real quick, but usually what you should say I got. I got a question for you. I'm not doing a very good job being down. He's gonna listen to this. How So, in your kind of rut cation marathon on your Michigan property, have you tallied up how many times you've seen him since X State when he started doing this. No, I need to, Um, but I can, I can, I can if you can help me here. I saw him the night of October thirty one. I saw him the morning of November four. I saw him the afternoon of number four. Um. I saw him the next day, November five, in the morning and the evening, then the then um so this is where it starts getting weird and then it was like the seventh or eighth is when I had the cell phone incident. But I mean, you've seen him seventy percent of the days that you've been out or for talking days. I mean, I wouldn't go that far because I started hunting so between the two and the fifteen, um, But I mean you're consistently. Maybe I've seen him a lot since since Halloween. So I saw him the first time on Halloween and then the last time I saw him was I just can't believe how visible he's been as a probably a five. I mean, yeah, I think he's I do think he's a five and a half year old, and yeah, I mean he's incredibly visible, and he's I think it's because he stays tight rough knock on wood, you know. I mean, he's the stupidest smart deer I've ever met my life, because he's so killable, but he stays just out of yeah range, just late enough for there's always something that's just a little bit that he is a step ahead of it. It's either it's either he is the the most unkillable, killable buck ever or he's just being hunted by the worst deer hunt. Ever, like I'm the one guy that can't kill this dear. Anyone else would be like, oh that's easy, let me come out there one day. I've managed to make it a significant challenge. Um. But yeah, but I don't know man, but you know you're good. Um. I decided, um to change my plans and to go out for opening a day a gun season, because if I had had a gun any one of these encounters, I would have killed him. And I've been just I've been debating inside of myself, UM, debating internally, do I want to only try to kill him with a gun or with a with a bow or with a shoot him with a gun and um. I went back and forth on it for a while, and then I kind of realized, you know, I'm not a I'm not a purist. I have nothing against hunting with a gun. I prefer bow hunting. I love bow hunting. You know, just bohunting is awesome. I being close to deer and all that, But I've shot deer withly gone and I have nothing against I like it and with his deer. Now, I mean I have hunted. I've never hunted a deer so hard. I've never worked so hard for deer. I've never I know without a doubt that I have given it like everything I have. I mean, um, I feel very much at peace with myself at least, and that like I have done everything I can. I've I've I've struggled, like I've wanted to sleep in, I've wanted not to walk the long way. I've wanted to not hang a news stand, and every time that's happened, I've told myself, Nope, you gotta do it. And so like if any tiny small solace I can take out of this, I can at least say that I know I did it the very best I could. So because of that, at this point, I want to finish the job. I want to kill this deer, and whether I kill him with a bow or muzzload or a shotgun will not change that for me personally be satisfied. I think part of why I was worried about out doing that using a firearms because I know that people would give me crap about it, um, And at first I was like that it's going to be a pain in the butt to deal with. But you know what, with all due respect to everybody out there, I don't care like that I have. You gotta hunt your own hunt. You need to do what makes you happy. You need to do what satisfies you and helps you achieve your own personal goals. And for me, with this dear, I will be just as happy and satisfy it and proud, and I will be probably like breaking down crying in happiness if I kill this buck with a bow or with a muzzleloader or whatever, um, and that will be just fine for me. Maybe that's not what you would do, and that's totally fine, but this is my hunt and I'm going to hunt him the way I want to hunt him. So I decided that I will use a firearm if I can. Um, Well, the goal is to kill him, and it shouldn't matter what you use along the legal ethic goal whatever, you know, the goal is to kill that dear. And you know, um, a few years ago, remember the buck six shooter that was hunting right Um. So I've been hunting him with a bow for a couple of years. The first year I was hunting him, second yar he disappeared. Third year and hunted all season for with the bow, couldn't kill him. And then mid December I've been hunting all the way through hunting my tail off, grinding and out during Muzzloer season, I killed him at forty yards with the Mussloder And UM, I had someone email me who like was blasting me about it, like I can't believe you would do that. I can't believe. Um, you know, I don't know. He emailed me, like repeatedly, Like he emailed me, and I ignored it. And then like a week or two later he emailed again like how it had been rubbing him the wrong way and he was thinking about it more. Um. And I've got nothing against the guy, Like I appreciate the guy fouling wird hunt. I appreciated him being a fan, but it really pissed me off, Like I'm like, who are you to tell me, like what I should or shouldn't be doing, etcetera, etcetera. Um, and it bothered me. So this time around, you know, I just I'm not gonna worry about other people. Think it is my experience. It is my hunt. Um, and I appreciate people falling along with it. I'm trying to share the true experience of my hunt, what it is for me and what I'm learning from it. And um, you know you can feel free to make different choices even your hunts, in your own hunts. This is what I'm doing in mind. So I had to go out there for gun season. Maybe I could get lucky in day one. Um, it ended up being a miserable day. I said, all day again, And starting like nine o'clock, it started raining and it was like I don't know, high thirties or something like that, and then raining, but it was a blowing rain. Even with even with my tree umbrella and my rain gear and everything. Um, I forgot, I wanted to forget. I didn't wear my rain pants. I just wore my rain jacket because I wanted access to all my pockets and stuff on my bibs. And I thought, what with my tree umbrella in a rain jacket on un zipped, I'll be able to stay dry enough. But I didn't think about the blowing wind, and so all the rain blew in underneath the umbrella and so just like everything got wet. My hands are wet, my hand warmer pocket was wet. So it was it was like the most miserable day of my season so far. It was long, cold, wet, didn't seem any deer didn't see holy field, and um, and that's it. So now I'm just crossing my fingers and toes that he can survive um handful more days and and I might make a couple targeted hunts during gun season. I'm not sure if I will or won't, depends on the conditions in the situation. UM, I might go in there after him again, UM, or I might wait until after gun season and then get back after him hard in the late season, um with the bow or muzzleloader, depending on the season. UM. But he just you know, that's all dependent on whether or not he is alive. So there's nothing I can do about now. I just gotta hope pity. Well, you know, if he stays alive, this track record is good, that'll stick around there. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. Like my the last two years. By far, he's the most active all year during December on my property because those late season food plots. UM. So I don't know if it's going to happen. UM, I can tell you that I have stressed more about it than anything. UM that last night of both season, I just sat in the tree and just like I don't know if you ever have you ever had this feeling, but like you just sit there and like you start like looking back on the season and thinking through everything and could I have done anything differently? And you know, all this work gone for nothing or blah blah blah blah blah blah. For the last four years, I haven't killed Okay, so yeah, um, but you know by the end of the night, you know, and I have to do this a lot personally. Um, And I've talked about this before. I have a tendency to to get really personally invested in like this kind of stuff. In myn It's a nice I get, you know, my wife always kids. Like every year, I'm like, I'm not gonna get stressed out this season. I'm just gonna have fun. But it never fails. I'm pretty sure you're saying that in September. Yeah, for sure, I'm just gonna have a good time. I'm not gonna get worked up about that. But every year I do like I'm very goal oriented, I'm very um, I'm very focused. So UM, I tend to to to to go all in and then um, I let it eat away at me if things aren't going well. And I think every year I get better at it and I deal with a little bit better. Um. But this year, you know, that happened to a degree. But I've had to have a couple like a little mini um what's the word, uh, interventions, Like a self intervention. So like after the cell phone incident, I had a self intervention. I said, you know what, you need to just get step away because you're about to jump off the tree stand Um, so step away, get back to the on of it. I did that. It was a great decision, came back, had a bunch of really close calls and encounters with holy Field. It was great. It didn't work out. Um, and then after that last day of both season, you know, I was like, you know, all right, it hasn't worked out. You've given it. You're all though. So you know, like I said earlier, Um, the odds are probably that he will get killed over the next couple of weeks because there's a lot of hunters out there. Um, he's been very daylight active. Um, he's probably gonna be killed. And that will be like heartbreaking for me. Like it's gonna be a very big bummer. If I get the neighbor sends me a picture or something, I find out, Um, but that's in the end. That's not what it's that's not what it's all about. I mean, I have to take, um, take like it's been such a cool three years getting to watch this deer and hunt this deer and live out this experience, and um, it has like tested me and pushed me farther than anything before. And um, I've learned a lot, I mean and and never I mean, gosh, I mean, if you take all the encounters I've had this past couple of weeks, it's maybe like a dozen. Maybe. Um. Last year I saw him twenty seven times in my own eyes. This year, maybe it's like twelve so far this year. The year before it was like five. Um, so what do is like twenty seven plus let's say thirteen, that's um forty plus another five. I've seen this here forty five times. Maybe, Um it's nuts. And I will probably because I don't own property, I don't have anything like that. I don't know if I will ever have an opportunity to have like this kind of thing with a deer again. Right, Well, you said it a couple of minutes ago. You you've done everything that you can do to try to kill this deer. And I think you even if he does get killed, you can lick yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, I gave it one heck of a shot. And you know, I don't think there's really anything that you could second guess that you did that. Man, if I would have done this, you know, you've been out there every day when the conditions have been poor, when it's been a struggle. So I mean, I think you can look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, I gave it my best shot and it works out awesome. If it doesn't, you know, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. That's a that's hunting, right, So live and learn. And I certainly haven't maybe made all the right decisions, are done all the right things, but um, I never I always did everything to the best of my ability and thought process at the time. You know, I always had a thought process, I always had a plan. I always was, um, you know, being mindful and thoughtful about how I was approaching things and trying to take every little thing into account everything I've learned over the years, trying to be smart about exit and access, trying to be smart about when trying to be smart about what this dear is doing, how he's doing it, and you know, it's it's kind of been like like your master what's called. Um, I don't know, like you've got to write your thesis at the end of your like PhD program or whatever. Like this has been like the culmination of the last decade of my growth as a hunter has been this challenge and I've had to take everything I've learned to try to put it all together. Um. And I have not passed the test yet. UM, but I've swung the very best I could. Maybe it's a swing in the mist or maybe I will connect and hit my home run. But UM, I know that I did what I could. So that's that's it. Well, I'm pulling fund out. I've told you that before. I'm pulling for you. I appreciate it, man, hope it works out for you. I do appreciate it. And I gotta I gotta say thank you to everyone out there listening to again, just man. Like I've been posting like daily Instagram stories like updates throughout every day's hunt, and I'm getting like, I don't know, dozens, if not hundreds of messages like over the over the week or two, just people wishing me luck or sharing the thoughts or different things. And then all the emails and Facebook messages and all that stuff, just just tons and tons of support. I appreciate every following along, and I appreciate all of you that are so sick and tired of hearing me talk about this deer, but that you've stuck with me and you've still listened. UM. I promise, probably one way or another, within the next month, either someone else is going to kill him or I will, and you will never have to hear about holy Field again. So that's that. Um. We won't talk about holy Field again until next week. So I want to wrap it up real quick with talking about where we're at. Um. We're at deer camp. So that's where I took off after opening day of gun season. That was yesterday. Today it is the second day gun season. We're up here at our cabin um, and this place is where it all started from me. I've been coming up here since I was like two. UM, but Josh, you are newer. You started coming up here like four years ago or five years ago or something. UM, so as an outside perspective or newer perspective, how would you describe this place, Like why is it cool for you? Or do is this play cool? Like it's supero it's like what like when Yeah, it's like when when you hear about people talking about Deer Camp for stupid songs like the second Week of Deer came, you know, this is like, this is like what you think about. It's like a cabin with no electricity, totally off the grid out in the middle of the woods, like northern Michigan, like swamp, cedars, pine tree. I mean, it's just like the whole package. And it's just like everything that you would think of Deer Campus. This is it. It's been awesome. It's it's been a great time coming up here. But I think it's five years now. It's been five years and coming up here now, um, and thank you for having me. It's it's been it's been so much fun, hang on with you, hang on with your dad and your uncle and just it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's a it's one of my absolute favorite places in the world. And um, lots and lots and lots of good memories. There's I mean between between the wall here with all these racks, I mean, I can point to a dozen of these and tell you stories like there's a that setting antlers just above your head, Josh. The top left rack is the first deer I can remember being killed up here. When I was coming up here, I was probably six or seven, and I remember this buck It was an eight pointer that my uncle's shop. And what I remember, I'm so young that I don't remember much about it. All I remember is that this one moment, the guys, all the all the men had the deer hung off from the buck pole and they've skinned it out. And usually we don't skin them out here. Usually it's just hung on the buck pole and then whoever, you know, they take it home and they do whatever with it. But for some reason they decided to skin it out, and I guess maybe they butchered the deer. I don't remember that. All I remembered is that the hide was laying down on the in the yard. The hide was laying down with with the hair down towards the grass, and then the inside of the hide pointing up. And what I remember is that I must I was drinking an orange high sea juice box and I was standing over it looking at it, Like I said, six or seven or something like that, and I remember I spilled a squirted orange high sea all over the inside of the hide, and I just remember being like petrified that I was going to get in trouble and I don't nobody must have been there, so I just remember squirting orange high sea all over it and like panicking. I don't remember what I did though. I don't remember like how I tried to resolve the situation. All I remember was spilling orange high sea. Um. So that was that memory. And then my uncle many years later gave me that hide that's now the that's the one is hanging on the wall in my house. I don't know that. Yeah, um, that big seven pointer there is probably my most memorable night ever. Um. I just remember the snowy night and my grandpa shot that buck. And I was again maybe like nine or ten or something like that, and I remember that was the first year that I remember they brought me along for a track job. It's like me and my dad had been hunting and we came back into the house or back into the cabin and we'd heard gp grandpa had we heard the gunshot come from where he hunts. So I was so excited, Like whenever you heard a gunshot, I'd always look at my dad like, Dad, was that one of our guys? That one of our guys, Like, Oh no, Mark, that was too far away. It's too far away. Then you hear another guns my dad, was that one? Was that one? He's like, oh no, when you hear one, that's when you hear what. You'll know what. You'll know it's close enough. And then maybe in our letter when you jump out of your chair like that was one, wasn't He's like, yeah, that was one of our guys for sure. And I remember running back to the swamp to get back to the cab and we get in here and GP comes in and he's like, oh, I got one Mark, And we had like this is you know, this is like seven or something. Um So we had like big kerosene like Coleman lanterns or whatever, um like, not even like flashlets. We had the lanterns like that. And it was snowing. I don't remember exactly how much snow. It was fully coated snow. Remember walking across the fields and get to this creek and you get to the edge of the creek and my grandpad dragged him up to the edge of the creek on the other side though, and I just remember we got there and then he held up the lantern high enough that then the light shone across the creek and you could just see this big rack across the way and that was whoa, that is a big bug um. And then um, our friend Terry had shot a nice eight point that morning, so we had this big seven point and big and I mean these are big, big Northern Michigan bucks um at least three and a half year old, maybe four and a half year old bucks um. You know, impressive racks for this area. And I just remember those two deer sitting on the on the buck pole, and I just stood out next to the deer hanging there for hours during the middle of the day. I would just stand out there and walk circles around it and look at it and touch it. And yeah, just a lot of cool memories up here. It's an awesome play. Um. We haven't seen tons of deer the last like ten fifteen years. The deer population is plummeted. But I think it's getting better this last few years. Things are improving. We've been seeing some more deer. We're getting some bucks on trail. Camera just pulled the cards here today and there's at least one mature buck, um, which is cool. There's at least one nice one here in camera that he was here in daylight on the eleven and the tenth I think, so that was only five six days ago, so there's a chance we might see him hopefully. I don't know. We'll give it a shot. We got a couple of days and um, I'm just excited to be out there and to be here. It's the hunting, it's it's nice now that we've got, you know, the chance of seeing a shooter buck. That's cool, and it's nice to see some deer. And we've been doing some work the last few years of trying to make it better, doing some food plots and trying to figure things out a little bit better. But it's more so just the camaraderie and being up here with friends and family and eating lots of junk food. Yeah, oreos and milk and milk beer. I think the best part about up here though, is like you can sleep in like a touch longer. Yeah, But then like the coffee, Like your dad's always got that coffee going in the morning, and man, it's the best part. Yeah. I think my big old like big mugs yea. And the fire has been restoked by you know once once we get up, because Dad gets up first, he's up real early. So by the time we're up and out of our sleeping bag, and that's probably about the fifth or six time he's been up. We won't talk about why, oh but uh, but yeah. I think one of my favorite moments is every day when you come in from the hunt. It's cold out and then you step in here and just that just like like a like a blanket of warmth gets wrapped around you here and that like the golden glow of the of the propane lights. There's like Josh, Sai, there's no electricity. It's just had these propane um lantern deal lights out to call them um. And then the wood burning stove and he was just some country music playing on the radio, and and then you just have some good food and play cards and you know, it's just good stuff. So I think on that note, we will wrap it up. UM. I don't know, Josh, any final final things you want to share, Um, yeah, I'll take advantage real quick. I would just say, you know, if if you know anybody out there that's expressed any interest in hunting or anything like that, take them along, get him out there in the woods. That's that's how I got into I mean, Mark, you took me when you know, we went a couple of times in high school, and then I really got into it, um after college. And I mean I'm sitting here today doing what I'm doing now a lot of it because you showed an I showed an interest in You took me out and got me involved in it. So I would just say, you know, be a mentor to somebody, take a take a new hunter out in the woods and and um, you know who knows where it will lead him. But UM, i'd encourage everybody to do that. UM. And if you're interested in in starting a branch or getting involved um in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio or even if you're not in that area, get it. Get get a hold of me and I can get you in touch with the right people. And um, and I'd love to talk to you. And if you do get in touch with him, please do not refer to him as Mr Hilliard. Please don't refer to him as Josh or Josh Hilliard or j h q dum, which is his Instagram handle. No, none of those things are the appropriate title to refer to him. You can just say what's going on in further further. All right, well we're gonna we're gonna shut this one down and um hopefully we'll have some more good stories for next time. And that is going to do it for us today. I'm going to wrap it up without any of my occasional end of the podcast rambling. So that said, let's just give a big thank you to our partners at Sick of Gear Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tailed Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt ra Maps, And finally, big thanks to all of you who have been listening today. I appreciate it. If you're going out in the woods soon do some hunting, I wish you all the luck in the world. Be safe out there, have a great time, and stay wired to hunt.

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